#AND THE ONE PERSON THAT USED TO MAKE IT ALL WORTH IT JUST CONSTANTLY DISAPPEARS WITHOUT WARNING FOR WEEKS AT A TIME

[glowettee]

do you have any posts abt decentering your life from men? i think i rely on male validation wayyyyyy too much lol. love your content btw ✨

✧˖° how to stop centering your life around men (because you have way better things to do)

(a guide to decentering men, breaking free from male validation & making yourself the main character for real this time)

so you’ve noticed it... the way your mood shifts depending on whether or not he texts you back, the way your confidence is high when you’re getting attention and low when you’re not. maybe you catch yourself subtly performing when guys are around, or maybe you find yourself molding into the kind of girl you think they’d want.

and honestly? same. we’ve all been there. society trains us to believe that being wanted is the ultimate achievement, that our worth is measured by how desirable we are to men. but that’s a lie. your life was never meant to revolve around them. you were always meant to be the sun, the main event, the entire storyline.

i really hope this post can help you understand you were never meant to revolve around them. love you - mindy

✧˖° step one: start seeing them for what they actually are

listen, it’s time to be so for real with yourself. ask: do I even like this man, or do I just like the attention? do I actually think he’s interesting, or do I just want him to think I’m interesting? do I want him, or do I just want to be chosen?

because half the time? the men we obsess over are painfully mediocre. and yet we assign them so much power. letting them dictate how we feel about ourselves, letting their validation (or lack of it) determine our worth.

take a step back. stop romanticizing them. start seeing them as human beings. flawed, regular, not the prize. the real prize? is you.

✧˖° step two: detox from male validation (yes, a real detox)

you don’t realize how much male validation fuels your self-worth until you cut it off. so let’s go cut. it. off.

for the next month, no:

dressing for male attention (dress for you instead).

posting just to see if he will like it.

checking who watched your stories.

replaying conversations to see if you sounded cool enough.

instead, every time you feel the urge to seek male validation, replace it with self-validation.

take pictures just for yourself.

romanticize your own opinion of you.

remind yourself that your value doesn’t shift based on their perception of you.

✧˖° step three: become the most interesting person you know

a lot of us center men in our lives because we have nothing else filling that space. so fill it. with things that actually excite you.

start a niche hobby that makes you feel alive (pottery, screenwriting, blogging (girlblogging to be exact), literally anything).

go to cafes alone, sit in the prettiest spot, and enjoy your own company.

build your dream life piece by piece, your wardrobe, your routines, your vibe.

when you’re truly obsessed with your own life, the need for male validation just… disappears. because suddenly, you’re so content, so full, that their attention feels like an afterthought.

✧˖° step four: unfollow the pick-me content (yes, even the guilty pleasure stuff)

what you consume matters. if your feed is filled with “how to make him obsessed with you” content, if you’re constantly absorbing media that glorifies male attention, you’re subconsciously reinforcing the idea that men = purpose.

so let’s cleanse. unfollow the pick-me content. mute the male gaze influencers. instead:

fill your feed with confident, self-sufficient women.

read books by powerful women who own their narrative.

watch movies where the female lead’s story isn’t about a man.

you are not the supporting character in a man’s story. start consuming content that reminds you of that. you are a goddess, an angel, the main character of YOUR story! please remember that <3

✧˖° step five: enforce the highest standards (with zero guilt)

decentering men doesn’t mean avoiding relationships, it just means refusing to settle. it means knowing that you don’t need male validation to be worthy. and that means setting real standards:

if he’s inconsistent? he’s gone.

if he makes you question your worth? he’s out.

if he needs you to shrink yourself to fit into his life? bye.

your love life should enhance your life, not become your life. you don’t need to be chosen. you need to be cherished. there’s a difference.

✧˖° mindy’s personal tips ✧˖°

some little things that helped me fully break free from male validation: ➝ talk to yourself like you’re the love of your life - hype yourself up in the mirror, take yourself on cute dates, write love letters to you.➝ wear perfume, do your hair, and put effort into your looks even when you’re alone. let your beauty be for you, not for male approval. ➝ when a guy doesn’t text back, shift your energy immediately. instead of spiraling, get up, put on music, do something fun. do not make him your focus.

✧˖° homework: shift your energy back to you

for the next week, every time you catch yourself seeking male validation, pause. redirect that energy inward. do something for yourself instead. and watch how your entire aura changes.

because when you stop chasing their approval? you start living for real.

love you <333 so sorry this reply was sooo late

xoxo mindy

[slytherinshua]

YOU'RE WORTH IT

genre. fluff. period comfort. warnings. it's mentioned that reader had a toxic ex. anton and reader haven't been dating for too long. mentions of cramps and general period stuff but no blood. kissing. pairing. anton x fem!reader. wc. 981. request. no. a/n. written for @eternalgyu who is suffering :( i hope this helps even a little <33

“Are you sure this is… normal?” Anton questioned a little worried from the other side of the bed. You winced, not only from the excruciating pain you were experiencing, but the sudden guilt that hit you. Maybe you should have tried a little harder to keep your ‘ow’s from distracting your boyfriend from his work.

“Yeah, it’s normal— don’t worry.” You waved him off and rolled to your side so your back faced him, fighting back the tears that started to prick at your eyes. Was it normal for cramps to be this painful?

“Can I do anything to help?” Anton’s voice reached your ear again, this time a lot closer than before. He was peering over your curled up body with concern written on his face. Your face softened a little, and a little of the fear of being annoying washed away with Anton’s look.

Your ex-boyfriend had been… less than understanding whenever you got your period. He always complained about you bothering him or “bringing the mood down” whenever you couldn’t bring yourself to be your usual bright self. He seemed disgusted at even the thought of it and would constantly blame any normal frustration towards him on your period, even when you weren’t on it.

Months of that had quickly trained your brain to be self-conscious of it. You knew it was all normal, of course, but you had started trying to hide the fact that you were on your period whenever you could; almost as if it didn’t exist entirely. 

Even admitting to Anton that it was your time of the month made you want to sink into the floor and disappear. You had expected him to be disgusted or confused or weirded out, but he wasn’t. Instead, he offered to go to the store to get anything you might need, which you politely refused— too embarrassed to make him go out of his way.

You shook your head, “I don’t want you to inconvenience yourself.”

Anton looked at you like you were crazy, “Inconvenience myself? But you’re the one in pain.” 

You diverted your eyes from his, unsure what to do in this situation. Your brain was racing a mile a minute, too hesitant to accept his offer in case it backfired later. But Anton wasn’t that kind of person, right?

“And, besides, you’re worth any amount of inconvenience. I promise.” He persuaded gently. 

“Okay.” You mumbled out. Anton smiled, his eyes crinkling before he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your cheek.

“I heard heating pads can help, right?” You could barely answer before he was rushing off to warm one up, and back before you knew it, placing it carefully on your stomach. The heat did feel nice against the pain, but it didn’t make it go away entirely. Anton seemed to notice when your eyes scrunched up as another painful cramp hit you.

“Is it not helping?” His voice came out softer than usual, a touch of anxiousness lacing his question. He was studying your face carefully, giving you his full attention. You weren’t used to someone being so patient with you.

“It is, but I don’t think there’s any way to make them go away entirely. I have to just wait it out.” You said quietly.

Anton frowned, “That’s not fair.”

His comment made you smile slightly, “It’s okay.”

“Is there anything else I can help with?” 

“Distraction?” You suggested, a little skeptical whether it would actually work, but it was worth a shot. 

“Hmm.” Anton thought for a second, giving you a glance before diving forward and capturing your lips without warning. You squeaked slightly from the shock before allowing yourself to focus on the feeling of his soft lips and less on the pain of your cramps. It was pretty effective, if you were being honest. It was easy for your brain to only focus on his lips and nothing else. But there was one problem: you didn’t have unlimited breath.

You pulled apart slightly breathless, and as soon as you didn’t have the distraction to focus on, you were hit with another painful cramp that had you whimpering and sinking deeper into the mattress. Your arms were still around Anton’s neck, clasped at the back, and you brought him down with you.

He shifted to the side quickly before he crashed on top of you and turned so he was facing you again. You were almost sure he would be sick of trying to think of ways to help after 2 attempts, but you were wrong. 

He pulled you closer until you were right up against his chest, safely wrapped around his arms. He tapped on his phone for a couple seconds, clicking on the playlist he had made for you a couple weeks ago. The soft songs on it helped you relax immediately, and you snuggled a bit closer.

“Maybe if you tried falling asleep?” Anton suggested, and you nodded slowly.

Usually it was hard to fall asleep with the pain, but it was surprisingly easy when you were wrapped in Anton’s arms. He started humming quietly along with the music, one of his hands rubbing your back slowly at the same time.

You felt your eyelids droop and finally close entirely. Each time you had a cramp, you would tense up and curl closer to him, and he would hold you just a little bit tighter. Eventually, you were able to fall asleep, and Anton let out a relieved sigh. He hated seeing you in any kind of pain, especially when you seemed so afraid to even tell him about it. 

He knew it would probably take more time for him to earn your complete trust, but he was more than willing to put in the work for it. A little inconvenience on his end was more than worth it. You were more than worth it.

↳ riize taglist: @eternalgyu,, @kangtaehyunzzz,, @weird-bookworm,, @haecien,, @seolboba,, @cyberpunksunwoo,, @cosmicwintr,, @evalevaeva,, @lecheugo,, @wccycc,, @seunghancore

[robin-evry]

I have no idea if this has already been done(I assume not since I was scrolling through your posts) but what about a Topaz or Jade!Yuu? Either one is fine!

So if usually when I have to choose between two characters, I usually just do both but if one of the characters has already been requested with someone I'll do the other since there's no one request jade and topaz I'll do both

𝐓𝐖𝐒𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐀𝐙!𝐘𝐔𝐔 🐖🪙

Topaz is the Leader of the Special Debts Picket Team and high-level manager of the Strategic Investment Department under the Interastral Peace Corporation. A member of the "Ten Stonehearts" at a young age, Topaz's foundational expertise is "debt retrieval." Her partner, the Warp Trotter "Numby," is also capable of keenly perceiving where "riches" are located, ensuring that jobs based in security, debt collection, and actuarial varieties are of no great challenge. At presently they are traveling the cosmos together, seeking all manner of liability disputes that might be affecting the stable progression of the IPC's businesses.

Manages the finance of nrc, always could be seen with a note pad or a clip board calculating the finance of the school for Crowley not to mention help him calculate the school taxes because he's unable to do basic math.

Approaches everything in nrc like a business venture. Whether it's securing better living conditions at ramshackle or negotiating with vargas to lower PE requirements, they always have a strategy.

Constantly takes notes on people, labeling them by "risk level," "investment potential," and "market value" (to their frustration). Not to mention they would occasionally go around the School and calculate the market value of stuff, they are wondering why Crowley keeps some useless artifacts when he could auction it to get more funds for school.

When interacting with other students, topaz!yuu mentally calculates their “value.” “How useful would they be in a future deal?”, topaz!yuu assessment of their friends can be surprisingly accurate like how Riddle is a “great brand ambassador” or how Cater has “untapped influencer potential.”

Sam and Azul would seek their assistants as long topaz!yuu got a cut of the price, not to mention topaz!yuu would buy the most randomized things in Sam shop and resell it online with a higher price for their own personal money and it actually works

At school first opinion of numby was "What the hell is that" which hurt his feelings. Numby could always be seen with topaz!yuu following them around, assisting them with work or school or just for emotional support.

Sometimes when numby disappear and they would bring back treasure for topaz!yuu, this managed to catch the attention of ruggie and he would start to follow the warp trotter to get some treasure for himself.

Topaz!yuu excels at math people would already consider them to be a human calculator and manage to count complex equations within a second. Sometimes when the lessons become boring topaz!yuu would do some brain exercise counting stuff in their head.

Although topaz!yuu appears all business on the outside, deep down, they make investments based on loyalty and emotional connection. They’ll always back up their friends or team members, offering free magical items or advice without asking for anything in return—though they’d never admit it.

Topaz!yuu is like those types of kid who use their resources to trade stuff from other students, like a bag of oreos can be worth a pudding cup and an apple juice type of kid, they could be found trading some of their lunch for better so they don't have to spend extra for lunch.

𝐓𝐖𝐒𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐀 𝐉𝐀𝐃𝐄!𝐘𝐔𝐔 🐍📜

A senior manager in the IPC Strategic Investment Department and one of the Ten Stonehearts, known for her cornerstone "Jade of Credit." A cold and elegant moneylender, she is skilled at understanding the human heart, with a personal hobby called "Bonajade Exchange." She's willing to wait patiently for high-value acquisitions and adept at extracting value from seemingly destitute clients.

A puppeteer, jade!yuu is working as a manager for Crowley, leading them to have an upper hand over him so they could manipulate the school towards their own whim.

Do you guys know that one episode of nanno that she rent a room from the school and grants wishes for students no matter how big it is, that's jade!yuu basically but they will always seek for something as equal to value as the wish. They excel at understanding the desires and weaknesses of others, always seeking an opportunity to trade, negotiate, or use information to their advantage.

Jade!Yuu always have a larger plan in mind, both in terms of their academic endeavors and social interactions. They would often see the potential outcomes of situations before anyone else, and their subtle guidance could influence the choices of those around them. Whether it’s orchestrating complex schemes or navigating complicated friendships, Jade!Yuu knows how to play the long game.

They would have a particular interest in setting up profitable ventures, whether it's managing the finances of Ramshackle Dorm, organizing events, or offering magical services that people can’t resist. Their financial knowledge and ability to bargain would make them a formidable opponent in anything involving resources or trade. But In return they always seek as an equal value towards the wish.

Unlike Azul whose wish making could only reach the school grounds, jade!yuu ability to grant wish is much bigger you want your family name to be bigger and sign a deal with jade!yuu and the wish will be granted their ability is on a larger scale. They would act as a manager or consultant for other students, offering tips on everything from enhancing personal style to perfecting their magical abilities. Their network would be impressive, though they keep their cards close to the chest, rarely showing their true intentions.

They could easily be a behind-the-scenes orchestrator, pulling the strings to help others, but always with the intention of gaining something in return, whether it’s a favor, knowledge, or leverage.

Azul would try to crack them but impossible, jade!yuu seems to be able to predict his moves without issues. And when a group of rally students are unsatisfied with the outcome of the deal is trying to beat up them, jade!yuu would summon their pet snake to deal with them. Many rumors say that jade!yuu snake is also an exchange they got.

Just to be warned there will always be a price, jade!yuu would want something that is equal price as the wish you ask for them so when you fall, you will fall hard. A student wishes to be great at everything soon loses dies everything and is forced out of nrc, this is the consequence of their deal.

[ghettogirly]

𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐄!

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐒 𝐗 𝐅𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐂:

⇨ 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐁𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄!

-> synopsis: to which you’re his bestfriend’s lover, but that doesn’t stop him from getting what he wants.

[🕷️] warnings: mature themes, mentions of alcohol, mature language, sex, fingering, kissing, infidelity, Armando is a shit friend!

Authors note: First time writing smut in a long time. Bear with it. Let me know if you guys want a Part Two!

Minors DNI.

The mini tavern was bustling with energy as people chattered away, drinks and drinks flooding the tables. People felt free the more alcohol they took, letting the drug overpower their body as their conscious state slowly fades into a drunken mess. The shouts would the house, the rough echoing of the footsteps along the wooden floor were the main sounds of the room due to the groups high excitement.

However, one man was not in the same mood as the others. Focused on something else.

Armando’s deep, brown eyes were in a trance as you walked across the room, glistening in mesmerisation as you began to sit down next to your boyfriend. He could tell you wasn’t happy, the spark in your eyes being no more from the start of the relationship where he first was introduced to you. Your lack of interest in your boyfriend’s conversation with another man. Initially, you both didn’t really talk. He just nodded to you and then whisked your boyfriend away for a “private conversation”. You hoped for more of a reaction from your lovers best friend, disappointed by the plain, uninterested response from him.

You came to the conclusion that he didn’t like you. But, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

He loathed your boyfriend, believing he didn’t deserve to be with someone like you. You were innocent, loving and was worth way more than someone who constantly disrespected you. On his mind 24 hours a day, obsessive thought clouded his mind. He couldn’t fathom how amazing you were as a person.

Unfortunately, you didn’t see it yourself.

Snapping back into the room, Armando notices you sitting there alone. Sick and tired of your boyfriend’s mistreatment, he decides to walk over to you and sit by your side.

“Where did he go?” Armando asks while taking a sip of his drink, preparing to be slightly amused by whatever excuse you’re going to use for his disappearance. However, something is different. You look at him with a lack of love in your eyes, your face clearly tired as you succumb to your emotions of disappointment. “I don’t even know.” Y/N exhales.

Silence fills the moment between you two for a minute before the male opens his mouth, “Why are you still with him?”

This clearly catches the girl off guard, shocked by the lack of loyalty from the leader who preaches devotion to his followers and workers. Nevertheless, Y/N responds to him. “I don’t know anymore.”

Armando scoffs, rolling his eyes at your answer. However, an expression of pity seems to cascade down his face. “I could be better than him mi cariña.”

Y/N looks up at him in shock, the man you thought who hated you just confessed his longing of wanting to replace your lover. The male stood up, casting a shadow over you as he blocked out the dim, warm light illuminating from the lantern which hung off the ceiling. He held out his hand,

“Come.”

[🕷️]

The red, velvet sheets comforted you as you slightly exhaled at the little touches of his lips that littered all over your body, they savoured every crevice of your smooth skin, holding you close, not wanting to let you go. Your back slightly arched at the feeling of his hand helping his lips explore your body, the cold touch contrasting with the warm sensation that was now growing in your body making the tiny hairs on your body stand up.

He watches your reaction, captivated by the way your body responds to him. He dips his head and takes your right nipple into his mouth, sucking gently before biting down on it softly causing you to gasp at the feeling. “You like that?”

“Mhm..”

He continues to tease and caress your breasts, alternating between rough and gentle touches to gauge which one you prefer. He moves his hand slowly down to the waistband of your pants, before slowly stopping and looking into your lustful eyes. “Am i allowed?” He asks, his smooth mexican accent filled with desire.

“Please do..” you whisper to him, biting your lip in eagerness as you want him to please you more. He wastes no time. His hands move lower and lower before slipping underneath your panties, slowly sliding them off you and throwing them onto the floor. Finding your clit, he starts rubbing it gently, increasing his pressure as he feels it pulsating at his touch. “Fuck..”

His hand moves faster and faster as he feels you getting wetter, his own desire growing stronger by the second. Leaning in, he kisses you fiercely his tongue invading your mouth as you moan into it, running your hands slowly through his hair.

He slips one finger in. Then two.

You gasp at the bold move, moaning slightly as he stretches you out. The warmth in you increases as you become closer and closer to the edge. He begins to move his fingers in and out, you justices coating his tan, slim fingers as they hit that special spot inside of you repeatedly that has you squirming underneath him.

“F-fuck, i’m so close.” “Oh my god!” Your endless babbling at the pleasure brings music to his ears, smiling down at you as you come close to your orgasm. “That’s it baby..”

The male then goes straight back down to your neck, sucking on your delicate skin to create purple and red marks while he continues to finger you. This causes you to see stars, that being the final straw which causes you to cum all over his fingers, your juices dripping down them as your toes curl. “Fucking hell..”

“This night isn’t over yet.”

Oh shit.

[tawked]

I feel like engaging with real world homophobia would make Batman / Superman slash much more interesting.

It's more inaccessible, though. You have to finesse with knowledge not only of one "Gay Community" but the multitudes of communities and Kinds Of Guy you meet in those communities, you have to engage with Bruce as a public figure vs. Clark as a relative unknown, you have to understand how homophobia and therefore homosexuality are defined in American mainstream culture, blah blah blah - but it's worth it, right?

So, Bruce Wayne is a rich beloved playboy billionaire in his 30s with liberal beliefs that funds and advocates for, while maintaining a veil of being a real fucking dumbass. Everybody would hate his ass. He'd probably not be known publicly as queer until "exposed" ala Peter Thiel, either intentionally or simply because he doesn't perceive his identity as queer as important for the media and public to know (because it shouldn't be, but we do not live in that world lol). Because he's rich and therefore no one can conceive of him experiencing homophobia, people would defend his public outing as their exceptional case to a social policy they otherwise never discuss, that is outing people for fun and profit, a staple of American culture since the 90s.

From there, most leftists and working class progressives would probably hate him, especially The Straights, who would attempt to characterize him as some kind of class traitor. You know, [queer business] failed, why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne bail them out? [Homophobic politician] did [bad thing], why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne use his money to save the day? And then, in the same breath, using Bruce Wayne's success to say that American culture isn't homophobic any more whenever a major discrimination case breaks the news, similar to how Republicans use characters like Ellen. This is an especially common strategy racially marginalized people have to deal with, the use of a single successful person as a model minority to discredit the idea of systemic racism - they do the same thing to The Gays. But overall, drawing from how liberals discuss Peter Thiel here, they'd be making bitchy comments about how because he's a billionaire, cis and conventionally masc - and especially because he doesn't show any social signifiers of being of the culture - Bruce Wayne is basically a straight man, regardless of whatever he must deal with, exactly like how they characterize Dave Ruben.

Meanwhile, conservatives would NOT be okay with a known queer man raising a handful of adoptive sons, especially not one of their billionaires, who they prop up as proof capitalism works, the American Dream is alive, blah blah blah. He'd be accused of depriving them of a mother, he'd be relentlessly pedojacketed, QAnon flavoured freaks and the Christian Right would be constantly on his ass calling in fake allegations to CPS. Especially after Jason Todd's disappearance from public life. Alfred would, inevitably, become part of all of this, as people knowing Alfred basically raised Bruce after Martha and Thomas died would be like "oh well Wayne was definitely abused by his butler and when men are abused they just become abusers, that's how homosexuals reproduce," 'cause Boys Beware style beliefs never actually went away, it's just less common for people with a college education to share them. Bruce would have to navigate a social impact upon his whole family.

And the thing is, in actual lived gay social life, you have to realize, Rich Gays are not perceived as being at all like us. The ones with social profiles are perceived as aliens who tap-dance for straight people. Ryan Murphy, Steven Moffat's bottom, Stephen Fry, all them wealthy hyper-visible Hollywood homos seem behave as if homophobia is something you can outwit with a sarcastic comment (like that West Wing Bible lecture scene), and that no one but isolated freaks who can't hurt anybody or achieve anything is really homophobic with their whole chest. Because they're so insulated by their wealth that they've never been denied housing by a landlord who'd "prefer to rent to families," or harassed with "girlfriend conversations" at work, nothing like that. It's understood that they can buy their way around the barriers created by discrimination, experiencing only meaningless slurring from people who do not know them.

They belong in the PinkNews world, where homophobia is someone saying something mean on twitter. You cannot imagine they had the same experiences coming out to their parents (especially not Bruce, who seems really distant from his parents, like they're just never around for some reason idk), going through high school (Bruce was home-schooled), or perhaps most importantly, trying to start adult relationships with a lack of education about what all anything is. A formative experience many gay men of Bruce's usual age have is navigating those adult power dynamics while vulnerable. There are other touchstone experiences among working class gays, like fear of potentially being kicked out of home or dealing with the social isolation of being denied family in a family-driven culture.

Finally, it's not like he can just show up at the club with his nips painted rainbow and be inducted into the community. My point in saying all of this is, there are layers upon layers of social barriers between Bruce Wayne and conventional queer life. So - if he's connected to a queer community at all, it'd be the insipid one of rich white people, where being queer means redecorating your fucking McMansion for the 10th time in one year, with a kitchen perpetually under renovation. Annoying Miniature Poodle Gays. And I just do not see Bruce Wayne hanging with Charles & Rudy, he's too much of a Debbie Downer and is simply not someone who can fake an interest in Christos Tsolkas novels.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent is nobody. Sure, sometimes he has his name on bylines and depending on when in continuity we place him he's been a TV anchor, but let's be real, if Clark Kent were outed there wouldn't be a similar amount of drama, not even close. If Superman were outed - well, Superman is already the subject of fearmongering and conspiracies among the stupid, the status quo would not shift for him. He might wear a rainbow cape during Pride Month or whatever and make a bunch of public appearances where he's like, "trans women are women, and an individual's right to their own body must be protected!" I kinda picture him as the sort of dude who'd volunteer a weekend at the AIDS Council without knowing who ACT UP were.

Because, hear me out, he's from a small country town in Kansas and absolutely would have grown up with the concept of City Queer vs. Rural Queer. So, for some context here, where I live straddles the line between suburban and rural. I have cow paddocks and a major mall both five minutes from my house (Australia is a place man). So when I'm looking for dick my Grindr is full of cowpoke lookin to yeehaw and people who just moved into the area from the inner city. These are distinct flavours of Gay, believe me.

The social consequences of being outed when your nearest neighbours are an hour away, when you're dealing with the severe social isolation of rural living - it's different. Ostracism in circumstances like that will make you insane. These are communities where the church exists as the center of social life. Baby Clark has access to Smallville, which is more of a population center, obviously, but the likelihood of him having exposure to and a concept of queer life while growing up in this place is low. Men who went through this often claim they were The Only Gay Person In Town, which is not actually what's going on, it's more that men are so extremely closeted and the consequences for interacting with a 15 year old, even if it's just to say "hey dude, you're not alone, it gets better, move out of this hellhole ASAP" are so extreme that no one is taking that risk.

Meanwhile, homophobic narratives are pervasive, and many rural queer people actually do internalize and believe a lot of these homophobic myths, like that city-dwelling homos never experience oppression, that they're all poppin party drugs and living at the club 24/7, that they are incapable of commitment and only want shallow sex, blah blah blah. Clark would have to unlearn a lot of that after his move to Metropolis and if his primary connection to queerness is Bruce, well... he wouldn't. Y'know? Shit, Lois is more likely to know actual working class, real life gay culture than Bruce Wayne. The distinction being, Clark can actually access and learn these things, but Bruce Wayne is always Bruce Wayne, sans some kind of weird disguise he can't access the same spaces and cultural institutions as Clark.

For what it's worth, I feel like Clark would come out shortly after the move to Metropolis and he'd seek out actual queer life, but you've met boys like that, who come from bumfuck nowhere into the modern world and have to unlearn all of the stigma that surrounded them throughout their formative youth. They tend to have the realest, most honest understanding of how discrimination actually functions, and I feel like that'd be in the back of Clark's mind especially as a champion of truth, justice and sloppy makeouts with the lads.

My point in saying all of this: Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne would be very specific Types Of Guy if they were indeed queer and together. Their relationship would be heavily influenced by that. They are in some ways opposites - Bruce likely believes queer rural people are redneck hicks with a lot of homophobic beliefs, the kind of men who sign up for conversion therapy, and Clark likely believes that Bruce is so insulated from real homophobia that he's simply never been called a slur, capable of understanding homophobia only in the pure abstract.

This is, in real life, the kind of fiber that in many ways can define a queer relationship. We do, in real life, have concepts of how out one is and where one is out, we navigate complicated relationships with each others' families, and it is not uncommon to meet someone in the community who simply has no ties to their parents. The concept of "having kids" is, for most gay men, this incredibly complicated ordeal, regardless of those photos of smiling men in their 30s wearing Mr. Rogers cardigans you see in lifestyle magazines (the Charles & Rudy Gays I was discussing earlier), and Bruce has like ten of the fucking things running around. That would be a big deal to Clark, who's from a background with no queer parents in a ten mile radius, where queer marriage may be legal (for now) but the church sure ain't likely to cater to they/them folks, not in these here parts.

As a final thought, when gay men criticize fanfiction as not representing us, it's because none of this stuff is ever really considered in how those queer relationships are written. There's this lack of awareness or interest in how a relationship between queer men is fundamentally different to a hypothetical relationship between two ostensibly straight men, as men who are not victims of discrimination and have not had their identities formed under oppression. It can feel alienating and invalidating to see media someone who is not like you has created to represent a fetishised, simplistic idea of you, the literary equivalent of that "lesbian" porn made for straight men that has no interest in any kind of emotional or social connection between the performers under the male gaze.

And in the case of Batman and Superman specifically, it's like... to be honest, you're missing so much of the potential romantic tension and meat by simply not engaging with this stuff. You have a rich socially isolated queer man who's never been able to enter the community due to his wealth, who would reject the rich gay community because I mean who wouldn't, hooking up with a country boy liberal journalist who moved from Gay Hell to a major city at 18-20 or so. There's so so so so much there. Flattening this into "it's just them 1:1 exactly as in the comics but they fuck" feels alien and unreal, like they had no sexual thoughts or self-concept before encountering each other and therefore have never lived as queer men.

This is not a "you should do it like this or you're homophobic" post, this is a "you could access these concepts to add humanity and drama to your writing" post.

btw I think this applies to basically all slash fic but am using Batman / Superman specifically due to familiarity with the characters.

[phightingheadcanons]

SFOTH Headcanons bc why not

Windforce - Will just kind of appear around(mostly behind) banhammer sometimes. if he's talking to another inphernal when this happens he'll notice their reaction and just casually turn around and go, "hi mom" - She may have taken playground into the air, but she is surprisingly not there very often (you'd think that a deity that pulled an entire faction out of the ground and into the air would hang around, but nope) - Despite being very rambunctious and kind of impulsive (also just kind of crazy to the point where even the other SFOTH don't stop her from doing what she wants to do), she's actually a really caring person and would do just about anything to protect the other SFOTH and Banhammer. - It usually gets a bit breezy or windy when Windforce is nearby, so if the wind suddenly picks up out of pretty much nowhere, she's probably nearby. Also probably behind her son lol

Firebrand - He feels really bad about what happened to Dom and about his and Valk's parents not being present so he tries to take care of them the best he can, but often had to rely on Umbrella to take care of them (you can only do so much with hands that hot -- literally) - Before he just kind of disappeared he would actually try and see the inphernals as much as he could (mostly when Valk and Dom were around though bc grandsons) and was always kind, which is why he is(was?) the most beloved deity. - The air gets warmer smells kind of like campfire smoke smell when he's nearby, but really really faintly. Even when you're right next to him the campfire smell isnt very prominent. Its there, but not very strong at all

Venomshank - constantly has to break up petty fights between Sword and Sisyphus because they act like siblings in a lot of ways - ^ Venomshank has gone into a "small" panic because of these a few times before, but mostly only when Sword begins to pull out his gear or Sisyphus goes big bird. or both at the same time (the two never actually aim to hurt each other, they just basically do sibling things in fights and whatnot) - You can usually tell Venomshank nearby because the area will smell a little off. Like less fresh if that makes any sense-

Ghostwalker - Revives people even though he sometimes doesn't think they're worth reviving. Study purposes, lets say - Since Ghostwalker doesn't really feel emotions, he didn't really teach Ghostdeeri how to respond in certain situations, she both learned on her own and through Traffic - Ghostwalker is probably one of the most feared or at least like suspicious deities to the inphernal ( other than Windforce and maybe Darkheart) - When Ghostwalker is nearby the air just gets kinda dry. Like desert air, but without the heat. just dry (this is coming from someone who lives in a desert area)

Ice Dagger - Just a little little guy (but actually kinda scary) - Generally liked by the inphernals because he is mostly chill, but can and will sometimes just attack random people that are alone. why? great question, moving on (aka I have no idea) - its usually recognizable if Ice Dagger is nearby because the air will get a little bit chillier in that one area, but perfectly fine everywhere else, just around him. - ^ the size of the area can change depending on his mood or even the current weather of that time of year (if its more chilly outside it'll feel colder in a wider area than if it was warmer outside, that kind of thing)

Darkheart - Can and will use inphernals as fishing bait because why not - They refer to themselves plurally because they have this little voice in the back of their head that they think isn't them, but is really just their internal dialogue - The air will get a lot more humid when Darkheart is nearby, like, *really* humid. almost 100% humidity humid type humid. (which sounds like actual hell to someone who has only ever lived in desert air)

Illumina - tends to scare inphernals a lot. Sometimes intentional, sometimes not, but most of the time at least a little bit intentional - He'll kind of just appear sometimes just to scare ppl - ^ or he'll appear behind someone that's talking shit about either himself or another SFOTH (yes even if its shit talking Darkheart) and will just be like "You talking shit about ___?" and scare the shit out of them then disappear again - ^^ also sometimes he'll say more after asking. like if the person is shit talking Darkheart he'll just continue with something like "keep up the good work" or something stupid like that. just because he hates them - is mostly silent and doesn't appear often in the slightest. only appears to inphernals like, once every blue moon and he's fucking gone again, they don't even really know what happened and cant process it its so fast - The air actually doesnt really change much when Illumina is nearby. like, something feels off all of a sudden, but you cant really place what feels off. it just feels off.

- 🌌✨️ anon (I'm trying not to spam headcanons into the inbox, sorry if I am- I'm trying to space them out slower than my brain is making them but its making them too fast-)

oh nono anon its okay (i know im really late) but um. spamming inbox is okay!!

[maxdibert]

My problem with Lily and James being seen as a super couple has nothing to do with Severus Snape but rather with the fact that when we look at the relationship between James and Lily through a feminist lens, it’s hard not to notice some pretty glaring issues that go beyond just whether or not they’re an “OTP” couple. Sure, on the surface it might seem like a story of two people finding love amid all the chaos, but scratch beneath the surface and you see a whole lot more about toxic masculinity, objectification, and the erasure of a woman’s agency. James is celebrated as this charming, rebellious “bad boy” with a roguish smile, while Lily gets stuck playing the role of the sacrificial, moral compass woman—someone who exists largely to balance out and even redeem the male narrative. And honestly, that’s a problem.

James is shown as this complex, active character who’s constantly surrounded by friends, enemies, and drama. His life is dynamic and full of choices—even if those choices sometimes involve manipulation and deceit. He’s the kind of guy who can easily slip out of confinement with his Invisibility Cloak, leaving Lily behind in a narrative that, over time, turns her into a background figure. This dynamic isn’t accidental; it’s reflective of how our culture often values male agency over female independence. Lily, on the other hand, is repeatedly reduced to her relationships with the men around her. Instead of being a person with her own dreams, opinions, and friendships, she becomes a symbol—a kind of emotional barometer for how “good” or “bad” a man is. Her character is used to validate the actions of others, which means her individuality gets smothered under the weight of a trope that’s all too common in literature: the idea that a woman’s worth is measured by her ability to tame or save a troubled man.

This isn’t just about a lack of depth in Lily’s character; it’s also about how her portrayal reinforces harmful gender norms. Lily is depicted as this kind of sacrificial mother figure—a person whose primary virtue is her selflessness, her willingness to suffer and sacrifice for the sake of others. While selflessness is often celebrated in women, it’s a double-edged sword when that selflessness is the only thing we see. Instead of having her own narrative, her role is defined by how much she gives up, not by what she contributes or the inner life she leads. And it’s not just a narrative oversight—it’s a reflection of a broader cultural pattern where women are expected to be nurturing, supportive, and ultimately secondary to the male characters who drive the action.

What’s even more frustrating is how Lily’s isolation is used to further the narrative of James’s redemption. Over time, we see Lily’s network of friends and her connections outside of James gradually disappear. It’s almost as if, once she falls in love, her entire world is meant to shrink around that relationship. And here’s where the feminist critique really kicks in: this isn’t a realistic depiction of a balanced, healthy relationship—it’s a story that subtly suggests that a woman’s fulfillment comes from being dependent on one man and his circle, rather than cultivating her own identity. Meanwhile, James continues to be portrayed as this larger-than-life figure who’s got a whole world beyond his romantic entanglement, a world filled with vibrant interactions, rivalries, and a legacy that extends beyond his relationship with Lily.

Another point worth mentioning is the way in which the narrative seems to excuse James’s less-than-stellar behavior. His manipulation, his lying, and his willingness to trick Lily into situations that serve his own interests are brushed off as quirks of a “bad boy” persona—a kind of charm that, in the end, makes him redeemable because Lily’s love is supposed to “tame” him. This kind of storytelling not only normalizes toxic masculinity but also puts an unfair burden on Lily. It’s like saying, “Look how amazing you are, you’re the only one who can fix him!” That’s a dangerous message because it implies that women are responsible for managing or even reforming male behavior, rather than holding men accountable for their own actions.

The imbalance in their character development is glaringly obvious when you compare how much more we learn about James versus how little we know about Lily. James is given room to be flawed, to grow, and to be complicated. His friendships, his rivalries, and even his mistakes are all part of what makes him a rounded character. Lily, however, is often just a name, a face in the background who exists mainly to serve as a counterpoint to James’s narrative. Her inner life, her ambitions, and her struggles are rarely explored in any meaningful way, leaving her as a one-dimensional character whose only real purpose is to highlight the moral journey of the man she loves.

It’s also important to recognize how this kind of narrative plays into broader cultural ideas about gender. When literature consistently portrays women as the quiet, isolated figures who are only valuable in relation to the men around them, it sends a message about what is expected of real-life women. It suggests that a woman’s worth is determined by how much she sacrifices or how well she can support a man, rather than by her own achievements or personality. This isn’t just a harmless trope—it contributes to a societal mindset that limits women’s potential and reinforces gender inequality. The way Lily is written reflects a kind of “tamed” femininity that’s supposed to be passive, supportive, and ultimately secondary to the active, adventurous masculinity that James represents.

At the heart of the issue is the lack of balance in their relationship as depicted in the texts. The idea that Lily “fell for” a man who was clearly not a paragon of virtue is problematic, but what’s even more problematic is how her role in the relationship is so narrowly defined. Rather than being seen as an independent character who makes choices and has her own voice, she is constantly portrayed as someone whose existence is meant to validate the male experience. Even when the texts mention that Lily had her own issues—like hating James at times or suffering because of the way their relationship unfolded—it’s always in a way that underlines her weakness compared to James’s dynamic, active presence.

Looking at the broader picture, it’s clear that this isn’t just about one fictional couple—it’s a reflection of how gender dynamics have long been skewed in literature. Male characters are given the freedom to be complex, flawed, and full of life, while female characters are often stuck in roles that don’t allow them to be fully realized. This isn’t to say that every story with a sacrificial female character is inherently bad, but it does mean that when a character like Lily is reduced to a mere symbol—a moral compass or a measure of male worth—it’s time to ask why and what that says about the society that produced that narrative.

So, what’s the way forward? For one, we need to start reimagining these relationships in a way that allows both partners to be fully fleshed out. Lily deserves to be more than just a side character or a moral benchmark; she should have her own narrative, her own dreams, and her own agency. And as much as it might be appealing to think of James as this redeemable rebel, it’s equally important to hold him accountable for the ways in which his behavior perpetuates harmful stereotypes about masculinity. A healthier narrative would be one in which both characters grow together, where mutual respect and equal agency are at the core of their relationship.

In the end, the story of James and Lily, as it stands, is a reminder of how deeply ingrained gender norms can shape the stories we tell. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing toxic masculinity to go unchecked and of confining women to roles that don’t do justice to their full humanity. For anyone who’s ever felt frustrated by these imbalances, there’s hope in the idea of re-writing these narratives—of pushing for stories where both men and women are seen as complete, complex individuals. And really, that’s what literature should strive for: a reflection of the messy, beautiful, and often complicated reality of human relationships, where no one is just there to serve as a prop in someone else’s story.

Ultimately, if we can start imagining a world where characters like Lily aren’t just defined by their relationships to men, where their voices and stories are given as much weight as those of their male counterparts, then we can begin to chip away at the outdated tropes that have held us back for so long. It’s about time we celebrated the full spectrum of human experience—and that means giving women like Lily the space to shine on their own terms, without being constantly overshadowed by a “bad boy” narrative that has little to say about their true selves.

[datesinredink]

Yan turtles (rottmnt) with an m/c that’s allergic to reptiles/turtles? Idk I just think it would be funny (not Donnie trying to get m/c into getting injections to help the allergy-)

ANON I AM SO SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG BCIRBIFUNUIEH

Super duper sorry i ended up procrastinating really hard and i guess god took issue with that because he struck me down with multiple QAs and a Feelings crisis but the tests are over and I finally managed to sit down and finish Raph's part- seriously i struggled with him and mikey a lot but i guess it was kinda worth it in the end because Raph has an entire 110 more words to his part than the other three- hopefully it makes up for my lack of knowledge of his character. Enjoy!

Donnie

“My inspiration for this device was simplicity-”

Yeah you’re getting a hazmat suit until your allergies either magically disappear or he figures out some other solution

You’ll probably have to do a lot of tests, including possibly a blood draw but I’m no medical expert- since I headcanon Leo to be the medic he’ll probably end up helping too

After he finally puts the pieces together, he’ll start working with Leo to engineer a medicine to help suppress your allergic reaction, and maybe even be able to get rid of it entirely

Also anon you’re very right, you may be subjected to becoming the human pincushion of allergy shots while he figures it out. It’s safe. No it won’t kill you. Yes he made sure. Just, uh, maybe don’t ask your best friend their opinion on needles for a while….

In the meantime, he completely hates the current situation. He finally meets someone that he’s (mostly) fine with touching him, and they CAN’T TOUCH HIM without a HAZMAT SUIT. Just the worst. Awful times.

Normally, he’d have you around almost always, but, unfortunately, that’s currently not ideal.

Starts trying to keep things extra clean around the lair for you. Also everything that can be sanitized is sanitized. Good luck in the cleanliness prison after you get kidnapped later on.

The best about keeping distance, since he already wasn't super touchy before this whole situation. While he might tap you on the arm or something once or twice, it's nothing serious and you won't have a problem with him on that front.

Going back to the hazmat suit real quick, while it does do its job well, it's definitely not the most comfortable thing to wear, and you'll probably end up getting too hot pretty quick, so chances are you won't willingly be wearing it all too often. Donnie may occasionally force you to wear it, but otherwise you (usually) just... don't have to.

Leo

He’s the one who finds out you’re allergic. It was an accident he SWEARS. He only wanted to give you a pat on the arm when April first introduced you to them! How could he have known you’d get hives where he touched you?

At least he knows how to treat it. He managed to guide April through treating it, after which he sulked while rereading some Jupiter Jim comics.

Has a personal grudge against your immune system for daring to make you allergic to him. How dare your cells get mad about him.

When Donnie tells him that he might have “a fix, bro”, Leo jumps at the opportunity- oh thank god, he can finally hug you!

…Doesn’t mean he’s not super bad at focusing on actually working on it. Don’t worry, he’ll fix it eventually, just have a little patience.

Honestly, this is your chance to BOOK IT away from them, because none of them are as clingy as they will be after your allergies are cured/suppressed, which gives you more time to leave New York before things go from bad to worse.

Anyway, Leo’s about as clingy as he can be without physically clinging onto you for hours on end. Constantly hanging around you, like a ghost haunting their killer, except you’re not the one who kills people.

He might end up using your allergy to try and manipulate you away from his brothers. Mikey keeps forgetting to keep distance, Donnie’s suffocating and makes you wear a hazmat suit, and Raph almost treats you like a sopping wet cat that he has to take care of, so why not just stay with him? 

As much as he likes to criticize Mikey for forgetting, sometimes, particularly early on, he gets a little too close, and your allergies flare up, and while he does genuinely feel kinda bad, he will exaggerate his remorse for sympathy from you. He genuinely does try and apologize for it later, and he probably portals you two somewhere nice and gets you a couple of trinkets you like or find useful.

Mikey

Absolutely heartbroken!

His love is allergic to him! This is awful!

2nd most panicked when they first find out. Is their new friend ok? Did they mess up?

If you have a low tolerance for pain/allergic reaction symptoms and cry a little he probably will too. High empathy, man…

He’s really understanding after everything’s resolved and they figure out you’re allergic to them. He tries his best to keep a fair amount of distance between you and him, but he tends to naturally be physically affectionate, so there may be a slight adjustment period. He really doesn’t mean harm though.

He occasionally tries to bring you something from the mystic city that he thinks would be safe- a small figurine, maybe a sketchbook if you also like doing art, if he manages to bargain for/steal a piece of jewelry, he’ll also give that to you.

As I mentioned before, Mikey’s pretty big on physical touch, but since that’s off limits (for now) he’ll try to show you affection in any other way he can think of

Mostly quality time. He likes to take you with him when he explores through the sewers/city to spraypaint a couple of blank walls, and he’ll probably get you to try it too, and regardless of your skill level he’ll tell you it’s great

After Donnie and Leo finish making the cure, Mikey squeezes the LIFE out of you- he doesn’t mean to practically strangle you, but he’s fairly strong and he got excited, so he does feel a little bad afterwards.

Will decorate the hazmat suit Donnie gave you if you let him. He'll put stickers on it that match his and draw fun patterns that may or may not relate to him in some way. Maybe the spots he has, or the face on his knee pads. It's pretty endearing, even if his brothers may occasionally glare at him. In Mikey's opinion, if they're really that jealous, they should add something themselves.

Raph

And the award for most paranoid goes to….

Ok but really, he’s the most overbearing about it. This probably isn’t a surprise, but it’s still something I've gotta mention.

You don’t really have to worry about Donnie making you wear the hazmat suit- he gets it, not a fun sensory experience- other than a couple stand-out occasions, but you will have to convince Raph fairly often that you’ll be fine without it.

To be fair, it’s partially because he also forgets not to touch you sometimes, and while he’s better about it than Mikey and most of the time Leo, he’s also self-aware and protective enough that he’d rather be safe than sorry.

If you’re having an allergic reaction, he’ll either get Leo/Donnie/April to help you, or go find the hazmat suit Donnie made him a while ago when Splinter got sick and then help you himself

There’s a chance he might not do great though, as he’s not always the best under pressure and tends to panic when the people he loves are hurt or in some sort of extreme situation, especially when it comes to you (seriously, he treats you like a porcelain doll), but you can be reassured that he’ll do his absolute best to make you safe and comfortable.

Feels terrible after, pampers you a lot after the ordeal. Every time, not just the first few.

If he wasn’t the one who caused it, then he’s definitely pissed at whichever of his brothers made your allergies flare up. He won’t kill them, and he won’t lose it and drop kick them into tomorrow (yet. If they ever intentionally trigger your allergies he might snap some bones) but there will be a noticeable irritation and tension for at least the next few weeks between him and them.

He’s super excited after Donnie and Leo finish the allergy shots! I personally headcanon him to be the second touchiest of the brothers (Mikey being the most touchy, of course) so there’ll be a lot more casual touch between you two after. Hugs, headpats, you get the idea. If you try to tell him to stop, he’ll be very upset, though doing his best to understand, he will try to respect your wishes.. Before going right back to it after a week tops. Sometimes he genuinely does forget, after all, he does have a fair amount on his plate, but sometimes he does intentionally wait until he thinks he can get away with it again before jumping right back to how things were before. He’ll vehemently deny it, but no matter what happens, you’ll likely never really get him to stop for an extended period of time.

[daisyjonesgf]

silver springs

finnick odair x gn!reader

2k words

masterlist

summary: finnick's cycle of self destruction stops for no one, even if it tears the two of you apart, but you refuse to fade into the past.

warnings: angst, lots of it, self destructive behavior, mentions of trafficking, allusions to consensual smut, reader values their virginity, arguments, break ups, trauma, unhealthy relationship dynamics, unhappy ending, but could be interpreted as hopeful if you want it to be, unedited, no use of y/n

���⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Finnick knows he should just fall asleep, let himself rest and turn his brain off from overthinking, but he can't. You deserve better, so much better than the broken boy from District 4 who will forever be playing his role in the puppet show. Where you've fought the demons off with compassion for each person you've come across, it shames him how easily he can fall into the facade of the egotistical Capitol darling. Eventually his outlook will consume the joy you've harvested to forcefully in the depths of your heart and he knows not a minute will pass that he can look at himself in the mirror knowing he did that to you. So he has to end it, to let you be free for a much happier life, at least that's what he tells himself as he prepares for you to wake.

You're so beautiful in the moonlight that glows on your sleeping face and he's even more enthralled when the sun begins to rise and it's like you're an angel in the colors. He's not sure when he let a few tears shed thinking about how when you wake up it'll be the last time he sees you like this, but it's for the best. When you do hazily wake up, blankets falling off your bare body as you sit up, all your sleepy smiles make his heart clench even more, but his brain more certain.

“Good morning." You mumble out, leaning in for a kiss which he scoots away from and your incoherent brain snaps to attention. No matter how long it's been since you've been in the arena, you doubt that instinct will ever go away, the need to be constantly on edge if something seems slightly off, and he is. Finnick is usually the type to be just returning from a swim with some fish he caught in the morning or arms wrapped around you. “What's wrong?" You can feel a defense mechanism settling in with the numbness of your voice, had you really finally had the courage to let someone have your body only for them to pull away from your love the very next morning? What a cruel master the universe seemed to be no matter what cards you played.

Finnick's eyes were glossy and he rubbed his face as he sniffled, forcing the words out of his reluctant throat, “I don't think we should see each other anymore." Before the words have even finished tumbling out of his mouth you've pulled the blanket back up to cover your exposed chest. How could you be so cautious of something only for it to come from the person you least expected, apparently you weren't cautious enough.

“Oh." It's humiliating, if you could just disappear into the air you would give anything to do so. You can't cry, it would only further that humiliation, so you robotically move to the side of the bed to grab the panties that had been so lazily thrown off by him the night before. “Congrats on the score, Finnick, hopefully I'm worth a good amount of points." Your voice can't be allowed to crack or shake, but it's fighting against your willpower.

“It's not like that." Finnick quickly says, observing you, and he'll never say it, but he's scared. He doesn't want you to hate him, to break your heart, he just wants you to be free of his chains.

You scoff and have to force yourself to stand without the protection of the blanket so you can find the rest of your strewn about clothes. “I’m sure that's what you tell all of them.” All of us, he's always been a rumored playboy, but with what the Capitol did to him that was what you'd placed it on. Not that he played people, but that he was unfairly used, now you reasoned, two things could be true at once. Him having past partners had never bothered you when he began talking to you, but now you wondered how he left them. You glance back for less then a second when you see he's buried his head in hands, not answering.

He knows this isn't true, that he's doing this because he cares too much to let his darkness eat you alive. Maybe he'll even have to say that to you, so he won't have to live with the additional weight of your resentment.

“I just-" Your throat breaks on a sob you're holding back, “I know it's not important to everyone, but it was important to me, Finnick. I gave you something that I wasn't ready to give anyone else because I thought…” You sighed, "It doesn't matter what I thought, but it's so fucked that you took that away when you knew.” A stray tear has forced its way through which you're wiping away as soon as you can. Your pants are in a pile at the end of the bed which you quickly grab.

“I'm sorry." His voice isn't hiding the tears as he looks up from his hands, he's genuine and you can tell as much from his voice, but it doesn't stop the internal berating of being so stupid to finally share that intimate part of yourself when he would leave you hours later. “I didn't plan it like that, honey, I didn't."

“Please, don't call me that." He nods his head in retreat after your request that was meant to be more forceful, preferably he'd never speak to you again.

“You deserve better, so much better." You agree, the bare minimum would be a day before he broke the news not hours after you'd slept with him. “Better than me, I need you to have better.” He feels like a child, knees pulled up to his chest as he gives you up so you'll be far away from his destruction, but you feel more like a toy he's gotten bored of playing with. Like a hurricane it hits you that he means being with you, a sentiment he’s murmured many times in your relationship even if you insisted otherwise at each utterance. Yet you can no longer find it in you to assure him otherwise, no matter how much you disagree.

“Oh my god, this is the ‘woe is me, I'm Finnick Odair, so unlovable’ act again!” You could tear your hair out, "I could love you, Finnick! That's who could and I'm so sick of this push and pull thing you play at. But we are all dealing with things inside and you refuse to be, not even helped, but at least cared for!”

He's gotten up from the bed, shaking his head with as much intent as he can muster, "If you loved me it would kill you.”

"Says who?” You no longer care about whether or not you're keeping composure or yelling, you've spent every moment you can trying to assure him and within the hours you slept he decided to tear it all apart. "Oh right, just you! You and your endless piles of self doubt, I'm not asking for that to go away, but you could at least be open to hearing others out."

“It's for you, honey, I couldn't live with myself if I put you through that."

Any movements you were making stop as you stare at him, he's so honest, so eager, and you radiate an anger he despises himself for making, but wants to catch the last few sparks of before he leaves forever. “You are so selfish. Have you ever even considered the fact that I would suffer more without you, then with you, or were you too busy trying to punish yourself for not spending every moment of your life in a pile of guilt?”

He doesn't answer and you know it's a no. Part of you says it's wrong to tell a man who's always eating himself up from the inside that he's selfish, but you feel like you're on autopilot.

"I'm a person, Finnick! Everyone you've ever dated is. You do not get to play house for a year to live in a fantasy and then push us away whenever your thoughts are too much, that's why it doesn't work, you won't let it. And everyone who puts in the effort to love you, to care about you, has it all swept away when you're ready to wallow again. That way when you briefly decide it's over you can do it all over again.” You're pulling on the pants before you can look around for the shirt in some hidden spot.

Finnick feels like he's running cold, part of him knows you're right that his cycle is neverending, but you can understand, he tells himself. Even if you're a fellow victor, no one can help him, he's resigned himself to it and you're too light of a bubble to let you pop. So he has to live in denial, that he has to protect you from himself even if that is really what's attacking you now, “I care and I can't do this to you. You don't understand, I'm like a whirlpool waiting to suck everything in with me."

“You have." You find the shirt and button it up with fumbling fingers, blood pulsating in anger, sadness, and the want to beg him to change his mind and let you sit with forever. But you know you can't subject yourself to his cyclone of self-destruction any longer, not when you have your own struggles to deal with. The things you couldn't tell him about because of the constant pressure to be the light in his bleak outlook of the world, even when you were so tempted whenever it seemed like he was in his true state. The Finnick that was sweet and giving, or maybe you were an idealist wishing for a man that he could truly never be. “I won't fade into obscurity over you.” Your voice has become considerably softer and you gaze at his shaking body.

"What?” He asks, he knows that you won't understand why he has to do what he's convinced himself he must, but that doesn't prevent him from wanting to take it all back, embrace you, and promise to do better even if he knows he won't.

"I'm a victor too, Finnick. Every party, I'll be there, when you have to watch required programs on the television, I'll be there. I won't take a step back just because I'm hurt, we're all wounded dogs, Finnick, some of us just handle it better and I won't quiet myself just because it might remind you of another person you've pushed behind.”

“I'm not asking you too."

“No, but it's what you're used to. I'm not just someone else from home, you will always hear my voice, see my face, and I need you to know that. I want you to get better, Finnick, because I care about you more than you can even fathom, but I will be a hitch from what you're used to. You deserve to know that, I'm sorry if that makes it more difficult for you or maybe it's what you need. A wake-up call that whatever you're doing is what's actually hurting people not whatever fucked up fantasy it is you're listening to in your head.”

Finnick wanted you to know how much you cared, but said nothing as he pushed down more tears when you left, never to be in his room again. The mornings spent in your comfort are officially gone. You'd been right of course, he couldn't wallow and move on because you were everywhere. Your laugh in his ears at every party, your saccharine voice on the screen, your presence around every turn. Maybe you'd even been right when you insinuated this was what he was missing, he couldn't forget about you long enough to fall into his routine, especially not when the echoes that once told him he had to let you go sang a different tune. How destructive he was for letting the one person who could even attempt to anchor his tortured soul go.

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Thank you for reading, as always feedback, comments, likes, reblogs, is all super appreciated! I was going to write another chapter of the lakes but I had this idea in my brain presenting so here it is. 💋

[plutowon]

[out of your league]

pairing: sunghoon x fem!reader

genre: angst, vent, comfort post

warnings: insecurity, body dysmorphia, depression, feelings of worthlessness, wanting to disappear, very graphic depictions of eating disorders (ednos) please do not read this if you are recovering from an eating disorder, internalized fatphobia, questioning reality to a certain extent

synopsis: your perfect boyfriend couldn’t possibly think you’re even slightly attractive, could he ?

2.2k words

꒪ □ ◌⠀۰ ⠀۰ ⏜⃞☁️⠀⊹⠀ ָ࣪ ⠀• ❒

you assume everybody views you the same way.

ugly, to put it very bluntly.

you assume when people see you on the street they feel a wave of sympathy wash over them. when people meet you, they don’t meet you, they meet pity to a new extent. suddenly, they meet pity on a very very personal level.

such a shame, your face, your body as well.

you’re not even given the comfort and contentment of being average. for you, you are very much below average. not even something to settle for you are simply unwanted, another’s worse nightmare.

you assume everyone sees you like this because thats how you see you.

you feel like a pig. you can feel every inch of space you take up in the world, space you’re very much undeserving of. you can feel the fat on your thigh bounce as it absorbs the shock of your movements, you can feel it in your stomach as well. you hate the way it feels when you wear jeans. the denim squeezes against your fat and your legs are itching to burst out, as if they’re saying “you know we’re too big for this, let us out or lose the weight!”. and even when you are so sure you’re eating in a deficit, the fact that you’re eating at all means you’re not trying enough.

you’ve spent countless months crying. you’ve been stagnant for about a year. you lose and gain the same five to ten pounds. it seems to cling to you like a toxic friend, like a parasite feeding off of you, it’s making you sick. you can’t seem to lose weight, which is laughable, really. that’s the one thing you should be good at, isn’t that what an eating disorder is ? perhaps you’re not trying hard enough. perhaps you’re not sick.

and no one seems to notice your struggles. your friends haven’t even noticed. and you can tell, the way they say nothing when you eat nothing around them, when you constantly deny their offers for food because you mostly give in and eat a couple of fries anyways, despite attempting a thirty-six hour fast. you give up like you always do. even when you’re too obvious, when you mention the calories in a product, when you make a small joke about losing weight, they simply laugh it off, even telling you that losing a couple of pounds couldn’t hurt. you can’t expect them to notice you’re sick when you’re basically not. you feel lost, you feel stuck, you feel like you’re running out of time but you don’t try any harder.

at this rate, you’ll never be able to fix yourself. you’ll be stuck in this never-ending purgatory for the rest of your pathetic life as people look at you wondering how something like you could’ve crawled out of the ground and have the gall to pass yourself off as human.

your family is struggling because of your weight. because you’re eating everything in site like a raccoon trying to survive. your boyfriend is probably gonna start pulling away from you because how could he be seen with you ? i mean, you’re bigger than him and he’s one hundred and seventy-nine centimeters tall—are you not embarrassed ? you feel bad for him because he has to lug around his big girlfriend that all his skinny friends probably make fun of when you’re not around. you’re sure your friends feel bad for you—everybody does. you’re sure that they comment on your selfies to make you feel better. that they call you pretty because they know if they don’t, nobody else will. they’re just being nice. that’s the only reason you’re worth talking to,

out of pity.

how could anyone ever love you ?

how could anyone truly enjoy your company ? and your lack of eye candy isn’t even made up for in personality. you’re annoying, you’re loud, and your jokes fall flat on their face like a four year old learning to bike without training wheels for the first time. you’re nothing of value, nothing people seek out or look forward to.

this is just the way things are.

until you get your act together, you’ll simply be stuck like this. pathetic, and gross, and subhuman.

you assume eveyone sees you this way.

and when you’re with your boyfriend sunghoon, laying down in his bed while he changed his top to a simple hoodie to cuddle you in, you don’t think twice about what you say.

“sometimes i don’t understand why you’re my boyfriend. like, you’re so pretty and out of my league you could get any girl you want but you settled for me”

you laugh because it’s funny. your situation is a bit silly, is it not ? and you expect sunghoon to laugh along, tell you you’re an amazing girlfriend and you dont need to be pretty, but he looks at you in shock, almost angry. he doesn’t even know how to formulate words because he simply can’t believe the words coming out of your mouth, and what’s even more unbelievable is how calmly you’ve said them, this egregious belief of yours. it makes his blood run cold. it’s appalling how you think what you’ve said is okay, and what’s most terrifying is you expect him to agree with you.

“…what?” you ask when you realize your laughter isn’t kissing his. you don’t understand how he doesn’t find it all as humorous as you do.

“what the hell are you talking about?” he looks at you mortified. he runs up beside you on the bed and you sit up and look at him confused.

“how could you say that…?” he says, his voice barely above a whisper and his eyes are tearing up and you don’t know how, but you can sense you’ve fucked up.

“…well, i mean, everybody thinks it, so-”

“what? who told you that…nobody thinks this- who told you this? was it a friend? was it that dickhead at work? i swear i’ll fuck him up-”

“nobody had to tell me, sunghoon, it’s just common knowledge…i’m not exactly pretty”

sunghoon feels like crying.

how could you say something like this? how could you say you’re not pretty? objectively, you’re a very attractive person. you’re very very beautiful. so beautiful, sunghoon was almost convinced you were a long lost princess. he even made up a storyline where perhaps you had run away from your home somewhere in a european kingdom to get away from the hustle and bustle of the royal life that you had decided wasn’t made for you and ended up here in his.

he feels like crying so he does.

“what- i don’t-” he says it in between his tears as he tries to gather his bearings.

“is this why you don’t wanna go out for dates anymore…and why you’ve been eating less…?”

you’re shocked, to say the least. you had been avoiding been seen in public in general, but especially with your perfect boyfriend knowing people would be embarrassed for him. you didn’t think he would notice though, and you especially didn’t think he would notice you eating less.

“…what are you talking about?”

“i’m not dumb, y/n. you started eating less and all of a sudden you loss like twenty pounds in a month i noticed it last year, but jungwon told me not to say anything because that could make it worse. he told me to just watch you”

you don’t know how to feel.

a myriad of emotions falls over you, but one shows it’s face in the crowd more clearly than the others.

embarrassment.

how embarrassing this is, for your boyfriend to have noticed your eating disorder meant he also noticed you not losing any more weight. he noticed your failure before anyone else.

you want to deny him. you want to tell him he’s wrong, but the look in his eye is not one of question. he’s not looking at you for confirmation, he’s looking at you because he’s pieced everything together and he knows you know that.

you begin to cry. how dare you? inconvenience him like this. not only are you his ugly pigglet girlfriend, you’ve made your failure of an eating disorder his problem? how dare you?

“i’m sorry, i didn’t think you would notice”

sunghoon is even more shocked now. your words have stricken his core in such a bone-chilling way, worse than anything hes ever felt before.

“why the hell are you apologizing to me?”

“because it’s bothering you-”

“NO no, don’t even think like that”

he sniffles and wipes his tears before holding your hand tightly and pulling it towards himself

“you are never an inconvenience to me, okay? i love you so much. and i love you because you are you. not because you were available, and not because no one else was. i don’t love you because it’s convenient or because i have to, i love you because i want to. because my heart aches and pounds for you on it’s own. you’re my beautiful little angel—how could you ever even think i would find you anything less than gorgeous and heavensent?”

you want to believe him, you do. and you almost believe him cause his eyes are boring into yours with such a bold intensity, laced with devotion and desperation, but it doesn’t make sense.

because how could he see you like this? you’re jaw dropping heartthrob boyfriend that’s out of your league? the most average of people would never see you like this, so why would he?

“i wish you could see yourself through everyone else’s eyes, because my love, you are amazing”

what is he even saying? everyone’s eyes? last you checked,

“everyone would think i’m hideous”

he looks at you with aching pain, like you’ve taken the sharpest spear to his chest and you’re killing him, slowly and painfully.

“no baby, that’s not true. why would you say that? you’re genuinely so beautiful everyone thinks that i don’t understand why you see yourself so negatively. nobody thinks you’re ugly”

had it truly all been in your head? of course not. no, this is how it’s always been you’ve always been below average.

“you know when we first started talking, my friends laughed and said i was too much of a loser to pull someone like you” sunghoon laughs at the fond memory of his drop dead gorgeous crush smiling at him and his asshole friends punching him, telling him to lower his bar a little bit.

“if anything, you’re out of my league” you’re aggressively wiping your eyes as an excuse to not listen to these fabricated fibs he’s telling you.

“listen, we’re gonna go at your pace and i won’t push you or force anything on you, but we’re gonna start slow, okay? you’re so much more than just how much you eat or how much you don’t eat. no matter what, i’ll still be head over heels for you. you’ll always be my princess”

kissing the back of your hand and holding it to him like he’s scared you’ll wither away. scared you’ll leave him here all alone with nothing but the stardust that once danced around that pretty head of yours that just coats the floor now that you’re gone.

“you’re amazing. i know it’s not easy, and it’s so hard for you to see yourself for all that you are, but i’m here, baby. i’ll always be here”

as you sob into the sleeves of your hoodie, sunghoon pulls your hands away from your face and pulls you to fall into his arms, his warm embrace and his hipnotizing kisses.

you’re not sure if you believe him, that you really are beautiful to him and to everyone else, but you know that you want to.

and you know that you’re tired.

you’ve been chasing this perfection that doesn’t even exist for so so so long and your legs are tired. they’re aching and so is your heart. you’ve tried so hard to please yourself because you’re so certain you’re not enough for the world when you have always been more than enough. you realize that you’re wasting your life away. wasting time away just for beauty. for control. for something to hold on to when everything falls. when you’re insecure about everything, there’s always one thing that can be “fixed”.

you are running away from yourself. you’re trying so hard to be somebody different. you’ve tried everything to be happy except turn to yourself, take your hand and embrace yourself. come to terms with yourself. you’ve ran all your life but you’ve never thought to turn around and face yourself,

and you don’t know if you’re ready for that.

and sunghoon knows that. that it’s comforting to keep running. but now that the seed’s been planted in your brain and he can see the cogs turning and stopping on a cycle, he’s certain that one day, you will be able to stop running and turn around and holding yourself and welcome yourself with open arms.

but for now, sunghoon will run with his hand in yours to make sure you dont trip and fall.

“it’s okay to not be ready. we’ll take our time”

[casuallyanidiot]

Just read The Beta Test and it was really good!

But now I'm just imagining Javier walking in tomorrow, giddy. Only to realize that the plate of food he brought in yesterday wasn't eaten. Much. Our eyes look dark and our lips are parched. Thighs firmly pressing together, when we're awake.

We're on day three of no water or the ability to use a toilet. The food we did have wasn't easy for us to eat, we had to use our hands and probably tried to stick our face through the bars. So not only are our hands vaguely sticky, as are our clothes from trying to use them similar to a napkin. No. We're also sporting imprints of the bars on either side of our face. Maybe we fell asleep trying to eat? So we were pressed against those bars all night. We may even have bruises.

So we're just pitifully asking if we could have water or go to the bathroom.

This could easily lead into him trying to actually have to interact with us, or send down servants once a day to make sure we're doing well.

Also, I know that the girl he's probably trying to get with us us. But I'm just imagining him kidnapping us because we're best friends with a girl who was nice to him once. Little does Javier know, the girl he likes is also a Yandere. Towards [NAME].

Yandere BFF wants to know who to hurt for her friends disappearance.

Javier using maids to send down food and water when he doesn't want to talk to us. But Yandere BFF finds out where we were taken, through a phone tracking app she got us to install in case something ever happened at a party. So she disguises as a maid to bring down food, once she knows what's going on fully, so she can break us out.

Unfortunately for us, she takes this as an opportunity to tell us to move in with her. How she was oh so scared Javier would try to take [NAME] again. How scared she was to be alone in case he tried to go after her, after using telling her about how Javier wanted to date her. Like the ultimate manipulative yandere. And of course we stay with her! Best BFF, I need you're help untangling my hair and I need to pee, damn it. We do a spa night.

With Javier, [NAME] felt like an unworthy mutt locked in a kennel. Not even given basic human decency. But the BFF, whom I'll call Amy, makes us take care of our self and pampers us. She's kinda aggressive with it. Like, constantly doing each other's nails and face care while talking about our day and "Did you drink enough water?"

And yeah, she's clingy and constantly using the tracking app, but to be fair [NAME] was just kidnapped and the authorities didn't believe them when we told of who committed the crime. And she gives us privacy in our own room in the apartment. She just has cameras set up outside the windows so she can see what was outside it. And there was other cameras in the hall, living room, and a Ring camera doorbell for the same security. Not a single one was placed inside the private living areas.

Amy recommends [NAME] to switch to online classes. So we recommend the same to her. All their labs they need done in person is the few times they are seen outside for long periods of time. And they always try to schedule so one of them is free for the other's lab and neither are ever alone. Until finals, where they both have tests at the same time.

(I also personally like the thought Javier didn't like [NAME] like that until he kidnapped us and slowly opened up more. So, before we get broken out, Javier is trying to decide to stick to the original plan or keep us and start taking better care of us. After we get broken out, he bribes police, and [NAME] moves in with Amy; he's questioning if he just became love rivals with the person he previously had a crush on? He's also probably trying to do the mental math of if it's worth it to have both. Then he doesn't need to do much of the mental load. But he now is in increasingly hilarious situations where he's trying to out do an S-teir Yandere.)

I'm glad you like the Beta Test so much 😭

Honestly writing it is so fun and I really love Javier. he's such a gross little guy I can't help but love how insane he is. I think it would honestly be funny as hell to watch him and his like, bajillion dollar inheritance and boyfailure swag try and take on someone who is just as determined to have darling as he is if not more.

I'd like to see him try to spark his two braincells together to try and get back his now beloved "friend" lol

[jadeandroses]

Prompt by @hercarisntyours (which. Okay. I didn’t follow it to the letter. I hope that’s okay 👉👈)

the only way to bring me down

(Ao3 version) (next) (last)

(Warning: TF One spoilers ahead!)

If you had asked her before this exact moment, Elita would have said there wasn’t a reckless circuit in her body. She was focused. Her programming pushed her toward success, not risks and the potential of failure. She certainly wasn’t to the point of that one subordinate of hers, constantly breaking into archives and trying to saved trapped coworkers…

…and yet.

It took something to jump after him. Gall, perhaps? An undeniable sense of recklessness she hadn’t let herself explore, before? A sudden flare in her spark, whatever emotion it was that fueled the scream she let echo as she saw him shot?

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter much anymore—she was plummeting after him, and that was that.

(Bee’s scream as she jumped would forever echo in her audials.)

She thought they would have hit ground a long time ago. But that was far from the case—where the hard floor would have claimed her spark and whatever was left of his, it now disappeared out from under them. Arcs of energy—electric, buzzing under the ground—came narrowly close to them, and yet, not a one struck. But they were a source of light, for which she would have been grateful, if it weren’t for the fact that every single one illuminated Orion as he turned more and more gray.

Her eyes—and never you mind if they welled over—narrowed, and she lowered herself into a nosedive.

Her head made contact before her arms did. Without quick reflexes, he might have been thrown away from her, but she reached out, faster than any arc of lightning, and pulled him closer.

The wound burned under her touch, but his frame had already gone cold. Even his eyes—so full of light and wonder, even in the darkness of the mines—had gone out.

“You just had to make me believe,” she seethed, “didn’t you?”

The quick wit she had grown to despise was gone, and his lifeless frame didn’t answer. She pulled him into an embrace, just so that she didn’t have to look at his empty, sparkless eyes.

“I said you would bring us hope,” she wept, “not this! Orion, my god, he wasn’t worth it! Why did you have to be so-”

She choked on a sob, and instead howled her grief into the ground below. Her scream echoed, and thankfully, it masked the sounds of her tears.

She hadn’t cried in ages. Not since she was very, very young. It was a sign of weakness, in the mines. Elita needed to be strong, if she was to survive.

She was strong, yes, and she had carved a path for herself. But then Orion came into her life and ruined it all, and stars, she loathed him for it.

…but stars, it had been lonely without his passionate ramblings and bad flirting. It took a journey to the surface to realize just how much she had missed it.

(Maybe that was just constant exposure to Bee’s ceaseless chatter.)

…had she cried like this, when her cog was carved out as a newborn? Or had she been silent, voiceless and scared, like she had been every day of her life after that before Orion came and ruined it?

He had given her a priceless gift—her freedom. Her voice. Her autonomy. Maybe this choice had tossed back it in his lifeless face.

But she didn’t care. He had made his choice. She didn’t have to take it lying down.

And if she had to go back to relying only on herself, to being the only person in this universe she could count on or believe in…

…well. Whether her spark was snuffed out alongside his, or it flickered out trapped and endlessly alone in the dark of the mines, she would die one way or the other.

At least this way, it was her choice.

~~~~

He was gone.

He was gone, but her spark was still lit—that much she knew. That much, she could feel, deep within her chest, as it flickered right next to the cog of Alchemist Prime.

(The one renowned for his mind. Had she been thinking about it, when she received it, she would have preened.)

But the realization that holy Primus, she wasn’t dead wasn’t quite enough to distract her from the fact that Orion—her stubborn, endlessly optimistic moron of a former employee—was gone. In fact, even his corpse was missing from her arms.

She tensed. She straightened out her legs to stand—only to find no ground under her feet.

And, in front of her, painted in endless shades of stars and blue, backs of figures she only vaguely recognized.

If she had been staring at anything else, she might have looked at the blue sun in front of her, the figures of starlight in front of her, and put two and two together. But there was one in gray, whose back she had stared at as she charged into the unknown.

And suddenly her aching spark lurched.

“Orion!”

There was absolutely no response from anyone. She strained to see better, and, despite his lifeless state, he was glowing.

“What are you doing to him?!”

Still no response.

It was at this point Elita grit her teeth, and began to force her way past the ancient Primes like a barbarian. It didn’t occur to her at all what she was doing. All that mattered was that she get to him.

They resisted her. Even held their arms out to stop her. She thrashed, and even climbed one to see better.

“Stop! Please! He’s my friend! Don’t hurt him!”

As if the dead could feel pain. It was ridiculous. She didn’t even care.

On some unseen signal, though, they parted. No sooner did Elita find her footing did she once again find herself under the intense gaze of Alpha Trion.

It was like the world stopped. Orion—still lifeless, yet lit up like his spark hadn’t been extinguished in the first place—still had his back to her. And yet Alpha Trion stood in front of them both, lit up in starlight.

“Loyal to the very end,” he whispered.

It was reverential. It was almost a question. Even in the face of such might, she stood tall.

“That stubborn little optimist is the only person I’ve ever truly believed in,” she spat. “Of course I followed him!”

She wondered if she should have phrased that differently. That being said, it was the truth, and it hurt—but oh, she couldn’t take it back now. Where once her path had been hers and hers alone, it was one someone had chosen for her. Now, she had a choice—and she wanted nothing more than to stand by him. To help him, in his mission, no matter how stupid or now noble.

Especially now that D had…

It was difficult to say exactly what crossed Alpha Trion’s face. He rumbled approvingly, though.

“We Primes had a High Guard, once. Ones to advise us and to protect us. But more importantly, they were our friends.” Hand on Orion’s shoulder, he continued to speak. “It is a shame that we cannot give such luxuries to him. Instead, he will have you, loyal daughter of Cybertron, to protect him as we cannot.”

Her own frame began to glow, now. Not quite as bright as Orion’s, but almost. There was power coursing through her, filling her every circuit.

(…if she was tasting a fraction of what was coursing through him, she had the distinct feeling she wasn’t quite staring at Orion, anymore.)

“You are one of a kind, dear. Truly, you have earned your name,” he murmured kindly. “And as for our young one, here, I rather like what she said for his name, don’t you, my brethren?”

There was rumbling approval all around her. She was afraid to ask. But she swallowed it.

“…what?”

He turned starlit eyes on her friend, and smiled.

“Arise, Optimus Prime!”

[maiyami]

𝓤𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓵 𝓦𝓮 𝓜𝓮𝓮𝓽 𝓐𝓰𝓪𝓲𝓷

Fantasy!AU Bakugou Katsuki X Female Reader

Minors Do Not Interact

All Characters Aged Up 21+

One-Shot Unedited

Warnings: Not many, mostly language.

About: Prince Katsuki is not the easiest to get along with. However, when the King and Queen put on a ball to find a suitable wife for the Prince...many find him suddenly the perfect guy. The Prince thinks nothing of this until his perfect match slips away from him.

The whole kingdom had to be inside the castle grounds by this time, well at least...all of the females within the kingdom. King and Queen Bakugou had made sure of it, made sure that every single woman attended the ball tonight. They were not getting any younger, they only had one heir. An heir who was hell-bent on keeping himself away from love and constantly on the battlefield. As much as they wanted to respect their son's choices, they knew that the kingdom needed their family. Needed to keep the Bakugou family running the kingdom to keep the peace. So by the gods, they were going to find a wife for their stubborn, ash-blonde son. Even if it was very much not to his liking.

He had spent all day being pampered and prepared for this ball, much to his distaste. He would have rather gone hunting or spent time training. Anything but getting into formal wear and being paraded around like a shiny new toy. With many long fights, language that shouldn't have been used, and a scrub down that he wouldn't even wish on his own enemies...here he was. Standing over the ballroom on the balcony looking down at the sea of women.

Sure, some of them had caught his eye. Many of them were beautiful, however as he watched. As he scanned the room and picked up on their personalities? He knew that none of them would be right for him. Some here just for the wealth his family has, some here just for the title of 'Princess', and some that were forced to be here. Somewhere deep down inside him, he was sickened by all of this. He was still young, still had time to find someone for him. Someone he picked for himself, but he knew that was just a dream. A dream that would not come true since all he wanted to do was get out of there and kill something.

It had been about two hours into the ball, no one single woman he had spent even a bit of time was worth it. And trust in this, he tried his damn hardest to find one aspect of even a small bit of attraction to every woman he spoke to. He was about to give up, slip away to his room. Maybe even go out to the woods like he wanted to in the first place. However, at the far end of the ballroom? He spotted you.

A woman, helping one of the servants upright so he didn't tip over the large plater of glasses in his palm. A woman who was smiling so brightly that it could have rivaled the moon in the sky tonight. A woman that took a good look around the ballroom and slipped outside. At first, he found it strange. Every female in the castle tonight was fawning over him so hard, just trying to get a moment of his time. But not you. You had not even remotely come near him, not even a passing glance. Katsuki would have noticed if you did, he noticed everyone. Then he became curious of you, wondering why you were going out that door. The door that led out into the gardens, so he decided to follow. Taking the secret stairway to make sure no one else came with him.

When he finally made it outside, he half expected you to be gone. To have disappeared into the night, but much to his excitement of what was happening, there you were.

The music from inside was faint out here, but that didn't stop you from dancing around the fountain at the center of the garden. The moonlight shone off your face as you made your way around the stone and water. So light on your feet that not a sound was heard, hair blowing through the soft breeze as you twirled and stepped. Almost as if you were dancing with a ghost, being led around the fountain.

Katsuki admired you for a moment, you looked so free. So one with yourself, but most of all? You looked beautiful. Your movements, the way your dress was flowing behind you, and the small smile on your face. He didn't know what came over him, but he was then by the fountain as you made your way around.

You hadn't noticed him, didn't even hear him approach your space. You only noticed him when you felt a hand on yours, then a hand on your waist. Your eyes opened immediately, a shocked expression over your features. It earned you a low chuckle, with a big toothy grin. Instead of pulling away from Katsuki, you laughed softly. Holding onto his hand now as he spun you around the fountain.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, my Prince." You said with a little strain in your voice, probably from all the dancing you had been doing. But it was like music to Katsuki's ears. He held you a little closer, slowing your dance down. So slow in fact, that it was mostly swaying at this point. He wanted to have a proper conversation with you.

"Pleasure is all my, mi'lady." He said back with such gravel in his voice, that it made you smile. "May I ask you a question?" He looked you right in your eyes, it was intense. It was as if he was looking into your soul with those crimson orbs he was so blessed with.

"Anything, my Prince." You looked right back into his eyes, making sure you were as respectful as you could be. Remembering all the lessons your mother taught you when speaking with royalty. You hoped you were making a good impression with Katsuki.

"Everyone is inside, but not you. Dancing among the stars and flowers. Tell me, why is that you are out here while everyone in there is trying to woe me?" He wasn't upset by any means, you could tell by the way his eyes were sparkling at you. He was actually curious, he wanted to see if you were someone worth spending the time on.

"I mean no disrespect, my Prince. There are so many lovely ladies here tonight, I thought I should not waste your time. You see, I am nothing but a farmer's daughter. I come from no royal blood, I have nothing. Why should I waste the time of a Prince who could do far better than I?" You said honestly, you only came because it was required of you. Sure, you have dreamt of finding the man of your dreams. Strong, handsome, a willpower so strong that it could outrank an army. But to you, that was all fantasy. "Also, the night is so beautiful. I thought it would be a shame to be inside the whole time. I have also never seen the stars so vibrant before, I was being selfish. I do apologize, my Prince."

Katsuki didn't know what to say, he also didn't understand. He couldn’t possibly understand how you could think you weren’t enough. How you thought you were the selfish one, wanting to come outside when this whole ball was for him. Just seeing you, being yourself was enough for him. You weren’t throwing yourself at him, saying sweet nothings, not trying to get in good with his parents. You were just being yourself. In the most pure form, he couldn’t understand how someone like you hadn’t come into his life sooner.

“No need to apologize, I am not offended in any way.” As the music changed to a different song, Katsuki spun you around slowly. “Truth be told, I never wanted this dumbass ball to begin with. My par- the King and Queen thought it might help me pick a wife. Stupid really.” He didn’t know why he was telling you this, but he felt like he could. “I am thankful you come out this way, I didn’t want to be in there much longer.”

“I see, a suitor for you. I understand where the King and Queen are coming from. However, I think finding someone on your own can be much more…fulfilling.” You smiled brightly at him, that same smile that you gave the help. But, you understood him. How it should be his choice when he was ready. Though, those thoughts were fading from him. The longer he danced with you, spoke with you. He thought he could do this for the rest of his life.

There was just something about your calmness. If he had to describe it, you were like the moon. Shining in the darkness, pulling him in with your light. Calmness while he looked at you, a feeling of home. While in the same breath, he felt like the ocean. The moon the only thing to calm him, but to keep him moving. It was different, something he never experienced before.

“Yeah…much more fulfilling indeed. Excuse my manners, it seems as so I left them inside. Prince Katsuki Bakugou, and you?” He wanted to know, he wanted to keep learning about you.

“My name is-” You went to say but the loud chime of the clock tower threw you off, almost scared you a bit. It was almost midnight, it was time for you leave. Promising your father that you would be home, to not worry him. Your eyes went wide was you looked back at Katsuki, stepping back and out of his hold. “I’m so sorry, my Prince. I must leave…I cannot be late home.” You said as you started to make your way through the garden, hair bouncing behind you as your pace quickened.

Katsuki was shocked, running after you. You couldn’t leave just yet, not when he felt like he’d never be whole if he let you go. “Wait!” He called after you, watching the way your dressed moved with how quick you were becoming. Just keeping up with you enough through the maze of the garden to see parts of your dress when you slipped past another corner. “Stop!”

He did catch up with you, grabbing onto your arm tightly. Not tight enough to hurt, just to keep you in place for a moment.

“Please, will I see you again? Can I see you again?” He questioned, his heart beating out of his chest. Katsuki Bakugou has felt many things in his short time on this earth, but nervousness was not one of those things. It wasn’t until the thought of never seeing you again hit him in the chest. He needed to be reassured you’d come back.

Your breath was hitched a little, a soft pant leaving your lips. You eyed the clock once more before moving out of his grip slightly. You pulled a chain off from around your neck, a little locket hanging from it. Getting onto your toes, you slipped it over Katsuki’s head. Making sure to tuck it under his vest, eyes trailing up the imported design before they met his eyes once again. Your gentle hands coming up to cup the sides of his face, bringing him down for a feather light kiss on the lips.

“Until we meet again, my Prince.” You said barely above a whisper, once again leaving him in his place. Slipping out of the back of the gardens and into the woods, out of sight in the darkness.

It took several long moments for Katsuki to move again, making his way back into the castle. Once inside, women started to flock towards his side. Instead of practiced smiles and words, they got glares and snarls. He was on a mission, moving through the ballroom. He approached his parents thrones, walking up to whisper into his father’s ear.

“Send everyone home, they are no longer needed.” Before his father could say anything, or his mother to scold him for being spoiled and that he can’t have everything his way, he spoke again.

“I have found the one for me and I can’t let her slip through my fingers.”

[iknowshocker]

Putting aside poor planning/writing (being a TVD fan is painful lol), do you have a canonical explanation why Kai might've completely reverted to his pre-merge self?

I love seeing that man struggle with the influx of emotions he has shut off for so long. The scene where he's trying to kill Liv, but Luke is so obviously the one holding him back, or when he realises that touching Bonnie's hands would be traumatic after all he's done to her. It's so delicious and angsty.

The whole personality-merge is genuinely an interesting direction for his story, but a part of me does like that they didn't soften him too much. I'm not sold on the idea that he would've had a complete personality change; it's tragic, but his emotional and behavioural responses caused by his abusive upbringing wouldn't suddenly disappear imo. I just wish they hadn't turned him into an over-the-top comical villain in the end. It cheapens all he's been through, idk.

Basically, I need to see Kai struggle with empathy, while still maintaining that unhinged part of himself, yk?

Anyway, back to my point: Do you think it could be that Kai is constantly battling against Luke's influence, but choosing to ignore it?

Sorry for rambling in your inbox! Love your blog and your videos

never be sorry anon, thanks for stopping by <3

i totally agree, kai is 100% at his best when he's trying to find that balance, i think it makes him vastly more interesting than whatever they had going on in s8. i also love his moments like: 'hey why don't i reanimate your dead parents for a tea party while i'm at it? sorry - insensitive' because it's so fascinating/funny watching him try to navigate the changes he's suddenly going through.

I talked about it in my gemini coven vid but i don't think kai stops being sociopathic post-merge. i always write in some PTSD for him as well, because as you said his upbringing doesn't just vanish from his memory. those things shaped him and as bonnie says 'the old you is still inside of you'. he is different, but his past is always going to haunt him.

if anything i think luke just mends the gaps and it leaves kai with this weird mix of his original instincts and new urges to do things differently that he doesn't fully understand. sociopaths know right from wrong, so pre-merge kai knows he's being horrible there's just nothing in him that cares fully one way or another. post-merge he's confronted with the fact that he'll feel guilt now, so he has to rationalize if his actions are worth it or not.

at the end of the day even with luke's influence he's still himself, and i've always felt like his post-merge, pre-1903 personality is the closest we get to seeing who he actually is. i think his humor, arrogance and snark get worse with his sociopathy, but those are also just baseline traits he already had pre-trauma. we see them reflected in jo, too, considering she's also kind of mean even on her good days. like remember when she told ric his name was so stupid he couldn't be trusted to name other humans? the twins aren't exactly nice, imo, but they're funny enough for things to be brushed off as jokes most of the time (at least where jo's concerned).

in all honesty, the red wedding itself isn't a total stretch if you're looking strictly at kai pre-merge. i mean he straight up told us he wanted to kill them, that can't be denied. but the problem is that then they have all this time go by where he never attacks anyone and he's clearly changing, so it all falls apart if you look at it linearly.

for me personally, i have to imagine that his time in 1903 with the heretics convinced him that the coven couldn't be changed. he was confronted with proof, for presumably the first time, that he wasn't the first/only siphon, and the abuse he faced as a child was the most recent in a long line of systematic cruelty. when you add in that he was abandoned by bonnie/the mfg (after apologizing and helping save her life - because he doesn't know she doesn't know that he did that on her birthday) and then jo not coming to help him (after he apologized and agreed/stood by leaving her alone) AND the coven itself throwing him away even though he's literally earned the title of leader - it's easy to see why he would snap again.

still, i think we should have seen a little more hesitation or something to show us luke was against it. we know he fought back trying to save liv once, so i can't imagine him being like 'eh, you know what? you're right big brother, burn it all down' especially in the middle of jo's wedding. that's always going to feel like an impossibility to me, but the only way to view it in canon is that kai pushed him away and just did what he wanted to do regardless of how luke was reacting. kai goes back to having a super deadened expression several times in the red wedding scenes, and i know chris talked about us 'watching his eyes' at one point to explain the ending and show us that kai was 100% bad evil scary cannot be redeemed ever again - but then at the same time he looks at jo when he says 'when your family decides' and then dies beside her like ??? bro, come on.

i really love exploring his post-merge connection with luke in fanon because the ambiguity is annoying and i think just further shows the fact that it's riddled with plot holes. it shouldn't work the way it does in canon, because up until the red wedding we were told/shown repeatedly that it didn't.

in my fic Hits Different luke is like a voice of reason for kai but also just himself in the back of kai's mind; they have mini conversations and it's implied luke talked him out of blowing up fully while they were locked up with the heretics in 1903. at the same time, luke DID NOT want him to turn jo at the wedding, but kai did it anyway because he felt like it was the best way to 'keep them together forever' since he was going to transition and luke insisted he needed jo's help; so luke can't fully control him (and as the writer i know that he doesn't want to - it's more important for kai to actually be changing instead of luke puppeteering him).

in Heavy in Your Arm's kai is actively pushing luke away and avoiding interacting/acknowledging him at all. this is messy already and i'm only in chapter 4; it's leaving kai with headaches and will lead to some freak outs/lost time because he's only hurting himself by hurting luke

but yeah, anon, i think ultimately the red wedding unfolds because kai is able to ignore the parts of luke begging him not to. it sucks, and for me it's pretty OOC considering what we saw back in jan/feb, but you can argue that it was also exactly what he originally wanted and therefore makes perfect sense.

[imagine-you]

Make All Your Demons Be Gone pt. 6 [Sirius Black/Reader]

summary: When you first meet your brother's friends, you're not very impressed. You're especially not so keen on Sirius Black and the feeling seems mutual. But as time goes on, you start to realize there's more to the boy who seemed to only hate you because of the house were sorted into. Through heartbreak, loss, danger, and pain, you begin to realize that you need Sirius just as much as he needs you.

chapter word count: 4.8k

author's note: So, I haven't updated in two years...A lot of stuff happened like I started a new job, lost my motivation, had a whole bunch of personal problems. But, I finally found my way back, and I hope you're all still interested in this. If you like this, please let me know! It would make my day. 💖

read on ao3

You supposed, if anyone desperately wanted to know the truth, that having Sirius as a houseguest for the rest of that summer wasn't entirely the worst thing that could happen to you. It seemed as if you had reached an unsteady truce after you caught Sirius in your father's study and you noticed a difference in your interactions.  

You had insisted he was being all dramatic and brooding in the study, but Sirius swore he was only thinking over his family situation. You knew that you had truly lucked out with your parents and James, but you couldn't even imagine what it would be like to have a family you absolutely loathed. Sirius had his flaws and he was entirely too impulsive for your liking, but maybe James was right. Sirius might just be someone who might be worth knowing and you should stop fighting with him at every given opportunity.  

You still teased each other and made fun, but it didn’t seem to have the same bite it used to just days before.  

You got used to Sirius taking up space in your house and while you still found yourself irritated by him, you had to admit that it was a different kind of irritation than before. You wouldn't ever tell anyone, even Lily, but you had started feeling nearly fond of Sirius and his antics.  

One day near the end of July, you found yourself bored, so you decided to write to your friends.  

You started with a letter to Remus. You had yet to respond to his last note and you didn't want him to think you had forgotten about him. You confided in him that while your prank war with Sirius was never-ending, it didn't seem as mean-spirited as it had the previous year. It was almost like you were simply picking on each other. It was almost like you were something approaching friends.  

Even though you trusted Remus, you only confessed to Lily that having Sirius there wasn't nearly as horrible as you imagined. You tried not to let your feelings on the matter shine through too much, so you made sure to tell her that he was usually off somewhere with James, exploring and laughing and conveniently far away from you.  

She was quick to write you back, joking that maybe you and Sirius would become great friends, fulfilling James' dreams of having the two of you finally get along for once. What you didn't tell Lily was that you were sure James' dreams mostly involved her, but you weren't going to traumatize her with that bit of information. 

You wished that you could write to Severus, but you didn't know how to feel about him anymore.   

As the summer wore on, James and Sirius seemed a bit more secretive than usual. You weren't sure if you were being paranoid, since it seemed like the Daily Prophet was constantly showcasing the worst of the wizarding war that was brewing. Voldemort was gaining followers and it seemed as if you couldn't go anywhere without news of Death Eater attacks or people mysteriously disappearing following you.  

By the time you were starting your fifth year at Hogwarts, you were beginning to get scared. You knew that Severus was on his way towards becoming a Death Eater, if he wasn't one already, but you were starting to realize that a lot of Slytherins were turning to that side as well. You weren't sure who to trust or what to say to others when you were in your dorm or common room, so you mostly kept to yourself.  

You weren’t even sure if you could trust Regulus. Sirius had been vocal about the fact that his younger brother was all too content to simply fall in line with his family’s loyalties to the dark side. Was Regulus a Death Eater too? Were the only Slytherins you had come to call your friends now the enemy?  

You convinced yourself that it was best to focus on your studies and protect yourself from the war. Over the summer, you had heard your parents speaking quietly in the study, pondering whether to keep you and your brother and Sirius from attending Hogwarts. They were more concerned about you being in Slytherin and the influence you would fall under. The fact that your parents were scared for your safety at a veritable fortress like Hogwarts told you that the situation was a lot more serious than you feared.  

Despite your resolve to ignore Severus, you quite literally ran into him when you were trying to leave your dorm on the first day of classes.  

"Oh," you breathed in surprise, having to stumble back a couple steps to avoid crashing into Severus.  

"Y/N," Severus greeted with a nod of acknowledgement. "I didn't hear from you this summer." 

"I, uh, well," you started, not sure how to let Severus know that you were terrified that he had joined the wrong side and now the two of you would have to be on opposing sides of a war. He had been one of your best friends since you started Hogwarts and now you weren't even sure if you should talk to him. "I have to go see my brother," you blurted before brushing past him.  

"Y/N!" Severus called, but you were already out of the dorm and striding down the hallway, hoping you didn't look like you were running away.  

You made it to the Great Hall without running into any other suspected Death Eaters. You started to approach the Slytherin table out of habit before you redirected towards the Gryffindor table. You loved being a Slytherin and you didn't think it was a bad thing. You wanted to do great things and find success in your endeavors. You wanted to be ambitious and cunning and all the other attributes that were fitting for a Slytherin.  

You just didn't want to be evil.  

And the most horrible thing to you was that you weren't sure how to distinguish the evil ones from the good ones.  

Worse yet, you worried that you were falling into the prejudice against your own house that the rest of the school seemed to hold. And who was to say it was only Slytherins joining the ranks of Death Eaters? Who else in the other houses had decided to join Voledemort? 

You didn’t know and you figured the only true safe place for you was with your brother and his friends.  

So, you decided to drop down into a seat at the Gryffindor table between James and Remus.  

"A little lost, snake?" Sirius asked and you glanced up to see he was sitting opposite you. You weren't sure if you were imagining it or if Sirius’ 'snake' comment didn't hold as much venom as it used to.  

"I'm avoiding some people," you admitted with a shrug of your shoulders.  

Remus shot you a concerned look. "Everything alright?" 

"Yeah," you sighed, briefly sparing a glance for the Slytherin table. Severus was just sitting down and you had to hurriedly look away before he noticed you. "Just need to figure out how to handle something." 

"Well, you're welcome to sit here whenever you like," James offered, throwing his arm around your shoulders. "And if anyone gives you any trouble, just let me know. I'll make them regret ever picking on my little sister." 

You shrugged your shoulders, throwing off James' arm, and shook your head. "I can fight my own battles," you told him.  

"I know you can, but--" 

"But she's fully capable of taking care of herself," Lily cut in, joining the conversation. "But I suppose you are her brother, so maybe you could be good for something." 

James spluttered out an indignant response that you only caught part of before he turned in his seat, giving Lily his full attention. Remus had his head buried in a book and Peter was nowhere to be found, leaving you with just Sirius.  

You were going to settle for simply ignoring him in favor of eating breakfast, but Sirius had another idea. 

You felt something brush against your foot under the table. At first, you thought it was merely an accident, but then something pressed into your foot again and again. You glanced up at Sirius and caught the knowing smirk on his face before he shot you a wink. You weren't sure why it had you ducking your head and refusing to look at him. It was an entirely new response to Sirius’ antics and it uneased you.  

What did it mean? Was he just trying to annoy you or was this something different? Was he trying to get a rise out of you or simply teasing you or was it more than that? 

"Why do you look like that?" James asked, finally pulling his focus away from Lily.  

"Like what?" You wondered, trying to school your expression into something neutral. You would rather die than let Sirius know that he had managed to stir up that reaction within you, so you kept your head down and focused on your food.  

Sirius decided to break James' focus on you by flinging a spoonful of eggs at his head and among the chaos that followed, you managed to slip away, wondering if Sirius was simply your ally or maybe even something more now.  

As the year progressed, you began to hear more and more snippets and stories about the wizarding war that was waging on. Muggles were being tortured and wizards were going missing under 'mysterious circumstances.' Voldemort and his army seemed to be growing bolder by the day, venturing into muggle cities and causing a ruckus in the Ministry.  

You feared for your parents and you hoped that they were staying as far away from the war as they could get. Besides the obvious Death Eater problem in the school, you never really thought anything bad could actually happen to you or your brother as long as you were at Hogwarts.  

Which, you figured, was why you were attacked in Hogsmeade.  

It was the second Hogsmeade visit of the year and you were eager to get your hands on more chocolate wands. You hadn't expected just how stressful your fifth year would be and you had severely underestimated the amount of time you would spend awake at night, studying in bed and reaching for a snack that wasn't there.  

You were just about to make the trek back to the castle. The sky was beginning to grow dark and a lot of the other students had already left. There was a chill to the air that had you wrapping your scarf even tighter around your neck, shivering as a blast of cold air met you.  

"Little Slytherin girl," you heard someone hiss. It was a woman, you could tell that much, but you didn't recognize her.  

You instinctively froze in your tracks, not aware of where the voice was coming from. There was something screaming inside you to just move. Run now before they caught you. But your feet betrayed you and stayed rooted to the spot.  

"Won't you join us, little Slytherin? All your friends have," another voice taunted, growing closer to you by the second.  

You finally managed to turn around, pinpointing the voices to two Death Eaters approaching you. They were wearing masks, shielding their identities from view, and a sick twisting in your gut worried that they were really Slytherins who were undergoing some kind of initiation. What if this was Severus? Would Severus kill you? The fact that you didn't know anymore had you feeling even more sick to your stomach.  

"Leave me alone," you ordered, dropping your Honeydukes purchases to the ground and attempting to go for your wand.  

"Incarcerous," the wizard shouted just as the witch cast impedimenta. 

You fumbled your wand, letting it fall to the ground, just as chains enclosed you. You fell to the ground, helpless and terrified, as they stalked closer towards you.  

"Now, what should we do with you?" The witch mused as she twirled her wand, as if this was all some kind of game to her.  

"We should take her back to Master," the wizard answered, sounding positively gleeful at the thought.  

"Help!" You called, glad that they hadn't managed to silence you just yet. "Someone! Anyone! Please!" 

"Shut up, you stupid girl," the wizard growled, striking you across the face.  

Blood blossomed across your tongue and you could feel where the skin of your cheek had split under the force of his blow.  

"Let's get her back to Master before--," the witch's words were cut off by a low growl followed by a snarl.  

The witch let out a shriek before she fell to the ground. The wizard turned, surprised and confused, only to let out a howl of pain. You had no idea what was happening and you managed to roll to the side, getting a glimpse of the fight that was happening just steps away from where you were lying on the ground.  

You had to blink a few times, wondering if you had hit your head, because there was no possible explanation for the sight before you. A black dog was snapping its jaws repeatedly, attempting to take bites out of the witch while she held it off. And of all things, a deer was rushing at the wizard, butting its head into his chest.  

The wizard chose to apparate away, but the witch stayed behind.  

She let out a gleeful, malicious giggle and then struck the dog in its side. The dog let out a whimper before finally backing off. The deer rushed towards the dog, attempting to aid it, but the witch cast a hex at the deer, causing it to back off.  

All the while, you had been attempting to get the chains off you. You had wriggled and squirmed and finally they fell away, leaving you to grasp your wand and aim it at the witch just as she aimed hers at the dog.  

You cast the first spell you could think of which just happened to be the horn tongue hex.  

The witch screeched in alarm when her tongue grew heavy and began to protrude from her mouth. You followed it up with a stinging hex and then another. The witch stumbled back before finally apparating away, but you didn't think it was enough. You kept aiming hex after hex at the space she previously occupied, furious and hurt and terrified.  

"Y/N!" A voice called from far away. "Y/N, it's alright now. They're gone," they said, trying to shake you out of your shock.  

You blinked a few times, your eyes finally focusing enough to notice that James was standing in front of you. He had his hands on your shoulders as he attempted to get you to make eye contact with him. A relieved smile appeared on his face once he realized he finally had your attention.  

Your right hand was clutching your wand so hard you were amazed that it hadn't yet broken. Your left hand was clutching a bunch of fur and you looked down to see that it was the dog. It seemed content to stand still, as if knowing you needed the reassurance, and it pressed its nose into your knee when you slowly let go.  

"James," you managed, wanting to ask about the deer and the dog, but all you got out was your brother's name before you began to sob. You fell out of James' grasp and to the ground, hunching in over yourself. There was blood in your mouth and your arms ached from fighting the incarcerous charm. You were beginning to shake and an inane thought crossed your mind that you should really get your Honeydukes purchases before they were lost forever. 

The dog whined low in its throat before pressing close to you, sending a beseeching look up at your brother, as if asking him to do something.  

"I know, Padfoot, but we should get her to Dumbledore. Those were Death Eaters. In Hogsmeade," James stressed, sounding just as shocked as you felt.  

The dog, Padfoot, growled before he was gone. In his place was Sirius, fury written into his expression.  

"That was my cousin," Sirius snarled, reaching out to hold onto your shoulder. "And she could have killed Y/N." 

You stared at Sirius, stunned speechless. You glanced over to your brother to see if he was also hallucinating his best friend, but James didn't seem to think anything was amiss.  

"But--," you started, looking from James and back to Sirius. "You're a dog?" 

Sirius shot you a smirk, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. "Wow, sweetheart, tell me how you really feel about me." 

"Sirius," your brother rebuked before he brought your attention to him. "You can't tell anyone about Sirius or me, understand? We could get in a lot of trouble." 

"You...," you trailed off, finally putting the pieces together through a mind still dazed with shock. "You were the stag," you observed, thinking that of course your brother was an animagus, because your life was bound to take just about every insane turn it possibly could. “How did you find me?” 

“We were just out in the forest, letting off some steam,” Sirius answered. “And then we heard you screaming for help.”  

James nodded his head in answer. "I’m just glad we got here in time.” James glanced around before he sighed. “It’s getting late. We should get you out of here," he decided, reaching down to pull you off the ground.  

Sirius rose with you, his hand still on your shoulder, as if he was afraid to let go. He ushered you forward a few steps before you remembered about your chocolate wands and you tried to turn.  

"What are you doing?" Sirius wondered, watching as you stumbled your way over to your dropped bag.  

"I need this," you defended yourself with a shrug of your shoulders.  

Sirius rolled his eyes, muttering 'barmy' under his breath. "C'mon," he sighed, moving to wrap an arm around your shoulders once you were beside him again.  

James moved to walk at your other side, keeping you between the two of them.  

There were no more attacks on the way to the school and when you officially walked through the gates and onto the Hogwarts grounds, you felt a tiny little shiver work its way down your spine in relief.  

"You're safe now," Sirius assured you, letting his hand drop until it was resting at the small of your back.  

"If you two hadn't been there...," you didn't even want to finish the thought. The Death Eaters would have taken you to Voldemort. They would have tortured you. They probably would have killed you.  

"But we were," James refuted with a small smile at you. "And I'm not letting you out of my sight again, you got that?" 

"I think she did pretty well taking care of herself," Sirius reminded James. "Getting my cousin with a horn tongue hex was just...brilliant," he finished with a wide, toothy grin at you.  

"You're sure that was Bellatrix?" You asked him, thinking of the near maniacal glee she took in taking you down. You had only dealt with Sirius and Regulus, and while you thought Sirius was mad, he was nothing like that.  

"It was her," Sirius confirmed with a heavy sigh. "I'm sure the Black family will commend her for her loyalty to the dark arts." 

You weren't sure how to respond, so you settled for bumping your elbow into Sirius' side. "Thank you," you told him when he finally looked at you. "The both of you." 

"Yeah, well, can't let my best mate's sister suffer, can I? Not unless it's me making her suffer," he added with a conspiratorial wink.  

The conversation trailed off there and you became caught up in your thoughts of what had just transpired. It seemed like one moment you were hurrying across the grounds with your brother and Sirius and the next you were standing in Dumbledore's office.  

"You two may go back to your dorm," he said, addressing James and Sirius. "I would like to have a few words with Miss Potter alone." 

"Headmaster," James started before he was cut off by Sirius clamping a hand down on his shoulder.  

"Understood, Professor," Sirius readily agreed and dragged James from the office.  

Dumbledore waited until the two of them were gone before he turned his attention on you.  

"I expect that they will be waiting for you to escort you back to the Slytherin dorm once we're done here. I've never found Sirius to be that agreeable before." 

You couldn't help the nervous laugh you let out at his words and from the way Dumbledore's eyes twinkled with mirth, you knew it had been his aim all along.  

"Now," he started, watching you from across his desk. "Would you like to tell me what happened tonight in Hogsmeade?" 

You found the words for the story in bits and pieces. Your hands began to tremble as you talked about the Death Eaters approaching you while you were helpless and you found yourself pulling out a chocolate wand and taking a bite. "Sorry," you told Dumbledore when you noticed the amused look on his face.  

"No need to be sorry," Dumbledore dismissed with a wave of his hand. "I too find that sweets help me through trying situations. So, your brother and Sirius came to your rescue?" 

"They did," you agreed with a nod of your head. There was no way you were going to mention that James and Sirius were animagi, so you quickly glossed over that part of the story. "And once I was able to free myself, I attacked one of the Death Eaters when she hurt Sirius. I, uh, I turned her tongue into a horn," you admitted with a sheepish grin. "And then I cast a lot more hexes until she left. I was, I mean, well...," you didn't know how to talk about the worst part. "They wanted to take me to him," you forced yourself to get out. "And they would have killed me. There's no way I could have fought him or any of them and escaped with my life." 

Dumbledore seemed to mull over your words for a few moments. There was a look on his face you couldn't immediately decipher, but the more you studied it, the more you realized that Dumbledore seemed oddly proud of you.  

"Tell me, Miss Potter, what would you like to do once you leave here?" 

You weren't sure how that was in any way connected to the night's events, but you were happy for a change of subject. Your mind was still reeling from Death Eaters and animagi and the possibility of being taken to Voldemort. You really just wanted to think about anything else at the moment. 

"Well, I would really like to continue my studies," you answered, thinking over where you might want to be in ten years time if you were still alive. "Particularly in history of magic." 

"Ah, yes, I've heard that you are far more passionate about the subject than your classmates." 

"It's fascinating," you admitted with a genuine smile. "Maybe I'll be lucky enough to be a professor one day." 

"I think that sounds like a wonderful plan," Dumbledore mused with a thoughtful look. "I suppose when Professor Binns is ready to move on, we'll have a candidate in mind for the position." Dumbledore considered you for another moment. “I will have to inform your parents about what happened tonight. I don’t doubt that they will try to convince you to spend the rest of the term at home.” 

You knew your parents would fear for your safety even more now, but you didn’t want to leave Hogwarts. “Then I’ll just have to convince them that Hogwarts is safe.” 

Dumbledore offered you a content smile before he pulled out a drawer of his desk. He rummaged through the drawer before he pulled something free. “May I offer you a sherbet lemon?” 

Not long after that, Dumbledore sent you on your way with a few more sweets than you had arrived with and the knowledge that he thought you had done well for yourself under duress.  

You weren't surprised to see that Dumbledore was right about Sirius and James. The second you stepped off the staircase leading up to Dumbledore's office, James was right there with Sirius not far behind. 

"What'd he say? Should we get you to the Hospital Wing?" James asked, worry in his tone as he considered you.  

"I'd rather just go to sleep," you dismissed James' concern, brushing past him in favor of heading towards the dungeons. 

"Maybe we could sneak you into the Gryffindor common room to sleep it off on the couch," Sirius suggested, falling into step with you.   

"No," you immediately argued. "I have to trust that I can be safe in my own dorm." 

Sirius and James shared a look, a silent conversation taking place between them, before James finally rolled his eyes. "Fine, but we're walking you there." 

You couldn't help but snort in amusement. James was always going to be your overprotective big brother and Sirius...well, you weren't quite sure what Sirius was anymore, but you knew that things were constantly evolving between the two of you. 

And really, you didn't think that was such a bad thing. 

The next day, visits to Hogsmeade were put on hold for the rest of the year since it was deemed unsafe with the recent attacks on muggles and wizards. Your attack wasn't mentioned, and you were grateful since everyone seemed upset by the news. You knew they would just find a way to blame you and you didn't want to know what anyone would have to say. You were still shaken, and while you were going to miss your Honeydukes shopping trips, you couldn't deny that you wouldn't have felt safe there again.  

You had just finished writing a letter to your parents in response to their plea that you consider coming home. Dumbledore had been right, but you were stubborn and wanted to finish out your fifth year at the castle. Your parents wouldn’t like it, but you also knew that they wouldn’t force you to come home if you didn’t want to.  

You were clutching the letter tight in your hands, intent on going to the owlery, when someone called your name just as you were leaving the Great Hall. 

"Are you alright?" The voice caught you off-guard, stopping you in your tracks.  

You turned to see Severus standing there, his expression neutral with just a hint of conern in his eyes.  

"What?" 

"You appear to be injured," he observed with a quirk of his eyebrow. "This wouldn't have anything to do with the Hogsmeade trips being cancelled?" 

A hundred different emotions flooded through you before you somehow finally landed on contempt. "And if it was?" You took a couple of steps closer to him, lowering your voice so only the two of you could hear. "And if it was Death Eaters who attacked me and attempted to kidnap me? Would you still be with them?" 

Severus' expression morphed from poorly concealed worry into masked irritation. "I don't see how that's any of your business." 

You scoffed, shaking your head. "It's my business because you were my friend, Severus. You were one of my best friends and the fact that you could join them? That's just...I don't know who you are anymore," you admitted with a scowl.  

You turned away from him, not letting him even attempt to get another word in. You didn't want to know if there was anything left of your friendship with Severus. The fact alone that he would join the Death Eaters, especially after what you had endured the night before, was more than enough for you to know that you didn't want anything to do with him as long as he was with them.  

The rest of your fifth year was spent fearing for your loved ones and doing your damnedest to make sure that you got the OWLs scores that you wanted. While you had lost a friend, it seemed as if you had gained another in Sirius. He spent less time trying to poke and prod at you, attempting to get a rise, and instead did his best to make you laugh. He watched out for you and finally seemed to accept you despite the fact that you were a Slytherin. 

A year before, you never would have guessed that you would be facing your sixth year at Hogwarts trusting Sirius Black and avoiding Severus at all costs. You didn't know what the future held for you and you were terrified more than anything that Voldemort and his army would find a way to win. 

But as long as you still had the people you loved, for now you would simply focus on what the summer holidays would bring. And even though you were loath to admit it, even to yourself, maybe you were just the tiniest bit interested in seeing where the new amicable nature of your relationship with Sirius brought you. 

taglist: @mizelophsun11 @mysticalfuncollectorus @honeybxes @siriusement @takem3tothelakes @fangeekkk @strawberrysodaslut (if you would like to be added please let me know! some people who used to be on the list have different usernames, so I wasn't sure if I should still tag you.)

[bittersweetarts]

How to Disappear - Chapter 3

Soldier Boy (The Boys) x OC

Word count: 4220 words

Summary: Eden Reid can't help her curiosity, and Soldier Boy can't help but take advantage of that curiosity.

WARNINGS: Cursing, substance abuse, minor violence

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - AO3 Page

Chapter 3: Out of the Woods

What Ben – correction, Soldier Boy – did to Eden, really was a pain in the ass. A real fucking pain in the ass, and Eden will never forgive him for it.

Running away from a woman’s home after having sex with her, before she is even awake, hurts.

But what hurts more is forcing said woman into a situation where she has to lie to some jackass insurance agents about how she was somehow robbed while asleep, and the thieves in question only decided to steal her little old Mazda, which she had bought almost a decade ago, and now consisted of so many spare parts that it might as well be Frankenstein. On top of that, some officers from the local station had to inspect her home to file the report, and no matter how much Eden tried to clean, the smell of dope still lingered, which was humiliating.

It was a small miracle that her claim was actually approved.

Turns out in the case of theft, insurers will only cut a check for the current value of the car, regardless of how comprehensive the insurance is, and how much of a premium Eden paid for it. And unfortunately for Eden, her Mazda was not really worth all that much.

Motherfucker.

In the weeks that passed, Eden found herself cursing Soldier Boy for the mess he’d made for her. But as angry as she was at the ex-hero, she was angrier at herself, for getting herself into such a mess.

She decided to help a Supe and she had only herself to blame, and worst of all, she knew better, for that was the very reason that she dropped out of college and decided not to pursue a career as a Supe herself.

Eden only got angrier when their last moments together came to mind. The feeling of his warm skin against hers, the sweet nothings he spoke into her ears, the way he filled her up whole. Fuck him. Eden now absolutely despised him, for the way he makes her feel, and for inconveniencing her life.

Who the fuck steals nowadays. 

And so, after dipping into her meager savings and taking some PTO (not that she had any other choice, as she literally could not go to her workplace), Eden became the proud owner of yet another Mazda, this time an even older second-hand model in a navy color, and after a week of lots of walking and terrible public transport, Eden was finally able to return to work, where she was greeted by the ire of her co-workers (Matt was not happy by the increased workload on his plate due to her absence), and the bitching of her manager, Leslie, who went on and on about how he had mistakenly thought Eden was more of a team player. Fuck them too.

Work itself continued on as normal.

Eden worked in a private IVF Clinic in East Brunswick, and during her nine-to-five, she pretty much only greets patients and their partners, handles the telephone whilst managing records and accounts. A normal job for a normal person, that’s all Eden was looking for.

Eden also liked that her job was not strenuous or intense, and as the weeks passed, and December neared, Eden slowly started to forget about Soldier Boy. Work and her now tight budget distracted her, and Eden hated to admit it, but the car payments she had to deal with on top of constantly rising fuel prices and bills were starting to get to her, in a way they didn’t before.

Eden never had many good friends, because to Supes, friends are just tools to be used and discarded, and since moving to Jersey, Eden never tried to make any. But now, she wished she had someone to talk to, because the stress of life was getting to her. She woke up feeling exhausted, food made her feel nauseous, and every time she used her new car, a new problem seemed to arise.

The car seemed to use more fuel than her old one, the radiator started leaking, the sensors began to malfunction. Eden now visited the mechanics at least once a week, because her new car was a gift that just kept on giving.

The young brunette was not having a good time. And not that Eden would ever admit it, but the man she provided refuge for woke up something in her that was dormant before, the part of her that craved the affection and company of another.

Maybe that’s why when Felix, one of the younger mechanics from the Royal Auto Service Centre, asked her out on a date, Eden said yes without a second thought.

And maybe that’s why after a couple glasses of wine their dinner at a restaurant by the Raritan River, Eden found herself in his studio apartment in the city, under his sheets with him.

Felix was from Jersey and worked in the Centre with his cousins and guys he grew up with on the block. Unlike Soldier Boy, his hair and eyes were dark, and he spoiled her from the very start. At first, it was discounts for the work done on her car.

“Consider it the friends and family discount.”

“So, I’m your friend.”

“Maybe you can be something a little more.”

And it didn’t stop there. Felix would bring coffee to Eden during her lunch break, never let her pay for anything, and though a little corny, Felix never failed to compliment her.

“You look so beautiful.” “I love your smile.” “Your hair looks great today.”

The compliments were never ending. Eden was never insecure about her appearance, but he did make her feel good. He always looked out for her, and whenever she felt faint or ill, he never failed to take care of her, making them stay in and take it easy after work.

However, Eden did wonder if they were moving too fast. Barely three weeks into their relationship, and Eden was staying more nights in his studio than in her own bed. She had already met his friends and sister, Maria, and saw him practically every day.

And no matter how wonderful he was to her, Eden couldn’t help but compare him to Soldier Boy and even her only ex, Alex, who she tried to forget. Felix was not as well-built and sensual as Soldier Boy, but he cared more about her pleasure in bed, and actually, he reminded her of Alex before they broke up years ago.

Felix was nice, he was good to her, so why couldn’t Eden stop comparing him to the others.

It was near midnight on a Saturday, while Eden was with Felix in a noisy bar downtown, when she received a call from an unknown caller. Eden had cut contact with her family and anyone else she knew before dropping out of college, so getting calls to her personal number was abnormal for Eden.

“Be right back babe.”

Eden excused herself from the table where she and Felix sat, along with his co-workers, Jared and Rafael, and their wives, Lisa and Elena. As she stood up, Eden showed Felix her phone, to show she was going to be answering a call, before kissing Felix’s cheek and leaving traces of her rosy lipstick on his skin. Eden could feel judgmental eyes on her, but tried to ignore it as she stood, pulling down her dress and grabbing the coat on her chair, before heading out of the bar, to the smoking area.

A part of Eden was happy to have an excuse to leave the group and have a moment to herself.

The group have known each other for over a decade, and the couples there were high school sweethearts, and as far as Eden could tell, completely normal. Eden had gone out with them before, but she had never been entirely at ease. She got along with Jared and Rafael well enough, and they worked in the Centre as mechanics with Felix, and had the joy of working on her car (which was only a joy because they got to mock her for it).

Lisa and Elena, on the other hand, were not so friendly with her, often excluding her from conversation, and Eden could not do anything about it. Felix tried to reassure her, telling her that they probably didn’t trust her yet, and to give it some time.

With a small smile, Eden stepped into the freezing cold, which was only bearable because of the red wine in her system. The young brunette was met with the stench of cigarettes and a bunch of smokers, who glanced in her direction before continuing with their own conversations.

At first, Eden let the call pass, having not reached outside before the ringing ended. But the unknown caller called again, and this time, Eden managed picked up the phone.

“Hi sweetheart, it’s me.”

A cocky, self-assured voice that Eden remembered all too well spoke into her ear, and Eden’s smile suddenly dropped. The young brunette was silent for a heartbeat, before she impulsively responded, tone full of spite.

“Fuck you.” Eden heard a deep chuckle on the other side of the line, which only infuriated her even more.

“Don’t break my heart and tell me you forgot already. You already fucked me, doll.”

“And holy fucking Christ, why did I? You are literally a hundred and something year old and still act like a fucking man-child.”

To Eden’s irritation, her insults make Soldier Boy laugh even more.

“That’s not very nice to say. You used to be so sweet to me, doll. What happened?”

Eden’s eyes widened at his shamelessness, and as her voice raised, the spectators around her started to pay attention, reveling in the drama that was unfolding before them. Eden spat practically each and every syllable, but Soldier Boy only found amusement in her reaction.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m annoyed because some fucked-up bastard stole my fucking car. Oh wait, that was you, you fucking prick. You make me sick to my stomach.”

“I sure do.” Soldier Boy responded still laughing, words slightly slurring into one another. “Don’t worry sweetheart, I'm just borrowing. You’ll get a replacement later.”

“Forget it, I don’t need a fucking thing from you. Do me a favor and never contact me again, because trust me, hell will freeze ten times over before I have the remotest desire to hear from you again. As far as I’m concerned, your jackass is dead to me. In fact, we’ve never fucking met.”

Eden heard a clicking sound from the other line, as though Soldier Boy’s amusement had worn off and he was scolding her, like a parent does to a child, clicking their tongue against the roof of their mouth.

“Are you done with your tantrum, doll?”

Eden’s eyes widened in infuriation, and she ended the call without second thought. The young brunette could feel eyes staring at her, and as her phone rang again, she looked up and glared at the first person her eyes met; a blonde girl who barely looked legal, stood with a couple men, who looked twice her age. Eden couldn’t help but snap at them.

“Are you all entertained? Mind your own fucking business.”

Eden’s ringtone still dominated the acoustics of the smoking area, the sound of which made Eden want to smash her phone into the exposed brick wall behind her. Instead, Eden declined the call, swiftly blocked the number, before switching off her phone.

Try fucking calling me now, asshole.

From the corner of the eye, a lit cigarette was offered in her direction, and looking up, Eden saw it was the blonde girl she snapped at mere minutes ago, who had walked up to her, to offer some emotional support. Although Eden wasn’t a smoker, she still enjoyed the occasional cigarette, and it was very much needed now, so she took the cigarette, offering a grateful smile.

“Tough breakup?”

As Eden inhaled the cigarette, she choked, not because she wasn’t a smoker, but at the notion of her and Soldier Boy sharing anything like a relationship. Before answering though, Eden deeply inhaled the cigarette she held again

“A breakup would imply that we were together. Which we weren’t.” The blonde girl charismatically laughed, her blue eyes looking at hers in understanding.

“Been there, done that. You’re better off without him girl.”

“I definitely am.”

Eden responded in agreement, hugging herself to provide some relief from the cold, as she answered. Right on cue, she saw Felix walk up to them, smiling and flushed from his drinking. As he saw the cigarette in her hand, his smile faltered and brows slightly furrowed.

“Everything alright babe?”

“Yeah, all’s good.”

Eden nodded, before dropping the cigarette and stamping on it with her boot. She started to feel lightheaded, but tried to not let it show. Looking back at the young blonde girl, Eden mustered up a smile.

“Thanks for the cig. Have a good night.”

“You too, take care of yourself.”

The girl responded, smiling knowingly as her eyes darted between Eden and Felix, before walking back to her group.

“What took you so long? Who called?” Felix asked inquisitively, as he wrapped an arm around Eden, his warm body providing refuge from the cold as he guided her back into the bar. Eden couldn’t tell him the full truth, but she also didn’t have to completely lie, yet she did so anyway, without remorse.

“Wrong number. Don’t know how, but I ended up chatting with that girl, and lost track of time I guess.”

As Eden finished with her weak lie, in front of the bar, she turned to face Felix and gently tugged at his wrists, pulling him in for a kiss, to which he happily obliged. The kiss was deep, and though the bar was crowded, Eden felt like she was being watched, just as she had been in the smoking area.

Dismissing her paranoia, which was probably spurned by that prick, Eden tugged Felix until there was no space between them, making him laugh at her affection, and Eden laugh in return as well.

Mondays are always rough, but this Monday was particularly cruel to Eden.

In between the freezing cold, feeling weak and nauseous and dealing with a shitty work environment, Eden was clearly having a wonderful workday. And to make the day even better, Dr Andrews called in sick right at opening time, so Eden had the pleasure of dealing with cancellations, rescheduling, and angry clients who were tired of waiting for their delayed appointments with a now different doctor. Oh, and her only co-worker, Matt, decided to skip work that day as well.

“My appointment was at one, but it’s already half past two.”

“This is ridiculous, we have known Dr Patel for years, just let him know Nina and Christopher here.”

“I have waited for over an hour, this is unacceptable, and you’re not helping. Where is your manager?”

The complaints kept going, the phones just kept ringing, and Eden was struggling to handle it all. She even missed her lunch hour, as the clinic did not close for the hour, and Eden was running on no fuel, as she felt too nauseous to eat breakfast in the morning.

Eden was strong though, that is literally her ability, so she willed herself to persevere. Some days are more challenging than others, but they’re not impossible, or that’s what Eden tried to remind herself.

But it was during emergency broadcast being played on the TV in the lobby, Eden lost it.

It was the late afternoon, the lobby was finally emptying out, and Eden was busy dealing with the final clients of the day, exhausted, when an emergency broadcast by the Vought News Network captured the attention of everyone in the lobby.

“Good evening, thank you for joining us. Breaking news out of the capital today, only hours ago. Deadly blast outside of Ford's Theatre, killing at least 14, injuring at least 29. Police are still investigating the incident, but the leading theory is that it is an unfortunate pipeline accident. We turn now to Vought News Network’s Chief Domestic Correspondent, Bradley Hunter – Bradley.”

“Liam, it was during the afternoon performance of A Christmas Carol, when during the closing act, a huge explosion went off. Officials are still investigating the source of the explosion, but it is assumed that due to the building being old, it was an unfortunate gas pipe accident, but this will take time to investigate as the site has been severely impacted.”

The reporter stopped speaking for a moment, and Eden, who’s eyes were glued onto the TV along with the handful of people in the lobby, were met with screenshots of a well-built man in blurry video, and the figure was a very familiar one to Eden.

Eden’s heart dropped and stomach churned as a high-definition image of a well-built brown-haired man, dressed in his famous Supe costume, appeared on the screen.

“There have been videos circulating across the Internet of what appears to be a now-not deceased Soldier Boy, who we know in the past had gained the ability to self-explode due to dangerous Soviet experimentation, but we at the Vought News Network need to clarify that this is fake news. Our tech and video verification analysts have been able to confirm that the video involves AI-generated content, so Soldier Boy…”

As the supposedly fake video of Soldier Boy leaving the burned down theatre started playing on the TV screen, Eden’s head started uncontrollably spinning, and quickly, the TV and lobby noises started fading away.

Bright lights blinded Eden, and as she forced open her eyes, she was met with the concerned look of a blonde man in scrubs in front of her, who then proceeded to smile.

“Ah, finally you’re awake. You had us worried. Miss Reid, can you please open your mouth for a moment.”

Disorientated, Eden did as she was asked, and a quick checkup of her state was done by the man. “My name is Dr Williams, and I’ll try to be quick.”

Eden, sat in a bed, realized she was in the emergency room, as fluorescent lighting shone on her, and a makeshift curtain-walls surrounded her, and the man in front of her, Dr Smith, read his clipboard as he spoke.

“About twenty-five minutes ago, you were brought here from your workplace, from a fainting spell. You had lost consciousness, and it was unclear whether you had hit your head on anything. Upon the examination by the EMTs and myself, we have determined it unlikely, as we do not see any point of impact, and your cognition appears to be in normal condition.”

The blonde doctor pauses for a moment and meets her eyes.

“Have you had any fainting symptoms earlier today or this week? This could include any dizziness, light-headedness, nausea, and/or heightened stress levels.”

“Well, for the past three-to-four weeks, I, uh.” Eden pauses for a moment, feeling unfamiliar nerves kick in. “I’ve been feeling weak, light-headed, and uh, nauseous. But I assumed that I caught a bug or something.”

“It says here on your file that you are Super-abled, and that you have increased strength which reflects onto your immunity. When was the last time you were ill?” Eden furrowed her brows at this.

“I’m not sure, it’s been a long time.” Eden genuinely could not remember and was starting to feel worried. To this, Dr Williams hummed before responding with another question.

“Forgive me, I do not mean to be intrusive. When was the last time you had your period?” Eden quickly realized where this was going, and started to feel worried.

“More than a month ago – but I have an IUD, and my menstrual cycle hasn’t been regular in years. And my partner always wears protection.” Dr Williams hummed again, before finally responding.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to check. We will get some blood sample analysis completed, and conduct a standard pregnancy test just to make sure, as there is still the possibility of pregnancy even with an IUD. Do you have someone you can call, maybe your partner?”

“Are you sure you want to be alone tonight, babe?”

Eden was sat in Felix’s pickup truck, parked in front of her cabin. The moment her boyfriend had heard that she was in the ER, he had practically sprinted their himself, and did everything to make her feel better. According to him, he felt guilty for not noticing that she was unwell to begin with, and he had even gotten Rafael and Jared to bring her Mazda to her cabin while she was at the hospital.

It was dark, past nine PM, and Eden felt depleted. After waiting for the test results, and having one final consultation with Dr Williams, Eden felt like she was living outside of her body, and even the extortionate hospital bills haven’t affected her, because in her bag, she had pamphlets which made her want to faint all over again.

Shaking her head and leaning over to the driver’s seat, Eden kissed Felix, before responding, while putting on her coat.

“It’s okay, I don’t want to burden you. Lab results say it’s just iron deficiency, but to be safe, I’ll take a day or two off to recover. The doctor prescribed bed rest, but with you around, I won’t be able to get any of that.”

This made Felix grin and shake his head, before pulling Eden into another passionate kiss, with a grip so strong that Eden had to use a little bit of her Supe-strength to pull away, surprising him.

“I’ll be fine on my own, you don’t have to worry about me.” Eden said, before quickly opening the door and leaving the car, not giving her partner the time to respond. And as she stood on her front porch, waving goodbye at him, it took everything in her not to throw up.

This time though, Eden knew that she needed to throw up not because of nerves, but because somehow, she managed to be the less than one percent of people with an IUD, who had managed to get pregnant.

And in her bag, there were countless pamphlets, about every fucking topic possible with regards to pregnancies. Prenatal nutrition, exercise during pregnancy, managing pregnancy discomforts, preparing for labor and deliver, abortion clinics in the area.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

The thoughts run rampant in Eden’s head, so much so that as she entered the cabin and switched on the lights in her home, heading straight to the kitchen, she failed to notice a large, bearded man sitting on her living room sofa.

“Ahem.”

Eden’s heart practically jumped out of her throat as she dropped her bag, its contents spilling out, and when she quickly turned to face the source of the sound, she was met with a man who literally scared the living shits out of her. She screamed almost immediately.

“Jesus, get out!”

Eden immediately grabbed the kitchen knife that was in its holder on the counter, and watched as the man stood there, not affected whatsoever by her screaming and threatening gesture. Instead, he started to speak theatrically, in an over-the-top Australian accent which made Eden even more disorientated.

“Now calm down, love. We are civilized folk after all. I just want to have a little conversation you, and then I can be off on my merry-way.”

As he spoke, the man slowly stepped closer to Eden, almost cornering her, which made her feel more frantic and fearful. Eden said nothing, and stepped back towards the hallway as he approached, still waving the knife in her hands in the air.

“Who the fuck are you! Why the fuck are you in my house?”

Eden’s focus was entirely on the man before her, who now started smiling at her.

“Who I am is not important, but I do need to ask. How does a nice girl living in the woods and working as a receptionist get tied up with a grizzled cunt like Soldier Boy?”

At the mention of Soldier Boy, Eden immediately lunges at her intruder, knife in hand, but he quickly knocks it out of her hand, and the knife skids to the other end of the living room. Eden didn’t let it affect her, as she immediately punched the man in his stomach, and immediately he falls to the ground groaning.

Eden wasn’t an idiot and told no one about Soldier Boy. She knew it was not a good thing that the man before her came to ask her about him. And he seemed crazy, especially at that very moment, when he started talking loudly, as though to someone else.

“Alright then, I fucking tried. Now can we wrap this up before she breaks my fucking ribs.”

In the blink of an eye, Eden felt herself tackled to the ground by someone much stronger than she was, and a rag was violently pressed against her face, and no matter how hard she thrashed and tried to push herself off, she was unable to.

As she faded out of consciousness, the intruder and another man stood above her, moving their lips, but Eden couldn’t hear or understand anything.

Author's Note: I wrote this chapter in a day and my brain is now frazzled - Hope you enjoy! As usual, feedback and comments are appreciated <3

– Chapter 4