#Also the positioning of the angels eyes there are purely coincidental

[arsillanola]

The Pride and Prejudice BBC special lake scene, reimagined <3 Thanks @fellshish for the idea.

I love the thought of this being the first time they meet again, just like Lizzy and Darcy. The coverstation alone is peak awkward I cannot

ahhhh

Am I done now? Probably not

[junkdrawerfics]

Swan Sisters (Part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Bella and Sister!Reader

Summary: You get dragged into dress shopping in Port Angeles with the girls, which turns out to be a good thing considering Bella is a magnet for danger! Jasper is not in this one cause it got too long!

Word Count: 3534

Warnings: some violence (self defense) and allusion to/attempted assault (Port Angeles scene) also possibly horrid writing, I've been up for 24 hours!

---

“How was the beach?”

You meet Bella at the door, fluttering around her hectically as she toes her boots off and shakes stray droplets from her coat. She hits you with a look, the ‘calm down before I walk right back out of here’ look. Smiling apologetically, you back off a few paces, though you can’t stop the habitual leg bouncing.

She obviously had something planned last night, when you talked about La Push. Waiting is not exactly your forte these days. After wasting a couple hours working, you called Alice, who hadn’t seen anything, a common occurrence when the wolves are involved somehow. So wait you did, not that it was easy. The living room is in a completely different arrangement than it was this morning.

“It was fine. It rained a bit, but everyone seemed to have fun. I think I convinced Angella to ask Eric out,” she recounts once she hangs up her coat and starts towards the living room.

“Really? Angella and Eric? Huh.” You never thought of that, but they do seem like a perfect pair. Eric’s not too crazy and Ang- Wait, she’s trying to distract you! Focusing back in you, you prod a little further, “Besides that, did anything happen? Any coincidental Jacob appearances?”

‘Coincidental’ because you know of Jacob’s little crush on your sister. If he heard about Forks kids showing up on the reservation, he’d probably show up out of pure curiosity.

“Yup.”

Hm, the shut out approach. Smart. Unfortunately for her, you are now undying, which means an eternal amount of stubborn snooping.

“How’s he?”

“Fine, Billy’s good too.”

“That’s nice.” You give her just enough time to sit down and reach for the tv remote before plopping down next to her, your next question spilling out, “What did you guys talk about?”

Bella rolls her eyes, “Are we playing twenty questions?”

“Until I figure out what you were planning last night before dad came in,” you reply, just as snarkily, “So?”

“Fine,” she huffs, “I got him to tell me about the legend behind why they don’t like the Cullens. Happy?”

“How’d you do that?” This question is just for fun.

A lot of fun, considering Bella goes positively red, pursing her lips in discomfort.

“I might have…flirted with him,” she mumbles, scratching the back of her neck.

Oh the poor boy. Being exposed to that so young, he’ll never be the same. And to think, Bella can actually successfully flirt! You can’t stop yourself from snickering, which makes Bella look even more miserable. 

“It’s alright, Bells.” You try to reassure her, but there’s no hiding the amusement in your voice, and she just glares at you. “Sometimes you just have to use your feminine wiles to get your way, you know?”

She groans, head dropping into her hands. Her voice comes out muffled when she growls, “I hate you so much.”

The laugh you let out is truly a cackle, completely evil in intent, “You could never.”

“I am this close.” She holds out her fingers, except they are pressed firmly together, which just makes you laugh harder.

It takes a moment for you to calm down again. It’s a good thing you don’t need air, otherwise you’d be gasping, ribs aching. But now you can laugh as much as you want, as long as you want. A weird perk, but one you enjoy.

“So,” you start again, wiping a nonexistent tear from your eye, “What did you learn?”

Bella shifts, just enough to cast you a sidelong glance. Her eyes, thoughtful, calculating, seem to look straight through you as she considers her words carefully. You wish she would just spit it out, but it’s not too hard to guess what she might be thinking.

“He said that the Cullens are some enemy clan, and that they have some treaty with the Quileutes that keep them off the reservation,” she finally explains, though her tone is clipped.

“An enemy clan, huh?” 

That makes sense. You get the feeling that there’s more to what Jacob said, something about what you are, but you don’t press further. Whether she figures it out or not, you’re not too worried anymore. Alice’s visions always come true, and your stubbornness alone will deter the more gruesome ending.

You look at her face. There’s no fear in her expression as she meets your gaze. So maybe he didn’t say too much. But there’s still something. She has to know something. You catch yourself, humming at the realization that you want her to know something.

Maybe the quicker she figures it out, the quicker that future will come true.

You give her knee a soft squeeze and push yourself back to your feet, “Whelp, I’m glad you had fun, Bells. You should talk to Jacob more often, he’s a smart kid.”

Her brow furrows, confusion flooding her face at your conspiratorial grin. With a quick wink, you dart upstairs, leaving Bella positively bewildered much to your own amusement.

---

Not much changes the days following the conversation. The weather gets a little sunnier, meaning the Cullens don’t go to school and you get a few off days with Jasper. Bella doesn’t mention their absence, much to your surprise.

It’s almost like things are normal for a little bit.

She even invites you to Port Angeles for prom dress shopping, which prompted the question-

“You’re going to prom?!”

And the subsequent answer.

“No.” Said with such disdain, you let it drop immediately.

Even so, that’s how you find yourself here, watching Angela and Jessica try on dresses while Bella stares out the window, lost in thought. It’s a good thing that you know the girls from your time in Forks High, otherwise this would be so awkward.

Maybe that’s why she just invited you, to spare herself the pain of doing it alone.

“I like that one on you, Ang,” you chirp, “Lavender is totally your color.”

“Yah?” She smiles meekly, looking down at herself.

“Totally! Don’t you think Bella?” You give your sister a hard elbow to the ribs, making her jump and glare at you before turning to her friend.

“Definitely, Angela, you look beautiful.” At least she’s trying.

The two more normal girls go back to fussing over their dresses. Watching them gives you a dull sense of nostalgia. It’s been so long since you’ve done something like this with humans. Since you’ve been able to.

“So, (Y/n), are you still dating Jasper Hale?” Jessica suddenly pipes up, eyeing you with poorly hidden jealousy.

Ah, that, you haven’t missed. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Bella smothering a smug smile. Karma.

“I am,” you reply shortly.

“Is that weird?” She presses as she stares at herself in the mirror, messing with a pair of white gloves. “Ya know, since you graduated and he’s still in school?”

“No. I skipped a grade, so we’re about the same age.” Not even close, technically, but appearance wise it is. 

“Still-”

Thankfully, or unfortunately, she’s cut off by a sudden knock on the window. A group of men walk by, whooping and catcalling. Angela and Jessica flinch and shuffle away from the glass, faces twisting with discomfort. You frown, a sudden flare of anger flushes through you.

You jump in front of the girls, flipping the bird at the men as you bark a low, “Piss off!”

It doesn’t do much to damper their attitudes, since they’re probably too buzzed to notice the typically unnerving edge you carry as a vampire. Anger simmers low and hot in your gut. What happened to common decency?

“That is uncomfortable,” Jessica mumbles.

“But really cool, of you, (Y/n),” Angela murmurs, voice touched with awe, “Thanks.”

“Oh please, it’s only decent,” you grumble and slump back into your seat, “I can’t believe that.”

You’re tempted to go rip their heads off, but that wouldn’t look too good.

“It’s disgusting,” Bella agrees, looking just as frustrated.

You fall into a tense silence. It’s tense to you at least, but that’s probably because you’re watching the window like a hawk, as if they’ll come back at any moment. For their sake, you hope they don’t. Their death would not be pleasant. No, you’d make sure-

“What do you think of this one, Bella?”

Oh right, dress shopping. Probably not the best time to get swept up in murderous thoughts.

“It looks great.”

You snort. Is it possible to sound less enthusiastic? 

“You’ve said that about, like, the last five dresses,” Jessica says with a grimace-like smile.

Bella shrugs, “I thought they were all pretty great.”

Angela, who’s observant nature rivals even Edward’s, picks up on her reluctance easily, “You’re not really into this, are you?”

“I actually just really wanted to go to this bookstore.”

You perk up a little in interest, eyeing your sister, “A bookstore?”

She noticably avoids your stare as she nods. Curious. Maybe something to do with her talk with Jacob?

“Well let’s go to this bookstore of yours then! We’ll catch you girls at the restaurant?” A charismatic smile and they agree easily. You tug Bella up by her arm, though she quickly jostles out of your grip with a soft glare.

“You don’t have to come,” she grumbles.

“Hmmm, stay here dress shopping for a prom I’m not going to or accompany my twig-like sister around a dangerous town?” You pretend to mull it over, rubbing your chin theatrically, and Bella rolls her eyes. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go with the ladder. For your safety, of course.”

“I can hold my own.”

Swan stubbornness.

“A gust of wind could knock you over, Bells. Or worse, a nice patch of wet concrete.”

No need to remind her of all the times you’ve watched her trip on nothing. The girl was frightfully uncoordinated. Plus, you’d heard word of some strange “animal” attacks nearby. It’s safer if you’re with her.

Though the trip turns out to be mostly uneventful. You walk to a small store, Thunderbird and Whale Bookstore, who’s clerk gives you a weird look as you puruse the indigenous literature. Not completely abnormal, given your appearance. Just abnormal enough to make you wonder, not too abnormal that people ask. But the legends of their people definitely make you more conscious of your human habits. 

Breathe. In. Out. Blink. Shuffle.

Until he focuses on Bella as she comes up to him with a book.

You peer over her shoulder at the cover. Quileute Legends. Seems you right.

She shifts, blocking your sight as she tucks the book to her chest. With a quick thank you and goodbye, you’re back on the street. The restaurant shouldn’t be too far.

“So…Quileute legends?” 

“Yep.”

You huff, “You’re so boring sometimes, Bella.”

She meets you tick for tick, “You’re so annoying sometimes, (N/n).”

Unconsciously, you catch the sound of heavy footsteps down a nearby road.

“That’s my job,” you chirp, slinging an arm over her shoulders, to draw her close, just to be careful.

“I thought you’re job was to teach me about makeup and boys and all that,” she snorts back.

The footsteps get louder.

Pretending to be playful, you pull her hood up, synching it over part of her face, “What do you want to know, hm?”

Bella looks at you, glare equal parts amused and irritated, until she catches the faintest glimmer of unease in your eyes. You smile, but it’s forced, too stiff, unnarturally sharp. She grip the book closer to her chest. As you push her into an alley, she catches sight of the two men walking where you had. 

And they catch sight of the two of you. A glint sparks in their eyes. An all too familiar one. The hunt has begun.

“Keep walking, Bells, please.” You urge, voice tight.

Their gaze burns on the back of your neck, much like it had at the dress store, dripping with hunger. It brings back every memory of walking through Port Angeles alone. The fear, gripping your mace with white fingers, keys held like claws in your other hand. All because men like them think they are entitled to touch touch touch-

Rage simmers up your throat.

Any other day you could show them what that fear is like. How it feels to be hunted. But you’re too aware of Bella tucked under your arm, one hand curling around your wrist so tight, it would break if you weren’t made of marble. She would see. As much as you want her to know, this is not how you want her to figure it out.

So you clamp down on the rage. Dismembering them might not be the best solution anyways.

Though it sounds more appealing as you step out of the alley and watch the last of the drunken men slither out from the shadows. Disgusting snakes. They were waiting for you.

“Hey, where you running to?”

“There they are.”

Bella flinches, and you envision their blood spilled over the pavement, fizzling alongside their beer. Something inside you craves it, longs to see these men wounded in the same way they hurt young women. But you keep it locked down. Not yet. Not unless it’s necessary, you snarl to yourself.

“Stay close to me, Bella,” you murmur, arm like a metal guard around her shaking, frail shoulders. 

The girl merely nods. Her eyes are wide, unblinking, like a china doll.

You will protect her. At all costs.

Head kepts low, you try to force yourself forward, through the men, but they close in like vultures around you.

“Woah, woah, woah, where are you going?” 

“Yah, why don’t you hang out with us?” They chorus in agreement.

Your eyes dart around, looking for any way to escape. There’s maybe ten men, and you feel your throat tighten with each step they take towards you. With each step, Bella’s heartrate spikes, panic flickering over her features. You pull her impossibly closer.

You go rigid when a scorchingly hot, sweaty hand gropes your butt. Snarling, you slap it away, disgust burning a pit in your gut.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” you warn, though your eyes flicker between their identical, sickening smirks, unable to tell who did it. If Jasper were here, they’d all die for it. They still might.

“Oh, she doesn’t like that.”

“Feisty one, eh?”

“What about this one?”

Everything slows down for just a split second.

Another reaching hand, palm covered in sweat and beer, nails rimmed with dirt, skin smudged with oil. Ready to touch. Ready to take whatever it wants. Reaching for your sister.

Fast - too fast - you block his way. Bella gasps almost inaudibly behind you, but you’re too distracted as you catch the man’s wrist. His face goes stark white at your crushing grip, and it’s like the clouds clearing, his eyes setting on you for the first, real time. The fear glinting in their depths gives you a sick sense of satisfaction.

“Keep your disgusting, filthy hands off my sister,” you hiss slowly and give his wrist a deft twist.

The satisfying pop paired with his pained yelp is music to your ears.

Alongside the sound of screeching tires.

Edward.

Bella barely has time to breathe as you shove her towards the Volvo as it skids to a stop, barely catches the imperseptible nod you give Edward as he steps out. Ignoring her sputtering, you push her into the front seat.

“What the h-”

“Just stay put,” you grumble and slide into the backseat.

You don’t watch as Edward approaches the men. You don’t care to see their faces again. If you do, you just might turn around and break the remaining wrists. Maybe that would keep them from laying their hands on any innocents again.

Eyes flickering shut, you let every muscle in your body go still. It helps somehow, like you’re resetting. You focus on the sound of Bella’s breathing, how it slows down, and how her heart eventually returns to a normal rhythm.

It picks up a fraction when Edward slips back in, slamming his door hard enough to make the car shake.

“Hold on tight,” you whisper, mostly to yourself.

Bella turns to look at you, but gasps and clutches at her armrests when Edward whips right out of the lot. The man drives like usual, like he’s trying escape the depths of hell. This time, you don’t give him grief for it though.

“I should go back and rip their heads off,” Edward snarls, fingers going somehow paler around the steering wheel.

“No. Bad idea-”

“Sounds good to me-”

Bella shoots you a glare. With an unapologetic shrug, you turn to watch the trees race by. They might not have hurt the two of you, but there’s no doubt in your mind that they’ve done the same thing to some other poor soul. They deserve to rot.

“You don’t know the vile things they were thinking.”

You resist the urge to slap your forehead. Or him.

“And you do?” Bella’s brow furrows.

Cover it up, cover it up, you idiot.

“Not hard to guess.”

Better than that, Edward.

The glare he sends you through the rearview mirror is remarkably similar to your sister’s. They really will make a lovely match. Good thing they can’t have kids, what with the amount of disapproval they can put together. 

“Good thing you were visiting Port Angeles, huh Edward?” You tease with a lecherous grin pointed right back at him.

“You were just…visiting.” Bella’s voice rings with suspicioun.

Edward grinds his teeth, “Yup. Visiting.”

The word is slowly losing all meaning. 

You settle back into your seat as an awkward silence fills the cabin. If you didn’t know better, you would think Edward was just another inexperienced teenager, new to the whole love thing. Though, he still looks ready to murder those guys, based on his black glare barely focused on the road.

Remembering them brings back a new feeling. Not fear, but a remanent, the faintest lingering of anxiety that makes you grit your teeth. Dread maybe, because you can’t help but wonder - what if it happened a year ago? It’s pointless, you know, but there’s no banishing the images that come to mind.

Something hollow opens in your chest as you shake your head, as if that will dislodge them.

Edward glances back at you again. His gold eyes crease with concern, but ignoring him seems better than admitting to something so stupid. You’re a vampire now, nothing like that will happen. Instead, you let thoughts of Jasper fill your mind. His smile. His eyes. Anything to keep you distracted until you’re in his arms.

Bella must tell Edward where to go, because the next thing you know, you’re pulling up to the restaurant you were meant to meet Jessica and Angela at. They are barely walking out the door as you park. Bella jumps out, probably to greet them, and Edward goes to follow, but you stop him with a hand on his elbow. Gold eyes flash back to meet yours, still concerned and questioning.

“Thank you,” you all but whisper, squeezing his elbow gently.

His features soften, a small, genuine smile flashing over his lips, “Go. I’ll take care of Bella. Alice told Jasper about tonight, he needs you just as much right now.”

Those words wash over you like a warm tide. Somehow, the thought of Jasper in a rage over your safety, despite you being almost stronger than him now, makes you feel a little better. His protectiveness almost matches your own, though yours spans to practically everyone around you.

Speaking of. 

You slip out of the car and give Bella one last once over. She looks…okay. No bruises. No lingering fear. Like it never happened. Satisfied, you nod to yourself and pull her into a tight, almost crushing hug. She jumps, wheezing out a soft laugh.

“I’m fine, (Y/n).”

“I know, I know. Just, stay with Eddie, okay? He’ll get you food and take you home.”

Bella frowns, “Where are you going?”

“To see Jasper.” You offer her a guilty smile, though she nods her understanding. “Eddie called him right before he got to us, so he’s freaking out a little.” Another nod. “Love you, Bells.”

“Love you, too.”

One last squeeze and you pull away, offering the two other girls a short wave, “Night girls, get home safe, alright?”

“You too, (Y/n)!”

“It was nice seeing you again.”

As you turn to leave, you hear Bella flip on her heels, laughter in her voice, “Eddie?”

Edward’s following groan casts off the last of your dark clouds. You’ll pay for that somehow, you’re sure, but it’ll be totally worth the pure enjoyment it brings you. He hates it when you call him that. Almost as much as Bella hates it when you call her Tinkerbell. Another match.

The silver lining of this all is that you have a convenient reason to leave them alone together.

And based on the events of the night, Bella will probably have more questions than Edward can answer without lying. Plus the book. Everything’s lining up, it’ll just depend on how much Edward outs himself!

---

Part 5 (ending)

I hope y'all enjoyed! The next part will likely be the last! And sorry if you missed Jasper in this part :( I try to keep my stories to below 4k words, so I decided to keep that for the next part.

@avadakadabra93

@glaciuswduo

[joostsblog]

Love/Hate me more [tom holland smut] part one

Pairing: Tom Holland x actress!reader

Description: You and your co-star Tom Holland can't seem to get along. After the big premiere of your movie, things change.

Word Count: 9.5k (4.6k words of pure smut)

A/N: This is part of @venomsilk's valentine bingo! See my valentine bingo card attached at the end of the post. If you do not want to get spoiled: don't read the tags and warnings and be surprised! I hope you enjoy it!

Part two is out now here!

Tagging inspo pics

Tags: actress!reader, coworkers, enemies to lovers, fake dating, unhappy ending

Warnings: SMUT (18+), swearing, angst, pwp, PIV, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), cockwarming, fingering, spanking, oral (m&f receiving), dom!tom but also slight dom!reader at some point, slight choking, namecalling (s word), 'hatefucking'

Tom had a very good reputation. Almost spotless. Always punctual, always nice - almost courteous - and such a pleasure to work with. No logic could explain then why you and him just could not stand each other. When you were cast to play opposite Tom Holland in a spy thriller you were excited at first. So how come from the first time you met you both despised each other?

He always got on your nerves with his optimism and endless talking. Always energetically running around set, always charming everyone. He was like a small golden retriever puppy, who never stopped barking. This would be a positive for most people, but needless to say, you were a cat person.

In ways, you were also more like a cat. Calm, strategic, elegant, maybe a little judgmental and sometimes even snippy but always professional. From the get-go, you both knew that you wouldn't be friends. He's just too annoying.

On-screen you were playing spies working for opposite sides. Slowly they turn from rivals into lovers until they both unknowingly double-cross their own side to save each other.

Off-screen you developed a rivalry as well (only that it didn't turn into love). Everyone around you seemed to be oblivious to your spiel. Maybe they thought you both just went full method but secretly have mutual respect and admiration for each other (which obviously wasn't the case). But it was fine. You both avoided each other as best as you could on set. Delivering on your scenes like professionals, bickering with each other between takes, rolling eyes when you thought the other person wouldn't be able to see. You probably completely ruined the studio's chances of making a gag reel since all of the footage where one of you would mess up would just show the other person visibly annoyed.

Eventually, you had to reunite for a press tour, where the both of you did a fantastic job of convincing the public that you were actually very close friends, always praising each other (which you hated because Tom knew full well that he was a great actor) and making up set stories that never happened. Apparently, some fans were convinced that there was something more between you (dozens of YouTube videos compiling 'flirtatious' moments between the two of you could attest to that). Seemingly, your bickering read more like flirting. So much so, that halfway through the press tour the film studio approached you and Tom and heavily suggested you up the flirtations. The fans ate it up - fully convinced now that you had been secretly dating since shooting the movie.

The week before the premiere in Los Angeles the studio called you in for another quick meeting. This time they had more concrete plans. They presented a strategy that would include shots of the two of you "getting cosy" on the beach which the paparazzi would coincidentally take. And then the two of you would attend the premiere together, walk the red carpet and give everyone a little bit of a show ("Actually, nothing is off-limits").

You both agreed. After all, it's just a job, right? It's just acting.

Which is how you ended up on the sidewalk of the hotel you stayed at, waiting to be picked up by Tom. He was 10 minutes late, of course, when he pulled up in this ridiculous Porsche. You didn't care for cars. You drove yourself if you absolutely had to. But you never really liked the type of man who was like super into cars for some weird reason (using cars as a status symbol). You would take a long ride on a crammed up bus with poor ventilation any day if it meant you wouldn't be trapped in a ritzy car with one Tom Holland. When you got into the car, Tom didn't even bother to turn down the loud music blasting through the speakers.

"You're late," you snipped.

No response.

The car's engine roared obnoxiously as Tom pressed his foot down on the gas pedal. You rolled your eyes.

"We should probably get into the mood of actually liking each other," you suggested after a few minutes of silence, struggling to speak loud enough over the music.

"What? You don't like me?" Tom said sarcastically while putting on an obvious fake smile.

"I would like you more if you turned down your stupid radio pop music," you said. Tom rolled his eyes at you and turned off the music.

"You would prefer if I played some of your pretentious indie music," he said putting indie into air quotes.

"Yes, I would actually"

"You know, I'm surprised that you even acted in this big mainstream movie since it's not real cinema," air quotes again.

You knew that his characterisation of you was right, but you weren't gonna let him have this point.

"You know, I had perfectly fine plans for this afternoon, maybe watching a good film, but since I'm stuck with you, you could maybe make it suck a little less if you weren't so annoying as usual,"

"Yeah, I see you put on something nice for a change," Tom joked in reference to the outfit you were wearing. You hated that you had to put on something cute and make yourself presentable for Tom.

"I see you didn't return the favour," you shot back.

Surprisingly, Tom didn't take offence to your remark but laughed instead. Even more surprisingly, now you had to fight back a small grin appearing on your lips yourself.

"I was thinking, since there are different societal expectations for actors and actresses in the current patriarchal state of Hollywood, nobody would care that the man of the couple would turn up in a white tee and pair of jeans to a date," Tom said clearly parodying your characteristically snappish line of delivery.

"I- wh- did-," you stammered briefly before deciding on "excuse me?"

You looked at Tom, taken aback. You couldn't tell whether he believed in what he just said or whether he said this to take the piss out of you. "Did you just use my own arguments against me?" How dare Tom use what you taught him against you when before, he wouldn't even have been able to construct such a sentence. How dare he out-woke you.

"Don't act as if it's your original thought," Tom shot back with a raised eyebrow (he was right, you shouldn't).

"I know"

"Besides, shouldn't you break those social norms by not playing into those stereotypes?" he added.

"You, out of all people, don't get to tell me what I should do or shouldn't do to be a good feminist," you said as Tom was narrowly close to seriously angering you.

"I'm taking the piss," Tom said, almost softly.

"Well, I need you to shut up"

You side-eyed Tom and saw that he was looking at you with an amused smirk. You could tell that he was holding himself back from saying something which would probably make your blood boil (thank god, he respected your request and kept his mouth shut).

After a few minutes, you noticed Tom looking at you again. You glared at him before going back to look at your phone. At the next red light, you looked up to see him stare at you again.

"What? Get your eyes on the road," you said annoyed, maybe a little nervous that he was looking at you for so long.

"If I may speak..." Tom said smirking.

"Oh my god, what is it?"

"We're almost there and just purely for the sake of the cameras - believe me, I wouldn't dare to do so otherwise, you know that I find you absolutely repulsive", you knew that he was joking with at least the last part.

"Misogynist," you quipped.

"- we should maybe try to at least act like we can stand each other... I don't know, just a suggestion," Tom smirked.

"I'm a decent actress but I don't know if I can do that," you said.

"y/n, you're a brilliant actress!" Tom said mimicking the tone he would use in interviews to praise you.

You realised that you were dangerously close to actually enjoying Tom's presence and the banter you had. You caught Tom looking at you to check for your reaction but you weren't gonna give him that satisfaction, so you just returned a blank stare.

"Alright, director's note," Tom said. "You could try to let me hold your hand maybe or let me put your arm around you at least once. We really should touch at one point. You could laugh at my jokes- wait, you already do that-"

"Shut up"

Tom continued "You could maybe look at me lovingly since we're actually supposed to be in love..."

"Now, that is above my pay grade," you said and Tom laughed, again.

Soon after Tom parked the car on the side of the street and you got out. It was a warm spring day in Los Angeles, the sun shining down on the beach. Tom walked around the car to join you and put his arm around your waist.

"Are the paparazzi already here?" you asked.

"You can never know," Tom said and led you down to the beach to take a stroll.

"Let me put on my sunglasses so I don't have to look at you," you said after a while and Tom laughed over-exaggerated (clearly making a show for the cameras). "I know, I'm too funny," you said.

"Don't flatter yourself, we're on camera," Tom said head softly pointing to a paparazzo in the distance taking pictures of you.

You walked another hundred feet until you slightly shrugged your shoulders, feeling the need to free yourself from Tom's hold on you. Getting the signal, Tom dropped his arm from your waist (without any snarky comment, much to your surprise).

You looked around, out to the sea, up to the soft and few clouds, admiring this beautiful day. You didn't know that such a day wouldn't automatically be ruined by Tom's presence. When your gaze grazed Tom's figure beside you, you noticed him staring at you, his facial expression unreadable.

"Creep," you said.

"What? Am I not allowed to admire my beautiful girlfriend?" Tom joked and your heart fluttered briefly (what?). You rolled your eyes and theatrically pretended to gag until you stopped yourself, remembering you were on camera. "What the fuck," Tom laughed loudly and blood rushed to your face, embarrassed by your mistake.

You tried making up for it by wrapping your arms around Tom to hug him closely. Tom's arms quickly wrapped around you as well, still laughing.

"D'you think they got the shot?" you asked after a while.

"Hm, not yet," Tom said and you didn't protest.

A few days later you were stood beside Tom again. You were wearing a dark green long dress that was hugging your figure in all the right places. Flashing lights were almost blinding your eyes and the shouting of the photographers drowned out every other conceivable noise.

"Here! Tom! Here! y/n! Tom! Give us a kiss!"

It should have been you all by yourself, the paparazzi only shouting your name. Instead, you had to force a convincing smile on your face as the photographers and journalists were only interested in the much more famous Tom Holland or your relationship with him (you knew that it wasn't Tom's fault, but it only added another bullet point to your list of reasons why you couldn't stand him). Tom's arm was wrapped around your waist, his skin tickling you where the back cut out of your dress revealed your skin as he tried everything to avoid touching you there.

You turned your body to face Tom and put your hand on his chest while locking eyes with him. Almost like a reflex, you both smiled at each other lovingly before you both looked at the flashing cameras again.

You kept up the pretence a bit longer until your assistants rushed you along the red carpet to get a few shots of you on your own before you moved along to interviews. There you tried to duck personal questions about your relationship as best as you could by just talking about the movie and telling more lies about each other ("Yeah, he's just the best!" and "She's the sweetest girl you'll ever meet" and "He's the most fun to work with").

"You have such great chemistry on screen! How do you do it?" the interviewer asked immediately as you started your last interview on the red carpet.

"Oh, I have no idea, how we do it," "Thankfully, we're actors,"

You both joked at the same time.

"But really also off-screen," the interviewer continued laughing. "It seems like the whole internet is obsessed with you right now. I just love how you constantly tease each other... It really must be true what they say: teasing is a sign of affection,"

Both you and Tom nervously laughed.

"Right," Tom said.

"You got it all wrong," you said fake laughing. "Tom's the worst, I hate him, I could strangle him," you said and pretended to theatrically choke him with your hands. Tom played along by putting on a shocked facial expression, which made the interviewer laugh.

"You two are the sweetest," she said and you side-eyed Tom when you removed your hands from his throat. "But what's the scoop here, can you tell us more about your relationship?"

"Oh, y/n is just the best to work with, always so positive and fun on set," (lies) "she's so supportive of me and my work," (more lies) "and besides that, I really admire her as a close friend and a- uhm-yeah," (the biggest lie) "but we can't deny nor confirm anything," Tom winked.

"Thank you, have a good night!" the interviewer said and shook both of your hands.

"Great work," Tom whispered a little too close into your ear as you walked away from the interview. His arm was placed low around your waist which you barely allowed.

"Likewise," you muttered.

Tom dropped his arm from your waist as you were out of sight of the paparazzi. As soon as you were sat in your seat in the theatre to watch the movie, you turned it all off. Even though you were sitting beside each other, you didn't exchange a word until the lights got dimmed and the screen in front of you got illuminated.

"You can take off your shoes now," Tom whispered as he leaned over to you just a bit. In one of the interviews, you had joked that your shoes were killing you and that you couldn't wait to take them off.

"Right," you mumbled and went to take them off (slightly confused that Tom remembered or cared ).

As you leaned back into your seat you turned to look at Tom only to see that his eyes were fixated on you still. For a few seconds, your eyes were locked and you tried to get a grasp of what Tom was thinking. As the music of the first scene was filling the auditorium you both turned to look at the screen and ignore each other again.

You tried to forget about Tom's presence beside you and just enjoy the movie and the audience reactions. You were happy and also a bit proud of yourself whenever the audience laughed as your character cracked a joke or whenever they gasped as you pulled off an impressive fight move. Some audience members even cheered when the final kissing scene came on. You laughed in your seat to conceal the blood that was rushing to your face (which was a bad move because it made Tom look at you with a raised brow which only caused your face to become even hotter).

As the credits began rolling, the auditorium cheered as each actor's name got shown (Tom's name was first, of course). You had to fight back tears as everyone was cheering at your name (even Tom was clapping and cheering - maybe as not to be rude).

After one short cut hour at the after-party, mingling with your industry friends, you knew that it was time for the big finale of the night. The studio had arranged for you and Tom to leave the premiere in a limousine together. One last time you both walked across the red carpet, laughing and giggling as Tom's arm was wrapped around your figure again. You were waving to the fans still waiting behind the barricades and the paparazzi taking pictures and videos of you. As you arrived at the car you both turned to the photographers one last time to pose for pictures.

"Beautiful! Tom! y/n! Smile! Give us a kiss! Come on!"

Again, you both turned to look at each other lovingly. If you didn't know any better, you would have believed that it was real. Your smiles were gone now, eyes more lustful maybe. As the shouting of the people around you cheered you on you decided to go in. You leaned forward slowly, giving Tom a chance to back away until you captured Tom's lips in a kiss. Tom's hand was resting on your back as he leaned forward and dipped you slightly backwards (almost theatrical).

You remembered Tom's lips (soft and sweet) as you had to kiss a thousand times on set. But this time it felt different. It wasn't planned, improvised, almost organic while still being staged. Shivers were running down your spine where Tom's fingers were lingering. Even though you couldn't stand the man, you had to admit that he was endlessly attractive. It made this kiss be the most pleasant part of your fake relationship scenario so far.

When you ended the kiss you tried avoiding Tom's gaze as you waved to the cameras one last time before getting into the car, Tom close behind you.

"What the fuck?" Tom said as soon as the door closed.

"Come on, don't pretend like it's my fault," you said rolling your eyes as you sat down.

"Why did you do that?" Tom said, brows furrowed.

"Why not? We were supposed to give them a show," you said as the car started moving. "We've kissed before - why are you making such a big fuss about this?"

"Not like this," Tom said.

"This is no different," you countered, face serious. "Tom Holland, I could kiss you a thousand times and it wouldn't mean a thing."

Tom was visibly taken aback and didn't speak for a few seconds.

"Right, because you hate me too much..." he said eventually. You didn't like that Tom was upset with you. Ever since the press tour, it seemed like your rivalry consisted of joking bickering, not of serious hatred for each other.

"Hate is a strong word, I don't ha-" you said before he interrupted you.

"Oh, come on!" he said rolling his eyes.

"See? At least it's mutual," you pointed out his exaggerated reaction.

"Oh, you think I-" Tom started before he stopped himself and decided to ignore you.

He looked out of the tinted windows. He was sat only a few feet across from you. One bump on the road and your knees would touch.

"I don't get you," Tom turned to look at you again. "One day I think you actually enjoy spending time with me for a few hours and then you pull off shit like this," another pause ensued. "You're driving me insane."

Your eyes were locked with his. Your forehead was wrinkled, actually worrying that you took it too far, that you overstepped, no regard for his boundaries. For a second you considered actually apologising for kissing him.

"I could kiss you a thousand times and it wouldn't mean a thing," he mocked your tone. "I know we fuck around and shit but sometimes you-" Tom stopped himself, not looking at you. "but sometimes you say really hurtful shit,"

Oh. He wasn't upset with you that you kissed him. He was upset because of what you said afterwards.

"Well, to be fair, you do also say hurtful shit sometimes,"

Tom didn't answer and you sat in silence for a good five minutes. When you looked up again you saw Tom staring at you sternly. You narrowed your eyes at him, trying to read him. Tom mimicked you, also narrowing his eyes and tilting his head slightly. You nervously huffed out a puff of air which was supposed to be a soft laugh. In return, you caught a glimpse of something in Tom's eyes (something playful, maybe even lustful) and his lips slowly formed into a daring smirk. You discarded your small purse on the seat beside you, anticipating Tom's next move. Tom leaned back in his seat, his legs spreading slightly.

"Come here," he said and your heart stopped for a second.

"Wha-?" you said, the word getting stuck in your dry throat halfway through.

"Come here and kiss me," he said. "It doesn't mean anything, right?"

Heat rushed through your veins immediately. Nothing in you could stop you from slowly leaning forward (and nothing in you wanted to stop). Tom extended a hand until he cupped your cheek. He brought his face forward as well until your lips collided. The kiss was soft at first, testing the waters until soon both of your lips moved against each other hungrily. You got up from your seat and stumbled forward until you fell into Tom's lap, using your hands to steady yourself on his chest. Instead of breaking the kiss, your lips moved against each other faster.

You tried to position each of your legs beside Tom so you could properly straddle his lap. However, your tight dress hindered you from doing so. Realising your struggle, Tom grabbed the bottom of your gown and slowly pushed it up to your thighs, his hands leaving hot shivers along your skin as his spread apart fingers raked up your thighs. Still not breaking the kiss you were now straddling Tom, his hands lingering on your thighs. As Tom tightened his grip around your skin, you let a moan escape your lips. Breaking the kiss, he looked at you with a raised eyebrow and a smirk on his lips.

"Oh, don't get cocky," you rolled your eyes.

"You must be the greatest actress alive if this doesn't do anything for you," he smirked and your heart fluttered just a bit. You didn't know that making Tom smile would feel so good (if you'd known, you would have tried earlier).

This time Tom's lips latched onto your neck. His mouth roamed your skin as he used in hands to push you closer to him. You grabbed a handful of Tom's hair and let your head fall back so he could kiss along your skin easier. You let out another moan when Tom's hands started to massage at your butt under your dress.

"That's it, little slut," Tom whispered lowly. "Let yourself go,"

Another moan toppled out of your mouth.

Soon Tom's lips trailed along the straps of your dress before slowly pushing one strap down your shoulder when you didn't interject. Using one hand, Tom's fingers almost delicately pushed the fabric of your dress down to slowly reveal you only covered in a strapless bra.

Before anything else happened, the limousine stopped.

"We're at your place, Mr Holland," the driver informed you, his voice muffled by the closed partition.

Tom looked at you, eyes dark.

"Do you want me to-"

"Yes," Tom interrupted you before your could finish, knowing what you wanted to say.

Quickly you pulled up your dress again and scrambled for your purse on the car seat as Tom was already getting out of the door.

"No need to drive me home. Have a good night!" you thanked the driver.

"Have a good night, Ma'am," the driver replied.

"Ma'am," Tom repeated as he was stood beside the car door. He held out one hand for you to take as you got out. You narrowed your eyes at him playfully as you took his hand and he led you to his front door.

After Tom unlocked the door and you stepped in, you immediately kicked off your high heels and made your way through Tom's living room. You had never been at his LA house but walking out into the backyard you knew exactly what you were looking for.

"So, this is that hot tub you always brag about?" you asked with a grin as you turned around to face Tom closely following behind you. Tom returned your grin.

"I think you might have too many clothes on your body to get in there," he said and kissed you again.

You slipped your arms underneath Tom's suit jacket and grabbed at his dress shirt, ruffling it in your grip. As his hands found the zipper at the back of your dress another moan escaped your mouth, this time being fully swallowed by his lips. With your grip, you yanked Tom's shirt out of his trousers and went to find the buckle of his belt next. In the meantime Tom had undone the zipper, groaning into your lips, and pushed the fabric of your dress down your body.

"Careful, this isn't mine," you said, breaking the kiss.

Tom took the note as you stepped out of the dress and gathered it up. Carefully he folded the dress and placed it on a table by the glass slide door. As he turned around again he took off his suit jacket and eyed you up and down as you were standing there, only dressed in your strapless bra and panties. When he was stood before you again he placed one hand on the side of your neck, the other on the side of your waist and turned you around until your back was flush with his fully clothed front. His hand was now wrapped around your neck, his breath hot on your exposed skin.

"If I only knew this is what it takes to finally make you shut up, I would have done this much sooner," he whispered, his lips grazing the skin of your neck. You moaned and pushed your ass to the front of Tom's trousers, feeling his hard erection through the fabric. "Needy, huh?" Tom's other hand sneaked around your torso and slowly slid down to your panties. As his fingers pressed down on the fabric he could feel that they were already drenched in your juices. "So, so needy," Tom groaned. "Come on, let's add a little dialogue to your performance. What do you want?"

"I want to suck your cock," you moaned, your head falling back against Tom's shoulder.

"My god," Tom breathed out. "Such a dirty little slut," he murmured against your skin. "On your knees then," You complied and watched as Tom took off his shirt and unbuckled his belt until his hard cock was freed. He placed on hand on your cheek, almost lovingly until he pushed his thumb past your lips into your mouth. "What else do you want, baby girl?" he demanded. Calling you baby girl maybe was a little slip of the tongue.

"Your-", you swallowed around Tom's thumb. "I want your cock inside me. I want you to make me cum. I want you to pound into me until I scream."

"Fuck," Tom muttered and grabbed the sides of your face. "I don't know if you deserve that yet, you're lucky if I do that," he said and brought your face towards his cock.

Your mouth was wide open as you took his length into your mouth. Tom's thumb softly stroked your cheek as you looked up to him innocently. Your tongue twirled around his cock as your lips were stretching around his base. Slowly you began bopping your head and moving your mouth along his member, sucking hard.

"You're taking me so well," Tom praised and you noticed his hips slightly stuttering.

You narrowed your eyes and you touched a hand to his hip. This was the first time you touched him in such an intimate place (aside from his dick being swallowed by your mouth) and it felt so delicately personal. With your hand on his hip, you motioned for him to thrust into your mouth. Tightening the grip on your face, Tom started to thrust into your mouth as you hallowed your cheeks.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he muttered under his breath until he couldn't take it anymore and stopped himself. "You're too good," he told you as he pulled out, leaving your mouth empty. "Get into the hot tub," he demanded as he let go of your face and you complied. As he got in, you sat down on his lap immediately, the warm water hugging your body.

"I hope you don't get too comfortable commanding me around," you said and reached behind your back to undo your bra's clasp to reveal your breasts. Tom grinned as he eyed you up and down daringly. "I'm gonna fuck you until you're begging to cum," you said.

"You? Really? Because I think you're gonna be the one begging," Tom said with a raised eyebrow.

"Challenge accepted,"

You hooked your thumb into your panties, pulled them down and completely disregarded them by the poolside. Holding yourself up by Tom's shoulders you positioned yourself above his cock until you lowered yourself onto him. The resistance of the water made it harder for him to slip into you so Tom used his hand to guide himself into you. When you were completely seated on his lap you locked eyes with his. As the both of you leaned forward for a kiss, your teeth clacked against each other making you laugh before Tom swallowed the sound with his lips. Moaning into the kiss you started moving on his cock. Tom wrapped his arms around your body and so did you engulfing him in a hug. It felt intimate and made your heart beat fast to feel your bare chest pressed against Tom's. A feeling you didn't know you craved before.

As you rolled your hips against his, you could feel the tip of his cock nudging you in all the right places. Burrowing your face into his neck you let the moans spill out from your mouth. Biting down on his neck you remembered that you were supposed to make him beg for you. So you tried to hold back your moans and rolled your hips harder.

"Come on, fuck me like you hate me," Tom challenged. For a brief moment, you stopped in your movements before you gritted your teeth. You wrapped one hand around Tom's neck and picked up speed again. This time not caring too much about how sensual your movements would feel for Tom - the harder, the better. "That's more like it," Tom said pleased.

"Quiet," you hissed and ground down into Tom's lap harder while clenching your pussy around him. Tom's low groans grew into breathy moans as the pleasure was rolling over his body. "I said to be quiet," you repeated and tightened the grip around his neck.

To hold back his moans, Tom bit down on his lip hard and let his head fall back (which left you with the most beautiful and heavenly view in front of you). "Fuckfuckfuck," Tom muttered as he couldn't hold back his sounds anymore. "Stop," he huffed out and you did. His hands softly massaged on your waist as he was trying to catch his breath and you let go of his neck. "I don't want to come yet," he said as he sat up straight again. The sight in front of you was to die for. His pupils were blown out, hair ruffled, some strands wet, his lips swollen and his cheeks red.

"What? You can't keep up?", you teased and Tom laughed.

"Oh, we both know that you're the unathletic one. Riding me like this in the water must mean your thighs are burning now," he wasn't wrong.

"But I win the challenge," you insisted.

"Wha- no! I wasn't begging for anything, my darling," Tom smirked and your heart skipped a beat. "What? No rebuttal? Did that darling just knock you out or what?" Tom teased you when you didn't answer.

"Never," you said and softly punched him in the shoulder.

Tom surprised you when one of his hands came up to cup your face and bring you down for a kiss. The kiss would've almost felt romantic if it weren't for Tom's other hand sneaking up to touch your left boob. He broke the kiss to latch his lips onto your nipple. As you were still taking the full length of Tom's cock you went to move yourself on him again but he made you stop with his hand. You were seated in his lap, warm water bubbling around you and his thick cock filling you up as he sucked on your nipple.

Soon his other hand sneaked to your front to finally touch you. It took everything in you not to roll your hips against Tom's when his fingers began circling around your clitoris, massaging your nerve endings. As Tom's teeth sunk into the skin of your breast you let your head fall back. A multitude of delicious moans spilt out of your mouth when his fingers applied just the right amount of pressure on your clit.

"Such a dirty little slut, such a good girl for me," Tom breathed against your skin as he was leaving kisses against your breasts. "Acting as if you hate me when you really just wanted to get railed by me," he hissed and moved his fingers faster on your clit. "You just wanted me to fuck you, till you can't walk straight anymore. You should've let me known earlier, you dirty slut," Instinctively, your hips jolted against his. "Don't move," Tom demanded his hand on your neck again. "Don't move or I won't let you cum," he warned. "Do you want to come, baby girl?" he asked. Before you could hold yourself back any longer you let the words spill out of your mouth.

"Yes, please- I want to cum- I want to cum so bad," you pleaded.

Tom's mouth went to your nipple again and his fingers worked harder on your clit until you couldn't hold back any longer. With a series of moans, you came undone around him, your pussy clenching around his thick cock. Tom's fingers rode out your orgasm until you were only a whimpering mess on top of him. His arms engulfed you into a comforting hug.

"Did I allow you to cum yet?" Tom asked when you pulled back.

"I- wh-," you tried.

"I don't think I did," he interrupted you. "Maybe you're not such a good girl after all," he said and you whimpered needily. He noticed the goosebumps forming on your shoulders and softly kissed there. "If you get off me, I can get you a towel and I can make you cum in my bedroom for a change."

Tom wrapping you up in a towel topped off with a hug really shouldn't feel as good as it did. When he placed a kiss on top of your head you had to wonder whether the both of you finally dropped the pretence of hating each other.

A few minutes later Tom delicately placed you on top of his bed, on your back, towel still wrapped around you. He joined you between your legs, hands carefully pushing the fabric up until he faced your pussy. Immediately, he went to lick along your folds, his lips landing on your clit, still sensitive from your first orgasm. Tom's hands were placed on top of your thighs, softly caressing there when he could feel your hips bucking from the sensation overload.

"I know you can take it," he murmured against your skin and continued to suck harder on your clit.

Tom moved one hand to your entrance and slipped two fingers into you. Slowly he started to move the fingers in and out of you and patiently listened to your whimpers. Angling his fingertips towards your belly, they pressed down on that sensitive spot on your walls, making your breath hitch. As another wave of pleasure crashed over your body, you couldn't hold back any longer, giving way to another orgasm. You arched your back off the bed and grabbed a fistful of the sheets into your hand as you rode out your orgasm.

Tom kissed the top of your thigh and just when you were about to catch your breath again, he kissed up to your entrance and licked around it until he inserted his tongue. Even though his tongue felt soft in your hole, the stimulation from your orgasm heightened the sensation. Reflexively, you burrowed your hand into his hair which made him moan around your body. Bringing up his hand Tom touched your clit again which made you jolt sharply. Carefully Tom massaged around your clit while his tongue explored your hole as best as he could. With the after-effects of your last orgasm, it only took a few more strokes until you were orgasming again, whimpering and moaning. When Tom moved up from between your legs a big smirk was plastered on his lips.

"What?" you rolled your eyes.

"Nothing," Tom shrugged above you. "You just whimpered my name when you came," he grinned.

"I did not," you said, face hot with embarrassment.

"You did," Tom insisted. "Tomtomtommytommy-yes," he mimicked your high pitched moans.

"Shut up or I'll leave," you said and shoved his shoulder lightly.

"Okay, okay," Tom laughed. "Please stay," he said and gently moved the towel off you.

"Only if you fuck me finally," you challenged.

Tom groaned, smile now wiped from his face. He complied by swiftly sliding into you. Your eyes were locked as you adjusted around his length (maybe this was your most intimate moment yet). Tom wrapped his arms around you while you wrapped your legs around his waist. His chest was pressed against yours, feeling him so close to you sent your heart on a rollercoaster. Slowly he began finally moving in and out of you.

"Yes, fuck me," you moaned into his ear.

Tom groaned and picked up speed in response, thrusting into you harder and faster. The stimulation from your previous orgasms was still lingering and sending hot sensations through your body as Tom pounded into you.

"You're so tight for me, so good," Tom moaned into your skin as the bed squeaked below the two of you. "So good," Suddenly Tom slipped out of you. "Turn around," he commanded.

As you turned around you wanted to position yourself on your hands and knees but felt too overwhelmed. So instead you laid on your front and bend one of your legs so that you could push up your ass for Tom.

"So beautiful," Tom praised and let a hand come down hard on your ass cheek to slap it.

Swiftly he entered you again to thrust hard into you from behind. The soreness from your previous orgasms only enhanced the sensation of Tom's thick cock pounding into you. He was using one hand to hold himself up and the other to gather a handful of your hair firmly tugging it without hurting you. Tom's chest was pressed against your back and you were longing to feel every inch of his body.

"You're so good, taking me," Tom praised gritting through his teeth. "I can't get enough of your angelic sounds," he said which only made you moan more. "I'm close."

Tom thrust into your harder until he bit down on your shoulder to muffle his groan as his hips faltered and you could feel his warm liquid shoot deep into you. As Tom's thrust came to a halt you could hear his panting beside your ear until he pulled out and laid down beside you. You turned your head to face him. You grinned sheepishly at him and he chuckled.

"I'm not done with you," he said while stroking your hair almost gently.

Tom leaned forward and captured your lips in a hard kiss while using his hands to push you to lay on your back. When you felt Tom's tip nudge at your entrance your hips jolted to meet him. Still kissing you he softly stroked your cheek before breaking the kiss to look down at you.

"Stay still," he instructed and you nodded silently.

Tom's penis was softer after his orgasm but still hard enough to be able to fuck you. Using his tip he smeared the cum which had leaked out of you around your hole.

"So pretty," he praised. "My dirty little slut"

Slowly Tom slipped just about an inch of his cock into you before he stopped.

"Oh my god," you whimpered, feeling your entrance stretch around his tip. "feels so good"

Tom's lips turned into a smirk as he pulled out of you only for him to push back into again. Excruciatingly slow Tom pushed and pulled in and out of you, only ever entering his tip. You knew he was doing everything in him to hold himself back from fucking into you relentlessly. The sensation of Tom's tip stretching your hole mixed with the after-effects of your three orgasms felt absolutely divine. At the same time, by only pushing into you an inch Tom was teasing you in the worst way possible. You just wished he would pound into you again, make you feel all of his length between your walls.

"fuckfuckfuck," whimpers spilt out of your mouth uncontrollably.

Suddenly, you felt Tom's finger on your sensitive bud again. With your eyes forcibly pressed shut, it took everything in you not to cum again right then and there. Gradually he began massaging your clit again and you knew you weren't gonna last long.

"Keep your eyes open," Tom commanded. "Look at me," you opened your eyes and looked at Tom, completely exposed, spread out in front of him, completely submissive to his touch. "Good girl," he praised.

As Tom pressed down on your clit and pushed into you again you couldn't hold back any longer. Your breathing stopped for a second before you came around Tom's tip, your back arching off the bed but your eyes still locked with his dark eyes. As the stimulation became too much on your clit you begged Tom to stop touching you, barely able to form any words at this point. Tom stopped touching your clitoris but still pushed in and out of you, blurring your vision. Your hips were trembling uncontrollably.

"Fuck me, fuck me, please-," you whimpered, begging to feel Tom's cock fully thrust into you again.

Instead, Tom pulled out of you.

"You will have to do that yourself," he said and you groaned in protest. Tom sat down, back leaning against the headrest of the bed. "Come here, baby girl," he motioned to his lap. "Come here and ride me."

As you pushed yourself up by your arms you felt your whole body trembling, exhausted from your orgasms but still aching for more. Barely, you were able to drag yourself into Tom's lap. You sunk down on his cock, finally feeling him fill you up again. You sat there for a moment, catching your breath.

"So beautiful," he praised as he looked at you. "Come on, ride me," Tom challenged you with a devilish grin.

You placed your hands on Tom's chest, trying to steady yourself as you moved up his cock. You could repeat that motion only a few times before your burning thighs gave out and you let your head fall on Tom's shoulder. Tom placed a hand on your cheek and pulled you back to look at him. You expected him to look disappointed, maybe concerned. Instead, you were faced with a soft smirk formed by his lips.

"Not so bratty anymore, are we?", Tom teased. "No more snarky comments, no bickering," he said and gently stroked your hair. "no teasing, no nothing. You're completely gone for me," he said and you whimpered as your arms trembled trying to hold yourself up. Tom noticed and let you fall into his chest as he wrapped his arms around you to comfort you. His cock was still filling you up. "Tell me what you want."

"I want you to fuck me," you whimpered against his collar bone. "I want you to fuck me like you hate me."

"With pleasure," Tom grinned and sneaked his hand to your neck.

He took you by surprise when he suddenly thrust up into you, his hand tightening on your neck. You let your head fall back as Tom put his other hand on your waist to hold you in place. After thrusting into you a few more times, Tom suddenly stopped which only left you begging for more.

"On your hands and knees, little slut," he demanded as he pulled out of you.

With trembling arms, you positioned yourself on the bed as you were told, Tom behind you. Tom's hands roamed your ass until his hand came down on your ass cheek in a hard spank. You moaned and pushed your ass closer to him.

"You like that, huh?" he asked.

"Yes," you moaned and buried your hands in the bedsheets.

As the tip of Tom's penis nudged your entrance another slap came down on your skin. With another spank to your skin, his cock pushed into you, filling you up completely. Without giving you time to adjust, he grabbed you by the waist and pounded into you. The overwhelming sensation made your arms weak and give in underneath you. Even though Tom wasn't touching your clit, you could already feel another orgasm building up as he was hitting all the right spots inside of you.

Any softness or gentleness that Tom had shown to you before was completely wiped now. Only the sound of both of your moans and your skin slapping against each other was filling the room. Tom's hips were pounding into you, his hands holding you tightly, knuckles turning white, teeth gritted. When you could muster up the strength you finally started to move your hips back whenever Tom met you with another thrust. He groaned lowly and met your ass cheek in a hard spank again.

As the sensation became too much, a wave of pleasure rolled over your body again, this time leaving you to scream out Tom's name. Hearing his name leave your mouth as you chased your fifth orgasm of the night only made Tom pound into you harder. He didn't stop until you felt his cum shoot into you, filling you up until it started to drip out of your hole onto the bedsheets. As Tom pulled out of you, you collapsed onto the bed, still trembling from your orgasm. Without giving you a chance to recover, Tom inserted two fingers into you and touched your overstimulated bud with his other hand.

"Fuck," you moaned as you felt pleasure but also a sharp sting in your lower abdomen.

It only took one small move from his finger to make your hips jolt uncontrollably. Another motion and you were crying out his name again.

"You dirty little slut," Tom purred. "Making a mess of my sheets,"

Another flick of his finger and you buried your face into the sheets as you cried out.

"Please, please, Tomtommy," you whimpered when you couldn't take it anymore.

"What is it?" Tom asked patiently.

"I- I- I can't-," you stammered and he stopped.

Tom pulled his fingers out and got up from the bed, leaving you alone as you tried to catch your breath. You were still seeing stars when you felt a towel covering you before Tom slowly and gently cleaned your cum-covered thighs up.

Then Tom carefully turned you on your back, placed a pillow below your head and pulled the duvet over your body before slipping under the covers himself.

"Are you okay?" he asked and you nodded exhaustedly.

Tom chuckled as he wrapped his arms around your body to pull you close into an embrace and you could already feel yourself slip into dreams.

"For the record, I won," Tom said after a while. You rolled your eyes.

"Thomas, you do know that sex isn't a competition," you mumbled into his chest.

"Hey! You were the one that turned it into one," he said but before you could come up with a witty remark you were already fast asleep in his arms.

When you woke up the next morning, the bed beside you was empty. From down the hallway, you could hear the shower water running before it stopped. A few minutes later Tom walked into the room, only a towel wrapped around his waist.

"Morning," you greeted him with a smile.

"Morning," he mumbled (seemingly unfazed to see you awake) and went to his closet to pick out some clothes.

"Care to join me in bed?" you suggested. Tom looked over his shoulder at you, sat in his bed, the duvet only covering the lower part of your body.

"It's quite late actually...," he said.

"Oh, okay," you said disappointed and slightly confused at his coldness. "Do you want me to leave?" you asked. You were surprised when he let out an unconvincing laugh.

"Well, I don't want you to stay all day," he said.

"Okay, I wasn't gonna," you said.

When you got out of the bed Tom was already dressed in his clothes, which left you standing there naked and vulnerable. Something in you wished you could just walk up to him, hug him, kiss him, laugh with him. You wondered what triggered this change of heart in you. Only yesterday you could've recited a full list of reasons why you 'hated' Tom. But now? You tried to think of the reasons but you couldn't - it was an empty list.

"When will we see each other again?" you asked.

"I dunno, I think we have this promo shoot coming up next, I don't have my calendar memorised," Tom mumbled.

"No, I mean," you laughed nervously. "When will we be seeing each other again, you know, alone?"

Tom raised his eyebrows at you where he was standing across the room. "You want to go out?" he asked, scepticism clear in his voice.

"My god, I didn't ask you out," you rolled your eyes playfully. "I just thought that since last night-"

"It doesn't mean a thing, remember?" Tom said, hands in his pockets.

"Excuse me?" you asked, facial expression frozen.

"You said it yourself: it doesn't mean a thing," he repeated and shrugged. Suddenly, you felt exposed in front of him. You grabbed the duvet off the bed and wrapped it around your body to cover yourself.

"So, this was all just a performance to you?" you asked.

"Of course not, I obviously enjoyed myself," he said rolling his eyes at you. "But I enjoyed it because we had amazing sex, not because I love you or something,"

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, I don't love you," you clarified. "but I thought this was something more than just a hatefuck," you said your vision slowly becoming blurry.

"What more?" Tom asked, face blank.

"I don't know," you said defensively and added after a pause: "I like you, Tom."

"You could have told me that sooner before you decided to pretend to hate me and treat me like shit"

"So, there is nothing there for you?" you asked in disbelief. You couldn't believe that all the gentle touches, kisses and teasing was really just nothing to him. "Nothing?"

"y/n," Tom paused. "I have no feelings for you, there is nothing there," he said. "I think you should leave now"

"Fuck you," you said, angry with Tom and angry with yourself that tears were now actually running down your cheek.

You refrained from wiping your tears in front of him, so as to not draw any unnecessary attention on them. Tom ignored your remark and handed your underwear from last night to you. You didn't take it, so he left it on the bed for you.

"You can put on some of my clothes," Tom said and went to his closet to pick out something for you.

Without giving Tom another glance you went out of the room, downstairs where you found your purse from last night. You fished out your phone with trembling fingers to call yourself an uber as fast as possible. When you went to turn the screen on, you saw that it was dead.

"Fuck," that meant you would have to stay a bit longer to charge it or Tom would have to call an uber for you.

Either way, you had to ask Tom for help, which you absolutely loathed. You groaned and went upstairs again to get it over with.

"My phone's dead," you said as entered the bedroom again.

"Fine," Tom rolled his eyes. "I'll drive you."

You nodded and sat down on the bed beside the clothes that Tom picked out for you. You looked at him leaning by the doorway, watching you. Your hands were still clutching the duvet that was covering your body.

"Can I have some privacy?" you asked annoyed.

"It's not like I had my tongue stuck up your pussy only 10 hours ago," Tom rolled his eyes, smirking (how dare he smirk when you were sitting in front of him, dried tears on your cheeks).

"You don't deserve to see me naked right now," you said and motioned for him to leave.

"Fair enough," Tom said and left you alone in the room.

Ten minutes later you went downstairs, dressed in one of Tom's sweat pants, oversized shirts and socks. You ignored Tom leaning by the kitchen counter and went past him to the front door.

"I'll tell my assistant to pick up my dress tomorrow," you said.

"Fine," Tom said and unlocked his Porsche.

Quietly you slid into the seat and looked out of the window, planning to ignore Tom for the entire ride. When Tom pressed down on the gas pedal you noticed him checking for your reaction. He probably expected some snarky comment from you, but you insisted on ignoring him.

After a few minutes of the silent drive, Tom fiddled with his phone to turn on some music. Normally, you would have snapped at him for looking at his phone while driving. When the speakers started playing some Cage The Elephant song you groaned and Tom chuckled. No matter how much Tom would pander to your music taste, you wouldn't be less upset with him. Besides, why did he even care?

After a silent drive that lasted too long, you were getting closer to your hotel.

"y/n, wipe your tears, we can never know who could see us," Tom said.

"Fuck you," you retorted.

"Well-," Tom tried but you already knew that you didn't want to hear the stupid remark that he was going to make.

"Tom, I'm not in the mood to bicker with you," you snapped at him. You turned to look at him for the first time again. "I don't care who sees us like this. After everything, I couldn't care less if this hurts your reputation."

"I thought you liked me," Tom said, a hint of a smirk on his lips. The boy really didn't know when to stop, did he?

"You're making it really hard for me right now," you said, tears starting to form in your eyes again.

Finally, you arrived at the hotel and the car came to a halt.

"Keep the clothes," Tom said when you were about to open the door. You looked back at him. After a short silent pause he added:

"You know how to reach me when you're done being upset and are craving another fuck," a devilish grin on his lips.

Instinctively, you opened your mouth to tell him off, maybe tell him another fuck you, but you stopped yourself.

"And you know how to reach me when you're done lying to yourself and are ready to apologise," you said which wiped Tom's grin right off his face.

You grabbed the door handle and opened the door, getting out of the car and out of Tom's life (for now).

final A/N: I'm thinking of writing a second part to this because I still have so many ideas with this pairing! Would you be interested in another part?

updated final A/N: part two out now here!

Bingo card:

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. viii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt viii: the space between us

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.9k (????)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance from here on out. Some more PTSD symptoms/descriptions, though mild.

Notes: This chapter is like, nearly 2k longer than most others and folks, we got it all: identity crisis, PTSD symptoms, the irritability of being surrounded by Seed brothers, the irritability of perhaps not having eaten or had any real water for like two days, Jacob being a shithead, the "sees love interest in x state of undress" trope, YOU NAME IT. When does the fun stop?? We'll never know. tl;dr Elliot pops off like 6 times and honestly, who’s surprised anymore.

I hope you guys enjoy, it feels a bit like this chapter got away from me and not a lot of exciting stuff happens but it did feel important to have this lull of a chapter between all the action and drama. Thank you, as always, to my angel @starcrier the best proof-reader a girl could ask for an also a remarkably thoughtful and sweet friend who for some reasons decides to bless me with her presence to this day.

Thank you so much to everyone who comments, reads, reblogs, likes--all of it is always cherished by me, and it really does inspire me to keep going. <3

tagging my lover my life my shawty my wife @empirics bc she still wanna go here even when i babble at her nonstop

John had hoped that Elliot would go to sleep, but he knew the chances of that happening were slim to none and he wasn’t surprised when, out of what he could only assume was pure spite and anger, she stayed awake the entire drive to the compound. She stayed awake through John recounting what they had experienced of the cult already, what they knew about Faith; Elliot stayed oddly silent, in the way that swelled with the knowledge that she probably knew more than what she was letting on, but John didn’t push.

Jacob stuck to the side roads, the back roads, keeping them as far from the most populated areas as possible: and John could see that it drove Elliot batty, knowing they could just stop at Fall’s End. The radio’s gospel songs echoed eerily in the cab of the truck. After about five minutes of it playing—and, coincidentally, about two minutes after Elliot had smoked down the entirety of her first cigarette—she blurted out, “Can you turn that shit off?”

“Why?” Jacob asked evenly, and John passed a hand over his face tiredly as he heard Elliot take in a huge breath, as though she needed to make sure she properly had enough oxygen to spit her venom out.

As John began tiredly, “Deputy, mind yourself and close your mouth,” Elliot bulldozed him to say, “Because I’ve got a head wound that seems to get exacerbated by idiotic cultists,” their voices once again overlapping until their words strangled each other, Elliot glaring at John. He really wished she would stop looking so betrayed when he took the side of one of his brothers; it wasn’t as though she and him had ever really felt like a team , anyway.

Except for the ranch, dispatching of those Swedes in tandem. And except for when they’d been driving, and Elliot had actually looked happy for a second, even with their hands cuffed together. And except for—

Knock that shit off, John thought to himself, just in time for Joseph to say, “It seems as though your time together has made an improvement on your temperament, Deputy Honeysett.”

“What gave you that impression?” Elliot prompted, despite John’s not-so-subtle pleading look.

“Well,” Joseph continued, “we always do try to have faith , you know, especially in our brother. But considering the animalistic state you were delivered to him in, I would have expected much more poor behavior out of you.” A gentle smile tugged at his lips, an expression John could see reflected in the rearview mirror. “I like to see the impact he’s had on you.”

John couldn’t quite sort out how he felt about his brother’s words. He wanted to be proud; he wanted to think, yes, see? I’ve tamed her, the hellcat, look at her keeping her hands to herself. He wanted to, but there was a complicated feeling wound up in it, because he saw the way Joseph’s words struck Elliot, the way they collapsed the iron-clad battlements of her expression, the way they folded her up and crushed them in his proverbial fist. It was exactly what Joseph did; disarmed, unwound, pulled each tangling thread until they were so knotted all you could do was cut it out.

So yes, John felt an immediate burst of pride in his chest at Joseph’s words, and that pride was almost instantly wiped away at the look on Elliot’s face. It was as though she couldn’t stand the idea that he had made an impression on her, in any way. Disgust, he thought, fending off the insult of her abhorrence of his influence, hatred. She has always been spiteful and venomous, underneath it all.

“Just wait until you outgrow your usefulness, Seed,” Elliot managed out, her voice crackling with something violent. “You’re the only one I want to see dead before I hand you over to the government.”

Joseph rolled his window down. “I see that your manners still need some polishing, though.”

Elliot looked at John. Her gaze was hard, but he returned it nonetheless, expectantly. She asked, “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Elliot,” John began, moderating his voice so that he didn’t sound as pleased as he felt (and of course he didn’t know why he was doing that; there was no reason he should work so hard to preserve Elliot’s feelings, and yet… ) so that she wouldn’t be right about him, “it doesn’t…”

“Shut up,” the blonde snapped. Her voice rattled, with anger and with the sick inside of her. She pressed herself back into the corner of the bench seat in the back; she looked like she wanted to melt into the truck’s frame. “I’m fucking tired of your voice.”

“Watch your mouth,” Jacob said from the front seat.

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” John interjected tartly, feeling himself scramble for something—anything—that felt like normal between them again; the normal that had happened with being forced into each other’s company. “Not until you get better. You still sound sick.”

“ You got those cigarettes for me,” Elliot quipped, vitriolic, “and what the fuck isn’t clear about shut up?” 

As soon as the words left her mouth Jacob pushed on the brakes, hard, the movement slamming the back of her head against the window in the back of the truck. The blonde let out a volley of swears, her hand flying to the back of her head instantly.

Jacob said, his voice prickling with hostility, “I told you to watch your mouth.”

“Jacob—” John began, having braced himself against the driver’s seat, but he could already feel Elliot seething. 

“You fuckhead ,” Elliot bit out, spiteful as ever, her fingers coming away sticky and crimson. “You absolute piece of—”

“Jacob,” Joseph murmured, “let’s not waste time on the road.”

“Elliot, stop squirming,” John insisted, his voice more urgent now. “You’re going to get blood everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it inconvenient for you that your brother reopened my fucking head wound ?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” John growled. “Stop squirming.”

His voice came out more authoritative than he had intended, wound up-tight and hard by the antagonizing nature of Elliot and Jacob’s exchange. The blonde’s jaw clenched, but she stilled; his hands went to her face, tilting her head so that he could take a look at the wound. Reopened, yes, but only just.

“Don’t move,” John said firmly. He could feel Joseph’s eyes on him, and he thought he knew what he was thinking—that once again, he had reaffirmed Joseph’s words, that he had made some kind of an impression on her, that had he told Elliot two days ago to stand still so he could look at a wound that she probably would have sunk her teeth into his arm like a wild animal.

“Didn’t grab any bandages when we were at the ranch, huh?” John asked, trying at something closer to civil.

“I wasn’t thinking particularly beyond bare necessities,” Elliot replied dryly, her voice muffled by her chin tucked against her chest. John made a noise of agreement—he hadn’t thought to grab any, either, having anticipated they’d get the fuck out and be at the compound by now—and sighed a little.

“Well, let’s rip your shirt.”

“Why aren’t we ripping your shirt?” Elliot prompted, and John blinked at her incredulously.

“Do you have any idea how much this shirt costs?”

“Oh, you pretentious little manchild —”

“Fine!”

John didn’t rip his shirt. Instead, he peeled the shirt off, shrugging out of it and folding it to press the gathering of fabric to the wound. Elliot straightened back up into a sitting position, reaching up; her fingers fluttered over John’s, almost shyly, replacing the pressure of his hand with her own so that he could pull away and let her hold it herself.

“You should have just ripped it,” Elliot said, her eyes flickering over him before she caught herself and looked away. Were John not convinced she was running a fever, he might have thought he saw her blushing. All the same, he felt the corners of his mouth tick in something close to a smile.

“It’s easier to scrub blood out than it is to stitch it back together.”

“That’s our John,” Joseph acquiesced from the front sagely. “Ever-giving.” He paused, tilting his head to peer at Elliot and John in the back, “All we ask for is a little civility, deputy. After all, it is our sister that’s been kidnapped.”

Elliot replied, “You seem very concerned about that.” And then, “By the way, they have Joey too, which wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t pass her off to this idiot,” and she jerked her thumb at John.

“If they wanted to kill Faith, they would have already,” Jacob replied, hitting the bridge to the island and flipping the cruise control on as he blithely ignored her comment about Hudson. “Since she was alive when the two of you saw her. Isn’t that right?”

Elliot muttered something of an agreement, as though Jacob were not saying the things she had already said, as though she so desperately did not want to agree with him about something that she would rather choke on her own words than say it out loud.

“We have some search parties sent out,” Jacob continued, his steely gaze sweeping across the road as he flicked the turn signal on—certainly, pure habit at this point. “To pin them down. Once we have them located, we can work on getting Faith back and wiping them out.”

The blonde beside him was quiet, now. As Jacob pulled the truck into the compound—which looked nothing short of a ghost town, now—John glanced over at her again, nursing the wound with his shirt. She looked only tired, as though she’d spent all of her energy in just this car ride alone.

Jacob put the truck into park and turned it off; as they filed out of the car, John swept his gaze over the compound; everything seemed peaceful, as if nothing were happening, a low breeze drifting over the houses and church while the early afternoon sun drenched it in a harsh, unforgiving light. Though it was quiet, the stillness of the compound unsettled him, and the knowledge that many of their followers had been tucked away in the bunkers for safekeeping made his skin crawl.

“John.” Joseph’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Why don’t you take our dear deputy to one of the guesthouses to get settled in? There’s no reason why she can’t rest while we’re getting the radios set up to contact her...” His voice trailed off as he seemed to search for a word, and then eventually mustered up, “Friends.

“I’m not your dear anything,” Elliot said slamming the truck door behind her. Joseph’s lips quirked in a small, muted smile, his eyes beneath the yellow lenses of his glasses nearly unreadable.

“Not yet,” Joseph relented.

John's hand reached Elliot’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said, shaking the way Joseph’s pinning gaze unsettled him, just a little, like there was nothing that was happening that his brother wasn’t cataloging for later.

“Don’t touch me,” she muttered, shrugging his hand off of her but following him nonetheless. John could hear his brothers exchanging words in low voices on their way into the church, and that little sting in his chest lingered, more firmly: the idea that Joseph was pawning off responsibility to him to make him feel like he was doing something important remained.

Elliot pushed the door to a guest house open. “You really just took your whole shirt off instead of ripping a little piece, huh?” she said. It might have been her attempt at casual conversation, but John couldn’t say for sure. It was always so hard to tell what was going to trip that hairpin trigger into enemy territory again.

“It’s Versace, Elliot.”

“Oh, boo .” She pulled it away from her head. “I think you just wanted a reason to be shirtless in front of me.”

John blinked. He didn’t know what to say to that, the most friendly, nearly flirty thing Elliot Honeysett had said to him in many years—which was saying a lot, considering the last time they had spoken in a friendly manner, she’d hardly said more than a stammer of a sentence to him before Joey Hudson swept her away.

“Wouldn’t you like that?” he managed out after a moment, taking the shirt back from her as he got his mental footing back. “I saw you looking. No need to be shy about it, though—we’ve already established you find me handsome.”

Elliot scoffed, but he saw her face flood with red just before she turned away, pacing to the bathroom at the back of the house. “Found, once, years ago,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t let it inflate your ego, Seed.”

He called after her, “Too late,” and she slammed the bathroom door; the very definitive sound of the shower running echoed in the empty house, and John exhaled a small breath in relief.

As he inspected the bloodstain that had gathered on the front of the shirt, he felt a pleasant little thrill in his chest; a stain was a small price to pay for having made Elliot squirm her way out of that conversation, he supposed, and he remembered the way Joseph had said, I like to see the impact he’s had on you. 

Not so wild now, John thought, are you, hellcat?  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The benefits of a hot shower were never to be underestimated.

Though Elliot had gone into her shower feeling bedraggled, worn down, furious, and more than unseated—both by Joseph’s assertion that there was a yet to be had with the friendliness of their relations, but also by John’s casual confidence in her attraction to him.

She wasn’t attracted to him. John had held her under like he was going to drown her, really drown her. He’d wanted to tattoo wrath right on her chest.  

Elliot’s fingers fluttered over the spot where John’s had dragged, just a day or so ago now, as he said, I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you think? Maybe just over her heart. The same place dream-John had touched, the same place her skin had been burning when flower-eyed John, spilling petals from his mouth, had gripped her face in his hands.

They were getting mixed up in her head now, all of these Johns: the John she had spooned for warmth with in the forest, the John that hadn’t complained when she anchored her fingers into his arm for steadiness, the John that held each side of her face while her body and mind split, somewhere in the middle, bringing her back down before she slipped away permanently; they all wove and intermingled themselves with the others that she knew, the Johns that kidnapped her friends or kidnapped her or held her under or leered at her in a bar when she was young.

It was almost— almost —romantic, the kind of ferocious dichotomy she would have read in a book somewhere, sometime, in a place where she still had the leisure to do something like that: read a book, take a nap, browse television channels. 

Almost, but not quite, because there was and could never be something romantic about John Seed.

Elliot startled out of her thoughts when someone knocked on the bathroom door, the sound echoing in the small bathroom much louder than she thought the knocks would have actually been.

“You’re not climbing through the window right now, are you?” John’s voice came through the door. Elliot quickly wiped the amusement she felt creeping into her face and ducked her head under the water, the heat of it stinging her wound in a sort of catharsis.

“If I was,” Elliot called back, “what would you do?”

“Very funny, Elliot.” And then: “I’d probably kick this door down.”

“How very caveman.”

“Well, you know—desperate times. Plus, I hear women like that kind of thing.”

She rubbed her face with both hands to stop the smile tugging at her mouth. She had to keep focused: she had to remember the way John had practically glowed, radioactive with pride at Joseph’s praise that he’d made an impact on her, that he was changing her. For the better, they thought. For them. Elliot had hardly seen John around his brothers, but the short amount of time that she had (and wasn’t drugged out of her mind) it had become very clear to her that the relationship between them wasn’t as easy to swallow as she would have thought.

But it was easy, when she was given the luxury of a hot shower that molded all of her muscles into relaxation, to feel like they were on a team. It was easy—especially when John had handled her so carefully, like his hands hadn’t inflicted pain on numerous other people, like he hadn’t carved sin after sin into flesh as a macabre brand. Easy, Elliot thought, willing herself to turn off the hot water, because she couldn’t stay in a shower forever. Easy to forget. I can’t forget what’s happened.

“Any chance you’ve got some jeans out there?” Elliot said, stepping out of the shower and finding a clean (clean?) towel hanging; she didn’t have much time to be picky, so she wrapped it around herself and squeezed some of the water out of her hair. Outside, she could hear John stomping around, fumbling through things, and once she’d gotten mostly dried off she opened the door.

“Oh,” John said, like he hadn’t been expecting her, standing just a foot away from the door and holding a collection of clothes in his arms. Jeans, it looked like, and a few shirts. His own shirt was back on, the dark bloodstain turning the navy blue nearly black on the front.

“Oh?” Elliot prompted. She held her hand out for the clothes while the other kept the towel in place.

“It’s just that you look...” He paused, and then handed her the clothes, regarding her almost warily. “You look—”

And he stopped again, and Elliot thought, well go on, spit it out, then, her eyebrows arching upward expectantly.

“Nice,” he said after a moment. As though catching himself, he amended, “Normal, I mean.”

Elliot’s expression deadpanned. “I am normal, John. You’re the one that’s part of a cult, remember?”

He squinted his eyes at her. The spell was broken; the clock had struck midnight; he was no longer enchanted with her, numerous days of grime scrubbed off of her body.

Rather than argue the logistics of his family’s venture being a cult or not, John said, “Change quick, it shouldn’t take long for them to get the radio ready.”

“Yes, boss,” Elliot replied demurely, mimicking the words he’d used when she’d told him to shut up and be a good blanket. John’s eyes flashed to her face and then away, but she didn’t spend too long trying to parse out what his expression was; she closed the door and busied herself with shimmying into the clothes, leftovers from Eden’s Gate members, it seemed. Relatively clean, too, considering she usually saw peggies in various states of disarray and neglect.

After she’d pulled the rest of her clothes on, the white shirt—clearly meant for a man—nearly swallowing her up, she kicked the old, dirty clothes out of the way and opened the door.

“Would you have really kicked the door down if I was climbing through the window?” Elliot asked, scrunching her hair. The back of her head throbbed, but in a pleasant way; the wound had been thoroughly rinsed, and though it still ached from Jacob’s foot slamming the brakes, she didn’t think it was concussive. Yet.

John leaned against the door, regarded her with a dry expression. “Why?” he asked. She opened the door from the “guest house”—it was really more a bunkhouse than anything—and shrugged.

“I hear women like that kind of thing.”

A swift, easy breeze drifted through the doorway as Elliot stepped outside, taking one moment—just one moment—to close her eyes, and breathe, and think, I’m so close, Joey, to rescuing you. I’m so close, I swear I’m on my way to you. Please, just hold out for a little longer.

“—than woman.” John’s voice rattled around in her head, and she opened her eyes looking at him over her shoulder.

“What was that?” she asked.

He sidled up behind her, his hands in his pockets, and bent just a little at the waist so he could say into her ear, “I said, it’s a good thing you’re more devil than woman,” and against the wishes of her mind, the skin of her neck prickled with goosebumps.

She scrunched her shoulder up to her ear to fend him off. “That’s right, John,” she replied evenly, “I am a devil, and don’t you forget it.”

Elliot saw movement out of the corner of her eye, her body stiffening a little before she turned her gaze and saw that it was Joseph, standing at the steps of the church.

“Children,” he called, his voice welling with some kind of emotion that Elliot couldn’t quite pin down—perhaps amusement, or something else. “Are you done? The radio is ready for you, deputy.”

“Born done with this one,” Elliot replied, feeling the small smile that had been fighting its way onto her face slip from her features. There was just something about Joseph that put her on edge; every second she spent in her presence reminded her of the way he’d looked at her, that night in the church, when he’d said, God will not let you take me.

Like she was the only person in the room. Like she was the only person that had mattered.

Elliot liked to think that she was not the kind of person that would be so easily won over by a cult—but she also knew that they looked for people like her, people with a history of trauma, people who had fewer parents than a child ought to have, people whose one functioning parent was only barely functioning and only crested the standard when they had a few drinks in them. She was exactly the kind of person that Joseph nurtured, cradled, forgave, and she thought that for a second in that church, that night, she had thought about how nice it would be to feel that. Once.

But she had a family, and people who cared about her and relied on her and would miss her. Like Joey.

With long strides, she crossed the small courtyard to the church and stopped in front of Joseph, waiting for him to move aside so that she could go in.

“Feeling better?” Joseph asked her mildly, and when he didn’t move aside she shouldered past him. “You look like one of us.”

“Peachy,” Elliot replied flatly; she purposefully ignored his last words, rinsing them away by focusing on the task at hand. The inside of the church was dim, with only the Eden’s Gate window at the back. Her stomach dropped unpleasantly; a surge of panic washed through her, and she was suddenly reminded of the feeling of Eden’s Gate members shoving past her, watching her through fringes of dark, dirty hair, and Joseph, hands outstretched, waiting.

And John, prowling in the background, ever a predator waiting for his prey.

Joseph brushed past her, walking down between the rows of seating to where Jacob had set up a table, the radio crackling as he adjusted some settings on it. Elliot pushed her way down as well, hating that her steps faltered, that Jacob’s piercing eyes caught every step that didn’t quite hit the way that she wanted it to. Behind her, she heard the easy, confident cadence of John’s steps, the door to the outside shutting.

For the first time since getting in the truck, Elliot felt like she was in the belly of the beast. If only, a voice inside of her said, if only you had known this then, instead of now.

“Well,” Jacob said, “are you going to call them or not?”

She snatched the radio out of his outstretched hand, her heart hammering in her chest. So close; she was so close. If she wanted to, she could tell Jerome and the others where she was, flush the Seeds out well and good once and for all.

But she couldn’t, because she still needed them. At least, she needed one of them, to get Joey back.

Elliot adjusted the settings on the radio to the proper channels, swallowing thickly, and hit the button on the side. Joseph lingered under the window, a few feet away, his back to her; behind her, she heard John’s steps pacing closer to her.

The radio clicked, static buzzing patiently on the end. Her mouth felt dry. “Jerome?” she asked, tentatively into the static. “Jerome, do you—read? It’s me.” And then, quickly and feeling like an idiot, “Elliot, I mean. It’s me, Elliot.”

Silence stretched on the other side for just a moment. Then, the static crackled, and a familiar voice broke over the radio, “Elliot? It’s so good to hear your voice again. Thank God, we were—” Jerome’s voice broke up a little, and then picked up, “—about you. Where are you? Did you get away from John?”

Relief immediately flooded her system, the sensation almost painful; her heart thudded painfully against her chest, and she gripped the table with her free hand to keep herself steady.

“I—” Elliot paused. Her gaze flickered to John, who now lingered to the right of her; Jacob loomed to the left, and Joseph, ever the pinnacle, ever the point of the pyramid, just in front of her. The closest to heaven.

John’s gaze weighed down on her, pinning her, so that instinctively she wanted to squirm right out of it.

“—I’m okay, don't worry about me," she said after a moment. "I'm on my way to get Joey. Jerome, I need you to listen to me."

“Tell me where you are,” Jerome insisted, his voice crackling through the radio with urgency. “We’ll help you get Hudson back. It’s been quiet, here.”

John rolled his eyes, barely veiling his contempt. Elliot shot him a look and cleared her throat, trying to ignore the way that the pastor’s words clutched and pulled at her heart. Jerome’s voice was like a balm to her nerves; she realized, quite suddenly, how much she actually missed being around people who weren’t the Seeds, or members of Eden’s Gate—someone who actually cared about her.

“Please listen to me,” she tried again. “There’s someone else here. A different group, a new—cult. They’re here and I think they’re going to wipe everyone out. I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but you need to take everyone out of Fall’s End and get them out of here, okay? Everyone, and just evacuate as fast as you can.”

“What? Elliot, what are you talking about? ” Jerome’s voice faltered for a moment, and then he said, “Please don’t try and Atlas this thing, deputy.”

Elliot pressed her hand to her forehead. When she lifted her head, Jacob’s eyes were fixed on her, and he said, “Two minutes, deputy.”

Of course, she thought, both exhausted and infuriated. This fucking Darwinian psycho wouldn’t want to give them a fighting chance.  "There wasn't a fucking time limit on this radio call before."

"You're calling the people that want us dead," Jacob deadpanned. "One minute."

Elliot wanted to say that not even a full minute had passed, but she knew better. She bit down on her cheek until she tasted cooper, trying to refocus her attention.

“There’s no time, Jerome,” she insisted, talking faster now as the proverbial clock ticked down. “Take everyone from Fall’s End and leave, okay? I’m getting Joey and we’ll meet up with you a town over, or further way—just don’t stop driving. I can’t explain anymore. I have to go. Jerome?”

There was no answer on the other end for a minute; she could picture Jerome and Mary May arguing back and forth about what they needed to do for this, for her, and her heart ached a little in her chest. Finally, his voice crackled through: “I hear you, but Elliot—let one of us come and help. We’ll get you and Joey out of here.”

“Give Mary May a hug for me, okay? And get Dutch, and everyone, and get the fuck out of here.”

“Elliot.” Jerome’s voice had changed. Her hand had gone to turn the radio off, but it stilled. “Tell me you’re alright and mean it.”

It wasn’t his Resistance Business voice, anymore, and nor was it his pastor voice. It was his dad voice, firm and unrelenting, but not unkind. It welled with gentle affection.

Elliot felt her vision wobble a little. It was embarrassing, that Jerome could disarm her this far away, without seeing her or knowing what the last two days had been. She swallowed thickly and ducked her head against her chest a little when her breath shuddered in her chest.

“We’re worried about you, kid. All of us.”

“Deputy,” Jacob said, impatient, and Jerome continued, “You can tell me if it’s not okay.”

“I’m alright,” she managed out into the radio, willing the tears back away, back from where they had come from. “I’m alright, Jerome, I promise. Please get everyone out of here.”

She put the radio back down on the table and switched it off; she exhaled sharply, once, through her nose. Her chest felt tight, and her body ached, every muscle and tendon and joint in her body feeling deeply bruised. She thought, for one awful, terrible moment, that she might actually start crying right here in front of all of the men she least wanted to do that in front of.

“I guess we’ll see if they make it out,” Jacob said, his voice painstakingly casual and clipped all at once. Elliot felt something hot and sticky flare in her chest, like all of the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air around her. "And if they don't, well—probably means they weren't ever meant to."

She didn’t want to think about the Resistance not making it out; she didn’t want to think about the slow, oozing creep of the cult sidling up on them, of Ase’s fingers on their faces, lovingly planting their gutted corpses with fresh, vibrant blooms.

“Shut the fuck up,” she managed out, her voice wobbling. Jacob’s mouth curved at the corner into something like a wicked smile; he might have been infuriated by her petulance, she thought, if her voice wasn’t thick and wet with unshed tears. She straightened up, digging her nails into her palms, thinking, I could kill him right now, wrap my hands right around that big neanderthal neck and strangle the life right out of him.

But she couldn’t, even if at that moment she really wanted to, because talking to Jerome for even that short time had reminded her about what it felt like to have people around her that cared about her; it had reminded her about being around people that she trusted, that trusted her, that shared the same beliefs. That wanted to take care of her.

She had almost forgotten that, being handcuffed to John Seed for almost two days straight.

“We’ll pray for their safe departure, of course,” Joseph said. His words echoed, tinny and hollow, in her head. She blinked furiously. Elliot was only vaguely aware of John pacing back across the room and saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear what it was; not really.

I am so tired, she thought, over the sound of John talking to her. I am so tired, and I want to go home.

“When will your peggies be back?” she asked, interrupting the sound of Jacob and John blustering back and forth. Joseph paused, and then cocked his head at Jacob expectantly. She waited for one more beat and then said, louder and with more fervent impatience, “I said, when will your little cockroaches be back from finding Joey and Faith?”

Jacob replied, bitingly, “Within the next few hours. They’re going to pin down a location and get back to us.”

“Great.” Elliot turned on her heel, marching herself down the same hallway that just a little over a week ago, she had been walking down with Burke and Whitehorse. “Fuck off until then, you piece of shit.”

It felt like her lungs might burst, or her heart might beat right out of her chest, before she made it out of the stifling darkness of the church. She pushed the door open and hurried outside to take a lungful of fresh air, air unpopulated and unshared with Seed boys.

I’m just one girl. The thought was a desperate one, one that turned over and over again in her mind. That these things were just happening to her, that she had no agency in her life, that it might always be like this. Forever. I’m just one girl.

Elliot walked to the bunkhouse, pushing each step into the dirt in the hopes of feeling more grounded, each breath of air slowly bringing her back to the earth. When she made it inside, she closed the door quickly behind her and paced, rubbing her face. The bunkhouse no longer felt surprisingly clean. It only served as a reminder of where she was, where she wasn’t, where she might never go again.

She pushed her hands against her face until spiderwebs crawled behind her eyelids. They blistered, red fractals of light swimming in her non-vision. She was only a girl, and she was alone—no family and no friends nearby to help, and that was supposed to be good; if Jerome listened to her, they'd be out of Hope County within a few hours.

There was no more room for error. Fall's End evacuating meant there was no rescue party coming, in spite of her words. It meant that she was really only going to get one shot at getting in and getting out, for good. Get Joey, get Boomer, get out. Period.

The door clicked open. Footsteps echoed against the hollow wooden flooring. It was John; she could tell by the way he walked. “Elliot.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, not a how are you, but something else, something that Elliot didn’t know what he meant and or what he was saying or what he thought to gain from it. Did he ever do anything that didn't have any personal gain for him?

“John,” Elliot said, her hands pressed into her face, “can you just leave? I am so tired of hearing your voice.”

“Elliot,” John said again, “take a breath.”

“I am breathing, you fuckhead,” she snapped viciously, turning to face him—John, in his stupid fucking designer shirt, his head cocked to the side as he watched her, the venom in her voice landing but not hitting the way it should have. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be alone? Really, truly alone? Like, for fucking good, unless by some godforsaken miracle your insane brothers don’t kill me as soon as I’ve served the purpose of fetching Faith back.”

“I do," John replied angrily, "and they don’t want to—”

“Oh fuck off, John.” She raked her fingers through her hair. There was a nasty, wicked monster, crawling up from through her, fingers sliding between the slats of her ribs to get a good grip. “You should see yourself whenever Joseph says anything. You practically fall over to kiss the ground he fucking walks on, and for what? For him to give you a little pat on the head? You’d do absolutely anything he asked you to. You’re fucking pathetic.”

That hit the way she wanted to. She saw the hurt slide across John’s face, and then the anger, a power-point presentation on How To Make One Man Hate You. 

“You have a lot of nerve, deputy,” John bit out (and she didn’t miss the way he no longer was using her name, like he wanted to distance himself from her), “to talk to me like that, given that you would probably be lying dead in a field with flowers coming out of your eyes without me. Not to mention that you need us to get your little friend Hudson back—”

“It’s your fucking fault!”

She felt the rasp in her throat, the claws of sickness shredding her delicate insides as her voice flexed painfully in volume. John was staring at her, and she thought, I have to stop yelling, I have to stop, this is just what they want, for me to lose control, but she couldn’t, the words welling up inside of her, wrecked and vicious, and she felt like all of the blood had fled from her hands and feet; she was ice, now, frigid and unyielding.

John’s mouth twisted, like he was shaping the words he wanted to say before he said them. He started, less heated this time, “Elliot—”

“It’s your fault,” she interrupted, clenching her fists at her sides until her hands itched and burned with the intense need for circulation. “It’s your fault—I should—I should be leaving with Fall’s End and leaving this absolute fucking nightmare behind, or—or maybe that shouldn’t be happening at all because this is my fucking home and you and your stupid family took that from me, and I fucking hate you, John Seed, John Duncan, whatever the fuck your name is, whoever the fuck you are, I don’t care and I hate you!”

He stepped forward, his hands lifted, like he was going to touch her; perhaps rest his hands on her shoulders, take her face the way he’d grown so accustomed to doing when her breathing shallowed and her eyes unfocused. But she pushed his arms out of her immediate vision, and while infuriatingly he didn’t get out of her space she still bit out, crushing the words on their way past her teeth, “Don’t fucking touch me, John,” and his hands dropped back to his sides. 

She tried to ignore the strange, fleeting disappointment: as though she had been anticipating his grounding touch, as though she had wanted it, her body betraying her words and her head.

No more, she thought through the haze in her mind, no more of that.

He shifted on his feet. “You’re tired,” he said after a moment, which sounded not like the thing that he wanted to say but instead the thing that he decided was safe. “You should rest. The search parties will be back soon, and you’ll need to be at full capacity.”

Elliot stared at the bloodstain on his shirt. It felt like all of her insides had been scooped out, emptying her; her stomach twisted, both with anxiety and hunger.

“Yeah,” she replied numbly. “Alright, John.”

He turned on his heel, walking through the door to the bunkhouse and letting it swing shut behind him. The room felt colder without another human body in there; emptier, lonelier. Elliot sat herself down on the wooden floor and pushed her face into her knees.

This wasn’t supposed to be me. Her ears rang, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, a black stone falling over and over until her ribs bruised and cracked. This wasn’t supposed to be my life.

She closed her eyes tight, arms looped around her knees, pressed against the wall of the bunkhouse, and willed herself to sleep.

[nad-zeta]

Yo, can I ask for a matchup if its ok? First of all, i'm very slow person, I never get jokes and sarcasm at all unless its emphasize (think of me as Mitsunari minus the clumsy streak) i also have a very messy sense of direction and i often get lost. I acted like I don't care and I have a hard time expressing my true feelings to people, but I really wanted to help/take care of them (like Ieyasu but i don't insult lol). And lastly, i have a childhood trauma that I wanted to forget. Thank you! 🎊🎊

Its always okay love! I'm so happy u requested a match up! I hope you enjoy it and I hope you have a good day! Also sorry for making you wait sooooooo long! 😆

So I match you with.................. Shingen

You were adjusting to life at Azuchi really well. You had made a ton of friends among the Oda forces thanks to your friendly, warm nature. You had become really good friends with Nobunaga, Masamune, and Mitsuhide. The three would always strike up a conversation with you, trying their best to tease you. You also really like Mitsunari. The two of you were two beams of heavenly sunshine that brings so much warmth and positivity into the room. THB the Oda forces called you Mitsunari the second with the way that jokes, and sarcasm just flew over your head. Often the troublesome trio would make a joke or comment, and you and Mitsunari would just look at each other in confusion. Of course, Ieyasu would roll his eyes at the two cute, clueless angels, while Hideyoshi would scold the trio for taking advantage of yours and Mitsunari’s sweet, pure nature. You had a lot of fun interacting with everyone. You were long ago accepted by the warlords; even Hideyoshi didn’t suspect you for long due to your sweet nature. 

You worked hard for the castle and its people and was starting to wear yourself thin. Mother hen realized this and gave you a bag of coins telling you to go to the market and relax. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

And that is how you found yourself walking around Azuchi’s market. You looked at all the fancy accessories, taking in all the smells and enjoying looking at all the different types of people. You found a particularly interesting shop selling the prettiest accessories. Manning, the shop was a tall, handsome man. He greeted you with the biggest smile and started turning on the charm. “I must be truly blessed that an angel from heaven has come to grace me with her presence.” To that, you looked around confused, then you simply smiled at him and said, “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t see any angel.” Shingen was shook that his cheesy pick-up lines did not affect you. He tried his hardest to compare you to a goddess, a flower, an angel, but to no avail. You were definitely an intriguing person. You bought a small dainty pair of earing and bid the friendly, handsome man goodbye. You then ventured deeper and deeper into the market, following your nose to one of the tea houses. You sat sipping on tea, thinking about the relaxing day you had had. Your mind couldn’t help but drift back to the handsome store owner. He had definitely made an impression on you. As the sun dipped past the horizon, it was time for you to head back home.

You walked and walked and walked; it was now getting increasingly darker by the minute as the sun was disappearing. You started to feel a sense of fear and dread growing with each step you took. You looked around at your surroundings as you walked, trying to find something familiar to lead you back home, but nothing. Everything felt unfamiliar, and you were now lost. You were so directionless that you didn’t even know how to get back to the teahouse you were just a few moments ago. You were now overcome with a sense of anxiety, when all of a sudden, a big warm hand came to rest on your shoulder. You turned around to see the friendly shop owners. You looked into his warm smoky eyes, and your anxiety dissipated. He looked at you curiously and asked what you were doing all alone in the street. You couldn’t help the tear slipping from your eyes as you explained that you were completely lost and didn’t know who to get back home. Shingen gave you a big warm grin and said, “I'll help you to find your way back, me dear goddess.” 

You breathed out a thank you and started following him, some shady looking men walked up to you and tried to coax you into coming with them. Thankfully for you, Shingen was right there to chase them away, he gently wrapped his big warm hand around your smaller one. “It is not safe for a woman to be out at night, my dear angel.” You realized the full gravity of those words as the two of you continued to walk, you peered into the darkness and saw just how sketchy the Azuchi nightlife was. Shingen brought you back to the light of the main road. You were so happy you could almost cry. You thanked him profusely as he said goodbye. You walked back to the palace gates while unbeknown to you Shingen watched from the shadows to make sure that you got home to the palace safely.

You definitely got an earful from mother dearest who was waiting at the gates for you ready to send out a search party. You had told him that you got lost and that a kind shop keeper had helped you find your way back. Mamayoshi breathed out a sigh of relief and made you promise that if you ever left the castle again, to make your way back long before the sun sets and to take someone with to escort you. The next day you made your way back to the market to thank the kind stranger for helping you. When you arrived at the shop, you realized a much younger man was operating the shop today. You were a little disappointed TBH. You turned around to leave when you bumped into a solid brick wall, except it wasn’t a brick wall; it was the very man that you had been looking for. He smiled down at you and started fliting with you as he does. Again, his attempts were proven useless as all his cheesy pick-up lines just flew straight over your head. Yukimura couldn’t help but laugh at the first woman who wasn’t completely charmed by his lord. You were definitely something else. 

You wanted to convey your thanks to the man, but honestly, you weren’t always very good at conveying your feelings. Luckily for you, Shingen spotted the parcel in your hand and asked you about It giving you the perfect opportunity to present it to him. He invited you to tea so he could sit down and fully enjoy the sweet buns you had made him. The two of you sat and chatted, enjoying the tea and each other’s company. When it came time to part Shingen once again walked you home, cause he couldn’t have his angel getting lost again now, could he? The two of you would “coincidentally” bump into each other in the market all the time, which usually resulted in the two of you spending the day together. Whenever you left the castle,  you were often excited, even anticipated bumping into the man in the markets, although you appeared indifferent to it on the outside.

A few months had gone by, and you were getting really close to Shingen. One day as the two of you was sitting at one of the teahouses sharing some tea and sweet buns; He brought up the sad news that he had to leave soon. You couldn't help but feel a bit sad at the news. Your face and words were indifferent to the matter, while your heart broke in two. That was until he took your hands in his, looked you in the eyes and asked you to come with him. You were at a loss for words, you really loved him, but you didn’t want just to leave the people who had cared for you for months. 

Shingen smiled a knowing smile; he could see the answer in your eyes. He told you he was going to leave the next day and that if you were to come back to the teahouse, he would whisk you away with him, and if not, he had his answer. Everything was a blur; you didn’t know what to do; the Oda warlords noticed something was bothering you. That night Hideyoshi visited you to find out what was going on, when you told him about the man who had managed to capture your heart. He looked at you with warm motherly eyes, left, and came back a few moments later carrying an empty bag. Hideyoshi knew you kept your true feeling secret like Ieyasu, so he could easily decipher your words. You had helped him so many times, so it was no his turn to pay you back for everything you had done for him, Nobunaga and the castle's people.

That morning the oda forces arrange a breakfast banquet in which all of them gave you gifts and expressed how much they were going to miss you. After breakfast, it was time to meet Shingen at the teahouse; you were escorted there by your whole entourage of brothers, each one curious to see who had captured their princesses’ heart. They were shook when they saw Shingen. You smiled sheepishly and introduced them, each one your new brothers threatened him in their own way. And after saying your goodbye, the two of you made your way back to Echigo. They welcomed you with open arms and gave you a room fit for a princess.

You and Shingen started your new life together in Echigo. You would often write to your Oda friends about how well you were doing. Shingen would shower you with love from the moment you woke up in the morning to the moment you went to sleep. The two of you had no secrets; you even told him about your childhood trauma. He healed all your invisible wounds while you worked with Sasuke to heal all his viable ones. Shingen truly believed you were a goddess or angel from heaven as you and Sasuke did, in fact, manage to find a cure for Shingen’s illness.  

Often the two of you could be found nestled in each other's arms, just showering each other in endless love. You love nothing more than to spend time with Shingen. Whether it's sitting in the garden playing with his bear cub while watching him do his carpentry or just spending a quiet evening together gazing at the moon. You know you have found your home.

Other potential matches..................Hideyoshi 

I hope you enjoyed this dear and I hope you are staying safe and well! ❤🔥

[undertalethingies]

Help Wanted

Alphys was very excited about her new royal position. (The one she’d gained by lying and cheating and-) She was absolutely ecstatic to have attained her goal, even if her means had been just a bit questionable.

It was fine, right? People lied all the time. Everyone did it. Bending the truth a little to get what she wanted was nothing compared to what some people would have done. (Liar, liar, liar. Everything you have is stolen from the more deserving, if they knew they would all hate you-)

So it was fine. She was fine. No moral crises were occurring here, thank you.

Anyway.

Alphys was very excited about her new position, but with it having gone unfilled so long, she was absolutely drowning in work. While she was able to complete engineering related requests relatively easily, she was having difficulty with the ones related to magical science, especially the more theoretical ones.

She’d always found that her genius focused most easily on the practical disciplines, the ones she could visualize in her mind’s eye. She had a unique advantage in that area, in that she was easily able to imagine the schematics in her mind, rotating and adjusting them as her will dictated.

Things that relied purely on theoretical equations and ideas, though, tended to give her difficulty. She often ended up tripping over things with them, and it was hurting her performance.

So Alphys decided to hire an assistant. Someone knowledgeable in quantum physics, preferably. 

--

Sans wouldn’t admit it, but he was regretting moving out of his parents’ house. He’d had all sorts of reasons for it, of course. Wanting more alone time, wanting to escape his family’s nagging, wanting to get away from his brother… (He loved Papyrus, really, he did, but his sibling was overbearing at the best of times)

His biggest reason, though, was that he wanted to prove he could make it on his own. He’d always had poor health, as a consequence of his miniscule HP, and while his family had never outright said it, he could tell that they saw him as a bit of a burden.

It was perfectly reasonable, really. He was always in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals, trying to either heal his latest minor injury or “fix” him all together. His parents had been forced to spend large sums of money just to keep him alive, and he knew it wore on them, even if they did their best to hide it.

So he’d started working odd jobs when he was fourteen, and had amassed enough savings to get his own place by his seventeenth birthday. Not too shabby, if he did say so himself.

His apartment kinda sucked, though. It was tiny and dingy and had bedbugs by the dozen. (As a skeleton, they thankfully couldn’t hurt him) So while he was proud of being able to provide for himself, he couldn’t help but wish he’d waited until he could afford a better place. Plus, Hotland friggin’ sucked. If it weren’t for his ability to conveniently bypass the (awful, terrible, horrible) vent system, he’d have come running back home with his tail between his legs within the space of a week.

...He wasn’t really certain, whether he was happy about that or not. At least the heat didn’t bother him, since he was bereft of any internal organs that might react poorly to it. As far as climate adaptability went, he was pretty lucky to be a skeleton. 

So he wasn’t really doing much with his life, in the end. Not accomplishing any lofty goals or fulfilling his personal aspirations. He was just kind of… Existing. In limbo. He had a couple jobs to pay the rent, of course, but he’d pretty much just taken what positions were available, without much regard for his own personal interests. (Which he did actually have, contrary to common belief)

When he saw the ad for a personal assistant to the new royal scientist, he found himself intrigued. He doubted he’d get the position even if he did apply, of course, since there would be so many other applicants, but the ad said that she was looking for people who were good with quantum physics especially, and, well…

Quantum physics had been Sans’ special interest for a full decade, now. The equations had always fascinated him, along with the things they could accomplish. He’d read just about every textbook and journal he’d been able to get his hands on, and written a few things himself. (Nothing published, of course. He’d just wanted to better understand the material he was working with)

If the royal scientist was looking for a quantum physicist, he might actually have half a chance at this. According to the flyer, prospective applicants could take an aptitude test a week from then. Couldn’t hurt to make the attempt, right?

Sans spent the week reviewing the scattered information he’d been able to gather on the discipline from trips to the dump and various libraries throughout the underground. He also did his best to brush up on the math involved as well. He really hoped that this test would be entirely focused on theoretical physics, because Sans couldn’t engineer his way out of a wet paper bag with a gun to his head.

When the time came, his nervousness betrayed his excitement. He really wanted this. He could barely focus on anything the whole morning, to the point where he ended up locking his keys inside his house by accident on the way out. (Thank the angel for teleportation, right?)

As Sans entered the testing venue, he spared a glance for the other hopefuls. Some looked excited, a few looked like they’d been forced to attend, but most just looked pants-wettingly terrified. Jerry was there too, for some reason. He hated that guy.

“You look a lot calmer than most of the monsters here, hon. Feeling sure of yourself?” The clerk asked him politely. Sans shook his head, saying

“nah. i’m just better at hiding it,”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine, dear,” They said, smiling at him. He returned it, and went to sit down until it was time for the testing to start, feeling more jittery than Paps on caffeine.

He hoped the clerk was right.

--

Alphys was swiftly becoming aware of a problem with her plan. With each test she reviewed, it became more and more glaringly obvious that this probably wasn’t going to work as well as she’d hoped, because, apparently, there was not a single freaking monster down here who could do basic math.

Everyone had their addition and subtraction down pat, of course, the education system underground wasn’t that bad, but algebra and calculus? Complex geometry?

She might actually have to bring this up with Asgore. She’d realized, of course, that education in the underground was a bit lacking, but she’d never quite put together the equation of how few monsters were able to teach those subjects and how even fewer wanted to learn them. Not to mention the difficulty in accessing textbooks and scientific papers from the surface, which was just about the only way to get new information without having to rediscover the wheel for every little thing.

She was lucky that the royal scientist was a celebrity position, or it was possible that no one would have even applied. As it was, about a hundred monsters took the test, and she was beginning to think that if she wanted an assistant, she’d have to train them herself.

The point of this was to give her less work, not more! She had no time to play teacher for whatever kiss-up showed a bit of promise. Regardless, she was desperate, so she put the applications that showed at least a willingness to learn aside.

It was with this mindset that she opened the test from “comic sans serif font”. The lack of capitalization (on their name, of all things!) had her pessimistic from the start. She’d excuse the use of font, since she knew full well that if she was named after one, she’d never shut up about it either, but not capitalizing your own name? What possible reason could there be for something like that?

As she actually looked at what they’d answered on each question, though, she felt hope bloom in her chest. This person… actually really knew their stuff. She’d put some pretty difficult questions at various points throughout the application, and they’d answered each one thoroughly and creatively.

She put the test aside, suspecting that she had her winner.

--

Sans didn’t really expect to hear back from the royal scientist. A lot of people had applied, after all, so he doubted they could really afford the expense of sending a letter to every tester. Paper was pretty pricey underground, after all.

So when he got a letter in the mail with a return address of “the lab” he got a little excited. It didn’t mean he’d been selected, of course. It was entirely possible they’d decided to send letters to everyone who managed to clear some margin, or something.

...Or he’d done so badly they’d felt the need to ban him from ever doing science or math again, but that seemed just a bit unlikely. On that note, he sat on the edge of his mattress and opened the letter.

...

...Sans had been accepted for the position of assistant to the royal scientist, and was to go to the lab at his earliest convenience if he was still interested. 

He wasn’t freaking out. He totally wasn’t. His hands were repeatedly running over the letter as if to ascertain its veracity and his grin was so wide it threatened to exit his skull entirely and run away to join the circus, but he wasn’t freaking out.

Sans grabbed his nicest outfit, which was coincidentally also the one he’d worn to testing, (a blue jacket over a miraculously unstained white shirt, and basketball shorts, let no one call him a fashionista) and set out.

--

Given that the monster Alphys had sent the letter to lived about twenty minutes from the lab, and the letter had to actually get to them before they could read it and come to accept the position, she was startled to hear a knock on the door only half an hour after the post had left.

She opened it to discover… a skeleton in a hoodie and basketball shorts, looking like they’d just won the lottery. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from someone named after comic sans, really. Assuming that this was the applicant, of course, which she was slightly doubtful over, since, again, not enough time had elapsed since she’d sent the letter for them to arrive unless they could run at the speed of one of the cars from the surface.

“A-Are you Comic?” they visibly winced.

“yeah, but i go by sans. i find my first name’s a bit too…” they winked “comical,” Alphys narrowed her eyes. Puns? Absolutely unacceptable.

“Well, Comic, why don’t you come in?” Their eyes widened.

“please just call me sans, i’m begging you, i hate my first name so much,”

“I-If you p-promise not to make any p-puns,” 

“i think i’d dust on the spot,” Alphys rolled her eyes.

“This is going to be just w-wonderful, I can tell,”

__

Part two here!

[kryptaria]

What Will They Reboot Next?

(Saw this on Facebook, couldn’t resist...)

One of these days, Crowley would learn to think before acting. That day, unfortunately, wasn’t yesterday, when he’d finally talked Aziraphale into getting himself a phone that wasn’t a Bakelite antique attached to a landline.

He’d just wanted a convenient way to text the angel (though he dreaded the conversation about emojis he was certain loomed in his future like the Second Apocalypse). He hadn’t expected this sort of chaos -- whatever this was.

“Explain this! Right this instant!” Aziraphale demanded, brandishing his new iPhone[1] with such vigour, not even Crowley’s demonically sharp eyes could see what was actually on the bloody screen.

It wasn’t an error message. There was an actual picture there; that much, Crowley could see. But a picture of what?

“Explain what?”

“This!” was Aziraphale’s unhelpful response, accompanied by a wave reminiscent of the angel brandishing his old flaming sword, which set off all sorts of post-apocalypse stress reactions in Crowley.

He lashed out, not to harm[2] the angel, but to catch him by one perfectly starched cuff. The wardrobe-based assault froze Aziraphale in mid-brandish, letting Crowley’s eyes[3] finally focus on the screen.

“Oh,” Crowley said, jerking his hand back, though the screen remained rock-steady and regrettably in-focus. He doubted Aziraphale had any idea who was in the photo on the left[4], but the right...

“‘Oh,’” Aziraphale quoted, the word punctuated with the faint rustle of unseen wings.

Crowley couldn’t hide his guilty flinch. “It’s not my fault!”

“Not your fault! Crowley --”

“Look, it was when you were doing inventory, all right?” Crowley protested. “Three weeks, it took you. What was I supposed to do?”

Aziraphale huffed. “You said you were going to celebrate averting the apocalypse!”

“I was!” Crowley shrugged, giving his best innocent[5] smile. “I went to Los Angeles. There’s this --”

“How does your going to Hollywood end with this?”

Crowley shrugged again, saying, “Look, you’re the one who started it all, with the whole Hamlet thing. I took a couple of acting classes[6], and next thing you know, a director got me mixed up with this ‘David Tennant’ fellow. Poor chap can’t act his way out of a paper bag, if you ask me, but he somehow made it into weekend seminars at the Royal Scottish Academy --”

Aziraphale clicked his tongue and waved the mobile, making Crowley flinch again. “That’s not what I’m talking about -- although we will discuss that later,” he added ominously, bringing the whole flaming sword thing to mind again.[7]

After six thousand years of lying to Hell and, more recently, helping to avert the Apocalypse through sheer incompetence, Crowley knew when to shut up, and that moment was now. So he did.

“I’m talking about” -- Aziraphale scoffed, nose crinkling up in a positively adorable show of distaste -- “reboots.”

That nose-crinkle tore right through Crowley’s demonic defences. Despite six thousand years of vaguely-unswerving dedication to evil, he felt his mouth curl up in a sappy, slightly serpentine smile. “Reboots?”

“It says so right here.” The mobile screen flashed again, not that Crowley bothered looking. “They’re rebooting Batman.”

“Yeah?” Most of Crowley’s thoughts had melted into a puddle of goo, thanks to that nose-crinkle. The tiny corner of his infernal brain that was still working had just enough processing power to be impressed that Aziraphale hadn’t pronounced it in two words: bat man.

With a sigh of pure exasperation, Aziraphael crossed his arms, something he never did[8]. “You’re responsible for the concept of rebooting franchises every other year.”

“I wouldn’t! That’s all humans.”

Aziraphale lifted a brow sceptically. “You happen to go to Hollywood, and coincidentally there’s a Batman reboot, starring you?”

“Sure, if you put it like that, it sounds bad,” Crowley admitted, “but it’s not like they haven’t rebooted that particular franchise a hundred times already --”

“Five,” Aziraphale corrected primly.

Crowley blinked.

Aziraphale shrugged, glancing away. “I researched it.”

Crowley gave an unprecedented second blink. “You researched it?”

“I -- I have a whole back room full of comics,” Aziraphale said, still avoiding Crowley’s gaze. “Pristine first editions, all of them. I couldn’t not look into them. Have you any idea how much those things can be worth?”

“So what you’re saying is, you can afford to pay for an around-the-world cruise?” Crowley hinted, hoping to escape further discussion of reboots.

Aziraphale sniffed. “As if I’d sell any of them. I don’t even leave the door unlocked for browsing without appointment.[9] Just think of all the people getting their grubby fingerprints on the covers, dog-earing the pages...”

Crowley grinned, safely back on familiar ground. “Yes, wouldn’t want to imagine that sort of thing happening in a used bookshop.”

Refusing to be diverted, Aziraphael said, “Reboots, Crowley. Specifically Batman reboots. I sense your demonic hand at work.”

“My demonic hands were nowhere near this reboot,” Crowley said, heroically resisting the temptation to suggest anything about any of his parts, demonic or otherwise. “I was trying to tell you, I was in Los Angeles for a nightclub, that’s all.”

“A nightclub.” Aziraphale scoffed. “My dear Crowley, we’re in Soho. What could Los Angeles possibly offer that you can’t find right here?”

“Oh, angel...” Crowley smiled, plucking the mobile from Aziraphale’s fingers so he could slither up close. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to Los Angeles.”

Aziraphale did that full-body wiggle he always did when Crowley got too close, as if he were making a show of being too polite to back away.[10] “Of course not. It always seemed a bit... trite. And full of Californians.”

“Well, yes. It being in California and all,” Crowley pointed out, pretending to dust some lint off Aziraphale’s lapels.

The casual touch got the angel to finally uncross his arms. His hands landed unerringly on Crowley’s hips, fitting perfectly in place like a key made for a lock. The touch was every bit as warm and inviting as the shelter of his wings had been the day of that very first storm.

And the bolt of lightning that shot through Crowley as their eyes met made that first storm seem like nothing more than a drizzle.

“What’s so special about Los Angeles?”

It took Crowley a moment to remember how to speak and even longer to remember what they’d been talking about. He definitely couldn’t remember when he’d wound his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders. That sort of thing was happening more and more these days, not that they’d actually discussed it.

They probably should have done, but they were, after all, hereditary enemies. They just happened to be hereditary enemies who were on their own side now, not anybody else’s.

“This nightclub you found?” Aziraphale prompted.

“In Los Angeles. Right.”

Crowley nodded, wrenching his brain back from its dazed meandering. He was a demon, which meant he specialised in doing the wrong thing, but he’d once been an angel, and he’d recently done the right thing, with excellent results. Bracing himself, he decided to give the right thing another shot and, as humans put it, use his words.

After all, if you thought about it, they’d been on their own side for a lot longer than anyone realised. Six thousand years longer.

“Maybe... we could go together?” Crowley suggested, shifting from the casual accidental hug to deliberately running one hand up over Aziraphale’s nape.

The angel’s blue eyes went as wide as the infinite skies over the Garden of Eden.

A shiver passed through Crowley’s wings. He threaded his fingers into Aziraphale’s curls.

The sound Aziraphale made wasn’t one humans would have heard, if there had been any in the bookshop to witness this moment.[11]

A couple centuries’ of drama study had taught Crowley that this was, in fact, The Moment. He had to play it cool. Six thousand years of studying humanity meant he’d seen The Moment played out countless times. He had a whole repertoire of possible reactions and responses to choose from, even if this was the first time he himself had ever done any Seizing of The Moment.

But Aziraphale Seized first, moving his hands from Crowley’s hips to the small of his back, and suddenly there was no measurable distance between their corporeal forms at all.[12]

“Ngh,” was Crowley’s very un-cool response to his angel’s first real embrace.

Unruffled[13], Aziraphale said, “This nightclub you visited...”

What’s a nightclub? Crowley thought for a few eternal seconds before remembering. (Aziraphale’s hair was very soft. Had it always been that soft?) It took even longer for him to shuffle through his memories of every nightclub he’d ever visited[14] before he finally remembered the latest one.

It had all the usual features -- low lighting, dancing on tables, lines of humans desperate to make it past the bouncer -- but also enough alcohol to get even a couple of eternal beings plastered and a gorgeously tuned grand piano.

Besides, the only one allowed to play said grand piano could also be trusted not to snitch to either side if a certain angel and demon ended up in a dark corner booth. Together.

“Crowley?”

“Sorry,” Crowley said, tightening his arms before Aziraphale could think something had gone horribly wrong and pull away.

Smiling like an angel[15], Aziraphale looked up into Crowley’s eyes and asked, “What’s this nightclub called?”

Bargaining like a demon[16], Crowley countered, “Do you believe I’m not lying about the whole reboots thing?”

“My dear Crowley...” Aziraphale tipped his head into Crowley’s palm and sighed. “Yes. I believe you.”

Warmed all the way through, Crowley said, “It’s called Lux. Want to go?”

Eyes sparkling with delight, Aziraphale said, “I’d love to. Just let me fetch a nicer tie.”

Thoughts of a wardrobe full of tartan and taupe filled Crowley’s thoughts, but he didn’t protest. It wasn’t as if the bouncers would get in their way, and once they were inside... well, he’d burn that bridge when he came to it. “You do that, angel,” he said, reluctantly stepping out of Aziraphale’s arms.

And as Aziraphale bustled off to find a new bow tie (leaving his mobile behind[17]), Crowley got out his own mobile and hastily composed an email to his agent. If all went well, he anticipated some scheduling conflicts in his future. That around-the-world cruise was waiting for them, after all.

...

[1] Aziraphale pronounced it “eye phone,” with a distinct pause, but Crowley was taking baby steps in introducing the angel to technology.

[2] Never to harm.

[3] He’d never quite got the hang of limiting his vision to only the mortal spectrum, which was the real reason he kept wearing his sunglasses. These days, no one would look twice at his eyes, except to compliment him on his contacts.

[4] Crowley had never suggested anything as absurd as sparkling vampires, though he was happy to take credit. He did, however, write a disclaimer -- in all caps -- that he was NOT responsible for Fifty Shades of anything. Hell’s response had been “That came from the Other Side,” though Crowley had never figured out precisely which angel to blame.

[5] Despite six thousand years of practice, he wasn’t very good at it.

[6] “A couple” meaning a couple hundred, but eventually he got the hang of it.

[7] There’s a reason the Almighty had posted Aziraphale to guard the Eastern Gate, and it wasn’t for his snazzy fashion sense. Under the mild-mannered bookseller was the sort of badass angel who made Crowley’s toes curl, though Crowley would never admit it.

[8] Aziraphale’s usually-upright posture had nothing to do with his angelic nature and everything to do with not straining the seams of his favourite jacket.

[9] The “Employees Only” sign on the door meant no one knew about the collection, which saved Aziraphale the trouble of scheduling any appointments.

[10]  The fact that Aziraphale always ended up even closer to Crowley was a coincidence absolutely no one believed, especially not God.

 [11] Only one entity witnessed it, and Her only reaction was to sigh and say, “Finally,” in a Voice that made no fewer than seven prophets across the world faint, overcome with Divine Vision.

[12] Other than their clothing, a thought that occurred to both corporeal entities and their incorporeal observer, with varying levels of frustration.

[13] Metaphorically and literally. Aziraphale had, in fact, taken a few hours to meticulously groom his wings after he’d finished inventory. He was just waiting for the right moment to show off to Crowley.

[14] His favourite would always be an underground club in Night Vale, with its singing crystal walls and eldritch DJ playing the screams of those lost in the Void, but he didn’t think Aziraphale would like it there.

[15] Actually, angelic smiles tended to be cold, shallow, and feral. Aziraphale was smiling like a human, which made all the difference in the world.

[16] Demons are terrible at bargaining by design. Humanity is perfectly capable of tempting itself without any outside help.

[17] A habit he’d already developed, despite having the mobile for less than a week.

[adore-holland]

Under Renovation |T.H.| - Chapter 1

Pairing: Tom Holland x Celeb!Reader

Warning: Swearing? Angst.. Mentions of vomit

Word Count: 2162

Disclaimer!: This was written before we found out Tom has a girlfriend. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

A/N: Hope you enjoy! This was mostly just setup, trust me you’re gonna get some Tom stuff soon enough ;)

Teaser

Chapter 1:

The ceiling above you seems to move in new patterns every second. Dark circles and stripes race across the the white paint in the pitch black room. You can make out the sounds of loud music and laughing people out on the streets of London. It’s Friday night, and you’re laying at home, in your bed, following stupid patterns on your ceiling - What has your life come to?

With a groan, you run a sweaty hand down your face. You squeeze your eyes shut, hoping for the weird patterns to go away. No luck - the insides of your eyelids take over for your ceiling. If you could just tune out, disappear for a little bit.. get some sleep. As if on queue, you let out a yawn. 

It’s the seventh night in a row, that you haven’t been able to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, and your body is suffering from it. Large dark bags under your eyes, slumped shoulders and an almost complete loss of appetite. 

You desperately turn on your side, pulling a pillow over your head, hoping to just get some peace and quiet. You squeeze your eyes shut, welcoming sleep like an old friend. Except, sleep seems to be mad at you. Because the quiet only fills up with memories of cheerful laughs, and whispered “I love you”’s. Something in your stomach tightens at the sound of his voice. You always thought his voice was perfect. Smooth like honey, dripping in the love you thought he held for you. 

In all honesty, you had never told him how much you adored his voice. Well, he knew you loved it - and that the sound of his voice was enough to calm you down when the world was too overwhelming. What he didn’t know though, was just in what ways you loved it. 

No! No. You will not allow yourself to remember it… him. So you make a conscious decision to avoid any thought of the butterflies that went wild whenever he leaned in to whisper in your ear; or the way your heart would pick up speed for just a second whenever he said your name in whatever accent he felt like in that moment. 

Fuck.

With whatever strength you have left in your exhausted body, you throw the pillow off of you, welcoming the loud sounds of London. You turn around to lay on your stomach, listening intently to the sounds of the partygoers, chasing away his voice. There’s a group, nearing your apartment complex down below. Your condo is high up, but the deep concentration allows you to hear snippets of the conversation. 

“We should tell them…” The deep voice says with a concerned tone. You only hear the girl giggle as a reply. A conversation, so much like the ones you and Tom had so long ago. When you first got together, 3 years ago, you couldn’t figure out whether or not to announce to the world that you were a thing. Most nights discussing it were spent drunk, staring lovingly into each others eyes, forgetting the world, forgetting who there even was to tell. The two of you, together, were all that mattered in those moments.

Again! You want to scream out in frustration, but your throat is already sore from crying. You turn back around and quickly sit up. Your throat is tightening quickly, itching more and more every second. A silent yelp escapes you as you get up. Tears sting behind your eyes as you hurriedly make your way toward the bathroom. You make it to the toilet just in time, bile rises up your throat, and you throw up - pure stomach acid - you haven’t eaten enough lately to throw anything of substance up. 

:)-(:

An incessant noise wakes you up. Your head is pounding, and as you slowly blink your eyes open you realise why your back hurts so much. You’re sat next to your toilet, leaning against the tile wall. Your legs are sleeping, folded in weird angles beneath you. You sigh deeply, leaning your head back against the wall and closing your eyes for a second. The noise returns and you realize it’s your phone ringing. Slowly untangling your sore limbs you fight to get up, and walk back into your bedroom. You take it one step at a time, the pounding in your head worsening with every sudden jolt up through your body. 

“It’s y/n,” you mumble into your phone, rubbing your temple with the other hand, fruitlessly hoping to lessen the pain. 

“Hey! Hi! You’re up.” It’s Matt, your agent. “You remember that movie you turned down a few weeks ago?” You barely get to reply before he continues. “Well, exciting news, they are coming back to you with the part. They truly believe you’re the perfect fit.”

“Matt… I don’t think I’m up for a movie right now.” You eyes glance to the side. You still need to remove the picture of you and Tom on your first christmas together from your nightstand. You squeeze your eyes shut, ignoring the pain it brings and the tears that well up.

“Honey.. I know you’re in a lot of pain right now, so I’m not gonna force you to say yes to anything. I’m just telling you that I believe this movie is a good idea for you. How about we go out for lunch a little later? Talk it over, you read some of the script and then you can decide?” There’s so much concern and care in his words, that you almost want to vomit at the sound. When did you become so fragile, that even Matt’s extreme tenderness brings you to tears?

You really don’t feel like lunch, but you know you need to get out of the house. And maybe having someone watching you eat will help you actually… eat something. 

“Yeah. That sounds good.” Despite the complete lack of enthusiasm in your voice, Matt’s mood picks up all the same.

“Great! I’ll meet you at Louis’ Diner at 1 then?”

“No!” You startle yourself at your sudden outburst, but continue all the same. “Ehm… Sorry. Not Louis’ please. I’ll meet you at Little Bay.”

 :)-(:

Despite your less than excellent mood, the weather cheers you up a bit. It’s warm; even for late spring. Yourself and Matt are sat outside, at a small table under a cute red parasol. Bees hum as they busy themselves with the flowers around you. It almost feels like the week you spent hiding in your apartment made you forget the peace people and life brings you.

“So… The movie is a musical about a dancer? I haven’t danced in ages.” 3 years to be exact. Your career picked up around the same time you started dating Tom, whose career also seemed to be on the up and up, and you just didn’t have time to continue dancing that intensively anymore. You loved it though - You danced before you could run, and your heart leaped at the excuse to get back to your roots.

“See, that’s where you’re perfect for the part! Because you CAN dance! But just like Lia Morrison in this story, something is stopping you. Due to a motorcycle accident with her fiancé, she broke her left leg and hip.” Matt smiles at you, bald head shining in the sunlight. His grey top clings to his muscular torso, and his dark arms work furiously in large movements, as if whatever signs he’s making with his hands will help you understand what he’s saying. You feel a small smile tug at your lips at the sight of him. Your heart jumps slightly at the feeling of a smile after so long.. until you remember the last time your heart jumped like that.. the last time you smiled.

“Yeah, I got that part. But it’s a love story?” The summary he gave wasn’t very useful, still you feel dumb asking questions you know he already gave you the answers to.  But as much as you hate to admit it, the movie is starting to intrigue you. You had been quick to deny the part the last time Matt brought it to you. Two reasons especially made you turn it down.

1: Shooting starts in Los Angeles a few days before Tom gets off from shooting, so you wouldn’t get to spend any time with him.

2: You didn’t feel like doing a sex scene when you knew you would be attending the premiere, and watching it with Tom.

-Neither of those reasons are really a problem anymore.

“Yes! It is. So, the fiancé doesn’t get hurt. But he breaks up with Lia because she lets her injury consume her. She basically loses the will to fight for what she loves. She suddenly doesn’t wanna recover so she can dance again. She basically ends up catching herself ruining her own life, and then falls in love with her physical therapist.”

Something about the character, Lia, draws you in. You get the position she finds herself in, the devastation of losing something you thought you never could - brown eyes flash through your mind, a wide smile, hurried kisses. No.

You let out a small sigh, running a hand through your lose hair, searching Matt’s face for… something. “You really think I can do this?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course you can.” His smile is almost as wide as his face, and he blinks rapidly.

Old trick Matt. Instead of the usual laugh he used to lure out of you with said trick, you only huff out a small breath of air, and his smile drops immediately. His big hands find yours on the table. He holds your hands softly in his, slowly, tenderly rubbing his thumbs over the back of your hands. The feeling is comforting, familiar, and it makes your eyes sting with tears.

“Y/n.. I know what this part is asking of you is.. a lot. If you really can’t do it, no one will force you too.” His honey golden eyes hold so much care in them, that you feel your stomach coil at the sight. If only someone else were giving you that look. “But this pain.. it won’t last forever. The earth keeps rotating, and I just wanna make sure that you turn with it. This movie.. I know it brings back certain - memories -, but it isn’t about him. It feels like it is, I get that. But it’s about Lia getting more bent than ever before, but never breaking - And it’s about you, y/n, it’s about you, and the strength you and Lia share.”

Your head is spinning, everything he’s saying hits you like a stack of bricks. Not broken, but bent - but different all the same. You never subscribed to the idea of pulling your act together; the very idea would mean that you were responsible for spilling everywhere. You’re not. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still messy, or that it doesn’t drain you to clean up after someone else; even if the mess you. 

Daniel and yours conversation pop up in your head. Strength comes from tearing the muscles, letting them heal, over and over again. This role.. this movie, you already know it’s gonna tear you apart, but you need it to.

“Yeah,” you manage to croak out your answer, and Matt squeezes your suddenly freezing hands, “Yeah, I wanna do it.” The tears in your eyes disappear as you say it. You draw in a deep breath, filling your lungs, and your head clears as a result. You can do this, it’s not a matter of convincing yourself. You can do this, not doubt about it. Tom Holland took a lot from you, but he won’t take everything.

“Great, I’ll contact them right away then.” He squeezes your hands one last time before standing up, phone in hand, and walking a few steps away to call the casting director. To pass the time you pick up your own phone, scrolling through your twitter feed. Your notifications are insane, more than a thousand mentions. Your brows furrow as you start scrolling through some of them. You don’t read most of them.. Tom is tagged too, and you don’t feel like seeing your fans shipping you.

You scroll mindlessly through them, until you come across one with a photo attached. Clicking it, you almost drop your phone. Tom is very visibly on a date with someone. His hand is in her back pocket as they walk close together. They’re looking at each other, eyes shining, smiles bright.. Her blond hair glistens in the sunlight, and he looks so happy - smile showing off the creases around his mouth you always poked to make him smile when he was sad. You don’t recognize her, and in a way you’re glad because of it.

A week. He broke up with you a week ago. You finally know why.

[tartagilicious]

Heyy I saw that you write for the guys from ikemen vampire?Could I please get a Theo x mc where even though he seems super confident, inside he doesnt feel worthy of mc's love, and one time Arthur says something provoking (as he does) so Theo lashes out at him and leaves somewhere, and nobody knows what happened so mc goes to him and finds him having a breakdown and she has to calm his nerves telling him she loves him and that he's worth it and so on.. I hope this isn't too confusing! Thank you!

lol ~as he does~

don’t worry about it, it’s not confusing at all! if anything, it’s actually better if you spell it out for me. complicated requests are the best in that way, because it tells me exactly what I have to do.

Also question: what does Arthur call her? I forget and can’t figure it out, so I just resorted to him calling her ‘my lady’ when i needed to. (like Leonardo calls the MC cara mia, Napoleon nunuche, etc-?)

and warning: there are some major (but briefly mentioned) spoilers for theo’s route

— 

If there was one word to describe him, it would be ornate. His personality was a labyrinth in a lot of ways; but overall normally just annoying to some and thrilling to others with no surprises. Then, in an unseen third outcome, she had come to find his usually edged personality endearing. And he was less than used to the blank spaces she gave him.

It was easy to figure people out if you knew what to expect, but her, she’d thrown him off the moment she said a word to him. Hell, she’d done so the moment she stepped through the mansion’s doors. And she continued to throw him off, no matter how deep their relationship went, no matter how intimate their touches grew to be, she was always his anomaly.

He tried his best to cast it off, to tell himself that he didn’t need to pick and choose a personality for the woman that loved him for who he was, but unfortunately, nothing had ever been that easy. He hid his doubts and fears with unanimous words, and his concerns with equally haughty smiles,

Yet, she continued to be his anomaly still. No matter how much his personality wavered, she stuck by his side with a smile and her own equally sarcastic words to put him in his place. She always supported him whether she noticed it or not, and he had felt bad that he hadn’t realised sooner.

She truly was an angel. His salvation came with her actions that just seemed to be her second nature, and she pulled him closer to heaven with every touch on his body. But he couldn’t help but wonder if she had ever felt the same.

She had come to him from a time unknown to him, with such lavish opportunities and luxuries that he was almost positive she wouldn’t have any trouble finding a man that was better than him. her love for him was an anomaly in itself, and he constantly found himself doubting if he was the one meant for it after all.

She was as pure as silk, while he was comparable to the darkest sea.

“A fine morning to you,, ___!” Arthur greeted her one day as she walked into the dining room with his usual sly smile and blurry intentions. “You seem awfully chipper today.”

She didn’t give it much thought, though, just smiling back. “Do I?”

His eyes narrowed slightly as his smile grew. “Yes, of course. And it would be rude of me not to ask about the bloke behind such brilliance.”

She turned to him, her lips slightly pouted and her brows equally furrowed.

“How do you know it’s a person? I didn’t say anything to you, Arthur.”

Arthur just laughed, the sound bringing colour to the tips of her ears.

“Why, of course it’s a person, ___.” His voice was subtly softer as he tilted his head. “Who else besides our dear Theo would be responsible for such a smile?”

She didn’t answer as she handed him his traditional english breakfast of cold bread, boiled eggs and chilled stew, but the pigment of her cheeks was enough to tell him that she had in fact heard him loud and clear. He enjoyed teasing her very much, but found no pleasure in discomfort, so he just picked up his bread with a cheeky smile and remained silent until the man of the hour walked in minutes later.

She smiled over her shoulder as she heard the unmistakable thump of his heavy boots on the hardwood. “Morning, Theo.”

He gave her a tired but grateful smile as she slid his breakfast into a place, a slightly more modern mix of hotcakes and rookwurst.

“Wouldn’t you greet your beloved in a more, say, amatory way?”

Arthur and Theo weren’t exactly a dream team, to put it lightly, but thankfully, Theo didn’t find it necessary to push out an elaborate insult at that moment.

“It’s nine in the morning, you oaf. It’s not like I have to greet her like that every time I see her.” He grumbled, his eyes trained on the way she poured syrup onto his pancakes. It had been slightly over a month since she’d started working around the mansion under Sebastian, and she’d somehow managed to catch onto everything impressively quick even if she had been scared out of her wits for the better part of her first week.  

All of the little quirks everyone had, insignificant things that no one but her would trouble themselves to remember, it had made her a well loved member of the household . She had somehow managed to take every little detail into account, down to how much syrup to pour on his pancakes.

And he was glad she’d caught on - perhaps if she hadn’t, nothing would’ve changed and she would’ve gone back to her own world by the time the sand in the hourglass fell.

His gaze flickered up to hers as she turned away. He’d spent hours staring into her eyes, and it was scary to think that he could’ve been deprived of that if she’d made one choice differently. She was incredible. Incredibly brave, incredibly smart, incredibly beautiful - he always wondered what made her want to stay with someone like him.

“You know, ___.” Arthur smiled as he twirled his spoon around and about in his stew. “I’m sure that if I were your lover-”

She cut him off without even turning back, her voice curt. “Don’t mess around, Arthur.”

His grin was growing, she could tell as much from his voice alone as he continued, “By Jove, why yell at me for telling the truth? I’m sure anyone else could spare a hello for such a lovely lady-”

“You idiot,” She turned around just in time to see Theo’s fist clench around the fork in his hand. “You don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

Arthur spared nothing but a patient smile as his eyes narrowed.

“I’m afraid it’s only natural.”

As Theo’s confidence crumbled under the oblivious tone of Arthur’s patronising words, he stood up with nothing more than a grumble and threw his fork down on his plate with a clang.

She took a step towards him as she realised where the situation was leading, but before she could even get a word out, Theo had already turned on his heel and left the room in a cloud of irritation.

“Arthur,” She huffed. “Do you have to tease him like that? Would it kill you to leave him alone?”

Arthur gave her an innocent look, before melting into a laugh. “Don’t fret, he’s just a bit miffed. Give him a little bit to cool down and he’ll be in tip-top shape again, my lady.”

Her expression was irresolute before her lip curled into a slight frown. “Fine. I will, but quit being so mean. You didn’t have to drag me into it, too.”

He nodded, his smile turning genuinely apologetic at your words.

“I apologise, ___.”

She walked out of the dining room as Arthur turned his focus on his food once again, using the opportunity to slip out while his attention wasn’t on her. She respected Arthur wholeheartedly as an author and as a friend, but his teasing could be awfully relentless, especially for Theo, someone who tended to take every word to the heart. So, because of that, she decided to disregard Arthur’s fair warning and visit his room in hopes of talking to him.

But, there was no response when she knocked on his door.

The mahogany door was one she’d opened and closed many times, but the cold feeling of the brass doorknob that rushed through her skin upon contact told her there was no use doing either. Theo wasn’t there.

She turned away with a dispirited sigh. Theo was an art dealer, someone who could go around the city multiple times in a single day. He knew the streets and alleys like the back of his hand, and at that moment, he could be anywhere. She wished desperately in that moment that she would have spared her own wishes to chew out Arthur and followed theo instead, because if anything, she could at least see him.

“Theo,” She sighed to herself as she walked around the mansion with hidden purpose, casually asking anyone she came across if they’d seen the man in question recently.

There were no results from Issac, who had been working in the library, Leonardo, who was on his way out already, nor Napoleon, who was coming in from god knows where. But, finally, after coincidentally meeting Dazai as he was coming in through the window, she learned that he had headed off into the forest just minutes before.

So, she thanked him and excused herself with the excuse of having to find Sebastian. Of course, she needed nothing with Sebastian at the moment, and Dazai seemed to know that without her physical words. But, she still felt better giving an excuse rather than flagrantly saying her real intentions aloud.

Taking a detour from the hall that lead from the kitchens to one of the doors in the back was thankfully easier than she’d thought. She managed to avoid running into anyone thus far too, and she thought that as long as she kept her thoughts calm and her steps casual, it should stay that way.

She’d hate to be stopped just because her anxiousness was caught by someone too perceptive.

But thankfully, everyone was too busy off doing their own thing to pay attention to wherever she happened to be going, so she saw herself out with no trouble. Though she wasn’t exactly familiar with the forest’s trails and such, she still managed to make her way to where her gut told her to go without circling back too many times. And it paid off, because as she finally pushed the last branches out of the way, there sat Theo, sitting on a rock with his shoulders hunched.

Her brows knitted as her eyes moved over his back. The man was incessantly still, completely motionless other than the tremor in his hands and the unsteady breathing clawing at his chest. On the outside, there was nothing around him but the wind, but on the inside, he was drowning. In nerves or sorrow he couldn’t tell, but whatever he felt, it held onto him stubbornly.

She took hesitant steps forward, making sure that her footsteps were quiet before she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He barely gave a reaction other than the slightest tilt of his head, but she could feel him relax under her touch regardless.

“Theo…?”

Her voice came out soft, and the tone made his eyes shut tightly. She was obviously worried about him, and he didn’t know how that should make him feel. He was teetering on the edge, and the angel and devil on his shoulder were doing little but dividing his thoughts.

Her hand went up to duck into his hair, her thumb rubbing soothing circles into the nape of his neck as she asked, “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer, his breathing levelling as the soothing feeling of her fingers in his hair sent calm through waves in his body. Her lips thinned at the reaction, but she didn’t give up, nonetheless.

“Did what Arthur say bother you that much…?” She trailed off, her eyes searching the side of his face as the question sunk into both of them. She hardly thought that a snide comment like that could get to Theo, but they had nothing else to go on, so it was her best guess.

His response was nothing more than a low mumble as he shifted his chin in his palm. “He was right, though,”

The moment the words came out, she let go of him for a split second before using both her hands to take his jaw and turn his face to hers. His eyes were wide, but they showed no sign of being upset, so she continued.

“You’re here because Arthur said he would be a better lover to me, is that right?” She asked quietly, watching his eyes change. They were unreadable, yet she still felt like she was staring into his very soul.

She looked down for a moment as she said, “Even if that were true, do you believe that I would choose anyone over you? After you were so caring to me, and you almost died in my arms after protecting me? Do you believe I would go back on my promise to stay with you? Because, Theo, since then, I can promise you that I haven’t loved you any less-”

“I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be, ___” He avoided her eyes diligently.” Anyone could be a better lover than me.”

“There hasn’t been a day that I’ve regretted my promises to you. I chose to stay here with you because I love you, Theo. Even if you think someone else could be better, that doesn’t mean you aren't still good enough. So, please, remember that I’ll always choose you.”

She swiped her thumb over his cheek with a tender smile before leaning in close and whispering, “I promise.”

[kehideni]

Why i don’t like Star vs Season 4 so far:

To get this s**t out of the way, yes i am a Starco shipper. My reasonings have NOTHING to do with shipper stuff though.

Now that that’s out of the way let me just commence with a f***in huge a** rant.

TLDR first because rant, explanation and reasonings will be under readmore.

So Tl:dr.: Marco is pretty much Marco from Season 1. And while i really love that his relationship with Star is back to Season 1 lightheartedness, i really REALLY hate that his character also seems to slowly but surely regress.

Now to the rant part

 Now i want to uphold my right to change my mind because english is my secondary language, hungarian being my mother language and to top that off  where i saw the episode the audio is the most crappy at  the most crucial parts, and i MAY have misunderstood or worse missed dialog between characters.

However from what i precieved so far from this- what...  6 episodes, is that Marco is regressing to the neurotic comic relief character, that in serious moments is the voice of reason, or you know Star’s angel figure of the shoulder demon-angel picture.

 Marco in Season 1 was Star’s voice of reason, for him being from Earth he knew more, but i also credit it to Marco being a HUMAN. 

Human meaning: You know, that creature that is the apex predator of a whole f***in planet SIMPLY because of their superior intellect.

While Star is from a society based on magic that’s FULL of senseless shenanigans, you expect her to be instinctual, feral, random, which she WAS.

Marco is from a society based on science. Everything has a reason, every problem has a correct way to approach it. Intellect, sophisticated, calculated, predictable, which he WAS.

The great thing about their partnership is that they gave a little bit of their society to each other, those bits that each respectively yearned for or atleast needed.

Star gained understanding, Marco gained something unexplainable by science, something new in his life, DIVERSITY from the norm.

Understandably, season 1 had them and them only in focus, in which case someone has to carry the story on their back(and that must be Star, she is the title figure after all) and someone has to carry the comic relief buisness(Marco and his neurotic illstarredness[yes that was a pun]).

More shortly: The stress and de-stress factors that’s mandatory for a show like Star vs.

It’s BRILLIANT for a starter Season, but you know there is something with characters that i like to call the “Snapping point”.

I use that phrase in the context of character vs episode or character vs tv show(or whatever else medium your character appears in, this appears in mangas a whole lot too)

To explain what a Snapping point is i must first introduce you to the Snapping characters. And then the different style of snapping point/snapping characters, but let’s come up with examples first.

(Interestingly enough in most shows/comics/mangas/whatever my favourite characters end up being snapping characters)

Examples.:

Beast Boy - Teen Titans 2003

Katara - Avatar the last airbender

Raphael - TMNT2012

Chopper - One Piece

Charmander - OG Pokemon series

Lucy - Fairy Tail

Now, the snapping characters most usually are from the main cast but they are not THE main characters of their show. They are important, but mostly to fill a role.

Let’s take the first two of the list as examples. Coincidentally they are two different type of snapping characters, so explaining each mirroring the other will help me explain it even in more debth.

Katara as a main character has a set characteristic, in which way the show itself interacts with her. 

Katara is a mothering figure and the show treats her as such, so much so that in one episode it’s even a conflict starter. Her motherly behavior is a very important, very magnified point in her character. However there is one episode in the whole series where she as a character goes againts this point and you as a viewer almost forget that she is the group’s mother-figure.

No, it’s not the blood bending episode, and also not the episode where she teaches the old man that women can be just as good students as men.

Both of those episode show us her strenght, and she gets angry yes, but you don’t forget her motherly characteristic because for the majority of those episodes she still acts like our dear, established mom character. An angry mom.

The episode where she snaps her role, where you might even say she is OOC(when she is indeed NOT ooc, it’s just we get a glance at how she looks like when one of her core traits is pushed WAY out of her mind) is the episode where she and Zuko go and find her mother’s murderer.

Ask yourself: when was Katara the scariest? Bloodbending is scary, but you still see her being true to herself and mourn her innocence, you see her cry, you don’t forget what she is like, you more like pity her, mourn with her.

But don’t tell me that when you first saw her STOP THE RAIN AROUND HER you didn’t s**t your pants, because you did. It was completely in character but you didn’t expect her to do so, because you were thinking of Katara as the kind character it’s just that she’s mad. Yes she was mad, but you still expected her to be toned down, quiet and loving and kind like she usually is. She SNAPS the expectation, the norm episodes usually put her in and pushes further because the show(from her perspective: life) just pushed her over that specific “border”.

Now Beast Boy is in a completely different position as a character, and has a different “border” that he was pushed over, but still he is a snapping character.

He had serious moments in previous seasons and episodes, but we can all agree that he is the comic relief of the bunch. Your usual underdog, gets pushed around, loser, weak (eventhough he got GODLIKE POWERS  FFS)

It even gets noted by Raven and Cyborg and sometimes even Robin that he seems to lose a lot of times. In the episode “Every dog has his day” his core personality is what causing the conflict even.

You expected him in the Terra themed episodes to behave the way he did eventhough he was far from being a comic relief in those episodes. He didn’t really break out of his role. He is still the one that gets beaten up, still the one making mistakes (although Terra made bigger ones so the real focus is on those) NONE of the Terra episodes is his snapping point.

My favourite episode of the whole show is The Beast Within, is where he reaches it.

The show puts BB in the loser position it usually does, but it is as if he gets self concious, he just SNAPS and breaks the “same old” frame, and for a whole episode he behaves OOC, which- again -isn’t OOC at all, it’s just what he looks like when he finally has enough.

Usually, Beast Boy doesn’t do too much in fights, the heavy lifting is done by Starfire and Cyborg, the style is Robin, the magic is Raven, Beast Boy is mostly a hole-filler. If none of the 4 can handle something, you can bet your behind that it will be BB who takes over(i’m looking at you Season 5)

The episode starts the same way, BB gets his butt kicked, but then he just... he just snaps. There really isn’t much of a catalyst, Adonis trashtalks and that’s it..., he isn’t the first to trashtalk and certainly not the last. The point is that Beast Boy DESTROYS Adonis in the start of the episode and even at the end, and beats up his own teammates meanwhile too, for good measure. I remember seeing this on TV the first time and i WAS scared of BB. I always knew he had monsterish powers but i not only got shocked because he breaked out of the norm, he VALIDATED my suspicion, that he is MUCH more than a joke. It’s almost like he deliberatelly lets the show kick him around because he just doesn’t care.

Now, both of these just happen to be aggressive show of the “Snapping point” but there are milder examples.

Like Lucy’s Snapping point (Fairy Tail) is when she saves Loki the Lion celestial spirit.

The Snapping point is not a show of power, but a break from their magnified characteristics to show that they are more. Most usually it’s shown with a powershow, that’s true, but Lucy for example up to that point was a damsel in distress stereotype with tweaks here and there. In saving Loki through stubborn spiritdoor opening she broke from that magnified characteristic of hers and showed that she is capable of much more.

Notably main characters don’t have snapping points, because as they are in the focus the majority of the show, they are shown in much more detail, much more smaller steps just how much they are capable of.

Aang shows the Avatar state in the very first episode.(The avatar state being a quite literal break from his normal characteristics, since he is technically being possessed by his previous lives)

Robin almost never loses a battle, he constantly shows just how much he is capable of.

And Natsu.... let’s not even go there. It’s like bringing up Son Goku. He is almost always on screen, roaring and getting more and more powerful as he goes, JUST because he’s the main character. You know he will never lose there is no border for them to be pushed over.(And as such they are boring characters to me. Well atleast combat-wise, i like them both as characters it’s just they don’t have “THE” big moment, they are constantly in it. If you are constantly in it, it’s like you’re never there.)

But back to Marco.

All throughout Season 1 and 2 and majority of Season 3 he was fine.

The things happening to him may not have been easy to watch as a fan, but they had valid reasons for happening. He had very small snapping points which i was happy for, but then it’s as if they were forgotten by Season 4.

You see the point of this whole “Snapping” buisness is demonstration, for the viewer to keep in mind.

After The Southern Raiders, the viewer never forgot how much controll Katara had, and what brute strenght. So in the fight againts Azula you were completely prepared for pure badassness. You KNEW s**ts about to go down when you saw Katara’s eyes drawn similarly as when she was about to make a pintcushion out of the dude who’s name i mysteriously just forgot... a few minutes ago i knew it... i’m getting sidetracked.

After The Beast Within you knew that Beast Boy knows exactly how to use his powers effectively, it’s more like you were aware now that he is constantly holding back. So when you saw him beat demon after demon up in the Season 4 finale, even his own evil self, EVEN STARFIRE’S EVIL SELF, you knew that he always had it in him, he’s just the pure character he is.

After you saw Lucy go to such lenght as to almost deplete her own magic to save Loki(which back then meant death but Mashima mysteriously forgot about that just like how i forgot that dude’s name that Katara scarred for life) you were not surprised that she all alone freed her WHOLE GD GUILD from that demon prison that absorbed living beings into it’s walls. (Including Natsu who we all know is OP AF) You knew she totally would no spare herself all her effort.

But Marco? Firstly, in the Season opening episodes, he had the role of comic relief again, which in itself wouldn’t be a problem IF RIVER WASN’T THERE FOR THAT VERY SAME ROLE ALREADY.

Secondly, he had MINOR snapping points which were forgotten already by crew and by fans... His dimension-adventures could have been such a massive snapping point but it ISN’T. He didn’t change AT ALL. He doesn’t have anything to show for it AT ALL. (Justanawesomedragoncicle) And that’s why i still stand by my fellow Starco shippers saying it’s not pedophilic because he quite literally has nothing to show for that 30+ years now. NOTHING.NADA.WE LEARNED NOTHING MORE OF HIM. HE IS SO VERY MUCH THE SAME, which is why we all say that this dimension-adventure stuff was for nothing but s**ts and giggles. Marco wouldn’t be any less if these episodes wouldn’t exist. He’s certainly nothing more with them. In the Season 3 finale he did show off his skills but just like that they were forgotten. *Poof*

SO FAR the show treats Marco with amnesia.

Everyone else is treated properly. I couldn’t be more proud of Tom from the last episode, really. Star-... *sigh* she seems to have taken a step back too but with all the bs going on around her and her family i can’t blame her. There is such a thing as “too much” storylines on one shoulder, which is so fken clear she can’t handle all at once, so i don’t really mind her not addressing the kiss nor her feelings.

But come OOONN, MARCO! My boy... shooting the same joke twice, pushing them even...

FFS you are a HUMAN from EARTH!! That Earth full of apex megaminds, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see if the swimming trunks are too big or too small! And ffs if it stops circulation, use your common sense boi- TAKE IT OFF.

And i get that it was a joke, but that one joke was pushed ALL THROUGHOUT THE EPISODE. It was not funny...it was cringeworthy.

Rn i feel he is nothing more but a joke.  If he didn’t appear in most of those episodes it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Yes there were times where he WAS the voice of common sense, but it was outweighted with sheer stupidity which was not funny nor de-stressing. 

The jokes with him were taking me out of the story, not allevitating Star’s serious buisness.

[webcricket]

Looking Glass

Chapter 5 - An Olive Branch

Pairing: CastielXAU!Reader

Word Count: 3088

Summary: Impromptu peace talks commence between the reader and Castiel just in time for the return of the Winchesters.

Miss a chapter? Have a Masterlist Link!

Sat at the kitchen bench with a mug of room temperature black brew on the table before him – untouched, but within reach of his fingertips where he first placed it upon sitting – Castiel stares without seeing at the local section of a Lebanon Times newspaper he found in the library so old the color of the paper borders on the pale yellow of ripening corn.

There’s a scout troop featured; a motley crew of pre-teens forever frozen in photograph form cleaning up a park on a sunny spring Sunday to celebrate Earth Day. The same jaundiced pig-tailed child – designated as Cindy M. of Kansas City, Brownie Troop 271 in byline – has been fishing with outstretched fingers for a castoff Styrofoam cup beneath a hedge for the past two hours. The report doesn’t indicate that the piece of litter ever made the short jaunt into the garbage bag clutched in her other hand that she drags behind where she poses in stooped smiling perpetuity for the picture – another of life’s unanswered mysteries; not that Cas is currently pondering said mystery.

The angel’s ears perk to the sound of your barefoot heels plodding in the hallway in gradual but steady approach. Evidently you’ve finished your investigation of the premises or, determining an escape attempt is impossible, given up. In either case, he hopes you didn’t find something more lethally effective than kitchen stuffs, brute bare-handed force, or unbarred emotion coincidentally thrumming an inner nerve of truth to wound him with; every such angelically injurious object he is aware of in the bunker is under lock and key excepting his personal blade.

There’s a chance he overlooked an unknown item in a dusty storage bin that you succeeded in unearthing in your explorations; it would be consistent with his luck – good fortune demarcated by a fundamental lack thereof. It would also be consistent with his epically bad week – an already rough run of ill fate since his expulsion from the Empty exacerbated by Lucifer’s continued liberty, the resurrection, rescue, and subsequent high-tailing from commitment to creation of his brother Gabriel, an unnerving run-in with Naomi, the angel agent of much of his enduring grief, and then learning that Heaven is one or two celestial lights gone dark removed from permanent and catastrophic foreclosure; and, of course, there’s the latest complication of you.

In an effort to appear unruffled given your imminent arrival, he readjusts his posture; straightening his sloping spine and, for reasons of unacknowledged self-conscious impulsivity, the skewed knot of his tie, he redoubles his blind examination of the newspaper. The resulting effect lends itself to one of a spring coiled to maximum tension ready to fly off at the slightest disturbance. He flips the page with an exaggerated rustle to prove his utter indifference to your presence when you halt at the entryway and hesitate to crossover the door jamb to descend the two steps into the space he occupies.

Hyperaware, you freeze in suspense of animation to observe the scene like a bird cornered after tumbling down a chimney and emerging indoors without the familiar freedom of the sky in sight. His similarly caged reaction fascinates you considering you’re the one trapped in an underground maze with locked exits and disorientated by the kidnapping slash plummet down a rabbit hole into an alternate universe; that is, if he’s to be believed – and it’s still a big if according to your muddled wits. At least the lark about being in a bunker appears to hold up under thorough examination.

In a preening motion, you brush the pad of your thumb over the glossy slip of a photo you discovered and hid in the roll of the oversized sweatshirt sleeve encasing your right wrist; you’ll soon see if his story stands up to closer scrutiny. You allow the angel has every reason to be edgy; you’ve physically assailed him – granted without any lasting consequences – twice. For all he knows, the third time’s the charm. You decide his increasing unease with each confrontation does lend a linear sense of credibility to the reality of the situation.

The bitter aroma of burned coffee tickles your nose. The coffee maker ceased percolating the beverage some time ago; left on, it has boiled down the liquid into pure caffeine concentrate. The heady result smells like welcome lucidity after your wanderings and ferries your feet of their own volition down the stairs and to the counter. You help yourself to a mug of the stuff. Gripping the heat radiant porcelain between your palms, lips pursed to blow a cooling breath across the russet shimmering surface, you recommence watching the wary angel.

Sensing your protracted silent stare, he makes a grand gesture of flicking to a new page and folding it in half with a noisier-than-necessary shake to examine with great interest through a narrowed gaze an advert at the bottom for a law firm boasting attorneys specializing in personal, automotive, and work-site injury related litigation – seems convincingly relevant given the prevailing impasse between you two.

You clear your throat just to be sure he knows you know you have his surreptitious attention despite the display to the contrary.

If it’s possible – and evidently it is possible – he stiffens further. Still, he maintains the charade of ignoring you.

You liked him better when he was playing considerate host to your starring role as ungrateful violence-prone guest. This – this total impassivity – lacks definition; it’s missing sharp edges for you to remonstrate bodily and emotionally against. It simply won’t do.

“So, I’m guessing it was you that healed me?” you ask the loaded question as though you’re two acquaintances making small talk. Bringing the mug’s rim to your mouth, you suck a small sip and swirl the acrid swill over your tongue; it wants sugar, but you’re simultaneously certain no amount of sweetness could save it.

“That depends,” he answers without tearing his squint from the faded newsprint in order to deliberately avoid fully engaging you in whatever verbal skirmish you’re trying to instigate.

“On?” Since he refuses to grace you with a gaze, you aim the query at the back of his head; his hair explodes from his scalp in an unruly collection of loose chestnut curls – not a Nazi-esque grease-tamed coif indicative of extreme control issues.

“On whether or not my answering affirmatively will aggravate you.” There it is – the steel of sharpened blade you want lashes out in the form of spoken sass; the gloves, so-to-speak, are off.

Recollecting the black leather gloved fingers of the other one of him, you cringe at the metaphor conjured by your mind and swallow the chafing memory along with a second sip of God-awful coffee. In comparison to the interactions with your arson-aficionado interrogator, this angelic iteration is positively charming. It’s the first time the two of them seem separate entities to you. There’s something distinctly softer about the seraph in front of you – the blunt of benevolence, rather than thorny malevolence, gilding his halo.

You round the table and drop onto the opposite bench into his lowered line of sight. Propping your elbows on the top, you extend a hand to rudely swat the paper out of his grasp. “Since when do angels care about how humans feel?”

He lifts his eyes to meet yours; a degree of doneness dulls the blue.

You can’t tell if he’s done specifically dealing with you, or just generally done.

The besieged intake of his breath is audible. He holds the lungful of air, mouth thin and tense, reluctant to offer any explanation for you to twist around as a weapon to stab into him in wordy retribution. Finally, mostly to dissuade your skeptical stare and his resultant discomfort, he grumbles, “I don’t want to quarrel with you. Your mind, it’s . . . in a very fragile state.”

“I feel fine,” you fib to armor your weakness. Abandoning your mug, inclining backward, you slide your arms to encircle your sides and shrug. Forget the fatigue – your brain feels like it’s being drawn and quartered through your ears with a winch. Any effrontery on your part at this point is a bluff, but you’ve learned the difference between life and death often relies on the lie.

“You’re not fine.” In a reverse of your retreating body language, he sets his elbows on the table and leans forward, tone scolding. “You nearly died. You need to take it easy. I can’t help you recover if you insist on acting so . . . combative. This may come as a stark surprise to you, but as long as you aren’t suffering physically in a manner I can mend, the persistence of your foul mood is the least pressing of my concerns. There are more important matters at hand.”

He’s not wrong; and if you’re not mistaken, he’s expressed a continued – impatient, yet nonetheless there – concern for your well-being despite his frustration. He’s unlike any angel you’ve ever encountered. You glower at him for a lengthy minute. Somewhere thirty seconds or so into the hushed trade of glares you decide to accept the roundabout articulated truce he offered. You give yourself a superfluous thirty additional seconds to change your mind, but it seems set on a conciliatory course for the moment. You reach out to retrieve your coffee and muse into the liquid before drinking a gulp. “You don’t talk like an angel.”

Mouth relaxing into soft pink pout, he assents to the cordial shift of atmosphere implied in the statement. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was an observation,” you correct, filtering another swig of brown sludge through your teeth. “What you said before, about me not being from this world – it’s true?”

“It’s true.” He bobs his chin once.

You admire the scruff of beard shadowing his strong jaw; he’s remarkably handsome when he isn’t a monster trying to massacre you from the inside out. Shy of the superficial attraction, you avert your eyes to the neglected newspaper at center of the table. “And Michael, he’s trying to destroy this world, too?”

“You heard my conversation with Dean.” It’s not as though he made any effort to cover it up standing directly outside the door you were barricaded behind.

Your pupils widen with a surge of fear when you look up at him. “You said it was safe here. Nowhere Michael wants to be is safe.”

A slouch curves his spine as he sinks back into the chair. “Then I suppose, strictly speaking, that makes it less safe here than I initially suggested.”

Hugging your arms to your chest to subdue a rising shiver, your fingertips touch the photograph you found. The angel passes your provisional litmus test thus far, but your curiosity remains unabated; and it’s a distraction from the shattered illusion of safety. You withdraw the photo from the confines of the sleeve’s fabric, place it on the table, and slide it toward him with your pointer finger. “That’s you, Bobby Singer, Ellen and Jo, and the other two men I don’t know.”

You met Bobby Singer once, and immediately you understood him to be a rightfully paranoid man who doesn’t surround himself with, as he likes to say, ‘Idjits!’ He’s supposed to be in Dayton where you were headed before this detour. And Ellen and Jo are no different; dauntless women, at least the last you heard of them, daring a bid to cross the wastelands of Texas to breach the wall south of the states with a band of survivors in search of elusive safety. If they associated with this angel – and they did according to the pictorial evidence – you want to know the reason.

Cas slants his neck to better peer at the picture although he knows the details well – it’s the black and white snapshot commemorating the night before the day he joined Bobby, Ellen, Jo, and the brothers to confront the devil to prevent this world’s apocalypse; the day he chose humanity’s cause over Heaven – over himself. He gathers you must have found the keepsake in the top drawer of his desk – one of only a few mementos he saves. Catching the corner of the photo, he spins it and glides it nearer. Unlike the mystery of Cindy M. of Kansas City and her discarded cup, there’s no guessing at the fate of the people frozen there in time; a minute wistful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“How do you know them? Have you been to my world before? Who are the other men?” Biting your lower lip, you stop yourself at three successive rapid-fire questions; you have many more.

The smile fades from his expression; his blues, sheened with sadness, rise to regard you. “Many of the same entities, human and angel, inhabit both worlds. These two men you don’t know, they’re the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester. We know destiny didn’t deign for them to exist in your world. But in this one, they stopped the apocalypse from happening.”

“And Bobby, Ellen, and Jo?”

“I think of them as friends. I like to think they felt the same comradery. Brave and selfless souls all.” Eyes darting down, he taps each of their anxiously smiling faces in turn. “They played their parts, courageous to the last.”

“Played. So they’re-”

He looks up, cutting you off with the straightforward location of their mortal souls. “In Heaven.” He doesn’t add the, ‘For now, for as long as Heaven is able to hold itself together.’

In the requisite respectful interlude of a quiet few seconds to honor the memory of the dearly departed, it occurs to you that if there were more than one of all of them, then there may be another of you in this world; and if there’s a you, then perhaps there’s the family you lost in yours. With this nascent knowledge of the possibility you could see your loved ones again, you begin to comprehend why the angel and his friends so adamantly want to keep you contained here in the bunker; and also, why you must get out.

Noticing the intense interest of the angel’s eyes tracing the contemplative lines of your features, you deflect the thought lest he eavesdrop. “Why do you keep the photograph then? You’re an angel, you could see them anytime you like.”

He looks at his lap, self-conscious of the personal query – he never really considered the why of saving the photo; it seemed then and seems now natural to him to retain it. “I suppose you’d call it sentimentality,” he redirects, defaulting to the reason a human would hoard such an article.

Undeterred, captivated by an angel exhibiting flashes of actual emotion, especially genuine empathy for and affectionate attachment to humans, you reformulate. “And what would you call it?”

Weaving his fingers together, he snorts lightly through his nose – this time the small emergent smile is a disingenuous sardonic spasm of lip to mask manifest pain; you’ve touched upon another nerve, and one still raw judging by his reaction. “I’ve been told it’s an inherent weakness,” he mutters.

“Now you sound like an angel.” The statement is an impulse you instantly regret – an instinct to inflict pain upon this exposed and vulnerable piece of him like he hurt you. Only, it wasn’t this him.

“I am an angel.” His voice is an indignant rasped whisper; his wounded affect accentuated by a dim of hurt hazing his eyes. It’s a conflicting sentiment – an angel who appreciates not being likened to his kin in mannerism and yet nonetheless fiercely identifies as one of them.

The contradiction piques your curiosity. You want, no, need to know the honest reason a billion odd year old being hangs on to this specific sliver of his history. “You’re avoiding answering me,” you pry, “why do you keep it? You.”

His thick lashes shutter as he looks inward. He sighs, “Perhaps to remind me of the choice I made then.”

“What choice was that?”

“I chose the path of free will – to decide for myself what is right and not have destiny dictated to me by others.”

“And what did you decide is right?”

After a leaden pause, his eyes blink open and settle on you – they shine an impossibly vibrant blue to your mute color adjusted vision; you’re sure even the summer sky of your distant sweltering memories never shone so clear and endless. His reply is earnest – honest. “I’m still trying to determine the answer,” he confesses. It’s a deep-seated insecurity he has never told another soul – something he has been afraid to admit aloud, something he maybe didn’t fathom himself until you asked him why and pried the answer through the regret-reinforced ramparts shielding his heart.

You sense the significance of the admission and in return gift him the one thing about yourself that in revelation might hold equally substantial meaning for him. “Y/N.”

“What?”

“My name,” you repeat, “it’s Y/N.” It’s an apology, too, for your earlier antics.

The angel’s pensive expression floods with a lightness of realization. He gets it – you’re proposing a fresh start. You’ve met now on a common ground; laying bare a patchwork of jagged scars and bloody wounds alike, you’ve uncovered two drifters, equally lost in their respective worlds searching for something good in the bad. Hoping – still hoping it exists.

A subtle smile quirks his cheek. “My friends call me-”

“Cas!” Dean’s well-timed shout resounds from the kitchen threshold. He tilts his head politely toward you in toothy grinned greeting. “Hey sweetheart!” Wagging a finger between you and the angel, the grin broadens on his freckled face. “Well, isn’t this cozy. Nice civilized tea for two and not a meat cleaver in sight.” He winks a jewel of glinting green at Cas. “I told you apologies work wonders, didn’t I?”

Sam looms over Dean’s shoulder and furnishes you with a curt nod as he lumbers past his brother. “Glad to see you up and about. Cas was pretty worried there about whether or not you’d ever wake up at all. We all felt terrible having to leave you here alone – you find my notes?”

Dean mutters something unintelligible under his breath about stupid freaking notes and wanders over to the fridge, visibly relieved to find it stocked with beer.

You eye the anomalous angel – pretty worried, indeed.  A smile eases into the curves and creases of your mouth as he makes the formal introductions.

“Sam, Dean, this is Y/N.” His blues alight on your marveling gaze. “Y/N, these are the Winchesters.”

Next: Ch. 6 - Healing Touch

[wokainight]

NCT Reactions: Office Antics (part two)

notes: basically a collection of various nct members x you displaced in an awkward office setting.

part one | part two | part three

DOYOUNG:

trend setter, hot gossiper (!!)

knows everything about everyone and is currently playing cupid and matchmaking the sht out of everyone in the company

very curious

despises not knowing things

legit

wants

to 

know

everyTHING’;;

tends to butt into other people’s business and has good intention— but it may come off as being snobbish or overly rude

does his work well and is very good at persuading and customer interactions 

talks well

talks in general

vroom vroom show

apparently he practices funny chats inside his car and emcees the sht out of every event

the both of you were supposed to plan an event together with doyoung as emcee and you as the main coordinator

but he’s also trying to set this guy up with the hottest girl in the company and so far, his efforts are null

so he’s decided to make use of the event and perhaps hold a public proposal— to which you decline because,,

“doyoung-ssi, it’s not valentine’s day. there’s no need to implement such event.” you were quite stern because he was being overly imaginative with his mind and was planning a cruise boat???

like 

where is the funds????????

but he insists on holding the confession event

and he’s kind of above you in the company so you grumble and have to tag along with him

then comes the actual event

everything was going well and it has come to the highlight of the show where the guy who has to confess was to go up the stage

you had to take emceeing for a while because doyoung is giving the guy one to one support session

but then the guy’s in huge denial that he probably will get rejected 

(yes, 

at last minute)

and doyoung’s trying to shove him onto the shade but then they played wrestling and the guy who was confessing does judo and kickboxing while doyoung’s just lean and tall and the poor boy had his ass kicked onto the stage where he stumbled and rammed himself onto you

he falls on top

and coincidentally

his lips on yours

and the crowd cheers because it’s rather spontaneous but romantic and everyone’s off guard

and then the stage fireworks for the confession flares up along with the congratulatory song and confetti rains from the sky and you just stare at doyoung in shock

because…

whAT happened to the event???

TEN:

very hOT

a legit social butterly as in he’s literally connected to everyone??

whereas johnny’s followed by a crowd of fangulls, doyoung for people seeking love advice,,,,

ten is followed cos:

he’s teN

like no reason

he’s just really extroverted, 

humorous,,,

and knows how to charm the sht out of people!!!

and again——

a social buttERFLYYYYYYY~~

easily amused and smiles/ laughs like no tomorrow

easily holds a conversation and has a certain degree of closeness with everyone

an aegyo machine

and tends to get favours done through his positive impression and cutesy appearance

loves to drink

legit

VODKA SHOTS

a rather wild child--- 

earrings for days

ripped skinny jeans for days

hAIR FOR DAYSYYYYSSSIISSSSS

gets wilder when he’s drunk

and you’re kind dragged into one of the office parties where ten just makes everyone take ten shots each bcos why not and nobody could really pronounce his real name after that--

(not that they could in the first place)

and then ten’s 3/4 drunk when he approaches you bcos you’re just on your phone @ a little lonely corner and he thinks that he could be the spice to your day and tries to smoothly pass you really dirty jokes and you’re like

uhhhh no?????

but he wiggles his brows and eyes the back door and you;re like

wtf dude nO

but ten’s charming and like the charmer he was, he drags you by the elbow and the both of you exit the scene like its nothing

it was just a walk at a nearby park under the moonlight with ten humming to a rather familiar tune and you towing behind just as sorely as u did whilst sitting your ass down during the party

he turns to you and its weird how he knows your name and that you’re doing that particular project and that its been only six months since you entered the company

“...how did you know?” you make a rather bashful eye contact with him

“was it supposed to be a secret?” he laughs, 

and the way his eyes crinkled makes you felt rather clenched cardiovascular-wise

aka

he makes your heart beat

fast

“there’s just no reason for you to know” 

“you’re under my wing right? well, i have every reason to know.” and this time, he stops walking and gives your shoulders a friendly pat “aw don’t be so hard on yourself” then he smashes his rather muscly frame against yours and you’re kinda stuck in his hug for a good five minutes before he pulled back

“wow” was all he said before he turned to leave

the next day, you find your desk decorated in roses and you’re not sure why ten’s whistling at you as you walk by or why he’s given you a piece of paper with ‘xxxx me, [insert a bad lipstick smudge] - ten’

JAEHYUN:

that literal pot of flower boy with milky flawless skin and dimples that powers a radiating smile (probably radioactive)

nice to everyone

says hi to all

but a really private person

most people don’t know much other than the fac t that he’s a valentines boy and his name is jung jaehyun

an observant type of person

people watching

lOTS of staring

and then cue the bashful smile

damn those dimples

dAMN DOSE PIMPles

{{{{[[[[(((ifyouhaven’tguessed who mybiasis))}}}}{]]]]

you’ve been transferred to his branch and he’s kind of your seat mate and most of the time you’re working with his schedule cos he’s been here longer than you have and will hopefully guide you??

and he does

cos he’s nice

and a ball of sunshine (not literally) (i mean his smile blinds me but his personality is not extravagantly cheerful like ten’s or doyoung’s)

but you’re pretty good at getting to know person and you realise he likes to drink banana milk instead of coffee and that he secretly eats a pack of honey butter chip which lies inside his third drawer on the right

or the fact that he’s a huge ass foodie who likes to try out different dishes

because jaehyun’s so attentive to everything, he doesn’t really have time to pay attention to the fact that you’re paying attention to him

does it make sense????

and the irony doesn’t stop there

you’r e kinda neutral about him

just because you notice these little things doesn’t automatically make you fall for him in the romantic department... it was all pure observation

but turns out

the gREAT jung jaehyun is in love with you

you had your doubts when he started to treat you differently from other girls

i guess

opposites attract???

and he’s kinda been wanting to confess but has never had the time

and you’re talking with your best friend over the phone and you think everyone’s went home for the day but doesn’t realise that jaehyun’s just hiding in the corridor (the door was open) and was waiting for you to finish conversing with your friend

he had a bouquet of your favourite flowers and a little hand written card

dude was going to go for it

but you’re kinda in a flustered conversation when your best friend mentioned about the guy whom you mentioned who could’ve possibly liked you = jungjaes (or so they call him) (poor luck’s on you cos this was all in loud speaker)

and you;re like,,, “of course i don’t like like him-- i mean he’s a nice person but-”

and you hear something drop from outside the room and you have your bff on hold and walks out to check who is there (you were slightly creeped out because it’s dark and nighttime and it might have been a ghost) 

you find a bouquet of flowers and a pink envelope-- you turn your head quickly to catch a shadow turning for the stairs

and you pick up the card, open it and it kinda kills you in the inside slightly

‘Will you be mine? 

Love,

Jaehyun’

WINWIN:

china boi

pretty much more important and more influential than the actual ceo of the company??? 

cos he’s a bOSSS (SQUAKKKK)

the golden boy of the company-- everyone loves him and legit is like that beloved youngest child!! has a semi-playful personality with an awkward touch and a hint of innocence

probably knows much more than you think he does

the discreet but obvious type

when you think that you’re ordering him around.. he’s actually just turned the table and now yOU’Re the one with the task

p r e t t y

S

L 

Y

e.g.

one time TY track asked him to photocopy and then he just looked at the elder male straight in the face, placed the papers back in his hands and said:

“i’m busy”

or when he was absent for three hours and everyone was searching around for him only for him to come out of an unused cupboard with a sleeping bag and going “what’s the fuss?”

(everyone thought he either died,,, 

or was kidnapped)

and let’s not forget the time where he ‘accidentally’ poured soju into the bowl of fruit punch and walked away because another person called out for him and then realising later on that he actually did that

(it was it planned?)

in the end, he was the ojnly one who didn’t drink the fruit punch because he claimed of not liking the fruits ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

so you’re his supervisor

and your job is to literally find winwin in between people and various individuals who love him to bits

like literally

dong sicheng is always covered in love and chocolate and probably kisses???

and today is like any other day

but you find winwin in between two younger staff,,, both of which was arguing who would get to touch his ears today

it’s like a thing where only 10 people can touch his ears per day

you wondered why everyone had so much time-- but guessed it was because TY track was the supervisor and he practically does everyone’s work and cleaned after their mess

and winwin was just boredly staring ahead when he finds your eyes, hypes u p and excused himself

“are you searching for me noona?” he said, accent thick

but you roll your eyes and sighed,

“for the last time,,

we’re the same damn age sicheng.”

he just smiles his average angelic smile and leaned down, somehow making your heart beat faster (or was it because you were so unfit earlier on when hiking up the stairs-- holding onto the railings for your dear life)

“do you want to touch my ears?”

you groan, pushed his head away and turned on your heels, “follow me, we have work to do”

and just like a little chick, he followed after you with bouncy footsteps, saying goodbye to group of girls whining for him to come back

[tomioneer]

the yyh marathon continues 10 with episodes 31-33

CHU CHU CHU CHU

no, I’m not making train noises

he’s amazing.

i love chu’s stupid hair, I really do. it’s so fun to like, watch move around 

10/10 would date someone with that style ponytail. not the mohawk though, that’s too tall.

better and bigger and BUFFER than I remember damn son

speaking of sons.

soft yusuke

pure, blessed, angel baby yusuke

you’ve realized by now, of course, that I prefer his hair down, but did you ALSO KNOW that i prefer this child is garishly bright coats

no wonder I love napping!yusuke so much and remember these early matches so fondly despite what horrible shit the other kids go through

reminder that they are ALL children

except for rinku. honestly, in retrospect, presumably full-demon rinku is probably older than any of them? 

except for kurama. because. youko.

hiei is somewhere between actually fourteen in human years and like. 300 in demon years, probably.

I feel like kurama, an apparently four tailed fox (I maintain this is a lie, as kitsune can willfully appear to have less tails than they actually possess) is like. four or five hundred human years old at least

koto is a standard kitsune, by the way--transforms into a pretty girl, has one tail in her human form, and is a red fox.

I digress.

chu. chu is an adult. chu is not fourteen, so I can enjoy his shirtlessness without any qualms

koto,  oh my god: “well, they’ve burned their skin, shortened their breath, and somehow lost their shirts. altogether I’d call it a successful fight!”

relatable

they’re laughing, and it’s honestly adorable. 

they’re not hysterical, koto, they’re bonding. 

yusuke used to fight because he had nothing better to do and nothing worth staying out of trouble for, to his perception. maybe he thought it better to get killed in a fight than end up like his mom??? I can’t say

and he certainly never understood keiko’s vested interest in him

he fell in love with that kind of fighting, the carefree brawls where he always came out on top, and used them as a way to prove himself

but now he understands fighting at another level entirely, where his life really is in danger, and the stakes are higher than he’d previously imagined they could be. this isn’t about territory or revenge, he’s been saving lives

and he loves it, and so does this random stranger he’s ended up fighting

of course chu comes back as an ally later

he’s one of the first people yusuke’s ever understood on such a resonant level

thanks for the dramatic preview, kurama, but I really wouldn’t call them perfectly matched

in a fight bewtween two people of equal skill, the bigger one usually wins

or so says anita blake in laughing corpse, a book I havne’t read in ten years lol

so I have a thing for supernatural detectives, sue me

I ran out of ice cream ten episdes and 2 days ago. in retrospect, It hought I was going through these episodes faster than that

knife-edge death match

why is he australian

have I asked that yet, because I’m asking

koenma doens’t like the sound of that but I rmember how this goes and I LOVE IT

shizuru makes a dick measuring joke

watching chu remove his shoes is my new sexuality

btw if you don’t know what ‘toe off your shoes is’ in fanfiction, please watch this sequence because chu does it and yusuke does not

yusuke, I will say again, is a CHILD

yusuke loves the rules of this fight and if it weren’t amanga where he’s not aloud to use the same sort of fight more than once for fear of boring readers, I guarnatee ytou yusuke would do this more often

I can’t believe yusuke and chu are both just standing there in that position waiting with their feet on the sharpened edges of knife blades while the cimmitte decides whether or not a death match is allowed in a death match

yusuke is so small

ominous dark clouds that I missed bc I was typing lol

boys just punch okay

oooh and they even light the fight fo us, interesting

koenma somehow doesn’t recognize someone he knows and has known for years, according to the genkai tournament arc.

yusuke has to reach a lot farther to hit chu

karasu showed up like the little bitch he is

are those tiny eyeglasses on his mask, because if so that is BEYOND STUPID

karasu has a crush on yusuke, I know because his eyes shone and he’s gay

no, I don’t ship it

I could almost ship yusuke and chu though lol

I DO half-ship chu and koto

what the hell, I count them both

ship count: 6/400

kuwabara: I could watch them fight for hours... 

keiko, immediately: I can’t watch them fight anymore!

knowing how this match ends really makes it funny that  the dub, when those plant zombies showed up, had yusuke ask Kurama if he should headbutt them  

shizuru makes an totally unacceptable, but still funny, joke about yusuke having died once already (because they don’t know he pretty much died a second time against rando, and a third time against suzaku)

keiko runs off and shizuru chases her

is this why shizuru meets sakyo? he left his viewing room earlier so I bet it is

I remember shipping them as a kid, let’s see how that goes this time

this is pretty cool actually

she dresses like a first calss gay, honestly

I wishi I could pull that sort of look off

SAKYO hey who guessed he’d show up here , not me

he is beautiful

I actually forgot that this whole time, my favorite fight was going on

I can’t beleive keiko actually got into the fighter’s area and made it onto the field that girl is fucking unstoppable

Keiko, crying: Kuwabara, you have to make them stop fighting!

Kuwabara, clueless: no way, why would I wanna do that?

classic

I read a theory online that kuwabara used to be friends with keiko and yusuke when they were all little, and it has totally changed the way I see it whenever these two interact.

kuwabra genuinely tries to explain this fighter’s mindset to a noncombatant. he is a good, patient boy

yusuke is loving this fight

so is chu

rinku’s internal observations are completely different in the subtitles, saying that chu still has something hidden up his sleeve and it waitinf or the right time to use it, where in english he says that hie wishes the reast of team urameshi had given such a good fight, so rinku could have ‘given his yo-yo a workout’ which is a terrible euphemism for... using his yo yo weapons.

I’m surprised we haven’t gotten more shots of their feet against knives, bleeding

as I went  to type that, we get the first shot of exactly that, as yusuke goes in for his own headbutt to counter chu’s

which was aparently the ‘secret weapon’ rinku meant in the subs

yusuke has beautiful eyes

chu’s head BROKE THE FLOOR

yusuke called chu mate, I dig it

yusuke and kuwabara are cute and gay

oh, they are extra gay when they do sidehugs

I can’t believe that of this whole team only two people are left

yusuke is my hero

he just yelled loudly enough to shup up the entire arena of spectators

“if you idiots got something to say, say it! but say it to my face, or else say it to my fist.” 

that’s a badly written but highly epic and kickass line

I have NO IDEA what chu just said because the audio broke and he has am AUSTRALIAN ACCENT

son of a--

the narrator just fucking punned

yusuke flipped off the toguro kyoudai, and the screen does the dramatic stylized freeze, and the narrator goes, “yusuke may be flippant now”

YOU SUCK

but also it’s a good joke I hate it

where did keiko go during the dramatic pan over the team anyway, she was down there with them.

I rewound and she is Not There.

WHYYYY did they even make Chu say anything??? he doesn’t in the japanese version, there are no subs for him

I really miss the old ED. I love the images for this one, the keiko focus. but. it doesn’t have the same energy. it’s not a jam

now that I thinka bout it, the photograph at the end of that ED could only have been taken in universe on the return trip from the tournament, so I should never have worried that hiei or kurama or kuwabara actually died.

I’m so glad for this arc if only because it’s means all these casual clothes for our cast, and I love that

look how high wasted yusuke’s jeans are, I love it, Ireally do. BOYS , wear high waisted jeans.

during purely internal monolgue, dub yusuke gives a fraction of the information sub yusuke gives by just saying “damn it” instead of “I can’t focus my reiki, why??”

kuwabara’s outside, coincidentally passing by where yusuke is, because hs’ not psychic and ISN’T LOOKING FOR HIM cuz he’s not gay

look, I realize I’m calling yusuke and kuwabara gay a lot. I don’t mean literally gay. 

they are obviously bisexual, or pan, or demi.

I just mean they fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, which is in my region frequently shortened to “gay”

Kuwabara immediaetly ruins my theory by straight up admitting to looking for yusuke and wondering why he wasn’t left a note

kuwabara (paraphrased): I wanna have a team meeting

yusuke, a smarty who already knows he ain’t straight: have a meeting with yourself, then. you’ll learn a lot.

kuwabara, who clearly needs more time: what does that mean?

justas I was about to say tha tI couldn’t beleive they just--left genkai in the room alone, we see that genkai is actually stalking her student now that she’s bored of intimadting kuwabara

we just--that’s the ichigaki team

those poor men

those three poor, wonderul men

I remember nothing about those two demon members of the team but now I’m getting flashes of--delaying hiei and kurama?

thank you kurama, you nerd, for bothering to do research on the next team

yusuke, who now trains on his own time even after running out of reiki: why am I so damn tired?

is this. a filler villain? or did togashi really come up with a character who manifests rubgy balls and calls himself rugby

WHY is the dub so far off the sub right now? there’s no lip flap to match!!

this is awful

buys a fucking gymnast

well he lasted for three minutes before getting killed by his own teammate

GENKAI SPEAKS BLESS HER

oh man yusuke thought is was genkai and is now confused as fuck by this young voice amazing

but why the fuck does she sound young, when she hasn’t exerted herself at all that day

she just, fucking tells them about hiei fucking up his arm

baby YOU KNEW you were making that trade, you KNEW

botan looks a lot like sailor moon right now

keiko confimrs that she is aware yusuke has the hots for her, but also that she can see how happy he is here in the tournament

shizuru’s ass is AMAZING

it’s shocking to think neither hiei nor kurama could tell toguro was alive when they were just a room away from him

why are yususke’s eyes glowing

that whole team is huge, how did rugby even make it on that team lol

‘don’t you have a team?’ “of course I do, but they’re extremely lazy” amazing.

I mean, we know they brothers are famous, but it makes so much more sense WHY they are famous--having previously WON the dark tournament

I wouldn’t be opposed to a movie or something about that tournament, honestly. I want to se more of toguro when he was human. 

I wonder how genkai feels weatching him do this

toguro is sort of like an early saitama, if you strip away personality. their drive at this point is similar from what I know of OPM. 

okay so the dub has creepy-possessive implcations thanks to toguro saying (about yusuke) “that boy is reserved for me”. the SUB on the other hand--toguro just says, ‘it’s a bad day to be a large guy, huh?’ which is fucking. amazing. bold. iconic.

yusuke is sitting next to the previous LOVE of toguro’s LIFE, and he doesn’t even notice her. just yusuke. I guess amask really can hide everything?

I’m stunned they aren’t having more trouble  about sittin ght eaudience that was calling for their blood yesterday.

of course yusuke and his friends have to deal with an extra match lol. 

okay but what’s up with this reigun thing. I don’t remember it at all. 

I guess we just really need to see genkai fight.

i do love and admire her a lot.

on the other hand, I do NOT want to see the vs. dr. ichigaki fight. I remember it pretty well I think? and it was just so--upsetting. 

did we uh. ever get a NAME for the younger toguro brother???

[930club]

PLAYLIST: Niya’s Best of 2017

While 2017 was a rough year to get through for many, I’m happy to say that it has been a great year for music. Many of my favorites returned with new music that did not disappoint and I discovered several new artists that I’m excited to see flourish in 2018. Without further ado, here are my thirteen (painstakingly narrowed down from thirty) favorite tracks released this year. 

“You Don’t Do It For Me Anymore” – Demi Lovato This song is at the top of my list because it is, hands down, my favorite vocal performance of 2017. In stripping down the vocal processing and heavy instrumentals that characterize the rest of her album, Tell Me You Love Me, Lovato showcases her raw, soulful tone and incredible range. In her YouTube documentary, “Simply Complicated,” Lovato spoke about tapping in to a more soulful and sexy part of her sound. With this new shift, I believe Demi Lovato will continue to produce incredible tracks and distinguish herself as one of the great voices of this generation.

“Tied Down” – Jaymes Young The opening track of Seattle native Jaymes Young’s debut LP perfectly encapsulates his unique style. Young’s impressive vocal range lends itself to conveying the sultry, dark love stories he is wont to tell. While the verses are more acoustic, harkening to his more indie beginnings, the pre-choruses serve up a synthy smooth R&B feel, and the hard-hitting choruses have an electronic groove that is positively infectious.

“VJS – Interlude” – Huntar This is the shortest song on this playlist, but it sure packs a punch. London-based artist Huntar expertly manipulates a chorus that consists of one simple phrase into a dynamic electro-pop epic. I’ve listened to this song on repeat an embarrassing number of times this year, but I did take a break long enough to know that it flows perfectly into my next pick…

“4 A.M.” – Santino Le Saint Some tracks, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, transport you to a different reality constructed by the artist. Santino Le Saint, a 19-year-old, unconventional R&B artist whose influences range from indie rock to Motown, does exactly this with “4 A.M.” The rich vocal harmonies, captivating lyrics, and haunting guitar licks made this song one of my most listened of 2017.

“DNA.” – Kendrick Lamar Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. is a hip-hop album like no other. While I recommend listening from beginning to end, as it was meant to be heard, “DNA.” is a microcosm of the album as a whole: inspired, provocative, and impossible not to dance to.

“The Sky Is A Neighborhood” – Foo Fighters This playlist wouldn’t be complete without a bit of Dave Grohl’s growl. For Foo Fighters diehards, the band’s ninth album does not disappoint. The fourth track of Concrete and Gold has a cross-genre appeal that converted me into a fan the second I heard it played at the grand opening of The Anthem.

“Glory” – Bastille This song is a summer drive with the windows rolled down packed into a three minute and thirty-nine second package. Three years after their debut album, Bad Blood, Bastille has returned with Wild World. The British band’s sophomore LP, once again, expertly pairs Dan Smith’s smoky vocals and danceable beats with thought provoking and often depressing lyrics, making for nineteen pop hits with real substance (and one of my favorite albums of the year). “Warmth,” “Lethargy,” and “Blame” receive honorable mention.

“Happier” – Ed Sheeran While the singer-songwriter took a detour from the more homogenous style of his sophomore album, this track from Ed Sheeran’s latest LP, Divide, harkens back to the simplicity of his earliest tracks. “Happier,” a tale of love lost, is beautiful in its unfussiness and heartbreaking in its nuance.

“Transformer” – Donna Missal Donna Missal is one to watch in 2018. Just this year, the New Jersey native has released several singles, was featured on a track from Macklemore’s new album, and was Elvis Duran’s New Artist of the Month in November. “Transformer” effortlessly melds rock, electronic, and R&B influences, all tied together by Missal’s powerful, gritty vocal. Donna Missal has a voice unlike any other in modern music and I can’t wait to see what’s next for her.

“Lick” – Cardi B, Offset 2017 was the year of Cardi B. Her rise from reality television and Vine (R.I.P.) popularity to international stardom and recognition in the hip-hop community seemed to happen overnight. While “Bodak Yellow” will most likely be the song she’s remembered for, Cardi was also featured on several chart-topping tracks including G-Easy’s “No Limit” and Migos’ “Motorsport.” “Lick,” a collaboration with her fiancé and Migos member Offset, is my favorite track from her latest EP.

“Keep Me Sane” – Kacy Hill Kacy Hill’s debut LP, Like A Woman, is chock full of gems. However, I think that “Keep Me Sane,” the album’s second track, best showcases her trademark haunting sound and voice that is at once ethereal and utterly grounded.

“I Believe In Us” – LÉON I saw LÉON perform at U Street Music Hall this November. The show as a whole was stunning, yet this song in particular stood out to me. The soulful Swede was an electric performer and incredibly funny in between songs. Before she sang “I Believe In Us,” though, her tone turned somber. She simply stated that the song was one of the most personal she had ever written and apologized in advance for tearing up during the performance. The pure simplicity of the track paired with LÉON’s expressive storytelling left not a single dry eye in the house.

“The Village” – Wrabel Coincidentally, I first heard this song when Wrabel opened for LÉON and I dare say it is the most important one on this playlist. While the song itself is powerful, the music video, depicting a trans teen’s struggle for acceptance, elevates Stephen Wrabel’s vocal performance and nuanced songwriting to a new, incredibly moving level. Wrabel told Billboard, “I came out as gay around 23 into a church in Los Angeles that told me I could and should change; that I was unnatural and wrong. I hope this reaches anyone in need of it and makes them feel like they're not alone.”

With that message of acceptance and love, I now leave you—carry that feeling with you into the New Year. I hope you’ve had as much fun listening as I have making this playlist. Catch you at a Club show in 2018!

-Niya Avery

[rolandfontana]

A Lifetime Sentence for Operating in China Without a Lawyer, Well Sorta

Potential clients often ask our China lawyers, “what’s the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do ________.” My usual response is I don’t know or you get sued or you get arrested or you will never be allowed to leave China.” See Doing Business in China with Deportation or Worse Hanging Over Your Head. Whenever I mention prison or getting stuck in China forever I can “hear” the eyes roll on the other end of the computer or the phone because few take this risk seriously.

Guess what people. Get over your First World rule of law biases and start dealing with the real world, or as a friend of mine who regularly deals with China hostage situations is always saying, “this is China.”

The “this” about China hit me hard today via our China Law Blog Facebook page (go here to check that out where, purely coincidentally, my most recent post is how the portion of my Chinese TV interview from yesterday where I discussed hostages in China was completely deleted). Anyway, here is today’s story and it is filled with absolutely critical lessons for anyone doing business in China AND for anyone doing business with China who has any intention of ever going to China.

So I wake up this morning with a Facebook message from someone in trouble in China asking us to publicize his situation on our blog to help in a fundraising campaign. The fundraising campaign is here and it is titled, Being wrongfully sued and not allowed to leave China and rather than have me tell the story, I will pull it word for word from this campaign (see below) and then “unpack” it. Just as an aside, I visited the Getty museum in Los Angeles about a week ago and our tour guide used that word (unpack) before analyzing each and every painting and sculpture. The first time she used it I loved it but by the tenth or so time I hated it. This being your first time….

In 2013/2014, we started a personal training fitness gym in Shenzhen, China with 3 foreign partners. The initial agreement and plan between the partners was to grow the gym, however 2 years into operation, due to a variety of factors beyond our control, we could no longer afford to operate the business at the standard that we wanted. We had to pay high costs and find a way to close the business while respecting the staff and community.

The attempted transfer and closing process took many months while we interviewed potential investors and people who wanted to take it over. It ultimately came down to a young Chinese man who had spent many months in the gym, wanted to own his own gym and was getting to know the operations and the members. Unfortunately for us, this man’s intentions were not honest, and he manipulated the situation to his favour. Since we are foreigners in China, we were not knowledgable about certain legal processes and trusted him in this transfer. He devised a way to take over the business by paying the business’s then upcoming bills due, and some debts owed – amounting to RMB 217,000 (approx US$ 32,000). He then wrote up a pre-agreed contract stating that the RMB217k was a loan and that the business and equipment would serve as collateral should the loan not be paid back. Since we wanted to simply move on from the business, and were not able to handle the expensive monthly overhead, we agreed to this process, meaning we received nothing in the end for a business we had spent 3 years building, but would be free of the business liability.

This Chinese man is a loan shark, and once we had parted ways with him, believing everything was agreed to and wrapped up, we moved on with our lives.

Fast-forward two years, and unbeknownst to us, this man had filed a lawsuit, claiming that the business owed him the RMB 217k. The case was filed, and was ruled in his favor, since we had no knowledge of the case and thus never showed up to court to contest this man’s false version of events. It wasn’t until John tried to leave the country that we came to find out about its conclusion as he was told that he would not be allowed to leave China. In China the legal system greatly favours Chinese, and the entire case was processed and closed without our knowledge and thus no response from us, and as it stands now we are being ordered to pay a whopping RMB 250k ($40K).

We want to chance to set the record straight and show the court the documentation which shows the agreement we had and how this man has committed fraud. We want to re-open the case, and respond to the verdict that was passed without our knowledge. In order to fight the case we need to hire a lawyer and pay court costs and so are asking our family, friends and any citizens of the world who can support our cause and pursuit for the truth.

Initially we are trying to raise RMB 55K ($8K) to cover the legal and court fees, so we can do everything possible to clear our good name and release the government hold on John’s passport. This will be a long, difficult battle but we will keep you updated every step of the way and maintain full transparency throughout this process.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for your support, whether financial or just by sending positive energy and thoughts our way.

Now for the legal unpacking (that’s only by second time with that word) and an analysis of what likely went wrong and what probably should be done to try to solve it. The quotes from above are in normal font and our analysis is in italics.

“He then wrote up a pre-agreed contract stating that the RMB217k was a loan and that the business and equipment would serve as collateral should the loan not be paid back. Since we wanted to simply move on from the business, and were not able to handle the expensive monthly overhead, we agreed to this process, meaning we received nothing in the end for a business we had spent 3 years building, but would be free of the business liability.”  Mistakes: Not using a lawyer with this contract. Based on the above, it very much appears that this was a loan contract for RMB217k and this person(s) did not fully realize that. Any competent lawyer could have told them that. I am guessing the contract was in Chinese — why wouldn’t it be as it was a Chinese transaction —  and that may also explain why it was not fully understood. Or maybe it was a situation where eagerness took precedence over common sense. Who knows? Bottom line is that you should never sign a contract without fully understanding it and you should virtually never sign a contract without the assistance of a qualified lawyer.

Fast-forward two years, and unbeknownst to us, this man had filed a lawsuit, claiming that the business owed him the RMB 217k. The case was filed, and was ruled in his favor, since we had no knowledge of the case and thus never showed up to court to contest this man’s false version of events. Mistakes: Maybe none, or maybe this person received notice of the lawsuit but did not realize what it was. I say this because Chinese courts tend to be very good at getting their notices out and they also tend not to rule until it has been confirmed that notice was received.

It wasn’t until John tried to leave the country that we came to find out about its conclusion as he was told that he would not be allowed to leave China. Mistakes: Chinese law allows the government to not allow people to leave who owe money. This is why our China lawyers are constantly telling people not to go to China if they MIGHT owe money and to get the hell out of China as quickly as possible if they are there. See Maybe Owe Money To China? Don’t Go There. 

In China the legal system greatly favours Chinese, and the entire case was processed and closed without our knowledge and thus no response from us, and as it stands now we are being ordered to pay a whopping RMB 250k ($40K). Mistakes: I’m guessing a Chinese defendant would have had the same result as it sounds like a fairly garden variety loan agreement and this amount probably included interest and perhaps attorneys’ fees as well.

We want to chance to set the record straight and show the court the documentation which shows the agreement we had and how this man has committed fraud. We want to re-open the case, and respond to the verdict that was passed without our knowledge. In order to fight the case we need to hire a lawyer and pay court costs and so are asking our family, friends and any citizens of the world who can support our cause and pursuit for the truth. Mistakes: Is it even possible to re-open the case at this point? I do not know but I doubt that it is. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that this person is doubling down on his mistakes by again not hiring a lawyer to figure out the best way to get out of this. Let’s just suppose it is not to late to try to “re-open” the case. In most countries of which I am aware, to be able to re-open a case like this you must not only show that you were not given notice of the case you also must show that if the case were to be re-opened that you have at least some chance of overturning the ruling on the merits. If this is a legal and valid and garden variety loan agreement, that chance may very well not be there. If re-opening the case is going to be impossible, no money should be spent on that route. It probably should instead be spent on trying to strike a deal with the lender and in return for whatever payment he accepts, a settlement agreement is signed (this settlement agreement should be in Chinese and pursuant to Chinese law) and then used to get the hold on leaving China lifted. 

But in the end, this person does need money to hire a Chinese lawyer (probably ideally based in whatever city in which the lawsuit was brought) to figure out how to figure out the situation and help this person get out of China.

A Lifetime Sentence for Operating in China Without a Lawyer, Well Sorta syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/