#10/10 dream though would experience it again

[soapdi-spencer]

Just woke up from a dream where Gunpowder Tim was non-binary (he/they) and Welsh?

The thing I apparently read was in Welsh too but I don't speak or read Welsh?? So I assumed it was just random Irish gibberish from deep within my subconscious mind but it turns out the only word I can actually remember is waelach, which apparently means worse in fucking WELSH 😭

[yndrgrl]

your boyfriend, katsuki bakugo, loves you dearly, but you're scared you'll never be deserving of him

cute lil dabble. lowkey songfic. fem! reader. angst to comfort. fluff. established relationship. any au. overthinking! reader.

warnings: there are none :D

a/n: picture a "too sweet" by hozier girl x "i wanna be yours" by arctic monkeys boy relationship !

-

katsuki is always characterized as hostile yet calculating, a man who knows exactly what he wants. he's destined to be the top of the food chain, everyone knows it. he's powerful man with a deadly gorgeous face, his fangirls would describe.

& in comes you. plain old you.

you honestly have no idea what katsuki sees in you. like, if you're digging deep in yourself, maybe he likes your for your dark, crude sense of humor that always seems to make him belly laugh.

it's said that he's an early bird. he's awake before you every single day, asleep & sound by 8:30-- on the weekends, he'll push it to 10:00. before you've said your first words of the day, he's already made his side of the bed, made & ate breakfast, put away the laundry, & is off to his morning run after his morning workout. his good habits he's developed early in life has benefited him in every way.

he never procrastinated on chores, his paper work is flawless, & you could learn a thing or two from his time management skills. he's always making time for spontaneous dates you wanna go on, festivals you wanna visit, & he makes sure that the pantry is stacked with your favorite snacks. any of your interests are his interests, even if he doesn't fully understand it.

when it comes to katsuki, you ought to wonder if he ever wants to experience something different from his strict, repetitive lifestyle. you sometimes feel stupid for wanting more out; you want to travel somewhere far away, you want to go out clubbing with a bunch of strangers, you want to move to the country side & live in a cottage. katsuki always reels in your dreams, encouraging you but also reminding you that you need to stay consistent to achieve them. you're jealous with how fast he can accept reality.

"babe? you listening?" katsuki questioned, snapping you out of your thoughts. you blinked a couple of times then nodded almost-too enthusiastically. he let out a little chuckle & stroked your cheek with his thumb. "what're you thinking about?"

"nothing, i'm sorry," you sighed with your hands in your lap. you both were on the couch, doing your own thing. he was on his phone, & you were supposed to be doing some work on your laptop, but you found yourself spacing out again.

"don't apologize. i'm just curious about what's going on in that pretty, little head of yours," he told you before he took your hand & pressed his lips against your knuckles. you thought to yourself, i'm not good enough for this man.

you debated whether or not to tell the truth. on one side, he has been your devoted boyfriend for years now, but on the other, he could just be asking out of curtesy. like, what if he actually does not care at all- "(y/n)? talk to me. i know you have something you wanna say," katsuki commented, scooting closer to you. he set the pillow that you placed your laptop on the coffee table so he could get your undivided attention. he caressed your thigh to help ground you.

you stayed silent for a moment, & he waited patiently. you swallowed, your eyes darted from his piercing red ones to the floor to his hands. finally, you said, "you're too sweet for me." he laughed & laughed, & you couldn't help but crack a smile. "what? what's so funny?" you pouted.

"sorry for laughing, princess. it's just no one ever calls me sweet. like, ever," admitted katsuki as he settled down from his fit of laughter. what he said was true though, he didn't have a problem with it. he was not sweet at all, he was rough around the edges & egotistical with the skills to back him up. he only ever thinks about himself & you. "but what makes you say that, hm?"

"well, for one, you always treat me out & take me anywhere i want. we never go where you wanna go," you pointed out, jabbing your finger in his toned chest playfully.

"that doesn't make me sweet. i have the money, & i don't fuckin' care about where we go to eat."

you chose to ignore him, rolling your eyes at him because that was his excuse every time. "two, you're literally in the prime of your life, & you choose to go to sleep at 8:30? how do you sleep so well?"

"(y/n), what is this really about?" he questioned. katsuki brushed your hair away from your face, tucking the silky strands behind your ear. "& don't lie to me, i know you."

"ugh, fineee," you groaned as you threw your head back. maybe it was for comedic effect, or to gather your thoughts & regulate the tears that started to well in your eyes. "do you think i'm like, worthy of you?"

"worthy of me?"

"yeah, do you think i'm good enough for you?" you rephrased, pulling your hands away from him to rub your upper arm. it's embarrassing to admit something, it's scary too. what if, once you point it out, he'll agree & leave you?

"'course i do! i'm the best around & i got the best fuckin' girl, why are you thinking this shit?" katsuki exclaimed, his passion that you wish you had seeping through to his tone. a moment of thick silence followed, you took a deep breath. you suck at emotions.

"you're too good for me, okay! you're so much stronger than everyone, & if that wasn't enough, you're insanely smart! i'm just... here. average at best. people praise you like the morning after an eternity of darkness. you're the rain after a heatwave. everything works out for you, & i'm just the one holding you back from even better things-"

"babe, you're not holding me back or whatever. you've never held me back," he stated like it was a fact, but you felt as though he was just saying that to calm you down. it angered you, & you were ashamed that you were angry because it wasn't even directed at him, it was directed at the fact you felt unworthy.

"no, you don't get it! i aim low because it's realistic for me, i can't afford to aim for anything else because i'm destined to fail. you, on the other hand... you have so much potential. don't you get embarrassed about having a girlfriend like me?"

"no." he answered so quickly, like it was rehearsed, like he knew what you were going to say. "i've never felt embarrassed of you ever. you're so fuckin' dense, you know that?"

you paused just to stare at him. katsuki sure had a way with comforting people. even after years of being a hero, he never learned how to traditionally comfort people. tough love, everyone would call it. but with you, he forced himself to be tender because you deserve treatment no one else gets from him.

there were so many things he wanted to say to you. don't you realize what you do for him? god, katsuki would go mad living without you now that he knows what life is like with you, his missing rib. the two of you are meant to be, you're two sides of the same coin. so what if he's as bright as the morning? you were his darling night, the very universe was visible through your eyes.

"you must be dense if you really thing you're just average. would i go for an average girl?"

"i mean-"

"no, the answer is no. you're deserving of love, my love. everything you've accomplished, everything you've overcome, you're just diminishing it because what? you think you're dumb or something? you- you..." you're the reason my world goes round, you are so talented, he was so desperate to shout these praises at you.

he was never one for romantic gestures through words. if he did, he would've been the best damn poet in the game. "i am yours."

it was such a simple sentence, yet it shook you to the core. you stared into his lively, crimson eyes. the look he gave you in return made your breath hitch; he was so deeply devoted to you, as deep as the pacific ocean.

you leaned in, capturing him in a kiss. tears rolled down your cheeks, your despair melting away. you felt like the two of you were kids again, sharing your first kiss. how could you doubt a man who so clearly, who so desperately, loves every bit of you.

[jolynesmom]

reasons you’re unable to enter the void or shift while lucid dreaming or in sleep paralysis

recently I received a couple of messages from followers and other blogs explaining how, when they were in sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming, were unsuccessful in reaching the void or shifting after stating their intentions

this also happened to me a couple of times, seemingly at random; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t

I did a bit of research and also analyzed my own experiences to figure out the root of the problem and how to fix it:

you’re not completely grounded/you’re rushing

this took me an embarrassing amount of tries to realize this, but every time I’m lucid dreaming or feeling myself entering the void, I would instantly start to spew out my intentions/desires instead of completely grounding myself in there and I would be instantly kicked out from that state. I guess it just doesn’t work that way — you have to be completely grounded in your ld or sp for your desires to manifest

a lot of you (me included) get so excited or scared when realizing we’re in a certain state that the connection, I guess, breaks. as an example, when I wasn’t very knowledgeable on the void state I entered it and chilled there for like 10-15 minutes before exiting willingly, but after discovering it can be used for shifting or manifesting I could barely spend 10 seconds there before waking up unintentionally

mental exhaustion

your psyche is exhausted and it simply can’t proceed the instructions anymore. imagine you stay awake for more than 24 hours and someone asks you to do a task that requires concentration and precision. would you be able to do it perfectly? I highly doubt

to get over this issue you need to take a serious break, and I don’t mean you can’t attempt anything for a day or two, I mean a BREAK — don’t even think about shifting or entering the void and chill and sleep as much as possible. I mean it, especially sleeping! fix your sleep schedule or sleep lots for 2-3 days

after you start your attempts again, if the first few instances are unsuccessful, you need to take another break before continuing, otherwise you risk of repeating the same scenario over again — reaching your desired state but not being able to do anything from there due to mental strain

brain activation trigger

brain activity changes — realizing you are dreaming changes how your brain works, especially in parts that help you think about yourself and make decisions. these changes can wake you up; knowing you are dreaming can make you feel excited or surprised - these strong feelings can wake you up too

mental blockages and expectations

your subconscious mind might have doubts or fears regarding the process. if you unconsciously expect that your attempts won’t work or fear the consequences of them working, this can create a mental block — this is actually more common than people think and a lot of you don’t even realize you have these blockages

overexcitement

if you become too excited or anxious about the possibility of your desires manifesting, this can trigger your body to wake up. remaining calm and composed is very important (even though we can’t help ourselves at times). overexcitement goes hand in hand with other strong emotions such as fear, so make sure you’re in a neutral state

subconscious programming

your subconscious might need more time and positive reinforcement to accept and integrate the idea of shifting realities, entering the void or manifesting desires. using affirmations, subliminals and visualizations regularly can help reprogram your subconscious mind

timing

certain times of the night or stages of sleep might be more conducive to successful lucid dreaming/sleep paralysis and shifting. experimenting with different times and conditions can help you so much!!

as an example: I have an easier time entering the void by meditating at night after 1 a.m., but I have an easier time doing wbtb and lucid dreaming between 8-11 a.m.

I honestly think that what can help you overcome this is self reflection — a lot of you search for answers but never bother to answer them yourselves. by self reflecting throughout my journey has helped me identify my weaknesses, how to fix them, what works for me and other tricks to speed up the process or make it more enjoyable

[voxslays]

Hi i loved your Hazbin Men as Dads Writing! Maybe you could write the same for the Hazbin Woman x reader as parents if the Idea intrests you ;-) ?

OMG OFC!!! I was thinking of doing a sequel lol but I wasn’t sure if I should. Now I definitely will though! <3

HAZBIN WOMEN AS MOTHERS

Featuring >>> Charlie, Carmilla, Rosie, Sera, Velvette, & Vaggie x Reader as mothers!

Rosie:

Let’s be honest, your child is going to be a cannibal. Assuming the three of you live in cannibal town together as a family, (which is very likely), this may happen sooner…like before your baby turns a year old…BUT ANYWAYS-!

Your child will grow up surrounded by Rosie’s loyal subjects. Nobody in cannibal town would dare lay a hand on your precious child, but for the few outsiders who try…let’s just say they pasta way. Their ashes may or may not end up in Rosie’s spice cabinet, and then on your dinner plate…but rosie is such a good cook!

Rosie would be such a good mom. Sure, she is a very busy woman, but she would always make time for her little (demonic) spawn! Overall, 10/10 parenting.

Carmilla:

Carmilla is already a mother, she has lots of experience. Having two or three daughters, (I can’t remember how many she has in the show lol), she has seen it all. She knows all the tricks. She is strict…but loving!!!

She is shown being protective and willing to anything to save her daughters, so it would be the same for your child, if not more. She would not let the poor kid out of her sight for the first few months. She knows hell is a dangerous place, and will teach your child how to defend themselves from a young age.

Like I mentioned with Valentino in my other post, Carmilla would likely have your child learning Spanish young. It is very important your child is well educated both in language (and fighting). But then again, she’s already portrayed to be a good mother in the show, so what did you expect?

Velvette:

Oh lord. With her there is no way your child isn’t a mistake. Velvette would be ‘way too busy’ to deal with a child. She is one of the Vees and the top designer in pride! What did you expect!? She doesn’t have time for some random child!

Velvette is literally an adult screenager, so like Valentino I don’t think she would be very responsible with your baby. Velvette would leave your child unsupervised, or under the supervision of one of her models who wasn’t busy at the moment, while she does fittings and preps her models for the next big fashion show.

While in public she puts up a front of being too busy, in private I think she would genuinely feel guilty. Overtime I think she would grow to care for the child, teaching them all about fashion and social media. She is totally the type of mom to show your child off on social media or just create an account from scratch. Its safe to say your child is already a star.

Charlie:

BEST MOM EVER??? I mean first of all, she is the princess of hell, and with her personality, that basically means your child is going to be spoiled rotten! Your child has all the (mostly duck themed toys, brought to you by Lucifer) they could ever dream of. This child is royalty, and will be treated as such.

She would NEVER yell at your child, god forbid the poor kid cries…she might start crying too! Charlie is also always up for playing with your child. Whether it’s arts and crafts, dress up, dollies, etc. she will drop whatever she’s doing—or finish it up quickly—and play.

Grandpa Luci is also around very frequently. He has just reconciled with his daughter after all, and his daughter has a daughter??? If Charlie wasn’t spoiling your child enough, Lucifer is doing ten times more. Every time he visits he brings your child a trinket, like one of his ducks, a duck themed onesie, or just a sugary treat.

Vaggie:

Literally a carbon copy of Carmilla but like ten times more protective. I mean how could she not be? Her precious child is living under the same roof as the radio demon! (Let’s just say that if Alastor steps within even ten feet of your baby he is getting threatened with a spear to the neck.

I feel like she would be a boy mom. Not in the tiktok boy mom sense, but I just generally feel like she would get along better with a son than a daughter. No matter which one you have though, she will love them unconditionally.

Supportive of her children’s dreams in the same way she supports Charlie’s. She is always very supportive, but can sometimes be a little doubtful. However, to balance that out, she always brings good advice to the table. I can also see her keeping secrets, like the fact she was an exterminator from her child until they get older.

Sera:

She’s like Carmilla but more angelic. Sera is very strict and by the book, and would expect her child(ren) to be the same. She can be hard on others, especially her children, but in reality she just wants the best for them.

If the two of you had a child, I feel they would be a mix of Emily and Lucifer. Kind, energetic, and a dreamer. This worries Sera a lot. She lived with Lucifer in heaven, she saw his dreams. Sera watched him fall for the dreams he tried to make a reality. Therefore, she would try to stop your child from turning into a dreamer.

Overtime, I think she would realize that your child’s dreams are nothing like Lucifer’s, and would become more supportive. Overall, Sera is very overprotective, strict, and hard on others, but she is truly looking out for their well-being.

[jenscx]

HAPPINESS — yu jimin x f!reader

jimin made you feel like life was worth living for.

TAGS — situationship, strangers to lovers, ive member!yn, jealousy, angst, fluff, birthday fic for jimin

WORDCOUNT — 3.8k

it hadn’t been long since you and karina met. by luck, she was attending a fashion show and had gravitated to you during the after-party. it was an unforgettable experience; one of the most gorgeous idols constantly hovering around you, eyes lingering on the silky black, backless dress you adorned, fingers dancing across your arms… needless to say, you had immediately asked for her contact information, only to receive a cryptic smile in return.

“why not just,” she whispered, “come back to my place instead?”

you had instantly declined, “i’m sorry, i don’t do that. and don’t you live with your members anyway?” karina merely shrugged, eyes twinkling with a gleam you couldn’t name. 

“then shouldn’t we go back to yours?”

exasperated, you shake your head, “i just said, i don’t do that. i was interested before, and you are jaw-droppingly beautiful, but i’m not intending to go anywhere tonight, karina.”

the girl hesitated for a few seconds. you raised an eyebrow. she grins, “call me jimin.”

it had only been a month since that interaction. since then, your relationship has progressed. from strangers to friends and now tethering on the edge of a relationship. or as your member yujin had described, a ‘situationship’. it was so easy to open up to jimin, her sweet talk, midnight chats and relentless insistence to annoy you had captured your attention. she was so stupidly cute. 

you had fallen. 

and jimin seemed to have as well. 

no one would stay up till midnight talking to a situationship unless they really liked them, right? 

and even though jimin had a schedule the next day, you and her were still in a heated discussion about which ice cream flavour was the superior one (it was always vanilla).

the alarm on your phone rang. in bright words read, ‘milan fashion show.’ you smile to yourself. it was another chance to see jimin after her hectic schedule. you barely had time to see her during her break, and now your schedules finally matched up. you couldn’t wait to see her.

jiminie [7.41am]:

hihihi good morning

i’ll see u ltr :))

ynie [8.20am]:

morning!

can’t wait. 

you turn your phone off with a bright grin, barely keeping your excitement under wraps. your flight was at 10 and by the time you reached milan, it would be around 11 in the evening. it was going to be a long flight, but the thought of seeing jimin again made your stomach tighten up. was this what people in relationships feel? it was so bizarre that the simple thought of someone could so easily make you feel breathless. 

unable to contain your exhilaration, you get some weird stares from your manager and assistants. meekly apologising, you close your eyes as they drive to the airport, dreaming of a certain main dancer.

you blink. how did you get here?

jimin, was just standing a few feet away from you, but she had barely spared you a glance the whole day. she didn’t even greet you or anything. even after the crew had asked for you two to stand together, jimin was at least a metre away, not daring to stand in your vicinity. you could cry.

especially with the heart eyes every other person was sending her way. you swallow the lump in your throat, staring at the man who stood a little close for comfort next to her. and throughout the show, you could only stare longingly at the back of her head, sighing every once in a while when the two of them would pose. it was devastating.

“you good?” one of the other attendants asked. you think you recognise them from a recent drama you’ve watched.

“yeah,” you mumble, taking a sip of the champagne in your glass. at the corner of your eye, you could see jimin and that man conversing, both sharing giggles and whispers. your grip on the glass tightens. groaning, you look away, trying to hide the hurt on your face from being ignored so obviously. all your attempts at conversation had been shut down and she brushed past all your waves.

you saunter to the corner, taking a seat and pulling out your phone.

yujin [9.27pm]:

how’s it gg

yn [10.14pm]:

it’s like i don’t even exist.

i don’t know what i should do

she keeps talking to some guy

yujin [10.15pm]:

girl gtfo

you agree with yujin. if karina wanted to ignore you, so be it. there was nothing for you to do anyway. after sending a quick message to your manager, you get back up, heading back to the group of actors and idols alike that were engaged in conversation.

coincidentally, karina and her partner for the night had joined as well. it wasn’t difficult to avoid eye contact when she wouldn’t even look in your direction.

“i’ve requested for more champagne,” one of them say, “anybody wants a refill?”

a murmur of chorus emerges.

the waiter stares at your glass expectantly, the bottle in his hand waiting.

“ah… no, i’m leaving soon,” you say awkwardly, handing your glass to another waiter passing by. karina’s head shoots up.

“shame,” they all agree.

“your manager’s picking you up?” karina finally speaks. you longed for her voice, but you’re not very appreciative of it now.

you nod, barely wanting to start a conversation with the girl.

“i’ll walk you out.”

can you really refuse in front of all these people? you already had a reputation of being a bitch. refusing karina’s offer was going to severely damage your image.

you just hold your tongue.

the cold air greets you warmly, unlike karina. you relish in the gusts of wind, waiting patiently outside the gala for your manager’s distinguishable car. karina hums a gentle tune, turning to you.

“how was the show?”

“good,” you reply, curt.

karina doesn’t back down.

“you had fun?” you nod.

“i didn’t get to talk to you at all, it’s sad you’re leaving now.”

you shrug.

“why are you leaving so early?”

“tired.”

“hm, okay.”

you stand in silence while karina fidgets beside you, her hands constantly twirling her hair and eyes darting around. cursing yourself, you take a quick glance at her. the girl’s deep, lush and dark hair flows charmingly in the wind. her eyes draw you in, hypnotising you deeply, full of uncertainty and hesitance for the first time you’ve met her.

“do you have something to say?” you ask. karina huffs, blowing her bangs covering her eyes.

“i do, but it just depends if you’ll listen to me.”

“depends on what you’re asking for,” you reply.

karina smiles, smaller than before, “stay. just for a few more minutes. with me.”

you contemplate. just for a few minutes.

“only until my manager comes.”

she falters, it’s the first time you’ve ever subtly rejected her company, but a practised mask of indifference is put on.

there’s an uncomfortable silence, one that neither of you are willing to acknowledge. you start to regret your decision; you should have just asked her to go back in, instead of waiting out here with you like a fool.

“minjeong’s been talking about this milan cathedral, called duomo di milano, it’s really pretty,” karina looks at you expectantly, “do you have the day off tomorrow for sightseeing?”

you answer slowly, “i do have the day off...”

“where are you staying? i’ll come pick you up.”

“but i don’t want to go, karina,” you complete your sentence. shock passes her face rather quickly.

“uhm, do you want to go somewhere else?”

you shake your head, wanting her to get the hint that you weren’t exactly jumping for the opportunity to hang out.

“we could go shopping at this galleria that aeri mentioned, it has a hotel and everything.”

“no, thanks for offering.”

karina’s tethering on the edge of distress, her face showing visible distraught by now, no longer caring to hide behind a mask of impassiveness. you check your phone again. notifications line your lock screen, most of them coming from yujin.

yujin [10.29pm]:

are u out of there yet

make sure to get back safe

also call me ltr i need to tell u smth

omg jiwon js told me she left seo at home alone

you smile at yujin messages. the leader’s caring nature makes your heart warm and the mention of your other members makes you miss them.

“your manager texting you?” karina asks.

“uh, no,” you reply vaguely, not very keen on talking to her. karina frowns.

“are you sick? do you feel unwell?” she lifts a hand up to touch your neck. the fleeting touch of her fingers already caused goosebumps against your skin.

“i’m fine, karina.”

the mention of her name makes her glare at you, “didn’t i say to call me jimin?”

unable to answer coherently, you settle for silence. karina huffs, seemingly getting irritated.

she opens her mouth once again, but the honk of a car distracts you. the window rolls down and you recognise your manager.

“thanks for uhm, staying here with me,” you bow, “have a good night.” you were upset, but that wouldn’t stop you from being polite.

karina merely watches you leave.

your manager gives you about five minutes of peace and tranquillity before unleashing an onslaught of questions onto you, like “why��d you leave?” or “did someone say something to you?” you answer truthfully to most of his questions.

unable to get a proper response, he just drives back and tells you to not get into any trouble on your day-off.

(“what trouble would i even get into?”

“i’ll actually quit if dispatch posts a photo of you drinking with your friends.”

“that would be impossible since i don’t have any friends.”)

meanwhile, yujin fills you in on the stupid shit your members get up to during your absence. like rei putting aluminium into the microwave and wonyoung just managing to stop her in time.

your phone lights up with notifications throughout the night and you hate the fact that it doesn’t bring you the same excitement like before. the morning after, a chain of messages graces your phone.

jiminie [9.17am]:

are u awake?

jiminie [9.20am]:

when are u gg back to korea?

hello?

ynie [9.31am]:

tmrw

jiminie [9.31am]:

do u feel like gg out tdy?

you turn off your phone, sighing. you would have felt bad for being so distant but the mere thought of karina with that guy yesterday night made you feel unneeded. why was she texting you and asking to hang out with you when she already had someone to go to?

there was no point overthinking about her.

karina would just be another failed situationship. she didn’t mean that much to you (she did). she wasn’t the first thing you thought of once you woke up (she was). and she definitely couldn’t be a good girlfriend for you (she definitely could be).

the hotel doorbell rings. you quirk an eyebrow, not remembering ever ordering room service. maybe your manager knew you wouldn’t be going out for breakfast.

you don’t bother checking the peephole, the hotel you were staying at was very tight on security and only celebrities stayed at this floor. you open the door, stomach grumbling at the thought of food.

“yn.”

oh.

karina stands at your door, a small smile on her face. you feel terribly underdressed compared to her in your bathrobe and messy bed hair.

“good morning,” you greet hoarsely.

“hurry up and get dressed.”

you stop karina from entering your room.

“what are you talking about?”

“we’re going out whether you like it or not. you shouldn’t rot in your room, you should be exploring milan, before you leave, with me.”

do you really have a choice to say no? (yes, you do).

in your heart, you knew in the end, you wouldn’t ever say no to karina.

“okay.”

she grins and you forget why you were even upset in the first place.

karina waits patiently while you finish getting ready. she’s on the balcony admiring the view when you’re done.

“where are we going?” you grab a mask and a cap as karina puts on her shoes again.

“it’s a surprise, and you don’t need those,” karina answers, pointing at the items in your hand. you frown.

“people will recognise me. they’ll see me with you.”

karina shakes her head, “it’s fine, i don’t mind it.”

i mind it though.

you end up leaving them by your bedside table.

“where are we going?” you repeat as karina drags you out of the door. she groans, “stop asking! i already told you it’s a surprise.”

“i need to tell my manager.”

karina pouts, “i’ve already contacted him, just stop worrying about everything.”

her words seem so easy to believe now. to stop worrying about everything.

the streets of milan are filled with cafes and luxury brands. with it being one of the most visited cities, tourists and locals alike roam the area. at every corner, there’s either an art gallery or museum. you must admit that the architecture is simply amazing. quaint bookstores and coffee shops provide a sense of peace away from the bustling metropolitan city. milan was beautiful.

karina pulls you into a cafe, the strong aroma of coffee already filling your senses. there’s a quiet ambience of chatter and the soft footsteps of the waiters walking around. the girl brings you to one of the tables near the window. it gives you a view of a clothing shop adjacent to the cafe, full of customers.

“milan’s called a fashion capital,” karina remarks, “it’s one of europe’s most dynamic cities.” when you don’t reply, karina stands up, awkwardly saying, “i’ll go order our food.”

you nod.

she comes back soon, red in the face and fumbling with her wallet.

you ignore it.

“uhm, anyway, did you sleep well last night?”

“yeah.”

“okay… uh, what time is your flight tomorrow?”

“i think it’s in the morning,” you feel pity for karina who’s been desperately trying to keep the conversation going, “what about you?”

karina’s face lights up, “it’s at one in the afternoon.”

the waiter soon arrives with your food. its mouth-watering. karina hands the waiter a note and says something in italian that you don’t understand.

“you can speak italian?” you ask, curiosity taking over you.

“yeah, a little,” karina mumbles. she doesn’t seem to want to elaborate, so you don’t bother asking any more. you gorge yourself out with the pastries that karina ordered, all while she looks a little constipated and unsure.

“you’re not going to eat?”

“i… i already ate before coming here.”

you nod, continuing to chew.

“it’s so early, who’s awake to even eat with?”

karina mutters, “i ate with jaewook.” you swallow the piece of bread in your mouth. the sweetness you tasted on your tongue is gone, just left with a bitter taste. you regret even asking her. you regret coming out of your hotel to eat pastries with her at 9 in the morning.

your head feels clouded. it’s not only gravity pulling you down. it’s a wrangling chain clutching your heart, pulling it into your stomach. the more you think about karina and that guy together, the more you feel like puking out all the sweet treats you stuffed your mouth with. you wanted to get rid of anything related to her.

“are you okay?” she asks.

no, you want to reply.

“i wanna go back,” you say instead.

lying was always better than telling her the truth.

“what? no, uhm,” karina blurts out, panicked, “you can’t go back yet, we still have a lot to sightsee.”

“please let me go back,” you beg, feeling a wave of nausea take over. between her incessant pleading to not leave and the vision of the two of them, jealousy fills your every vein.

“i planned a lot for today and oh my god, yn—” you can’t stand it anymore.

swiftly, you take out a wad of cash, placing it on the table and leaving the cafe without a second look behind. you stomp out quick, steady steps back to the hotel and you can feel karina hot on your heels. she calls out for your name, but to no avail do you turn back. you think of a plan. once you get back to your room, you’re going to block karina on everything. she’s never going to exist in your life ever again. if your job requires you to interact with her, it’s a bare minimum. you’ll break off contact with all of your mutual friends, ryujin, minjeong, maybe chaewon (but yujin and wonyoung would kill you).

it’s only when you reach a traffic light that karina catches up with you. once it flashes red, you groan. you can basically see karina’s triumphant smirk at the corner of your eye.

“are you done running now?”

you take a good look at karina. she’s panting, not more than you are, and her cheeks are flushed red.

the light flashes green.

“no.”

and the chase begins again.

karina tails you until you reach the hotel lobby. you open up your purse, searching for the keycard. karina is just a few steps behind.

you hear gasps of recognition behind you, the very reason you wanted to cover up your identity.

the moment the lift reaches the ground floor, you slide in, rapidly pressing the close button. karina, however, navigates through the crowd and manages to reach the lift in time.

you groan, your attempt at running away has failed. maybe you could still convince karina to leave you alone somehow. she wouldn’t try to break into your room, right?

“this is awkward now.”

“yeah, i wasn’t expecting you to follow me,” you sneer, “if a woman says she wants to leave, just let her leave for god’s sake.”

“okay, that’s my fault but you literally left out of nowhere, and you’ve been acting weird ever since last night,” karina argues back.

the lift beeps. you exit it with karina following you closely behind, still ongoing about your sudden change in behaviour.

“like last night, you left early and we didn’t even have time to talk or anything, and when i asked you about it you didn’t even explain anything?! just brushed me off and left! can you just tell me what’s going on?”

you two reach your room.

“i don’t need to explain myself to you. i said i was tired.”

“okay, but what about today? i planned the whole day for us to hang out and you just got up and left? what the hell! are you just an asshole who plays with people’s feelings? you told me you ‘can’t wait to see me’ and then just left like that,” karina raises her voice. a elderly couple passes you two and you feel self-conscious. you were just standing outside your room letting karina yell at you.

“come in then yell, you’re getting weird looks.”

karina inhales sharply, finally calming down.

you sit down on one of the lounge chairs, taking a deep breath.

“i really don’t have anything to explain to you. i’m sorry. and i’m not the one playing with people’s feelings here.”

“what? are you insinuating that i’m the one playing with your feelings?”

“uh, if the shoe fits?”

karina slaps your arm, “are you serious right now? can you just talk to me for once?! is this your first time being friends with someone?” friends? since when were you ever just friends with karina?

“no, it isn’t,” you swallow, “it’s my first time feeling this way for someone.”

“what?”

“do you know how many times i think about you in a day? it’s once, because i never stop. it hurts me every time i see you with someone else and i know i shouldn’t feel this way because while you reside in my mind, i have to hope that I cross yours once in a while to feel less pathetic of myself. do you know how that feels? to want to exist in someone’s thoughts. i feel happy just to know that you’re even acknowledging my presence. but you didn’t. you didn’t even care when i was there, so you shouldn’t care when i’m not,” the weight of unshed tears came pouring out. you let out a watery but hollow laugh. karina makes your heart ache, she makes you feel defeated and useless, she makes you feel angry and jealous.

“you make me feel that life is worth living for. that i went through all those torturous years just to meet you.”

karina, is life in itself.

“and i don’t think i’ll ever be able to find someone else that makes me feel this way. have you ever felt that way about someone?”

she stares at you, unblinking. she comes to terms with your words finally.

“i’m sorry,” she says.

“it’s fine,” you sniffle, wiping your tears.

“i’m sorry i hurt you.”

“of course you’ll hurt me. of course we’ll hurt each other, because this is the condition of living. and what’s not love, if not living for each other?”

“i didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

you sigh, “regret is a stupid thing. when you reject me, i would be better off knowing that we wouldn’t work out because you don’t like me, rather than me not telling you and wondering if we would ever work out. and you’re with that guy anyway.”

“who told you i would reject you? and who said i was with him?”

“oh.”

“i feel everything that you’ve just said, about you. and i’m upset that you were planning to just throw me away like that because of our inability to communicate.”

you laugh, more heartily this time, “i just didn’t want to be one of your conquests or whatever.”

“you’re more than one of my conquests. i wouldn’t dream of even letting you go. some people search their whole lives to find what i found in you. you can be assured that i won’t ever let you go.”

her sincere words draw red to your cheeks, warmth spreads from your neck to the tip of your ears. “you still like me,” you repeat, “even when i’m a jealous freak, have commitment issues and i care too much?”

“even with all those traits. if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be the yn i like,” karina’s voice softens as does her touch. she takes your hand in hers, caressing the back of your hand with her palm.

“even if i don’t understand why you get angry and why you ignore me, i still like you. that’s what makes you, you. and love is all about understanding.”

you nod. all the crying has made you feel drowsy, and your fatigue is apparent, since karina smiles in amusement and says, “wash up and take a nap. i’ll be here.”

she’ll be here.

“thank you, jimin.”

karina, or rather, jimin, chuckles, “hurry up and shower. i hope you brought extra clothes since i’m going to change too.”

you quickly wash up and so does jimin. the two of you settle into the bed, your hands clutching at jimin for warmth and intimacy. you have her. the thought allows you to drift asleep, finally knowing that jimin’s heart beats the same for yours.

when the sun sets as you wake up from your nap, you can’t help but blurt out, “i adore you.”

jimin, pleasantly surprised, only giggles back.

“i adore you too, in ways words cannot express.”

maybe paris wasn’t the city of love. yours was milan.

🎙️ author’s note: this is probably one of my favourite fics i’ve written. most of my own personal values have been put into this fic. regret is a stupid thing, we only live once and we have no idea if we’ll ever get to live again. find people that makes life worth living for. happy birthday yu jimin, aespa’s stupid cheese cat 🤍

[nausicaaandhermouth]

Quandary & Retribution in F#

masterlist

professor!viktor x violinist!reader [6k] [AO3]

mdni

cw: nsfw, blow-job, piano witnessing oral sex i'm so sorry

summary: being neighbours mean being mindful of the noise you make - though, you'd been set on being a nuisance through violin solos, bringing Viktor to your doorstep to plead for silence. You decide to apologise.

tags: modern au, physics professor viktor, gn!reader, neighbours, nsfw, sexual tension, suggestive physics & music talk, blow job, fat set up beforehand, not betad

a/n never written comedy nor smut but at some point a girl's gotta try (why are both almost equally difficult) - but here ya go (plops down this mess). also, i'm more familiar w music than physics, i 3rd page googled the latter so there's def smth not quite right. if u know physics, no u dont.

and ty to an anon ask for pointing out a mistake in the pronouns. i intend one shots to be gn but i write back and forth from an f!oc fic, resulting in she/her ending up in one shots and they/them on the other :')) entirely on me for not catching those before posting though - but thank you for notifying me, i appreciate you!!

btw requests & taglist are open!

Viktor had repeated it ad nauseam—keep the overtures to a minimum.

His days are a gruelling marathon of lectures and lab work, stretching from the crack of dawn at 6 AM to the academy's closing bell at 10 PM. This self-imposed siege isn't mandated by the university—no, they frown upon such academic masochism.

Rather, it’s Viktor's desperate attempt to squeeze productivity from the fleeting moments of silence. The irony? The moment he shuffles home, key turning in the lock, his apartment transforms into an impromptu concert hall.

Attempting to grade papers? Constructing intricate lesson plans on quantum mechanics? Preparing for the department's annual "Explain Your Research to a Five-Year-Old" challenge? Hah. Another pipe dream of this beleaguered professor.

No, instead, he’s treated to a violin solo that would make Paganini nod approvingly in his grave, some overture to madness waiting to ambush Viktor the instant he dares to sit down and tackle his workload. And the cherry on top? The virtuoso had chosen the room directly behind his study as their personal rehearsal space.

Tonight, Viktor's reaching his breaking point.

One more pluck of that violin string, and he might just snap (hopefully with more panache than his freshman physics students' failed bridge-building projects).

He's hunched over his laptop, a harsh '02:24' glowing on his wall—a neon reminder of how little he's accomplished in far too many hours. And there it is again, that infernal violin leaping across frets, notes ping-ponging between octaves with reckless abandon.

This time, it feels personal. A taunt aimed squarely at his last shred of sanity.

Viktor's fingers rake through his dishevelled hair, tugging in sheer frustration. His other hand thunders against the wall—once, twice, thrice. Stop. Stop. Stop.

For a blissful moment, the last note wavers, then fades.

Silence descends. Relief washes over him.

But his reprieve is short-lived. The melody resumes with a vengeance—louder, closer, more petulant and frenetic. It's as if the laws of acoustics themselves have conspired against him.

God, if you’re there…

Viktor can feel his grip on rationality slipping. Perhaps it's time to conduct an experiment on the effects of sleep deprivation on a physicist's patience. For science.

Your paths had crossed in the hallways, a silent slide of avoidance. You’d exchanged fleeting glances, loaded with unspoken frustration, before hurrying on your separate ways.

Viktor had made the pilgrimage to your door three times, his voice dripping with forced politeness as he implored (bordering begging, not his finest moment) you to relocate your impromptu concerts or, at the very least, reschedule your sonic assaults to more reasonable hours.

You’d exchanged names, plastered on smiles that never reached their eyes—and yet, your solos persist.

In moments of weakness, Viktor's traitorous mind can't help but wonder what camaraderie you might have shared in an alternate universe where you weren’t the bane of his existence.

He finds himself muttering a desperate prayer to the gods of acoustics: "Grant me the strength not to bash my head against this wall." He pauses, another side of his brain kicking in. "Although, the resulting concussion might make for an interesting case study."

A groan escapes him as his forehead meets the desk with a dull thump. (Might you want percussions, he could supply his head banging against his desk)

His mind, addled by sleep deprivation and the constant assault, contemplates the unthinkable—actually standing up for himself. God forbid.

He envisions marching to your door, pride in tatters, ready to beg, plead, perhaps even grovel for a moment's peace.

The image of his students receiving paper feedback that reads like the ravings of a madman flashes before his eyes. No. Nope. This cannot stand. Something must be done.

Then another image invades his mind: your door opens and there you are face to face once again.

He grudgingly admits you’re… aesthetically agreeable. He supposes. Mathematically pleasing. Something about proportion, bone structure, genes, something, something, and—no, there is an undeniable artistry in your relentless dedication. Which he respects.

Even through the wall, he can discern the masterful control of your bow, a testament to hours of practice that simultaneously impresses and infuriates him.

If he could be granted such hours to achieve his own goals, he'd surely rule the world (or at least figure out how to soundproof his apartment).

There'd been one night—one treacherous, sleep-deprived night—when his exhausted mind careened off the rails of rationality into dangerously uncharted territory.

He envisioned himself barging into your apartment, a perfect storm of righteous fury and academic gravity. In this fever dream, he demanded silence with an authority cobbled together from an unlikely triumvirate: his stern Professor alter-ego (complete with imaginary tweed jacket), the ego-inflating gravitas of his hard-earned Ph.D., and the bizarrely suave confidence that only exists in the realm of 3 AM delusions.

But in this warped fantasy, instead of blessed quiet, he encountered something far, far worse—a scenario that defied even the uncertainty principle in its improbability.

Sharp gasps cut through the air. Delicate moans rolling against the nape of his neck that it sent shivers down his spine. And then—oh, sweet laws of thermodynamics—his name. His name in repetition, wearing the throes of... No. Stop. Abort mission.

Viktor's eyes snap open. Heavy breaths. His heart rate approaches escape velocity, threatening to launch his ribcage into orbit.

He shakes his head violently as if the motion could dislodge the inappropriate thoughts from his brain.

"Fuck off," he mutters to the empty room, to his unfaithful imagination, to the persistent violin notes that seem to mock his predicament. Fuck it all. And fuck you. Well… No—(he means yes (no)).

A few times since your initial encounter, Viktor had been subjected to a different kind of midnight sound through the walls. These weren't the familiar strains of a violin, but rather... a more primal composition. Something more akin to pleasure than anything Stradivarius could have conceived. 

The truth was, these… vocalisations had rearranged his synapses, had opened up an entirely new neural pathway in his brain, one he had staunchly refused to acknowledge before. It was a new theorem of attra—intrigue he wasn't quite ready to solve.

Each breath, groan muffled, was a data point on his imaginary graph. To study the patterns, the crescendos, the duration. The other man in him... well, that was a variable he dared not allow to factor into the equation.

He found himself both dreading and anticipating these unintentional (at least he surmised so) performances. He'd catch himself straining to hear, then immediately feel a rush of guilt and self-loathing.

He reaches for his coffee mug, grimacing as he swallows the cold, bitter dregs. Clearly, this is what happens when a brilliant mind is deprived of its required REM cycles. Yes, that's it. Just the cruel tricks of an overworked, under-rested brain. Exactly.

His mind kicks into overdrive, frantically scribbling a mental grant proposal: "The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Auditory Hallucinations and Improbable Fantasies: A Case Study." Purely for academic purposes, of course. (his mind lingers on improbable)

It's not like he's terrified these forbidden thoughts might return, more vivid and enticing than a perfectly aligned experiment. And it's certainly not because he's afraid he might enjoy—no, no, no. He minds. He minds with the intensity of a supernova. 100%. No, make that 100.1%, just to be safe. Exactly. Precisely. Quantum-mechanically determined.

Now, if only he could convince his subconscious of that irrefutable fact…

His eyes dart to the wall—that infuriating barrier of plaster and wood—separating him from the object of his des... deliberation. No, that's not right. The source of his frustration. Yes, frustration. A frustration so profound it could light up a small city.

He groans, burying his face in his hands.

The things sleep deprivation does to a man. It's enough to make even a rational physicist question the very fabric of reality.

But admiration be fucking damned—his frustration reigns supreme.

Viktor straightens up, a manic glint in his eye. Perhaps it's time for a little experiment in human behaviour. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? Let's see how you’d like a taste of your own medicine—played back at 3 AM through a wall of subwoofers tuned to the resonant frequency of your floorboards.

No, no—Viktor, don't stoop. Just knock on their door.

A grin spreads across your face when a comically polite knock interrupts your crescendo. Ah, the sweet sound of success—or is it the dulcet tones of a professor’s patience snapping?

Oh, he's ever so gentle, even when he's one decibel away from a meltdown. You can practically hear his teeth grinding in perfect harmony with your last note.

You settle your violin and bow on the couch like a general laying down arms after a victorious battle. One palm reaches to massage your jaw, soothing the tender spot where your instrument has been resting. Who knew revenge could leave such visible marks?

Note to self: next time, consider a less physically demanding form of payback. Maybe take up the theremin? Start haunting him.

Though you're getting the creeping suspicion he doesn't know what he did—and it's entirely plausible that you just look like a nocturnal nuisance with perfect pitch and an impressive bruise. But hey, what's a little psychological warfare between neighbours?

Besides, it's fun crossing him in the halls, eyes following each other like two notes slowly coming in accordance, like a particularly flirtatious harmony. You're both knowing, sharing a secret thing. Well, as secret as a loud violin solo at 2 AM.

You reach the front door and turn the lock, swinging it open with a dramatic flair.

Leaning on the frame, you plaster on a grin that could outshine the brightest spotlight—and is sure to make the dear professor's blood pressure skyrocket. "Viktor," you greet, your voice a perfect pizzicato of feigned innocence.

As expected, he's the very picture of academic despair: dark under-eyes that could rival a raccoon's, hair ruffled in a way that screams ‘Sleep? What sleep?' (who knew sleep deprivation could be so becoming?), and a brow so furrowed it could host its own mountain range.

Huh. Interesting. Seems like the composed professor facade has taken an unexpected intermission.

You force yourself to keep your eyes on Viktor's face, resisting the urge to conduct a full-body visual scan. Tonight, you're oppositions. Stubborn ostinato. O-ppo-si-tions.

Oppositions don't ogle each other's physiques or linger on sartorial choices. That would be absurd, a complete discord in your carefully orchestrated revenge. Which is why you don’t see that he’s wearing a thin tank top, and why your eyes don’t hopscotch across the vague outlines of his chest.

Viktor grumbles your name with a frown, his accent turning the syllables into something between a growl and a plea. It's music to your ears, really—a different kind of melody, but no less satisfying than your midnight sonatas.

You wonder what else he could do with that voice. No—you don’t wonder. O-ppo-si-tions don’t wonder.

Rather, you flatten your lips, desperately trying to hold back a laugh that threatens to escape.

"Please," he breathes, the word carrying the weight of a thousand sleepless nights.

You cock a brow. "Please?"

He glares, his eyes boring into you with the intensity of a conductor silencing a wayward orchestra. Not finding me funny, you note mentally.

Well, tough crowd. But then again, you didn't take up the violin for the standing ovations, did you?

"How can I help you, Professor?" You smile sweetly, crossing your legs. "You're looking positively... nocturnal," Your eyes dance over his dishevelled appearance, drinking in every delicious detail.

You know that he knows that you know what you're doing. It's a duet of mutual awareness—simple, really—and satisfying.

He squeezes his amber eyes shut, his mouth a taut line of frustration. You half expect his hair to stand on end. Orchestra on their heels after a baton’s click-click-click.

That little mole above his mouth twitches, and you imagine it as a staccato note. There's a twin on his right cheek. You wonder, idly, if they'd dance a jig if you played just the right jaunty tune.

"Why," he begins, his voice a crescendo of exhaustion, "Are you doing this? I can't keep my head in tune with you behind that wall, turning my brain into jelly with your... your..." he gestures wildly at your apartment, as if trying to conduct your imaginary orchestra into silence.

"Oh? And what's wrong with exploring some alternative fingerings now and then?"

His eyes lock onto yours, widening slightly. He blinks, frozen—a maestro who's just realised he's forgotten his baton.

Ah. Are there actual discordant thoughts lurking in that brilliant mind of his?

What's a little push? You lean forward. "Care to demonstrate these unconventional techniques of yours?"

A gulp rides down Viktor's throat. A nervous glissando. A viola quivering. His eyes suddenly find your front door fascinating. "Look, I just want to be able to do my work, finish what needs to be finished, and get some actual sleep. Aren't you tired of this too?"

Your mouth pitches downwards in mock contemplation. "Mm... I get plenty of sleep in the day. Unemployment generally gives you a lot of time. Besides, payback is payback. This is simply the retribu—"

"Payback?" His face contorts into a mask of confusion that would make Picasso proud. Ah. So the maestro doesn't know his own composition. Tsk.

You straighten yourself, arms still crossed sternly. "You—" you sigh, brows pulling together.

"What," he huffs, clearly lost. His mouth slightly gapes open, eyes glancing to the side as if somehow the answer will appear.

lLast month. Seven PM. You're home with what I assume were your students," you gesture at his door. "Don't know what you were doing, none of my business. However, it does become my business when they stay over until four," you hold up four fingers at his face like a metronome gone mad, and he backs away. “In. The. Morning. You try sleeping with rowdy, hormonal young-adults screeching about the universe and quantum-this, quantum-that,"

He brings his hand up and rubs at his neck, looking everywhere but you.

"And I, not having slept in god knows how long at that point, had an audition for an orchestra later that morning," at this point his expression is completely soured, realising where this is leading. "And guess who bombed that and missed a potential orchestral debut?" you point at yourself with both thumbs, "First chair of the Insomniacs Anonymous Symphony,"

He brings his thumb and pointer to the bridge of his nose, worrying at his bottom lip.

You can recall a few times you’d burrowed your teeth in such a manner. Recitals. A particularly tricky passage in a Paganini caprice. On your couch with hand at the crux of your thighs rubbing gently to some fantasy. Nothing specific.

You stare for a moment, mentally composing a scream for the cosmos. How dare he look like a dishevelled maestro when you're trying to channel your inner fury? Not the time, brain. Not. The. Time. File that image away for later...

“I..." he begins, but the words seem to have gone on strike, leaving his mouth hanging open. Forgotten fermata.

A furrow grows on your brow, deep enough to nest a whole string section. His guilt-ridden silence gives you ample time to become distracted. Truly not the fucking time. But your eyes—oh, what rebellious instruments.

But fret not (hah), as you don’t discern much of his arms—not lean, nor precise. Not those fingers either, no. They’re not that long. You didn’t even notice. And not the slow rise and fall of his chest, rhythmic as a metronome in a world where time has suddenly become very, very interesting.

He says your name—it’s a baton raising in the air—and it wrangles your attention. “I truly... I apologise. I do admit... that night was foolish. I'd lost control of my class. I'd invited a few over since they wanted a discussion on quantum entanglement,"

Yeah, I know entanglements. What.

Your brain performs an emergency shutdown and reboot. “Uh-huh," you manage, trying to sound like you absolutely know what that means and aren't at all imagining him demonstrating the finer points of entanglement. Because you aren’t. O-ppo-si-tions.

You shake your head, imagining your thoughts like shaking a tambourine. Focus. Revenge. Missed opportunity. Right. But why does righteous indignation have to be so hard when he's standing there looking like Einstein's hotter, sleep-deprived cousin?

“And the discussion just… I wasn’t careful with the time,” he leans forward, mouth downwards in apology. His fingers tap on his cane, mouth sucking on one side of his bottom lip.

He looks miserable. And worse, genuine. Two things that never sit right with you when they happen at the same time. A string just slightly off tune that it settles as unease in your stomach. It gives you the itch to fine-tune it, put it back how it should be.

You give Viktor a resolute nod, blinking away. “I accept your apology,” you say shortly, gaze lounging on the hallway and making sure they don’t linger on his misery.

But he searches for you eyes first, and by obligation you look back. “And have you, has there been any opportunities after then?” he asks, leaning forward, brows tilted in genuine, apologetic curiosity (your heart decides it’s now a great time to perform an accelerando. 95 bpm, if you’re counting). “Auditions and… orchestral… things? Sorry, I’m not too knowledgeable on these,”

What’s good: he’s genuinely apologetic, which may herald the end of your musical tyranny.

You lean your head backwards, aware of the distance (What’s not good: he seems unaware of the distance he’d taken up). “Uh, no. Well,” you shrug, shoulders bobbing in reminder. “Not since then. But there’s one next week. Piltover Grande Hall,”

His brows raise, seemingly in recognition. “Oh? Highly-esteemed,”

“I know. I’ll probably need a good sleep before then,” you grin, watching his face go from confusion, to apologetic, to relief in mere seconds.

“I also… I assigned some heavy research work last week to my class, which’ll be submitted tomorrow, so I’ll be grading those next week,” he added, now fully leaning on your door frame as if his upper body were trying to slink inside slowly. “We’ll both need much rest before then,”

Your eyes meet his. Face fully facing face. “Mhm,”

Prelude: “An observation of observation of observation”. String section, sweet, curious, and swelling with playful remarks. Interrupted by staccato heartbeats, conflicted by seductive cello whines.

You don’t move. Not an increment. You stay as still as your body allows, suspended in time. So does he. His eyes flicker between your left and right, expressing nothing but obvious observation of you. Your stomach breeds a butterfly when you catch his gaze dropping briefly to your mouth before flicking back to your eyes.

Interesting.

100 bpm.

No. I, “Where The Gaze Lands Will Determine The Night’s Fate”. A languid 4/4. A lone marimba begins—blithe. The chirp of a güiro.

“And what do you propose?” you tilt your head up. Are you challenging him? Depends, you suppose. Depends if he tilts his face down.

But he stays in position. Instead, brings a hand out, palm open. “A truce,” his breath brushes against your chin. Hot. Temperaturally. Temperamentally.

Does he know what he’s doing to you? There are desperate sax whines in your head. Supposedly they sound similar to the human voice.

You take his hand and shake firmly. But you don’t let go. “What are the terms?”

A soft huff of a laugh escapes him, eyes slightly narrowing. “But you’ve already agreed,” his fingers tighten slightly around your hand. Warm. Long.

“Confident in the final piece,” you assert, letting your eyes drape with leisure between his eyes and to the bone of his cheek, the mole, the mouth. And you hope he notices.

The sax is breathy. It’s now a smoky jazz riff, painting dimly lit rooms, whisperings of sweet-nothings, a daring foot hiking up another’s thigh.

Your travelling eyes seem to catch his breath.

No. II: “Where Silence Is Relative”. Strutting 2/4, beginning with a sultry glide of an accordion. A conversation between the cellos and violins.

“Does that mean you’ll rest your little concertos?” his head tilts. “Giving me peace, finally?”

You play up a pout. “Shame, I thought you were a fan,”

“As I am of quantum tunnelling through a brick wall,” he responds, the brief questioning curve of his brow indicating this was not a good thing.

“Surely my playing isn’t that bad?” a smirk.

“Not the quality, no,” he gives a small shake. His thumb softly brushes your hand. “It’s the quantity. And the timing,”

You soften your fingers, letting the tips of them brush at his wrist. “I was trying to be helpful. Heard scientists appreciated background music while working,”

A glint of something playful in his eyes. “We do. Just not at 3AM when we’re trying to grade important papers,”

“Grading?” you quirk your brow and smile. At this point, it’s far from grating to him—he’s even looking at it. “I thought silence was overrated in the pursuit of knowledge,”

“Silence is relative when you’re next door,” he gives back. His hand is now shameless, inching your closer and closer to your wrist.

You wet your lips and hum. “Relative, right. Like, whose is that—like Einstein’s?”

“Like the relative pitch of a jackhammer compared to your violin,” his expression flattens sardonically, still maintaining that disarming smile.

“I’m touched,” you lean your head on the door frame. “You think I’m as powerful?”

“Enough to redefine my understanding of ‘noise cancellation’,” he retorts, eyes rolling. What a pretty expression that is. You wonder how else you can evoke that same reaction in other contexts.

“If you ever want a demonstration…”

He laughs. “I think I’ll stick to my textbooks. Much quieter,”

You feign a mask of disappointment, gaze sharpening and hooking his eyes in for your next few words. “Pity. I was hoping to show you how good I am with my fingers,”

His mouth parts. Surprise? Temptation? But he’s hooked in and it’s all you care for. “I… uh,” he blinks, hand still around your wrist. “That’s…”

His face fills with a slight impassive contemplation, thoughts seeming to run amuck in his head as he looks down at your growing, teasing smile.

“You’ve been hearing me practise, no?” you smirk. And you can tell he knows that you know that he knows what you mean. “The violin’s not an easy instrument. Unless you’re thinking of something e—”

He diminishes the space between you with his lips on yours.

No. III, “A Swing in A#”. 113 bpm. A confident, gritty trumpet reels you in.

The door shuts and is immediately faced by Viktor’s back. His neck bends to accommodate the difference in height, his free hand at the back of your neck to press you closer to himself. Your hands find purchase around his shirt, curling around the fabric, pulling and pulling—but as he’s leaning, only his hips jut forward. Good enough.

Your mouths move in tandem. He’s occupied with your bottom lip in a sort of desperation that speaks of practise—or at least imagined practise.

You nudge upwards, hip bone meeting his in soft collision, which coaxes a filthy, back-of-the-throat grunt from him. You smile. And as you feel his other hand snake around your waist, you hear the metallic thnk of his cane against the floor.

You jerk away to look down at it. Briefly, you assess its importance and his dependence on it. “Your leg,” you breathe, breath barely allowing your real voice to pierce through.

He’s nuzzling at the side of your face, gaping mouth at your cheek as he catches some air. “I’ll manage,”

When you turn to him, your heart jumps at the sight of him. Dishevelment caused by your hands, a slight flush from arousal, eyes rounded and trained on your mouth. You don’t look but can’t help noticing the hardness pressed against your lower belly.

“It doesn’t hurt?” you ask.

He shakes his head and finally draws his eyes back to yours. “A… discomfort. But not pain,” he dips in for a kiss, hand sliding up to tilt your jaw towards him.

A smirk becomes of you. “Mm… about the, uh… retribution. I do admit, I took it too far,”

His eyes widen in mock surprise. “Did you? All those unproductive nights, I truly didn’t notice,”

You roll your eyes at his quip. “But I was thinking of how to properly apologise,”

He quirks a brow, thumb tracing at the border of your lip and chin. “And how will you show your remorse?”

“Ah, well, I’m just like you,” a soft laugh escapes you, and you lean towards him to hide the slight embarrassment rushing to blush your cheeks. “Thinking all about… entanglements,”

“Do, please, demonstrate your version,” his accent noticeably makes ‘demonstrate’ even sharper and more pronounced.

“Only if you talk about yours,”

With a swift kiss, you silence him, lips capturing his words. Your hands grip his body, gently guiding him away from the door. Viktor's eyes, intense and unwavering, remain locked on you as you lead him a few feet to the side to the upright piano.

In one smooth motion, your foot hooks around the piano bench, sliding it out. Your hands, warm and certain, travel up to Viktor's shoulders, guiding him down onto the seat with a gentle and firm pressure. His gaze never falters.

For a breathless moment, you tower over him, drinking in the sight of him. He's even more deliciously undone—hair tousled, shirt askew, lips slightly parted.

The room seems to shrink, the world narrowing to just the two of you. You're minutely aware of every shallow breath, every subtle shift of his body, each time the muscles in his neck form a 'v'.

Something all-consuming takes root in your core, to hear his voice wearing your name—not just spoken, but gasped, moaned, worshipped.

“So?” you prompt. “Begin,”

No. IV, “Viktor’s Recitative”. An accented voice searching for focus. Punctuated by gasps.

“It’s, ehm, quantum entanglement. Imagine two dancers, perfectly in sync no matter how far apart they are. When particles become entangled, they share a quantum state. If you measu—”

With your leg you push his knees apart.

“Uh, if you measure one, you instantly know about the other. As if… as if connected by an invisible thread of… mm, cosmic intimacy,”

You kneel slowly, gaze locked onto his as he searches for his next words. “Rather romantic,” you add.

He swallows. And you take it as a suggestion.

“I think so, too. Two particles, forever intertwined,” his eyes fall to your hand as you palmed one knee, your head resting on his other leg. “Fates… linked across the, the vast…ness of space and t—time,” he jerks forward as your hand pressed a little too near his centre.

The sound makes your breath hitch. More. Your cheek’s brushing against the cotton of his pants, your other hand cradling around his calf. The hand on his knee roams further upwards, thumb applying more pressure on the ins of his thigh.

“Regardless of distance, still they influence each other in ways we can’t f—” he breaks off with a whine as your palm grazes the growing swell beneath his pants. It takes every ounce of self-control not to grasp him fully, to feel the entirety of him at once. “Fully…” his eyes follow where you press harder, your mouth curving into a smile. “Comprehend,” the word falls with more breath.

He leans back against the piano, elbows weighing down keys and sending a jarring, discordant chord alongside his sighs.

You straighten, bringing your other hand to the knot of his waistband. Your finger hooks onto it, thumb caressing the single button. Your gaze travels upward, admiring the sight of him leaning back, his shirt riding up to reveal a tantalising glimpse of hair trailing downward.

His breathing slows, becoming deep and measured as your finger grazes the skin of his stomach, the fine hairs tickling knuckles. For a moment, you imagine yourself above him, watching him squirm as his eyes fixate on the point where your bodies would join. Another day.

With a deft movement, you pop the button free. Leaning in, you catch your lower lip between your teeth as your hands gently guide him from the confines of his boxers.

His form arches slightly to one side, living sculpture of desire. Delicate ridges trace his length, and at the apex, his glans gleams like a ripe cherry. Tempting fruit begging to be tasted.

Deep, methodical breaths, you remind yourself. Deep and methodical. And oh so deep. You wrench your thoughts from this enticing path, lifting gaze to meet his. Your eyes seek permission, finding his half-lidded stare heavy with want.

Your palm, warm and inviting, glides along his length with exquisite slowness. The motion elicits a shudder that ripples through his hips, a breath catching in his throat like a trapped butterfly. His head falls back, unveiling the elegant lines of his neck.

Emboldened, you repeat the caress, this time allowing your grip to ascend until it reaches the pinnacle. There, with deliberate tenderness, you gather the pre-cum with a slight swipe. The touch brings a cluster of stuttered gasps and half-formed words. His body, as if magnetised, curls towards you, hands grasping the edges of the bench, white-knuckled, anchoring himself.

Your name escapes his lips in a plaintive groan, lust renewing his voice with a gravelly quality.

Responding to his unspoken plea, you stretch upward, capturing his mouth with yours. A reward. A prelude. Your lips, soft yet insistent, trail a path down to his chin, then along the sharp line of his jaw. He tilts his head back, an offering, granting you unimpeded access to the column of his neck. You accept the invitation eagerly, pressing a kiss to his bobbing Adam's apple, and leaving a trail of lilac.

Your hand torments him with a slow ride down, grip tightening incrementally with each kiss. But there's a yearning for more, craving something more substantial. Not that this isn't intoxicating—the pulsing in your core is evidence enough.

The moment a more desperate whine unfurls from his lips, a ribbon of pure need, drawing you in. It's the tipping point. As if thanking him for the sinful sound, your lips abandon the canvas of his neck, attention now wholly focused on his full, flushed hardness.

You level with the sight of his arousal, standing eager, tip glistening. Your breath ghosts over his sensitive skin, eliciting a shudder that courses through his entire body. You hear the complaint of squeezed leather beneath his grip.

“Show me how you like it,” you breathe, letting the little puffs of air tickle at his reddened shaft.

Seemingly overwhelmed, he remains answerless, eyes resting on your blushed mouth. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, as if reciting an undeniable truth, akin to the blue of the sky or the firmness of his length. His thumb traces the contours of your mouth with gossamer lightness. “Indulge as you please,”

At that, you smile, gently guiding his hand away and pressing a kiss tender on his knuckles. And with a final, heated glance up at his face—flushed with want, eyes dark with need—you lower your head, lips parting.

With a delicate grace, you envelop him, your lips forming a perfect crescent around his crown. Slowly, deliberately, you welcome him into the warmth of your mouth, one hand gliding to his base with tender precision. The other, seeking purchase, finds his chest, gently urging him backward to grant you greater freedom of movement.

He yields without resistance, acquiescence punctuated by a cascade of desperate, breathy whimpers as he reclines against the piano. The instrument protests beneath his bones, dissonant notes plunking out objections at the sin unfolding before it.

You savour him—heady salt and warmth. His velvet glides across your palette, your lips tightening in counterpoint. Your tongue laps and flattens against him in a rhythm that plucks a brief grunt from him. Curiosity compelling you, you lift your gaze to meet his. In that fleeting moment, his eyebrows arch—whether at the feeling or the sight, you prefer the idea of the latter—a wordless expression of awe at the vision before him.

This silent exchange ignites a fervour in you. You increase your tempo, sound of saliva blending seamlessly with his escalating pants. His voice, once controlled, now tumbles in a torrent of incoherent, keening pleas. His fingers now tangle gently in your hair, curling and uncurling in unconscious rhythm. When you dare to take him deeper, his grip tightens ever so slightly.

A deep groan reverberates from the depths of your throat, setting off a cascade of reactions that ripple through both your bodies. The raw sound triggers an involuntary response in him; his hips stutter and twitch forward with barely restrained urgency, cock brushing dangerously far back in your throat.

This sudden intrusion causes your body to react instinctively. Your grip on him tightens, fingers digging into the soft flesh of his thighs, pliant tongue pressing fully against him, cheeks hollowing with increased suction.

The sensation brings tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, threatening to spill over. Yet, you hold them back, your focus entirely consumed by the incoherent, mangled words tumbling from Viktor's lips. His loss of composure only serves to fuel you, ushering more strangled moans from you.

With a deliberate leisure, you pull him out of your mouth, slight, wet ‘pop' punctuating the action. A grin plays across your lips as you lick them slowly, savouring his taste and the way his eyes track the movement of your tongue.

Leaning back in with renewed purpose, you flatten your tongue against the sensitive underside of his length. You drag it upwards, feeling every ridge and vein. As you reach the tip, you linger at the frenulum, that exquisitely sensitive spot just beneath the head. Your tongue dances there, teasing and tantalising, while your hand presses firmly against his abdomen, pushing him back slightly, maintaining control.

This calculated move elicits a pleased hum from him, a sound that vibrates through his body and into yours. Encouraged by his response, you repeat the movement, each pass of your tongue a perfect mirror of the last, building a rhythm that teeters on the edge between pleasure and sweet torment.

You revel—the choked desperation emanating from the back of his throat, the frantic rise and fall of his chest—tempestuous sea. His jaw, slack, burns into your imagination, conjuring tantalising visions of how it might feel nestled between your trembling thighs. Pure masterpiece before you.

A thought dances through your mind: how differently might he approach his little entanglements if it were you sprawled across his desk instead of the mundane paperwork? The notion trails a delicious shiver down you.

The tip of your tongue traces feather-light around his sensitive crown. Slowly, teasingly, you envelop his tip between your lips. Tongue, emboldened, finds its way back to the frenulum and lingers there. Your hands continue to glide in smooth, quickened motions, descending and rising fluidly. His breaths grow increasingly laboured as you continue, his hips jutting and twitching. You apply gentle pressure, guiding him downward.

With a filthy cry that escapes him, you feel the hot release at the roof of your mouth. Encouraging him further, you draw him deeper, welcoming the spill into your throat with a rough hum. His voice breaks as he calls out your name between ragged gasps. It sounds almost like prayer.

Further sinful whines fall out of him as you continue to swallow and lap him from inside.

As you feel his tension finally easing, you slowly withdraw, your tongue tracing the pearlescent spill. His sharp, staccato breaths punctuate the silence, and he brings his hand to your chin, lifting your attention to him.

You smile, swallowing, though proving futile, his release unrelentingly coating the back of your throat.

“Will I get to demonstrate?” he breathes, voice hoarse.

He smirks. The fucker.

You shake your head. “Not tonight. Tonight’s my repentance,”

[mewhenimanangel]

cherry, eren jaeger

—synopsis. you and eren reunite after almost two years.

—chapter 10 ౨ৎ

𝜗𝜚 content!: au-college/university, time skip, black reader, au-modern, reuniting, confessions, oral sex, breastplay, piv sex, missionary, filthy smut, long chapter

previous ౨ৎ

nia’s ౨ৎ notes: this chapter is pretty long but i felt it was necessary. i loved this story so much it was so cute and so sweet. thanks for reading! 🫧🎀

today was lana's birthday, her 21st to be exact, and you were driving down to her apartment for her party, you were quick with your movements considering you were running a little bit late and it was an hour and a half drive down.

it had been almost two years since you graduated from high school. since then you committed to your dream college about an hour away from home and you were studying for your dream career.

you had a part time job at a clothing store near by and a paid internship at a marketing brand company, so you were always busy between those obligations and classes. but there was no way you were going to miss your best friend's birthday.

your college experience was enjoyable for the most part - you joined the dance team, and were part of the honors program for the school. you were lucky enough to find a really nice roommate, evanie, who you grew fairly close to the last two years, you guys even agreed to continue being roommates as long as you attended the school.

you met a few friends at uni - brooklyn, who was a total party girl and who always brought the excitement. brooklyn's girlfriend, dana, who was a little more introvert than brooklyn, but was really funny and a talented artist. and you met parker, a charming and caring guy with a lean body, in your statistics class freshman year.

who which you hooked up with a bunch of times, and though he assured you he loved every second of it, he decided to come to terms with the fact that he was gay and you guys decided to stay friends.

thanks to brooklyn, you went out a lot more than you thought you would. clubbing, sleepovers with the group, a road trip to the beach - which you missed an exam for, you went to parties here and there, hooked up here and there.

you hadn't really been in any relationships in college, it was more or less, sex. you had this thing with a guy you'd met at a party. his name was daniel, but insisted everyone called him danny. he was on the basketball team.

your thing with him lasted about two months before he accepted a transfer offer to a better school and decided that whatever you and him were, wasn't enough of anything to hold on to. but there were no hard feelings, you were thinking the same.

after he transferred halfway through this school year, it had you thinking about eren again. who you had a sneaky suspicion would be at this party tonight, though lana swore he wouldn't.

it's been almost a year since the last time you spoke to him. not because of anything bad, you just grew apart.

he went to the university of marley and you both just got so busy that you never really talked much anymore.

over the summer before college, you had hooked up at jean's fourth of july party. no one knew about it.

once the barbecue was over, eren offered to drop you home. though, once he pulled up outside your house, something came over the both of you and you smashed your lips against his.

you were lucky eren's windows were tinted so nobody could see the way you crawled over the console to sit on his lap while his mouth left marks all over your neck. or how you grinded your hips against his growing dick.

his hands tangled in your hair as he laid his car seat back and pulled his pants down.

you shook the memory out of your head as you turned left down an intersection. you called lana to tell her you were on your way as you anxiously checked your back seat to make sure her gifts were in fact there.

you had gotten her a designer bag you knew she always wanted and you got dana to paint a picture of the two of you when you were younger.

you searched for five minutes for a parking spot outside of lana's apartment before you went up the elevator to her floor.

you rest the painting and the gift bag at the side of her door before you knocked, it was a rather big painting and you didn't want her to see it just yet.

lana opened the door with a big smile on her face and arms out ready to give you a hug. "happy birthday oh my god you're becoming a big girl" you joked as you squeezed her tight.

"ugh i'm just so glad you made it" she hugged you tighter. "of course i would make it" you said as you held her arms. you took the chance to look past her for a second, the apartment was filled with people - some you recognized, some you didn't. there was music bumping, and people dancing.

you could see a table by her windows filled with mini sandwiches, snacks, deserts, and pizza. everyone was dressed nice as lana told everyone to.

there were pink streamers and flowers decorating her already decorated apartment. she offered for you to live with her full time and as much as you would've loved to, it was just too far from your school. so during the summers, after going back home to your mom, you would spend weeks at a time at her apartment.

"i got you a present" you smirked as you leaned down to grab the gifts of the floor. "ooou you did?" she smiled.

you showed her the painting and she smiled before thanking you and bringing you to her bedroom.

"i'm definitely hanging this up in my living room once all these people leave" she told you and you giggled.

"oh and i have this" you handed her the gift bag as she opened it to find the purse. "no fucking way! how did you buy this?? don't you have student loans to pay off?" she joked.

"alright not too much cause i could take it back real quick" you laughed "i got it when it was on sale" you told her.

"you know im just playing with you, thank you so much" she hugged you again. "did connie come yet?" you asked her. "no not yet" she smirked "why, worried about eren showing up?"

"no!...no i'm not worried. i'm sure he's moved on too. it's just been a while" you shrugged. "you want me to tell con not to bring eren?" she asked you as she lead you out of the room.

"y/n! oh my god i've missed you so much" sasha threw her arms around you for a hug. "i didn't know you'd be coming" she told you. "hey sash, i've missed you too" you smiled. "you have to try the mini sandwiches" she told you. "oh i will" you giggled before she walked over to the table of food.

you said hi to some more familiar faces, occasionally falling into conversations with them - usual questions about school, work, life, etc. before lana found you again.

the sun was beginning to set and you joined your friends in the living room, dancing and sipping on your drinks.

"i'll be right back okay?" lana told you and you nod your head as you continued dancing with mikasa and sasha.

she opened her front door to see connie and eren standing on the other side. "oh baby i'm so sorry. there was so much traffic" connie immediately threw his arms around her. "happy birthday my love, im so sorry" he kissed her forehead.

"it's okay, you can make it up to me later" she winked before bringing him in for a kiss.

"hey eren" she waved before he brought her in for a side hug. "what's up, happy birthday"  she smiled and thanked him.

she closed the door behind them before grabbing connie's hand. "come on baby i wanna show you what y/n got me" she pulled him to her room.

eren perked up at the mention of your name. obviously he knew you would be here but actually being here knowing you were in the same room was a little too real.

"yo man, what took y'all so long" ony dapped him up. "so much traffic" eren hugged him. "it's good to see you bro it's been mad long" ony told him. "yeah man i've been keeping busy"

they talked for a bit before eren’s eyes scanned the room before landing on you. you looked even more beautiful than the last time he saw you, you looked so mature and confident.

your complexion was a little more tan than before, your hair looked as though you’d cut it shorter and it was straightened. you were in a pretty yellow dress and a cute little pair of open toed heels. there was a glass of wine in your hand as you talked to someone he didn’t recognize.

his heart sank when you looked over for a moment and your caught his eyes on you. there it was again, those tantalizing eyes and that charming smile.

the last time eren saw you was in armin’s pool as you all decided to do one last hang out with the group before you would be going your separate ways. after that the most you and him did was text, which fizzled out, his last message with you dating back nine months.

you felt your heart pick up when your eyes landed on eren. his hair was even shorter now, almost back to the way you remembered he wore it in middle school. he looked like he had put on a bit of muscle and grown an inch or two. his outfit looked nice and put together. you indulged in the thought that he got dressed today with you on the brain, the way you did.

you just stood there looking at each other, it became almost rude to the people you were both talking to. you excused yourself from your conversation before making your way over to him.

“hey stranger” he said first, same old grin on his face. ony took this as a sign to step away and let the two of you mingle. “hii, it’s so nice to see you” you reached out to hug him, holding out your drink. his arms wrapped around your waist.

“how’ve you been? you look good” you told him. “thanks,, i can definitely say the same about you” you didn’t miss the way his eyes trailed over you for a second as your lips curled into a smirk.

“so what’s up with you?” you asked him. “just keeping busy you know, school is slamming me. i’ve been working with some brands though”

the two of you talked for longer than you realized, catching each other up on your lives. you poured him a drink before you made your way out onto lana’s fire escape. you talked about your respective college experiences, work, your internship, his projects with brands, anything your minds led to.

talking with him made you realize how much you’ve both grown since the last time you saw each other and just how much you both missed each other.

you took a second to really look at each other as, just for a moment, eren’s eyes dipped down to your lips. a sly grin drew on both your faces as you let out a giggle.

“i have to ask, are you…seeing anyone?” he asked you “no not necessarily” he searched your face for an answer before you laughed. “no, no i’m not” you told him.

he took a step closer to you, standing so close you could feel the fabric of his jeans brush against your knee. you looked up at him, still taller than you even with your heels on, waiting for what he would do next.

“so,, does that mean i can do this?” he brushed your hair out of your face, letting his hand rest on your cheek and leaned in. you grinned as you followed along and held onto his waist, lips meeting for just a moment before connie knocked on the window, making you both jump and step away from each other.

“save that for later, we bout to sing happy birthday come on!” he told you before stepping away.

you looked at each other and laughed before climbing back into the apartment and joining everyone in singing happy birthday.

you and connie were first to give lana hugs and kisses and get your pictures taken before everyone else did the same. the whole time, eren’s eyes were just on you. he missed your smile, and your laugh, and the way you always made other people smile.

once the party was over you, connie, and eren stayed behind to help lana clean up. the four of you talked for a bit, munching on cake and the finger foods you were helping her put away.

“well i think it’s time i head out” you yawned. “okay there’s no way you’re leaving, your campus is like an hour and a half away. plus you’re still tipsy” lana insisted.

“how about you stay in the second bedroom?” she offered. you took a second to look at eren, hiding the small smirk on your face. lana clocked it immediately. “um i can take her” eren spoke up. “hm, very well then.” she nod her head before coming to give you a hug.

“stay safe and make sure he has a condom” she whispered in your ear and you giggled.

eren led the way out of lana’s apartment and down to your car. you let him drive since he had less to drink than you did and he drove to his brother’s apartment where he was staying.

he led you upstairs and opened the door to a spacious apartment with big windows overlooking the city. “jesus what does your brother do” you asked as eren closed the door behind you. “he’s a doctor or something like that. he’s not here though” eren told you as he leaned against the counter and watched you look down at the city.

you turned around to see a mischievous glint in his eyes. he cleared his throat before showing you to the guest room. “um there’s some clothes i had left in there from when i came down here with my mom if you wanna change” he told you.

“aw how is she?” you asked earnestly. “she’s good, she still loves and misses her prized dancer” eren grinned.

ʚɞ

you woke up in the middle of the night looking for water when you saw eren sitting at the kitchen island, doing something on his computer.

he turned your way when he heard the door open. “oh hey, can’t sleep?” he asked you. “nah, just thirsty” “there’s some water in the fridge, i’ll get you some” he got up to take a bottle of water out and handed it to you and you thanked him.

“what are you working on?” you asked him. “something for a class, i was supposed to finish it earlier but i put it off for lana’s party….which I’m glad i did cause i got to see you” he turned to you at the last part.

“i missed you a lot you know” he told you. “i missed you too. it was so nice seeing you again”

he didn’t say anything for a moment and you watched as though the gears in his head were turning.

“y/n….i really want to be with you. i can’t keep ignoring it anymore. i’ve wanted to be with you since we everything senior year. i tried to just push it down and get over you and try on new people but nobody fits, nobody but you. i don’t want this to be like last time, i don’t want this to be the last time i see you for another two years. it’s time for us to grow up and for me to admit that i really fucking want you and i think you want me too…”

you felt like you got the wind knocked out of you with the mini monologue he went on declaring his feelings for you.

“of course i want you too. i want you so bad eren, i don’t think my feelings for you ever really went away. i just, i don’t even know i was just a stupid seventeen year old who didn’t know what to do but i do know now. i want to be with you ren”

a moment went by before eren pulled you in for a hug. “god i’ve been dreaming to hear you say that” he mumbled into your shoulder while your hands played with the back of his hair.

he lift his head off your chest to look up at you and before you could even think, your lips were on his.

the kiss quickly changed from a soft pace to the two of you kissing like your lives depended on it. it was filled with years of tension and need.

eren stood up from the chair, pushing you up against the wall behind you as his hands dipped underneath the shirt you wore and held on to your waist. your mouths continued fighting to taste each other as your arms were wrapped around his neck.

you groaned in his mouth when you felt him grope your boob from under your shirt and his thumb grazed over your nipple. you felt him smirk against your mouth. “still like getting your tits played with?” he teased before moving to leave kisses and marks down your neck.

he reached for the bottom of your shirt and pulled it over your head, throwing it somewhere in the living room. he grabbed your boob and put it in his mouth, letting his tongue swirl over your nipple and sucking on it like a sweet.

a moan fell past your lips as you felt your face getting hot and you tangled your fingers through his hair. he pointed his tongue directly on the sensitive bud, reveling in the sweet noises you were making, like music to his ears.

you could feel your panties moistening by the second as you let your head lay back on the wall. he moved off your tit to show the other one some love, groping at it before putting it in his mouth.

he kissed along your collarbones before meeting your lips again. your hand dipped between your bodies and you teasingly grazed your fingers over the tent in his shorts. “mm what are you doing princess” “haven’t heard that one in a while” you grinned. “i wanna suck your dick” you looked him straight in the eyes.

“i won’t stop you” he smirked. you lowered yourself to your knees, keeping your eyes on his. you reached for the waistband of his shorts and pulled them down, revealing his dick print against his boxers. you pulled those down too.

face to face with his flushed dick, you wrapped your hand around it, slowing pumping to tease him. you licked a kitten lick over his tip, smirking when you heard his sharp inhale.

you pumped his cock between your fist as he let out small moans. most of the guys you’d hooked up with during college were too full of themselves to make any noise during sex. you enjoyed the groans he gave as he carefully held your hair in his hand.

you finally put his dick in your mouth, starting with his tip while you continued jerking him off. you slackened your jaw and manually breathed through your nose as you felt his cock fill your mouth. eren was definitely the biggest you’ve been with.

you combined your vacuuming lips with the licking of your tongue and it sent eren over the edge. one hand held onto the wall in front of him while the other kept a hold on your hair.

“fuck you’re so good at that” he whimpered. you licked along a vein near his tip and you felt his dick jump in your mouth.

“fuck y/n, think i’m gonna cum” he began shifting his hips, pushing himself further in your mouth. you felt his tip touch the back of your throat and you willed yourself not to gag, tears pricking your eyes. “you want my cum in your mouth, princess?” you nod your head.

a few seconds later he came and you swallowed every last drop. somehow, he was still hard and ready to go.

you got off your knees and he hugged your waist before kissing you again. “i’ll make you some tea for your throat” he said before lifting you up and carrying you back to the guest bedroom. he closed the door with his foot before laying you down on the bed.

you propped yourself up on your elbows as he pulled your pants and your panties down in one swift motion before he pulled off his wife beater, throwing all the pieces of clothes somewhere in the room. you think this is the first time you’ve seen each other fully naked.

“you’ve been working out?” you asked, trailing your hands over his soft abs. “yeah but i haven’t been in a while” he crawled on the bed and spread your legs, placing himself between them.

he squeezed your boobs before trailing his hands down to your vagina. you moaned feeling a finger rub over your clit before dipping in your hole.

he smirked before reaching over to the nightstand and pulling out a condom. “no need,,i’m in the pill. i wanna feel you” you told him.

he leaned down to kiss you again. “gonna fuck you so good baby” he whispered in your ear before lining his dick up with your entrance.

he eased himself inside you, hands gripping your hips as his hips snapped against yours in an erotic rhythm.

you felt him fill you up, brain going fuzzy. you reached behind you to grip onto the pillows. “oh my fucking god, ren- feels so good” your words came out airy as every hump inside you made you lose your breath.

your tits bounced and you felt the bed squeak as eren got more rough with his thrusts. “you feel so fucking good princess, like this pretty pussy was made for me” his grip on your hips got tighter.

your pussy engulfed his dick, you could feel his balls slapping against your skin.

the room was filled with the vulgar noise of your skin slapping against his, your pornographic moans, and eren’s grunts. for a second you wondered if the neighbors could hear you.

but you were too busy getting fucked out to care.

eren threw your leg over his shoulder leaning down to deepen himself inside you. “oh my god eren i’m gonna cum” a moan ripped out of you at the new angle.

“go ahead baby, wanna feel you rush on my dick” he kissed your forehead, holding on to the headboard behind you.

it didn’t take long for the knot in your stomach to snap and you were cumming all over eren’s cock. he followed suit soon after too and the two of you sat there for a few seconds trying to catch your breaths.

he pulled you in for a hug and you could feel his heart racing against your chest. you stayed like that for a while, hugging each other while eren’s dick was still buried inside you. “i think i love you y/n, if that’s not insane to say” he said, making you chuckle.

“it’s not. i love you too” you said before he pressed his lips against yours. this one much different than the one before - this one soft and gentle and sweet.

you kissed each other, never wanting to let go now that you’ve made your way back to one another.

[tasteforambrosia]

Ranking who in the gang you should leave your drink with at the club.

This is not an opinion, this is a fact :)

12. Luke obviously because he ain't getting in that bar in the first place. Baby is watching Looney Toons while MC getting wasted.

11. Solomon, he wouldn't let anyone tamper with it. HE'D tamper with it. Not out of malice, but to spice it up, and now you're dead. Remember to be careful of Solomon at bars.

10. Belphegor, MY MAN WOULD FALL ASLEEP. SOLDIER GET UP DRINKS ARE EXPENSIVE YOU NEED TO PROTECT THEM.

9. Mammon. He is absolutely protective of MC, but let's be honest, if he was offered a good sum, he'd definitely consider it. Though he'd probably not give the drink to you BUT STILL WASTED LIQUOR.

8. Asmodeus. While he might be the demon with the most club experience, that man would get swept away by his fans in a second.

7. Our favourite teddybear, Beelzebub. Once again, he wouldn't EVER give it to someone else, but he would drink it himself. HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO SAY ALCOHOL AIN'T CHEAP.

And now we get to the somewhat good choices.

6. Satan would definitely be reliable, but I do think he would get caught up with networking, but at least he doesn't drink it :')

5. Poor Levi, he'd be absolutely terrified at the club, like absolutely overstimulated and at the corner. He'd definitely keep the drink safe, he'd probably leave if anyone even tried to approach him.

4. Simeon, even though he's kind, he's not oblivious. He would keep the drink safe but minus points because I could see him commenting about the amount of drinks consumed during that night.

3. Lucifer, my man. No one would even DARE try to spike a drink when he's holding it, at least if they like having their head on their shoulders. But minus points for either - drinking it, because we all know this single father has alcohol issues. OR if Diavolo is with him, he'd pull a Simeon and scold MC about drinking responsibly (Like a traitor.)

2. Barbatos could see into the future to alert the authorities if there were any scumbags around, and unlike Lucifer or Simeon, I'd see him holding his tongue on commenting about drinking at a club.

Diavolo supremacy. Even if he was careless, he has Barbatos AND Lucifer making sure things go smoothly. BUT EVEN WITHOUT IT HE WOULD BE SUPER DETERMINED TO KEEP THE DRINK SAFE AND HE WOULDN'T CHASTISE MC OVER IT. Truly a dream man.

I want to hear your thoughts! And also remember to keep your drinks safe!

[lynnlovesthestars]

Scars.

Pairing: Astarion x reader Genre and warnings: angst, lots of it, hurt barely any comfort, allusions to sexual assault, past trauma, graphic description of torture, kidnapping, blood, violence, set in act 3, mention of death. Notes: not proof read ngl, i wrote it after dreaming it, and i didnt even wanna read it again, i cried like a bitch cause it’s kinda like…. past experience projected? just yeah dont ask if im ok after writing this, the answer is no lmao... also just a side note since it’s the first time im posting on this profile, but english is not my first language so please be mindful about it. Edit 10/06/23: i finally went through it end edited it.. i hope i catched all the errors cause idk if i'll ever be strong enough to give it another read ahah

Getting so close to someone meant so much for Astarion, and the more he cared, the more new fears would swim through his brain. 

Since you arrived in the lower city, and his bed was no longer cold at night, a new nightmare snuck in.

The idea that Cazador would be able to get to you, and weaponize you against him, made his cold blood run even colder. Several nights you woke up to a trembling and sweating Astarion, as he was begging for mercy. He never explained too much about these nightmares to you, just letting you know it was about Cazador again and again, but he left out the haunting possibility of you getting hurt because of him. On the other hand you believed it was because you were getting so close to the Szarr palace, and Cazador knew about it just as much as Astarion did.

It was the middle of the night when the sound of a broken glass stirred you awake. You looked around you, Astarion still deep into his meditating state, while the others were asleep as well, none of them reacted to the sound like you did. Maybe you just had a light sleep, you thought, and someone in the tavern dropped a few glasses or something. It was when hands gripped your wrists that you jolted up, looking behind you. It was too dark to see, and all you could spot were the deep red eyes, like Astarion's, though they lacked the warmth of his.

A shiver ran through your spine as you realized what was happening, but when you tried to call for the others, you realized how deep in shit you actually were: no sound would leave your lips, like you were silenced.

"There's no need to be afraid, Tav." A deep cold voice whispered so close to your ear. "They can't hear you".

The voice chuckled at your failed attempts to call for Astarion, Karlach or anyone, as tears were starting to pool at the edge of your eyes.

Another pair of hands took hold of Astarion, magical shackles fastened around his hands and feet, just as they did to yours, and then they started dragging you both away.

The deep voice spent the whole travel taunting you with stories of Cazador, how cold blooded he was, and just how much he enjoyed torturing his victims. From one point of view you were already accustomed with such stories about him, but from the other, the idea of Cazador getting hold of Astarion again, made your blood freeze again. You were not going to let Cazador hurt him again. You were set on the idea.

When you reached the corridors of Cazador's palace, the silencing spell finally wore off, though Astarion was still not moving. Terror flashed through your eyes as you wondered if they had already…

"What did you do to him?!" You breathed out as you tried so hard to keep your calm in front of the spawns that were dragging and pushing you through the dark hallways.

The spawn scoffed as he pushed through and through.

"Don't worry, he's not dead" You could feel his eyes rolling at the question, like it was some dumb question you should have known the answer to. "..yet" he added at last.

You couldn't stop your mouth from twitching, between the state of rage that was slowly building up, or the terror of them hurting Astarion.

"What's going on? Can i know that at least?" You wanted so bad to cast a spell on him, charming him into freeing you, but without the use of your hands, you were useless.

"Cazador wants to give you a warm welcome into Baldur's gate" He giggled, as the smell of old blood mixed with the sour taste of the bile threatening to spill from your lips, and you couldn't hold it anymore, and your feelings started spilling out.

You couldn't help then to try and get Astarion free at least. You wanted to shake those hands off of you, to wiggle out of the shackles that bound your magic, but no matter how much you tried, you were like set in stone, unable to do anything but move forward, shed tears, and talk. Or more specifically, beg.

Beg them to hurt you, instead of Astarion. 

Beg them to keep you here, and let your star free.

Beg them to turn you if needed, but spare Astarion's life.

Anything, if it meant not hurting the man that stole your heart with a dagger to your throat.

Quickly you were tossed in a cage, adjacent to Astarion's, and locked in.

The shackles that bound your feet dissipated, as the cage started ascending upward.

It halted in front of an altar, you guessed, that directly faced into the chasm you ascended from. Other spawns, around twenty you were able to count, started taking seats around the edges, sitting all in religious silence on their knees.

Astarion was still passed out, cradled on the floor of the cage, both restraints still tightly bound to him.

"Please, please, please" You cried out as the last bit of your strength was going to be dedicated towards trying to get Astarion free, far away from this place. "Let Astarion go, i beg you" You repeated your plea again, as you saw all those spawns stir from their seats, they wanted to turn their heads, to face whoever was foolish enough to beg Cazador for mercy, to trade spots with Astarion.

Everyone in that room knew what was going to happen, he was going to show them what happens when you disobey, when you run away thinking you can escape him. Instead you were so foolish and blinded by love, that you wanted to take Astarion's place, unaware of the extent that Cazador would go to. Yet you didn't stop, you kept begging and begging until a voice, the voice, echoed through the altar's walls.

"Tsk you just gave me a wonderful idea" the man hummed as his scepter started glowing, and Astarion started stirring awake, he looked around him, his tired eyes quickly widening as the reality around him had set in his mind.

"Let her go, you son of a bitch" Astarion growled as he stood up so quick, and gripped at the iron bars separating him from Cazador. 

"Touch her and I swear I'll spill your guts right here" He spit out of the cage, a symbolic spit cause you were too far away to reach him.

"My, my, our dear Astarion has forgotten all the manners" He cooed as his lips smacked together, his voice so honeyed it was bringing you to the verge of vomit.

You wanted to reassure Astarion, let him know that you were going to do your best to free him, that you were both going to be out of there alive soon, but could you? Could you lie so much to the man you loved? Words were stuck on your tongue, making your throat drier and drier.

You guessed you zoned out for a few seconds as your head was flooded with thoughts, missing the hate Astarion was throwing at his master.

"Ah sweet Astarion, your dear Tav has given us a great idea though, it would be a shame to let it go to waste" He hummed, as the staff light up again, the lock on your cage fell down the chasm, as your trembling body was slowly being dragged out of the cage by magic.

"No, no, no, no" Astarion reprated as his eyes locked on you, falling on the long streaks of tears running down your cheeks as you tried to offer him a sad smile, your lips muttering an "it's going to be okay" while his body was about to give in to desperation, loud sobs echoed from him, as your heart broke at his sight: he was barely standing up now, his hand gripped tight as he screamed through the hall to let you go, to not hurt you, to stop. "This is just a nightmare" He fell on his knees as you were slowly dropped on the cold floor, barely keeping your head up as you realized you were still in his shirt, the one he loved on you.

"Oh dear Astarion" Cazador cooed again as he kneeled in front of you, his cold fingers getting ahold of your chin, to tilt your head towards his. "This is not a nightmare, this is real" His words were like cold daggers through your chests, you knew that whatever was going to happen, it was not going to be fun.

Before you could say anything, Cazador's hand slipped to your waist pulling on the shirt as you flinched away, disgusted by the touch of the vampire in front of you.

But he didn't care, he was swift in removing it, leaving you bare in front of dozens of eyes.

You could hear the rattling coming from Astarion's cage as he attempted to break free over and over again while his chest was about to explode.

He didn't have the right to undress you in front of everyone, he didn't have the right to touch you at all, not when he prayed every night to have the chance to see you bare, to hold you. His thoughts were swinging back and forth between desperation and deep seethed rage.

"My, my I can see why our Astarion has fallen for this little creature" Cazador's compliment almost made you retch as you stumbled back a little. "She even puts up a fight" He chuckled as he lunged forward just enough to grip at your wrist and whipping you on your feet.

Every inch of your skin was visible to everyone, from the battle scars you got through the years of adventuring, to the teeth marks on your neck, down to the stretchmarks that lived on your hips.

A shiver ran through your spine as Cazador’s fingers grazed over the two marks on your neck. “Mh, your blood seems to be sweet enough, right Astarion?” His cruel words hit Astarion through the chest. He was one word away from a breakdown as he couldn’t do anything but witness his nightmares coming alive, not his Tav, not when he would be so careful to cradle you and comfort you to his chest whenever he'd drink from you.

Whatever he was screaming was incomprehensible to you, as all you could feel was the way Cazador gripped and pushed you towards a plush chair, where he sat with legs wide open before dragging you on his lap. You felt so nauseous as he bent you towards the arm rest, making you face the cold grey floor.

You wanted to hear the taunting explanation of what he was going to do, but all the sounds were drowned by the thrumming of your chest and the desperation in your own thoughts, repeating over and over that you were going to find a way out, trying to convince your brain to shut off and dissociate as you were there, like you were just in a nightmare, and you’d be awake soon.

All you could gather was few words like “knife”, “mark”, reminder”, and then “Astarion”. He was torturing him through you, and you couldn’t do anything about it. The worst part in this, was that you were the one that gave him the idea, cause you wanted him to free Astarion, and instead he let it all out on you instead than on your Aster, as a punishment for you both. You cause you were so careless to offer yourself though you didn't know the risk, and Astarion for being reckless and disobedient. Right there, as the dagger pierced your spine, you regretted not whispering Astarion how much you loved him, while you were tight against his chest, when the world around you was asleep, and you had a corner of peace. You always knew what you felt for him, from that moment on the beach, at the shipwreck, and yet you just wanted to tell him in the right moment. But what was the right moment? You might never know, as a broken scream broke through your lips, salty tears flowing free, so much that you thought for a moment that you might have died of dehydration, if the knife wasn’t going to do it first.

He carved and carved over your back, intelligible lines and symbols as you finally understood what Astarion meant when he told you how he got his scars. How gut wrenching the pain was as he couldn’t move, and how Cazador didn't allow a break, and retraced the lines that were wobbly if he moved too much.

“You know?” Cazador asked, as everyone’s eyes were on what he thought was a work of art, your carved skin, while Astarion’s plea echoed over and over in the room. “Our sweet Astarion used to whine just like you” He hummed. “Just a pathetic little child” He spit out like venom as you could barely breathe out few words along the lines of “you disgusting monster”, though you were not sure you actually let them out until, Cazador’s laugh filled every corner of the disgraced altar. Your tadpole writhed as another line was cut at the height of your hips, before, Cazador started retracing the lines and pulling away the skin, exposing the deepest layers of your flesh, the pain was so deep your vision blurred, and you were so close to passing out right there.

You don’t know how long you sat there, you slipped between pain and numbness as Cazador slapped you back to consciousness whenever you'd slip away, you had to endure the agonizing scarring and remember every second of it. He decorated with bloody lines almost all over your body.

You didn’t know what was worse between laying on the raw scars of your back, seeing your own skin being peeled away or the cries and sobs coming from the man you loved. You had to find a way, you couldn’t give up, you couldn’t allow this monster to walk the earth again. You had to do it for Astarion.

You were not sure when he dropped you on the floor, your body barely able to hold itself together as finally you could look around you and towards Astarion. Every face around you was stoic, like they were used to witnessing such spectacle, and they knew what was going to happen next.

You wanted to reach for Astarion, to take him away from the revolting scene in front of his eyes, you wanted to take away his pain, give him the last bit of hope you had, but when you were about to link your tadpole to his to do it, you hesitated. Connecting your minds meant he would feel how dirty, wretched and lost you felt, along with the gut wrenching pain ebbing through your body.

You could barely make out the words Cazador said as his nails dig through your skin again, even when he pulled your eyes to his you could barely read his lips as he said words you just wanted to cancel from your brain. A broken sob regurgitated from your throat as he was going to take the last thing you had. You just had to let your brain go, right? To ignore the teeth dipping in your throat and the putrid hands slithering down your skin, taking away enough blood to barely keep you alive as he took you in front of everyone.  It was no longer just physical pain, it was the way you felt your own body being stolen away and used in way no one ever dared before.

Numbness was all that was left of you after a while, of your barely beating heart while more hands crawled their way through places were you never wanted anyone to touch, then, in that moment, you realized you were free of your shackles, because you were so drained and broken that you could barely do anything. You could barely by aware of your surroundings, of how many bodies were preying on you, as you could barely manage to move inches.

Your vision was all but clear, you could make out the outline of Cazador as he was buttoning up his blouse again. Then you could see Astarion, still caged, struggling to stay sane as he wanted just to take you away from the monsters abusing of you, abusing of the fact that you were powerless in front of them. His eyes were a bloodshot, he was so hurt that he resorted to supplicate for mercy, to let you go and just kill him, whatever that could stop the agonizing pain. You didn’t have much strength left, maybe if you put all of yourself, you could muster two spells before passing out again. 

It took all you had to even raise your hand towards the lock that sealed Astarion’s crate, you mustered all your willpower to cast that knock spell, just enough to let the damn lock fall down. Astarion instantly turned to you, to your teary form still being touched by unworthy creatures, noticing how your hand barely held up, as you tried to cast one more spell, just for him, before another broken scream echoed in the room, bouncing from wall to wall till it reached Astarion's core. The kind of scream that should never be drawn by someone, nevertheless by you.

The radiant dagger materialized in his hands, and for a moment he didn’t notice it as he was fixated on the broken look on your face, encouraging him to end his master, although you suffered right there, paces away. “I love you” You mutter barely, you wanted to let him know before you could draw your last breath, then everything blurred.

Everything was muffled, you couldn’t see what was going on around you, you just felt all the presences around you disappear, while Astarion’s voice was crystal clear through the excruciating pain.

"I'll kill you, then I'll bring you back, and kill you again.” He shoved Cazador on the floor, just like he did with you, to remind him how he hurt you, how he used you, how he touched the only person he should have never laid hands on. “I’ll do it over and over again until you have suffered a tenth of what you did to her. Then I'm going to gut you one more time, and paint this shithole with your putrid blood. The halls of this place will reek with your disgusting blood, to let the whole city be aware of your death and from which the hands it came from” His hands were shaky, but he had to do it. For him, but mainly for you. All that was left of him was you, and nothing could ever be enough to vindicate you.

The shiny dagger stabbed over and over again through Cazador’s chest, while Astarion cursed him, every thrust of the dagger through the heart earned a new mocking insult, a new reminder of what he did, while all of Astarion's anger was channeled into annihilating him.

You just laid there, all you could do was listen to the grunts and the hate slipping from your lover’s lips as he dipped that dagger in the gutted body. You didn’t even realized when he dropped the disemboweled body on the marble, you weren’t even sure you could breathe, at that point.

A pair of shaking arms wrapped around your drained body, Astarion’s shirt was used again to cover your skin, as he picked you up, trying to be as delicate as possible. His salty tears fell over your body as he carried away from the nauseating scene, you frail body barely shivering, and your chest barely moving. He was muttering something to you, but everything sounded foreign at your hear.

He had to move quickly, find Shadowheart or Halsin, or anyone to heal you, to keep you alive. It was in this moment that he wished he could beg a deity to keep you alive, but he didn’t trust anyone else to tend you. He needed to rush outside of this place and get you to safety. 

He didn’t expect to see everyone outside the locked ballroom door, as they fumbled to open the door. They were taken by surprise at the sight of Astarion cradling you to his chest, all covered in blood, while his eyes were a pit of pain and tears.

Shadowheart didn’t hesitate to heal you right there before they all guided you towards the tavern you've been resting. They all offered to carry you, to make Astarion breathe a bit while on your way back there, but he refused. “I can’t..” He mumbled. “I don’t want..” His voice was just a whisper, broken. “I need” He wanted to break down again with you in his arms, but he had to lay you down first, to let you rest in a warm bed, he had to bring you to safety again, away from anyone that could pose any harm to you. He needed to see that smile again, cause no power flowing through his veins could have replaced you. He failed you once, he was not going to do it again. You saved him, twice, he had to do it just once for you. He had to thank you, and he had to tell you how much he loved you.

[daryldixonfanfiction]

What you fight for! pt.10 - Good girl(*18+)

Masterlist

summary: Daryl desperately tries to amend after they're heated argument…

Warnings: *18+, SMUT!, intimate sex - this man is in love, unprotected p in v, fingering, use of ‘good girl’, praise!cink, age gap, overprotective!Daryl, anger issues, heated argument, manhandling if y squint, angst, mutual pining, fluff, walkers, brief mention of signs of grief, trauma/dissociation.

wc.6k

According to the diary they had been traveling on foot for two weeks now. Two weeks since leaving pittsburgh. And two weeks since Sam and Henry were buried. It was all she could think about - and her failed promise sat heavy on her heart.

Julia had not told Daryl what she had done that night, when Sam told her he was bit. A part of her new she should have, but she didn't. Instead she comforted him, showing him her scar and the bitmarke there, rubbing some of her blood into his wound in hope her blood could act as a sort of medicine. She knew Daryl would be upset with her actions and it felt it would make no difference if she did tell, so she had kept it to herself.

She didn't feel like talking much, nor did she have much of an appetite sins a week ago when fatigue had begun to creep in. And when she began having heavy cramps she knew she was coming on soon. She had dreaded it, the pain, that jabbing pain that made her want to vomit, but she was prepared with the tampons she had found so she knew she would be fine. Though Advill would be nice.

They were somewhere in northern Ohio.

Each day was colder than the one before and even though the autumn colors painted the levels in spectacular shades of red, orange and yellow she couldn't shake the way she was feeling. She didn't think she was depressed or anything like that, though she had been mourning the loss of Sam, feeling terribly devastated by what had happened that morning, or maybe she was just traumatized about it all? She didn't know. She just hoped she would eventually move past it.

But how did someone move past something so horrid? Something that bleeds into one's dreams, with their blooded faces and Sam's dead body begging her to save him?

She felt guilt, just pure guilt about it all and it felt more important than ever to bring a cure into this unforgiving world.

It had begun getting darker much earlier and it being the beginning of October, mid autumn had begun. Daryl was all about finding a safe place to rest for the night, walking slightly ahead of her though she could always feel his watchful eye, not letting her out of his sight, not even letting her walk too many steps behind or he would snap at her, ordering for her to stay close.

After that morning Julia had noticed Daryl becoming even more protective of her. A clear change in his demeanor. He's always been the one to call the shots, it was his call, he was the leader, the one who had the most experience in this world, easely outweighing hers. Julia didn't mind, in fact she thought it was better that way. Because she trusted him in his decisions and like she had said that night, she did truly trust him ‘with her life’.

But the way she was feeling now only made her feel annoyed by his protectiveness. A Lot of the times she thought it was out right obsessive. It made her feel like a child that could not think for oneself, and she was perfectly capable of making her own decisions on her own accord. But Daryl had decided everything for her and if she didn't follow along she knew she would get scolded, so she did as she was told and kept it to herself, silently brewing underneath.

Entering a small abandoned town Julia longed for her aching feet to get some rest as they had been traveling since dawn. Julia looked down to the ground as they walked and Daryl let out a sigh, before shaking his head. It got Julias attention,

“What?” she questiond.

“You gotta stop doing that,” Daryl said.

And there it was again.

Julia looked a head, acting as if she didn't know what he was talking about, because she didn't have the energy for it, feeling drained, then she looked at him, and she questions,

“Doing what?”

Daryl gives her a look, “Disepering.”

And Julia knew what he meant by that. He was right, she wasn't paying attention. But she couldn't control it, it just happened, like it did when they had been ambushed and her body disappeared to somewhere she didn't know. She had thought of bringing it up, but chused against it. Bause how could she make him understand something she couldn't herself? And if she did say something it would sound like a lame excuse and she never wanted to burden him with her problems.

Making their way through the desolated town, they eventually spot a good place to hunker down. Daryl leads the way around the small food store and just when they turn the corner they run into a group of walkers, Daryl grabbed onto her, ushering them into the opposite direction, but they were cornered by more, leaving no other choice then fighting their way true. The dead were closing in fast, and Daryl's grip on her grew stronger. She could sense his inner panic and it was unlike her to feel so unafraid, not stiffening up but instead feeling confident she could handle herself.

They doge and stab walkers that get too close and it was working, they were making their way true. Moving to the back door that would be their escape Daryl rushes up to it, successfully forcing it open, Julia reaches the dore where Daryl stood holding it open for her, but then she looked behind herself and she knew the walkers would eventually make their way inside. Spotting the fence she steps back, and Daryl loses his grasp on her,

“I’m gonna draw them away!” Julia announced.

Daryl tries to stop her, but she is already on her way and begins to draw the walkers towards the other side of the fence away from the building.

Julia runs up to the opening and the walkers follow her true the gate. Waiting for the last one to pass true she realized it wasn't such a good plan as she had thought. She had moved the walkers and the next step to get herself out of there after trapping them she hadn't properly thought all the way true, unintentionally traping herself. Running back to the gate a walker gets a hold of a shug of hair, pulling her back towards its hungry teeth and its friends. That’s when the panic finely cashed up. Julia screams from the harsh pain, terrified doing anything to get out of its hold.

It happened so fast, the pain was gone by a swish of a bolt and she was pulled out of there within a second. Daryl came to her rescue and did what she couldn't, successfully closing the gate, walkers now trapped behind it, pushing and growling against the fens.

Julia rubbed the back of her haid where the walker had pulled, feeling a bruise forming there.

Daryl having secured the gate with a chain he made his way towards her, moving with purposeful strides towards where she stood making Julia's heart rate pick up, knowing sins meeting him he could have a very fiery temper. Her hand paused as he continued towards her and Julia was quick to amend,

“That was close, huh?”

It was an attempt to soften him. To soften the rage that threatened behind his eyes. It didn't seem to work though, as he reached out and took her upper arm, pulling her towards himself and snapped,

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?! Huh!”

And Julia couldn't find the words, she just stares up at him wide eyed.

“Girl, answer me God dammit!” he demanded.

Julia jumped, the anger in his voice surprised her. His expression screamed so many different things she felt she could hardly breathe. Julia blinked, several times more. He stared her down with narrowed eyes, waiting for her to say something and she felt so small under his gaze.

“No, I was ju-, ju-” she stutters, finding it hard to look him in the eye. “I just didn't see that one coming from behind, it’s not a big deal, nothing happened…”

The moment she said it Julia knew it sounded stupid, that she had been naive. It made something within Daryl snap, the subtle twitch his eyebrow told her so. Julia wasn't sure if it was anger towards her, or worry, or what. Then his face turned unreadable,

"What?” It came out low...daring. As if he couldn't believe it had come out of her mouth.

Julia blinked, feeling startled at the reaction. She began to step backwards, and tried to retract,

“Nothing..”

Daryl didn't seem like he didn't want to play any games, following with every step she took.

"No, what the hell did you just say?" he demanded coldly.

Julia swallowed hard, feeling winded all of a sudden, "It wasn't a big deal. Nothing happened.”

Julia continued to step backwards until her back was against the chops facade.

"Yeah, because I made it to ya in time,” Daryl said, caging her in. His voice was empty of emotion, but it held something sharp behind it, something warning, "If I wasn't, you’d be ripped to shreds right now.”

“But I wasn't,” Julia insisted.

Daryl starred. He just stared. And she wished he would just calm down. He was angry but It wasn't rage - it was something else. Maybe he was scared? But it didn't make the way he was treating her any more okay.

Daryl stepped even closer, “The fuck is wrong with you? Being immune doesn't make you immortal, or did you forget that?”

She shook her head, then croaked weakly, "Stop talking down to me."

"Then stop doing stupid shit that can get you killed," Daryl countered easily.

Julia looked up at him, feeling her eyes begin to burn, "You always make it sound like you're the only one capable of doing anything. I can handle myself.”

"Will you just stop it.” Daryl demanded.

Julia frowned, “No, you stop it! Just because you feel like you have to do everything yourself for it to be done correctly, doesn't mean you can treat me however you want!”

Then Julia stepped forward and this time It was Daryl that took a step back, and she said with tears falling from her eyes,

“Don’t you get it?! You can’t get bit, but I can!”

Daryl stood there completely baffled, just staring at her and she could not read the look he was giving her. Did he even understand what she meant by that? Meaby not. But the anger had dissipated from both sides, melting away with the rain. And as they went inside it felt like she had no words left to say after that.

She had always found arguing terebully draining and all she wanted was to get to bed.

Julia was giving him the silent treatment, and he simply could not stand it.

He desperately wanted to amend. And he didn't like the idea of going to bed without resolving it. What if she never talks to him again, if she couldn't forgive him?

Daryl watched Julia get ready for bed.

The dim lantern being the only source of light inside the small store. The sound of raindrops hitting the glass smothers him, and he didn't think he would be able to sleep without hearing her voice. He watched her roll out her sleeping bag, beginning to adjust herself in it - getting ready to sleep…

Daryl sat on top of his sleeping bag, too restless to lay down in it and instead opted to lean back into the wall, staring where she laid with her back facing him. Her soft form moved with every breath, and he knew she was still awake,

“Julia,” he spoke softly and he could see the small movement made in response, “Can’t we talk about this…please?”

He didn't care if he sounded pathetic. If he wanted to make it right he had to put his ego aside, so that's what he did even though he didn't know how to go about something like this.

"Please."

There was no response, and when he thought she had gone to sleep, or simply opted to ignore him further Julia turned around. And even though her eyes still had that sad look, puffy from crying, he felt a sense of hope. Because at least she was looking at him, offering her attention he didn't deserve. Daryl swallowed nervously…then..

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

Daryl hoped it came across as sincere as he men’t it, because he truly was sorry, feeling ashamed of how poorly he had been treating her. Julia blinked from where she laid, listening from her sleeping bag. He swallowed again, then continued, with that soft tone that only existed for her,

“I was a real asshole for treating you like that…Can you…'' He had to evert his eyes, feeling guilty for asking for something he didn't think he deserved. But he didn't anyway. His gaze lifted and he asked,

“Can you forgive me?”

Julia's eyes welled up, brows pulled downwards and her lip began to quiver before she broke down crying. He stiffened, not expecting this as her response. He didn't know what else to do so he moved where she laid and pulled her into his chest, sushing apologies until she calmed and her breathing evend out.

“Fuck, I’m sory, I’m so sory,” Daryl reppets, wiping her tears away until they stoped falling. All he could do was holding her there on the floor in his arms, and he didn't know how long he did.

Then - softly, her voice came to life against his shoulder were her head rested and tears had stain his jacket,

“I forgive you, Daryl.”

Julia was staring directly into his eyes. She looked so small in his arms, her brown eyes looked almost like stars, glimmering up at him with all her kindness - and never before had he felt relief wash over him so intensely.

Daryl bowed his head, he felt like crying himself, but then he felt her hand on his cheek gently brushing a tear away, soothing him even though he had been the one that had made her shed tears due to his cruelty.

He searched her face. He searched for something to hold onto. And then it was like the wind had shifted to something else entirely and he could see it in her eyes that she felt it too. A part of him knew what she must be thinking, because he felt his heart begin to beat against hers, or he assumed it was a shared thought.

It was much like that night…Her hand on his face and all he wanted to do was kiss her.

That night had been...a night in which Daryl had given into every small desire he had ever felt towards her since the prison. Desires he had barely known existed up until that moment when he couldn't stop himself and he was sinking between her legs.

He glanced down to her lips, inviting and full. He swallowed hard, entranced and nervous. His hand that had cradled her head in the embrace moved by its on, his thumb beginning to trace her bottom lip. He washed how she closed her pretty eyes, how she leaned into his touch. Julia let out the most beautiful sigh he had ever heard, and he hoped his mind wasn't making him hear things that wasen’t there.

He thought to remove it, to move back where he had been sitting and go back to bed. But his thumb remained right where it was, and he watched Julia’s eyes flicker open, looking true her eyelashes, notesting her eyes having darkened significantly. His thumb slid to her neck, feeling the softness of her skin. She felt…so comforting. He wasn't sure if he was correct - but he thought she sounded more breathy than usual. And he wondered how things had shifted so quickly - how it had gone from making her cry to having her in his arms looking up at him like she was begging.

Pressure formed under his stomach. That thing that had caused him to have her in the sopha. Moments ticked by like that, staring into each other's eyes. He wondered if she wanted him to get away...If she wanted to push him. But when her mouth opened, he was met with the soft voice that always made it feel like he could never go a day without properly hearing it speaking towards him...A question on the tip of her tongue...

"Please stay?”

And he found it impossible to deny her anything at the moment. He was so engrossed with the feel of her smooth skin and what she was implying he had completely forgotten to reply.

“Daryl?”

Fuck. Her voice always spoke it so delicately, like butterflies.

Daryl's hands slid to her hips, gouging her reaction to his touch. Her small fingers laced into the fabric near his neck as he laid her back, and it sounded like she could hardly inhale. Julia zipped open her sleeping bag, opening it completely, inviting him closer.

She had sounded beautiful that night, and had felt...even more so. He swallowed once more. She wasn't stopping him as he moved on top of her, boxing her in - but he felt she wouldn't. It was himself that he wanted to stop...but he couldn't. He stared down at her soft features. Her legs slightly spread apart, welcoming him. The room was silent besides their breaths and rain dripping against the windows. And he felt something he had known before - that he wasn't going to stop himself if he wasn't asked to…

"Julia," he breathed, and she was looking up at him with that soft expresion, "I...Need you to say it's okay."

His emotions had been all over the place before. So desperate for her touch there had been little time to think it true. Julia only nodded until he ordered,

"Say it."

"It's okay,” She breathed easely, smoothing his hair away from his eyes.

And everything - the regret from that morning after that night, all of it. It seemed to pause. Melt. Disappear for a moment. He worked quickly, removing the upper layers down to his sleeveless shirt, adamant to keep the scars on his back hidden.

Julia was beginning to take off her jacket as well and he assisted, helping her peel it of easley. discarding it to the floor, then her shirt followed, exposing her upper body to him and his eyes darkened seeing she hadn't been using a bra. His thirsty gaze followed down to her jeans and she must have sensed what he was asking,

“It’s okay, Daryl.” Julia assured.

And there it was again, the way she said his name.

He obliged, unbuckling her belt, then grabbed the edges of her jeans, hiking them downwards. Her plump bottom slid out from underneath her, and he pulled them down enough to expose her. He moved to her side, and found her mouth...And for the first time since that night - he kissed her.

He made a sound into her mouth deep and rumbling as he pressed into it. Julia's skin was warm and welcoming against him, and he couldn't describe what relief it was...She had forgiven him and was willing. Her hands were caressing his cheek and a part of him wondered how she could let him touch her again when he had been so terrible to her after that morning. But the thought only remained a moment before he pulled from the kiss, breathing heavily and he pushed his clothed front against the curve of her bottom, seeking that warm contact he needed.

Julia arched herself closer against him, inhaling sharply as his hand traveled along her breast and squished. She was squirming under his touche, and he liked how sensitive she was. He had barely touched her and she was already shaking. His right hand stayed there squeezing as his left agonizingly slow moved down, down to the heat between her legs. She was dripping wet already, the feel of it made his head spin. He began to move two fingers in and out of her and he was terribly hard against her, but he was focused on making her fall apart on his fingers. But then he could feel her reaching down to where he was moving inside of her and he was taken by surprise. She moved his two fingers with hers and began to guide him, making rhythmic circles there, with a certain amount of pressure. In an instant he could feel how she began to twitch against him, and he watched with awe.

She was showing him how she liked it and then let go when he continued on. And just like that he washed her fall apart under his touche. He soaked up every expression, every little sound she made, letting her breathe it true, then kissed her gently. Leaning into her ear he breathed,

“You're amazing.”

He could feel how his pants had grown even tighter as he wrapped his mouth around hers and he gave her other breast a squeeze. She whimpered. Softly - and he wished it was louder. It still sounded as if she was biting the sounds back and when he pulled away from the kiss onely to unbuckle his belt and release himself from the tight confinement of his pants, he slid his hand along himself, stroking back and forth a few times as he moved so he was properly spooning her.

He gently took the edges of Julia’s underwear, sliding them downwards to where the jeans were bunched up under her bottom. She allowed it easily, and his hand moved to feel the wetness, making sure she was ready. He kissed her shoulder, whispering into her skin,

"You're safe...You don't have to be quiet.”

She nodded against him and he grabbed himself, slowly dragging along her folds. She was slick, and he felt her twitch at his movement. With an arm around her from underneath he pulled her flush against his chest. Her nimble fingers found their way around his forearm, gripping onto him as he started to elinine himself. Entering, he gasped,

“Fuck.”

He had to go painfully slow as he made his way inside of her. The feel of her arching against him and her holding onto him like a lifeline made warmth spread through his lower body, she was so…just soft, everywhere it seemed. Welcoming him. Daryl could hardly stand the tightness - with his free hand he dug fingers into her hips tightly as he let her adjust herself around him. Onely when he could feel her relax he began to move, but slowly, he wanted it to last as long as it could.

With every rock of his hips Daryl when’t as deep as her body would let him, earning a soft whine of pleasure from Julias lips - Daryl gasped as well. He continued to grunt, keeping the pace slow but firm. There was a muffled cry, hearing it he realized she was keeping sounds from him, prompting Daryl to yank her hand from her mouth and out came those pretty sounds, one after the other slipping past her lips. He felt a sense of pride in that, knowing he had brought them to the surface.

Passing her hand to his other, ensuring she would not attempt it a second time. He reached down and began making circles around her swollen bud as he continued his steady pace. Her body moved deeply in response to his fingers joining. Julia was squirming and her legs trembled. He kept it how she had showed him, soft...slow...with just the right amount of pressure and at the same time tried to have her there as long as he coulde. The sounds from her were slowly growing, and he felt his stomach flutter a bit, when he heard her say in a quiet plea,

"Daryl,” It was breathless, it sounded perfect coming from her.

He pushed himself deeper, his fingers moving more urgently, finding that perfect pace that made her soft whimpers grow louder..louder still. He quickened it even more when he heard her breath beginning to speed up, her head fell back into his shoulder and her thighs began to squish his hand in response. He went faster and faster, trying to get her to that point. Leaning near her ear, he encouraged,

“Good girl, almost there.”

It didn't take long after that before he felt her twitches, her cries turning into soft whimpers. Daryl let her ride it out against his fingers. And he relished in it, her body warm and sweaty like his own. And never before had he wished that he wasn't the way he was about his scars, badly craving to be skin to skin, but his shame would not let him.

Leaning down he found her panting mouth and offered a hard kiss. She returned the kiss- but it was far gentler despite the trembling state she was in. Pulling from the kiss her eyes were still closed in bliss, and Daryl asked softly,

“You okay?"

Julia’s dark eyes fluttered open,

“Yeah…”

It was breathy the way she said it. He kissed her again - he just wanted to keep on kissing her. A part of him wanted to whisper words that would leave them both feeling dirty for days- but there was another part that just wanted her to know how beautiful she was - how wonderful she felt and how much he enjoyed to be inside of her - to just…fuck her out of her mind. He wouldn't of course, as he had promised himself to be nothing but gentle, taking his time that he didn't in their last encounter.

As they kissed he guided her so she was laying on her back, his free arm held her under her knees, holding them up. Her arms reached to where he was still on his side, wrapping them around his neck and it felt like they fitted like a puzzle piece. It was like she was sitting on his lap, but lying down. He liked how he had her face at full display, and he could kiss her much easier this way. With his other arm, still underneath her head, he took the side of her face into his grasp, forcing her to look at him. And when she began to close her eyes, he ordered,

“Hey, you keep those pretty eyes on me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and her gaze was back on him.

“Good girl,” he praised. And a dark part of him liked how submissive she was.

Daryl couldn't hold out the slow pace for so much longer, it was too agonizing. He went just a bit faster, then a bit harder. Just a bit more he told himself. His hips were no longer rocking that steady pace into her making the sound of their bodies colliding come to life. The feel of her hot breath felt like feathers brushing along his face, as her fingers gripped onto the nap of his neck. Her touch was enough to make him want to go over the edge, watching her taking him so well as she held onto him as if her life depended on it - making it feel unfair for someone like him to be intimate with someone as perfect as her.

There was a particular whimper she made, that made his heart flutter every time, urging him faster and faster until eventually he simply couldn't stand it anymore. He removed his arm under her knees, adjusting Julia back into the spooning position as he continued, putting both his arms around her, tightly pushing her into his every trust. Julias head fell back as he continued to have her. Daryl planted a kiss on her face as he released his arm to spread her apart and quickened the pace even more, maybe being too rough as he slammed himself into her. Julia made a beautiful sound, arching even more for him to get better axes and Daryl held her tighter, spreading her cheeks to get to that perfect angle she seemed to like. Julia began to almost squirm her way out of his hold, as if she didn't know what else to do as the pleasure wracked her body. He heard her beg past her panting,

"Please..please..”

Daryl planted reshoring kisses down her neck then buried his forehead in her hair. She was tensing around him, and he felt his blood rushing in his ears in response to the feeling, pulling him closer to finish. Her hair felt so smooth and her scent enveloped his senses completely, his body started to become sloppy as he thrusted faster and more desperately the closer he came to climax. Julia was breathing so heavily, her sounds the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. Then something like electricity shot through his body. He groaned into her skin, tensing as he hugged her from behind, having her flush against him as he continued to rock true the climax. They were both sweating, his shirt and hair drenched in it - the smell of sex filing his nostrils. Her body was boneless against him as he continued to rock his hips just slightly.

Their chest was heaving rhythmically with one another and he could feel the wetness between her legs as he slipped out of her - and he wished he could stay in her warmth forever, holding her like this. His mind was fogged a bit, as he unburied his face from her hair and looked at her trembling mess.

Julia slid out his hold and turned to him with half lidded eyes, she truly was angelike, the afterglow having him infatuated with her boundless beauty. Daryl caressed her cheek affectionately and he didn't think she could ever fathom how much she meant...How her existence was one of the only things that mattered to him - how if he could have her every night, he would cease to need anything else. Her eyes began to draw heavy, as if exhaustion was finally cashing up. He pressed his mouth to her hairline and her eyes opened, she looked like she could fall asleep any second.

It had been far different from the first time - they had been through so much and he had thought he had almost lost her forever. He still wished he could do more to her - make her feel everything even though he had made her come three times this time. He smoothed back her dark curls, and she soaked in his touch with her eyes closed.

He was silent - almost frozen as he took in the beauty of her soft features. Until he quickly leaned forward, pressing a forceful kiss to her mouth, not gentle...He didn't know if his kisses ever were. She always seemed to be the one to force him to slow the insatiable desire to have more and more. She was too much, too kind, a safe haven between her legs and when it was over, he wished for more.

His thumb slid along her lips. And the thoughts of what had almost happened to her rushed in without warning. Truly, the thought of someone touching her the way he did made his mind flare in that same way that made him kill those asholes. The need to protect her, to keep her from harm's way in any form had grown into something that had begun to consume him - even bleed into his dreams if he failed. And he had never meant to treat her that way, it had been his attempt to protect her.

Selfishly he wanted every inch of her skin to be his. For him to be the only one that could ever pull any of those sounds from her. He must have disappeared into his thoughts when Julias hand slowly covered where he was smothering her hair, pausing his movement there. The glimmer in her eyes caught his attention sharply, it looked like she was about to cry and he feared he had hurt her somehow. Searching her face attentively, tilting her chin up Daryl questions,

“What’s wrong?”

A tear fell and he brushed it away just as quickly. She smiled sadly up at him and he questioned,

“Did I hurt yah?”

“No,” Julia denied, shaking her haid.

But something was, he could tell.

Her hand brushed away the hair covering his eyes, then moved along his face, then along his stubble, her thumb slid along his mouth, but she was much more delicate in her way of touching. No hurry behind it, just the attentive softness of her way of doing things. It almost felt even more intimate than being inside of her. Just the feeling of her made him feel a sense of safety he had never felt before and he desperately craved it, having been deprived of it his whole life. She continued on, some kind of emotion behind the words,

“I’m happy…But I’m…”

Daryl felt bothe confusion and worry to her words, and he just needed her to spit it out so he could fix it,

“But what?” Daryl questioned, desperate to get to the route of the problem.

Her brows came together and it came out so small from her lips…

“..Scared. Please don't wake up tomorrow and regret me.”

He felt guilt down to his core. Shaking his head he shushed her as gently as he could. He was beginning to learn how to comfort her, how to be gentle like she had with him.

"No, No, I won't. And I never did.” He confessed.

Julia blinked up at him in disbelief,

“But you said-

Daryl cout her of before she could finish,

“Fuck what I said,” he took a hold of her face, “I never regretted you and that’s the truth. You hear’n me.”

Julia searched his eyes carefully, maybe she was still in disbelief?

“You sure you're not saying that just because you feel sorry?”

“Yes,” Daryl insisted.

Then for the first time in a long time she gave him a true smile. God her mood swings were giving him whiplash. He gathered her into his chest. His arms enveloping her form as he snuggled his chin into the crook of her neck unintentionally making her giggle in response. He liked how happy it made her sound so he repeated the motion, making her bubble with laughter.

“Stop it Daryl! That tickles!” Julia laughs and Daryl chuckles, holding her in place so she couldn't escape.

Her laughter created butterflies in his stomach and only when she was out of breath he gave her a chance to breathe. He looked at her with affection he had never felt before, he looked at her exposed body and he could see goosebumps forming there.

“You cold?” He asked.

“A bit.”

And without a word he sat up and began helping her with getting her jeans back on. He had been the one to remove them, so he thought it was only reasonable for him to do so. Finishing with her shirt over her head he laid down and siped the sleeping bag back together, cocooning them as he held her close and spooned her. He felt her relax against him, her head becoming heavy on top of his arm. Her curls were everywhere. There was so much of it, he carefully gathered it and smoothed it away from his face. He could hear her breathing even out - then as if half asleep, almost innocently she said…

“You're so warm. You’re like your own sun.”

Daryl hummed with his eyes closed, feeling sleep taking a hold of him too. Snuggling his nose into her hair he said,

“Julia, it's time to sleep.”

But Julia never responded, having drifted away into the world of dreams, and he wondered if she had been asleep all along.

Pt.11 Masterlist

[lucid-loves]

Taste Like Venom ~ Simon "Ghost" Riley Part 6

Pairing: Ghost x assassin!reader (fem!reader, no use of y/n, callsign “Hex”)

Word Count: 4.8k

CW: angst, violence, blood, strong language, scars, enemies to lovers trope, slow burn, fluff, clear attraction and sexual tension, smut later on, reader POV and ghost POV, minors dni, Soap lives in this AU

Let me know if I missed any CWs.

Story Synopsis: After Makarov gets away once again, Laswell decides to force a favor from you, the world’s greatest assassin and best-kept secret. You are now expected to help the 141 with taking down Makarov in addition to playing nice with them. It’s hard to play nice when you have always worked alone. It doesn’t help that one of the team members, Ghost, gets curious about you in each interaction. 

Chapter Synopsis: Kate calls you with some news about the mole. Ghost stops by your room a couple hours before you are all meant to leave in order to spend some more private time with you. When everyone leaves to board the early train to Paris, he is still adamant about sticking to your side. 

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Part 7 ~ Part 8 ~ Part 9 ~ Part 10

Dinner went smoothly. A little awkward for you, but fine. You mainly just listened to the conversations, not feeling comfortable enough to include yourself just yet. The 141 respected your boundary, only cracking jokes and discussing things that showed off their personalities. Kyle was the most mellow out of the group, despite being the youngest. Soap was definitely the loudest, a jokester. At least he was confident. Price was level-headed but sharp. He wasn’t afraid to tease his team when the opportunity was just right.

And Ghost? You got to see a new side of him. One that was more open around his teammates. Considerate, but snarky every now and then. Dry, blunt, caring. The side you were already familiar with though was still there at dinner. The entire time during dinner, he secured himself right beside you, close to you. He didn’t seem all that happy when Kyle sat next to you on your other side too. Every so often, Ghost’s leg would brush against yours, the exuding heat making you shiver. He really ran warm.

At some point, you caught on that he was brushing his leg against yours on purpose. He did it every time Gaz ended up bumping your shoulder during a fit of chuckles, completely by accident. It didn’t bother you too much, having grown more comfortable around the men as time passed during dinner. 

However, it completely bothered Ghost. He knew that Kyle didn’t mean any harm. He most likely wasn’t realizing that he was doing it. Yet, it still bothered him. He’s the only one that wanted the privilege of touching you. By accident or on purpose. It scared him a little, the sinking feeling he got every time Gaz’s shoulder brushed against yours. The feeling of jealousy. He didn’t know that he was the jealous type. 

Once dinner was over, everyone retreated back to their bedrooms to try to get some rest in. Ghost lied in his bed, Soap having taken over the shower as soon as they got back to the room. He closed his eyes, trying to see if he could actually rest up. 

Simon has always struggled with sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he would see nightmares. Experiences that he has gone through that he wouldn’t even wish upon his enemies. The flashbacks were a bit more tolerable when his eyes were just resting. They were just images in his mind. It was when he actually fell asleep that his nightmares came to life. There have been plenty of moments where he would jump up in bed, clutching his chest and trying to get his panicked breathing under control. Sometimes his skin even twitched painful from where he would be stabbed, shot, or even bitten within his dreams. 

He’s always dreaded sleeping. However, this time, when he closed his eyes and took deep breaths, he didn’t see his past behind his eyelids. He saw you. You tossing him the book you’re letting him borrow, you starting the fire in the cabin, you listening intently to confidential conversations, you giving him a teasing smile with the sunset behind you. He even saw you on top of him, hips pressed against his and a knife to his chest. Before he knew it, he was imagining a replay of that entire situation, only this time, you were dressed in only your panties and t-shirt like the first day he met you. Your t-shirt would weigh down with gravity as you would straddle him. He would have been able to see your cleavage. The thin fabric of your underwear would drive him crazy too. It would make him want to just rip them to shreds just to see all of you without a barrier. 

All of these thoughts were involuntary, but Ghost was having a hard time trying to stop them once they started. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of the shower turning off that he opened his eyes back up to stop the dirty film in his mind. When he sat up and looked down, he cursed under his breath. Really? A fucking boner? Again? What were you doing to him? 

He got up and shifted his pants just as Soap came out of the bathroom, feeling refreshed and ready for some sleep. When he saw his lieutenant standing and putting on some boots, he raised his brow curiously. “You going somewhere, Lt?”

“Gonna walk around a little. Burn some extra energy.” He made up, hoping the excuse would be enough for Soap to drop it. Hopefully, Soap wouldn’t look too closely at him either. 

Johnny nodded and headed towards the room’s mini-fridge, helping himself to an ice cold water bottle. As Simon left, Soap didn’t notice the slight bulge in his pants. Although, he did notice the lieutenant walking a little differently. Not unlike the way most boys had to walk when they were trying to hide something they couldn’t control due to puberty. He held his breath to avoid laughing. Right up until the door was closed with a click. Soap never thought that he would see Ghost so down bad for anyone.

Simon headed up to the rooftops to get some alone time. He’s been meaning to find some more time to finish the book you lent him. Finding a comfortable spot leaning against the wall, he cracked open the book and began to read, a military-grade flashlight illuminating the words on the page.

~

The time ticked slowly through the night, having you wonder if time had actually stopped. There were still a couple of hours left before it was time to check-out, so you tried to fill the time as best as you could. You just stepped out of the shower, a long, warm one. You normally took quick showers that were lukewarm at best. When it was the hotel paying the hot water bill, however, you didn’t really care about how long your shower was or how hot the water rushed. 

It was heaven feeling the water pressure massage your tense muscles. The scent of clean steam and soap helped you relax as well. You weren’t one for the standard, generic soaps that most hotels provided. You preferred your own scents, your own soaps that you were accustomed to. The scents that helped you feel most comfortable in your own scarred skin.

By the time you turned off the shower, your fingertips had turned pruny and you were craving a cold beverage. Wrapping a towel around your frame, you stepped back out into the beverage to pick a fruit juice from the fridge. As you sipped, the phone on your desk started to vibrate. There was only one person in the world that could call you. If she was calling at this hour, it must’ve been important. 

“Kate.” You greeted nonchalantly. 

“Hex, how are you doing?” She started with small talk. She always started with some small talk with you before discussing the important matters. Usually it was because she had to butter you up so she could ask for a favor. 

Lucky for her, you didn’t mind it. “I’m fine. We’re making good progress with the mission. I’ve been getting to know the boys too. They’re not half bad.”

You could practically feel Kate beaming through the phone at your confession. She was incredibly excited for you. “That’s great to hear! I figured that you would get along with them better than anyone else. I told you they were good men.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. There’s still a lot to do and a lot I don’t know. I haven’t given them my complete seal of approval yet.” You teased, a small smile gracing your own face as you imagined how happy Kate was. You couldn’t remember the last time you witnessed her smile.

She gave a warm laugh before clearing her throat. “John has told me about what he thinks of you as well as how you’ve been interacting with the team. It was a rocky start, but he told me that you had dinner with them tonight. Really, Hex. I think this is good for you. They’re good for you.”

“Anyway, talking about this isn’t the only reason why I called. I wanted to give you an update on our potential mole situation.” She continued, her tone shifting to proud and carefree to serious and grave.

You took a seat on your bed, preparing to hear the report. “And?”

Laswell paused for a while before releasing a shaky breath. “At the original checkpoint where you were supposed to pick up an armored vehicle, there was an ambush waiting. Makarov’s men. The vehicle wasn’t stolen, so there is no way that they were just there to steal military property. Their only reason for being there was to apprehend the 141.”

“So we have a mole situation after all.” You groaned. When it came to things like this, you hated being proven right. It wasn’t like you liked these kinds of things happening, waiting to brag like a child. This was serious.

“Your hunch was right and you have proven it. The only people that knew where the 141 was going and where they were supposed to be were me and Shepherd. Shepherd doesn’t suspect that I have been turning in false paperwork, but he has questioned me on where you guys were. I think in his panic, he bought my lie. He seemed spooked.” She elaborated in detail.

“Have you told the boys yet?” You inquired. From her tone, it sounded like she hadn't.

“Negative. I figured that you should break the news. Besides, I don’t have anything concrete yet. If tried in court, Shepherd could brush it off as a mere coincidence. Legally, I have to be careful with who I tell and how I say things. I’m going to keep digging on my end, see about getting something on record. You guys just keep going. Take down Makarov.” She decided, her determination clear in her decision. Kate wasn’t one to let these kinds of things brush under the rug. Her sense of justice was too strong for that, even if Shepherd was her superior.

You trusted her to get the job done. She was really risking her job with this one. The least you could do was play a little secretary for her. “Got it. Thanks, Kate. And be careful. If Shepherd is willing to release confidential information to Makarov for his own gain, who knows what else he may do to ensure that no one finds out.”

“Thanks for the warning, Hex, but I don’t think I have anything to worry about. I have an assassin on my side after all. The best in the world.” She claimed, her tone light again.

She wished you good night and hung up, leaving you to process the turn of events. It was going to be tough breaking the news to the team. You could imagine that they were going to get very angry when they finally do know. 

You got up from your bed to finally get changed. Just as you were picking out some underwear, there was a knock on your door. Without thinking much of it, you yelled out. “Come in.”

Ghost unlocked the door and waltzed right in only to see you in nothing but a fluffy towel. He reacted to his surprise with anger. “What the fuck, Hex? Why would you invite me in if you were still naked?!”

“A good soldier shouldn’t get distracted by nudity.” You reminded him with a casual shrug.

“Hex.” He simply warned with your call sign, his eyes roaming your body. He could see more scars covering you than before, your full arms, shoulders, and some chest now exposed to him. God, he wanted to trace every scar you had with his tongue. At the same time, he wanted to strangle you.

You rolled your eyes and scoffed, proceeding to prepare to finally get dressed. “If it really bothers you that much, then turn around for a minute. There are more important things to worry about right now.”

He grumbled curses under his breath. How dare you put him in such a dangerous situation! Either he turned around and admitted that it did bother him, or he watched you change. For him, it meant sacrificing some pride while the other meant sacrificing his cool. And he just recently calmed down his dirty thoughts of you too. 

To you, it really didn’t matter. He had already confessed that he cared about you as a teammate. He wanted you safe. What did you have to worry about in this situation? 

In the end, he opted to turn halfway around. He could still see you just out of the corner of his eye, but he tried to keep his gaze straight. Still though, he ached to see you. Even the blurry figure of you nude was such a fucking tease.

You dropped the towel and slipped on some underwear followed by a shirt with a different band on the front. Briefly, you looked over to Simon who stood with his arms crossed, clearly irritated. You contemplated putting on some pants for a moment before ultimately deciding against it. You preferred to be comfortable at night. When he heard you sitting down on the bed, he turned back around.

He didn’t know what drove him crazier. You completely nude, you in nothing but a towel, or you in pajamas that just left a little something to his imagination. How infuriatingly attractive.

“Might want to take a seat for what I’m about to tell you.” You gestured to the desk chair, waiting for him to take a seat. When he settled himself in, hands strategically placed in his lap, you began with your update.

“Kate just called. She said that Makarov’s men were planted at the original checkpoint, hoping to ambush you. Shepherd is definitely a mole given the circumstance, but she needs time to gather more evidence that would hold up in court.” You pulled the band-aid right off. Your bluntness was usually something that knocked people off their feet. Hence, the offer to sit.

Ghost sat in silence, feeling betrayed. He wasn’t surprised. Not in the slightest. Ever since Shepherd allowed Shadow Company to take over in Mexico, he’s never trusted him again. Soap and himself almost died from that incident. More than once too. When Shepherd disappeared afterward, Ghost thought he was a coward. Lucky though. If Shepherd stuck around, Simon would’ve most likely lost his shit on him if one of his teammates didn’t do it first. 

He clenched his fists, knuckles cracking menacingly. He could kill someone. Specifically Shepherd. All he could think about now was wrapping his hands around his neck and squeezing down as hard as he could. Hard enough to have his eyes pop out of his skull. “Fucking Shepherd. . .”

You weren’t surprised by his reaction. It was exactly how you expected to go. Anyone would be upset about this. Especially the 141. You’ve read those mission reports. You knew about what transpired in Mexico. However, you were worried that Simon was going to pop a blood vessel. You wanted to make sure that Laswell got back her down deposit on the hotel rooms too. 

Simon didn’t notice you getting up, his vision only seeing red. Once you softly touched his shoulder, though, all he could see was you. Your hair still damp, your eyes more warm, and your fresh scent flooding his senses. It calmed him down, his blood pressure going down. Yet, his heart didn’t slow. In fact, it seemed to quicken even more at your proximity to him. Your scars, your hint of cleavage, your thighs. You exposed so much on the surface. But he wanted to explore your depths.

He stood up from the chair, almost causing it to fall over from his force. Your quick step back wasn’t fast enough to escape Simon’s reach. In less than a second, he threw off his mask, grabbed your face, and smashed his lips against yours. He couldn’t fight his attraction to you anymore. He wanted everything from you and he wanted it now.

It startled to be kissed so suddenly. To be grabbed and pulled towards him. He should’ve known better by now. At first, you growled in protest, fight mode kicking in as your natural instinct. You haven’t yet registered what he exactly was doing. Hands gripped his firm shoulders tightly, prepared to push him away. Once your brain flashed with the image of his face, you finally melted. 

You only managed to see his face for a split second, but it was more than enough to know that he was devastatingly handsome. A strong jaw, light stubble, and a couple of scars that told a story. His lips were perfect too, just as you had imagined. Not only to see, but to kiss as well. Mostly soft, just a little rough, all sweet.

As soon as you relaxed, Simon wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you closer to his chest and letting his hand roam your back. Instead of easing up, he just dived deeper, his kisses getting more passionate with each second. It was making you lightheaded, moans threatening to escape as you began to feel your brain go numb. He barely gave you time to breathe as he continued to deepen the kiss, his own senses becoming heightened to how you felt on his lips.

Without warning, his hands slipped underneath your shirt to feel your bare back, causing you to gasp and shiver. Simon took advantage of your shock and slipped his tongue into your mouth, his heart going wild with the sweetness of your warm taste. You let out an involuntary moan as he took over your mouth which was more than just music to Ghost’s ears. It was the sound of heaven on earth. And he wanted to replay it like a skipping record.

Your legs were getting weak with each swipe of his tongue, the fear of having your knees buckle taking over. While you tried to grab his attention by tapping his shoulders, he just ignored you. That, or he didn’t notice. He was too busy exploring every inch of your mouth. Licking, sucking, and even biting. You were trembling with pure pleasure at this point, something that he absolutely relished with all his being. He loved feeling each shudder go through you. He loved being able to trace it up your spine to only cause more quivering. It didn’t take much longer for you to begin feeling your panties get damp with your wetness. You were practically dripping already.

It wasn’t like Simon wasn’t affected either. Pressed up against you was his rock-hard erection. One that was impossible to hide or make excuses for. 

As soon as he bit your lip in a heated impulse, you pushed him back to catch your breath. Your chest heaved, trying to fill your lungs with air. He left you breathless. “Fucking hell, Simon! You’re gonna suffocate me! You gotta let a girl have some air.”

Jesus, you needed to sit down. Your legs were shaking like a newborn deer. If you didn’t take a seat, you may very well fall to the floor. While you caught your breath on the bed, Simon went to turn the lights off. While he didn’t mind showing you his face for a moment, he wanted to return to some of his comfort zone. He had a feeling that you would prefer the comfort of the dark too for what he was about to do to you.

As the lights went out, your eyes strained to adjust to the dark. Your stomach was flooded with butterflies, your heart raced, and your skin tingled. You could hear the rustle of clothing, Simon deciding that his shirt was no longer necessary. Through the dark with adjusted vision, you could see Simon approaching you once again. His whole torso was covered in scars as well. The tattoos covering his whole forearm probably camouflage even more. Besides that, his muscles were defined, his chest and abs revealed in all their glory. This wasn’t just the body of a man. This was the body of a soldier. 

You would be lying if you said you weren’t a little scared of what was most likely going to happen. It has been a very, very long time since you’ve been with anyone. Not since fooling around in high school and a little bit right after. “W-Wait, Simon-”

“I’m not waiting and I’m not sorry.” He cut you off, his voice gruff, unapologetic. His voice was closer than you thought, the deep vibration of his vocal chords going right through you. Before you could protest further, he pushed you down on the bed, towering over you with his ripped 6’3” frame. 

Instead of your lips, he went straight for your neck, quickly finding out just how sensitive you were there as he aggressively kissed it. Your back arched, torso pressing against his as he fulfilled his desires. You bit your lip, trying to mute any moan that may escape past your lips. When his hands went up your shirt to grope your breasts, you whimpered, voice shuttering. You weren’t used to this. This lack of control. This feeling of being consumed. But Christ, did it feel so good. Especially with Ghost. Regardless, you needed his attention in order to let him know what to expect if you were to go further. “S-Simon!”

The sound of you whimpering his name made him freeze. He daydreamed about that sound. Hearing it in real life had him reeling. It had his cock twitch in anticipation too. You really fucking turned him on, whether you knew it or not. As much as he wanted to keep going, he finally gave you a chance to speak up. Hopefully, this wouldn’t take long. “Hex?”

Ghost’s own breathlessness when he said your name made your heart skip a beat. You clenched your thighs together, feeling some slickness that ended up dripping from your weeping pussy. You needed to say your piece before it’s too late. “I. . . I haven’t done something like this in forever. . .”

You trailed off, wanting to say more but you couldn’t organize the thoughts that were scrambled in your head. He made you weak. Excited. As much as you wanted desperately to keep going, there was a small part of you that couldn’t ignore the fact that you were scared. You were scared to be so vulnerable again. More than you were now. You were just beginning to open up about your personality after all.

Simon swallowed hard, noticing your apprehension. He wanted to punch himself for rushing you. For pouncing on you like a wild animal in heat. He wasn’t sorry before, but he was definitely sorry now. It made his heart ache. “You don’t want to continue, do you?”

“It’s not that simple. If I’m being honest, I want more. Fuck, I want it all. I haven’t felt this fucking excited in years. I just. . . There’s something stopping me from giving all of myself away so suddenly. . .” You tried to explain, each word out of your mouth strained. Why couldn’t it be more simple? Why couldn’t you just say “fuck it” and have the night of your life?

Ghost was amazing. Sure, you two have fought. Your fights could cause earthquakes with how intense they got. At the same time, he was strong, confident, handsome, and alluring. He hasn’t minded that you have pressed a knife against him twice already. He hasn’t cared about you biting at him with each attempt of getting close to you. He’s been stubborn and patient with you. Most people would have been scared away by now. Most people would’ve left by now. 

Yet, you still didn’t trust him completely yet due to your fears. What was that fear though? Besides being afraid of being vulnerable, what else did you fear?

His hand landed on your cheek with much more gentleness than before. He helped guide your eyes to look at him. In the depths of the dark, you could still see his blues. Vibrant like a midnight blue full of stars. His gaze has softened too. 

Your breath caught in your throat as he looked at you with such tenderness. Such remorse for what he has done to you. His small smile, though, conveyed optimism. 

Jesus, you could cry. You were starting to fall for him. 

“It’s okay, Hex. I’m sorry for pushing for something you clearly weren’t ready for. I let my emotions get the better of me. The truth is, I find you irresistible. I didn’t kiss you because I needed relief from my anger over Shepherd. I kissed you because I’ve wanted to for a while now.” He explained with full transparency, something you deserved. He wasn’t ready to admit any deeper feelings that were growing within his heart. He couldn’t make complete sense of it yet. For now, we would keep those confusing feelings hidden, but he won’t hide his attraction any longer.

He got up off of you and rubbed the back of his neck, just now feeling slightly embarrassed for his actions. He couldn’t get the kiss out of his head just yet. Nor the sound of your moans or the softness of your breasts. Simon wouldn’t be able to forget any of that any time soon.

Slowly, you sat up, adjusting your shirt that was hiked up pretty high. “Thanks for understanding. I just need more time.”

Your hand was taken up in his, a little squeeze grabbing your attention again. “I promised you that we would take things slow. I broke that promise just now. Not again.”

Relief washed over you like a tidal wave. Finally, you could breathe easier. Being with him still did things to your head and heart. Something that you would address in solitude later. Right now, you still wanted him to be with you. “What did you originally knock on my door for?”

His shoulders fell as you slowly turned back into your calm state. He loved driving you crazy in more ways than one. However, he liked you calm too. It was something he fed off of along with your other emotions. “I finished the book you recommended. I came to talk about it.”

“Well, we still have time before we have to head out. Wanna talk about it now?”

~

The train station platform was deserted. Most people were still sleeping comfortably in their beds. 

Not the 141. Not Makarov’s weapon guys either. 

They haven’t noticed any of you as you dressed in civilian clothes. Even Simon switched his balaclava for a simpler face mask, complete with a lower skull print as part of his brand. The military luggage was swapped out for regular travel luggage as well. Truly, you all looked like tourists. Maybe even residents.

You had told the rest of them about your call with Kate discreetly during check-out. Now more than ever, they wanted to take Makarov down. It would most likely lead to Shepherd’s arrest as well. They were willing to do whatever it takes, even if it meant taking your fashion advice when it was time to wear civilian clothes. You guys were in Italy. American-styled casuals weren’t going to cut it.

Makarov’s men sat in the boxcar two up from yours. Price planned on sneaking into the luggage cart to find their shipment to place trackers on later during breakfast service.You would be on the lookout when he does. Ghost would be the one to place the trackers on the men. Gaz, and Soap would check to see if they worked through their laptops within the safety of their seats. 

As of now, you all sat in a car together, waiting patiently for your opportunities. You took the window seat, looking out at the platform that eventually began to slowly pass once the train started. Ghost was sat right next to you, ensuring that you could feel the warmth of his side against you. He would make sure that this would be his spot for the rest of the ride. 

-

Taglist: @eatingtheworldsoffanfiction @dory-98 @cum-tea-and-towels @completelymarveltrash @watersquirtpewpewboomm @thychuvaluswife @sweetheart-im-the-boss @anotherrickinthewall @bluewinter39 @fortunatelydecadentstudent @transparentsheepsheep @rhaenryawhore @randomlyblues @issssawrap @lachimolalaa3 @callsign-pyro @corruptcrybaby @kdadss @lexuria @dookiedanish

[accio-bagel]

✧ MC Intro Post ✧

I finally filled these out for my lil criminal 💚

Explanations & more info (ramblings) + her presets below the cut for anyone interested.

✧ Family ✧

Does not talk about it. Will either be evasive about her history or outright lie about it if asked. An only child born to parents who didn’t want her, and when it became apparent she had no magic they they cast her out as a Squib. Hadn’t spoken or seen them since, and has no idea whether they're alive or not. Never fitting into the wizarding world or muggle society, she always dreamed of a better life for herself - the life she was supposed to live at Hogwarts.

Struggling to take care of herself after being abandoned by her family, she resorted to petty crime to survive, then more often upon discovering she was rather good at it. At age 15, her first accidental magic outburst involved a chase with authorities after pressing her luck one too many times, resulting in Fig finding her on the streets of London, panicking after she'd suddenly turned a policeman into a chicken. Professor Dad Fig took her in during the summer before term began at Hogwarts.

✧ Patronus ✧

Some associations with crows: gregarious, intelligent, creative problem-solvers, mysterious, deceptive, mischievous, manipulative, intuitive, and adaptable. Symbolic of community and loyalty, change and transformation, magic and the supernatural. Conflicting interpretations as harbingers of death or omens of fate, destiny, and good luck. They never forget a face, and will reward those who help them or may punish those who harm them. I also couldn't resist the connection between crows' habit of stealing and collecting shiny objects, and of course a flock of crows is called a Murder. 

✧ Classes ✧

She loves learning magic now that she's got the opportunity. Strives to do well at Hogwarts and wants to impress her professors and peers. Open-minded about magic of all kinds.

Charms is her absolute favorite, the most useful and enjoyable form of magic for her. Defense follows closely, as she's got an innate gift for dueling and developed a bit of an ego about it - especially enjoys teasing Sebastian about kicking his ass. Ever pragmatic, she also knows how important the subject is and wants to add to her repertoire of spells.

It's not her strongest subject naturally, but she loves Potions. She can follow a recipe well and works hard at it. While she finds Garreth's experiments interesting and doesn't mind stealing for him, for her own self-preservation she doesn't ever sit at his station, nor will she risk Sharp's wrath again by stealing from his office. Everyone knows she is Sharp's favorite student by the year's end, though he denies it.

History isn't uninteresting to her - it’s just Professor Binns is too boring for her to stay awake through class.

✧ Personality ✧

😉 Charismatic and persuasive, comes across as highly confident (faking it til she makes it.) She isn't shy about walking up to talk to someone she finds interesting, loves spending time with a small group of friends, and prefers a partner in crime on her adventures. That said, she is quite independent and needs plenty of alone time to think and recharge.

🧠 She prefers efficient, not lazy. She's highly active with her chosen activities and will take the lead naturally, but it has to be worth her while for her to put in the effort. She'll also take nearly any advantage given to her, especially in high-stakes situations.

💁🏻‍♀️ She wishes she were stylish and tidy, but it doesn’t come naturally and she hasn’t got the time (would rather get the extra 10 minutes of sleep in the mornings.) She starts the day looking relatively put-together, but you'll usually see her looking disheveled from running around, waistcoat askew, hair coming loose, boots dirty, possibly a bit banged up from her adventuring. Leaves half-drunk cups of coffee lying around the RoR and laundry on her dormitory floor. Handwriting is atrocious, she uses an enchanted quill to make her essays legible.

😾 Not that grouchy but can't say she's very nice, either. She isn't taking on extra tasks just out of the kindness of her heart - she needs to get paid or receive something else in exchange. Snarky and sarcastic, somewhat selfish, mocks/teases/messes with people (told Zenobia she’d keep her gobstones, then said jk lol, and gave them back.) Anger issues rage blackouts when pushed to her limit. She's got soft spots though - especially for animals/beasts, orphans, and freckles. Will do anything for her closest friends even if she gives them a hard time.

🤔 Generally weighs the risks of what she's getting herself into before acting. Stealthy and strategic, usually likes to silently petrify a few enemies to even the odds before taking on a group. She's prioritizing protecting herself and her friends rather than foolishly charging into unnecessary danger, balancing out her more reckless companions. Again, if one of her loved ones is in danger she won’t hesitate to dive in and help them.

😏 Mischievous, jokes a lot, a bit silly. Likes breaking rules. She's made many a daring escape with a smile on her face, will turn to her mates and laugh together once they've made it out alive. Taunts and goads her opponents in duels to throw them off. While very capable of deep thoughts and feelings, she covers hurt with humor and doesn’t often let it show.

🏃🏻‍♀️Athletic. Fast runner and climber, she regularly outpaces Sebastian “out-of-breath” Sallow on their outings. An evasive and agile fighter, swiftly dodging all over the place before striking. Quick on a broom, joins the Quidditch team in sixth year as Keeper (and acknowledges the irony here.) Has her clumsy moments when she's not paying attention or had too many Butterbeers, accidentally breaking a vase at the bottom of the stairs in the Slytherin common room on more than one occasion.

✧ Extras ✧

Amortentia scents: autumn rain, butterbeer, and smoke

Her scent: green apple and lilac

Bisexual who flirts with everyone, to the point that it's hard to tell when she actually means it. No time to properly court anyone during fifth year but she has many fleeting fancies and won't readily admit to real feelings. All of this inevitably leads to confusion on all sides.

Goes insane for the food at Hogwarts after years of barely scraping by, eating stolen food and scraps. Always snacking to keep her energy up with how much running around she does. If she misses a meal, something is very wrong. 

Funny (at least she thinks so) and uses humor as a coping mechanism.

Loves cats. Pets all the cats.

Loves puns and will give a genuine laugh at a particularly good one.

Constantly running late, much to the chagrin of all her friends.

Drinks like a fish and smokes an occasional cigarette. Swears like a sailor.

Likes to dance but isn't very good at it.

Has an academic rivalry with @cheyplaysgames’s mc, Freddie Harpis (AU/HCU)

As Sharp says, Wiggenweld doesn't fix everything, so I imagine her gaining quite a few permanent scars over the course of her fifth year. Significant mentions are a cut brow courtesy of Rookwood and some burns on her body from Solomon.

After her hair was partially singed during the battle with Ranrok, she cut it short for a drastic change.

Girl is not doing very well after everything she went through, especially losing Fig. Not sleeping, not eating enough, and prone to thousand-yard stares. She will need time to heal, plus a lot of help from her new chosen family.

✧Future ✧

Ellie is very ambitious and she knows her strengths. She wants to live up to the reputation she's built for herself as a powerful witch, and wants to be known for more than what she went through in her fifth year. Taking time to make a name for herself as a Curse Breaker, she'll spend several years in the field before coming back to Hogwarts as Charms Professor when Ronen retires.

💚 If you have read any of this, I love and appreciate you so much! I have more to say about her but this was already too long so maybe I’ll do a part 2 or something.

✧ Presets ✧

5th Year:

6th Year changes:

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 60

Wow we really made it 60 days huh?

Okay so i’m not gonna yap long for this part. You saw the image, you see the read under. This is a small comic adaptation of @vanadisvalentine’s “Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed” fanfic. And it adapts the end of Chapter 4 which is pretty fuckin pivotal in that story. So if you haven’t read that fic yet I’m actually begging you, please read it and don’t let this comic be your first experience.

Second warning, this is going to be a long one. How long? Who knows. I haven’t written it yet, but this Day represents one of the biggest turning points in the whole project for me. 

When you click the read under you’re gonna get just the comic, and then you're gonna get hit with a gigantic fucking wall of text. I apologize in advance for the amount of rambling I’m about to do but I got a lot to say here.

Okay so you read the comic, you ready? Cause not only am I gonna yap about making that comic along with all the behind the scenes stuff, (amidst other tangents), but I’m also going to talk about the fic this is based on. This is probably going to feel a bit disorganized but i’ll try my best to keep this legible. Apologies in advance.

So your first thought is probably “Jem why the fuck did you do that?” and you’re correct for thinking that way. Rest assured, you’re going to ask that question again later but significantly louder and more exasperated in the future. 

Answer is simple though. I wanted to do something big for Number 60, cause every 10 images I wanna do something Big. For Number 50 I came out of retirement and wrote a fanfic and some art to go with it. So I wanted to go up. How do i go up? Well I am a comic artist, and making a webcomic is my general goal in life and what directs me forward. Sooo, why not a comic?

Okay but a comic of what? Well, why not a fanfic? And at the time the real answer was obvious.

There are Three Fanfics made for Junkan that are pivotal to this entire event. Without all three of them combined ya’ll would not be having Junkan art pop up in your feed every day, questioning what the hell is in my bloodstream to make me draw all this. The answer is Junkan, junkan is in my bloodstream.

I plan to talk about all three of those fics in this event, in as much detail as I can muster. That said not only are we going in reverse order, as todays fic “Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed” is the last piece of the puzzle for why I went off the deep end and drew this much Junkan. But also the other two fics aren’t gonna be discussed for a long time due to their placement in the event order. I’m talking within the last ten days. Oops.

But at the time it was, pretty fucking easy to choose this one to adapt. The other two either wouldn’t really fit my style that I had been working with up to that point, or were just not made to be a comic without way more energy.

And as a reminder this was before I had actually gotten to know some of ya’ll. Within the realm of Junkan Val was the only friend I had. I did have other people who liked DR and were on board with Junkan after I showed them my supply and stated my case, but Val was the only person I knew at the time who was as brainrotted for this ship as I am, granted I think she has like, a normal amount of brainrot. I think by the end of the project I’ve fully snapped and now I can’t stop thinking about these two, like I have actually tried to stop thinking about them but they keep popping up. What was I talking about- Right! Point is, you can consider Day 60, or as I would call it in casual conversation “The 22 Page Junkan Comic,” my most excessive thankyou to her for helping me stay motivated throughout the project and playing a massive part in its inspiration.

As for making the comic.

It was a very bold mix of “I’m having the time of my life” and “Hell,” that's the shortest way I could put it. The longest way? Wellll

So by this point I wasn’t just showing these pics to Val alone. I had a few friends even before Val who I showed the art too. I’d get compliments and feedback and all that nice stuff that keeps me going.

As I’ve stated in the past (i think) one of the hardest parts of this project for me was the lack of validation for my efforts. I do not make art purely to be complimented, I make art in order to hopefully bring a smile to someones face. However I do still take a lot of joy when I see my art being positively received, it shows that my efforts were worth it. Seeing peoples reactions helps me remember why I’m doing this and that I’m doing a good job at it. So if I  don’t get a lot of that, especially on something i put a lot of effort into, it can be a little demoralizing. It’s something I’ve tried to work past during this year, but at the time it was a big issue. Day 60 took around 2 weeks to finish, as I was managing other projects and commission work at the time. The whole time I barely showed anyone, Val was obvious because this was a surprise gift for her, however the rest is because I was very adamant about not spoiling the Fic it was based on, and say for a single person amidst the people I would show these pics to none of them had read the fic. So I went from showing a small handful of people these to showing one guy (admittedly one of my best friends) for the span of 2 weeks while grinding away at the comic. It wasn’t until the very tail end that my girlfriend surprised me by reading the fic, meaning I could show her as well finally. 

Was it worth starving myself of a majority of positive feedback for 2 weeks when I haven’t had to do something like that for years? Oh god yes but we’re not there yet I still need to talk about the actual comic.

So when you compare the fic to the comic you’ll notice I skipped a decent portion of this scene, this is mostly just for the sake of not making this take too long, I think I picked a pretty solid starting point but also I won’t lie and say there isn’t a part of me that wishes I took like an extra week or two to adapt the whole scene sometimes. Sometimes.

Mukuro acted as the pseudo cover for the comic, both because it was a small detail noted in the scene that she was watching the door, and because I could call back to the “Mukuro Notes” bit I did on the Vampire Junkan comic, which seemed like a cute call back. I also used this as a way to skip past some of the initial dialogue of the scene in terms of adaptation. I’m really happy with how this page turned out visually, I remember having to fiddle with Mukuro’s anatomy and smaller details for awhile.

As you can probably tell, like usual the art for this was still being done as a sketch which I colored rather than what I do in my usual comic stuff, that being Sketch > Lines > Colors > Shading. I did shade a few of these pages cause I think the extra effort was warranted for some pages. I wouldn’t know this without like, actually time traveling to check but I think there was even a time this would be just uncolored sketches. Clearly that didn’t last because yeah, the chick who’s drawing 100 days worth of junkan art is going to make a 22 page comic and NOT color the whole thing, keep telling yourself that Jem.

Once again since I was directly adapting this fic like with Day 20, I tried to be semi accurate in what I assume Junko’s appearance would be, giving her the bunny and bow clips in her hair. I didn’t go all the way since honestly I think i would have gone a little crazy if I drew both characters in their actual Hope’s Peak uniforms for the whole thing, so I mostly stuck to their killing game designs with that small change to Junko. And yes, I did have to edit Junko’s hair to remove the bear clips multiple times throughout the first few pages because I kept forgetting not to draw them. For the first time having these two memorized was a hindrance. 

If you’ve ever seen me draw a Question Mark with a cross instead of a dot when drawing Mikan, it’s cause of this comic. Val said it was a cute detail so I decided to stick with it when applicable.

I think I have read the segment of the story this is based on like, 30 times bare minimum. Now some of those times were just because I often reread this fic to help me relax before sleeping, but the majority are because I kept looking at this scene over and over again so I could try and get every detail of this perfect. The posing, expressions, and other visuals, while a little rough around the edges were all possible after going over every paragraph to get the vibe as close as possible.

The dialogue is word for word, punctuation for punctuation ripped from the fic itself. Mildly difficult to pull off without having to extend certain pages, but in the end I managed to pull it off.

Page 7 is one of my favorite pages from the experience. Originally the visual was supposed to be Junko in literal chains of despair with Mikan coming in with a key to unlock them, however chains are agonizing to draw. Not drawing them was a form of self care, even if I think it would have been a bit of a stronger metaphor. 

Mikan’s expressions were very difficult to get just right in this, which was half the fun. Do you know how fucking satisfying it was to draw her happy crying??? Very.

Page 10 is another one I’m really happy with. I don’t know exactly what the original plan was beyond the fact that I wanted the shot of Mikan reacting to that being a lot more visually extreme for the colors and amount of space it takes up to make it as overwhelming as possible. But I went in reverse  and made the initial heart stop moment of her realizing that Junko just said that more prominent than the rush of emotion hitting her right after.

There were going to be more visuals of Mikan being cute in the following page, however not only was I struggling for ideas but also my energy was fluctuating to hell and back by this point in the comic.

It took awhile to get the initial kiss to look good because by this point I was still really figuring out how the fuck to do that. I can’t remember if I mentioned it but the kiss in the Vampire Comic is one I actually edited after the fact before the post was scheduled because it looked really weird and pissed me off. Luckily this one doesn’t bother me at all. I remember being super paranoid i made the posing look too sexual, I don’t know what the fuck past me was on about but I’m not here to question I’m here to curse you all with knowledge and funfacts.

On page 15 Junko’s blush and smile are a bit more intense compared to the other panels on this page while she wipes away Mikan’s tears. This is because in future stories by Val it is confirmed a few times that Junko has dacryphilia, meaning she thinks Mikan looks really hot when she’s crying. Yes I’m really working in details from other fics into this comic, you should not be surprised this isn’t even the weirdest thing i’ve put in this whole event.

Peak comedy that I mentioned the question mark with the cross dot earlier and on Page 16 I didn’t do that, immersion broken, back to square one Past Jem!

Junko with no contacts!!! I mentioned during one of the Vampire AU days that while I don’t feature it in that AU alone I like the idea of Junko’s real eye color being red. Something I can never remember whether it’s actually canon or just strongly implied. I think this is the page I put the most amount of effort into, both to make it look well lit, and also to make sure her god damn eyes look as pretty as humanly possible. The end result may or may not be my favorite page of the whole comic? I dunno

I said Mikan’s expressions were hard to draw for this since I wanted to get them just right, she requires a lot more work on the smaller details to make everything feel right. Junko however? Oh no I was thriving by this point, her more lowkey expressions do need a bit more thought and effort, but by this point in the comic I was in my element with her. 

But speaking of expressions, Page 19.

That smile on Mikan in the middle panel took 20 fuckin’ minutes because I had never drawn Mikan looking that happy and I had no fucking idea what I was doing. I did actually edit the page last night (as of the writing of this post), however it wasn’t for the expression. In the original version of the page, Junko looked really fuckin weird in the last panel, like I don’t know how I let that slide but her whole face and neck looked way off. These pages aren’t like, perfect quality but that one was just egregious. Also edited Mikan’s blush in that panel just cause I was already there.

Junko’s surprised face was very fun.

And I think if I were gonna ever redo any page in full for this comic it’d be the last one. I don’t think this one looks bad I just know that I could I could do way better nowadays even if I stuck to just coloring a sketch. Maybe sometime down the line.

And that’s the comic itself! I can’t think of any other fun facts or thoughts on the art itself at this point. Uhhhh, I guess the cover I made last minute for this post is technically a reference to a future day? What does that mean? Oh you’ll fuckin’ see.

So 2 weeks of effort with little feedback and rereading the same scene over and over again, was it worth it?

God yes it was.

When I sent Val the Google Drive folder with the comic I was jittery for hours as if I had too much coffee. I was nervous as shit over whether she would like it or not, since this was when I still was a perpetual nervous wreck with very little self respect who was viewing her as “Coolest Person Ever” rather than “That’s bestie.” I was also nervous because it was the first time I actually asked for a more detailed response rather than just letting her respond in whatever way she wanted.

But when she responded?

I have lived the past several years doing weed, I’ve recently quit (i think by the time this posts it’ll be close to 3 months since I went clean), but that’s besides the point. I’ve had mild highs, crazy highs, bad highs, good highs, sad highs, and highs where I don’t feel anything. 

I severely doubt that any drug or vice on this planet will ever match the feeling of reading that response. I was shaking, I bit my knuckles until it left indents for like a full hour minimum, an adrenaline rush doesn’t even begin to describe what I was experiencing. I rode out the happiness from this moment for an entire week, I worked on comm jobs that would normally leave me feeling aggravated as hell and did so with a smile because I was just that fuckin excited over it. This probably sounds embarrassing as shit but there have been times where I go back to read that response when I just need a pick me up.

I had a fuckin epiphany at that moment. Who fuckin cares?

24 fucking years (25 starting tomorrow) I’ve lived my life as a people pleaser perfectionist with extreme paranoia problems with absolutely no self esteem and a whole wealth of other mental health issues. I would feel like dogshit if I halfassed a comm even if it was a really bad one. My whole goal in life was to make a webcomic that would make EVERYONE happy, be a positive part of their week. I was paranoid about pissing off the wrong people, starting shit, how people perceive me, about what ideas for my comic would be problematic or not. But after this? Who gives a shit?

It ain’t about making People Happy it’s about making Yourself Happy and the People you can reach happy. My goal is still to make a webcomic that people will come across, and look forward to every week as an escape to give them some positive vibes every week, but I ain’t gonna do that if I’m desperately trying to appeal to every single person on the planet while trying to stay as uncontroversial as possible. I wanna make art that makes people happy, and if I make it the way I wanna make it then it will eventually reach the people that it can make happy.

But enough of that shit, the actual big thing that happened because of my complete reassessment of my personal values and entire goal for life is that I fucking finally stopped giving a shit about whether people were gonna throw me in a woodchipper because I shipped Junkan. And it will continue to get funnier and funnier that after all the time I spent scared out of my fuckin’ mind over what people would think, that absolutely fucking nothing happened. It is day 49 at the time of writing this and STILL I have not had anyone give me grief or issues over this whole project, nothing but support and even some new friends over it. You cannot write something funnier than that.

I think if I went back in time and told myself at the beginning of the year that her fears were completely unfounded she would bleed out the eyes and pass out, and I would laugh. I’d laugh so fuckin’ hard.

So yeah, this Comic and the reaction it elicited changed my entire perspective on life and being an artist, I can’t say It’s been perfect or that I haven’t faltered on certain things, but  I think to an extent I have been a lot happier as a result. Is it a little weird that this niche version of a niche ship is now directly tied to a drastic change in my mind? Is it any weirder than the fact that I transitioned into a woman because I binge read like, all of the Tokomaru I possibly could on AO3 and it made me think that wearing a skirt might be cool?

Alright so how’re ya'll holdin up? Drink some water we ain’t done. This is already getting up to 7 pages on the google doc that I prepare these posts on and now I have to like, talk about Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed properly. So bare witness to me trying to figure out how the hell to format talking about what might just be my favorite fic of all time.

But first lemme go reread the entire thing, I know the passage of time doesn’t exist in the context of these text walls but i’ll be back in like, a few hours to a day.

Okay i’m back-

I’m honestly not sure where to start here. Normally with my biggest obsessions I could probably go on lengthy rambles about why I love them so much, but this? I struggle to find a proper place to start, or even how to format this. I don’t want to just give a beat for beat plot synopsis while talking about the things I like, but also how do I talk about something this good otherwise.

So fair warning this might be completely incoherent at points, sorry??

This was not like, the third Junkan fic I ever read despite it being one of the three fics vital to me becoming the inhuman machine of pure Junkan brainrot that I’ve become today. A lot of things are blurred but if I remember right the exact timeline of events was Read a cute Junkan fic which made me think “Wait this ship can be soft and cute???” and then I read Smile by Kayleen, which is funny in hindsight because I really went to tooth rotting fluff to one of the darkest Non-Abusive Junkan fics out there (dark by my standards at least and I think my frame of reference is out of sorts). I think after that I just stopped for awhile, partially because Smile wasn’t finished at the time, partially because I still wasn’t sure how to navigate the Junkan tag to find what I was looking for in the ship.

Smile comes to a thrilling conclusion and I think to myself “maybe this author has more?” which is how I found Kayleen’s series of One-Shots for these two (along with separate three other pieces), I read through those in a day and would continue to check the tag to see if it updated, like, every day.  Eventually after a couple months (possibly way longer), something came over me and I finally started seriously looking over the tag to try and find more Soft Junkan, whether there were others I read before it or not, I honestly can’t remember. 

What I do remember is I came across “The Marvelous Makeover of Mikan Tsumiki” by VanadisValentine. I don’t know how I found that before the fic of today’s subject, if I had to guess I wasn’t reading the tags first on this run through. I was likely reading the name of the fic, and THEN i read the tags to see if it has what I was looking for (I wasn’t a starving animal for the ship by this point so I was a lot more picky with what I was willing to risk my time on). And this fic’s name was slightly more eye catching for me at the time I guess??

Fun fact when I first read this fic I wasn’t even sure if it actually was a shipping piece at first, not until finishing it at least. How? Poor reading comprehension is my only guess lol. Anyway, I finish that, loved it, and made my usual move of checking to see if the author had written anything else like this fic, and oh boy did she. 

This finally brings us to me finally reading “Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed.” Took us fucking long enough.

It was perfect, it was everything. I fucking loved reading it the entire time. It had everything I could have wanted out of this ship without me even realizing what I wanted at the time. The weirdest part that my immediate response after wasn’t to go on an adrenaline fueled binge of the tag like I did for Tokomaru way back when I first got into Danganronpa. The most I did was read the other Junkan fics in Val’s library at the time. Otherwise I just stopped again. 

It was then that I drew the first three days of this event, the original sketches. I kept them a secret between myself and a small few friends, too paranoid to let anyone find out. And things just kinda stayed like that, for awhile. And then sometime in December, of last year I decided to give that same fic another read, and something just kinda, fucking snapped?

I went up and down the Junkan Tag on AO3, reading whatever I could, I was reading stuff I wouldn’t have ever risked reading with variable amounts of success. I only skipped a small handful of fics, including one that we’ll come back to way later in the project. Everything else I was scraping even the smallest crumb of fic to read at times. After that I scoured the tumblr tags, taking in whatever soft art or headcanons that I could, I went to Fanfiction.net, a website I still barely know how to fuckin’ navigate to try and find ANYTHING. I went to Deviantart to try and find any art or fics, no results not helped by the fact that it would include results that were slightly related. And not to sound like a Youtuber with no personality who’s built their career on punching down at whoever they can because otherwise their audience would see they’re a complete shell of a human being, but it being deviantart you can imagine what I was finding more often on that search. 

I even went to Wattpad, and that ones it’s own mini story that I’m saving for Tomorrow because the art for Tomorrow doesn’t have a lot of talking points on it’s own like this one does. But Wattpad had no fuckin results either.

I cannot remember the last time I had ever been this obsessed with a ship, this desperate. So, 100 Days of Junkan began, even if it wasn’t planned to be this big project. All cause of this fic turning a switch in my brain with a hammer.

Hey look we’re talking about the fic again, I told you this was gonna incoherent.

Anyway so the fic is just, perfect? To me at least? Before I had even realized why I liked the ship in the first place it did everything that I love about it at it’s core. It practically set the standard for the ship in my brain, at bare minimum within the context of a Non-Despair AU. And overtime as Val’s continued to write for these two her portrayals of the character are practically just how I view them at this point.

It’s not 1 to 1 but you can likely trace every aspect of how I portray Junko and Mikan whether through art or writing back to Val’s writing, down to even using certain pet names for the characters because of their usage in her work. I’d worry that I’m being way too much, heaping an overbearing amount of praise and respect. But also this fic unintentionally sent me careening into the direction of drawing 150+ Junkan pictures, learning various new skills and techniques as an artist, rekindled my love of writing (despite the horrors of actually having to write), making new friends both in and out of this community including some who I consider close, coping with mental health issues, and then performing this gigantic project at the tail end of the year. So I might actually be underselling this a bit in actuality. And don’t worry when I get to talking about a few other fics later in the project I’ll be doing my best to give equal praise to them as well, it’s just gonna be a bit sdlahfljasdfhas.

I’ve already said it but the fic has everything, at least of the core reasons I love this ship from the non-abusive perspective that this blog has built its foundation on.

To me I love Junkan because it’s two people that could not be anymore different from one another, who arguably should despise one another finding happiness in each other. It adds a new layer of depth to Junko to ponder how someone like her, whether in canon or in a non-despair AU like this could fall in genuine love with a total wreck like Mikan and how that would affect her character. It’s fluffy moments of Mikan getting to be genuinely happy for what might be the first time in her life while Junko showers her with affection. It’s Junko being fucking hilarious while Mikan can barely keep up with her humor and teasing because she’s so flustered. It’s Junko grappling with newfound emotions. It’s Junko and Mikan bringing out the best in each other and inciting positive change through their influence. It’s that perfect blend of hurt/comfort. And so much more beyond that, all contained in this one god damn fic. I might even be forgetting things I like about the ship too, there’s just so much that goes into this!

Obviously this is all specifically in a Non-Despair context, the Evil Girlfriends angle has a myriad of other reasons to enjoy the ship which I’ve become fond of. Especially in some of the parallels it can have with a non-Toxic Yuri angle of things. But that doesn’t really apply for today’s subject and I’m not someone who’s deeply knowledgeable or equipped to sing its praises at the moment. Maybe in the future though?

Is there anything else I can yammer on about with this fic? Uhhhh- Oh. I love how it uses the supporting cast. I think Val has a really excellent grasp on how to write Mukuro and Junko’s dynamic without dipping into the territory of DR3 where it just gets a bit uncomfortable. I think that’s better exemplified in one of her other fics rather than this story, but I still do love Mukuro’s portrayal and role in the story. This was my first time learning who Yasuke was, I hadn’t properly heard of Danganronpa Zero by this point so I was really confused as to who the hell he was. Certainly left a strong impression in the story though. I think Kaede’s sudden appearance and role in the plot progressing towards the stunning climax of Chapter 4 was really good! 

I very often go back to Chapter 1, 4, and 5 whenever I need to go to relax before bed. I’ve reread this fic multiple times as a whole but an absolute fuck ton of times as separated pieces, they’re so god damn soothing on my mind. 

The fact that I haven’t left giant fuckin’ comments on any chapter of that fic is quite frankly one of my deepest sins, but one of these days I’m gonna buckle down and write up on those because they deserve every ounce of praise in my scrawny lil whitegirl body. 

I think I’ve said everything I can for now but even now I feel like I haven’t gotten across how much I love this fic. It genuinely is my favorite fanfiction out there both just for the quality of it’s writing and the comically massive influence it had on my life this year. If you somehow haven’t read it by now, please do, if you like the art I’ve drawn of this ship over the past 60 days I can almost 100% guarantee that you’ll like this story. And read the rest of Val’s fics too! Please! 

As always, Reblogs, Comments, and Little Notes in the Tags are appreciated!~ They always make my day!~

[writing-for-life]

Sandman Predictions

So we’ve been speculating wildly what the remainder of The Sandman might look like on here and in our community (join us!) for a while.

And I thought it would be fun to put my predictions to paper (so to speak) so I can be embarrassed about them later and laugh at how wrong they were 🙈

Taking all the casting announcements and BTS in consideration I’ve collected like a magpie (check out my #sandman S2 tag), I will have a stab at it…

Only 12 Episodes or Aiming for Renewal?

Both is possible, but I am more and more leaning we’ll get the whole thing in twelve episodes in two batches of five each with two wraparound episodes (one will be AGoY/THCoL in the middle, one the last three issues of The Wake).

We know the episode names for six episodes that are directed by Jamie Childs. That doesn’t mean they were in order, or that there won’t be other directors involved. It wouldn’t surprise me if they at least went for female writers/directors for AGoY/THCoL, and if that’ll be the episode that separates (or rather connects) SoM and Brief Lives. So here comes my totally unhinged prediction for 12 episodes, including the titles we know (mind you, they might also be working titles). The chapters from the comics are to be seen as fluid and not absolute, because there are a lot of scenes that are not linear in chronological terms and will probably be shuffled around a bit:

Batch One

“More Devils Than Vast Hell Can Hold” (that title is a direct quote from AMND): A Midsummer Night’s Dream, SoM Prologue & Tales in the Sand flashback

“Season of Mists”: SoM ch. 1-3, ch. 4 is getting dropped

“The Ruler of Hell”: SoM ch. 5 through Epilogue

TBA: AGoY & THCoL “Brief Lives”: Brief Lives ch. 1-3. Maybe the first parts of Thermidor (could also be ep. 5).

“Brief Lives”: Brief Lives ch. 1-5 “The Song of Orpheus”: Brief Lives ch. 4-6 and The Song of Orpheus segueing into

“The Song of Orpheus”: Brief Lives ch. 6. Bast is an excellent cut to SoO. “Family Blood”: Brief Lives ch. 7-9. Parts of Thermidor will also be in there.

Batch Two

“Family Blood”: Brief Lives ch. 7-9 TBA: TKO ch. 1-4

TBA: TKO ch. 1-4 TBA: TKO ch. 5-7

TBA: TKO ch. 5-8 TBA: TKO ch. 8-10

TBA: TKO ch. 11-13

TBA: The Wake (all of it apart from…)

TBA: Sunday Mourning/Exiles/The Tempest

Edit 19/09:

[strikeouts in text done on same day]

So I’ve read The High Cost of Living again over the past few days because it didn’t want to leave me alone, and I’ve now convinced myself we’ll get it as a side-plot to Brief Lives in episodes 4-6, and that we’ll get tiny bits of AGoY, (mostly to set up Wanda/Ruby for Brief Lives and Hazel/Foxglove for THCoL) as a side plot to SoM in episodes 1-3. Spoilers ahead, so skip if that’s not your thing:

Both Sexton and Orpheus have a death wish. I don’t want to drag this out too much because the post is long enough as it is, but suffice it to say, Sexton rethinks after spending a day with Didi/Death, while Orpheus is granted his wish. And this is what ultimately sets Morpheus on his own path. The meaning of “So live” would be beautifully contrasted that way because it has different meaning to different people, depending on their own experience. Add to that Death spending a “brief life” for one day herself, and I can somewhat see the vision.

Failing this, THCoL could also be a special in episode 13 that hasn’t been announced yet (I’d rather have Overture though if I’m honest).

In more detail:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest will be bookends, one before SoM, one after The Wake (they don’t necessarily have to be full episodes, they could be half each and make up roughly an hour combined. It really depends on overall runtime).

We’ll kick off batch one with Season of Mists (maybe the prologue and will also be in episode 1–there are several points in AMND that would make good cuts into SoM), and Tales in the Sand won’t be a full episode but incorporated as flashbacks (maybe around the family dinner). After we conclude SoM, we’ll get one episode of AGoY will be a side-plot to SoM, as per above (if it happens at all), and leads into THCoL as a side-plot to Brief Lives as per my edit above, because there’s a through-line in there for Fox and Hazel, plus we can set up Wanda/Ruby for Brief Lives.

Bonus 1:

Johanna will be somehow involved in SoM (she’s the Hellblazer after all), and we’ll get her to hook up with Murphy. No need for a longwinded introduction of Thessaly. Or, failing that, we just cut out the love interest completely, Morpheus does his moping session because Nada rebuffs him again, but Jo will still take Thessaly’s place as the crone.

We’ll move into roughly three episodes of Song of Orpheus/Thermidor and Brief Lives from there. Wanda will die in Brief Lives like Ruby, not in AGoY.

We finish the first batch with Morpheus alone on his chair after you-know-what 😩

Second batch: TKO and The Wake. Little bits of World’s End will be woven in where it fits, maybe already in the first batch as well. Same goes for little bits of standalone issues from Fables and Reflections.

Jo will take Thessaly’s place and protect Lyta because she’d just believe it’s the right thing to do (she also sympathises because she lost Astra). Whether she also holds a deeper grudge depends on if they set them up as having an affair or not.

My guess is four episodes TKO and one for the Wake. Sunday Mourning and Exiles will be done in one episode. The movie concept art that Jill Thompson did ages ago showed Daniel in the distance on the beach with the other three, and I think that’s a good tie-in point to lead into Exiles. Even the Tempest might fit in there if they make the last episode more feature-length. And you’ve got your two Shakespeare bookends.

Bonus 2:

Hob will be reinstalled to his narrative purpose because at least half the fandom will drop him like a hot potato and ship Morpheus x Cluracan instead. Because:

If you think 12 episodes are tight: Yes, if you want to see every detail and issue of the comics. But not everything you see in a graphic novel translates well to screen, plus you don’t perceive time the same way. What takes ages to read can be something like 30 seconds in a film. Add to this that the movie that never happened was conceptualised as a trilogy if I’m not mistaken, so probably 6-8 hours planned runtime in total. So they always had a definite idea how to streamline it, and they were planning for it before. 12 episodes with 45 to 60min each give us more to play with than a movie-trilogy (plus we can already take the time off that we spent on S1). I think it’s doable, but of course it means tightening arcs and dropping stuff.

However, I’ll be honest with you: With all that’s been going on, and having seen that they filmed right through until the end, I’d rather have them wrap up now. Because I honestly can’t see a S3 happening after all that’s already been cancelled and put on hold because of you-know-what (I���m thinking of Disney shelving The Graveyard Book and Amazon putting GO on hold and sitting on the Audible despite it being finished).

But also: These decisions have likely been made long before these considerations even became an issue: Renewal was on a knife’s edge, and choices were made back then we can only guess at. Scripts aren’t written over night, neither are sets changed around wildly on a whim (plus actors aren’t just tied to one project and can’t just willy-nilly change their schedules). And some sets for TKO were already confirmed and booked in May. So they were always going to do what we’ve seen in BTS shots. It’s not a sudden development.

In any case: If they aimed for more seasons than two, I think this prediction could still hold in general, we’ll just get it more fleshed out. In that case, I’d say 10 episodes of SoM and Brief Lives (5 each), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and THCoL as standalones with the rest as side-plots woven in (that includes AGoY). Then S3 comprising TKO and The Wake with more space for standalone episodes and World’s End. Maybe even Overture as a special. I very much doubt they would go for more than three seasons in total though.

So these are my predictions, now I’d love to hear yours…

[meowtus]

Project Meridian yap sesh 😭 spoilers (obviously) ahead !!

This was one of those things where I was like “yeah….I had a feeling this could’ve been the ending Project Meridian’s leaning towards,” but I wasn’t expecting the EXTENT of just how little we really know about the real versions of these characters.

A part of me kind of wishes that we did keep the robot-sci-fi thing, and having an android listener was cool but I can understand why the other route was gone. Though I could see how the storyline could’ve been fit into the main storyline—it would get a little complicated. But Project Meridian was a CRAZY ride. Had my brain turning and I was second guessing everything. Like the Marcus Code, the Asset being a test of the waters in the Meridian, THE DREAM ITSELF & THE SEPARATION OF REALITYY ??? 10/10 would like to experience for the first time again.

But I think the distinct moment when magic started getting vaguely involved within Project Meridian now is like—SUPER different contextually than before (when I inevitably go to relisten). Like the real-world experiences with magic within Asset’s memory bleeding into something that should’ve remained a disconnected reality. And Marcus…Mark? Marc??? Lord knows anyway

His character just got like A MILLION times more interesting knowing he’s a dreamwalker. And that he had control over the dream for a while, before things got out of control. Did at what point did he realize that the dream was out of his hands?? URGHH it’s fascinating. Also the loneliness and still seeking it through a person who 1. Does NOT remember jack about doing any of this 2. Genuinely believes they’re a robot and is programmed to like you is SO messed up, and even though he’s lost that grip on the Asset’s dream—he didn’t want to leave or stop the dream from getting to the extent it did. And they FREAKED IT IN THE DREAMM?? Vro. I hope we get more of him later because that’s a crazy bag of worms. He’s a looser…what a guy amirite 😭

But hands down I think the coolest part about all this is James. Well, both James versions, and how the Asset’s views on them distorted him in the dream. James turning out to be some guy™️ working for the department in contrast to the cold, calculated, put-together variant is amazing and I’ll think about it forever.

Peak Cinema…thank you Mr. Redacted for the meal 🙏🏽🙏🏽

[sugolara]

𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

Feat. Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Izuku Midoriya x fem! reader

An ongoing series.

Synopsis: After a deadly virus leaks all over the world, every country is forced to close down its borders and airports to prevent anyone from coming in and out. Though, it's too late for some people. The dead have risen and are looking for revenge.

Cw: gore, quirkless! au, apocalypse! au, zombie! au, weapons, death, heavy angst, lots and lots of blood, cannibalism, suicidal thoughts, updates thursday/sunday, slow burn, wd: 1k - 5k, its a quirkless! au, so u.a is a  private high school with general education along with classes that have hands-on experience; like a trade school.

✓ HEAVILY EDITED: s1 - s5 has been heavily edited as of 7/15/24 - 9/16/24, s6 - s9 has finally been edited as of 9/16/24 - 11/22/23, so a few things may not make sense if you are re-reading or the comments do not make sense.

Inspired by, ''The Walking Dead''

Table of contents:

Season 1: The beginning of us. Episode 1: Begin Episode 2: Not alone Episode 3: Gone but not forgotten Episode 4: You belong in this world Episode 5: Because all life is precious Episode 6: Musutafu, we'll meet again Episode 7: Izuku: I'd always thought there be more time

Season 2: The setting I lived for. Episode 8: During these two weeks Episode 9: Diopside, like your eyes Episode 10: For the first time in a long time Episode 11: Determined to survive, stay alive Episode 12: Imperturbable Episode 13: Almost complete Episode 14: Katsuki: You are going to beat this world

Season 3: The completion of us. Episode 15: Away with you Episode 16: Three months ago Episode 17: Disappear Episode 18: Thin ice Episode 19: Nothing else to lose Episode 20: My savior Episode 21: Shoto: Everything you would be will be gone

Season 4: The torture realization. Episode 22: Trouble Episode 23: For however long that'll be Episode 24: The fallen city Episode 25: Stay who you are Episode 26: Here with you Episode 27: All together Episode 28: F/n: A soul yet to be mourn

Season 5: The dawn to you. Episode 29: Back on road Episode 30: Lost Episode 31: Safe in your arms Episode 32: And so it begins Episode 33: At stake Episode 34: To be forgiven Episode 35: Familiar face

Season 6: The journey to you. Episode 36: Solace Episode 37: A stab through my ticker Episode 38: Never to easy Episode 39: To good for death Episode 40: Dreams of my hateful memories Episode 41: A stroke of luck Episode 42: Be aware Episode 43: Bait Episode 44: A thump in my heart Episode 45: Belong to me Episode 46: One step closer (Towards you)

Season 7: The ache in my heart. Episode 47: Sorston Episode 48: Bitter tenderness Episode 49: Here to stay Episode 50: The start Episode 51: Powder Episode 52: Good morning and goodbye Episode 53: For they may be my last Episode 54: An end to sorrow, grief & regret Episode 55: Even when I'm sleeping Episode 56: Reporting to duty Episode 57: I dream of you like I'm afraid tomorrow will be the last I see you

Season 8: The beauty of choice. Episode 58: Not who you were Episode 59: Just you, me and the others Episode 60: The Plaza Episode 61: The other side Episode 62: To be ready Episode 63: You're here Episode 64: My dear Episode 65: Secrets you'll soon share Episode 66: Discard me Episode 67: To wish you well Episode 68: For as long as we live Episode 69: Like a flower I bloom and then later fade away

Season 9: The missing. Episode 70: I'll see you in a while Episode 71: So wait for me Episode 72: Hushed secrets Episode 73: I wanna get it through to you Episode 74: It won't be long Episode 75: My heart echoes Episode 76: Amend Episode 77: Consumed in dark Episode 78: When you wake up, you'll remember this, I promise you Episode 79: Just a little longer Episode 80: Last man standing

Season 10: The end of us. Episode 81: The day came in which you left me

To be continued...

Playlist!

Space junk - Wang Chung Wolf - First Aid Kit Into The Black - Chromatics My Life In Rewind Run Boy Run - Woodkid Bad Before Good - Day One You're so Cool - Jonathon Bree So Bored - Gorgeous Bully Operations - Duster Civilian - Wye Oak Can't Stop - Red Hot Chili Peppers Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns N' Roses Skyfall - Adele Up the wolves - The Mountains Goats Be Gone Dull Cage - Kiev Into Dust - Mazzy Star Tomorrow Is a Long Time - Bob Dylan Poison Tree - Grouper Rhymes Of An Hour - Mazzy Star You Are The Wilderness - Voxhaul Broadcast Running - Delta Spirit People, Turn Around - Delta Spirit The Lion's Roar - First Aid Kit Pain - Boy Harsher Setup - Favored Nations This Old Death - Ben Nichols Revolution - Red Shahan Mr. Splitfoot - Paris Motel The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana Beautiful Mess - Balian The Day The World Went Away - Nine Inch Nails Empty Words - Bowery Electric No Longer Making Time - Slowdive Hush - Trills Struggling Man - Emily Kinney The Last Pale Light In the West - Ben Nichols Blackbird Song - Lee Dewyze Step Away From the Cliff - Blue-Eyed Son Take Care (To Comb Your Hair) - Ty Segall Paradise - Silverberg No Peace At All - Aldous Harding Glad I Had a Friend - Galt MacDermot Machine Gun - Portishead Shadows of Planes - Duster Save Us from Ourselves - Digital Daggers Salt in the Wound - Delta Spirit I'm No Heroine - Emily Wells It's All Right - Sam Cooke To Build A Home - The Cinematic 6 Underground - Sneaker Pimps Edge Of The World- Dayshell Bye Bye Bye - School of Seven Bells You Are Not Alone - Mavis Staples Welcome - Harmonia & Eno '76 Hope We Can Again - Nine Inch Nails outside - Oneheart sleepless - Odyzon Arsonist's Lullabye - Hozier It's All Over - Johnny Cash The Stars Just Blink for Us - Say Hi Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Guns N' Roses Runnin' Down A Dream - Tom Petty Fly Like An Eagle - Steve Miller Band Alesund - Sun Kil Moon Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd Wicked Game - Chris Isaak 1908 - Repulsive Rule of Rose OST - Playing Airship I Shall Cross This River - The Black Atlantic Easy Way Out - Low Roar Don Abandons Alice - John Murphy Wherever You Are - Ulrich Schnauss Waitin' Around to Die - Townes Van Zandt Hope Prevails - Jesper Kyd Take Me Home - Lazyroom A Song For You - Leon Russell

Book one: Welcome To The New World Book two: To The One You Left Behind

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