#... the point here is. someone should give me a real gun >:))))

[rancidarling]

it's probably such a good thing I didn't grow up in America because anytime I went to someone's house and they had a bb gun, I'd just be obsessed with it and trying to be subtle about how interested I was in using it and also wanting to know what it would be like to shoot someone with it 😍

[evansonlylove]

id share my power with you forever

-kai anderson x female reader

CW: Smut 18+, slapping, choking, toxic relationship, rough, p n v, abuse? body marking, jealousy. kai being kai. mentions of murder, gun. exhibition. . !!Loving kai!!

Summary: Kai had been getting closer to his members but you noticed one girl in particular. She always touched kai and flaunted herself in front of him for you to see until you finally had enough as he wasn’t stopping it. He shows you just how much he really loves you♥️(other woman is h/n)

“It’s time for a revolution, a revolution i want you all to be a part of. i’ll give you purpose” Kai said as he walked around the room, looking at all of us sitting down. He’d talked to you about the type of people he wanted, the power he wanted and such yet it surprised you every time he talked. “Real power is having people loyal enough to you that, if you ask them to, they will kill themselves. they will override their natural survival instinct in service for your needs and will.” He turns to a girl sitting infront and looks down at her, seeing her admiration as easy target. “I’ll give you.. give you all something to be a part of. someone to serve for the best”

It was all for a cause right? you shouldn’t be jealous, he’s just doing his job. You remembered when you were that girl, the innocent girl he longed for that opened his cold heart. But he loved you you just need to be secure in that, and you were until she did everything possible to have him. She wasn’t even threatened or cared to do it infront of you and it drove you crazy.

“Hey h/n I need to talk to you, meet me in my room when you’re done with that will you?” being the leaders girlfriend came the perk of the members listening to you as well, you were going to put an end to her one way or another. Finally she walks in, but of course wearing the shortest shorts known to man kind and skimpiest shirt. “Lock the door please and sit down” You pulled out a chair for her as you stayed standing up. “So I see what you keep doing, wearing these clothes infront of MY boyfriend. What are you looking to get?”

“What do you think? I obviously want him, i could easily take him for you” She said and looked up at you with teasing eyes and a laugh.

“Oh? you really think so?” Your hand goes up to her neck choking and pushing it back. “Id love to see you actually try, because all you’ve done is dress like a whore and it’s done nothing” Reaching into your back pocket you pull out a gun Kai had given you for protection and put it right up to her head. “But try it, try it and i’ll fucking kill you. After all I am Kai’s girlfriend, I know a thing or two” Suddenly you hear the door open, turning around you see Kai shirtless with his beautiful blue hair half up in a bun.

“What the fuck is happening here?” He questioned as he walked closer and sees who’s in the chair.

“Just telling this stupid whore she should stop trying to take you from me… or i’ll kill her” You whisper into her ear and feel kai’s hand around your waist making a smile appear on your lips.

“Pfft, her attempts have be pathetic but i’ll tell you something” He turns its body to you while you still have the gun pointed to her head “You can kill her, or I can show you how much I ONLY love you” His head leans down and in to kiss you.

“Get the fuck out of here, try again and i’ll kill you for real” You look at her and point to the door but kai has other plans.

“No no let her stay, let her see how much i love you. Make her watch what she’ll never have” He gave you a smirk before locking the door with a key this time. “And you sit the fuck down, don’t talk” Letting you go he leaned down to her face level. “All you ever were was a easy target to serve me, if you thought anything else than you really are a stupid whore” he practically spit his words at her.

You put your gun down on your drawer and got down on your knees infront of kai, his fingers ran through your hair as he looked down at you. “What a pretty girl you are” You really were the prettiest girl he had ever seen, always especially pretty when you looked up at him on your knees ready to serve him. Reaching your hands up you undo his jeans and bring them down, seeing his hard cock in his underwear you bit your lip and slowly jerked him off as he pulled them down. Holding his cock in your hands you slid it on your lips before kissing his tip and taking him into your mouth fully. “Fuck, you’d never be able to take this cock like her”.

You looked over at her as he ran his hands to the back of your head and fucked your mouth, the groans coming out of his mouth was the cherry on top, It felt like electricity through your body. Once he was close he pulled out of your mouth and pulled you up by the back of your head, he placed a kiss on your lips before turning you around and slapping your ass. Slowly he pulled your pants off along with your panties, you took your shirt off and threw it to the side. “Look at these fucking ass and tits, you think you can compete with my pretty little slut?” Her face ran red when he showed you off. “I asked you a question bitch” He walked over to her and slapped her across the face before she answered.

“No- no i can’t compete with her”

“That’s fucking right” he says before laying you down on the bed, kissing down your body and licking a stripe up your pussy. “This cunt is all I need” He lays a kiss on your clit and spits on your already wet pussy, suddenly he flips you on all fours and holds onto your hips as he pulls you onto his cock.

“Fuck, kai you feel so good” you moan out while he pounds your pussy from the back, reaching down he lifts your upper body towards him holding you up by your neck. He lays kisses on your neck still thrusting into you. You turn your head around leading into a passionate kiss between you two, his groans going into your lips making you throb around his cock.

“Show her how good you ride me” He whispers into your ear as he lays down. You straddle him in reverse cowgirl so you can look at her face while you do so, kai leads his cock to your entrance as you slide down. “Tell her how good this divine cock feels in you, show her it’s all yours”

Holding in your moans you look at her while still going up and down on him. “His divine fucking cock feels so good in my pussy, and it’s all fucking mine” Kai held onto your ass and gave you a slap showing how proud he was. His cock hit the perfect spot in you every time you went down.

“Don’t hold back your moans, show that bitch the pleasure i’ll never give her” And just like that you let go, moans coming out of your mouth and filling the room along with the sounds of your ass hitting his hips with each move you made. “Yeah just like that, so fucking hot for me” His hands holding onto your hips so hard you felt the bruises forming.

“Divine ruler I need to cum, im so close please” He lifted you off his cock and put you on your back

“Not just yet, you’re cumming with me” Sliding his cock back into your wet cunt. Your orgasm building up again with his hand cupping your breast as he leaned down kissing and sucking on your breasts leaving hickeys and marks all over you. Your head rolled back in pleasure feeling his hands all over your and his cock thrusting deep into you.

“God I love you and your cock my divine ruler” You moaned out before his hand reached your chin pulling your head to look at him.

“Yeah baby? look at me while I fuck you and this perfect wet little cunt” His hands squeezed your cheeks causing your mouth to open as he spit down your throat. You swallowed immediately looking into his eyes with a slutty smile on your face. “I fucking love you ” Your legs shook around him as your orgasm came close to you again, you felt his thrusts get harder as he groaned into your ear. “I’m gonna cum inside this cunt while that stupid bitch watches, you ready to cum with me my little lamb?”

“Fuck yes, give my cunt your seed my God” He held your hands at your side as he let out his final thrust pushing you over the edge screaming his name while you came all over his cock, milking his cum into your desperate pussy. It was all unreal, he gave you unreal pleasure. You leaned up and pulled him into a kiss while he was still inside of you he pulled you up to sit.

“Let’s go finish her off” He whispered into your ear as you stood up with him and walked towards her with his cum dripping down your pussy.

“Oh look at how flustered you look, you dumb bitch you’ll never have him, I hope you were able to learn that. I don’t want to have to lose a bullet on you.” You laughed and held kai’s hand.

“I wouldnt even pitty fuck you, keep that shit up and i’ll kill you myself” He pulls her hair back as she screeches in pain from his force. “What you just saw, that’s how I fuck the woman I love”

“Get out of my face and go do something useful with yourself” Right as she stood up you pulled her down on her knees, humiliating her once again. “Actually, thank him for letting you watch. He was being nice don’t you think?”

“yes, yes thank you divine ruler for letting me see how- how much you only love her” She stuttered out making a laugh come out of both of you.

“What a pathetic bitch. All you do here is obey me and y/n and that’s it, don’t walk around like a slut trying to get me to pitty fuck you. Seriously get out now.” She walks out leaving you and kai alone, picking you up with your legs around him he kisses you.

“You’re the only one I want, i’d share my power with you forever”.

You look at him with confusion, you he loved having power and even deep inside you “knew” you were only a special follower to him. “I thought today had shown you i want us to be two, in this together. I want you to be the divine queen to these people, alongside me”

“Of course i will kai, you won’t regret this. I know how much trust you’re putting in me and i’ll never get out of my place, you’re still the divine ruler, i don’t mind ruling these people beside you but never above you” You lean in and leave kisses down his neck, all of what you thought before was wrong. He was genuine, you were different to him and opened a different side of him.

“You know it was hot to see you take charge of someone in the group, And you were right. Being with me has taught you a few things, i bet you even got a rush out of putting her in her place.”. You felt your heartbeat get faster as these words came out of his mouth, slowly he laid you down and laid beside you as you thought about everything. Kai changed you, made you realize the deepest parts of yourself and being entirely true to who you really are and desire.

“I did, I feel like i’ve been chasing a high like that. The only other time i feel it is when you take control and ruin me while loving me” You turned your body over and cupped his face with your hand, you were never a religious person but seeing him made you question that maybe God was real and took form in him. “But i have been craving something more…”

“Tell me” His hands wrapped around your waist to pull you closer to him leaving your head on his chest. Before you answered you lifted your hand up to his rising and falling chest, his heartbeat not only gave him life but it did to you too.

“I’d kill for you and i know you’d kill for me. I’ve been in the group while you kill people with other members, I always see how your face changes as if something takes over you and you feel truly alive. I want that with you, I want that high with you.” His eyes almost lit up with your response, as if he has been waiting for this very moment.

“I knew you were fucking perfect for me” A almost sadistic smile spread on his face as he picked you up and placed you in his lap, immediately your lips crash together like they had many times before except this time there was a hunger for more and you knew you’d get that certain high soon enough. Everything felt as if it went into place, you knew how kai truly felt abiut you, you knew you weren’t just another member and you knew you had changed him somehow. Kai was still kai, but with love, love for you and only you forever.

part 2?

thank you all for reading, this was kinda quick and i’m thinking about writing a different version of this where they actually kill the other girl, or just a part two to this. not sure if you’ll like that so if you’re interested pls comment it lolll. all likes and reposts are so appreciated and make my day. i’m trying to grow my account and such but i’ve just started writing and i’m not sure what to do to grow it but thank you for your support ♥️- rain

[diaryofanidiot]

The Experiments

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!Reader

Chapter list: Prologue, <1>, 2, 3, 4, 5

Cw: Swearing; torture; blood; medical experiments; panic attacks; malnourishment

Summary: For over a year, Y/N was held in a soviet experimentation facility. Forced to fight and claw her way to live, she managed to stay alive. When the 141 rescues her, they get way more intel than bargained for.

Chapter One

"What the bloody fuck is this..." A gruff voice spoke. I slowly looked up with wide eyes and nearly shat myself at the sight.

A giant behemoth of a man in a skull mask stood still, his body language relaxed but on guard as he stared in my direction.

His boots clunked heavily on the floor as he approached me, his gun still held at the ready but not pointed in my direction. I couldn't see his face, but his frown was apparent in his voice.

"Mactavish, I've found something... or someone, rather." He said, tuning in on his radio. I never once took my eyes off of him, unsure of if he was even real or not. Perhaps I had already died and this was the grim reaper to take me away...

"I don't understand, L.T." A staticky voice came through his radio.

"A woman. In a cage."

"Last I checked this wasn't a sex dungeon." The voice on the radio had a Scottish accent, dripping with amusement.

"Not joking." The British skull faced man said gruffly. "Finish clearing out the building. Then get to the rendezvous. I'll meet you there."

"Copy."

As he finished giving his orders, he knelt down next to the cage. "Who are you?" He demanded.

I scrambled back in the cage until the bars pressed against my bare back. I tried to speak, but my voice only came out in cracks after long-term misuse.

"Ah. Gotcha." He seemed to understand, or maybe he simply thought I was a mute. I saw his eyes flicker up toward the label on the cage.

"Subject 237: "Banshee"." He read aloud. "Stay where you are. I'm opening this blasted thing." He warned. "Try anything and you're dead."

I nodded slowly, desperate to let him know that I understood English. My eyes never left him as he shot the lock on the cage, despite my flinching at the sound.

"Out you go." He demanded, his gun still at the ready. My knees protested in pain as I crawled toward the entrance of my cramped confinement. I had almost forgotten about the chain and collar around my neck.

I could see his eyes widen slightly as I crawled into whatever light the room had offered; they darted around my scarred naked form as he observed me.

"Fuck did they do to you..." He mumbled below his breath.

The chains length only went so far for me to get an inch of room past the cage door. He knelt down in front of me. My traumatized brain flashing danger signs with every movement.

"I won't hurt you." He said in a low tone, one hand coming up to reassure me. "Not unless you try to hurt me. Just need to take this off..."

His hand darted toward the chain around my neck, causing me to flinch at the rapid movement. I could hear him curse underneath his mask as he realized a key was needed.

"Wait. Here." He ordered, standing back to full height before he went to raid the dead corpses in search of the key. He found it on the assistant's body with impressive speed before walking back over and swiftly removing the steel collar that kept me in place.

I hissed in pain once more as the cold damp air hit the sores on my neck, my hand going up to rub them instinctively. His hand was on my wrist now, stopping me from rubbing.

"We should get a doctor on that. Or on you in general..." His gun was lowered now, seeing as I had made no room to attack him. "Do you have a name?"

Once his hand was off my wrist, I pointed a shakey finger toward the label on the cage. He shook his head at this. "No, that's what they called you. I mean a real name." He insisted.

I frowned and looked to the ground. I had one. Over the course of a year, somehow, it had fled my memory. Nobody called me it anymore anyway. I turned my gaze back toward him with an apologetic look.

He sighed. "No matter. It'll come back to you. Let's get you out of here."

He swiftly walked over toward the scientist and removed the lab coat from the corpse.

"Put this on." He demanded, handing it to me. I complied. The fabric swallowed my malnourished body as I looked down, as if just now realized how gaunt my once healthy body had become.

He seemed to be looking at me expectantly. My legs tried to hold me up, screaming in agony as I stood slowly with atrophied muscles. I stumbled, my knees slamming against the linoleum tile. I cringed in pain as they did.

"Fuck." I heard him say before I was lifted and thrown over his shoulder. "Let's get you out of here." I watched as he seemed to notice a file on the table... my file. He snatched it up quickly and stored it away before the same voice I had heard earlier came in on the radio.

"L.T., you copy?"

He spoke into his radio with a sense of urgency. "Aye."

"I'm at the Rendezvous point now. The building's cleared, so you should have a clear path as long as there's no stragglers."

"You have my appreciation." If it were possible to hear a smirk, you could swear he wore one under the mask.

"Get here safely, and you'll have mine, Sir."

The radio went silent once more as I was carried out to the hall like a rag doll. Hell, I probably weighed less than one at this point. My eyes were wide as I saw all the death that littered the building.

Unable to push down the sick sense of satisfaction that came from seeing my tormentors dead on the ground, I managed the smallest hint of a smile. The first one I've worn in what seemed like forever.

The man on the radio was right. A path was completely cleared, seeing as my rescuer never once had to stop for any threats.

Until we exited the building, at least...

Gunshots were pouring out as my eyes adjusted to the rising sun, unaccustomed to the light. I felt my body thrown behind something as my rescuer took cover beside me, firing multiple shots.

Once my eyes adjusted, I blinked them open to see we were behind a set of barrels. I managed a small peak at our assailants before I was forced back behind the cover with an angry "stay."

I frowned as he continued making his shots before requesting backup. I guessed the soviets really didn't want him escaping this one with how many men were sent.

Opening my mouth to try to speak, my voice cracked and strained severely. "Ears..." I mustered. I saw his eyes flicker to me for half a second before refocusing on his targets.

"Ears." I tried again, miming for him to cover them.

"Noise reduction headphones, kid." He said gruffly. It was then I noticed that his ears were already covered.

I glanced back once more, placing a hand on his arm to prepare him slightly as I gathered all the strength I could.

I screamed. The supernatural-esque sound reached nearly two hundred decibles, equivalent to a large bomb. I heard glass shattering and the sounds of people crying out in pain. My throat was raw by the time I let my screaming fade to an end.

The enemy gunfire ceased, and even the man beside me looked temporally disoriented. He grunted as he got his bearings back and shot those writhing on the ground in pain. They weren't wearing ear protection, I noted, finally looking up from my spot behind the steel barrels. They must've been deployed in a hurry.

Once the waves of gunfire ceased, I heard a shuffling motion and a click beside me. My rescuers gun was now to my head.

I looked at him with wide, fearful eyes as he stared me down.

"What the fuck are you?" He demanded. I flinched, but the scream had left my throat too damaged to speak. I could only croak out a few sounds, none of them enough for form even a single word.

"Don't. Move." He demanded, pulling out the file he had snatched earlier from its space between his vest and his chest.

I watched him with unblinking eyes as he opened it. "Are you even human anymore?" He asked seemingly to himself as he scanned the front page of the file.

Something he read caught his eye before his gaze landed on my frightened expression once more. "Show me your teeth."

Hesitantly, I opened my mouth. The barrel of his gun moving to pull my lip back further. I could've sworn I stopped breathing as he revealed the pair of sharp fangs that had been surgically fastened to my canines. His eyes then lowered to my throat. Underneath the sores was a jagged surgical scar where they had altered my vocal chords.

I couldn't read his expression due to his mask, and his eyes said nothing.

"You scream like that again and I'll kill you." He stated matter-of-factly. He didn't seem to care that I just gave him a major advantage against his enemies. I watched him cancel the request for backup before I was thrown over his shoulder once more.

The Rendezvous wasn't far; he experienced no more hiccups in getting me there. I blinked as I observed the abandoned factory, the floor creaking with each of his heavy steps.

I felt my weak body stumble as I was set down on the floor. I winced in pain before a new set of footsteps approached.

"Good to see ya, Sir." The voice that once cracked through radio waves was now just in front of me. I looked up to put a face to a voice. This man wasn't masked, I managed to get a good look at his face.

"Sergeant." The tense tone in my rescuer's voice was gone now as he greeted the other. I listened in as he updated his teammate on the situation.

"Experiments?" His Scottish accent was thick with confusion. His attention turned to me as he knelt down to my place on the ground. He seemed to be observing me, a slight crease between his eyebrows as he did.

Not a trace of fear entered his eyes even once as he looked at me. "Call me Soap, lass."

I blinked at his friendliness, a stark contrast to the other man's battle hardened tone.

"That over there, That's Ghost. He's the one who got you out of there." Soap's hand went to his hip as he unlatched something from his vest and held it out to me. "You'll probably be wanting this."

It took a minute for me to realize what was in his hands but once it clicked, I snatched the canteen quickly and fumbled it open. I heard him chuckle as I drank greedily, the room temperature water doing wonders for my dry throat.

"Slow your roll and don't drown yourself." He lightly lectured as I pulled away in a coughing fit once my greed bit me in the ass by sending water down the wrong pipe.

I watched him turn to Ghost, a quizzical look in his eyes. "She doesn't appear dangerous."

"Appearances can decieve." Was Ghost's response. "Show him your teeth."

I cringed at having to go through this again before I bared my fangs hesitantly. "She was heavily altered. I'm assuming they were creating human weapons."

"That all?" Soap scoffed, seemingly not intimidated. Ghost shook his head.

"They called her Banshee. Her vocal cords are altered as well. I watched her practically burst the eardrums of five enemy soldiers. Hell, nearly had my own eardrums bleeding."

Soap nodded and took the canteen back as I handed it to him. "She's so scrawny. How long have you been there?" He asked me.

Ghost placed a hand on his shoulder. "Her voice is fried. Gonna have to get back to the compound and have a more thorough look at her file. Where are the others?"

Soap stood to his full height. "Gaz and Price are clearing out another facility nearby. They should be here soon."

A new voice called out, turning the heads of all three of us.

"Soon? Try now."

The two strangers, we'll at least strangers to me, walked up. The older man looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite identify before speaking.

"Ghost.... fill us in."

-----------------------------------

Typos? In my fanfic? Liar. (Pls point them out to me as we don't do roughdrafts in this household. We die like Roach here 🫡)

A/N: thank you all for the love this got from just the Prologue alone <3 sorry if anything feels off. I'm a secondhand fan and never touched the games lol.

Taglist: @warenai @linoskitten11 @jamesrifftapes

[estellan0vella]

Robbery Older Brother Sukuna AU HFBU Pt2

You sit at the counter of the parlour, sketching random designs in your notebook while chatting with Gojo. Your best friend since high school, Gojo recently joined the shop as a piercer, and his cheerful banter has become a daily highlight.

"Hey, Y/N/N," Gojo says, leaning over to peek at your sketches. "That's some good stuff. Ever thought about doing the tattoos?"

You laugh, shaking your head. "Nah, I'm happy just doodling. Leave the ink to the pros."

Gojo grins, his bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "Maybe I'll just have to convince you one day."

Across the room, Sukuna is working on a client's back piece, his concentration intense and unwavering. His presence is commanding, even when he's completely focused on his work. Toji and Geto are busy with their own clients, exchanging jokes and stories as they ink intricate designs.

The door chimes as someone walks in, and you glance up out of habit. A man stands in the doorway, looking out of place and nervous. Your eyes narrow slightly as you take in the sight of the gun he's trying to hide under his jacket.

"Uh, everybody freeze!" he shouts, pulling the gun out and waving it around.

A tense silence falls over the room, but only for a moment. Then, to the man's surprise, laughter erupts from all of you.

"Wow, seriously?" Gojo says, rolling his eyes. "Compensating much?"

Toji smirks, not even pausing in his work. "Yeah, buddy, did you lose a bet or something? That thing's tiny."

"Is that a lighter in your pocket or are you happy to see us?" Sukuna taunts.

The man blinks, clearly not expecting this reaction. His face flushes with embarrassment and frustration, his grip on the gun tightening nervously.

Sukuna leans back in his chair, a smirk playing on his lips. "I gotta say, if you're here to rob us, you could at least bring something more threatening. That little pea-shooter won't get you far."

Toji chuckles, glancing over at Geto who nods in agreement. "Seriously, man. Did you think we wouldn't notice you sneaking in here with that?"

You, still seated at the counter, can't help but join in. "And here I thought I'd seen everything in this shop. Turns out, we're now a comedy club."

Gojo, with his usual irreverence, adds fuel to the fire. "I mean, look at you. You look like a marshmallow"

"What does that even mean?" You ask with a giggle and Gojo shrugs.

The man’s face contorts with a mix of anger and humiliation. "Shut up!" he yells, waving the gun again. "I'm serious! I'll shoot!"

Toji raises an eyebrow, his tone still teasing. "Oh, are we doing threats now? How about this: put that thing away before someone gets hurt. Namely, your ego."

The man looks flustered, his grip on the gun tightening as he points it at you. "Shut up! I'm serious! Give me all your money!"

You roll your eyes, unable to contain your sarcasm. "Sweetheart, I have epilepsy. My brain doesn't work right on the best of days. A gun doesn't scare me. Just don't mess with my face or my tits, alright? They're my best features."

Sukuna leans back, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Can confirm. I'm extremely fond of them"

Geto nods solemnly. "Seriously, those are top-tier assets. We should put them in a museum."

Gojo nods solemnly as you laugh. "We'd have to hold a memorial service for the girls. It'd be tragic."

Toji finally looks up, his expression one of mock seriousness. "The worst crime you'd commit today would be damaging that rack."

Gojo grins wider. "We'd put ourselves in the line of fire to protect those honkers."

Sukuna gestures lazily towards you. "Hey babe," he says with a grin, "don't worry, I'll protect those masterpieces," nodding towards your chest. "Can't have this guy ruining what I get to enjoy every day."

Gojo nods sagely. "He's right, those are national treasures."

Toji nods in agreement. "Yeah, I'd cry real tears if something happened to those."

The man's face turns bright red, his hand shaking as he tries to regain control of the situation. "Shut up! Just give me the money!"

"Is it an innie?" Toji asks, feigning genuine curiosity. "You know, your... equipment?"

The robber's frustration grows as the room continues to be filled with laughter and teasing. He finally lowers the gun, looking completely defeated. "You guys are crazy," he mutters before turning and bolting out the door.

As soon as he's gone, the room erupts into even louder laughter. Sukuna sets down his tattoo machine and walks over to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. "Glad our national treasures are safe," he murmurs, planting a kiss on your temple and you snort.

Gojo is still chuckling, shaking his head. "That was priceless. Best robbery attempt ever."

Geto nods in agreement. "Yeah, we really should thank the guy for the entertainment."

Toji stretches, leaning back in his chair. "Who knew our biggest concern today would be protecting Y/N's tits?"

You grin, feeling the warmth of Sukuna's embrace. "Well, they're glad to still be here."

"We're all glad they're still here," Sukuna says with a grin. 

The next day, you come into the parlour with a new sign you’ve created. It's bright and colourful, with bold letters that read, “No Guns Allowed. Seriously, We'll Laugh In Your Face.” Gojo takes a marker from you and neatly writes 'We will protect the honkers with our own bodies' making you laugh as you hand the sign to Sukuna who takes it from you, chuckling as he hangs it in the window for everyone to see.

Sukuna steps back to admire your work, a proud smile on his face. “Looks great, babe.”

Gojo, standing next to him, nods in approval. “Perfect. Now we just need someone dumb enough to test it.”

Toji and Geto walk in, glancing at the sign and chuckling. “I give it a week,” Toji says.

“Three days, tops,” Geto counters.

You all laugh, knowing that no matter what happens, you’ve got each other’s backs—and that’s more than enough to handle anything life throws at you.

The rest of the day goes by without a hitch. As you sketch, chat with Gojo, and watch Sukuna work, you feel a deep sense of contentment. Life may be unpredictable, but with this group of misfits, it’s never boring.

The bell above the door jingles, signalling a new customer. You glance up. “Welcome to the madhouse,” you say with a grin. “How can we help you today?”

[auspicioustidings]

Hello there I have another questionable idea 😁

So 141 confusing reader home for a safe house and breaking in and the sleep deprived nurse reader is just like 😐 and patches them up cos they are hurt and that’s the start of an very interesting relationship

Thank you for everything you are doing and remember that you are amazing

Drink water not coffee

🎃anon

Pumpkin! Ohh so this is similar vibes to this which I never wrote because sometimes I love a concept but am rubbish with execution :')

I have, however, tried my best to give you a little bit of your ask <3

Hippocratic Oath

Words: 550

Nah, for real if someone was breaking in you didn't care but they could at least be fucking quiet about it so you could go back to sleep. You had not slept in an actual bed in fucking days, only catching what could barely be described as a nap in the cots at the hospital between emergencies. 

“Find a first aid kit, we need to get him stable!”

Oh come on. The people robbing you were injured? Stupid fucking hippocratic oath. Technically it said nothing about having to help people who had broken into your house, it just said you couldn't harm them. So if you laid here and ignored it then Apollo couldn't say shit. 

…God fucking damnit. You dragged yourself out of bed, honestly too tired to react to the gun pointed at you with anything but a withering look, and went to pull the first aid supplies from their place. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

“This is my house skull mask, who the fuck are you?”

There was a man with a mohawk bleeding all over your couch. You grumbled about that a little but dutifully knelt by him and started to cut the clothes around the problem area so you could clean it out and stitch him up. A heavy tactical vest was on the floor, leaving him in just a t-shirt. The other young man was pushing a wad of bandages to stem the bleeding. Good, he was doing a good job. 

Kyle looked at Price who only furrowed his eyebrows and nodded, giving him permission to follow your instructions. So that's what he did. 

“We get a bonnie medic with safehouses these days Captain? Cannae say I'm complaining.”

“Shush or you'll wind up biting your tongue off when I do the stitches” you said, prepping the needle and thread. 

You looked quickly around his get up, seeing he was wearing jeans with a belt and undoing it. 

“I've definitely seen a movie like this” the skull mask man said which you elected to ignore.

“Tell me more LT.”

You shoved the belt in the man's mouth and he took it between his teeth immediately. Not his first rodeo then. Made sense, they were probably soldiers. He was a model patient as you stitched him up, not squirming at all. 

Your focus overrode your exhaustion for long enough to give each of the others a once over, making sure there wasn't anything else serious you needed to treat. By the time you got to the last man, the one your patient had called Captain, you were completely dead on your feet and your eyes were starting to sting. 

“Thanks luv, c'mere.”

Being scooped up by some military man who had broken into your house really should have caused some sort of fight or flight response, but you had nothing else left to give. You were asleep before he even made it to the bedroom, putting you right back under the blankets. 

–

Your alarm never went off and you frantically called in to work to let them know you'd be there as soon as possible only to be told in no uncertain terms you were on leave for at least the next week. 

It was with some shock that you emerged from your room to find that dream wasn't as much of a dream as you thought.

“Let's have a little chat about the next week hm luv?”

Ah fuck.

[stevie-petey]

episode five: the flea and the acrobat

“Steve, what-” He pushes past you in a frenzied hurry to get to his car, but you grab his jacket and force him to stop. “Answer me! Is Nancy okay? Was Jonathan with her?” Steve whips around and sneers at you. “Why do you even care about them? About him?” “Because we’re friends,” you say, and for the first time you really mean it. Nancy has become someone you’d call a friend.  Another cruel laugh escapes Steve’s lips. “Friends, huh? Yeah, those two looked real fucking cozy in her bed.”

summary: you and dustin have a long overdue Sibling Moment, at will's funeral you and jonathan exchange information and surprise ! it's all horrible news ! nancy has awful timing and when you leave her alone with jonathan one damn time you and steve end up trauma bonded on her front porch #bffs.

rating: general, though there's the use of guns in here for plot point sake, as well as cursing

warnings: use of guns, cursing, fem!reader, and use of y/n.

words: 14.4k (whew)

before you swing in: i'm back gang ! fall semester is almost done and i am in the trenches, so i leave y'all with this monster of a chapter before hell week (i have three finals in one day next week, no i don't want to talk about it). please enjoy this beauty, i had so much fun messing with character relationships in this and it was very ;)

-

With how many times you’ve knocked on the Wheeler’s door this week, you’d think that Mrs. Wheeler would stop looking so surprised when she answers. 

“Y/N?”

You give the woman a small smile. “Hi, Mrs. Wheeler. Is, uh, Mike home?”

“Yes… he stayed home today because of Will. Is there something you need?” The usually friendly woman seems beaten down from this week’s events as well, which you’re understanding of. 

“I was wondering if I could come in and see how he’s doing? Dustin is really shaken up about it, so I figured…” You shrug, trying to come across as a concerned older sister figure rather than a worried and horrible babysitter who should really retire. 

Mrs. Wheeler places a hand over her heart. “Oh, Y/N. You’ve always been so good with the boys, of course you can check on him. It means a lot that you care.”

Oh, no problem, but if we’re being honest I’m here because I’m scared I accidentally let your son get involved with the supernatural and dangerous monster men thingies that I honestly can’t wrap my head around!

Of course you can’t tell the woman this, so instead you thank her and let yourself in. Immediately you head towards the basement and fling the door open. You like Mrs. Wheeler, but the amount of times her son has snuck out of the house without her noticing honestly concerns you, so you’re a bit unsure if Mike even is home.

You get deja-vu from a few days ago as you head down the basement steps, once again hearing the three boys panicking as they try to hide El. Unlike last time, which had only annoyed you, seeing them scramble to hide the girl makes you relieved. 

They’re here, alive and well. You’d let Steve distract you from your worrying on the drive over, so the relief hits you like a damn truck. 

“Oh god not again!” Dustin groans when he sees you, worried that he’s once again going to get yelled at for being at the Wheeler’s with El. 

You ignore his theatrics and walk over to the girl, who is laying face down on the couch. You notice that she’s dressed in one of Nancy’s old costumes and a blonde wig that suits her well. What the hell did the kids get up to today? 

“Do I want to know why El is dressed like a doll and almost passed out on the couch?” 

“That depends on if you’re going to yell at us again,” Mike says. 

You shoot him a glare, but you guess he has a point. The last few times you’ve been with the kids you’ve ended up yelling at them one way or another. You feel bad about that, but then again: they won’t stop getting into trouble. 

El manages to raise her head from the couch, “Hi, Y/N.”

“Hi, sweetie,” you approach the couch and gently nudge her to the side so that you can sit down and place her head on your lap. She nuzzles into your warmth and lets out a sleepy sigh. “And to answer your question, Mike: I’m not here to yell at you guys. I just… Please tell me what’s been going on. I know I haven’t been here for you guys like I should’ve, but-”

“Your boyfriend needed you more,” Mike quips, though there’s some resentment in his voice that causes you to feel even worse.

Dustin hits his shoulder against the boy. “He isn’t her boyfriend, but she couldn’t just abandon him; he needed her. Besides, we have been sneaking off without telling her anything.” 

You cast an appreciative smile at your brother, thankful that even though he’s a pain in your ass, he always has your back like you do his. It’s something he’s always done with you and Mike; being so similar, you and him are constantly butting heads, yet Dustin has always been the first to defend you against his friend (even if you’ve never needed it in the first place). 

“I’m sorry, okay? I messed up, but I’m here now and I really, really need to know if I’m being paranoid. What mess did you dweebs manage to get into?”

The three boys suddenly can’t look at you. Their heads turn in different directions, Lucas scratches the back of his neck, Mike kicks at a board piece on the ground, and Dustin whistles a tune. 

Your shoulders slump. “Is it that bad?”

“It started this morning,” 

“Lucas!”

“Mike, she could help us! The weirdo clearly likes her,” he gestures over to El practically asleep in your lap, “plus, she’s the only sane one left in this group. I need backup.” 

“Backup?” You ask. 

Mike throws his head back in annoyance and lets out a groan as if he’s dying. Truly, this kid is the most dramatic person you’ve ever met. “Fine, we’ll tell you everything if you agree to stop hounding us for sneaking around. Will is missing, he’s our friend, and no one in the party gets left behind.”

You think this over for a moment, weighing the pros and cons in your head. “I will agree to those terms if you guys agree to keep me updated on everything at all times.” 

The boys try to argue, but you don’t let them. 

“I mean it, another person is missing. Nancy’s friend, Barb, was in the same woods that Will was, the same woods that you guys keep insisting on trekking through without supervision. This is serious, guys. Whatever, or whoever, is out there… it’s dangerous, and I-” You swallow down some tears that claw against your throat. “I can’t lose anyone else, okay?” 

The mood in the room is solemn, the three boys silent as your words hang in the air. Naturally, you try to lighten things up. “I’ll deny this if anyone asks, but unfortunately I love you boys.” 

As expected, they immediately begin to gag and pretend that they’ve been impaled with something as they all scream “ew” and “yuck” at your words. You laugh, which causes El to laugh as well, and for a moment it feels like nothing has changed. 

“So?” You ask after the boys have finished their gross theatrics. 

Dustin is the one who makes the decision for them. “We promise to keep you updated, for real this time.” 

“Good, now again I ask: why is El dressed like a doll and half asleep on my lap as we speak?” 

Lucas, Dustin, and Mike begin to talk all at once. 

“Mike radioed for me to head over, claiming he heard Will on the walkie.”

“Yeah, and then they radioed me to join. Sorry, by the way. I would’ve woken you up, but you and Jonathan looked so cozy in your bed so-”

“I thought you said they weren’t dating?”

“Not now, Mike.”

It continues like this for a while as they explain everything they did today. Sneaking El into the school, having to to talk to Mr. Clark, attending the assembly for Will, Mike fighting some idiotic kids for making fun of him before El made the head bully pee himself. 

You look down at the girl in your lap. “You can really make people pee themselves?”

“Sometimes,” she shrugs. 

“Lovely.” 

“That’s what you focus on, Y/N?” Mike asks you, and you simply shrug your shoulders in response. Sue you for still having doubts about Will being alive, you’ve gotten your hopes up one too many times. 

“Are you suggesting I believe that you heard Will through your cheap little walkies?” 

Dustin puts his head in his hands in defeat while Lucas gestures over to you. “See, she’s the sane backup I need.” 

Mike groans at you once more. “No, that’s why we snuck El into the radio room and used the heathkit that Mr. Clark got us. Keep up!”

“What, did you tell the guy that El was a new student?” 

“Don’t be stupid, we told Mr. Clark that she’s my cousin.” 

“Uhh, Y/N,” Dustin laughs nervously, motioning for you to stop talking. “You promised you’d be cool about everything if we told you.”

Knowing that your brother is right, you deflate a bit against the couch and start playing with El’s hair. “I am being cool, I just have so many questions.”

“Oh, just wait.” Lucas snorts. 

Mike now crosses the room to stand in front of you, as if he’s gearing up to tell you some major news. “We heard Will on the heathkit. El, she managed to use her powers to communicate with him.”

Like always, the seriousness in his voice concerns yet intrigues you. “Lucas, do you really believe that it was Will?”

The boy nods at you, his face grim. You don’t like how scared he looks, because out of the entire group he’s the one who is always the most reasonable. If he’s willingly telling you that he thinks it was Will, then you have to start taking the situation at hand seriously. 

“Okay, tell me exactly what you guys heard.”

And they do. One by one they tell you about Will’s pleading for his mom, telling her that it’s like home but cold and dark, the banging that followed after his words, how El had used so much of her energy trying to maintain the communication before the radio caught fire and she was too exhausted to do much else. 

“So, you believe us now?” Mike asks after you’re silent for a moment. 

You look down at the girl in your lap, in awe that someone so small and shy could hold so much power. This time you believe what the boys tell you without much conviction. Now that you know that Barb is missing as well, lost in the same woods as Will, the same woods where you found El, the photos from Nancy and the figure she claims she saw… It’s all starting to come together. 

You’re not sure exactly what you’re caught up in, but you know it’s too late to back out. Whatever is going on, whatever thing took Will and transported him to some unknown place with possibly the same powers that El has, you know it’s your responsibility to handle it. 

“Yes,” you respond, and the boys all sigh with relief. “Just one question though,”

Dustin sighs. “Yes, Y/N?”

“How did it take you guys so long to set fire to the school? Honestly, Jonathan and I thought it’d happen sooner.” 

“You’re hilarious.” Mike deadpans, which only causes you and El to giggle together again. 

“I hate to ruin the good mood, but we seriously need to figure out what Will meant when he said that wherever he is ‘is like home’.” Your brother interrupts. 

Mike spins to face him. “He said, ‘like home, but dark’, right?”

“And ‘empty’.” Lucas adds. 

“‘Empty’ and ‘cold’. Wait, did he say cold?” Dustin asks the group.

You nod your head. “You mentioned cold earlier.”

Lucas throws his hands up in the air in frustration. “The stupid radio kept going in and out!” 

“It’s like riddles in the dark…” Your brother sighs, which you hum in agreement to. 

Will’s words were pretty vague, but you wish you had been there at the middle school as well. Maybe if you had heard the tone of Will’s voice, you’d be of more help.

Mike continues to mumble about “like home” and “dark” for a few more seconds, now pacing around the room. You watch from the couch, El still resting with her head in your lap, and as you’re playing with her hair she finally speaks up after having been silent for a while. 

“Upside down.”

“What’d she say?” Lucas asks.

“Upside down? I guess?” Is all you can tell him. 

“What?” 

While you, Dustin, and Lucas are confused by El’s words, Mike rushes over to the forgotten board from a few days ago and sits down. He frantically flips it over and motions for you to come and join him. You hesitate for a second, but he only doubles down on his waving you over, so you gently lift El’s head up and walk over. 

“God, took you long enough.”

“I was literally three feet away from you on the couch, why did I have to move?”

Mike ignores your question and begins to explain the thirty million thoughts flying through his head at the moment, “When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember?” 

You nod, slowly understanding where he’s going with this. “She flipped it upside down.”

“Exactly! Dark. Empty.” 

Lucas looks over at you and Dustin, unamused. “Do you understand what he’s talking about?”

“No,” your brother says at the same time as you saying “the upside down part? Yes. The dark and empty part? No.”

Mike tries to explain further. “Guys, come on, think about it. When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?” 

“You mean last night when they found Will’s body in the water?” You ask, not really understanding where Mike is going with all this. 

“Like Y/N said, he wasn’t there.” Lucas reminds everyone, but Mike still tries to get his point across.

“But what if he was there? What if we just couldn’t see him, what if he was on the other side?”

You think about Jonathan’s words from earlier today in the car while on the way to the funeral home, trying to calm down from his fight with his mom. He had told you about how Joyce was convinced that Will was in the walls within their home, that the body they saw in the morgue hadn’t been his. 

“Hold on,” you interrupt Mike, “you guys said that there was some, like, banging where Will was, right? And that he had been begging his mom to come get him?” 

“Yeah, it was like some sick sci-fi movie!” 

You glare at your brother. “Ignoring you. Anyways, did you guys hear Mrs. Byers on the radio as well?” 

Mike shakes his head. “No, all we could hear was the banging and something... Growling, I guess.”

Knowing Joyce, you’d bet money that the banging had been her. You know that the next time you go over to their house, the walls might actually be destroyed, but she’d been right all along. Will is alive, he has to be. The pieces that you’ve slowly been collecting this past week fall together one by one. 

“That explains the walls and the weird monster thing in Jonathan’s picture,” you mumble to yourself, but Lucas hears you. 

“Do I wanna know?”

You purse your lips. “Let’s focus on figuring out where Will is, then I’ll tell you guys what I’ve been up to this week.” 

“Okay, so,” Mike begins again, now grabbing the board game and flipping it onto its normal, light side. “What if this is Hawkins,” he flips it upside down onto its dark side, “and this is where Will is?” 

“The Upside Down.” You finish for him. 

“The Upside Down.” Mike confirms. 

Slowly Dustin follows along. “Like the Vale of Shadows.”

Somehow you always end up the one confused when it comes to these damn kids. “The Vale of Shadows? What the hell is that?”

Dustin runs over to the bookshelf and pulls out a thick binder full of paper, but as he flips through it you realize it’s a rulebook for Dungeons and Dragons. He lands on the page he’s looking for, and you feel your shoulders drop. Great. More confusing terminology ahead. 

“‘The Vale of Shadows’,” he begins to read, “‘is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters’.”

“Wait, didn’t you say something about a monster, Y/N?” Lucas asks, but you shush him so you don't miss whatever else Dustin will say next. 

“‘It is right next to you, and you don’t even see it’.” He finishes. 

His words hang in the air for a moment, but Mike, always somehow three steps ahead, pieces it together. “An alternate dimension.” 

Lucas finally accepts what’s happening. “But how do we get there?” 

“I’m sorry, we?” You look between all three boys, their faces still young and holding the childish innocence that you once had yourself. “No, there’s no ‘we’ in this. I may not know much about alternate dimensions, but there’s no way I’m letting you guys try to find and go to one.”

Mike rolls his eyes at you. “Well what choice do we have? Do you want to tell that mean police chief about this?”

“I…well… I mean-no.” You sink down in the seat, annoyed that Mike is right. No way Hopper believes any of this, you hardly believe any of it. 

“Can we cast shadow walk?” Dustin focuses back on the conversation at hand.

You don’t bother to ask what that means. 

“In real life, dummy.” Lucas reminds him. 

“We can’t shadow walk, but…” Your brother’s eyes land on El, who is still laying on the couch, silent and unmoving. “Maybe she can.”

The four of you turn towards the girl, and Mike voices his own question. “Do you know how we get there? To the Upside Down?”

El meets your eyes, and you can see that she’s hesitant about something. She’s been quieter than usual, almost suspiciously so, and you know that the more Mike figures things out, the more hesitant she becomes. She shakes her head at you, and you give her a sad smile. 

Lucas flings his head back and groans. “Oh my god!”

Mike and Dustin seem to be thinking the same thing, disappointed by El’s lack of help. You don’t blame them, also frustrated by the fact that it feels like you guys are so close to discovering something big. You can feel hope reignite in your chest; you haven’t been this close to an explanation about Will all week. This has to be it. It’s the only way you can explain everything that’s been happening lately. 

Speaking of which:

“Remember how I mentioned Barb and a possible monster?” 

You tell them everything, about Jonathan’s worry for his mom, how their phone got charred by lightning, Hopper’s theory that Will had been running from something, Nancy and Barb attending Steve’s party and how Barb had been on her own near the woods. You tell them about how Barb has been missing ever since and the photos Jonathan took (leaving out the horrible ones of Nancy) that Nancy brought to your attention at the funeral home. The figure in the background, looming over Barb, how it didn’t seem to have a face.

Then you tell them about Joyce and her spiral, though now you know she actually wasn’t crazy. You tell them about the Christmas lights and Will communicating with her through them. How she claimed that she could hear him through the wall and that the body in the quarry hadn’t been him. 

When you’re finally done catching them up, they stare at you with their jaws open. 

“Dustin,” Mike says, “remind me to never leave your sister out ever again.”

“Noted.” 

– 

The events from the day had left El exhausted and she refuses to say anything else after you explain everything to the boys. Her eyes droop while Mike interrogates you for answers you can’t give him, so finally you take pity on the poor girl and tell him that you’ll talk more in the morning. 

Mike isn’t too happy about being shut down, but when you point towards a half asleep El he reluctantly gives in. “Fine, but as soon as the funeral is over we’re discussing this further.”

Right. Will’s funeral is tomorrow. 

“Yeah, sure,” you tuck your hair behind your ears and motion over to Dustin. “We need to go, it’s late and mom will be wondering where we are.” 

He tries to argue with you but you just gather your things and head for the stairs. There’s still a lot you need to think about and a million things you need to sort before the funeral tomorrow. Did Jonathan even buy the coffin? Who had made the arrangements after you and him left the funeral home with Nancy?

There’s a lot you need to talk about when you call him tonight. 

The bike ride home with Lucas and Dustin is a quiet one, both boys understanding that you need some time to think about everything you learned tonight. 

You make a list in your head of what you do know, but it’s a frustratingly short list. 

1) El, one way or another, has powers that enable her to communicate with Will in some weird upside down universe that you can’t actually get to (can you even count this as something you know?)

2) Hopper was right: Will went missing because he was running from something (probably the same faceless thing that’s in Jonathan’s photo). 

3) Whatever took Will also took Barb, bringing Nancy into this wonderfully confusing mess (you still don’t know if her involvement is a good or bad thing). 

Everything else? You have no fucking clue what’s going on. 

When you get home with Dustin, it’s late; the two of you have to sneak past your mom, who fell asleep with Mews on her lap in the living room. Dustin heads straight for his room but you stop him, motioning for him to come into yours for a second. 

“What-”

“Shh!” You quickly shut your door to ensure that your mom won’t hear anything. 

Dustin groans. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna yell at me?”

You roll your eyes at him. “I yell at you guys twice after years of patience, now suddenly I’m a screaming monster,” he doesn’t say anything and flings himself onto the bean bag by your bed. “Anyways, we’re long overdue for a code blue.” 

Your brother shoots up from the bean bag, eyes wide. “No.”

“Yes,” you join him on the bean bag. “Code blue time, we’re going to talk about our feelings after the hellish week we’ve had. C’mon, you know the drill.” 

Code blue was something the two of you came up with when your dad left. You had been twelve when it happened, Dustin had been nine. It’d been a really rough few months for you guys, dealing with the betrayal of your dad while also moving away from your hometown in Virginia all within a year. Neither of you had adjusted well to the sudden changes, and though you were angry and bitter about what had happened, the moment you saw that it was affecting your brother you decided to implement code blue. 

It’s simple, really. Whoever calls for a code blue gets to talk about or ask whatever they want while the other is required to answer. Originally it was so that you could force Dustin into telling you his feelings, but over the years it’s become a way to bond with each other and know that no matter what you’ll be there for one another. No half truths or a vague “I’m fine”; it’s a time for you guys to be vulnerable with one another without using it as leverage against the other. 

Dustin plops his head back down. “Fine, but I’m tired so can this be quick?”

“Hey, no complaining during code blue. That’s like, rule number one.” 

“Y/N.” His tone is one of annoyance and you know that if you don’t start talking soon then you’ll lose his interest.

“Right, sorry. Okay,” you clear your throat and face your brother. “Today’s code blue topic is this: I’m worried about you getting your hopes up about Will. We don’t know that he’s alive just yet.” 

As expected, Dustin is unhappy with what you’ve said. “We do know that he’s alive, I heard him on the heathkit. He’s alive, Y/N.” He sees the uncertainty on your face and doubles down on what he’s saying. “He is.”

You bite your lip, scared that you’ll say the wrong thing. “Dustin, nothing is certain. Even though we’re definitely onto something, and while I believe that you heard Will on the radio, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s something else out there that wants to hurt him. I mean, he’s trapped in some weird alternate dimension that we have no idea how to even get into. I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

You think about the way your brother’s face fell when they pulled Will’s body out of the water. How the hope that had been in his eyes immediately died alongside his childhood naivety. He had built all of his hope upon a shaky foundation; the moment it collapsed he fell apart. 

“Look I know you’re trying to look out for me, but Will is a part of the party. He’s our friend, we can’t just lose hope and leave him behind. He needs us.” Dustin speaks with so much certainty and an aura of maturity that almost makes you forget that he’s twelve. 

“I’m not saying it’s dangerous to have hope, but I need you to promise me that you’ll protect yourself from whatever happens next. How’s that sound?”

Dustin thinks for a moment, tapping a finger against his chin. “Hmm, I think I can make that deal if you promise the same thing. I mean, c’mon, it’s obvious that you’re the sensitive one out of the two of us. You and hope? Doomed.” 

You laugh, knowing he’s right. You’ve always been branded by hope; hopeful for love, for dreams, and for those who may not always deserve it. You and hope haven’t always gotten along, but she’s become a familiar friend. 

“I think you’ve got yourself a deal. Now, it’s late and I have to call Jonathan and catch him up on everything, so let’s conclude code blue with its mandatory hug.” 

“Woah woah woah, I don’t think we gotta-”

Dustin’s words become muffled as you throw yourself on top of him and squish him into a hug. He squirms against you for a second, claiming he can’t breathe, but you shush him and force him to accept the hug. Though you won’t ever tell him this, losing Will has only made you more appreciative of having a wonderfully annoying little brother. 

After code blue, Dustin goes to his room claiming that “alternate dimensions are super draining”, and before he leaves you tell him to be ready tomorrow by nine for the funeral and that your mom will take him. You’ll be at the Byers’ helping Jonathan. 

Once he’s gone you give yourself a few moments to sit in silence, letting the events from today settle over you. It seems like all you’ve felt this week is exhaustion and hurt and at the rate everything is going, there’s no telling how long you’ll feel this way. 

The moment you’re done wallowing you roll off the bean bag and walk over to your desk to call Jonathan. You’re honestly not sure what you’ll even tell him tonight, there’s no way you’ll be able to cover everything before the night ends. The two of you have a long day tomorrow, so you figure you’ll have to make do with the limited time you have and summarize. 

Jonathan answers after a few rings. “How’d your little secret mission go?”

You make a face. “Is it even a secret mission if I told you I was going on it?”

“It is if you refuse to tell me what you did during it.” 

“Touche, bee.” 

He laughs, which sends a cascading warmth throughout your body. You can envision him perfectly on the other end of the line, leaning against his kitchen wall with the phone wire wrapped around his finger as he absent mindedly fiddles with it while he talks to you. 

You clear your throat and shake the thought from your mind, you called him for a reason. “Anyways… we need to talk.”

Jonathan is silent for a moment and you can feel the playfulness fade away. “Yeah, you first though. You already know what Nance and I were up to.” 

Nance?

Awesome. Cool. Totally not going to be consumed by that later. 

“Right. Uh, well. I went looking for Dustin because the other night when I was with the boys we stumbled upon this, well, this little girl.” 

“A girl?”

“Yeah, she’s bald.”

“Okay… is that important or…?”

“Unsure, but it felt important to tell you. Sorry,” you take a deep breath, “I’m not sure why I’m so nervous right now.”

“It’s okay, bug. It’s me, you can tell me anything.” 

No I can’t.

“Sure, yeah, totally. Um, so anyways we found her, her name is El, and she’s our only connection to Will right now.”

A beat of silence. “What do you mean?”

“Well, she kinda has… powers?”

“Powers,”

“Powers.”

You hear Jonathan sigh on the other end of the call. “Bug, you’re not seriously telling me that the boys have somehow dragged you into one of their little schemes, right?”

Yeah, he’s reacting exactly how you figured he would. 

“I know what it sounds like, but Jonathan… How else would you explain everything going on? Will disappeared, Barb did too, your mom and her lights. Now that thing Nancy saw in the woods, which I know you definitely have an update that will only further prove how weird this all is.”

Again Jonathan is quiet, and this time you envision him pacing little circles in the kitchen as he carefully thinks through your words, trying to piece it all together. “We developed the photo again and you’re right, there’s something behind Barb in it.” 

You close your eyes and exhale. “So, you believe me now?”

“Guess I don’t really have a choice.”

“You don’t.” 

“Then we’ll talk about it after the funeral tomorrow.” He concedes. 

“Yeah,” you let out a shaky breath, “the funeral. I’ll make my way over the second I wake up tomorrow to help with everything.” 

“You don’t have to-”

“I know.” 

More silence settles over the two of you. It’s still hard to wrap your head around the fact that it was only a week ago where everything was normal. No disappearances, no weird feelings, no heartbreak and confusion. 

“Bug?” Jonathan is practically whispering. 

“Yeah?”

“Lonnie is here.”

The words hit you hard. Why the fuck is Lonnie back in Hawkins? “Do you need to spend the night? I can finally bake those cookies for your mom and we can watch whatever you want.” 

“No,” he sounds exhausted. “He hasn’t been a problem yet, and I can’t…” 

“Leave your mom with him?” You finish. 

“He thinks she’s crazy and her axing down one of our walls doesn’t help-”

So you were right, Joyce did indeed break down her wall to try and get to Will.

“Jonathan, it’s okay. I understand, stay with her and get some rest. Sleep, that’s an order.”

He lets out a weak laugh. “I love you, bug.” 

Like how I love you?

“I love you too, bee.” The words burn your tongue. 

“Goodnight,”

“Sleep well.”

– 

You’re up before the sun this morning.

You spent hours tossing and turning last night, hardly getting any sleep. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t seem to turn your mind off. All you could think about was Jonathan, his smile and his voice and the way he kisses your forehead whenever you’ve done something especially endearing to him. You were surrounded by him last night. 

Now you stand outside his front door holding a tin of cookies, dressed in a simple knitted black dress and tights with mary janes that used to belong to your mom for Will’s funeral. The shoes are your favorite, but now you’re afraid they’re tainted by the occasion you’re wearing them for. 

It’s Lonnie who opens the door. “Well if it isn’t little miss Henderson. I missed ya, sweetheart.” 

You haven’t seen the man in two years, having been fourteen when he left Joyce and the kids. Since then he’s only aged horribly, his eyes slightly yellowed and his beer gut now more prominent. Clearly he still prefers alcohol over human company. Figures. 

“Can’t say the same about you.” Your shoulder hits his as you walk in and he lets out an annoyed huff. 

The man follows you but you pay him no attention. Instead you head straight towards Joyce and the second she sees you she runs into your arms; you only have a few seconds to place down the cookies before she’s in your arms. 

“Y/N! You’re here!” She squeezes you tight and you melt into her embrace. She’s always given the best hugs whenever you’ve needed the comfort, but now it’s your turn to be the one offering the support. 

“Of course, Mrs. Byers. Who else will make sure Jonathan is ready on time?” You mean for it to be a joke, but the way that Joyce’s eyes harden tells you that the funeral is a sore topic for her. She still doesn’t believe that Will is dead and it breaks your fucking heart that you can’t tell her she’s right. 

Joyce wipes away a tear before pulling away. She goes to say something before seeing the tin of cookies on the counter; she immediately pulls you into another hug. “Oatmeal raisin,” 

“They’re your favorite.”

“And Will’s.”

“And Will’s favorite. You know I gotta take care of my Byers.” You whisper into her ear, feeling Lonnie’s eyes on you during the exchange. You have to bite back your tongue, though his presence always makes you feel a type of anger that’s normally foreign to you. 

Joyce pulls away and you know it’s taking everything in her to give you a smile. “You’re too good, sweetie,” she tucks a loose strand of hair that came out of its braid. “Jonathan’s in his room.” 

You grab her hand and give it a squeeze, trying to convey just how much you love and admire her into a simple gesture, before letting go and walking over to Jonathan’s door. 

He’s struggling with his tie when you let yourself in. He’s dressed in the only nice white button down he owns, something he bought for his aunt’s funeral a few years ago that now hardly fits. You can tell that he’s getting frustrated with the tie, so you walk over and help. 

“Here, let me,” you wrap your fingers around the piece of cloth and quickly fashion it into a tie. The two of you don’t talk while you fix the clothing and you know that today will be a wordless day with Jonathan. 

When you’ve finished, you begin to pull away before he places his hands around yours. He cups your hands at the base of his neck as they rest against his collarbones; your fingers are still wrapped around his tie. He squeezes your hands and brings them to his lips and kisses your knuckles so softly that you feel all the love within you simmer.

You know he’s only trying to express his gratitude for you but the butterflies in your stomach make you feel faint. 

You’d do anything for him. 

– 

The funeral has a surprising turnout, not because you ever doubted Will’s incredible ability to be loved by anyone he meets, but because you see faces in the crowd who you’ve never seen before. 

You stand behind Jonathan during the funeral with your hand on his shoulder as he sits with his family in a weak attempt to provide comfort during the service. It’s really fucking bleak. Your other hand is on Dustin’s shoulder as he stands next to you while Mike and Lucas are to the right of him.

Your mother is in the back of the crowd having known she’d cry the entire service, and faintly you can hear her blow her nose into a tissue and sniffle. 

The pastor drones on for a while about how a tragedy like this won’t separate everyone from God’s love, but if attending the funeral for a twelve year old boy is how God shows his love then you want no part in it. Joyce sits stoic alongside Lonnie, Jonathan hasn’t moved at all since the service began; they’re a family brought together by grief. This isn’t love. 

“Just wait until we tell Will that Jennifer Hayes was crying at his funeral,” Dustin snickers, effectively breaking you from your thoughts. You hit his shoulder and shush him as Mrs. Wheeler reminds the boys to be quiet. You flash her an apologetic smile for your brother’s actions. 

You know how firmly the boys believe Will is alive and you honestly can’t say you don’t think so as well, but nothing is certain. Even if he’s alive there’s no way you guys can get to wherever he is; you wish the boys would use some caution with how quickly they’re building their hopes up. 

After the service you walk up to Will’s grave and bend down. You bring one of the yellow roses from the funeral director up to your lips and whisper, “If you’re out there little bee, please, come home.”

Before dropping the rose in you give it a gentle kiss, inhaling its sweet scent and watching as it falls down onto his coffin. Jonathan finds you there crouched down and sees the rose right as it lands. He doesn’t say anything, he just grabs your hand and helps you stand up to bring you over to where Nancy is waiting a couple yards away. 

“Hey, Y/N.” 

You don’t have it in you to do anything other than wave at the girl, but she seems to understand and gives you a sympathetic smile. 

Soon the three of you are settled on the ground with your backs against an old rickety fence behind some tombstones. Jonathan is in the middle of you and Nancy and you rest your head against his shoulder, already exhausted from the day. It’s not the coziest spot to be sitting, but at least you’re away from prying eyes. 

Once you’re seated, Jonathan finally talks for the first time today. “Alright, I already told you this over the phone last night bug, but Nancy was right. After we redeveloped the photo there’s definitely some kind of figure behind Barb, and we thought maybe if my mom has been right all along about some monster-”

“Then she’s right about Will being alive.” You finish for him, having already come to the same conclusion yourself.

“And Barb has to be alive if Will is.” Nancy says, and there’s a spark of hope in her voice that surprises you. You’re ashamed to admit that you didn’t think her and Barb were that close, but seeing how worried she’s been for the girl makes you realize that you’d been a fool not to have seen it sooner. Barb was Nancy’s closest friend. You don’t know what you’d do if Jonathan ever disappeared like Barb did. 

Jonathan pushes your head with his shoulder. “Anything you want to share with the class?”

You look between him and Nancy and try to decide how much you should tell them. While you’ve already told Jonathan a little bit about El, you’re not sure if you can trust the information with Nancy. However, seeing her urgency to find her friend leaves you feeling a bit safer disclosing the information to her. 

“It started the night after Will disappeared…”

It takes a while to tell them everything, and while Jonathan butts in a few times to ask questions, Nancy remains silent and eagerly listens. She nods when she’s supposed to, engages with the story as if her life depends on it. You’re incredibly impressed by her intelligence and openness to the situation at hand. Had it been anyone else they would’ve scoffed at you and called you insane. But Nancy? She holds onto every word and trusts that what you’re saying is true. 

You’re starting to admire her, as painful as it is to admit. But Nancy Wheeler is fucking brilliant, there’s no denying that. 

When you’re finally done explaining El and the Upside Down, Nancy finally speaks. “Let me make sure I’m understanding correctly, you’ve been helping my brother harbor a girl with superpowers in my basement?”

Huh. 

You hadn’t thought of it that way. 

“Ya know, you make a good point.”

Thankfully she laughs and doesn’t seem too upset, which relieves you. You reassure her that they’re fine and that El is someone you trust, and Nancy seems to take comfort in your words. It’s not that you purposely hid the situation from her, but looking back you definitely could’ve used her help now that you know how cool she is. 

As the two of you are laughing, Jonathan pulls out a piece of paper. 

“What’s that?” You ask. 

He shows you. “I printed out a map of Hawkins and drew x’s on every place we know for sure the monster has been.” 

“Two questions: one, so we’re officially calling it the monster now? And two, why don’t you ever put in this much effort for school projects we do together?” 

Jonathan flicks the paper in your face. “Funny. And yes, we’re calling it the monster now. Can you pay attention please?”

“Sorry,”

Nancy shuffles in closer and her head is practically on Jonathan’s shoulder as well (you’re choosing to ignore that) and she studies the paper and points to one of the x’s. “So that’s-”

“Steve’s house,” Jonathan points to another x, “and that’s the woods where they found Will’s bike and where Y/N last saw him,” the familiar feeling of guilt washes over you, “and that’s my house.” 

Nancy reaches over Jonathan and grabs your hand, surprising you both. “You saw Will last?”

“Yeah,” you swallow, your mouth now suddenly dry. 

“I’m sorry,” her tone is sincere.

“We should get back to the map…” You dodge, highly uncomfortable with Nancy’s comfort. You appreciate it, but you’ve never been good at accepting help from others. 

“Right, sorry,” Nancy clears her throat. “The x’s, they’re all so close.”

Jonathan observes the interaction with slight confusion but decides not to say anything besides, “Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing is, it’s not traveling far.”

There’s a look in his eyes as he speaks, one of determination and disdain for whatever that thing is, and before you can tell him no, it’s Nancy who voices your concern first. “You want to go out there.”

Jonathan nods and you feel uneasy. “I trust you won’t try going alone again, right?” It’s a question, but he hears the underlying try and I’ll kill you hidden beneath your words.

“No, not this time… but we might not find anything.” 

“I found something,” Nancy reminds him, which you nod at. She’s the only one out of the three of you who has seen the monster in person, and if you had to place any bets, she’s the one who will be able to figure out what the fuck to do with it. 

Actually, what are you guys going to do?

“Do we, like, have a plan for after we’re done monster sightseeing? Or are we just going to take a look at it and call it a night?” You ask the two of them. 

Nancy bites her lip and looks down, also unsure what exactly the three of you are supposed to do. It’s Jonathan who remains stone faced, and there’s a newfound sense of confidence within him that you’ve never seen when he boldly states, “We kill it.”

“Alright there tough guy,” you hit his chest with your hand and snort. “Sure, we kill it. Obviously.”

“Well, do you have any other ideas? For all we know, Mike and the others will be out there in those woods later looking for Will.”

“We don’t know that-”

“Bug, humor me, how did they find El again?”

You’re silent. He’s right, if you guys don’t go and find this monster before tonight then there’s a high chance the boys and El will find it themselves. Fuck. 

“Nancy,” you say to the girl, “it seems like we’re now officially monster hunters.”

– 

Of course Lonnie has a goddamn handgun just casually stored in his glove box.

You’re not entirely on board with this whole gun situation and apparently Nancy isn’t either, immediately questioning Jonathan when he picks the lock to get the gun.

“What, you want to find this thing and take another photo? Yell at it? Better yet, why doesn’t Y/N just round up the boys and El and have them take it down.”  

“Okay, hey,” you point at Jonathan. “Out of line.” 

He mumbles an apology under his breath while Nancy claims that this is all a terrible idea. You’re not sure where you fall in regards to what’s happening, but you’d say at the moment you’re a solid mix between Jonathan’s no time for nonsense mood and Nancy’s hey let’s slow down hesitation. 

You kick a rock and watch as it dings against Lonnie’s car, which pleases you. “Oh it’s definitely a terrible idea, Nancy. Unfortunately it’s all we have going for us at the moment.” 

Jonathan nods at your words. “She’s right, no one’s going to believe us if we tell them. You know that.” 

“Your mom would.” Nancy responds, jutting her jaw out in defiance. 

You cringe, unsure how Jonathan will respond to what she’s said. Joyce is a sore topic for him, he’s always been so protective of her.

“She’s been through enough,” he sighs, and you hum in agreement. 

Nancy grows more frustrated. “She deserves to know!”

You step in between them. “Look, you’re right. Mrs. Byers deserves to know, but right now she isn’t well enough to handle the idea of her only remaining son actively seeking out a monster that may have taken her other son who could possibly be alive. If we’re wrong or Jonathan gets hurt, it might actually kill her.”

“Yeah, we’ll tell her when this thing is dead.” You note Jonathan’s word choice, saying “when” instead of “if”. In the four years you’ve been his friend, you’ve never seen him so self-assured before. You’d be proud of him if the circumstances weren’t so damn grim. 

“What about the kids?” Nancy finally says after a few seconds of silence. 

“They can’t get involved, I won’t let them.” You tell her and she nods as if expecting you’d say that. 

She gestures over to the funeral home where the crowd of attendees are now gathered for the post burial service. “I know my brother, so you better go and tell him that they need to stay at our house while we deal with the monster. They like you better than they like me, they’ll listen to you if you explain what we’re doing.” 

You’re flattered by her words, honestly. Mike, Dustin, and Lucas listening to you about staying put while you guys go monster hunting? They’d be out the door before you’d be even able to finish saying the phrase “monster hunting”. No way they’ll listen, and you’re about to say exactly that before catching the look Jonathan is giving you. 

You groan at him. “You don’t actually believe they’ll listen to me, right? C’mon, you know those boys as well as I do. This is just a giant DnD game for them at this point.” 

He shrugs, “It doesn’t hurt to try?”

Nancy gives you a hopeful look and bats her eyelashes at you, which, okay, shouldn’t work on you but does. Jonathan does the same, except instead of batting his eyelashes he winks at you and suddenly you’re very confused by the onslaught of emotions that wash over you.

“Ugh, fine. But when they show up in the woods later you guys are on your own!” 

– 

When you step inside the service hall, everyone is gathered into small groups talking amongst themselves. You scan the room for the kids and spot them across the room sitting at a table with Mr. Clark. He’s talking to them about something while holding a paper plate up. You’re not sure what exactly he’s saying to the boys, but they’re leaning in close to him and are listening intently. 

This worries you. 

You try to make your way over as quickly as you can, but being Jonathan’s best friend has some challenges. Every few steps you take you’re stopped by an extended family member of the Byers to ask how you are or a stranger stops to offer you their condolences because you’re close with the family. You do your best to make small talk and thank the people, but you don’t have time to say much else besides, “thank you” or “you were Will’s favorite great aunt”.

By the time you finally get to the table with Mr. Clark and the boys, the man has folded up the paper plate and stabs it with a pen. You really, really don’t want to know whatever the hell this man is explaining to the kids. 

“You create a doorway,” he explains, holding up the plate and smiling at the boys. 

Dustin looks enthralled. “Like a gate?”

“Sure, like a gate. But again, this is all-”

“Theoretical.” Lucas says, nodding his head.

A gate?

What are the odds the boys are talking about a gate to Disneyland?

You sigh, not liking the odds at all.

You slide yourself into Dustin’s chair and force your brother to share with you. He squeaks in surprise and you flash him a tight lipped smile, which causes him to gulp. He knows he’s been busted. 

Mike scoffs at your arrival. “Gee, wonder why you’re here Y/N.”

“Go on, continue this conversation with Mr. Clark here. I wanna hear it.” 

Mr. Clark looks at you uncertainly but Mike simply carries on with the conversation as if you aren’t even here. “But what if this gate already existed?”

“Well, if it did I think we’d know.”

You snort. “Wanna bet?”

Again the man looks at you uncertainly and clears his throat, uncomfortable by your presence. “What I mean to say is that it would disrupt gravity, the magnetic field, our environment.”

“So if there is a gate, it’d be really bad?” You ask, but you already know the answer. 

“Oh, definitely. It might even swallow us up whole!” 

You and the boys look around the table at one another, not at all liking what Mr. Clark is saying. Swallow you guys up whole? That’s not really something you’re interested in. 

Mr. Clark sees your nervousness and shrugs. “Science is neat, but it’s not very forgiving.”

Silence falls upon the table. 

Mr. Clark is such a peachy person.

“Well!” You throw your hands upon the table and the loud noise causes everyone to flinch. “Thank you so much for that lovely information, Mr. Clark. It was truly riveting, but would you mind giving me and the boys a second alone? I just, I want to make sure they’re doing okay after today.” 

You bat your eyes at the man, something you never do, and he clears his throat and excuses himself. The second he’s gone you snap your finger in the boys’ faces. “Hey, listen up. Whatever you guys are planning? Don’t.”

As usual, Mike is the one who argues. “But-”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what we’re-”

“No.”

“Can you at least let me-”

“Sure,”

“Really?”

“No.”

Lucas and Dustin watch the interaction with slight pleasure, amused by your ability to shut Mike up, but when he turns to them for help they reluctantly give in. 

“Y/N,” Dustin sighs, “honestly, how many times are we gonna do this whole ‘we’re not allowed but we’re going to do it anyways’ bit?” 

You glare at your brother. “However many times it takes for you guys to finally listen.”

“Cool. Then we’ll expect you to bust down Mike’s door later tonight.”

“I’m not kidding,” you face all the kids and make sure they’re listening. “Whatever you’re trying to do, don’t. Jonathan and I-”

“You told Jonathan?” Mike exclaims but Lucas shushes him. 

“We’re going to handle it, we already have a plan but whatever you do: stay out of the woods from here on out. We think… We think there’s a monster out there hiding. I just want to make sure you guys are safe.”

“Monster hunting?” Dustin’s eyes light up and you silently curse Jonathan and Nancy for even suggesting you do this in the first place.

“Technically… yes, but you guys absolutely have to stay put.”

They stare at you as if you’re insane.

“You do realize who you’re talking to, right?” Dustin asks. 

You flick his head. “Yes, and I’m putting a lot of trust in you guys right now. I’ll let you guys do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t include the woods. Until you get an all clear from me, it’s off limits.” 

Mike thinks this over. “Can we look for the gate then?”

You sigh. There’s no other way to appease them. “If you don’t go near the woods… then fine.”

The boys begin to cheer, which causes several funeral guests to stare at you with judgment. You realize now that this probably hadn’t been the right setting to have this conversation in. Oh well.

You don’t let the boys cheer for long. “However-”

“There she goes,” Lucas sinks into his seat and squeezes his eyes shut. 

“I get full updates whenever I please. I don’t care if I have to track you guys down from the gates of hell itself, but I will find you and you will tell me everything. Deal?”

Lucas, Dustin, and Mike gather close together and duck their heads down so whisper to one another. You roll your eyes but wait for them to finish. When they’ve reached a decision, Mike interlocks his fingers and places his hands on the table. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” 

– 

As soon as you’ve changed out of your funeral clothes and into a simple pair of jeans and a sweater, Jonathan arrives at your house. You kiss your mom’s cheek before leaving and shout over your shoulder, “Remember the deal, Dustin!” 

You don’t quite catch what your brother responds with but you honestly don’t care enough as you run over to Jonathan’s car and hop into the passenger seat. 

“You certainly didn’t waste any time getting here,” you say in lieu of a hello. 

Jonathan shrugs. “No time to waste when it comes to monster hunting.”

“You do realize that we’re only scouting out the woods tonight, right?” 

You, Jonathan, and Nancy had decided earlier to simply go and explore the woods for any clues of the monster and then figure out how, or even if, you can kill it. 

“I know, but monster hunting sounds cooler.”

“Bless you, bee.” 

The two of you get to the field in no time. Jonathan had been the one to suggest the spot a few yards behind his house for target practice and Nancy had agreed to bring a bat just in case you needed more protection. 

And you?

You’re bringing the cans to serve as targets for shooting. Your family has never owned a gun and last time you checked, Dustin doesn’t play any sports, so all you can offer is your emptied recycling bin contents. 

It doesn’t take long for you and Jonathan to set up the cans on top of the tree trunks before he begins shooting. Jonathan takes a deep breath and holds the gun up so it’s eye level and looks over at you. “Ready?”

You take a deep breath as well and prepare yourself, knowing it’s about to become loud. “Yeah, start shootin cowboy.” 

The first shot hits a tree behind the can, nowhere near its intended target, and you wince. It’s looking like the monster might actually win at the rate Jonathan’s aim is going. 

“It’s okay,” you tell your friend. “The tree looked at me funny, he had it coming.” 

Jonathan snorts. “You’re laughing now, but I can’t exactly hunt a monster if I can’t even shoot it.” 

“Maybe you could talk nicely to it?”

“And say what, exactly? ‘Hey, Mr. Monster, where are you hiding my brother?’”

You step closer to him so that you’re now side by side and you nudge his shoulder. “Hey, you never know. It could work.”

Jonathan readjusts his grip on the gun and aims it once more. He takes another shot, this time it lands a bit closer to the can, but not by much. He lets out an agitated, “Fuck!”

He tries shooting again and again but each shot is as unpredictable as the last. After his sixth round of firing you can see how tense his shoulders are and the way he’s clenching his fists against the weapon. You remember how he acted earlier today, the newfound anger and resentment within Jonathan that had originally impressed you. Now it only frightens you. 

When he goes to re-aim the gun for the seventh time, you grab at his hand and stop him. 

“Bug, what are you-”

“Let’s go for a walk.” 

Jonathan looks at you like you’re crazy but you simply take the gun from his hands, click the safety back on, and then walk over to the tree stumps to rest it against one of them. When you’re done you walk back over to the boy and interlock your fingers with his to drag him along. 

There’s not a whole bunch of room in the clearing for a walk per say, but there’s enough to go a few laps around for Jonathan to take a breather. You’re not sure exactly what’s going on with him but a walk has never hurt anyone. 

Jonathan’s silent the first lap around. You’re content with this and you admire the fall weather and enjoy the slight warmth from the sun as it kisses your face. When you’re on the third lap you decide to ask a question that’s been on your mind since yesterday when Nancy showed up at the funeral home. 

“Do you really believe Will is alive?”

Jonathan thinks the question over for a moment, and as he’s lost in thought you notice that he begins gently swinging your hands back and forth absentmindedly. “I can still feel him.”

“Feel him?”

“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy but…”

“No, I think I get it. I mean, I’d be able to feel if something bad happened to Dustin. I know I’d be able to, even if there’s not necessarily a science behind it. It’s like there’s a lifeline connecting us, like some unspoken sibling thread that neither one of us can sever.”

“A sibling thread?” Jonathan asks, a slight laugh accompanying his question. 

“Oh, you know what I mean, bee.” 

“No, no. I wanna hear all about this thread theory of yours.” 

Jonathan’s bright mood is back, reminiscent of the boy you once believed you knew better than you knew yourself, so you entertain his teasing if only to sustain his light a little longer. “If I explain this theory you have to promise not to laugh at me.”

“I promise,” he says and he gives your hand a light squeeze. 

“Alright, but if you decide I’m insane after this, just know that you legally cannot leave me. You signed a contract.” 

“Oh, did I?”

“You sure did, bee. Anyways, back to me,” a slight breeze surrounds you for a moment and you let the crisp air fill your lungs. “I have this theory that we’re all connected to each other in some way by different threads. Some threads are older than others, stronger, or maybe even more rigid, but they’re there. Whether it’s a thread between you and your family, the love of your life, or a stranger you happen to pass on the street one day, none of it happens by accident.” 

“The threads are the reason it all happens?”

“Not necessarily, but yeah. To put it simply, I guess you could say that.” 

“So, for our thread,” Jonathan stops walking and tugs at you to stop as well. “After everything we’ve been through, all that we’ve done for one another, what thread would you say our’s is?”

His question catches you off guard; you can hear your heart beating within your chest. There’s so many things you wish you could tell him.

Our thread is one of romance, of lovers, of soulmates, even. 

The feelings build within you and the words threaten to spill out. The November sun is beginning to set and everything is golden in its light and Jonathan is a part of it all. His brown eyes are like warm honey on a cold winter morning and his hair is slightly ruffled from the wind that leaves his cheeks flushed and rosy. 

“Our thread,” your voice catches in your throat for a moment. “You know what our thread is, bee.”

He pulls you closer to him and in this moment all you can focus on are the slight freckles that dot across his face and neck. “Do I?”

Jonathan has never, ever looked at you like this before. There’s an intensity within his eyes that frightens you and leaves you feeling bare before him. Does he know? Has he figured it all out?

“I…” You can’t form the words you want to say; the three words that have been weighing upon you feel even heavier than before. They’re thick on your tongue, syrupy and dense and you feel as if you can’t breathe.

“Y/N?” He whispers, but you can only shake your head. 

It’s too much. It’s all too much. 

And then suddenly Jonathan leans in. 

Maybe you’re imagining it. 

Maybe you’re delirious after almost a week of sleepless nights and exhausting encounters. 

Or maybe, just maybe, he feels the same way about you. 

You lean in as well and allow yourself to close your eyes; you believe that just this once you can be selfish and accept more than you may deserve.

“Hey! Guys!”

Nancy’s shout causes you and Jonathan to spring apart. 

You want to scream. 

Of course it’s Nancy fucking Wheeler. 

Jonathan drops your hand and waves the girl over while you stand there, trying to collect yourself. As she walks over, you have just enough pride left over to say, “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”

The question is one Jonathan isn’t expecting. He steps back a bit, now even more aware of the close proximity the two of you had only seconds ago. “Of course I do, bug. You’re my best friend.”

Best friend. 

The words hurt more than they should, really. 

“Right. Best friend, ha.” You step even further away from Jonathan, which he raises his eyebrows at. 

“Did I miss something or…?”

If you had the time, you’d ask him why he wanted to know about the thread between the two of you. Why he looks at you like you’re the most precious thing in the entire room. Why, just minutes ago, he leaned in as if to kiss you. 

But Nancy is now only a couple feet away and it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to give the two of you some privacy. You spot the bat in her hand and it serves as a reminder of what the three of you are here for in the first place. 

Will, Barb, the monster. 

“No, of course not,” you clear your throat and greet Nancy as she arrives. “Hey, Nancy.”

She smiles at you and then says hello to Jonathan. “Hey, where’s the gun?”

You point over to the cans and the tree stumps. “Over there, we just wanted to go for a little walk after shooting a few rounds.”

Nancy nods and walks over to inspect the undamaged cans. “You said you already shot a few rounds?”

Jonathan ducks his head down. “Yeah, well. It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies.” 

“Y/N, did you try shooting?” 

“Pfft, I’m definitely not a weapons kind of girl. I prefer to use my crippling good looks instead.”

While you and Nancy talk, Jonathan walks back over to the gun and reloads it. He motions for the two of you to step back and he shoots a few more times. Not once does he hit the can. You pinch the bridge of your nose and sigh. 

“You’re awful at this, bee.”

“Yeah,” Nancy agrees.

Jonathan looks over at her. “Have you ever shot a gun before?”

She scoffs. “Have you met my parents?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Wheeler seems like the type to have a hidden gun.” You say, and Nancy waves you off. 

“Well, I haven’t shot one since I was ten. My dad took me hunting on my birthday and made me kill a rabbit.” Jonathan’s words make you frown. Every day he gives you another reason to hate Lonnie. 

Nancy sympathizes with Jonathan and the two of them fall into an easy banter that you’ve never seen before with him. He’s comfortable around her in a way that makes your stomach twist. He tells her about his parents and how they may have loved each other at one point but now no longer do. He’s opening up to her after only a few days of really knowing her. 

Lovely. 

Nancy shares some details about her own family and how she believes her parents never loved each other, which you can relate to. You watch as Jonathan hands her the gun as she explains how her mom had been younger than her father. “He had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So, they bought a nice house at the end of a cul-de-sac and started their nuclear family.”

“Isn’t it funny how the fathers never seem to suffer the same fate as the mothers?” You ask, and Nancy looks over at you in confusion, so you explain further. “My own parents, they were like yours except the moment my mom was no longer young, my dad left. Found a newer and cheaper model back home in Virginia.” 

“I didn’t know that, I’m sorry Y/N.” 

You shrug. “It’s not like I go and advertise it. Besides, he was an asshole anyways and my mom is better off without him. She’s the sweetest woman in the world who was forced to run back to her family in Hawkins. Nuclear families aren’t all they’re cracked out to be.”

Jonathan ruffles your hair to get you to laugh, which he succeeds in doing. “Screw that.”

 Nancy raises the gun to eye level and closes one of her eyes, her beautiful face now scrunched in concentration. “Yeah, screw that.”

And with that, she shoots a perfectly aimed shot and knocks the can off the stump. You and Jonathan look at her, stunned, but she can only laugh. 

“Damn, Jonathan. Remind me to never piss Nancy off.” You say, still staring at the fallen can. 

Only he doesn’t hear what you’ve said because he’s too busy staring at Nancy. You can tell he’s impressed by her hidden shooting talent and the way she holds herself with such confidence. His eyes shine as he stares at her and he almost seems to come to life whenever she looks back at him. 

Jonathan looks at Nancy and you know he sees what everyone in Hawkins sees: a beautiful, fierce, and incredible girl. 

Nancy Wheeler, the perfect enigma.

Suddenly it clicks. 

Jonathan is in love with her, or at least he’s beginning to fall in love with her. 

You want to hate her. Afterall, she already has Harrington head over heels for her, and yet you can’t blame either one of the boys. She’s perfect and brilliant and everything you’re not. You’d fall in love with her too if you weren’t already in love with someone else. 

You watch as Nancy and Jonathan become lost in their own little world, him helping her reload the gun as she flashes him a shy smile, and you no longer exist near their presence. It feels like a fucking stab to your already open wound of a heart. You watch the way he ducks his head down whenever she looks at him and the way she stares at him when he isn’t looking. 

Nancy shoots a few more rounds and each shot feels like a hammer coming down onto your own coffin. Each time Jonathan looks at her you feel another nail enter. 

Clearly there’s no room for you here. 

Which is fucking ironic given that you’re in a giant field outside. 

You reach for Jonathan’s hand and tug him forward. He gives you a look as if asking is everything okay? and you wish more than ever that things were different between the two of you. You give him a soft shake of the head. “I can feel a headache coming on and I just remembered that I have a shift tonight, so I should get going.” 

He frowns. “But what about the monster? We can’t look for him without you.”

“You’ll be fine without me,” to your horror you can feel tears forming, which you quickly wipe away before Jonathan can notice. “I doubt I’d be any help, anyways. I suck with guns. Nancy’s the professional here.” 

“I mean, I guess, but…” He looks over at Nancy, who is busy firing the gun and hitting every target she aims for, before pulling you even closer to him. “Are we okay? I feel like, I don’t know… like I’m losing you.”

Your breath catches in your throat. He could never, ever lose you, but if you don’t leave now then you’re afraid that maybe you’ll lose yourself. 

“Don’t be silly, bee. You’re not losing me, no matter how much you may want me to.” You try to tease him, but your heart isn’t in it. 

“You didn’t answer my question, Y/N. Are we okay?” He’s looking at you with so much adoration and concern in his eyes that it almost makes you sick. 

“Of course we are. I promise. I think it’s all just catching up to me, if I’m being honest. Between finding Will and tracking down my own brother, I think this monster hunting business may break me.” 

Jonathan eyes you for a moment as if to try and catch you in a lie, but while you’re only telling him this as an excuse to get away from him and Nancy, it’s not technically a lie. You are exhausted. Plus, you really do have a shift. 

The boy scans your face once more before deciding that you’re telling the truth. You know he suspects there’s something else behind your words, but thankfully he doesn’t pry. “Let me tell Nance that I’m driving you home,” 

And there it is again. 

Nance.

The nickname is like a punch to your gut and only solidifies that you should go. “It’s okay, bee. It’s still nice out, figured I’d walk home and get some sun before winter officially takes over Hawkins.” 

“You can’t expect me to let you walk alone now that we know there’s a monster out there taking people, bug.” 

You kiss his cheek, letting your lips linger for a little longer than necessary. “I’ll be careful, I promise. Stay with Nancy and call me tonight after you guys are done scouting around. We’ll figure out where to go from there. Okay?”

You don’t give Jonathan time to argue because you pull away and inform Nancy of your departure. She also frowns at the idea but has already learned that you’re not one to be told what to do. She understands this aspect of you, and you understand it within her as well, so she wishes you goodbye and tells you to stay safe before going back to shooting.

As you leave, you feel Jonathan’s eyes follow after you. 

– 

The walk ends up being more than enough to clear your head. You haven’t had any time to be alone in god knows how long, so it’s nice to have some time to just think and enjoy the quiet. There’s a lot you need to think about, but at the very forefront of your concerns are Will and El. You still have no idea how they’re connected or how the monster comes into play.

Then there’s Steve, oddly enough. 

You’re not really sure why he’s in the midst of your thoughts, but there he is. Smiling at you and laughing at your jokes and telling you that you’re pretty as he instills a carefree sense within you that feels foreign to enjoy. 

As his words ring through your head, you find your thoughts drifting towards Jonathan and the way he holds your hand every time you’re worried about something and the way he kisses your hair after a particularly hard day.

You’re not sure why the two boys almost seem to clash within your mind, but you don’t have time to look into it. Your shift starts soon and god knows how long your coworker Alex can survive on his own if you’re late. 

Work is slow as usual tonight, but you find the downtime a pleasant relief. It gives you the opportunity to skim some new books that shipped in and catch up on some Spidey storylines. In between stocking books and arranging comic displays you find yourself wondering just how true to his word Dustin stayed earlier. 

Like hell those kids really stayed out of the woods. 

Your question is answered as soon as you get home and find your brother crying in his room. Panic immediately swells within your chest and you run over to him.

“What’s wrong?” You check Dustin’s body for any sign of injury and he lets you as he cries, too upset to wave you away. When you’re assured that he’s okay, you feel your heartbeat calm down again. 

Christ, everytime you see this kid he takes ten damn years off of your life. 

You pull a chair from his desk and sit in front of him. “Dustin, do we need to have another code blue?”

“Maybe,” Dustin sniffles, wiping away a few tears. 

“Okay, then code blue. What happened? Is everyone okay? Is it El?” At the mention of the girl’s name, Dustin flinches. Your blood runs cold. “Dustin, what happened with El?” 

“You won’t yell at me?”

You smooth down his always wild hair. “Never during code blue. Please talk to me, bud.”

Dustin explains how he and the group had gone looking for the gate like they told you they would. He explained how they’d followed the train tracks throughout Hawkins for what seemed like hours. 

“The train tracks that go through the same woods I told you not to go in?”

“Like hell we were gonna listen to you.” 

“Yeah, I know.”

This gets Dustin to laugh a bit, which you’re relieved to see, before he continues his story. When he reveals El’s weird behavior and the way she seemed to be hiding something from them, you feel dread creep in. “Did she… Did she do something to prevent you guys from finding the gate?”

“She used her powers to mess with the compass. Lucas found the blood on her jacket.”

You sense that there’s more. “And then?”

“Mike and Lucas… they-they started fighting.” Dustin’s voice breaks, “they started really going at it, and I tried to stop them. I swear I tried, Y/N!”

“Shh,” you reach for his hand to try and calm him down. “I know you did, but I also know how Mike can get when he’s protective of someone and I know that Lucas isn’t El’s biggest fan. It was a recipe for disaster.”

Dustin snorts, “No kidding.” Then his face darkens once more, “but they wouldn’t listen, and that’s when El screamed.” 

“She screamed?”

“I think she was overwhelmed, but she used her powers on Lucas and flung him across the yard and he hit his head pretty hard…”

“She what-”

“She didn’t mean to! She looked really upset after, and Lucas was fine after he woke up-”

“He was knocked unconscious?”

“And then he stormed off and El ran off. We searched for her, but…” 

You stare at your brother in shock. That definitely hadn’t been what you were expecting. El never struck you as a violent girl, but she knocked Lucas out with her mind. Sure, she may have been trying to break up the fight, but you’re willing to bet that she lost control for a moment and Lucas ended up getting hurt as a result.

Maybe you don’t want superpowers. 

“Y/N, have I lost all my friends?” Dustin asks. 

You shush him once more. “No, of course not. You three boys have always been so drastically different from one another, and this week has been one from pure hell. It makes sense that Lucas and Mike finally snapped, but I promise you that they’ll bounce back eventually.” 

“And El?”

“I’m not sure what to make of her,” you admit. “She isn’t violent, I know she’s not. But we also clearly don’t know her as well as we think we do. I just, I need you to be careful around her, okay? Fight for her, defend her like you would for the boys, but be cautious as well.”

“Cautious, got it.” He cocks his head at you, “but what about Lucas and Mike? They’re still friends, right?”

“Of course they are. Just… sometimes friendship can be hard, but it’s almost always worth fighting for. It’s rare to find friends as loyal as Mike or as brave as Lucas or even as sincere as Will. Yet look at you guys, all together; you’re all incredibly lucky to have one another.”

“Lucky like you and Jonathan?” Dustin asks, a sly glint in his eyes. 

You smile, even if he’s teasing you. “Yeah, like me and Jonathan.”

Dustin returns your smile and you squeeze his hand. “Anyways, I say give Lucas some time to calm down. I think he was scared, more than anything. Tomorrow you can try to talk to him again.” 

Your brother nods at your words and he seems better than he did when you first started the conversation, so you open your arms wide and engulf him into a hug. 

“Code blue concluded, I guess.” Dustin mumbles against your chest, which causes the two of you to laugh.

– 

After your talk with Dustin, you head back to your room and wait for Jonathan to call. You glance at the clock and figure that maybe him and Nancy were still out scouting for clues, so you busy yourself with some homework.

When it nears ten at night and the phone still hasn’t rung, you sigh and reach over for the phone on your desk. You dial Jonathan’s number and hope he simply forgot to call, but when no one answers after your fifth time calling: you begin to worry. 

Ya know, maybe it wasn’t your best idea letting him and Nancy go off alone with a monster on the loose. 

You find yourself frantically biking to the Wheeler’s house before you can even think about it. The night blurs past you and as you walk up their driveway and try to rest your bike against their mailbox, a familiar BMW parks next to you. 

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, Henderson.” Steve says as he sends you a wink. 

You almost greet the boy before Tommy’s head pops out from the passenger side window. “Hey good lookin.”

You hear Carol berate him and the two begin to bicker as Steve gets out of the car. 

Great. He brought the idiots.

Steve walks over and takes your bike from your hands. After a couple seconds of repositioning and balancing, he finally manages to get the bike to stay upright. “Tada!”

“I almost had it,” you glare at him. 

“Sure ya did.”

Steve’s presence is frustrating as always, but you spot Jonathan’s car parked down the street and Carol’s shrill voice becomes increasingly irritating. You don’t have time for this right now. “What are you doing here, Harrington?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” When you glare at him, he finally says, “Nancy promised she’d call me but hasn’t, so I wanted to check on her.”

His sincerity is why you say, “I’m here for…” You realize you can’t necessarily tell Steve about Jonathan possibly being here. You have a feeling it wouldn’t end well, but you’re also not keen on lying to the boy. You’re already keeping secrets from practically everyone in your life; you don’t want to add Steve to the list. Not when he doesn’t deserve it. 

“I’m looking for Jonathan,” you confess, worried about Steve’s reaction. 

He frowns. “Why would Byers be here?”

“Him and Nancy have this… thing for english. Due tomorrow. A big thing. Like, huge. So they’re working on it together. In the house. Where Nancy lives. Here.” You stumble over your words, more nervous than usual, but you weren’t expecting Steve to be here or that you’d need a cover story. 

“Uh huh,” something almost aggressive flickers across Steve’s face and you silently curse to yourself. You said the wrong thing. 

“Funny, Nancy told me she was only helping Byers for the funeral.” 

Shit.

Tommy and Carol watch from the car, obviously amused by the whole situation. 

“Right! She was, now she’s working on an assignment with him.” Technically not a lie, you’re just omitting the fact that the assignment in question is monster hunting. 

“You’re really bad at lying, Henderson.” Steve walks past you, now over the conversation, and you struggle to keep up. You try to block his path, assuming that he’ll use the front door, but as you near the front step he side steps you and starts heading towards the bushes. 

“What are you doing?” You whisper loudly, trying not to draw too much attention to yourself. 

Steve ignores your whispered yelling and jumps on top of the radiator. Once he’s up, he begins to pull himself over the overhang and up onto the roof. There’s a window just above the ledge with a light on, which you presume to be Nancy’s room due to the practiced ease in which Steve scaled the house. 

You don’t try to climb up after him in fear that you’ll only end up embarrassing yourself. “Ya know, Mrs. Wheeler loves me, I could’ve just knocked on the door.”

Steve peers down at you, an easygoing smile now back on his face. “Relax, this is quicker. Besides, you gotta admit it was impressive to watch.”

Again he winks at you and you feel your cheeks flush. He’s right, it had been impressive to watch; he had made it look so easy. While you struggle to come up with a witty retort, Steve almost knocks on Nancy’s window before his smile drops.

You notice the way his face hardens. “Steve?”

He doesn’t respond, which only concerns you more. You begin to think about the millions of possibilities surrounding Nancy, Jonathan, and monster hunting; fear creeps in. “Is Nancy there? Is she okay?”

“Of course you’d be worried about Nancy right now,” Steve laughs bitterly. You frown at his words, unsure what they mean, but before you can ask anything else Steve angrily climbs back down.

“Steve, what-” He pushes past you in a frenzied hurry to get to his car, but you grab his jacket and force him to stop. “Answer me! Is Nancy okay? Was Jonathan with her?”

Steve whips around and sneers at you. “Why do you even care about them? About him?”

“Because we’re friends,” you say, and for the first time you really mean it. Nancy has become someone you’d call a friend. 

Another cruel laugh escapes Steve’s lips. “Friends, huh? Yeah, those two looked real fucking cozy in her bed.”

A wave of nausea hits you.

“W-what?” You drop your hand and release his jacket. 

“It’s incredible, really. Byers has some fucking nerve.” Steve runs a hand through his hair in agitation and begins to pace. You’re too numb to stop him. “I mean, look at you! He has everything he could possibly want, but he decides to go after my girlfriend.”

“It’s not like that-” 

“Did he tell you they’d be in her room, alone in her bed, underneath her blanket?”

More nausea hits you. “No,”

They were supposed to look for any signs of the monster in the woods. That’s all he told me, you think. 

“So he’s a liar, too.” Steve scoffs, “you deserve better, Y/N.”

And with that, he heads back to his car and drives away, leaving you standing alone once more in the Wheeler’s driveway. You get a sense of deja-vu, watching Steve’s BMW descend down the street, but only this time there’s no warmth fluttering within your stomach as he leaves. 

All you feel is nausea. 

You don’t remember the bike ride home; you’re not sure how you even made it back safely without crashing into anything. All you remember is that you cried the entire way. 

You’ve lost Jonathan, there’s no denying that now. He’s Nancy’s, wholly and truly, he’s hers. 

He was never yours in the first place, you remind yourself. 

But if he was never yours in the first place, then why does it feel like you were almost something?

No. 

You don’t want to think about it that way. 

Yours or not, you can’t afford to lose Jonathan. 

Something or everything, you’ll take whatever you can when it comes to him. 

Everything, anything, nothing. Whatever he gives you, you know you’ll cling onto it with all that’s within you.

But your friendship with Jonathan is too precious to lose, too meaningful to let stupid feelings ruin it. You refuse to let anything come between your friendship with him, and you swear to yourself to shove everything down. Every hurt feeling, all the pain stabbing within your chest, you force it all down to focus on finding Will. 

He’s all that matters right now, even if it feels like the thread connecting you to Jonathan has begun to wither.

Will has to come first. 

You have to find him, something good and lovely has to come from this. You can’t let this all be for nothing.

-

⌑ series masterlist

⌑ if you would like to be added/removed from my taglist, just let me know :)

⌑ taglist - @siriuslysmoking @sheisjoeschateau @myeclispedsun @innercreationflower @juhdoche

[omgreally]

Hot Coffee ☕️ / Joel Miller/F!Reader / 1.5k-2k ish / E18+ MINORS DNI

Warnings: This escalated quickly. Angst; Banter; Sexual tension that is most definitely resolved; Consenting adults getting carried away; unprotected sex; smut, little bit of a breeding kink if you squint.

Summary: When is a coffee date not a coffee date? When it’s with Joel Miller, of course. It’s about time both of you got the hint.

—

Joel tries not to think about creature comforts much. The world ended so suddenly that most of them became a thing of the past in a single afternoon. By the time the next day dawned, he forgot about things like Sunday mornings and coffee and watching TV and playing board games; all that mattered was survival.

He often wondered why he bothered. There didn’t seem to be much to live for, after - after Sarah. Tommy kept him going a while, and sheer spite after that; anger at the whole world, anger that manifested itself through the impact of his fists or from the barrel of his gun. Bloody knuckles and the metallic tang of of gunpowder and copper the only taste left in the back of his throat. Things like coffee and pancakes? A thing of the past. Forgotten.

Tess cooled him down some, reminded him of something other than emptiness, but the space between her and Ellie coming along was too narrow, the grief too fresh, so he locked it away. He was pretty sure he’d never be close to someone like that ever again.

It was inevitable, though. Humans always sought out companionship; it was pack instinct more than anything else. At least, that’s what Joel tells himself as you sit across from him, drinking coffee.

He tells himself he isn’t getting comfortable or complacent, because if he let himself think that, then he’d start to think he doesn’t deserve it, and he knows where a thought like that ends. But he can taste something other than blood now, and he’s not sure why, but that scares him - more than his anger does.

Joel lets the silence stretch between you, and you seem comfortable with it. He imagines a time years ago when this would be a date. Now it’s just two humans sharing a space and a time where they don’t have to fight to survive. When he stops to think about it, he realises it feels…nice.

So nice he almost didn’t want to let you in when you came to his door, but you had a bag of coffee beans- real coffee beans - you pilfered on a patrol and you were offering to share them with him, no one else, him - and he’s not sure if it’s because he was the only person you knew who owned a coffee grinder in Jackson or not.

Joel’s not sure he can handle the implications otherwise.

“Finished already?” You raise a brow as he drains his chipped mug and sets it down on the table between you. “Jesus, Miller. You’re gonna be bouncing off the walls for hours. That shit’s Colombian.”

“Thirty-year-old Arabica beans,” he corrects, pointing a finger at you, making you smile. Making you smile is always easier than it should be. Easier with him than with others, he’s noticed. It worries him. “Probably full of more E. coli than caffeine.”

“You fail high school chemistry too?” You tease him often, because the man takes himself too damn seriously. Joel hates that he likes it, and he hates that you can tell.

“Okay, it’s oxidised,” he drawls, “It tastes like shit but it won’t kill me. Happy?”

“Only when you’re miserable,” you say brightly. He scoffs and shakes his head, and the quiet builds between you, its presence suddenly large and uncomfortable in the absence of more coffee. You sigh, and give up. “Ah, never mind. I should get going. Sorry the coffee was shit.”

You stand up and move towards the door. Joel catches your wrist, and you pause. Look down at the man. More greys than when you first met him, but his cheeks aren’t as hollow. Jackson suited him, even though he makes any excuse not to settle down.

Ellie’s happy here, so he doesn’t have a choice.

“Thanks,” Joel says, making eye contact. Your turn to look away. Too serious. “I haven’t had fresh-ground coffee in…” he pauses to think, going back. Too far back. “Ages,” he finishes. His fingers are still on your wrist.

“Well, you were the first person I thought of when I found it. Haven’t had a good supply run like that in ages. But it wasn’t fresh. I think you said something about E. coli?”

“Sorry. You know I-“ He fights for the words when you take his hand. You’ve never done that before. Flirted with him, sure, but you’ve never touched him unsolicited like this. You’ve got more boundaries, more walls up than he does sometimes.

“You remember coffee dates?” You smile at his frown. “You know, some asshole buys you a coffee, expects you to sleep with him after. Happened all the time to the girls I worked with at the bar, back before the world ended. Never to me though. So one day, I brought an asshole a cup of coffee. Know what happened?”

Joel shakes his head, mute. He’s stroking your wrist with his thumb, turned his body towards you. You could just sit right on his knee if you wanted. You could lean down and kiss him.

“We sat and drank coffee for twenty minutes and neither of us said a word.”

Joel lets you go like you’ve bitten him. He wonders if he’s blown it, and he’s surprised to find out he really hopes he hasn’t. You put up a lot but he’s always known it was inevitable he would ruin any chance at friendship - or more - with you by pushing you away. He’s been doing it for weeks, months even, ignoring your hints, responding with taciturn silence, expecting you to figure out it was habit drilled into him by years of only his own loneliness and anger for company.

“I’m sorry,” Joel says, not meeting your eyes. You touch his shoulder and then he looks up.

“Don’t be. Best coffee date I’ve had in ages.”

He tastes like bitter, burnt beans when you kiss him, and you imagine you don’t taste much better. But Joel reacts as if he’s drowning and you’re his only source of air - rising to his feet, his hands on your waist - he kisses you back like he never forgot how.

He didn’t know how much he wanted you until you were about to walk away.

Joel prays to god Ellie’s still out with that girl she likes because if she walked into their house right now she would see her surrogate father figure with his tongue down your throat and his hands in your pants. Your thoughts go down a similar road as you fumble with his belt.

There’s no need for words or what-ifs between you; you don’t need to say anything because you both know it doesn’t matter. All that matters is now, the press of Joel’s mouth and tongue, the solid promise of his body.

Joel touches you at first as if he can’t believe you’re real, that this is happening. But he’s quick to grow bold, hands kneading at your breast, fingers pinching at the peak of your nipple when he finds out it you like it - rewarding him with a gasp. Joel grins that cheeky fucking grin you see on him sometimes, when he thinks you aren’t looking, and suddenly all that matters is the stubborn zipper of his fly, the buttons of your shirt, and your sneakers which you just can’t seem to kick off fast enough before either of you stop to think that this might not be the best idea after all.

Joel can’t remember the last time he had a good idea, but this doesn’t feel like a bad one. Not with the heat of your mouth at his throat, the firm, pliable curves of your body pressed against him. He knew you weren’t the shy type but he almost chokes when you palm the outline of his stiffening dick before you even get his zipper all the way down.

It’s like a spell the two of you are too reluctant to break by speaking. There’s just the combined sound of your breathing, the press of your mouths, the intoxicating buzz of caffeine mixed with arousal so painfully strong it’s like a cramp. You need to fuck Joel right now as much as you need to breathe. He seems to feel the same, if how hard he is is anything to go by.

When you finally free his cock the animal part of Joel’s brain starts snarling and clawing at the walls. He grabs a fistful of your hair and spins you around, bending you forward over the table. You manage to kick one of your sneakers off, your jeans hanging off one leg - he doesn’t even pull your panties down, just drags the soaked fabric aside to make room for him.

Everything up til now has been frenzied. Coffee cups and clothes all over the floor. But when he pushes into you, time slows; and for a moment there’s no apocalypse outside Jackson. There’s just the feeling of Joel feeding your pussy every inch of his cock, slow but steady, as if he already knows you can take it. And you can, and you do, holding your breath as your entire focus narrows to the delicious ache between your legs as Joel stretches you open.

Then you feel his warm, wide palm on your back, long fingers stroking almost soothingly down your spine. He doesn’t speak but you can almost hear the dark molasses of his Texas drawl, lifting the hairs on your neck - Relax. Breathe. So you do, and Joel rewards you by pulling out slow - and thrusting in again quicker, finding a new angle that has the blunt head of his dick striking some nerve inside you that has you seeing stars, and then he does it again. And again.

You want to sob his name and drag claw marks into the table but you just hold onto the edge of it and arch your back, closing your eyes. You haven’t been fucked like this in years - maybe ever - and it feels right that it’s now, that it’s Joel Miller.

Thank God for coffee dates.

Joel’s thighs slap into the back of yours, the table jumping beneath you. You can hear him panting like distant thunder. When your legs start to shake beneath you, he loops an arm around your hips and finds your clit in seconds with two fingertips, as instinctive as pulling a trigger. You know you’re not going to last much longer, and he seems intent on it.

You moan his name then - without meaning to, without your permission - and Joel’s pace stutters. He starts grinding into you, barely pulling out before surging back in again, almost lifting your feet from the floor. You’re so wet you can hear it with each impact but you don’t give a fuck and Joel loves it; the reaction of your body only spurring him on.

All too quickly, you’re quivering on a knife’s edge, straining towards it, and you let go of a sob when you come, and the sudden fluttering, wet clench of your cunt around his cock finally does Joel in.

He knows he shouldn’t but he just needs to be inside you, deep enough to bruise, to replace the taste of coffee with the taste of him in the back of your throat - an instinct he just can’t hold back. He snaps his hips forward one last time, the slick wet heat of you welcoming him home, and his vision goes white as his cock pulses rhythmically inside you, filling you with his come.

You twitch and shiver through it, moaning weakly, encouragingly. You push back against him with the grip of your toes on the floor, murmuring wordless little sounds in time with the aftershocks.

Joel’s knees feel weak when awareness finally returns. He leans over you, breathing hard as if he’s just been running from a pack of Clickers, pressing his forehead against the back of your neck.

You know you should be pissed that Joel Miller just fucking came in you, but, well, you let him - and you liked it. A lot. You wanted him to. In fact, the predominant feeling you have now is one of satisfaction. In more ways than one.

You reach back on instinct to touch his face, as if to reassure yourself he’s still there. Joel flinches - but then you feel his beard, his lips against your fingers, your neck, your temple.

Yeah. He wanted this too. Maybe even needed it, too, as much as he needed the coffee.

“Definitely the best coffee date I’ve ever had,” you croak when you can speak again. And you think you can feel Joel smiling against your neck.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 民国奇探/My Roommate is a Detective.

My Roommate is a Detective is a 2020 drama about the Jazz Age shenanigans of a terrible OT3: a useless noodle boy, a spoiled journalist girl, and a handsome thug-turned-cop, who together solve Agatha Christie mysteries in 1920s Shanghai.

I mean, seriously, have you ever wondered what Hercule Poirot would be like if he were a 6'2" Chinese rubber man? If he had a long-suffering sugar daddy from the wrong side of the tracks and a spunky sugar mommy who owned their shared apartment? The answer is, it would be a laugh-out-loud-funny series about a ridiculous and charming assortment of weirdos solving only slightly believable murder mysteries in charming period clothing.

This is another one of those shows where I'm kind of shocked at how not well-known it is, except I'm not, because I can see exactly the problems that keep fandom from descending on it like horny little vultures. Nonetheless, I think it's a good time that more people would enjoy if they gave it the chance. Here's five reasons why you should:

1. Equal parts smart as heck and dumb as butts

On the one hand, especially given its tone and tenor, this show has many surprisingly clever turns and thoughtful moments, carried along by some talented actors. On the other hand, [.gif of a guinea pig in a rollerskate being pushed merrily down a hallway]

This show is not a complicated intellectual exercise. It's an action comedy about a goofy sleuth, a rich-girl reporter, and the cop who should be the straight man in this trio, except he's as much of a goober as the other two are. If the promotional tableaus are giving you real "cover of a Clue box" vibes, you've understood the kind of pastiche it's pulling off.

The mysteries are preposterous. They're all the kind of thing that exemplify the Doyle line about how, when you've eliminated the impossible, whatever's left has got to be the answer, no matter how ding-dang improbable it may be. You know the type: tons of overly elaborate setups, unbelievably perfect timing, coincidental long-lost relatives, people hallucinating right and left. They're also very short -- most full cases take only 2-3 episodes to introduce, investigate, and resolve, even when interspersed with the larger goings-on in these weirdos' lives. The DramaWiki page for the show lists 23 separate arcs over 36 episodes, so you do the math.

And yet, it's way more thoughtful and clever than its doofy little setup would indicate. Its attention to detail surprised me on more than one occasion. Add to that a bunch of solid performances from an ensemble of real characters, and what you get is definitely more substantive than a junk-food waste of time. You can't turn your brain off while watching it, but you sure can turn it down, and that's great.

It also doesn't hurt that everyone is super attractive and wearing great outfits. The whole show's worth it for the wardrobes.

2. THE GIRL

Fuck the haters, fuck everyone, I am going to climb right up on my little soapbox and tell you all why Bai Youning is awesome.

She is insane. She's a troll. She's a clever little monster. Every other character's response to her is, oh my god, you are literally the worst. And she is! She has been spoiled beyond belief by her incredibly rich Crime Dad, and she has learned to leverage her uwu just a widdle girl status to get her whatever the hell she wants. She simply cannot hear it when someone says the word "no." She will look her future sister-in-law in the eye and point a loaded gun at her own head without blinking. Every ball she has is made of brass.

She's hardly perfect. During the course of the show, there are some times where her entitlement runs face-first into the brick wall of reality. She's not nearly as good at her chosen career path as she's been told (mostly by the people who get paid to tell her she's good). She's rarely prepared to deal with the consequences of her actions, especially when she can't just throw money at the problem.

So she learns, and grows, and changes. She's always going to be a stubborn bitch, but she can become a stubborn bitch with a more accurate conception of her relationship to the world around her.

She's actually a really good romantic foil for Lu Yao, who is equally stubborn and spoiled and obnoxious as hell. It is a pure brat4brat relationship, where each one thrives on comically enraging the other. What this means, though, is that when they actually start showing one another some vulnerability, it's really sweet.

Now: I'm pretty sure that you could not have made a female character in her position that everyone did not hate, no matter how cool you made her, because that is the fate of all girls who theoretically keep the two boys from kissing. (More on that next point.) If she were less outgoing and friendly, she would've been hated for being too cold. If she were less headstrong, she would've been hated for being a pushover. If she weren't as into the boy, she would've been hated for being frigid. I know the "god forbid a woman do anything" meme is a joke, but ... man, god forbid this girl do anything. She gets a level of hate entirely disproportionate to what she's actually like. As I said with Eom Dada, it's not always sexism, but sometimes, yeah, it's sexism.

(Real talk: Her character is also fighting both how she's definitely not written as well as the boys are and how the plot sometimes needs her to be artificially stupid and jealous for Straightness Drama Reasons, so that's a legit problem on a structural level. Also, she's dubbed by someone else and the boys aren't, which gives her voice an annoying not-quite-there quality that's hard to ignore. The deck is stacked against her real hard even before she steps onscreen.)

So here's my advice: Go into this show wanting to like her. Embrace her terribleness as a positive, intentional quality. Don't be mad at her for straightening up an endgame that was never going to be gay, even without her. Welcome her contributions to the chaos. Realize that she is exactly as entertainingly irritating as her boys are.

Truly, this is a story of three terrible people in love. They're all just awful, and you wouldn't want to be in a room with any of them for longer than you had to. Left to right up there, Bai Youning is spoiled and self-absorbed, Lu Yao is arrogant and lazy, and Qiao Chusheng is suuuuuch a fucking cop. If you're into the kind of dynamic that can only be described OT3: You All Deserve One Another, then this one's perfect for you.

3. Do you really miss '00s queerbaiting?

Like, really? Are you just super-nostalgic for being able to see the showrunners go, ha ha, girls, we know you're watching and we know you want these cute boys to kiss, which they never will -- but what if we pretended for just this one scene??? Do you just carnally ache for that with every fiber of your being?

Yep.

Now, why am I calling the occasional really gay moments between these two gentlemen "queerbaiting" and not "bromance"? Because these moments are a) obviously intentional, b) completely sporadic, and c) never spoken of again.

For example: There's a scene (which you can see a gifset of here) where the two of them are at a restaurant frequented by the cop, who brings a lot of ladies there on dates. When the waiter points this out, useless noodle boy says, I'm his date. The waiter looks mildly surprised by this, the cop says not to listen to his bullshit, and that's the end of it. The scene moves on. There is no further discussion of this comment. It does not affect their relationship.

That's the essence of queerbaiting: that little on-purpose nod to the homoerotic tension between the two, in a way that isn't a joke but also isn't not a joke, and either way is never going to happen. (In fact, the show is going to go out of its way to make sure that ship gets sunk, so, uh, get your fanfiction lifeboats ready for that.)

A true queerbaiting move is something that should make a difference in a relationship, but doesn't. It should make a difference that our cop is so comfortable in the noodle boy's personal space that he invades it at will. It doesn't. It should make a difference that noodle boy keeps getting real weird every time the cop has a date with a girl. It doesn't. Those are some real romantic moves the two of them keep pulling, and then nothing comes of them.

I had this show sold to me as being incredibly shippy, to the point of being even more so than its censored-BL contemporaries. And ... well, it is and it isn't. It has textually gayer individual moments, but it is much less pervasively gay. It's clear from the start that it's going to throw all its actual relationship points into its canon het romance. When it comes to these boys, the show is toying with you. It knows you want to see those boys smooch, just as much as it knows (and it knows you know) they're never gonna.

How you feel about this is entirely up to you -- and indeed, it may be a dealbreaker on the whole drama for you. If you are inclined to pitch a fit when your ship does not become canon, you'll be happier somewhere else. If, however, you see this as a delightful opportunity to do whatever the hell you want with the situation as it is presented, all the while enjoying little moments of startlingly blatant homoeroticism between two handsome dudes, well, here you are!

(I mean, if you want my take on it, what needs to happen is that the cop and the girl need to fuck while the useless noodle boy watches with asexual bisexual interest, and then they all need to snuggle with the noodle boy in the middle so they can both annoy him appropriately, but your mileage may vary.)

4. The multicultural extravaganza!

1920s Shanghai had a lot going on in terms of cultures and languages, and this show actually does a fair job of representing that.

By now, I've seen a number of shows set during this era, and they all at least acknowledge the international nature of the city -- usually by mentioning the French Concession and having a handful of evil Japanese characters. However, this is the first time I've seen a show go to such lengths to actually show so many non-Chinese characters onscreen, even to the point of making one a recurring character supporting the main squad.

Salim is the best. Whatever he is being paid, it's not enough. He's Qiao Chusheng's right-hand man, which means he is also the dude who most often has to put up the main trio's bullshit. (The actor himself is also a dude with a pretty cool backstory, which is another great layer.) He's sharp, he's loyal, he's patient, and he looks great with his shirt off. He's got it all!

Other non-Chinese characters include a white Jewish art collector (I'd issue a warning for period-typical antisemitism, except … honestly, it's mostly just confused), a sadistic priest who maybe is supposed to be Italian, a completely different priest who [last episode spoiler], and three whole sinister white dudes behind it all.

It's not just the world coming to China, though! A large number of the Chinese characters are said to have spent significant time outside of China, whether for business or for schooling. Near the end, when some characters are discussing moving away from Shanghai, they consider a number of foreign cities as potential destinations.

Here's a delightful detail: When Lu Yao and his sister speak English, they're dubbed by actors with posh British accents who sound like native (or near-native) English-speakers. This makes perfect sense, because both of the siblings did a lot of their schooling in the UK. When Bai Youning speaks English, she's dubbed by someone who speaks English very well but also has a noticeable Chinese accent, which makes perfect sense for her character's background. And Qiao Chusheng never speaks English at all, because he's a street tough who has no reason to know more than three words.

...This is also kind of weird to say about something literally made in China, but go with me on it: Everything's kind of got that Art Deco Orientalist vibe to it. It looks like China's idea of what Britain's idea of China during that period would have looked like. The result comes across less like what 1920s Shanghai would actually have looked like, and more what an ad for 1920s Shanghai would have looked like. It's a fascinating aesthetic, and more so for how it's mostly pretty subtle. The show isn't some visual extravaganza, but it's always very nice to look at, and I appreciate that in a show.

5. A wonderful horrible protagonist

A lot of mystery-themed prestige television involves an asshole genius detective who gets away with being a dick to everyone because he's sooooo smart, while all his long-suffering friends and colleagues spend a lot of time doing damage control for him because, sigh, he's an asshole but we need him, genius excuses all dickhead behavior, we'll always make exceptions for him because he's just ever so special. (Watch histrionic sage hbomberguy's video on Sherlock if you're unfamiliar with the trope.)

Lu Yao is an asshole genius detective, but one who winds up spending most of his time being an asshole to a) people who deserve it, or b) his horrible friends who will be assholes right back at him. When he is awful to the people who don't deserve it, the show smacks him pretty hard on the nose for it and makes him apologize.

This is a show where you'll figure out pretty quckly if you'll love it or hate it, because if you love Lu Yao, you'll love it, and vice versa. He carries most of the show himself, with his goofy charm and his incredibly bendy slenderman body and his ability to make the one competent person he knows both protect him and give him money.

Like so.

For my own part, I find him intensely charming, and I think a lot of this has to do with Hu Yitian's ability to play him as an affectionately bullyable weenie who needs to get shoved in a locker for his own good. He's the worst, and it's comically endearing instead of offputting because at the end of the day, he really does have a good heart. He's just also lazy as heck and disinclined to do anything that he does not want to be doing, and really, aren't we all?

As I alluded to in point 3, he comes across as real asexual. He's just not that interested in sex, and he is in fact pretty uncomfortable in situations where he finds himself the subject of someone else's sexual desires. He's perfectly capable of romantic feelings! I mean, not only does he get Bai Youning as a love interest, we actually meet one of his ex-girlfriends. He's just not partciularly horny about them -- which is even more noticeable as a sharp contrast to how extremely horny Qiao Chusheng is for just about everyone, but this exasperating little dork in particular.

(Like seriously, 90% of the time, Chusheng is about to explode with sexual frustration at Lu Yao's skinny oblivious ass.)

This isn't to say you couldn't get Lu Yao into bed, because you absolutely could, and he'd probably have a good time. You'd just have to remove all distractions from the room, lest his ADHD ass wind up running off to solve a crime mid-coitus.

Twiggy little nightmare man. Garbage-animal boy. Love him.

sidebar: A word about the ending

I'm going to be vague and talk about general vibes instead of specific events, but you should still skip this section if you want to remain completely unspoiled. Jump to the picture of Chusheng holding the sledgehammer.

Okay, so, a lot of people do not like the ending, and I'm including myself in that number. I honestly don't know if they got rushed and had to wrap everything pretty last-minute, or if they thought they might get a second season out of it and were leaving things open-ended accordingly. Either way, it's incredibly unsatisfying.

I think there's a clue that the show didn't actually want to end this way, and it's not actually in the text of the show itself. Every episode, between the last scene and the start of the credits, you get to see a couple still frames from the episode (usually some of the queerbaity ones). After the very final shot of the series, you get two images: the boys hugging goodbye, and Chusheng's upset face. That's not a resolution! That is at best a "to be continued..." ending!

But no, that's it. That's all, folks.

It's not quite an ending so bad it ruins the rest of the show, mostly because it doesn't feel finished, so it's less like you're watching a car being deliberately driven into a wall because someone thought that was the best route to take, and more like you're watching someone leave a car on the railroad tracks because they figured they'd have time to move it later.

As far as I know, there has been no noise made about a second season. These 36 episodes are the entirety of the narrative. It had the distinct misfortune to start airing in March 2020, which wasn't exactly prime time for planning sequels, and that seems to have been that. (There is a 2022 show called Checkmate that stars the two main guys in extremely similar roles, also adapting Agatha Christie stories, but it's apparently pretty meh? Somebody else who's actually seen it, go ahead and weigh in here.)

I'll say that if you turn off the episode right after Lu Yao gets out the handcuffs, you'll save yourself the worst of it the awkward and unsatisfying moments (though I'm impressed at your willpower to stop watching something five minutes from the end). That's not all of it, though. Structurally, there are several situations rushed to a resolution and loose threads left flapping untied in the breeze. I guess stopping before the last five minutes simply saves you the hope that it'll pull a good ending out of the fire, because it won't.

And let's be real: The more you hate Bai Youning and her romance with Lu Yao, the more you'll hate the ending. (Not that liking those elements will necessarily make you like the ending, of course, because I'm a fan of hers and I still think the ending is butts.) The ending is already like a pair of uncomfortable shoes; if the het romance especially makes you grind your teeth, the ending becomes a pair of uncomfortable shoes that also have a rock in them. A lot of the comments online indicate plenty of people dropped the show when they learned the het romance would be endgame. It's a pretty common dealbreaker.

Oh well. Bring on the fanfic, I say! Those of us who are used to taking a sledgehammer to canon are unafraid.

Smash it, baby.

Still want to see some of these mysteries?

Both iQiyi and Viki have the answer to your sleuthing!

It's not a perfect show -- as evidenced by my digression about the ending -- but it's a lot of fun. If you can handle the occasional foible and some eyebrow-raising moments, you're in for a good time with some attractive people that occasionally tastes very gay.

Every roommate crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Yuri posting time. These are ships I personally vibe with from what I post about on here.

Higuchi and Gin (BSD): Okay, I'm not sure I can really explain this properly because it's so entwined with the plot of a particular fic I've been wanting to write about them, and I don't really want to spoil where it goes too much? Basically, I love the potential of two characters who (it's implied) got involved with dangerous work for the sake of their siblings. Higuchi's idealized view of romance contrasts with Gin's survival mentality (which is similar to Akutagawa's). At the same time, Higuchi gives Gin opportunities to express different sides of herself. They both work for the sake of others. Okay, so canonically, there isn't a lot there, because there is little exploration of the themes of BSD through these two characters, unfortunately. But, with a combination of "what if I explored the themes through these characters", some influence from O-Gin and Higuchi-sensei's works, and a touch of my own personal brand of "fuck it, we ball, and see where it rolls", I think there's a lot of fun things you can pull at.

Higuchi and Tsujimura (BSD): Not a long-term relationship. They're best friends who had a brief fling and then decided to remain friends. To me.

Wells and Sasaki (BSD): Absolute crack ship that I have not stopped thinking about since you suggested it @lucythejudge. It's so funny.

Meryl and Milly (Trigun): !!! THEM!!! AUGH! They spent!!! Eight months navigating the apocalypse together!!! Milly's smile and presence is enough to help Meryl out of her dark thoughts! Milly is unable to sleep when Meryl is in danger! Milly challenges Vash and Wolfwood when they try to stop her from rescuing Meryl! Meryl has complete faith in Milly to intervene when she has a literal contract killer pointing a gun at her head!!! They're always at each other's sides! THEY!

Coco and Agott (WHA): They give me slight killugon vibes (also maybe lumity - but I've never actually watched owl house unfortunately). Cute and pure. I hope they continue to inspire each other. :)

Theta and Morena (HxH): Saw art for this once. They haven't even interacted. But still, my brain thinks about it and goes ohohohoho

Ann and Shiho (P5R): Ahhh... they want to be strong for each other... avenging Shiho was Ann's reason for awakening... ahhhhhh

Ann and Mika (P5R): I just think Ann's canonical admiration for women who are mean is incredibly funny and so real. Get her a mean girlfriend.

Makoto and Hifumi (P5R): Okay, they hit it off immediately and also I want to see how intense they get over a game of shogi. Everyone quietly backing away from them... lmao. Also I think it's nice because Makoto could understand Hifumi's struggles with expectation and wanting to help her family, and Hifumi offers a familiar setting (intellectual, strategic) with opportunities for Makoto to expand her understanding as well as form a solid connection. They should be best friends at least!

Bonus:

This idea I had for a fucked up polycule that never actually becomes a polycule and is literally just Yosano, Wells, and Mary all being needed for some kind of research, with a stressed Tsujimura as their supervisor. There is... some kind of tension happening amidst the often inadvisable scientific decisions being made. No sex or romance actually ever occurs but there are conversations that sound suspiciously like flirting that usually end in Yosano gleefully hacking at something or someone in her temporary office, Mary nearly downing the entire grid because she diverted all the power to her latest project that then promptly exploded, or Wells vanishing then abruptly and calmly reappearing minutes later with no explanation except "the world will survive another day". Tsujimura is about ready to tear her hair out. The cat thief drops in sporadically to cause extra chaos. This too, is yuri.

[wannaeatramyeon]

Gun Park x Reader: this is our place (we make the rules)

Chapter 4 - Probably should read ch1 first

Gun has a new neighbour. Index: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Epilogue

You pray to the heavens above.

You pray to hell below.

And everything in between. Because something needs to have mercy on your soul. 

This sight. It cannot be real. 

Your eyes are deceiving you.

.

.

Of course you considered eating Gun’s food. It’s the least of what he deserves. But you didn’t have the heart to cause trouble for the careless delivery person. 

Besides, what asshole steals someone else’s food?

Now this is what you get? Is it supposed to be a reward or torture?

.

.

“Why is it always you?” Gun, face impassive, stands at the doorway with towel in both hands, scrubbing at his wet hair. Damp tendrils curling at his forehead and neck.

(What you wouldn't give to be the towel in those big, strong hands.)

Expecting just a quick visit, where he could grab his lunch and needing to exchange a grunt at most, he’s wearing very little. 

To you, he is wearing far too much.

Steam rises from his shoulders. His bare naked shoulders. Broad. Powerful. With that particular delicious cut of muscle linking to his underarm.

Then all arms and bis and tris in the air, graceful and frankly. Obscene. Like a ridiculous cologne advert dreamt up by horny execs.

(Praise the gods for the horny execs and the creation of this before you, a tiny voice in your brain offers.)

Your eyes continue taking in the rest of his body. Scars that should be a screaming red flag litter his torso, a fitting match for the one between his eyes, but it just elevates this man. Adding to the mystery, the danger.

Droplets from Gun’s shower slides down over his skin, now starting to prickle in the cold air. It glides down in a delectable path that your eyes are all too eager to follow.

The linen shirt from the other week seems puritanical. Far far too much material.

Because if you looked like this, why on earth would you ever wear anything ever again. 

Why would you ever cover those pecs, and that 6 (hold on a second - you count each muscle), 8 pack and those obliques. 

All leading to jutting hipbones, a delicious faint trail of hair starting at the navel, and that tantalising line of muscles shaped in a V. Everything pointing straight down below. Teasing at what the towel around his waist covers.

(You change your mind. What you wouldn't give to be this towel instead.)

Completely mesmerised, your hand is half reaching out before his voice slaps you out of your daze.

“Are you done?”

And like the shameless moron you are, all you can do is nod, mute, as you retract your hand. Swiping at your nose and mouth to check for a nosebleed or any drool.

Thankfully, it comes back dry.

Leaning a forearm on the door, and other hand on his hip; Gun bends at the waist, bringing his face close to yours. Much closer than it’s ever been.

“Tell me,” A smirk, “Why are you on my doorstep again.”

You gulp, and his eyes drops to watch your throat swallow.

How is it so hot in here. How is your hand clammy. And how. Really. How does he smell so good. Like whatever expensive body wash he has used and an intoxicating mix of smoke and spice.

This is a reward. Definitely.

Then your eyes dart to his lips, moist and pulled up at one corner. Too far to reach, but close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath.

No. This is torture.

“Are you,” Gun inches closer and you can’t help leaning in too, “hungry for food,” somewhere far away, you hear a faint rumble. It could be your stomach or an earthquake, you would never know, “or for something else?”

After his last words, Gun reclines, giving you the space to breathe again. 

Like the first rush of cool air after drinking in a stuffy bar and it fully hits you how drunk you are.

Another rumble and you realise it’s your stomach.

The smirk never shifts, instead Gun grabs the bag from your hand and retreats back into his home.

Leaving the door wide open.

Your body, as if pulled along by a wire, follows.

.

.

Gun, infuriatingly smug that you have walked of your own accord into a lion’s den, spreads out the food and hands you a pair of chopsticks.

No. No. You are not disappointed. Definitely not.

“Eat,” he commands and disappears.

Your other brain cells start whirring. Better late than never. You blink, dazed. Sobering. As if you have no idea how you got here. How it all led here.

.

.

An unexpected turn, though not unwelcome.

Gun pulls on some fresh clothes, thinking about his next move.

He’s done a basic check on you. Common sense, standard, to check there are no nefarious purposes for you living next door.

Turns out it was just a coincidence you turning up at the same places as him.

What’s more, the PI, one who he has entrusted with many cases to, returned very little.

Barely any living relatives, no training, no big accomplishments, no connection. 

A student at Seoul National University, gaining entrance through merit rather than nepotism. Some part-time job to support yourself, which you parted with on good terms once you moved. You weren’t lying when you mentioned your grandmother passing her home on to you. 

Someone that shouldn’t even be on Gun Park’s radar. That doesn’t warrant any searches conducted on them.

So the interesting part, the reason you have his attention is this:

How come a nobody like you, someone whose entire existence has barely filled a side of paper, look him in the eye unflinching? 

To find the abyss staring, and to just stare back. 

To have so little fear of a demon, who has ruined lives of much more powerful men and women.

Gun can count on no hands and no fingers the amount of people he has invited back that he does not intend to bed. 

But here you are. In his home.

He’s curious to find out more about you.

[so-many-fandoms-here]

(English isn’t my first language so feel free to correct any mistake you notice)

• Characters: Suguru Niragi, fem!Reader

• Genre: Idk actually 🫡

• Warnings: violence

Off Limits

༺☆༻༺☆༻༺☆༻༺☆༻

Everybody that is more than a week at The Beach knows Niragi. It could be his loud and dramatic attitude or the big gun he carries around all the time. Fact is: he’s known. And therefore you’re known too.

He did make it obvious pretty quickly that it’s better to not even think about you if they value their lives at least a little bit.

But of course there always has to be some sort of idiot who just won’t listen to all the warnings he’ll get.

It’s a rather calm day at The Beach today. No games, no fear of dying, just accepting and making the best of the day.

You sit at the bar, sipping your second raspberry bacardi for tonight and enjoying the feeling of the bass hammering through the floor and your body.

„Hello there“, you hear a deep voice greeting you. Turning your head to your right you look into the face of some stranger. A girl stands behind him, pleading him to just go.

Well, this will be real fun.

„All alone baby?“, he asks, prepping his elbow on the bar.

„Please, just let us leave already!“, the girl almost cries. „You don’t want this.“ But he just ignores her. „I heard you’re supposed to be 'off limits'.“ You can’t stop the grin creeping on your face as he leans closer.

„I’m waiting for someone. He should be here any minute.“, you answer amused. „Well, but he’s not here now. Finders keepers.“

The people near you start whispering to each other and the girl again tries to make him leave, this time tugging on his swimming trucks.

„Wow, those afraid looks really give me the feeling I’m playing with fire. Truth be told, you’re so hot I had the feeling all along.“

„You are playing with fire! And you’re about to get badly burned when he comes back!“, the girl continues her useless efforts.

„Oh please“, the guy says amused as he pushed her away. „I’m down for a good fist fight.“

„You’re new, right?“, you ask him, acting flirty and drawing his attention back to you. „You know the faces around here?“ With a giggle you answer: „No, just had a feeling.“

„Well, your intentions are right. I came two days ago. If I’d knew what beautiful women were waiting for me I would have come here way sooner.“ It’s hard to not let your giggling turn into laughing, so you take another sip from your bacardi, hoping it’ll help to keep your volume down. „This annoying girl there tried to warn me all day since I saw you, but believe me babygirl, there’s nothing that could scare me away from you.“

„Oh, is that so?“ The room goes silent as his voice echoes trough the air. The guy turns around, getting a little bit pale around the nose as he spots Niragi with his riffle aimed at him, but he catches himself pretty quickly again and stands up as Niragi walks up to him.

„You think your gun scares me?“, he asks, acting all tough. „Yeah“, Niragi answers bluntly. „Usually this is the point where your small brain tells you to go.“

The guy puffs out his chest, trying to make himself look taller. „Well, I see trough your bluff. You think because you’re a militant and carrying a huge gun around you’re better than me. But let me tell you one thing“ he gets closer to Niragi, causing the rest to start whispering. „You’re a coward. As if you have the balls to pull the tri-“ Before he’s able to finish his sentence, a shot echoes trough the room, followed by the high pitched scream of the, now not so brave, guy. He falls to the ground, pressing his hands in his thigh.

Immediately everyone backs away when Niragi steps over him, trying to keep as much distant to the raven haired guy as possible. Only you stay where you were, keep sipping your sweet beverage.

„Y-You’re insane!“ The screaming is so distorted from the pain he feels that it almost sounds creepy.

Niragi bends down, looks him in the eyes and flexes with his tongue piercing, a sinister smile decorating his face. „You have no idea.“, he whispers, before another shot rings in your ears, ending the pathetic being of the guy.

Slowly Niragi stands back up, snapping the glass out of your hands to drink the rest. He then throws an arm around your waist and pushes you off the bar stool so you stand beside him. „Anyone else wanting to say something to her?“, he asks loud, pointing his gun on everyone in sight.

Silence.

„Thats what I thought.“ With that he grabs your wrist and starts dragging you with him.

„Fucking around now, are we?“, he asks while dragging you to his room. „No“, you answer with a grin on your lips. „But I like it when you deal with them.“

You know how fucked up it is, but it always warms your heart to see him so obsessive over you that he is ready to kill anyone who just lays an eye on you.

I have an huge blockage right now and it frustrates me. This Oneshot kinda frustrates me too.

[thespiritssaidso]

Give Shawn the Dress, Dammit!

Summary: Basically the same as the episode Weekend Warriors except Shawn gets to wear the nurse’s outfit

Notes: I have no idea how the fuck a dress from the civil war is made, specifically one with hoops. I don’t know the structure. So give me some leniency here if I wrote the dress wrong.

Juliet left the car and trotted over to where Shawn and Gus were standing, one of whom was holding a dress. “Hey, what’s up guys?”

“Jules!” Shawn and Gus ran up to her. “You're going to get a call from a very irate Sally Reynolds saying two guys just drove by and stole her dress. Just ignore it, okay?”

She was extra confused now. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

Gus started explaining. “Sally was a target. Shawn’s gonna put on that dress, and wait for someone to shoot him.”

Shawn nodded along. “Yeah but- the plan sounds a lot better when you don’t say it like that.”

“What?”

“Listen, detective.” Shawn turned back to Juliet. “We have reason to believe that the intended target was Sally Reynolds. Now we’ve stolen her dress,” he held up said dress, “we’re gonna catch the yellow-bellied son-of-a-bitch red handed.” He paused to take a breath. “I forced the ending, that’s horrible.”

“So, risking getting shot is the only way to solve the case?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we should stop the battle!”

“No, we can’t. It’s too late. They’re gonna start in less than a minute. Listen, Juliet…please let us go?” They’re both bouncing on the balls of their feet in anticipation.

Juliet doesn’t say anything, mulling over her choices in her head.

After a minute or two of tense silence, she wordlessly marched to the back door of the car she came in and opened it, rummaging around for something. When she resurfaced she had a bullet proof vest. “If you’re going out there, you might as well be protected.”

——————

“Breathe out, loosen up.”

“Ow ow ow ow!”

“Sorry Shawn!”

“No no, it’s fine, this wasn’t exactly made to fit me. Now just zip- AGH!”

“Sorry!”

“Is it done yet? Please tell me it’s done.”

“You’re all good.” Juliet patted the zipper on his back.

Shawn straightened up, and tried to take a breath. It was difficult, and it made him feel like he was back in high school, wearing his binder. It wasn’t a terrible thing to remember. But it wasn’t exactly a fond memory either.

“Here.” Juliet handed him a helmet. He shoved the it on, fumbling a bit with the buckle.

Gus grabbed Shawn by the shoulders. “Alright remember, the fifth cannon boom is your cue to shoot whoever's playing Quantrill.”

“Right.” Shawn nodded, but then gave his friend a strange look. “Wait, how do you know that?”

“I read the manual. Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t open the manual, it was like War and Peace. There were seventeen chapters.”

“It’s the manual, Shawn.”

“It was this thick!” He held up his hands roughly 6 inches apart, emphasizing the sheer size of it.

“Guys!”

“Right, sorry Jules.”

She just shook her head, and started helping Shawn tie the bonnet.

“Shawn, please be careful.”

“And don’t die.”

“Gus!”

“What? I don’t want my best friend to die!”

Shawn just began to ignore them at this point, and started talking to himself. “Okay. Okay. You got this you got this you got this.”

As the fifth canon went off, he shot out of the tent, grabbing the bayonet from the table nearby and running to his spot. Shawn hefted the gun up to his shoulder, and aimed at the new actor standing in as Captain Quantrill.

“It’s just a reenactment. It’s not real. You’re not actually shooting that guy.” he muttered to, hyping himself up as he pulled the trigger.

Pow!

The captain dramatically fell, and rolled down the side of the hill like in the rehearsal.

Shawn quickly looked to the tree, checking to see if the shooter had come back. There was no one. That was odd. He looked at the trunk where Gus and Juliet were standing. They seemed just as confused as he was.

He hitched the skirts and jogged back over to them. “Did you see anything?”

Gus shook his head no. “Nothing.”

Juliet cocked her gun. “I’m gonna double check the nurse’s tent. You two stay put.”

As she ran off, Shawn said, “That’s weird. Nobody came.”

“Well, at least you’re out of danger now.”

They both turn to walk back to the med tent, but Gus kicks something. He freezes, as does Shawn. He kicks it again, hearing a metallic clang. They share a look with each other and begin brushing off grass to reveal a manhole cover.

Shawn tilted his head. “Well I wonder where this leads.”

They grabbed the handle, straining themselves while moving it oh so slowly. When they got it off, Gus noticed something crucial that would hinder them. “Isn’t that gonna get in the way?” Gus pointed at Shawn’s dress, which was much wider than the manhole itself.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Shawn put his hand to his chin in a thinking gesture.

“Then take it off.”

“Dude, I am not taking this off, it took too long to put on!”

“Well figure something out!”

Shawn thought for a minute, then had an idea. He dug through the little pockets of the dress and grabbed his Swiss knife, and started cutting little holes in the fabric and ripping the metal hoops out.

The end result was a — somewhat — regular dress, though it was a bit longer than before. “Alright, let’s go!”

——————

Behind one of the grey tents, another manhole cover was lifted up from underneath. Shawn peaked out, taking in his surroundings before hefting himself completely out.

“Watch your head.” The plumage of Gus’ feather hat pokes out. Shawn grimaced when he noticed a bit of… something on it. “Aw, did you get sewage on your feather?”

Gus doesn’t respond, simply climbing up and out of the hole. They both shuffle over to the tent, peering around it.

“We’ve crossed to the other side of the creek bed!” Gus pointed out.

“The police accounted for all the Union soldiers, but nobody’s considered that the murderer could have come from this side. After all, this was the bad side, right?”

“You know that’s right.”

Shawn looks over to the tent flap, and swiftly snuck inside of it with Gus close behind. Immediately, Shawn found something.

“Now, I ask you: who goes out on the battlefield without their boots?”

Gus shrugged. “Maybe someone has bunions.”

Shawn gave him a disbelieving look. “Bunions, Gus? Really? That's what you're bringing to the table? I'm trying to solve a murder here.” His bonnet and helmet were really starting to squeeze his head, and it was giving him a migraine. Shawn untied the bonnet and helmet, setting them down on the little table as well as the boots. It wasn’t like he would need them anymore. Besides, they were ruining his hair. He began rummaging underneath the table.

“I deal with bunions every day at work, Shawn. They hurt. They hurt people. That's a perfectly logical assumption.”

“Oh yeah? What about this?” With a little flourish, Shawn grabbed a uniform and presented it to Gus. “No tunic!”

Gus snatched the uniform from Shawn and inspected it. He held it up to himself as he said, “This is Mahoney’s!”

Shawn looked closer at the uniform, and a lightbulb went off in his head. He dug through the dress pockets once more, fishing out the brass button from earlier and held it up to the coat, where there were two small holes placed exactly where a button would go.

“The brass button.” Shawn muttered.

“Mahoney did it.” Gus whispered.

They both started jumping up and down, stimming from excitement.

“That’s why he had that sticky musket! He must have got sap on it from that notch in the tree!”

“Woah woah this doesn’t track. Why kill Sally? She’s hot. They’re friends. She even wrote his insurance policy-“

Shawn’s interrupted by a loud BANG. They both flinch a bit at the sudden explosion.

“That was C-4!” Gus pointed out.

“That didn’t come from the battlefield, it came from the south.”

Shawn and Gus instantly come to the same conclusion at the same time. They looked at each other in the eyes, confirming it.

“I solved the crime!”

“No, I did!”

“I said it first.”

“I identified the uniform.”

“I found the button near the tree,” Shawn quickly reached out and tapped Gus’ shoulder twice. “Tap tap no take backs.”

“That's not fair, Shawn. I was identifying the C-4 sound.”

“Dude, you snooze you lose, Gus. I don't have to tell you.”

Gus, frustrated, starting shoving his plumed hat up and down on his head.

Shawn pointed back outside the tent. “That manhole we found connects to the sewer. It's going to lead us right to our killer. Let's go.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! We're going in by ourselves?”

“What, are you crazy?”

Shawn and Gus quickly rushed out of the tent and- well, I’m sure you know how the rest goes.

They find Mahoney stealing his own artifacts and confront him — with some help from the reenactment soldiers— and take him to the station where Shawn figured out that it was not only Mahoney but Sally as well. The two had been attempting insurance fraud. But Mahoney didn’t want to share, so he tried to kill Sally. Poe rolls past his mark, sees Mahoney in the act, and is murdered. Case closed.

——————

It was late in the evening, and the sun was starting to set. Shawn was running to the many tents that had yet to be put away. He had forgotten his Gameboy there, and had to convince Gus to drive him back in the Blueberry to go grab it. He just hoped no one had nabbed it while he was gone.

Shawn still hadn’t taken off the dress. Really, it had just slipped his mind. But he had noticed he was still wearing it at least an hour ago, and realized he didn’t actually want to take it off. It felt… nice, wearing it. Except for the bullet proof vest. That he could do without. He changed out of the vest and voila: comfy-ish dress.

He was exiting one of the tents, Gameboy in hand, when he noticed Lassiter. The detective was still in costume, meandering around the battlefield.

“Lassie!” Shawn started jogging over to the man.

He watched as Lassiter’s shoulders slumped, and turn around to face him. “What are you doing here, Spencer?” His voice didn’t have its usual bite to it, just sounded a bit… tired.

“Oh, I needed to grab my Gameboy — which I found-” he waved it around for emphasis. “-in one of the tents. But this looks more fun!” That was a lie. Walking around aimlessly sounded boring to Shawn. But he wanted to spend some time with Lassiter, boring be damned.

He just gave Shawn a resigned sigh. “I don’t suppose I could stop you, anyway.”

Shawn gave him a big grin, and began walking alongside him.

“Spencer, why in the world are you still wearing that dress?”

“Why are you still wearing your uniform?”

Lassiter huffed. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

Shawn just shrugged. “Alright then.”

“It’s just- isn’t that… uncomfortable? There’s no way that fits you.”

He smiled to himself. “Nah, it’s not really too bad. I took off the bullet proof vest, so it’s not too tight. Brings back memories, actually.”

Now Lassiter was confused. “Memories? What, did you try wearing dresses or something in high school?”

Shawn could’ve taken offense to that. But he decided not to, opting to shake his head no. “Just reminds me of a time when I had to wear a binder to even look half this good.”

Not knowing what else to say, Lassiter let out a small “Oh,” and didn’t add anything else.

“‘Course, the binder was a different kind of…” Shawn gestured to his chest as he said this. “…tight. But it’s the same idea.”

They fell into silence, taking in their surroundings. The sky was pinkish, blending beautifully into purple and blue. The clouds were colored a soft coral pink and cream orange. The air was slowly filled with a soft euphony of various sounds. Crickets chirping, frogs croaking, the whistle of a gentle breeze rustling the long grasses.

Shawn breaks the quiet. “You know, I did a little bit of reading earlier-”

Lassiter scoffed at that. “You? Reading? Please.”

“As strange as that sounds, yes. I did. It was awful, zero stars, do not recommend. There were all these big words- and don’t even get me started on the lack of pictures-”

“Get to the point, Spencer.”

“Right. Yeah. So, I was reading about your great-great-grandfather, Colonel Muskrat-”

“It’s Colonel Muscum T. Lassiter.”

“-I’ve heard it both ways.” He was getting sidetracked. “That guy, who you’re dressed up as, I got curious-”

“Mhm.”

“-and I noticed there was a page in there about him and the… uhh, the nurse, the one I’m dressed up as-”

“Sally Reynolds.”

Shawn raised his eyebrows. “No kidding? That’s her name? That is a huge coincidence.”

“Yes, it is. Now what about her?”

“Right right right. There was a page in there about those two.”

Lassiter didn’t know where this was going. “…Go on.”

“And uhm, apparently, after the war they got together. And eventually married.”

They stopped walking, and Lassiter turned to stare at Shawn. “If you’re insinuating what I think you are, it’s gonna be a hard no. Not in a million years.” He quickly returned to his stride, leaving Shawn standing there.

Wow. Oh, wow. That- that actually kind of hurt. Shawn shook his head, and quickly jogged to catch up with Lassiter.

“Why-”

“Spencer,” Lassiter stopped walking again, halting Shawn’s little run. “Don’t take this the wrong way- actually, take this any way you want: I would rather reenact the civil war stark naked than go on a date with you.”

Woah. Okay, that hurt him even more. But Shawn hid this expertly under a nonchalant grin. “Now that I would pay to see.”

Lassiter gave a mocking smile. “Haha. It’s still no.”

Surprisingly, Shawn didn’t keep pressuring him. He just raised his hands in defense. “Alright.”

“Alright.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“Not going to think about it-?”

“Spencer.”

“Even a little bit-?”

“If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to shoot you.”

He put his hands behind his back, walking backwards. “Okay, Lassie. Let me know when you change your mind.”

“You mean if I change my mind.”

“Sure, sure. Yeah. Whatever you say.” Shawn turned, hitching up his skirts, and ran off to where he knew the blueberry was waiting for him.

——————

AO3 link

[anamericangirl]

Actually, gender reaffirming healthcare is not child abuse; you're just a transphobic piece of work who doesn't even know what real child abuse is. In fact, the real child abusers are actually transphobic assholes who abuse their kids for being trans. When parents give their kids gender-reaffirming healthcare, they're not abusing that kid; they're just letting that kid make their own choices for themself and actually loving them for it. As for abortion, nobody is killing babies, you absolute halfwit! There is a difference between an unfeeling fetus and an actual baby. Oh but of course, you just want to advocate forcing rape victims to give birth to kids they don't want against their will. Also, abortion actually saves lives, unlike your precious guns; guns just kill people and that's it. Yet you just want to prolong gun violence forever. Seriously, be careful what you wish for!

There you have it! Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Wow you managed to be wrong about everything great job.

Gender affirming care is child abuse because healthcare is not supposed to "affirm" things it's supposed to diagnose a problem and treat it. Having a boy say "I'm a girl" or a girl say "I'm a boy" and responding "That's right honey you're whatever you say are here take puberty blockers" which will permanently change their bodies in ways they can't possibly comprehend is abuse.

If a person walked into a doctor's office with two arms and said they only have one and the doctor chopped off one of their arms that would be abuse but I bet you would call it "limb affirming care."

There are choices kids should not be allowed to make for themselves. We don't let kids choose to smoke or drink or get tattoos but an 11 year old boy should be allowed to "choose" to permanently mutilate his body because someone convinced him he's a girl because he likes to play with dolls and put on a dress once? Nah fuck you dude.

As for abortion it is killing a baby. The only difference between an "unfeeling fetus" and an "actual baby" are the ones you arbitrarily assigned to it. Abortion has never saved a single life and has killed millions more people than the holocaust did.

And for real, you are a disgrace for using rape victims as a prop for your morally bankrupt and ignorant opinions. Rape victims account for less than 1% of the women who get abortions and you using them to pretend pro-lifers just want to hurt rape victims is disgusting, especially when you're the one hiding behind that weak, pathetic and thoroughly debunked talking point. Shame on you.

It's very sad to me that you would actually believe any of that. You are a perfect example of how deep the propaganda in this country runs and the extent to which it is successfully brainwashing people. I hope you learn how to think for yourself, see through the lies and follow the truth.

[liquidstar]

do u have any recs for folks newer to the yuri genre? I've never really read any manga other than shounen and some magical girl stuff

Omg i can totally give yuri recs. (And which ones to stay away from. Sakura Kiss has cousin shit in it, Citrus has stepsister dubcon, Dragon Maid has lolicon, Happy Sugar Life is also lolicon but it’s edgy about it and tries to act like this makes it deep, we can do better)

Anyway here’s my actual recs! I'm going to give details but if you don't wanna read them I bolded all the titles.

YuriKuma Arashi (By Ikuhara of Revolutionary Girl Utena fame), is about lesbian bears. But it’s actually a metaphor for the simultaneous objectification and demonization of lesbians, the expectation both for purity and predation. There are some nitpicks I have with it like the sexualization being a bit too much to bring the point home, but overall I do like its themes and its message. And I think the ending pulls everything together really nicely. There is both a manga and an anime, and I believe the anime came first. I’ve only seen the anime so I’m not sure if/how the manga deviates!!!! 

Bloom Into You is an absolute must. Like, for real, I think it’s one of the best romances out there, yuri or otherwise. It gets really deep into both characters' respective psyches and the ways that they’re both Very Screwed Up when it comes to love and romance, or really just life in general. Giving details would be doing them a disservice honestly. Both characters are very messy but also do try their best to genuinely communicate, and what comes of that is a lot of teenage lesbian drama, but the growth they both experience though it TOGETHER is just great, and you can tell they care about each other so much.

Okay this one I’m not really recommending for the good writing, it’s more-so just really cool. Liberta (EXPLICIT) is a series about a vampire who can turn her body into guns and a human woman who is sick of being seen as lesser in her ordinary life. And then they fall in love and are vampires together. The artstyle and character designs are awesome and it has some really cool fight scenes. However it also has full blown barely censored sex scenes. A few of them. One of the women uses her tail at some point. If that’s not what your cup of tea is, give it a pass. 

Anyway for something more wholesome you should check out The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All, which I’m actually not fully caught up on bc life, but has still been a super fun read so far. It’s about a girl who works at a music store, and her classmate who gets a crush on her while she’s at work. The classmate doesn’t realize that they’re the same person, due to her looking different at work, and thinks her worksona is a guy. Hijinks ensue. 

Otherside Picnic is also highly recommended. Its manga adaptation is lagging behind the light novel, which I can’t find a translation of online (But if anyone can help me out w that 🙏). The story itself is about two college students who go on adventures to a parallel plane of reality, which contains cosmic horrors who can only communicate with humans through fear so intense it will make you go insane. They’re also looking for someone who went missing, and gain cool powers like Ghost Hand and Sans Eye. Yes this is still a yuri series and it’s also really really extremely fucking cool. 

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat, is a slice of life story about… Well exactly what it says. A woman with a passion for cooking, making lots of food and sharing it with her neighbor, and they end up bonding through this. It’s also like, cool to see a big butch woman for a change! The story itself is very straightforward but I love watching the relationship progress as well as the mc question her sexuality. This story will absolutely make you super hungry though.

Show Me Your Bust (EXPLICIT) is also exactly what it says on the tin, though it’s technically a webtoon. Again this is a series with explicit sex scenes, but it actually does have a story and actual depth to its characters. Honestly there’s a lot to unpack with all of them and a lot of the relationships aren’t totally healthy but it’s a drama so that’s the point. 

A Monster Wants To Eat Me is actually hard to describe without spoilers. It’s about a girl who lives by the sea, meeting a mysterious girl with eyes that remind her of the ocean itself. The girl says that she’s actually been looking for the mc for a long time, and it’s revealed that….

And lastly I wanna mention Hanamonogatari, a story about an old widow who begins to regain confidence in herself as she experiments with make-up with the help of another old lady who works at a local cosmetic store. Honestly it’s very very very sweet, it’s rare to get romances like this of old women when so much of the focus of romances (yuri or otherwise) is often on the characters being attractive. I also really appreciate how the make-up is being used specifically to accentuate their wrinkles. Not hide them. Because aging is beautiful too. Sadly IVE ONLY READ TWO CHAPTERS BECAUSE I DONT THINK THE REST ARE TRANSLATED IF ANYONE OUT THERE CAN HELP ME PLEASE DO 🙏

[nameuserlee]

“A beast doesn't belong in a cage.”

Latest part in me compiling some of my favourite lines from interacting with Sylus at the café. Part 7 here (links back to part 6, and so forth.)

“I didn’t bring a gun. And hopefully, I won’t ever have to point one at you.” (Betrayal arc when Infold? I need the angst now!)

“When you touch me like that next time, let me know in advance. My bullets don’t have the time to tell the difference between kindness and malice.”

“I wasn’t scared when a real gun was pressed against [my head]. Why would I be scared of your finger gun?”

“I'm thinner than expected? | don't always rely on brute force to solve my problems.”

“To suddenly move behind me— are you trying to avoid someone? Do I need to take care of it for you?”

“If someone tried to encroach on my territory, I’ll retaliate with an even greater force.”

“The strongest people aren't without weaknesses. They're individuals who understand their flaws.”

“Flaws don't always become more obvious the closer you get.”

“Have you ever seen a torch in the dark? It beats like a heart and outshines other lights.” (I’ve never heard anyone be this poetic about… a torch. Thank you Sylus.)

“My vision is great. At night.” (Him specifying “at night” is so endearing to me idk why. Also this just gives me more reasons to keep putting glasss on him >:D )

“My eyes are somewhat tired. I think it's because I've been in the light for too long. I need to rest in the shadows for a bit.” (Never beating the demon/vampire allegations.)

“I heard upset kittens like to scratch things. Do you need to scratch me to feel better?”

“Is that the best you can do? Were you always this weak?”

“Why are you leaving a mark on my face? To let people know that it belongs to you?” (YES!)

“You’re the one who grabbed me first. If you’re scared, you should let go sooner.”

“You must be tired, having to reach out like that. Should I move closer instead?”

“I’ll give you a heads-up, sweetie. You’re too close, so you can’t escape now.”

“Next time you do a sneak attack, give me a heads-up. I’ll remember to lean down and cooperate.”

“So your version of a massage is to find a new painful spot so that I would forget about the previous one?”

“… Well? You like what you see?” (More than like, bbg… Don’t get me started.)

“With me around, you’ll always be smiling and happy.”

[solar-halos]

i finished the umbrella academy s4. i am not amused. here are my thoughts (looong post incoming)

1. i don’t remember diego being so fucking annoying. actually that’s a lie he’s always been annoying but since he was hot i let it slide but now that he’s not treating lila right (how do u fumble a baddie THAT HARD) i think he should participate in the shut the fuck up challenge

2. “their uncle will pick them up” HUH? like obviously this timeline is different but you’re telling me lila has uncles (and parents! or someone! she was talking to some elderly couple before the party!). what does that mean for the others… were their mothers still killed in this timeline or did klaus live out his little amish dream, even if he wasn’t around to experience it? ykwim? like did they show up to this timeline and someone was like “omg where did u wander off to? i was looking all over for u!” and then it turns out it’s their sibling/uncle/whatever in that timeline and they just have to be like ah yes. i surely do know who u are

3. what they did to lila and diego was criminal!!! “she said she couldn’t get pregnant while breast feeding. but she could” dramatic ass reveal for no fucking reason. like get over yourself diego

4. ok i know they prob couldn’t get rays actor to come back but what the fuck do u mean he walked out. and how can allison afford that nice house when all she’s doing is being in commercials nobody wants. our girl has a BEAMER. also i thought they weren’t supposed to have phones or anything like that so why does allison have a vape lollll. not complaining bc that scene was funny to me but why and how

5. ughhh they were tryna set up lila and five SO BAD in the beginning. and even then they still gave off intense sibling vibes

6. ok maybe im just too american but the gun imagery was kinda not it for me. like idk i think the bit with santa claus coming out shooting at everything was supposed to be funny but idkk i think im just too sensitive bc i was like mkkk whatever not funny. also i know luther has super strength but even in s1 he still got majorly injured when that chandelier fell on him but now he’s fucking indestructible apparently?? like getting shot at and stuff?? what???

7. ok but that grandma loading her old timey gun while she turned to the siblings like O.O was funny i’ll give them that

8. speaking of guns wtf siblings are killing EVERYONE. like ik they started the apocalypse and everything but idek just the way they did it was so weird. like less detached/guilty and more like… triumphant? satisfied? idk but it had a different tone than even s3, i remember in s2 it was such an intense ordeal when allison made those two european brothers kill each other but this time they straight up mass murdered a bunch of ppl in a small town and were like B). like ok. like allsion mutilated that guy in front of her DAUGHTER and it was just chill. major tonal shift

9. “you just had to one up me” 1) you just killed a bunch of ppl diego!! 2) that is NOT the lila and diego i know. the real lila and diego would have started making out nasty style the moment lila killed that guy w her laser eyes. also wtf were the point of the laser eyes. she used them like twice and then that was it

10. with that being said all that affair stuff and recovery and addiction and relapse was getting so heavy. which ik is the point and the umbrella academy has always been heavy but like holy shit u GOTTA pick a struggle. is lila gonna groom five or is klaus gonna give claire trauma cos u can’t have both

11. speaking of claire… “would it help to remind u that we were just as shitty at her age” no u fucking weren’t. u could have breathed at ur british alien father wrong and he would have made u do drills until u puked. don’t play rn

12. why did they not trust the audience to pick up on the fact ben spiked their drinks. like we did not need a full on FLASHBACK. or like to be fully immersed in that scene, a tiny little flashback would have done

13. ok but why is this season so scary. like that train station made me paranoid

14. i will never forgive them for what they did to my girl lila. she used to serve CUNT

15. that british lady alien annoyed the fuck outta me

16. WHERE was pogo. and grace. they needed to find a way to bring them back. maybe they could have transported to a universe where the apocalypse happened and now the world was getting ruled by a planet of [gunshots]

17. why the fuck was diego acting like jennifer and ben weren’t linked in some way when all of s3 they alluded to the jennifer incident every other scene. i get it was supppsed to be so obvious even to someone who has ONLY watched s4 that jennifer and ben were linked so it was just a case of diego being stupid BUT that doesn’t work when it’s already been established that they all know jennifer played a part in ben’s death. hence calling it the Jennifer Incident

18. “they tried to address that in later scenes” they failed. they didn’t know how ben died, fine. but they knew jennifer had something to do w it. i’m tired of scenes that poke fun at diego for being stupid. he’s not stupid—he’s cocky

19. okay no but this season was SO gory. like. whatever they have guns this is a revolution but the guts? the intestines?? they wanted to be stranger things sooo bad

20. no but we need to talk about that. the monster thingie at the end was so stranger things and the guns and the military and everything it was like we were back in s3 (or whenever we met the russians)

21. LOL but that scene where diego finds out about five and lila was lowkey funny. this season was so meta in general

22. speaking of the holidays… i sure did love watching everyone sing christmas carols and walk around in the snow when it was hot asf in real time

23. i do like how many parallels there were to s1. like w viktor and reggie, it was very viktor and leonard in s1. and klaus getting kidnapped. although i was kinda tired of klaus getting abducted and his siblings not giving a fuck. i thought there was supposed to be growth there

24. okayyy but ben and jennifer were cute SORRY. “let’s get married” that would have worked on me. however being rude to me while i was at work WOULDNT have worked on me so maybe yall are right maybe we didn’t need a love interest this season

25. i did NOT expect them to actually drag out lila and five’s love story. other than the age gap (no matter how ur looking at it) you already knew it was gonna be bad as soon as they had their first kiss. i hate those multiple little open mouthed kisses that are literally just ALL lip and spit like that’s fucking gross if ur gonna stick ur tongue in my mouth u better do it by the third little :O we got going on there. and then five was giving boy. like literal boy. and lila is a literal goddess but a goddess that’s well into her 20s and the contrast was so sharp it rlly was giving mom and her caucasian child. i mean that bit about lila viewing it as survival vs five actually clinging onto it showed their different levels of maturity, but since it’s never specified if five is still a 50 year old man or just aging normally, his reaction rlly was such a teenage boy thing. “i’m gonna kill him” man shut the fuck up

26. ok no bc we need to talk about this. i think fives actor is my age—maybe even a little bit older—but i don’t see how anyone over the age of 18 is supposed to find him attractive. like idk it’s weird in the show but even creepier irl cos lila’s actor had to have known him when he was still a minor. why did anyone at the umbrella academy think we wanted this

27. anyway not to make this about myself but when i was writing the odesta longfic there were a lot of lore inconsistencies as we kept going bc i forgot some of the details and was too lazy to go back and read it sometimes, and i think that’s what happened this season. the most notable detail is when klaus covered his ears while everyone was shooting at each other. i was expecting some sort of vietnam flashback but like no. he was just there being normal about it, all things considered

28. “ex-squeeze me?” it wasn’t funny when klaus said it in s1. and it wasn’t funny here

29. alright i think that’s really all i wanted to say about the season tbh… like idk diego and lila starting a family made sense i guess and i know they were falling out of love (even tho they would never do that…) but i didn’t rlly feel any of the love w the kids. like even when lila stepped off the train at the last min and her daughter was banging at the glass it looked more like she was like “oh no :(“ and then just started poking at the glass. i don’t even think it matters that she didn’t fully know what was going on—if you’re a child and ur mom steps away in an unfamiliar situation, you’re gonna start to freak. especially w everything else that was going on

30. ok this is such a small thing to harp on but they abused the fuck outta that time skip font. like i don’t think they ever used it that much before now

31. now let’s get into the ending. this is how i would fix it:

we can keep jennifer. whatever. that thing they added at the very last second about her having a particle that causes the end of the world was… whatever. like i get it. they needed a way to explain the end of the world and that was the thing they used and even if it was very late to introduce such a (admittedly confusing) bombshell, at least it fits in with what we already know about this universe’s rules. magic and particles and marigold and whatever. jennifer is fine.

tbh when jennifer started feeling sick i was honestly thinking that they were gonna go the surprise pregnancy route even though they weren’t even fuckinf hinting at that i just have no media literacy. i wouldn’t have minded that tbh, like the monster transformation made more sense but imagine if we did a twilight ripoff for a second, except that jennifer and ben were both equally protective of the killer baby growing outside of jennifer’s womb (or in her womb… whatever. point is there’s a baby). i don’t think this is a good idea—if anything i think this is a shit idea. but something that’s always been so prominent in tua are the moral implications of what they’re doing, like with everyone wanting to kill harlan in s3 instead of letting the entire world die, and with everything that happened with viktor in s1. there was the whole “i can’t kill my brother” bit, sure, but everyone kinda didn’t rlly seem too enthusiastic about it.

actually the baby addition is actually a shit idea. i’m just keeping that part of the rant in bc we need SOME sort of moral dilemma that isn’t just viktor arguing w hargreeves and then his siblings dropping in later with opinions that don’t even seem that strong. everyone needs to have a strong opinion on SOME sort of moral issue that we wanna introduce—that, in a perfect world, we’d be building up to throughout the season—and then yeah whatever there can be an epic fight scene

i don’t watch/read a lot of time travel stuff, but from what i gathered, the timeline can never be restored once it’s fucked with. there has to be consequences, like with any story. and tua did address that—they tried restoring the timeline thousands of times—but i think they shot themselves in the foot there. time travel with a (somewhat) happy ending is possible—there just has to be something to lose, and it has to be something that isn’t nonnegotiable. claire was nonnegotiable, which is why i think they stayed in s3’s timeline for as long as they did

point is, i think they should have gone back to 2019. i mean i don’t think anyone really wanted them to die. i made a joke in s3’s rant that i would just give up, but lucky for me, i am not a fictional character in tua, so the fact they just die in the last five mins and we’re supposed to be ok w that makes the last three seasons pointless. like, actually pointless. what was the message here? why is the ending of the show painted as some sort of utopia just bc we got rid of the siblings? and why is five okay with that? i think him being on board w dying could have been an interesting route to take if they showed his relationship w his siblings consistently deteriorating (both on screen AND off screen) but they only rlly managed to do that with diego, and it was for something fucking stupid

ANYWAY. bring those fools back to 2019, but don’t make them totally happy. just give them something that makes them all just stay put, like how allison has claire (doesn’t matter which timeline. it could be from the fucked up timeline. i don’t think the cleanse would happen bc of that bc claire is only one person and not an entire fucking organization like tua or an assassination like jfk. so hell. might as well throw harlan and sissy in there for viktor. that makes lila and diego’s motivation really easy for staying put, cos then they have their kids. klaus is klaus and no offense to him but i think hes just gonna roll w the cards he’s dealt without trying to fight back, for better or for worse. then ben can have jennifer and since they love each other idk they just stick around. then five’s motivation for staying is that his family is alive and none of them want to leave and that’s good enough for him bc that’s why he time traveled in the first place

again… i don’t think what i came up with is any good. i just think it’s better than them all dying at the last fuckin second. i think this show relied on a lot of haha random xd humor at the beginning and they tried to keep that intact here but everything got so serious that i think them all dying rlly did seem like the only way out but.. it’s not. they could go back to the way things are as long as there were consequences. it would suck, and none of them would be as happy as they could be, but they know that’s as happy as they’re gonna get, so whatever. like, if we were gonna take the suicide route, we might as well gone the time loop route and gone back from the very beginning when five blinks back to 2019. i think that rly would have driven home the “this all would have happened anyway” point way better than them just being like guess ill die :) bc ughhh. no they wouldn’t. also they wouldn’t let lila leave bc she still had marigold in her but… what about her and diego’s kids?? they’re half marigold, and claire is a quarter, so… what’s up with that?