#I don’t even think anyone will read this but | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sidemari · 3 days ago

Text

• After Dark •

A NSFW compilation of short texts (not so short) about their kinks. This could also be called "1 character, 1 kink".

Characters included: Childe, Diluc Ragnvindr, Dottore, Kaeya Alberich, Kamisato Ayato, Ningguang, Scaramouche, Wriothesley and Zhongli [separately] x Fem/AFAB/GN!Reader

TW: Aphrodisiacs; BDSM dynamics; bondage; brat taming; breeding kink; consensual non-con; creampie; DD/LG; dirty talk; edging; exhibitionism; fingering; masturbation; oral sex (F/M receiving); overstimulation; praise kink; sub/dom dynamics; vibrators; unprotected sex. Let me know if I missed any.

WC: 10k+ (all of the stories together, of course).

Forgive me for any mistakes, I'm exhausted, and I won't read this giant post over again for the next few weeks, lol.

Childe

Consensual non-con. (Fem!Reader)

You were lying on the sheets, your wrists tied above your head with a bow he had tied himself — tight enough to keep the fantasy alive, but soft enough not to hurt you.

“Look what we have here…” Tartaglia’s voice sounded deep and theatrical, as if he were playing a character. He was looking down at you with a wild glint in his eyes, the crooked smile of someone who was having fun — but with his heart pounding with desire and zeal for you. You squirmed, trying hard to look scared, even though you knew that was exactly what he wanted.

“P-Please… Don’t do this…” You whispered, trembling on purpose, playing the role perfectly.

“You should know that you can’t tease someone like me and still get away with it, princess…” He growled, pulling your legs to the edge of the bed. The way his eyes bored into yours, even when he was playing his role, was still full of adoration. “It’s too late to regret it now.”

The sheets under you were damp with some of the essence that insisted on seeping from you, due to your anticipation. Your nipples were hard beneath the thin fabric of your nightgown, and he noticed every reaction — every little sign that you wanted this as much as he did.

“You’re so wet…” He commented as he slid his fingers between your legs. “You’re begging me with that little body, even though you’re saying ‘no’ with your mouth.” He leaned in and whispered against your ear, “But I know your body better than anyone, my love. I know when it’s desperate for me.”

“P-Please, don’t do this to m-me… I’m… so sorry for—” But he didn’t let you finish. He thrust into you hard, in one motion, eliciting a scream from you that was a mix of shock and pleasure. You arched your body, pulling at the sheets, feeling the heat rise like an overwhelming wave.

“Beg me.” He ordered, his voice hoarse with lust. “Tell me you need it. That you can’t live without my cock ravishing your cunt.”

“Ajax, please, use me… Fuck me until I can’t think anymore…” You moaned, your eyes moist, no longer from pretense, but from real, deep pleasure. His hips moved with rhythm and strength, your name escaping between his lips. The act had already given way to surrender — the game was exciting, but what made it all intense was the trust between you.

He leaned in, his red hair wet with sweat, his eyes fixed on yours.

“Is everything okay?” He asked softly, breaking character for a moment, just to be sure.

You nodded with a lascivious smile. “I can still take much more, love…”

And he provided that to you, until your legs were trembling, until your eyes watered with pleasure, until your voice broke. And when it was all over, he released you with loving hands, kissing each mark and scratch, wrapping you in his arms as if you were fragile.

“It was perfect.” He whispered. “You’re perfect.”

Diluc Ragnvindr

Bondage. (Fem!Reader)

The flames in the fireplace cast warm shadows over the stone walls of the room. The unmistakable aroma of wine and wood filled the room, and the silence was broken only by the soft crackling of the fire. You sat on the edge of the bed, your heart racing, your eyes attentive to Diluc’s every move as he walked back towards you.

He looked even more imposing under the golden light, his red hair loose over his shoulders and an expression that mixed concentration with restrained desire. In his hands, he held the red satin strips that you had timidly suggested the night before.

“Are you sure about this?” He asked in a low, husky voice, kneeling before you. His hands caressed your thighs gently, reverently, as if preparing the ground for something deeper. “I only want this if you want it too.” You nodded, your face hot, your breath shallow.

“Yes. I do. Just… just take care of me.” A small smile appeared on his lips — a rare, intimate smile that made your chest tighten.

“Always.”

Patiently, Diluc led you to the center of the bed. His kisses came slow, intense, as he took his time to undress you, piece by piece, as if each button and strap were a ritual. When you were naked beneath the fine linen sheets, he pulled away just enough to tie your wrists with the satin, crossing them over your head and securing them firmly to the headboard.

“Let me know if it’s too tight.” He said, caressing the skin of your arms, his dark eyes assessing your expression every second. You felt the knot tighten securely, but it didn’t hurt. It was firm… comforting, even. You trusted him. You always had.

Diluc lay back down beside you, his fingers gliding over the curves of your bound body, his eyes exploring every detail as if he were memorizing the landscape of the woman he loved. He leaned in, kissing your collarbone, your jaw, until your lips parted reflexively.

“You’re so beautiful like this…” He murmured against your skin. “Surrendered, only mine.”

His words made something inside you melt, even more so when his hand went down between your legs and found you already wet, hot and pulsing.

“Already so wet… I’ve barely touched you.” He chuckled softly, a deep, satisfied sound, before pressing his thumb against your clit and making slow, teasing circles. Your hips moved instinctively, but he held them back with his other hand, holding you in place.

“No.” The word was spoken tenderly, but full of command. “I’m the one in control here.”

You bit your lip, arching your back with a restrained moan. Tied up and exposed, each touch felt more intense. Diluc knew that. He knew your body like no one else. His fingers danced between torture and pleasure, making you writhe under the delicate control he masterfully exercised. His breathing was also heavier, his dark eyes fixed on your face, capturing every reaction. He alternated soft caresses with firmer touches, sometimes leaning in to kiss your breasts, sometimes whispering praises in your ear:

“You endure so much for me… so obedient…”

“You’re driving me crazy like this…”

“I need to hear you beg, love.”

You felt yourself getting close. Your body trembled, your muscles contracted, your orgasm building like an inevitable storm. But then, just as the wave began to rise, he stopped. He removed his fingers, went back to kissing your neck, leaving you on the edge — dragging your pleasure with refinement and intention.

“D-Diluc, please…” You whimpered, your eyes watering, your body arching toward him. “Don’t stop…”

“You haven’t reached your limit yet,” He replied quietly, his voice low and husky, his fingertips tracing your abdomen. “I want you to need this. To really beg for me.” You panted, your body too hot and sensitive. Each pause was sweet torture, a flame that burned without consuming — until the desire became something deeper, more urgent. And then, when you finally moaned his name, begging without pride or shame, he smiled.

“Good girl.” He positioned himself between your legs, kissing you hungrily, his entire body pressing against yours. The heat of his skin, his weight, the firmness with which he held your hips — everything about him was absolute. When he finally entered you, slow, deep, your body cried out in relief. It was as if everything fell into place — as if the universe were spinning on its axis again. He groaned softly, his lips against your neck, his hips moving with a rhythm that was torturous, but felt so good.

“You’re perfect. So tight… You take me so well…” His voice was hoarse from pleasure. “You have no idea how much I’ve thought about this… about you, trapped, moaning my name…”

The restraints kept you from touching him, but that only made everything more intense. You felt vulnerable and adored at the same time. His thrusts became harder, but the bed creaked in protest as he lost himself in you.

“Look at me.” He pulled your face with one hand. “I want to see your eyes when you come for me.” And you obeyed. There was no other choice, no other destiny, no other name to say but his as your body shattered with pleasure — the orgasm ripping through every inch of you hot, overwhelming. Diluc continued for a few more seconds, until he spilled himself inside you, trembling, his face hidden in your neck.

When your breathing returned to normal, he carefully untied your wrists, kissing every red mark left by the satin. His fingers caressed your arms, your hair, your waist.

“You were wonderful,” He murmured, pulling you to his chest. “Thank you for trusting me.” You smiled, tired, satisfied, whole. In the flames dancing in the fireplace, everything seemed safe. Everything was love.

Aphrodisiacs. (Fem!Reader)

You were sitting on the couch in Diluc’s private library, wrapped in a light robe, your body still tingling from the wine he had brought. But it wasn’t just any wine. It tasted exotic, sweet and spicy — with something that made you feel warm from the first sip.

Your heart beated faster, your skin felt more sensitive, and every glance Diluc made in your direction made your breath falter. He was there, standing in front of the bookshelf, watching you with those intense red eyes, like embers about to catch fire. There was a small smile on the corner of his lips — a smile that betrayed that he knew exactly what he had done.

“This wine…” You began, your voice lower than you expected. “There’s something more to it, isn’t there?” Diluc approached slowly, his hands in his jacket pockets, his eyes fixed on yours.

“It’s a special batch. Made from a rare variety of fruits grown in the fertile soil of Sumeru. Some say it… stimulates the senses.” He stopped in front of you, leaning down just enough to touch your chin with two fingers. “Do you feel it?”

You nodded, your lips parted, the heat growing in your lower belly like a fire slowly spreading. He gently removed the robe from your shoulders, exposing your skin to the warm air of the room.

“You look so beautiful like this… all flushed, breathless…” He knelt between your legs, his fingers sliding up your bare thigh. “Sensitive.” His lips brushed against your skin, each kiss sending electric waves to the core of your body. It was as if each touch of his tripled in intensity. The wine, or whatever it was, made your body beg for more — made you writhe under the softest caresses, yearning for something that had yet to come.

He pulled your legs up to his shoulders with ease and buried his face between your thighs, his hot tongue sliding inside you with precision, firmness, and calculated pleasure. It was almost cruel, the way he used his mouth — as if he studied your reaction to every movement. You moaned, your hands going to his hair out of reflex, but he held them with one of his large hands, keeping you in place.

“Stay still,” He murmured against your skin. “Let me take care of you.”

And you tried. But it was impossible not to writhe, not to moan, not to beg. The heat was too much. Your body throbbed, hungry, desperate for release. And when you were finally on the edge, arching your back and gripping the seat under you, Diluc stopped. His red eyes rose to yours, hungry, and a little cruel.

He stripped off his own clothes, revealing the strength contained beneath his formal attire, his muscles defined in the firelight. When he lay down on top of you, the heat of your two bodies met like a spark in gunpowder. He entered you slowly, filling you completely, and you both gasped in unison.

“You’re… tight,” he whispered through his teeth. “Like you’ve been waiting for me for days.” His movements began slowly, deeply, and you felt every inch of him as if it were the first time. The aphrodisiac made your body vibrate, your skin tingle, your senses plunge into a pleasurable torpor. It was impossible to control your moans, the way your body trembled beneath him, the way your hips sought more. Diluc bent down, kissing your neck, your shoulder, biting carefully.

“Are you this sensitive because of me? Because I filled you with that wine, knowing what I would do to you later?” The answer escaped like a sob of pleasure.

“Yes…” He increased his pace, his movements more intense, the sound of skin against skin echoing in the muffled room. His hands held your waist firmly, keeping you in place as your body was taken deeper, faster, harder.

“You’re mine,” he whispered against your mouth. “Only mine. I want you like this… writhing in pleasure, calling my name, begging for more.” You couldn’t think, speak or breathe properly. The pleasure came like violent waves, and when it arrived, it was overwhelming. Your body arched, your eyes rolled back, your moans were lost in Diluc’s mouth as he also spilled himself inside you, with a low, hoarse grunt, full of pleasure.

He stayed there for a while, still on top of you, kissing your forehead and stroking your hair. Then, he pulled you to his chest, covering the two of you with a blanket.

“Next time,” He said with a satisfied smile, “I’ll use a smaller dose. Or maybe not.”

Overstimulation. (Fem!Reader)

The night had started slowly. Calm kisses, hands exploring patiently, and tender whispers exchanged under the soft light that entered through the mansion’s windows. Diluc was always meticulous with everything he did, and with you it was no different. He made love like someone who appreciates a rare wine — slowly, savoring your every reaction, every sigh.

But that night, there was something more. A glint in his eyes, something hungry, that made your entire body react even before the first most intimate touch. He wanted more — and he wanted you to feel more.

Your eyes met his for a moment, and all you could do was nod, already feeling the heat begin to pulse in your belly. Diluc smiled — not that gentle smile of his usual, but a slower one, full of dangerous promises.

The sheets were rumpled beneath you, your hair spread across the pillow as he settled himself between your legs again. You had already gotten there — not once, but twice. Your body was trembling, sensitive, a little fragile under the touch of his hands… but still hungry.

“Look how wet you still are for me,” He whispered, sliding two fingers inside you, slowly, almost reverently. You gasped, your body reacting with small spasms, as if you were on edge — and you were.

“Diluc…” Your voice was broken, pleading, but he just smiled and lay back down between your thighs. The first touches of his tongue were almost unbearable. Your skin reacted with small tremors, the pleasure coming fast, too aggressive, as if every nerve was screaming with the accumulated intensity. You tried to close your legs, instinctively, but he held them firmly.

“Don’t run away now, my dear,” He said in an almost serious tone, looking at you with his red eyes burning with desire. “You can handle it. I know you can.”

And he went back to licking, slow and deep, exploring you with the precision that only he had. His hands held your thighs open, pinning you to the bed as if he wouldn’t let you escape for even a second. Your head threw back on the pillow, moans escaping loudly, uninhibited, because you could no longer control anything.

It was too much. Everything was too much. His mouth, the heat, the perfect and cruel rhythm, the feeling of being consumed entirely. Your entire body trembled, and when the orgasm arrived — a third, overwhelming one — he didn’t even give you time to breathe.

“Diluc, please… I… I can’t take it…” You whimpered, almost sobbing, your body contracting as if you were running away and searching for more at the same time.

“Of course you can,” He murmured, his fingers now replacing his mouth. Two firm fingers, thrusting in and out of you at a torturous pace, while his other hand caressed your clit with soft, rhythmic circular strokes. “You’re so good for me… you always give me everything.”

You whimpered fearlessly, shamelessly — your moans mixing with disjointed words, your eyes watering. Each wave of pleasure was more intense than the last, each one stealing a piece of your air, your strength. And yet… you didn’t want him to stop.

Diluc was visibly aroused by your surrender. His eyes were glued to your body, to the way you trembled and moaned and begged. He climbed on top of you, pressing your body against his, and aligned himself with your entrance again — hot, hard, hungry.

“One more,” He whispered against your mouth, his lips crashing to yours in a searing kiss. “Just one more for me, love…” And when he entered you, everything went blank for a second. Your body, which already seemed about to collapse. He moved with force, with need, each thrust deep and accurate. The sound of your bodies colliding filled the room, his moans mixing with yours as he held your face, his eyes fixed on yours.

Your entire body exploded in pleasure once more, with such intensity that tears escaped your eyes. You moaned loudly, your whole body arching, your hands gripping the sheets as if you were going to come undone.

Diluc hugged you tightly, burying his face in your neck when he came too, with a hoarse moan. His body shuddered against yours, and then everything was quiet for a moment — just your hearts beating fast, your breathless, sweaty, and exhausted.

He kissed your forehead gently, running his fingers through your heat-soaked hair.

You smiled against his chest, your body still trembling, but completely sated.

Dottore

Sleepy sex. (Fem!Reader)

The lab finally fell silent. Vials still pulsed with faint blue glows, remnants of some unstable mixture he had decided to leave for the next day. For the first time in hours — maybe days — Dottore was without his mask and his impenetrable posture. Just a man with heavy eyes and slow breathing, slumped on the couch in the next room, his shirt half open and his hair still a little messy from the last time he ran his hands through it.

You approach him silently. He knows it’s you even before he opens his eyes, and he murmurs something hoarse, low, almost swallowed by fatigue.

“You should be sleeping…” But his arms open anyway, as if his body were defying its own order.

When you lie down next to him, he immediately pulls you onto his lap, burying his face in your neck as if he were trying to hide from the world. There’s something curious there — he seems more fragile than you’re used to seeing. The defenses that always make him so hard to read were now slowly melting away in the heat of your skin.

“You calm me down.” He confesses softly, between warm kisses on your shoulder. His voice is still slurred, half-sleepy, but the desire… that was already starting to boil beneath the surface. His hands slide down your thighs more slowly than usual, as if he were too lazy to let go of his control — but also without the slightest desire to resist you. Each touch of his is a little more needy than technical. You see him without any armor, and yet so sure of himself, even tired.

Your lips meet slowly. It’s a lazy, slurred kiss… but full of that typical Dottore intensity. He murmurs against your mouth:

“Do you want this now?” And when you respond with a whispered yes, he sighs as if he already knows. “Of course you do. You always know how to make me weak…”

The excitement grows between kisses and touches exchanged in silence, almost respecting the tiredness that weighs on both bodies. Still, there is something delicious in losing yourself like this — in bodies intertwined without haste, in moans muffled by the pillow, in panting breaths that mix.

Dottore’s surrendered more than ever. With half-open eyes, he observes your every reaction, even as he moans softly as he feels you mount him with the calm of someone who knows all the shortcuts to your pleasure. His hands hold your hips, sometimes tightly, sometimes just caressing you with his fingertips, as if he wanted to prolong that moment as much as possible.

You move your hips slowly, feeling every inch of him, feeling how his body trembles beneath yours.

“You’re driving me crazy…” He says, his voice deep and broken.

“Then go crazy with me.” You reply. And he does exactly that.

There, between the rumpled sheets and the drowsy smell of experiments and desire, Dottore lets himself go. Cumming with you on top of him is almost cathartic, as if his own body were thanking you for letting him come undone like that — tired, vulnerable, but satisfied.

Then, he keeps you there, lying on his chest, fingers drawing circles on your spine. The drowsiness is now real, deep… but in the midst of the torpor, he still says with an almost choked voice:

“You are the only experiment I never want to end.”

Kaeya Alberich

You being on top. (Fem!Reader)

He loves to tease. You know that. Just look at him, with that crooked smile and his blue eyes sparkling with mischief. But behind the sharp words and calculated charm, there is something else — something that only you know.

It is the Kaeya who moans softly when you hold his chin firmly and tell him to stay still and obey. It is the Kaeya who shudders when you push him against the bed and ride him at your own pace, making sure to control every moan, every sigh, every tremor of his body.

“Are you that sensitive already?” You ask, feigning innocence as you move over him, slowly burying his cock deep inside you, staying there for a few seconds, grinding your hips against his, before starting the movements all again. He bites his lip, his eyes moist with pleasure — that pleasure that burns in his chest, that almost hurts because it feels so good.

“You’re going to kill me, love… I can’t take it—”

“Yes, you will. You’ll take it because I want you to.” And he obeys. Always.

He loves seeing you on top — literally and emotionally. He loves when you hold his wrists against the mattress and straddle him with a sweet, dangerous smile on your lips. He loves feeling his entire body begging for release, while you deny it, only to see him begging for more.

“Touch me… Please, just a little—” His voice breaks, choking, and he turns his face away, ashamed of his own weakness. But you hold his chin, forcing him to look you in the eyes. “Or else… At least let me touch you…” His hands struggle against yours, winning and lifting one of them to touch your breast, squeezing it devotedly. You pull his hand away, preventing him from touching your body under the threat that you wouldn’t let him cum if he did.

“Look how beautiful you are like this… Whimpering and almost crying just because I’m giving you pleasure in my own way.” The moan that escapes him is almost a sob. A muffled sound, drenched in emotion and desire. You don't need to do anything else — just exist, and he's already surrendered.

“Can I?” He bit his lip, trying to hold your hips only to have you slap his hands away.

“Can you what? Use your words, Alberich.” Heavens, iit was so good to see him like this, escaping his dominant and sharp personality.

“C-Can I cum? I'm so close, p-please…” Your movements became faster and your own hands guided his so that one of them stimulated your clit while the other squeezed one of your breasts, teasing your nipple every now and then. That was your way of saying — without words — that he could cum. And he did, becoming a whimpering mess under you.

“Remind me to tease you more often if you're going to treat me like this.” He murmured, before pulling you off of him so that you two could switch positions. “Now I need some revenge, right?”

Bondage. (Fem!Reader)

You were there, your wrists tied above your head, your back against the mattress, your body exposed and heated by his voice. Kaeya was an expert at seduction, but with you… he sometimes left a little teasing aside, just to show how much he knew what he was doing.

“Don’t worry, love,” He whispered, adjusting the tie on your wrists with surprising care. “If you want me to stop, just say so. But something tells me you won’t.”

The fabric he used to restrain you was soft, allowing it to be firm enough to impede most of your movements. His kisses spread like slow fire — down your neck, against your collarbone, across the curve of your breasts. Your eyes returned to his for a second, and Kaeya gave you that mischievous and affectionate smile, his fingers sliding between your legs, teasing you just enough to make you gasp.

“Look at you… You’re already so ready, and I barely touched you.” His fingers penetrated your folds, curving to reach your g-spot with ease and mastery. It was almost as if he had memorized your body: every curve, every sensitive spot. Teasing was a game he mastered.

Then he bent down and devoured you with his mouth while his fingers didn't stop their movements. His tongue lapped at you with a precision that made you writhe, tied up, completely helpless in the face of the pleasure he administered with dedication.

"Stay still for me, darling," He murmured against your sex, his dark blue eyes fixed on yours. "Let me take care of everything." And you let him.

The world was reduced to his hands, his mouth, the weight of his body on yours. He made you ask — not beg, because he knew the difference. He wanted to see you surrendered, but with pride, surrendered to him because you trusted him, not because you were forced. And that made him crazy with desire.

When he finally entered you, your moans mingled with his, muffled by deep kisses. The thrusts were firm, constant, followed by sweet and dirty words in equal measure.

"Just like that… You're mine, all mine. I'm going to remind you of that every time you cum around me." And you both came, strong and overwhelming, the waves of pleasure washing over your bodies. He released you afterwards, with gentle hands, worried eyes, covering you with kisses and caresses.

"Did I tie you up too tightly?" He asked, caressing your cheek affectionately.

"No, I like it when you do that." You kissed the corner of his mouth. "Can we go again?"

"Always."

Aphrodisiacs. (Fem!Reader)

You didn’t know exactly what he had put in that wine — but you knew he wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want. Kaeya was a tease, but he loved you. He loved the way you trusted him even when your eyes were clouded with desire, even when your body trembled for more.

“Just a touch of something special,” He whispered against your lips, holding the glass that was still between his fingers. “Something to... ignite what’s already burning.”

The drink tasted sweet, almost fruity, but the effect was immediate: your skin tingled, every heartbeat seemed to echo between your legs, and Kaeya’s presence, with his scent, his smile, and his cool fingers against your warm skin, became unbearably addictive.

He noticed the effect, of course he did. He sat behind you, pulling you onto his lap calmly, his chest against your back, his hands traveling over your body, mapping it with care and intention.

“It’s hot, hm? It’s the aphrodisiac... But it’s also me.” He chuckled softly, kissing the side of your neck. “Your body knows who it wants.”

You moaned softly when his hands reached your breasts, squeezing them gently, his thumbs playing with your nipples through your thin clothing. Your hips moved unintentionally, seeking friction, relief — and Kaeya guided you with pleasure.

“You’re sensitive... So beautiful like this. I could make you cum with a touch.”

He laid you down with all the care in the world, removing each piece of clothing with lingering kisses. His fingers stimulated your sex just enough to make you shiver, and he smiled, fascinated by the intensity of your reaction.

The aphrodisiac pulsed in your blood like fire, and Kaeya enjoyed every second — with patience, with precision, with desire. His touch was the final dose: you came with just his fingers and tongue, your entire body arching in response.

“That’s it...” He whispered, between kisses on your belly, moving up to your lips. “I want to make you come like this again and again.” And he really did.

With his body pressed against yours, his eyes fixed on yours, Kaeya penetrated you slowly, moaning with the pleasure of being inside you — and feeling how hot, tight, desperate you were. You scratched his back, and he moaned back, asking for more.

“It’s my fault,” He murmured with a dirty smile. “I left you like this... and now I’m going to fix it.”

Overstimulation. (Fem!Reader)

He had already made you cum once. Then twice. And now your body felt like it was about to collapse under his every new touch.

“Kaeya… P-Please…” You moaned, your voice broken by the excess of pleasure, by the tremors that ran through your open legs, still exposed to him.

But he didn’t stop.

His tongue moved slowly over your clit, as if savoring your every reaction, every involuntary spasm, every breathless sob that escaped your lips.

“You can still take more, can’t you?” He asked in a low voice, his lips wet with your essence, his eyes half-closed and hungry. “Your body is begging me even if your mouth says otherwise.”

You tried to close your legs, but his arms were firm, keeping them apart. Kaeya was gentle, but determined. The pleasure was already unbearable — and yet, you wanted more.

“You look so beautiful when you crumble like that,” He whispered, before lapping at you again more firmly, his fingers sliding inside you with ease, curling at the exact spot that made you gasp. Your back arched once more, the orgasm ripping through your body with force. He felt it and smiled, because he knew there was more to come.

“How many times can I make you cum before you pass out in my arms?” He murmured against your skin, kissing your inner thigh, his fingers still inside you, moving slowly, as if he was testing the limits of your sensitivity.

You whimpered, struggling weakly, your body already too sensitive, your clit throbbing, your mind clouded by so much pleasure.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” He whispered, moving up to your lips and kissing you tenderly. “You’re doing so well...” Kaeya entered you slowly, feeling how you trembled, how your body pulsed around him, completely surrendered. He moaned against your mouth, pleasure consuming him too.

“Let me take you to the edge… Just one more time.” He asked, his voice choking with desire and affection. “I’ll take care of you later, I promise.”

And you let him. Because there, even in the midst of the chaos of absolute pleasure, Kaeya was your safe haven — even when he made you forget your own name with yet another orgasm that made you see stars.

Kamisato Ayato

Bondage. (Fem!Reader)

You had lost count of how many times Ayato had told you that he loved seeing you surrendered to him. But there was something in the way he said it — with that serene smile, his clear eyes fixed on yours — that made everything inside you warm. With him, even submission was wrapped in elegance and reverence. And that night, the touch of the silk tying your wrists only confirmed that.

The softness of the sheets contrasted with the gentle tension of the ribbons that held your arms above your head, firmly on the back of the bed. Your legs, equally spread and immobilized with delicacy, made you feel vulnerable... and deeply desired.

Ayato was kneeling between your legs, impeccable even in that intimate moment. No part of him seemed out of control — everything was calculated, refined, even the way he ran his fingers through the ties to check if they were tight enough without hurting your skin.

“You trust me, don’t you?” He asked softly, leaning down to kiss your forehead, then your lips sweetly.

“Of course I do.” You replied, your voice trembling with anticipation.

“Good girl.” He whispered with a crooked smile that made your stomach turn. “Then let me guide you tonight.” His hands were as gentle as they were firm. He began exploring your skin with light touches, trailing his fingers along the curves of your body, slowly moving downward. He kissed each spot patiently, with a silent adoration that made your skin shiver from head to toe. And then he stopped, observing your bound body as if it were the most precious of works of art.

“You look so beautiful like this... exposed just for me.” He said in a low tone, almost like a prayer. “Every sigh you take, every shiver... it’s all mine.”

You gasped as you felt the tip of his tongue slide down your belly, rising to the base of your breasts, where he stopped to nibble lightly. The restraints made it impossible for you to try to squirm, and that only made each touch intensify. You were surrendered, and he knew it.

Ayato brought his fingers to your intimacy, touching slowly, exploratively. Your hips moved, an involuntary reaction to the growing pleasure, but he held you firmly.

And with that, he bent down, his tongue taking the place of his fingers. Ayato’s tongue was a precision weapon. He knew exactly where to lick, where to suck, when to speed up and when to stop just to watch you writhe, begging for more.

The tension of the tapes on your wrists made each sensation even more vivid. Your senses were heightened, your body reacting to each stimulus as if it were the first. Your moans became pleas, and when the first orgasm came, you practically cried out in pleasure, trembling under his touch.

He climbed up your body, his chest pressed against yours, his eyes staring into yours with a glow that was both hungry and calm at the same time.

"You're not done yet," He whispered, his lips almost touching yours. "Not until I say so."

And then he positioned himself and penetrated you slowly, with an almost cruel slowness. You were so sensitive that the simple act of feeling him inside you drew a loud moan. He moved firmly, controlling each thrust, watching every expression on your face, as if memorizing every nuance of yours.

The silk ribbons held your arms in place, and that only intensified everything. You couldn't touch him, couldn't pull him closer, only feel — and obey.

“You’re mine.” He whispered, his breath hot against your ear. “So obedient, so perfect for me…” The climax came again, even stronger, making your vision blur for seconds. Your entire body trembled, sweat stuck the strands of hair to your forehead, and all you could do was call his name, as if it were all that mattered in the world.

And when he finally came undone on top of you, with a low, satisfied groan, Ayato wrapped his arms around you, whispering praises, loosening each bond with affection. His kisses were now tender, and he murmured between one touch and another:

“You were wonderful... as always.”

Aphrodisiacs. (Fem!Reader)

The evening began with a treat. Ayato appeared with a small, ornate wooden box adorned with the Yashiro Commission seal and a delicate silver-blue bow. He handed it to you with a restrained smile, but his eyes — always so serene — gleamed with something more mischievous.

“A special Sumeru delicacy.” He explained, sitting down next to you. “Sweets made from the nectar of a flower called the Nilotpala Lotus. They are known for their… stimulating properties.” You looked at him with a mix of curiosity and amused trepidation.

“Stimulating how?” Ayato smiled, taking one of the small candies with graceful fingers and bringing it to your mouth.

“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Your distrust didn’t last long. You always trusted him — and besides, the scent emanating from the little box was sweet, delicate, and enveloping, like jasmine with a hint of honey. When you bit into the first sweet, a warm wave ran through your body. It wasn’t just the taste — melting on your tongue like silk — but the sensation that was slowly spreading through your limbs. Heat. Sensitivity. A silent awakening in every spot of your skin. Ayato watched, enchanted by every expression that took over your face.

“It’s starting to take effect, isn’t it?”

You nodded, taking a deep breath.

“It’s like… my body is more alive.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

He moved closer, his fingers gliding along your bare thigh with reverence. The contact made you hold your breath — a simple touch sending shivers that seemed to run down your spine. Ayato smiled with silent pleasure, as if appreciating the fruits of a carefully laid plan.

“You’re so sensitive… so receptive.” His lips touched your collarbone, then your neck. “Every part of you is begging for attention.”

Gently, he laid you down on the sheets, pulling the fabric of your robe with slowness. The cool air against your exposed skin contrasted with the heat building inside. Ayato took his time — he explored every inch of you with kisses and caresses that set you on fire. He knew your body like no one else and seemed determined to enjoy every second.

When his mouth found the curve between your legs, you gasped. His tongue was patient, meticulous, eliciting reactions heightened by the sweets. It was as if his every touch was magnified tenfold — and you couldn’t escape the sensation.

“Ayato—!” You moaned, your hands gripping the sheets.

“Yes,” He murmured between kisses, “I want you to say my name like that. I need to hear you come undone for me.” His fingers gripped your thigh more firmly, preventing any movement. Each lick was a delicious torture, each pause a subtle punishment. You felt the muscles in your stomach contract, the heat between your legs growing until it became unbearable.

“Please... more...”

“More?” He teased, looking up with that calm smile. “But I’ve barely begun.” When he finally entered you, with the same careful rhythm, your bodies fit together as they always did — perfectly. But now, with the aphrodisiac coursing through your veins, it was all too much. Too intense. Too pleasurable. Each thrust was deep, calculated, and you whimpered in pleasure, completely surrendered to this man who never lost control — except when he wanted to make you lose yours.

“You’re so beautiful like this... all surrendered, all mine.” He whispered against your ear, the sound of his voice like velvet on your skin.

Your orgasms came in waves, shaking your body with force and he was there, steady, attentive, guiding you through it all, as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world. In the end, he held you against his chest, running his fingers through your sweat-dampened hair.

“Maybe we should bring more of those sweets home.” He whispered. “Or maybe… you only react like that to me.”

Overstimulation. (Fem!Reader)

The night was silent inside the Kamisato residence, and the intimacy of Ayato’s room seemed separated from the rest of the world. Candles in thin holders cast soft shadows on the walls, and the light scent of sakura petals invaded the room through the half-open window. You knew him well — every subtle expression, every restrained gesture. And you knew exactly how to make him lose that control.

Ayato lay on his back on the futon, his hair slightly messed up by the silk pillow. The blue yukata he wore was loose, his chest partially exposed, rising and falling with his already irregular breathing.

“Are you comfortable?” You asked, your voice soft as you caressed his abdomen with your fingertips.

“Yes,” He replied, his tone low, almost a whisper. “But you… are playing a dangerous game, my dear.” You smiled, leaning in to kiss his collarbone.

“Maybe I am.” Your fingers slowly moved down, tracing the length of his cock before wrapping your hand around it with precision. The moan that escaped Ayato’s lips was suppressed, but you felt his body shudder.You started slow, almost lazy, and his eyes closed as his hips lifted, seeking more.

Your tongue collected the pre-cum that leaked from the tip of his cock, tasting it before taking his length into your mouth, sucking just the tip before sucking him completely — the head of his cock hitting your throat and making you choke on sinful sounds.

“You’re already so sensitive…” You murmured, watching his skin react, his entire body arch in response.

“You… always know how to disarm me, don’t you?” He said with a crooked smile, trying to maintain his composure even though his toes were already twitching.

The first time he came was quick: he’d been on edge since the very first touch of you — hot spurts of cum hitting your throat, and you drank all of him with need. But you didn’t stop. You continued to stimulate him, now with slower, delicately torturous movements from your hand, that stroked his cock with devotion. Ayato gasped, his neck and back arching.

“Wait… ah! You’re teasing me—”

“I’m taking care of you.” You whispered, caressing the side of his face. “You always take care of everyone and everything. Now it’s your turn to surrender, Ayato.”

The second time came with more difficulty. He groaned your name, his hips shaking as the pleasure coursed through him again, this time more intense, more desperate. His eyes were watering, and you leaned in to kiss away the silent tears that trickled from the corners of his eyes.

“You’re doing so well,” You praised, and he shivered all over at the compliment whispered in his ear. “So beautiful, so obedient.” Ayato smiled, his lips trembling, his cheeks flushed. “You’re cruel, love…” You just laughed softly.

“Cruel? Never. I am devoted. To your pleasure, at least.” And when he reached his third orgasm — shaking, sobbing, completely lost in the touch, in the words, in the suffocating intimacy of that room — you wrapped your arms around him, kissing his forehead tenderly.

“You were perfect,” You whispered, stroking his hair as he caught his breath. Ayato smiled, tired, satisfied.

“I love you.” He murmured against your neck.

“And I love seeing you like this… All mine.”

Ningguang

Exhibitionism. (GN!Reader)

It was night in Liyue, and the high moon was shedding its silvery light over the rooftops of the Jade Chamber, making everything even more luxurious and enchanting. You were there, alone with her, after a long day. Ningguang, as always, maintained her impeccable posture, sitting elegantly on the divan in the center of the hall with large windows, which offered a full view of the city below.

"Close the door." She said, her voice like silk, low and sure. "And stay where you are. Don't come any closer yet."

You obeyed, not understanding at first, but soon your eyes fixed on the way she stood up. The soft light illuminated her contours as she slowly dropped the white robe she was wearing, revealing the scarlet lingerie, convenient, tailored. It was delicate, lacy, with small provocative slits on the sides. She turned to the side, purposefully, knowing exactly how the curve of her waist and hips would steal your attention.

“I spend my days being admired by everyone. Desirous glances, restrained suggestions. But tonight,” She walked to the glass windows and stood there, facing the city, “Only you will see me like this... and only you will be able to touch me... When I allow it.”

The position was daring. Anyone with a well-positioned around that building could, in theory, see that enchanting silhouette through the windows. But Ningguang didn’t seem worried. She was in complete control of the situation — and you knew she wanted it that way.

She glanced over her shoulder, her red lipstick contrasting with her pale skin and her steady gaze.

“You like seeing me like this, don’t you?” You nodded, your breath catching in your throat.

Then, with calculated slowness, she reached for the clasp of her bra and unclasped it, letting the garment slide off her shoulders. Her exposed breasts were exposed under the moonlight, and the view was as mesmerizing as it was forbidden. She didn’t cover anything, showing herself with all the naturalness of someone who controls her own desires — and those of others.

“You’re so quiet…” She teased. “Did the image of me undressing for you in front of all of Liyue leave you speechless?” Her hands then went down her own thighs, until she reached her panties. She didn’t take them off right away. She just moved them a little to the side, revealing just enough to drive you crazy with desire. Her fingers slid there, and an almost silent moan escaped her lips. She touched herself in front of you, slowly, with evident pleasure. “Stay there. And just look. I want you to learn... that my lust is a gift I grant you.”

Little by little, her body began to move more rhythmically, her hips undulating slightly against her hand, her moans becoming more frequent, although muffled by her ladylike composure. She arched her back against the glass, knowing that this accentuated every curve, every tremor, every breath.

You wanted to touch her. You wanted to be part of it, but she hadn’t let you yet. Then she stopped all stimulation abruptly, earning a curious look from you. She turned slowly, her hair fanning out over her bare back as her gaze met yours — steady, warm, with a glow of victory.

“Come.” She said, holding out a hand. “You’ve endured my teasing well. Now you can worship me up close.”

Scaramouche (Wanderer)

BDSM, brat-taming. (AFAB!Reader)

You teased him. You knew exactly what you were doing — every defiant look, every insolent retort, every cheeky smile. You knew Scaramouche wouldn’t let you off the hook. And that was exactly what you wanted.

He sat cross-legged, watching you with feigned boredom and a sharp glint in his eyes. The silence was thick in the room, until he leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, and spoke in a low, harsh voice:

“Say one more word in that tone, and I’ll make you regret every syllable.” You smiled. Sweet, defiant.

“What if I want to be punished?” It was too fast. In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet. You barely had time to step back before you were gently pushed back against the bed, your body restrained firmly. His fingers gripped your chin, forcing you to look at him.

“You don’t want punishment. You want attention. And you’re begging for it in the most childish way possible.” He growled. “But I’ll give you what you want. Only my way.” He tied you up with leather handcuffs attached to the corners of the bed. There was no rush. He made sure to maintain control over every movement, every touch. The straps tightened just right — security and submission. You bit your lip, already feeling the heat building between your legs, and he laughed mockingly.

“Look how you look just being restrained... so easy to read. So predictable.” He leaned down to your ear, his voice a whisper full of promise. “And you love it. You love challenging me just so I can bend you.” Scaramouche then slowly removed his blouse, letting you watch — like a small visual punishment. Without being able to touch, without even being able to brush your fingertips. He came closer again, his eyes sparkling, his fingers tracing your exposed body with a sharp caress.

“You’re going to beg today, you know?” He said, his hand squeezing your thigh firmly. “And I won’t give in until I hear you ask for it. No smiles. No sarcasm. Just you, little brat, surrendering.” You shivered under his touch, feeling his power wrap around you like an invisible chain. And for the first time that night, you were speechless. He smiled. A victorious smile, dark, hungry. “Good, you finally understand who’s in control here.”

Scaramouche pulled away just enough to let you feel the emptiness of his absence. The handcuffs forced you to stay exactly where he wanted you — exposed, vulnerable, irritatingly aware of your own arousal. His gaze slid over you like a cruel caress, and the smile that formed on his lips promised no relief, only torment.

“Did you really think you’d get what you wanted that easily?” He knelt between your legs, his fingertips sliding along the inside of your thigh but never reaching where you needed him most. “Not after all that petulance.” He leaned in, his lips brushing your skin — a touch that was almost chaste, almost pitiful. Almost. You arched your hips, desperate for more, but he pressed his hands against your thighs, keeping you still.

“Tsk.” His tongue ran a lazy path, too hot and too light at the same time. “So sensitive... Already shaking from that? And you think you’re strong.” You moaned softly, trying to press yourself against him, but the chains wouldn’t let you. And he smiled, cruel and calm.

“Not until you ask. Not with the boldness from before. I want your real voice. I want your surrender.” He then brought his hand between your legs, running his fingers over your sex without actually touching. Just the heat of the contact hovering there, making you cry out in frustration. Your body begged, throbbed, but he just watched. “Do you really think you’re going to cum before I let you?” He laughed, soft, contempt slipping through every syllable.

“You have no control here. I’m the one who decides when and if you deserve it.” Then he went down again, with his tongue, his fingers. The pleasure flared like fire. You arched, trembling, almost reaching… And he stopped. Nothing. Cold, suddenly. You gasped, desperate.

“N-no… please, Scara, don’t do this—” He looked at you, and his gaze was pure dominance.

“You’re going to beg for real. You’re going to moan my name and call me master in that sweet little voice. Or you’re going to spend the whole night like this — trembling, wet, and empty.” His finger came back, teasing. Another slow kiss, a warm breath. But it was all superficial. Punishment disguised as affection. And you were already starting to give in. You bit your lip, fighting back the tears that threatened to fall. Your entire body ached with need, and yet he hovered there, cruel and serene, as if your suffering was entertainment.

Scaramouche tilted his face, his eyes narrowed in pure delight as he watched you squirm.

“Almost, aren’t you? That cheeky little mouth has lost its power. Where did all that teasing go, hm?”

His fingers slid in again, this time touching exactly where you wanted it most — but only for a second. A warm, lingering touch and then emptiness again. You gasped, sobbing, your hips trying to follow the absent touch.

“P-Please…”

“Please what?” He murmured, with a satisfied smile. You hesitated, pride throbbing in your chest. But it was useless. You were already defeated.

“Master…” The word escaped in a broken voice. “Please, master… let me cum. I need…”

“Ah…” He sighed with pleasure, as if those words were sweeter than any moan. “Now my little brat knows how to behave.”

He returned with his fingers, his mouth, his body — all at once, without mercy. The touches came fast, intense, too skillful to resist. You moaned loudly, feeling the orgasm build up like a colossal wave. The tension made you tremble, the pleasure bordering on unbearable.

“Cum for me. Now.” He ordered, his voice low and hoarse. “Show me who you belong to.” And you broke: your body buckled, the chains rattling with the force of your climax. A hoarse cry escaped your lips, his name lost between sobs and moans. He held you tightly, whispering praise, guiding each spasm of your body.

“Look at you… So beautiful, begging and cumming like this, all mine…” When the tremor passed, you could barely breathe. But his smile said he wasn’t done with you yet. “Now that you’ve learned your lesson… let’s see how many more times you can obey.”

Wriothesley

Breeding kink, praise kink. (Fem!Reader)

There’s something about the way Wriothesley watches you that goes beyond lust. It’s control, care, and such a genuine desire to see you rendition to him — completely vulnerable — that makes it impossible not to surrender to him.

When he praises you, his voice is low, gravelly, almost a whisper as he explores your body with caresses, touches, and kisses. His cock brushes against the folds of your sex, which is crying out to receive him after so much teasing, but penetration doesn’t happen — he continues using the tip of his cock to stimulate your hard, swollen clit, occasionally putting just the tip inside you, but never penetrating you completely. Your sanity was running out. You needed him, you needed him to fill you, stretch you, mark you as his.

“Wriothesley… please!” You moaned in frustration, your hands gripping his biceps, your nails digging into the skin. “Fuck me already.”

“Patience… Didn’t you say you’d be a good girl for me?” His words silenced your desperation — you wanted his approval, his praise — even if it meant your frustration would only grow. You nodded, biting your lip and leaning your head back against the pillow as you felt your orgasm approaching. It was almost strange how just the act of grinding against each other could completely break you. More moans left your lips and he smiled.

“You’re perfect.” He murmured, thrusting into you without warning, reaching the deepest point inside you in seconds. That was enough to make you cum, your walls contracting against his cock, milking him. “Fuck, always so tight… and so warm…” He pulled you into an urgent kiss, his orgasm approaching as well.

“Cum inside me…” You begged against his lips, your nails scratching his back, your body jerking against the sheets with every thrust of his hips. “Please, I’ve been a good girl.”

“You look so beautiful like this, begging for me… Your body knows you belong to me, can you feel it too? It’s begging me to fill you completely, to plant my seed in your womb.”

“I…” You could barely speak, a second orgasm quickly approaching. “I want to feel you stay in me for hours, I want to feel you dripping out of me just so you can fill me up again.”

“So tight, s-so hot…” He bit his lip, his words failing and his eyebrows furrowing, a clear sign that he was about to cum. And he did: hot and deep. Spurt after spurt of his seed invaded your womb, marking you completely as his. “Good girl... My girl. So obedient, so perfect, so… mine.”

Zhongli

Edging, use of vibrators. (Fem!Reader)

The room was calm, silent, as if the world had stopped to watch you both. Zhongli always treated pleasure with reverence, as an art that required patience, study and devotion.

You were lying between the silk sheets, your body already covered in a thin layer of sweat, the sheets messy beneath you. Your legs trembled slightly, and your breathing came in ragged pants. The vibrator in your intimacy vibrated in a soft, continuous rhythm — but never enough.

Zhongli was beside you, on his knees, his golden eyes fixed on each of your reactions. His expression was calm, almost solemn. As if he were praying with his eyes, adoring each sigh that left your lips.

"You're doing so well, darling." He murmured, his voice deep and calm, almost a whisper that touched your core. "So sensitive... so obedient."

The vibrator was lightly pressed against your clitoris, and you gasped, your hips arching reflexively. But, as he had done before, he pulled the toy away before your climax. Again. Once more. You moaned in frustration, almost tearful, feeling your own essence drip down your thighs.

"Zhongli… Please…" Your voice was a raw, trembling plea. He smiled gently, caressing your face with his fingertips, as if you were made of porcelain.

"Patience, my dear. Pleasure must be built, polished… almost like a rare jewel." He slid the vibrator over you again, this time with a light circular motion, unhurriedly. "When I allow it, it will be the kind of pleasure that will completely break you. Isn't that what you want?"

You whimpered in response, feeling every inch of your body tremble under the touch of the toy and his words. The moans came low, almost desperate, your mind clouded between torment and ecstasy. And he watched, mesmerized by how beautiful you were as you lost control for him. And then he finally whispered those words against your ear.

“Come for me…” You knew you were lost — and at the same time, exactly where you wanted to be.

The permission came as a blessing, and you came hard, your body arching in pure bliss. The sounds that escaped your lips were hoarse, beautifully uncontrolled. And Zhongli didn’t look away for a second: he matched every spasm of your body with his firm hands on your thighs, keeping the vibrator gently pressed against your clit even as you shuddered in extreme sensitivity. You gasped, breathless, and yet… yet you wanted more.

“You look so lovely like this.” He murmured, tracing the contour of your belly with his fingertips. “So surrendered… So mine.”

You tried to push the toy away with trembling hands, but he held them easily, his fingers intertwined with yours. His gaze was calm, but there was a spark of raw desire burning behind the gold of his eyes.

“I’m not done with you yet.” And then he turned the vibrator back on — a lower intensity, but focused, insidious, teasing exactly where you were most vulnerable. You let out a sob of pleasure, your body convulsing in immediate response.

“Zhongli… It’s too much, I can’t—”

“Shh…” He leaned down, kissing your lips tenderly. “You can, I know you can. Trust me.”

He knew your body like he knew the stories of every era of Teyvat— deeply, with respect, with adoration. Every pause between moans, every quiver of your muscles, every new limit crossed was memorized by him — memorized with mastery, just like the stories he had once told you.

“You deserve every drop of this pleasure.” He whispered in your ear, as his cock finally replaced the vibrator. “And I will be here to guide you through it.” You whimpered — a beautiful, husky, indecent sound — as your second orgasm came fast, violently, stealing your breath, your strength. But he didn’t stop his thrusts, because Zhongli didn’t love in a hurry. He loved like a god who had all eternity to worship his favorite mortal.

Breeding kink, DD/LG and praise kink. (Fem!Reader)

The candles cast a soft amber light over the room, dancing over the contours of the antique furniture and heavy curtains. Zhongli was meticulous even in his intimate moments — everything around him seemed carefully prepared to make you feel adored. And it worked.

You lay between the silk sheets, your breath held as he knelt between your legs, his golden eyes fixed on yours with an intensity that made your entire body shiver.

He leaned forward, his hands firm on your thighs, spreading heat wherever he touched. “You’re perfect like this, you know that?” His voice was deep, sweet, enveloping like a balm. “So receptive, so mine… Just like the good little girl you are.” His kisses began softly, almost reverently, on your abdomen, then below your navel, until he was inside you again — slowly, deeply, filling you as if each movement meant more than just physical pleasure.

“Zhongli, please…” You whimpered, your hands finding their way to his back.

"You drive me crazy." He murmured against your neck, his thrusts deep and slow, his hips pressed against yours as if he wanted to merge the two of you into one body. "Every time I feel you like this, so hot, so tight... All I can think about is filling you to the last drop." Your moans were interrupted only by the words he whispered in your ear, between kisses and caresses that left your skin on fire.

"I’ve been thinking about fucking a baby into you…" Zhongli brushed his lips against your ear. “Every single day, every now and then, I catch myself thinking about knocking you up, making you round with my child, tying your soul to mine because of our heir…” His thrusts became more rapid, almost violent as he continued his monologue. “Would you like me to do so, my girl?” Your eyes widened — you suspected he had some kind of breeding kink, but having him finally admit it… it made your heart warm up in adoration.

“I’ll happily nurture your heir inside my womb.” You reassured him.

"You deserve to be praised, adored… You deserve to be filled with me, like the good girl you are." You felt him grip your waist, keeping you in place, as if he wanted to make sure you wouldn’t disappear. The pleasure was intense, pulsating — and he knew exactly how to handle every second of it. "Atta girl... Just like that, love, you're taking me so good.”

“Daddy… I’m…” That name slipped from your lips unintentionally, and you felt aroused by it. You had never called him that, even though you fulfilled the role of being his little girl. “I’m so close, please, daddy… Cum inside of me.”

When he finally reached his limit, his moan was muffled against your skin. His orgasm provoked yours: your cunt convulsing around his cock, milking every last drop of his cum out of him, the contractions of your walls helping his seed reach deep inside of you, invading your womb without warning.

The silence that followed the climax was thick and full of meaning. Zhongli didn’t pull away immediately — instead, he remained above you, his body still entwined with yours, his fingers slowly tracing your waist, as if he wanted to memorize every curve again.

Your breathing was irregular, your eyes half closed as you felt the heat of his body mixed with yours. There was still the sensation of his semen inside you, hot and abundant, as he had promised.

The kiss he placed on your forehead was slow, like a seal of care. Zhongli then pulled out of you calmly, carefully observing your reactions, as if any discomfort you felt was a crime he would never forgive himself for committing. He lowered his gaze to where your bodies separated, and the sight made him let out a heavy sigh — satisfied, possessive, enchanted. And even breathless, he still whispered with possessive caress:

“Look at you…” He murmured, his fingers tracing the inside of your thigh, where his cum dripped lazily. “So full of me…”

You moaned softly, shuddering at his touch, and Zhongli smiled. A small smile, but full of tenderness. He rested his forehead on yours, his nose lightly brushing against yours, before murmuring in the softest voice you had ever heard as his fingertips caressed the skin of your lower bell in an instinctive, protective way.

“You make me want a future.” He murmured, kissing the top of your head. “With you. With the two of you.”

521 notes · View notes

rafesbabygirlx · 2 days ago

Text

ONLINE LOVE | 𝙵𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗

𝚂𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚎𝚍𝚊𝚍!𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎 𝚡 𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝙰𝚄

✧ 𝙼𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃 | 𝙰𝚄 𝙼𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃 | 𝚃𝙰𝙶𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃

✧ Summary- Rafe Cameron used to avoid love, only having flings and never getting close to anyone. Now 27 and raising his 3-year-old daughter Harper alone, he wants something more, a real connection. Tired of being judged on the island, he tries Hinge and sets his location to the mainland. After days of no matches, he finds your profile and is instantly drawn to you.

✧ Prompt- for hingematch!rafe could you do one where hes been busy with his daughter and doesnt realise hes left her on delivered and she thinks hes ghosted her?

✧ Prompted here

It had been a month. A month of back and forth texting, FaceTime calls, and learning more about each other. Rafe surprisingly opened up about a lot to you, other than the fact that he had his daughter. He still didn’t know how to bring this up. Now worried it would ruin everything.

You had off today so you and Rafe had spent all night on the phone. You had fallen asleep first so when you woke up you wanted to make it a point to text him.

9:29am: Hi, how pathetic am I fallen asleep on you like that?

9:30am: My first year residency is kicking my ass, I’m shocked that I even stayed up as late as I did.

9:31am: I’m free all day today, finally have a day off, so don’t be shy in texting me! 🥰

9:44am: I’m sure you’re at work and busy. Like I said I’m free all day. I just can’t wait to hear your voice again.

You hadn’t mean to sound desperate. This past month you and Rafe had been on top getting back to each other the second with of you had texted. You had both shared your schedules, you knew when he’d be in meetings and he knew when you’d be working at your internship. The second either was over, one of you was immediately sending a text. Unless there was an emergency meeting he got pulled in to, this was a bit of a strange break in the pattern.

You busied yourself as best as you could. You made yourself a nice breakfast, something you barely get to do anymore. Then, you caught up on some of your tv shows and when they were done you began a new book. You took a full pamper shower, cleaned up your nails, did your hair routine, your skincare, and applied some makeup.

It had been 4 hours and when you finally picked back up your phone it was still radio silence from Rafe. You let out a sigh of defeat. Mind racing that something that seemed so precious could already be over. He hadn’t even read the texts. You don’t mean to jump to conclusions, but no matter how well this seemed to be going, he was only just an online dating match who ended up living 5 hours away from you.

On the other side of North Carolina, Rafe was a mess. Harper had claimed she had a stomach ache and refused to go to school, meanwhile he caught the toddler in the pantry sneaking cookies and gummies 3 times this morning. He told her the only thing she was allowed to do was lay in bed and get rest if she was that sick. This lead to full blown tantrums and Rafe wanting to pull out the short hair of his buzzcut.

Between Harper fighting him all morning and having to rearrange his business schedule, this glued Rafe to his office desk. His personal phone was forgotten on his nightstand and he didn’t get a chance to think about it. He left the office door open, which gave him a perfect view of Harper’s and the hundreds of times he caught her sneaking out of it.

“Harper get back here!”

“No daddy, I want more snacks.”

“You said your tummy hurt, were you lying to me?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to daddy, Harper.”

“Yes.”

Harper bowed her head in defeat. A cute way of defeat only a 3 year old could get away with. This caused Rafe to kneel in front of his daughter, lifting her chin delicately with his fingers.

“Why’d you lie Harper?”

“I don’t like school, I wanted to be with you. You mwake me safe.”

“Why would you need me to keep you safe baby?”

“Cause kids are mean and I don’t like ‘em.”

“Oh baby, I’m sorry. How about this, we spend the rest of the day doing anything you want? Snacks, movies, tea party. How’s that sound?”

Harper’s face lit up and she threw herself into her dad’s arms, wrapping hers around his neck and hugging him tightly.

“Yes daddy! Come!”

Rafe laughed as he allowed the toddler to drag him into the kitchen. She pulled out the tea set from the lower cabinet that was designated for all her stuff. Rafe put on some water to boil, then she went to pantry to pull out snacks she wanted for tea time.

They brought up everything to her room. Harper knew exactly how to set everything up. A setting for her, a setting for Rafe, and two other settings for her stuffed elephant and American Girl doll Sarah had gotten her.

They spent the entire day doing what Harper wanted. Rafe let his assistant know he would be unreachable as he just wanted to focus on his daughter. This was the first she brought up having problems at preschool. How the hell were 3 year olds already having issues. He got her to open up about it and it was 2 boys that would take her crayons and break them when she’d color or steal her gummies at lunch time.

Rafe took offense to that personally because he was always proud of himself for making her lunches every morning. But he quickly shook off the feeling of being pissed off at a 3 year old. Heloved being a dad and making Harper happy. He didn’t want to be sad or afraid to go to school. So to just do this little thing for her to see her smile, he was more than ok to do it.

When the time came around for Harper’s bedtime, he brushed through her now dried hair from the bath and tucked her into bed.

“You’re gonna have to go to school tomorrow Princess. I know it’s scary, but you’re a tough girl, I’ll come in with you tomorrow and talk with your teachers. We’ll figure this out together. Ok?”

Harper gave a soft sigh and looked like she wanted to plead with her dad to not go in another day. “Ok. Ima tough girl.”

“That’s right. I love you little one.”

“I love you daddy.”

Rafe had given her one final kiss before making his way to his bedroom and plopping down onto his sheets. He had forgotten about his phone all day and had decided to pick it up. There were notifications from Sarah, Topper, Kelce and all the way at the bottom there were four missed messages from you.

He ran his hand over his face. He never missed a text from you. He always had Do Not Disturb on and you’ve been the only one this past month that could still get through to him. He was stuck on what to say. His entire day was spent making sure his daughter had been happy. His daughter, you had no idea about. What could he even say?

It was now 8:30 at night. You had just cleaned up the kitchen from cooking dinner earlier. Mind finally at ease from the doubt and wary feeling about being ignored. You knew you shouldn’t have gotten attached, no matter how good it felt. He probably found someone closer to him and forgot all about you. Online dating has never turned out great for you. This was just another disappointing failure.

You sat on the couch, trying to push aside your thoughts as you engulfed yourself in your favorite movie. Your phone is next to you laying face down. It was almost 9 and even with a relaxing day of doing what you loved you were already feeling tired again. You rested your head in the palm of your hand as you our eyes began to close, a ping from your phone shot them right back open.

Embarrassingly, you reached for it quicker than you’d like to admit. You look at the notification and see it’s Rafe. You hold back a smile, not ready for what it says.

8:55pm: Hi. I’m really sorry about today. From the second I woke up chaos was erupting at the office. I had to get up and ready and rush out the door. I completely forget my personal phone at home and just got back. I missed you today. 🩵

You let out a breath that you didn’t even realize you were holding and smile warmly at the message. You were scared of rejection and know he feels this way you reply instantly not caring how it makes you look anymore.

8:57PM: No need to apologize Mr. CEO. Some things are unpredictable, it’s easy to get caught up, I’m still here for you.

Rafe took a sigh of relief at your response. He didn’t want to ruin this. But the gnawing guilt of lying to you about Harper made him terrified of what was yet to come. You said you loved kids. But would you love him when you found out he had a daughter?

For now the only thing to do was to continue to talk to you. Learn more about you. Hopefully you would understand why he was doing what he was doing. It was to protect Harper. You’d understand, right?

Tags + some moots: @rafestoothbrush @weluvwbb @itsforeverandalwayz @butterfly-ibuki @megiiite @siredbtches @bigenergy777 @aupernatural-teenwolflover @rafegf-real @skywalker0809 @snowtargaryen @kieeslove @leather-n-velvet @avada-kedavra-bitch-187 @diasnohibng @slurpdew @alphabetically-deranged @whydoesthemirrorhateme @currentresidentinhell @slut-4-rafey @akobx @rafesheaven @laniirackssss @jjmaybankmylovee @slut4you @larema121 @tul1preads @wuluhwuhmaster @inthelibrarybtw @littlelamy @bellaballerina111 @pogueprincesa @daddyrafeslittleslut @nemesyaaa @papercranesandinkstains @frankoceanluvr11 @drewsephrry @zyafics @rafeysvenicebitch @rowdydevs @maybankslover @rafesgreasycurtainbangs

I think I have everyone tagged <3

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singhallelujahh · 21 hours ago

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This is super fascinating and, after reading through the study and the first part of Bleak House, I have a couple thoughts.

First, it sounds to me like the problematic readers were embarrassed when they couldn’t understand the text (which like fair lol). I wouldn’t be surprised if—like many a “gifted” kid who only started encountering challenges later in their schooling—they have internalized shame over not immediately getting something and therefore rarely ask for help when they’re struggling. Makes even more sense then that they’re relying on things like Sparknotes, where you can sorta get help without having to admit to anyone that you need it.

This is definitely a universal problem across subjects, not just confined to reading. As a physicist, I seriously struggled my first couple years of grad school because it was the first time classes were actually hard for me and I barely knew how to identify what I didn’t understand, let alone how to communicate that to a professor. Honestly, knowing how and when to ask for help is probably one of the most important skills I’ve learned (honestly still learning tbh) in grad school. Idk how to best teach those sorts of skills to a student before they’re actively struggling in a subject, but uh maybe we should look into that?

My second thought is that actually using the available resources to properly understand a challenging text (sentence by sentence) is a time consuming activity and I don’t think our current education system is particularly great at encouraging students to take the time they need to actually understand the things. Thinking back to some of my high school English classes, I often felt like I just wasn’t able to give books the time they actually deserved and so I ended up engaging in problematic reading behaviors like skimming and using Sparknotes and only focusing on main ideas. But when I started reading classic novels for fun (and took as much time as I wanted to read them), not only did I enjoy and understand them better, but I also found myself appreciating “small-scale” writing techniques more. I wonder if focusing on the quality of reading in English classes would be better than just maximizing the number of books covered in a year.

i appreciated this study: "They Can't Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills Of English Majors At Two Midwestern Universities"

essentially, a pair of professors set out to test their intuitive sense that students at the college level were struggling with complex text. they recruited 85 students, a mix of english majors and english education majors - so, theoretically, people focusing on literature, and people preparing to teach adolescents how to read literature - and had them read-while-summarizing the first seven paragraphs of dickens's bleak house (or as much as they made it through in the 20 minute session). they provided dictionaries and also said students could use their phones to look up whatever they wanted, including any unfamiliar words or references. they found that the majority of the students - 58%, or 49 out of the 85 students - functionally could not understand dickens at all, and only 5% - a mere 4 out of the 85 students - proved themselves proficient readers (leaving the remaining 38%, or 32 students, as what the study authors deemed "competent" students, most of whom could understand about half the literal meaning - pretty low bar for competence - although a few of whom, they note, did much better than the rest in this group if not quite well enough to be considered proficient).

what i really appreciated about this study was its qualitative descriptions of the challenges and reading behaviors of what the authors call "problematic readers" (that bottom 58%), which resonated strongly with my own experiences of students who struggle with reading. here's their blunt big picture overview of these 49 students:

The majority of these subjects could understand very little of Bleak House and did not have effective reading tactics. All had so much trouble comprehending concrete detail in consecutive clauses and phrases that they could not link the meaning of one sentence to the next. Although it was clear that these subjects did try to use various tactics while they read the passage, they were not able to use those tactics successfully. For example, 43 percent of the problematic readers tried to look up words they did not understand, but only five percent were able to look up the meaning of a word and place it back correctly into a sentence. The subjects frequently looked up a word they did not know, realized that they did not understand the sentence the word had come from, and skipped translating the sentence altogether.

the idea that they had so many trouble with every small piece of a text that they could not connect ideas on a sentence by sentence basis is very familiar to me from teaching and tutoring, as was the habit of thought seen in the example of the student who gloms on to the word "whiskers" in a sea of confusion and guesses incorrectly that a cat is present - struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next. so was this observation, building off the example of a student who misses the fact that dickens is being figurative when he imagines a megalodon stalking the streets of london:

She first guesses that the dinosaur is just “bones” and then is stuck stating that the bones are “waddling, um, all up the hill” because she can see that Dickens has the dinosaur moving. Because she cannot logically tie the ideas together, she just leaves her interpretation as is and goes on to the next sentence. Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them. In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results. Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech. Some could correctly identify a figure of speech, and even explain its use in a sentence, but correct responses were inconsistent and haphazard. None of the problematic readers showed any evidence that they could read recursively or fix previous errors in comprehension. They would stick to their reading tactics even if they were unhappy with the results.

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

like, i've said this before, but the year i taught third grade i had multiple students who told me they loved reading and then when i asked them about a book they were reading revealed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on - on a really basic literal level like "didn't know who said which lines of dialogue" and "couldn't identify which things or characters given pronouns referred to" - and were as best as i could tell sort of constructing their own story along the way using these little bits of things they thought they understood. that's what "reading" was, in their heads. and they were, in the curriculum/model that we used at the private school where i taught, receiving basically no support to clarify that that was not what reading was, nor any instruction that would actually help them with what they needed to do to improve (understand sentences) - and i realized over the course of that year that the master's program that had certified me in teaching elementary school had provided me with very little understanding of how to help these kids (with perhaps the sole exception of the class i took on communications disorders, not because these kids had communications disorders but because that was the only class where we ever talked, even briefly, about things like sentence structures that students may need instruction in and practice with to comprehend independently). when it comes to the literal, basic understanding of a text, the model of reading pedagogy i was taught has about 6 million little "tools" that all boil down to telling kids who functionally can't read to try harder to read. this is not productive, in my experience and opinion, for kids whose maximum effort persistently yields confusion. but things are so dysfunctional all the way up and down the ladder that you can be a senior in college majoring in english without anyone but a pair of professors with a strong work ethic noticing that you can't actually read.

couple other notes:

obviously it's a small study but i'm not sure i see a reason to believe these are particularly outlierish results (ACT scores - an imperfect metric but not a meritless one IMO for reading specifically, where the task mostly really is to read a set of texts written for the educated layperson and answer factual questions about them - were a little bit above the national average)

the study was published last year, but the research was conducted january to april 2015. so there's no pandemic influence, no AI issue - these are millennials who now would span roughly ages 28-32 (i guess it's possible one of the four first-year students was one of the very first members of gen z lol). if you're in your late 20s or early 30s, we are talking about people your age, and whatever the culprit is here, it was happening when you were in school.

i think some people might want to blame this on NCLB but i find this unconvincing for a variety of reasons. first of all, NCLB did not pass because everyone in 2001 agreed that education was super hunky-dory; in fact, the sold a story podcast outlines how an explicit goal of NCLB was to train teachers in systematic phonics instruction, because that was not the norm when NCLB was passed, and an unfortunate outcome was that phonics became politicized in ed world. second, anyone who understands anything about reading should need about ten minutes max to spend some time on standardized test prep and recognize that if your goal is truly to maximize scores... then the vast majority of your instructional time should be spent on improving actual reading skills because you actually can't meaningfully game these tests by "practicing main idea questions" (timothy shanahan addresses this briefly near the top of this post). so i find it very difficult to believe that any school that pivoted to multiple choice drill time in an attempt to boost reading scores was teaching reading effectively pre-NCLB, because no set of competent literacy professionals would think that would work even for the goal of raising test scores. third, NCLB mandated yearly testing in grades 3-8 but only one test year in high school; kansas set its reading and math test year in high school as tenth grade. so theoretically these kids all had two years of sweet sweet freedom from NCLB in which their teachers could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to teach these kids to actually read. the fact that they didn't suggests perhaps there were other problems afoot. fourth, and maybe most saliently for this particular study, the sample text was the first seven paragraphs of a novel - in other words, the exact kind of short incomplete text that NCLB allegedly demanded excessive time spent on. i'm not really sure what universe it makes sense in that students who can't read the first seven paragraphs of a novel would have become much better reader if everything else had been the same but they had been making completely wack associations based on nonsense guesses for all 300 pages instead. (if you read the study it's really clear that for problematic readers, things go off the rails immediately, in a way that a good program targeted at teaching mastery of text of 500 words or less would have done something about.)

all but 3 of the students reported A's and B's in their english classes and, again, 69% of them are juniors and seniors, so like... i mean idk kudos to these professors for being like "hold up can these kids actually read?" but clearly something is wack at the college level too [in 2015] if you can make your way through nearly an entire english major without being able to read the first seven paragraphs of a dickens novel. (once again i really do encourage you to look at the qualitative samples in the study, lest you think i am being uncharitable by summarizing understandable misunderstandings or areas of confusion that may resolve themselves with further exposure to the text as "can't read.") not to mention the fact that most students could not what they had learned in previous or current english classes and when asked to name british and american authors and/or works of the nineteenth century, roughly half the sample at each college could name at most one.

the authors of the study are struck by the fact that students who cannot parse the first 3 sentences of bleak house feel very confident about their ability to read the entire novel, and discover that this seeming disconnect is resolved by the fact that these students seem to conceptualize "reading" as "skimming and then reading sparknotes." i think it's really tempting to Kids These Days this phenomenon (although again these are people who in some cases have now been in the workforce for a decade) and categorize it as laziness or a lack of effort, but i think that there is, as i described above, a real and sincere confusion over what "reading" is in which this makes a certain logical sense because it's not like they have some store of actual reading experiences to compare it to. i also think it's pretty obvious looking at just how wildly severed from actual textual comprehension their readings are that these are not - or at least not entirely - students who could just work harder and master the entirety of bleak house all on their own. like i don't think you get from "charles dickens is describing a bunch of dinosaur bones actually walking the streets of london" to comfortably reading nineteenth century literature by just trying harder. i really just don't (and i say that acknowledging i personally have had students who like... were good readers if i was forcing them to work at it constantly... but i have also had students, including ones getting ready to enter college, who were clearly giving me everything they had and what they had was at the present moment insufficient). i think that speaks to a missing skillset that they don't know are missing, because they don't have any other experience of "reading" to compare it to.

just wanna highlight again that although they don't give the breakdown some of these students are not just english majors but english education majors a.k.a. the high school english teachers of tomorrow. some of them may be teaching high school english right now, in case anyone wishes to consider whether "maybe some high school english teachers can't read the first seven paragraphs of bleak house?" should be kept in mind when we discuss present-day educational ills.

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seominis · 1 day ago

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deep ! જ⁀➴ ♡

sunghoon nsfw drabble ꕤ p. dom!hoon x afab!reader, w. smut (18+ mdni!), doggy, sunghoon is huge, praise ✿ hoon in full sweaty, slow, deep, dominant glory.. you like that ⊹ ࣪ ˖ not reqs :3

to read all you have to do is click under the cut!, reminder, this fic contains nsfw content, and I don’t want anyone under 18, interacting ^^ please respect that hehe <33

Your cheek is pressed to the sheets.

You’re trembling.

And Sunghoon’s behind you, inside you, moving slow. So deep, so thick, so fucking devastating you can’t even think.

“F-Fuck,” you whimper, voice cracking. “You’re so— so big, Hoon—”

“Yeah?” he groans, breath hot and ragged. “You wanted this, didn’t you? Thought you could handle it.”

His voice is hoarse, wrecked, laced with sweat and restraint. His fingers grip your hips, tight enough to bruise, holding you right where he wants you while he rocks his hips forward again, dragging his cock so deep into your slick heat that your entire body shudders.

The stretch burns. He’s thick, every slow inch of him dragging against your walls, tight, wet, swollen around him.

“God,” he pants, Adam’s apple bobbing hard as he fucks in again, slower this time, hips rolling in deep, dragging out the moan he knows he can pull from you. “This pussy’s so fucking tight. Gripping me like it doesn’t wanna let go.”

You cry out, nails clawing the sheets, back arching as you push your hips back into him, desperate for more, for anything.

Sunghoon’s skin is slick now, sweat dripping from his jaw, shining down his neck. His hair’s stuck to his forehead and his chest is rising hard with every thrust.

He leans over you, voice low, mouth brushing your ear.

“Can feel you shaking,” he murmurs. “I’m not even going fast yet. Just letting you feel me. Feel how deep I get.

And he is.

You swear you feel him in your stomach, dragging along every nerve inside you, pushing past every edge until you’re gasping, broken.

When he finally starts to pick up pace, still deep, still controlled, just harder now, your moans turn to sobs. You’re so full, so overstimulated, you don’t even know where you end and he begins.

“You take it so well,” he groans, biting down on your shoulder, grinding deep again. “Fucking made for this.”

You cum with his name in your mouth, legs giving out, body collapsing into the mattress, and Sunghoon doesn’t stop.

He fucks you through it, chasing his own release, hips jerking until he spills inside you, moaning your name like he’s the one being ruined.

And when he pulls out, slow and sticky, he watches it drip from your fucked-out pussy with that signature smirk, the one that says he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Knew you’d take it,” he says, brushing hair from your face. “No one else gets to fuck you like this. Just me.”

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rosemaryhoney27 · 1 day ago

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Gotham's sunshine child part 3

“You Mess With Him, You Answer to Gotham”

It started with a bruised lip.

Just a little thing. A split at the corner of Danny’s mouth and a faint scuff on his cheek.

To anyone else, it might have gone unnoticed. Gotham’s a rough place—people get bruised all the time. But Red Hood noticed. And Red Hood didn’t do unnoticed.

Jason found him in the East End, same as always, seated cross-legged on a crate behind a laundromat. A trio of tiny kids were gathered around him, Danny animatedly explaining long division on the back of a pizza box.

He didn’t flinch when Jason dropped down from the fire escape, but the moment he turned and Jason saw the bruise… something in him snapped.

“Who,” Jason growled, voice low and steady, “put their hands on you?”

Danny blinked. “Huh?”

“Your face.” Jason pointed. “Don’t play dumb, kid. What happened?”

Danny hesitated. “Oh. That. Nothing serious. Some guy didn’t like that I told him not to harass the waitress at DeeDee’s Diner. He shoved me. It’s fine.”

Jason did not think it was fine.

Jason thought it was the opposite of fine.

Jason made sure the kids were safe and left.

The man in question was later found duct-taped to a lamppost in nothing but his underwear and a bright pink sign reading “I HARASS WAITRESSES AND HIT KIDS” in glittery marker. No one saw a thing. The waitress got her tips covered for the month.

When Danny found out, he sighed.

“Jason.”

“I’m just saying,” Red Hood replied, smug behind his helmet, “Gotham’s got your back.”

It became a thing after that.

Someone tried to scam Danny? A tech repair shop mysteriously had its Yelp rating obliterated overnight and got a surprise inspection from the fire department. Barbara swore she didn’t do it. Out loud.

A slumlord tried to evict a group of squatters Danny had quietly been helping? The building got “accidentally” donated to a housing nonprofit. Courtesy of one B. Wayne and some forged signatures Dick may or may not have acrobatically acquired.

Some idiot tried to rob Danny again?

They were found three alleys over with every shoelace tied to their belt loops and a very clear message written in ketchup: NOT HIM.

It wasn’t always the Bat-Family either.

Civilians got in on it. A fruit vendor started giving Danny free apples “because you remind me of my nephew.” A gang of teen taggers painted a mural of him near Blackgate, halo and all. An old lady on Danny’s usual bus route started crocheting him scarves “because your hoodie’s full of holes, sweetpea.”

Danny protested. A lot.

“You guys don’t have to do this,” he told the kids he tutored after they “accidentally” spilled soda on the shoes of a guy who’d cursed at Danny.

“Yeah, we do,” one of them replied, chin up and defiant. “You helped us. That’s worth something.”

Danny tried to argue.

They ignored him.

The tipping point came when someone—some fool—decided to try and kidnap him.

Some out-of-town gang. Didn’t know the rules. Thought he was just another soft face with no backup.

They tried to grab him outside the soup kitchen.

They never made it past the sidewalk.

In seconds, there were people there—staff, other volunteers, even a grumpy teen Danny had helped with math homework once. The gangsters got swarmed before they could blink. Cops showed up, baffled. The only evidence left behind was a pile of duct tape and a very traumatized rental van with a glitter bomb in the glove box.

Batgirl was first to respond.

“I wasn’t even needed,” she muttered afterward to Bruce. “It was… honestly kind of terrifying.”

Bruce didn’t say much. Just turned to Alfred and asked if the guest room closest to the kitchen could be made up. Again.

They tried again. A week later.

Only this time, the whole Bat-Family got involved.

Someone had clearly put out a bounty. Kidnapping. Alive. Big payout.

The team sprang into action.

Red Hood hit the streets like a hurricane.

Nightwing ran surveillance with Oracle, flagging known traffickers and suspicious activity.

Robin—Damian—gritted his teeth and snarled at Bruce: “We are adopting him. This is not up for debate.”

“I don’t think he’d let us,” Bruce admitted.

“Then we do it anyway.”

Danny was fine.

Of course he was.

He had a faint burn on one arm from phasing through a too-tight restraint, but otherwise? Fine. He’d shorted out the van’s electronics and ghosted through the floor while humming the SpongeBob theme. Because of course he did.

“Are you mad?” he asked when Bruce finally tracked him down.

Bruce just looked at him, jaw tight.

“You could’ve died.”

Danny shrugged. “Yeah. Again.”

“Danny.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—look, it’s okay. I can handle myself. Really.”

Bruce studied him for a long moment.

Then: “Next time, let us handle it.”

Danny opened his mouth.

“Gotham wants you safe,” Bruce added softly. “Not just me. Not just my family. All of us. So let us help. Please.”

For once, Danny didn’t argue.

He nodded, quietly.

“…Okay.”

That night, Danny stayed at the Manor. Just one night, he promised.

It turned into two.

Then three.

By the end of the week, Alfred had added “Danny’s Favorite Cereal” to the shopping list and Tim had programmed the Cave’s system to alert them of any pings on his name.

Bruce didn’t force anything.

But when Danny fell asleep on the couch during a movie night and Damian covered him with a blanket without comment?

Bruce started the paperwork.

Danny could dodge billionaires all he wanted.

But Gotham had already claimed him.

#dpxdc #danny fenton #danny phantom #jason todd #batman #damian wayne #alfred pennyworth #cassandra cain

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multific · 18 hours ago

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The Letters He Never Burned

Simon Riley x Reader

Summary: Through quiet letters and unspoken truths, something bloomed.

It began as a favour.

You never thought a single letter could reach anyone, let alone someone like him.

You wrote about your garden, the books you read, and your cat who sat on the kitchen table like a king.

You kept it light. Hopeful.

You figured, whoever got it, if they even bothered to read, would need something that felt normal.

Not pity. Not a reminder of where they were.

You didn’t expect a reply.

So when an envelope arrived weeks later, sealed tight with careful, blocky handwriting and a military return address, your fingers trembled.

Not much to say. But I got your letter. It helped.

Don’t stop writing.

-Ghost

And so, you didn’t.

Over the months, the letters grew longer and more personal.

He never gave much away.

But he started asking questions. About your day. About the people in your life.

He asked what your favourite season was. If you believed people could change.

I don’t sleep well. That’s not new.

But I read your letter twice last night. Thought I’d dream of something better.

I didn’t. But the thought helped.

-Ghost

There was no photo of him. No voice. Just his scrawl, always signed Ghost until, one day, it was just Simon.

And then it stopped.

No more letters. No word from the front.

You checked the News, and they said a team had gone dark in the field, no names released. You checked your mailbox every day for weeks. Every knock at the door made your heart stumble.

You tried to move on.

You failed.

Weeks turned into months.

And then one evening, a knock at your door.

When you open the door, there’s a man on your porch.

Tall. Broad. Worn leather gloves. Civilian clothes, but you know instantly that he doesn’t belong to this kind of quiet.

He removes his hood.

His face is pale, gaunt. Haunted.

“Simon?” you whisper.

He nods once. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t move.

“I didn’t know if you were”

“Didn’t know if I was coming back either.”

You don’t wait. You close the distance and wrap your arms around him.

His are stiff at first, unsure, but then his whole body sinks into yours like he’s been holding his breath for months.

“I read your letters,” he murmurs into your hair. “Every bloody one. Even the one about the cat knocking your tea over.”

You laugh through your tears. “I thought you’d stopped writing because…”

“I didn’t know if I deserved to keep them.”

He pulls back just enough to look you in the eye. “But I never stopped thinking about you. And when I made it back, you were the only place I wanted to go.”

You place your hand against his cheek, rough with stubble.

“You don’t have to say anything else,” you whisper.

“I do,” he replies hoarsely. “Because I didn’t think I could feel anything again. But I felt you. Every damn letter. And now that I’m here… I’m not going anywhere, love.”

And when he kisses you, it tastes like salt, and everything he never thought he’d have.

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

Wattpad

/DO NOT TRANSLATE, STEAL OR REPOST ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

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veal-exe · 3 days ago

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To be clear, I find you a waste of meat and blood and breath, and the only reason I am replying to you at all instead of throwing you into my group chats to mock the unfortunate fact that you exist on the same planet as me is because I’m feeling generous enough to let my followers see exactly what I think of the drivel running out of the worthless slop oozing from the holes in your wretched terf skull.

You read a post analyzing the ways AFAB masculinity is punished, erased, and forced into submission in media and your first instinct was to publicly seethe because someone, somewhere, might exist outside the little box you’ve built around “womanhood.”

Nobody called you a boy. Nobody took your gender from you. But you saw transmascs talking about shared oppression, about the violence they face when they defy the narrow, gendered cages that society is eager to shove us into, and you couldn’t stand not being the center of it.

That’s not feminism. That’s self centered self worship dressed up in trauma cosplay. You’ve turned your pain into a weapon to silence others, and it’s transparent as hell.

What’s most glaring here is that you’ve somehow missed the point entirely. The problem with your reaction is that it doesn’t actually challenge the structures that hurt everyone who dares to live outside the suffocating boundaries of traditional gender roles. What you’re defending isn’t just your “womanhood” (a construct, by the way, that you’re too attached to, grow a personality outside of your genitals, it isn’t worth it), it’s your need to keep it exclusive, to keep everyone else who doesn’t fit your version of the narrative beneath your thumb. You’re not fighting for women, you’re fighting to ensure no one else gets to have a voice in the conversation without you at the center of it.

If the idea that not every AFAB character needs to be interpreted as a woman, or that the way characters AFAB are punished for displaying masculinity, (very cool reducing women to their genitals by the way, very feminist of you) and the fact you’re too damn stupid to understand links to oppression sends you into this level of incoherent rage, then you’re not defending women. You’re defending your self perceived monopoly on suffering. You want to claim that only your experiences count, that your version of womanhood is the only legitimate one, and anyone who steps outside of that suffocating mold is an attack on you personally. That’s not activism.

That’s ego.

It’s a self-centered, reactionary defense of a gendered identity that only exists to keep you from having to share the space with anyone who might threaten your neatly constructed worldview. You’re willing to trample over anyone, cis, trans, or otherwise, who threatens that. You’re perfectly fine with perpetuating harm as long as your pathetic bioessentialist narrative stays intact.

You don’t actually care about the oppression of women. You care about your personal image of womanhood. You care about making sure that your womanhood is the only one that matters, that your experience of womanhood is the one that’s respected and validated. You’ve created a box and you’re trying to shove everyone else into it, even if that means silencing trans men and non-binary folks who have every right to claim space in this conversation. The minute someone challenges your narrow definition of gender you lose your mind, like an annoying, undisciplined child throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get their way. The irony is that you’re perpetuating the same exclusionary, patriarchal bullshit you claim to fight against.

Your anger. It’s not about “protecting women.” It’s about policing womanhood. It’s about deciding who gets to take up space and who has to shrink themselves to accommodate your fragile understanding of gender. You don’t want inclusivity. You want control. You want to dictate who counts as a woman, who doesn’t, and who gets to exist in between. And anyone who challenges that, trans men, non-binary people, or GNC women, becomes an enemy to be silenced, marginalized, erased.

We’re not confused. We didn’t fumble. We didn’t make some catastrophic mistake that you can pounce on to further your own agenda. No. The problem is that you can’t tolerate a world that doesn’t orbit your worthless existence personally. A world where other voices, other struggles, other forms of gender, are allowed to exist alongside your own. You’ve internalized the idea that feminism means “only my experiences count” and, in doing so, you’ve stripped yourself of any real solidarity with the people fighting the same systems of oppression.

And now you’re upset because someone dares to suggest that the lived experiences of trans men, non-binary folks, and GNC women have value too. But instead of engaging, instead of listening, you default to the same tired, regressive response: I’m the only one who counts.

You’ve become so obsessed with your fragile vision of womanhood that you’ve completely lost sight of the fact that feminism is supposed to be about solidarity. And you’re not fighting for a better world; you’re fighting to keep your version of it tightly controlled and exclusive.

So go ahead. Stay mad. But don’t expect anyone who actually understands the meaning of solidarity to listen to you.

Touch grass?

No. ma’am, actually, you need to dig yourself deep hole.

Then, rot in it.

I saw a post earlier, I will not be appending my response to that post to the post itself, but I did want to touch upon it.

The post was about how trans men and transmasculine people afab don't have any media tropes that are, we'll say, problematic for them, the way that the 'funny man in a dress' trope is trans-misogynistic, I wanted to discuss that and lay that claim to rest.

Below I will be discussing some tropes in media that affect trans masculine people afab. Some may be worse than others, some accidental, some maybe on purpose, but I've compiled them because I think it's important to understand that just how the harmful tropes aimed at masculine people afab do exist, they just differ in their execution.

DISCLAIMER: If I have worded anything poorly in this post please tolerate it, English is my fourth language and it can be overwhelming to attempt linguistic perfection or the performance of it for native English Speaker.

EDIT: tumblr really messed my layout and formatting up, sorry for that but I'm not fixing it unless I really need to.

1. “Tomboy Gets a Makeover” = Suddenly She’s Worth Something (AKA: Now She’s Fuckable)

This one’s everywhere. You’ve got a character who’s rough around the edges, usually wears hoodies, maybe doesn’t shave, maybe doesn’t even care what people think. And the story punishes her for that. Until someone (usually a fairy godmother or mean girl turned ally) shoves her into a dress, puts some gloss on her lips, straightens her hair...

and then she’s finally seen as beautiful, desirable, and valid.

The core message? Your masculinity is temporary, and your value doesn’t actually exist until you conform to traditional femininity. You weren’t lovable, datable, or even visible until you softened up and got pretty.

This trope tells young people AFAB:

You're not enough unless you perform femininity

Your gender nonconformity is a flaw to fix

If you're not seen as sexy in the "right" way, you're invisible

And this sticks. Especially for transmascs, who grew up seeing their natural instincts or styles treated like a before picture.

Examples:

The Princess Diaries – Mia goes from “invisible frizzy nerd” to prom-queen level once her hair is flat and her legs are waxed.

A Cinderella Story – Sam’s baggy clothes are treated like a shield for her insecurity, until she shows up in a dress and suddenly earns male attention.

The Breakfast Club – Allison is artsy and weird and quietly masc... until she’s quite literally pink-washed and given a makeover so she can be datable.

She's All That – Laney is cool and self-possessed in her own way, but the movie waits until she’s in a red dress and contacts to take her seriously.

Meteor Garden – Shan Cai’s toughness is tolerable, but she’s still only framed as truly “lovable” after being softened through male attention.

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2. “She Pretended to Be a Boy” = She’s a Lying Snake Whore

When characters AFAB dress or live as boys, it’s almost always framed as deception. Not survival. Not autonomy. Not self-expression. Just trickery. There’s a dramatic “reveal” scene where everyone suddenly feels betrayed, like the character has been scheming the whole time instead of just…

living. Sound familiar?

This isn’t just about fiction. It directly echoes how transmasc people are treated in reality, as liars, as fake men, as threats to those around them just by existing. The idea that someone AFAB could be masculine, or just a guy, is treated like a trap set for unsuspecting cis people.

The underlying message:

You can’t be trusted if you present as masculine

Your gender is a mask, a trick, a crime

If people liked you before, they were duped

it’s the same logic used to justify violence and exclusion towards Transmasculine people AFAB in reality.

Examples:

She’s the Man – Viola pretends to be her brother to play soccer, but it’s all “uh-oh she has boobs” humor. Her gender presentation is the punchline.

The King’s Affection – She lives as the crown prince and does a damn good job, but the tension constantly hinges on whether she’s tricking people by being there at all. Masculinity is okay only if it’s secret and painful.

Coffee Prince – Go Eun-chan presents as male to get a job, and instead of critiquing the system that forces her to do it, the narrative focuses on her guilt and “the reveal.” Masculinity is tolerated, but never fully respected.

Victor/Victoria – Gender is treated as a clever disguise. The moment someone finds out “the truth,” it’s all shock, betrayal, and drama. Queerness framed as a con.

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3. “It’s Just a Phase” = You’ll Be a Real Girl™️ Eventually

You can be a tomboy for now. Run around, get messy, be loud. It’s even kind of cute! As a little kid who needs to grow up. Then suddenly, your masculinity isn’t just childish! it’s a problem. Something to “grow out of.” Something to fix!

This trope trains audiences to see AFAB masculinity as:

Immature

A quirk of childhood

A stepping stone to real femininity

And what does “real girlhood” mean in this context? Dresses. Lip gloss. Boys. The implication is that your value kicks in when you start performing the kind of femininity that makes you palatable and desirable. You were allowed to be wild for a minute, but only if you clean up nice later.

It reinforces the same tired message: Girlhood = destination, not a choice. Masculinity is just the wrong stop on the way. If you are Transmasculine AFAB, you are a child who should grow up, immature, being treated as much younger than they are is a huge issue with transmasculine people AFAB.

I would like to add that this is also a misogynistic trope, but misogyny intersects with transandrophobia in ways that are valid to talk about.

Examples:

The Parent Trap – Annie and Hallie are opposites, but Hallie (tomboy-coded) only really “settles down” and softens once she’s back with her mom. Her rougher edge is charming but temporary.

Now and Then – Roberta is the tomboy of the group, and her Big Moment of Growth™ comes when she puts on a dress. Not solving childhood trauma. Not emotional healing. The dress.

Boys Over Flowers – Jan-di is scrappy, resilient, athletic! and then she falls for the male lead and gradually loses every bit of that fire. By the end, she’s quiet, deferential, and soft. like that’s her natural arc.

Hi My Sweetheart– Rainie Yang’s character starts out masc-presenting and bold. She’s mocked, corrected, and eventually “fixed” into a soft, pink, cutesy girl. Her makeover isn’t for her. it’s the narrative giving her permission to be “dateable.”

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5. “One of the Boys” But Never Really One of the Boys

She’s tough. She’s cool. She fights. She hangs with the guys. She might even burp. But make no mistake! she’s never actually allowed to be one. This trope gives characters AFAB just enough masculinity to seem "interesting," then punishes them if they go too far with it.

Again, this is also a misogynistic trope, but the intersectionality here is important even in the ones that don't seem obvious, some people will poke fun at me putting Natasha here for example, but if you do that you're misunderstanding my intent and I do not care for it.

I am not saying ANY of these characters are coded transmasculine, I am discussing how masculinity is treated in regards to characters AFAB.

The message is clear: You can borrow masculinity, but don’t get comfortable in it.

These characters:

Get constant reminders that they're different

Are sexualized, softened, or sidelined the moment they get too close to “boyish”

Exist to complement the boys, not compete with them

Examples:

Avengers – Natasha Romanoff is deadly, competent, cool under pressure, but also constantly shoved into the “team mom” or “sexy redhead with feelings” role. Her backstory centers around forced sterilization, and her arc in Age of Ultron literally says she’s a “monster” for not being able to have kids. Tell me again how she’s treated like “one of the guys.”

How to Train Your Dragon – Astrid starts out as the alpha fighter, but as soon as Hiccup grows up, she becomes a background girlfriend with no arc of her own. Her sharp edge gets smoothed into supportiveness.

My Hero Academia – Nearly every tough AFAB character gets undercut. Mirko is badass but exists on the fringes. Jirou gets development, but only as support. Bakugo’s mom is comic relief. Meanwhile, male characters are allowed complex, messy, powerful arcs without ever needing to "soften" for the audience.

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“AFAB Character Learns to Embrace Womanhood” = Moral Victory!

You start with a tough, scrappy, masculine-coded person AFAB, maybe she fights, maybe she’s emotionally shut down, maybe she just doesn’t want to be like other girls. It doesn't matter, this is how it ends:

She softens. She submits. She “grows” by becoming a wife, a mom, a love interest, a Real Girl™️.

This isn’t healing. It’s containment. The message is: your rebellion was cute, but it’s time to settle down and accept the role assigned to you.

“Growth” = compliance. “Strength” = giving it up. “Maturity” = pink, dresses, and a baby carriage.

Examples:

The Hunger Games – Katniss Everdeen is trauma-coded, masc-leaning, and uncomfortable with romance or traditional femininity. So what’s her ending? A baby epilogue where she’s in a dress, quietly settled into nuclear family life. Is she happy about it? No, but there's no denying that this is her ending.

Mulan II– In the original, she challenges gender roles and becomes a literal war hero. In the sequel? The plot revolves around her needing to prove she can still be soft, feminine, and wife-material. Her masculinity is not allowed to just exist.

Jojo Rabbit – Rosie (the mother) is framed as the ideal woman: warm, loving, feminine. Meanwhile, Elsa (a girl in hiding) starts out guarded and hard-edged, but only becomes “redeemed” once she softens and embraces traditional femininity.

A Silent Voice / Koe no Katachi – The narrative constantly punishes her for not being “nice enough,” and her arc only begins to shift once she becomes more demure and apologetic. She cannot be both a good person and brash or hotheaded, submit or be branded evil.

Inuyasha – Sango is introduced as a demon-slaying warrior. But her story ends in the most vanilla way possible: marriage, motherhood, and sidelining. She loses her edge completely. I hate the end of Inuyasha so much it is borderline a meme in my circles.

Fruits Basket - Uotani is tall, tomboyish, and used to be in a girl gang. She has strength, history, and depth. And then her “big growth moment”? Realizing she wants to be softer and more ladylike, because femininity is treated as the finish line within the story.

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“Masculine Presentation” = Joke Costume or Moral Failure

When characters AFAB wear suits, cut their hair short, or pass as masc in any way, media rarely lets it land without a laugh track, or a moral consequence.

Masculine presentation is treated as:

A silly costume

A failed experiment

A sign of monstrosity

Or something to be shamed out of.

The story makes sure you feel embarrassed for them. It invites the audience to laugh, cringe, or judge, because “girl in boy clothes” is still a punchline in mainstream media. Just like 'Boy in girl clothes' is.

And yes, this hurts trans women, but it also absolutely targets butch, GNC, and transmasc folks. Masculinity is marked as wrong on AFAB bodies, funny if temporary, disgusting if permanent.

Examples:

Scooby-Doo – Velma’s masc coding (short hair, flat clothes, practical shoes) constantly becomes the joke. If she dresses even more masc? She’s “mistaken” for a man and ridiculed. Her queerness and presentation are treated like a quirk at best, a problem at worst.

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody – London Tipton wears a single masc outfit and the laugh track explodes. The outfit itself isn’t weird, but the show acts like the sight of her in anything non-feminine is a cosmic-level joke.

Friends – Rachel and Monica wear tuxedos in one episode, and the joke is entirely that it looks “wrong.” Chandler mocks them, the camera lingers on how “awkward” they look.

iCarly – Sam dresses masc semi-regularly, and is constantly mocked for acting “like a guy.” In interviews, actress Jennette McCurdy has said this ongoing joke contributed directly to her eating disorder relapse. This is not harmless.

Matilda - Miss Trunchbull is heavily masc-coded: big build, short hair, no makeup, harsh voice. She’s a literal villain, and her appearance is meant to be scary. Her masculinity is associated directly with her monstrosity.

Aikatsu! – Girls in suits are used as performance shock value. “Omg, a girl in a tuxedo??” is the whole joke.

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IN CLOSING.

These tropes don’t exist in a vacuum.

they shape how people see us, and how we see ourselves.

When characters AFAB exploring masculinity are only ever jokes, villains, phases, or tragedies, it sends a message: You don’t get to be this. You’re only allowed to visit. And when you're done, you better come back “correct.”

But we’re not punchlines. We’re not broken girls. Some of us are boys.

Some of us are neither.

Some of us are just butch as hell and happy about it.

We deserve stories where we aren’t corrected. Where masculinity on AFAB people isn’t a phase, a disguise, or a joke. But our lives, and the truth of them.

#replies

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tsunodaradio · 2 days ago

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love on track ⛐ 𝐘𝐓𝟐𝟐

you wish, of course, that you could have accounted for yuki tsunoda. (or: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.)

ꔮ starring: yuki tsunoda x graduate student!reader. ꔮ word count: 5.4k. ꔮ includes: romance. profanity. reader is studying something statistics-adjacent, a bit of numbers talk, isack is a plot device again, idiots in love. highly recommended that you read love at first flight before this one! ꔮ commentary box: the tsunodaradio yuki transportation verse expands! writing this sequel to my first ever yuki fic as a birthday gift for the man, the myth, the legend 🚆 without further ado.. 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

♫ take a chance with me, niki. oh shit...are we in love?, the valley. ? (who do you think of), any name's okay. me & you, honne & tom misch. maybe?, radi. happy accidents, saint motel.

The statistical probability of running into a stranger twice in your lifetime depends on a range of variables.

There’s location to consider. Frequency of interaction. Shared activities or interests. The probability may be low, but it is never zero. Even a 1 in 100,000 chance is still a chance.

So, in some ways, are you really that surprised to find a familiar face on this train?

It’s your second trip to Japan. The first one had gone by in a blur, and that was why you came back. You hadn’t felt like you were able to sufficiently enjoy yourself and you figured a country as beautiful as this one deserved a little more respect. A longer stay. More touristy commitments.

The Sunrise Izumo Express gave you that chance. A sleeper train route of 12 hours, boasting Pinterest-worthy views of the country’s mountains and lakes within the range of Tokyo to Izumo. You had timed your vacation specifically around the snowy season.

Do you wish you could have gotten a private room on the train? Of course.

Did you cheap out a bit so you could buy more wagyu? Definitely.

You find yourself on the top berth of a double-deck sleeper. It’s not much. Curtains for privacy, a reading light, an overhead fan. A barely-there wooden separator will keep you from being shoulder-to-shoulder with whoever sits—or lays—next to you.

As you squeeze yourself into the small space, you try to think of comparably positive experiences. It feels like… summer camp. Sure. That’ll work.

The train is set to depart at 10 PM on the dot. You glance at your watch. Half past nine, and the space next to yours is still empty. If you’re lucky, it will stay that way.

Unfortunately, luck has never been as good to you as numbers have.

At approximately 9:22 PM, the Familiar Stranger climbs on to the berth next to yours. He grunts when his head hits the top of the train. He falls onto the thin mattress with an incoherent cuss. You offer him a rueful smile.

He grins back.

Then does a double take.

“Wait,” he says, words garbled with an accent you can’t quite place yet. “I know you.”

You nearly start sprouting numbers about this being only your second time in Japan, about the low likelihood of you recognizing anyone in this foreign land. You hold back just enough to evenly say, “I don’t think so.”

“No, no,” the stranger insists. “I know you. I know you from somewhere.”

The thought is laughable. You’re a tourist, for God’s sake. Nobody—most especially the person you’re supposed to sit-slash-sleep next to for the next 12 hours—should know you.

Despite your growing irritation, you stand your ground. “I’m sorry,” you say firmly,, “but I think you have the wrong girl.”

You try to pull the curtain close. The stranger’s hand darts out, stopping you at the very last moment. You’re already contemplating how to flag a conductor down for potential harassment.

The man opposite you opens his mouth, ready to push, when a voice rings out. “Hadjar? Is something wrong?”

Your head snaps up.

Again, we go back to the plain and simple fact: 1 in 100,000 is still a chance. Today, that 0.001 percent glares up at you like a neon sign in a dive bar. Bright, oppressive, unavoidable.

Yuki Tsunoda is standing at the foot of your bunk.

He looks a little different than you remember. To be fair, it’s been over half a year.

Six months ago, on your first flight to Japan—your first flight ever—happenstance had put you in the seat next to Yuki. You chatted. Fell asleep on each other.

Held hands throughout turbulence.

And, at the end of it all, he had slipped you his number on a scrap of tissue, asking for the statistical probability of a text.

“You,” Yuki chokes out, eyes widening almost comically.

He says your name afterwards, and you wince. He doesn’t say it like a curse or an insult. It comes out more like a suspension of disbelief, like he’s just seen someone come back from the dead. At this rate, maybe he has.

“Airplane crush!” the stranger next to you—Hadjar, right, that’d been his name—announces triumphantly. “You are Yuki’s airplane crush!”

That doesn’t help. At all.

Yuki shoots Hadjar a withering glare before turning back to look at you. “What are you doing here?” Yuki demands. He’s gripping the edges of the bunk so tightly that his knuckles have gone white.

“Vacationing,” you say defensively. “What are you doing here?”

“This is literally my home country!”

“I mean,” you stammer, “this is the cheapest option on this train. Couldn’t you, like, afford a compartment or something?!”

“Yuki insisted on the regular seats,” Hadjar interjects. “He wants me to get the authentic Japan experience.”

Oddly enough, it’s the way Hadjar says those two words—regular and experience—that finally clues you to his accent. French. Your seatmate is French.

You have bigger fish to fry, though, because Yuki is still staring at you like he can’t quite believe you’re real. Before you can decide if you should apologize or brush the whole thing off, Hadjar is already making an executive decision that is determinedly bad for everybody’s welfare.

“Let’s switch, Yuki!” Hadjar says, enthusiastic in the way only a wingman could be. “I will take the bottom bunk!”

No, you mean to say, but you don’t know how you’d manage that without sounding rude. Yuki has a little less tact. He immediately tries to refuse, stuttering words like don’t and Isack and I am going to kill you.

Hadjar only gathers his things and begins to scramble away, completely ignoring Yuki’s protests. Hadjar even throws you a conspiratorial wink over his shoulder, like he’s doing you a favor. Like your heart hasn’t sunk to your ass at the prospect of what the next 12 hours is going to be.

You hear them bickering below you, just out of sight. Low voices, curt exchanges. A lot of the hissing seems to be coming from Yuki.

You lay down on your side, facing away from the berth that’s either going to be an overzealous Frenchman or a guy you ghosted after a long-haul flight. You find yourself facing what seems to be an elderly Japanese woman, already setting up her nighttime skincare routine. It’s not the worst of sights.

The bunk you’re pointedly trying to avoid creaks under the weight of a body. You hold your breath, lying in wait. And then—

“Why didn’t you text me?”

You have to give it to Yuki. Getting the hard question out of the way, right off the bat, is admirable.

You keep on holding your breath. Maybe if you don’t move an inch, he’ll leave you alone. Wishful thinking.

“I know you’re still awake,” Yuki says, tone caught halfway between amusement and exasperation. “The train has just left the station.”

With a sigh, you turn. Yuki is seated upright, leaning against the window. You hate to admit it, but he’s still as attractive as you remember. The mop of black hair, the faint five o’clock shadow.

In the dimming lights of the train, you zero in on things you hadn’t noticed before. His stack of chrome jewelry, his designer wristwatch, his muscles rippling with every small movement he makes.

You blink. Woah. Where did that last thought come from?

Anyway.

You clear your throat. He speaks up again, his gaze fixed on some nondescript point in the berth across from him.

“I gave you my number,” he says matter-of-factly.

You sit up, leaning your own back against the window. This doesn’t feel like a conversation to have while you’re curled up over the mattress, ready for sleep. Now both you and Yuki are glaring into the distance if it’ll mean you don’t have to look at each other.

“I didn’t think you’d actually be waiting for a text,” you confess as you pick at a loose strand of the train-issued blanket.

When you found out who Yuki was—really was—it made no sense to act on the number entrusted to you. On the plane, he had just been a nice seatmate who you thought you could spin into a story. A tidbit for future Two Truths and a Lie games.

But then you landed in Tokyo, and you found out he was a racecar driver, and suddenly reaching out to him was out of the cards.

“Besides,” you add, aiming for levity, “I’m pretty sure you do that all the time.”

“Do what?”

“Give out your number.”

A beat. One long enough to make you realize your mistake before Yuki points it out himself.

“I don’t,” he says, voice so soft and hurt that you can only pray, with every fibre of your being, that the ground might swallow you whole.

It doesn’t. You reach for the second best thing. “I’m sorry,” you say sincerely, turning your head so you’re looking straight at Yuki.

To your surprise, he mimics the move. You’re both looking at each other as the train rumbles out of Tokyo station, starting what will undoubtedly be a long journey.

“Are you sorry for not texting?” Yuki asks, and it strikes you what kind of person he is.

You recognize the lightheartedness in his tone. He’s probably still offended, but he’s trying to tease you right now. Trying to make light of the situation.

“I’m sorry for assuming you have bitches in every city,” you offer in return.

Yuki laughs. It’s a bark of a surprise sound, jolted out of him like he hadn’t expected it. But you had. You had wanted to get that exact reaction out of him.

It eases some of the tension in his shoulders, makes him look at you with a little less of the flight instinct. It’s not absolution just yet; you know you’re not out of the dog house.

But you decide you’ll take it. This small win, this break in the surface pressure. What was the statistical probability of having another 12 hours with Yuki ahead of you?

The very least you could do was try and make it tolerable.

You had a plan.

This whole thing about sleeping during the first hour and waking up for the sunrise. You had stayed up during the day for it, eager to make sure you wouldn’t miss anything that would justify the trip or the price tag on it.

But you don’t realize how difficult it is to fall asleep here.

It doesn’t even have anything to do with Yuki. Okay, well, that’s a lie. It’s not entirely about Yuki. He’s part of the reason, though he’s mostly out of your hair as he tries to feign interest in whatever manga he’s reading.

Your shared history—or lack thereof—exists in the negligible space between you. He’s so close that you can hear the music leaking through his AirPods.

You’re intent on falling asleep. On keeping your back turned to Yuki, fixed instead on the snoozing grandma across you.

Someone is snoring like a chainsaw below you. Hadjar, probably.

Yuki steals the thoughts right out of your head. “You’re lucky you’re not next to him,” he says dryly, making you jump a bit.

You’re still hopeful you’ll fall asleep, so you stay curled up in your bunk as the train hurtles past the sights of Japan. It’s too dark to see anything but shadows of buildings and trees.

“Does he snore like that all the time?” you ask quietly, not wanting to wake up the woman next to you.

“Unfortunately,” Yuki chirps from behind you. “I’m a bit jealous. He’s the type to fall asleep anywhere, at any time.”

“Are you two teammates?”

There’s a moment’s pause. “You know, I thought you would be a little more invested in F1 after getting a driver’s number,” he says, that hint of amusement back in his tone.

A snort of laughter escapes you. Your F1-obsessed best friend had gone ballistic over the knowledge you sat next to Yuki the entire flight; you withheld the fact his number was now in your phone, knowing full well that it would become a whole thing.

Maybe you had resisted the urge to Google ‘Yuki Tsunoda’ once or twice. Maybe you were a little more tuned in with your best friend’s ramblings over the championship standings. But it was never enough to truly get you into the sport, to see what all the hype was about.

Besides— “You told me you were a chauffeur,” you point out, still speaking to the divider.

“You assumed I was a chauffeur,” he amends. “It was too funny to deny.”

“You could have corrected me.”

He pauses. “I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Would it have changed anything? If I told you I drove cars in circles?”

Well, when he puts it that way. You try to think of what that plane ride would have looked like if you knew from the get-go that he was a racecar driver, that he was revered in a sport you didn’t really understand. You like to think you might’ve just rattled off more car statistics—effectively scaring him off.

But would it have changed anything, like the way you catalogued his laugh, the way you blushed when he flirted with you, the way you napped in his side like it was somewhere you belong?

“No,” you say quietly. “Probably not.”

“Exactly.” The way Yuki says the word is loaded with implication. He sounds smug and sad all at once.

You try to unpack it, try to make sense of it the same way that you navigate numbers. But there is no equation to this, no logic. This is emotion, and sentiment, and the held breath of a situation neither of you thought you would be in.

After a beat too long, you hear him ask, voice softer now, “Is that why?”

“Why—what?”

“Why you didn’t text me.”

He’s asking if it’s because he lied. Because he omitted facts of the story, twisted the narrative like he was hoping to make the medicine go down easier.

You knew from the get-go that some white lies were being told. That was always the case with strangers, anyway. You could be whoever you wanted to be for a few precious hours, cosplay as an ideal self or somebody even far worse. You figured it was always going to be black and white with chance encounters like the one you shared.

You weren’t meant to find each other again. Except Yuki had wanted to, maybe, with his stunt of his scribbled-down phone number, and you decide you can at least afford him a little bit of honesty.

“Kind of,” you breathe. Him lying about being a chauffeur was only partly the reason why you never reached out.

He picks up on the hesitance almost immediately. “There’s more to it?”

A corner of your lip twitches upwards. Yuki doesn’t see, and so you let the little smile tug. Just for a second. Just enough.

“There’s always more to it,” you say vaguely.

“Come on, then,” he urges. “We’ve got time.”

You laugh. Soundlessly, because you don’t want to bother any other passengers. Your shoulders shake all the same as you try to dismiss him with a firm, “Good night, Yuki.”

You’re still not looking at Yuki, but you can hear the grin on his face when he says good night back.

You dream of race cars made of sushi, cherry blossoms with numbered petals, and the sound of Yuki’s smile.

When you wake up to the gentle vibrations of your phone alarm, you’re surprised to find Yuki is still seated upright.

He has his back to the window, his eyes still trained to his phone. It’s attached to a power bank now, and he’s scrolling through what seems to be the same manga he had been reading earlier. You glance at your phone—confirming you had about seven hours of sleep—before properly curling in on yourself to look to Yuki.

“You didn’t sleep?” you ask, voice raspy with drowsiness.

He looks up from his phone, offers you a one-shouldered shrug. “Nah,” he says, though he doesn’t really go on to explain why.

You try to wipe out the bleariness in your eyes. With a yawn and a pathetic excuse for a stretch, you roll over. A pinkish dawn is beginning to creep in outside the train window.

You left no part of your itinerary up to chance, so you’d noted everything from the time of the day’s sunrise to which berths had the best view.

You wish, of course, that you could have accounted for Yuki Tsunoda. Yuki, who pockets his earbuds and locks his phone. Yuki, who awkwardly maneuvers so that he’s lying down on the bunk next to yours.

Yuki, who just outright copies you. Stomach flat to the thin mattress, gaze fixed on the countryside roaring past. You’re not about to escape him, you realize. Not today.

“Do you have another race in Japan?” You hear yourself ask. Your voice is still pitched low, not wanting to rouse the other passengers who are all still getting up themselves. “Is that why you’re here?”

“There’s only one Japan race per season,” Yuki answers patiently. “The season just ended.”

“Ah.”

So, that time you’d seen him—that had been his only home race. You don’t know how any of the sport works, and it’s beginning to frustrate you a bit. Was it just a matter of who finished first? Did he have to drive any particular way? Were him and Hadjar in the same car or something?

All those questions seem inconsequential to the one on the tip of your tongue. You stammer through it, not wanting to ask Did you win as much as, “Did you… do well?”

A flicker of an expression on his face seems to indicate the topic is a touchy one. But your question fully sinks into him, and he does that thing again. The one where he’s not-quite smiling; the corners of his mouth, lifting just so.

“I drove safe,” he says, and it nearly takes the wind out of you.

“That’s good,” you manage.

And, just in case you forgot, he adds, “Because you told me to.”

Your parting words, blurted out in place of goodbye. Yuki, turning in the line of moving people on the plane, with damning hope on his face. When you had called his name, he had probably thought you might say something else. Ask for his number, maybe.

Instead, you’d just said Drive safe, and now the words haunt you.

“You’re just saying that,” you groan, burying your face in one hand. You’re trying to hide the way your own expression has betrayed you, the way you’ve cracked a grin.

Peeking through your fingers, you see the way that Yuki has started to beam. It crinkles the crow’s feet on his face, shows off a gap between his two front teeth. He keeps his eyes on the scenery even as he glows like the day that’s just about to begin.

“You’re right,” he agrees, words measured and slow. “Guess I just wanted to see you smile.”

Outside, dawn breaks. You lift your head, your chin over your folded arms, to watch it happen.

The December snow blankets Japan’s countryside in sheets of white, reflecting the orange and the yellow of the rising sun. It’s a stunning panorama, a postcard for halcyon days. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of words that could probably describe just how breathtaking the view is.

All that comes out of you is a dazed murmur of “Pretty.”

In your peripheral vision, you see Yuki stealing a glance at you. You hadn’t grown up on a diet of romantic comedies, hadn’t read fanfiction or watched as much TV as you might have liked. So how could you have known?

How could you have known he would respond, voice barley above a whisper—like he’s saying it to himself—”Yeah. Pretty,” while still looking at you?

How was your heart supposed to stand a chance?

“Talk numbers with me.”

You glance up from the Japanese city maps spread open on your lap. Yuki has abandoned his manga-reading and has also abandoned feigning disinterest in you.

“Numbers?” you repeat dumbly.

“Numbers,” he confirms.

You’re a little surprised he remembers. In hindsight, he’s remembered everything else; your obsession with statistics was probably much more defining than, say, the last thing you’d said to him.

“What kind of numbers?” you ask. A little defensive, a little suspicious.

“I don’t know,” he says. “How much of Japan uses trains?”

“69 million people daily,” you answer instinctively, knee-jerk in your admission.

“69. Nice.”

“Seriously?”

Yuki shrugs, something glinting in his eyes as he continues to sit cross-legged across from you. You try not to mistake the glimmer for affection. “What else?” he prompts.

You blow a strand of hair out of your face. “I don’t know what you want to hear,” you shoot back, a hint of annoyance finding home in your tone. “The railway system operates around 26,000 trains daily. You have great punctuality rates. Average delay of just 1.6 minutes per train. The model share’s at 72.2 percent, and—why are you laughing?”

“I’m not laughing,” Yuki says in between laughter.

You resist the urge to chuck a map at him. You only glare, waiting for him to calm down before you speak. “You asked for the numbers, man,” you grumble.

Surely you can’t be blamed for sounding a little hurt. You’re not about to get into it with Yuki Tsunoda, of all people, but there’s a lot of history behind the sting. Years of getting made fun of for different interests. Grating laughter, scraped knees, side eyes.

Yuki sobers instantly. “I’m not… not laughing at you,” he offers apologetically, pulling his criss-crossed legs a little tighter around his body.

The skeptical look on your face urges him to go on. “It makes me happy,” he says, “hearing you talk about numbers.”

“It’s just me nerding out,” you deadpan.

“It’s you lighting up,” he interjects. “It’s a good look.”

“What is this, Yuki?”

Record scratch. Freeze frame. Yuki stares at you, unblinking, unmoving. You stare back. The train chugs along. Your words hang in delicate balance. You wish, for a moment, that the maps in your hands could guide you through the next four hours, looming over you like a guillotine.

“What’s what?” he asks. It’s his turn to sound wary, to try and build up walls.

You chip at them anyway. “What are you doing?” you press.

“I’m talking with you.”

“You’re flirting with me.”

“I am,” he agrees without missing a beat. “I thought I’ve made it very clear that I’m interested in you.”

“Why?” Your fingers are curled around the paper maps; your voice, surprisingly level amid the din of noise in the train car. “Why want someone you barely even know?”

Yuki opens his mouth.

“Yukino!”

Hadjar’s head pops up at the foot of the berth. He has a shit-eating grin on his face, which means he’s probably blissfully unaware of what he just interrupted. “I am going to try the noodle vending machine,” the Frenchman announces excitedly. “Coming with?”

The moment between you and Yuki goes flat like a soda left out for too long. You glance away, angling your face back towards the window. The views are all still stunning, but the pang in your chest makes them feel a little less enjoyable.

Yuki’s gaze lingers on you. When he finds nothing he can cling to, he gives a jerky nod to Hadjar and reaches for his wallet.

As he steps down from the top bunk, ready to follow his friend to the mythical vending machine, Yuki calls out a question that jolts you out of your moping.

“Do you know the statistical probability of love at first sight?”

You look back at him. There’s no teasing on his face now. There’s nothing there but the serious set of his jaw, the purse of his lips that makes your heart thump, thump, thump beneath your ribs. It’s the kind of look you imagine he would sport before getting behind a wheel.

“1 in 5 people,” he answers for you. “I looked it up the moment we got off our flight.”

You’re half expecting Yuki to spend the last couple of hours with Hadjar. Out of sight, out of mind. Running from what was probably a love confession, all things considered.

To his credit, Yuki doesn’t hide. He comes back an hour later, sure, but he still comes back. Climbs up the berth, settles into the bunk next to yours.

Suddenly, it all feels so insufficient. The sheer curtain you could pull between you. The sorry excuse for a wooden divider that barely comes up to your knees. The one hour you have left to figure out what to do.

What you want.

You’re gnawing your lower lip, pretending to be very interested in the quaint prefectures flying by. Yuki, whether he’s conscious or not, mimics your stance again.

For a couple of beats, all you two do is stare out the window. Then, simultaneously—

Your voice is remorseful; Yuki’s, contemplative. “I’m sorry.”

You both start. You both laugh. It’s an awkward sound, but it makes things a little easier.

“You first,” you say, and Yuki concedes without resistance.

“I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that,” he says. “You don’t owe me anything. I—I don’t know much, just that I left that plane really hoping to hear from you.”

There’s a twinge in your chest, put there by the sincerity in Yuki’s words. “I know,” you say, and he shoots you a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Do you know how bad I was?”

“How bad?”

“I spent an entire night looking up academic conferences in Tokyo.” He laughs, self-deprecating but unyielding. It’s just a fact to him, just a story being pressed into your palm. “I tried to find the one you might be at.”

But it’s not just a fact or a story to you. You try to imagine Yuki, folded over in some Tokyo hotel, scrolling through SNS page after page of conferences in hopes of finding you. Finding you. “That’s crazy,” you say through the ringing in your ears.

“Well, I’ve always been a little crazy,” he says casually, as if he hasn’t just tilted your world on its axis.

The conversation lulls as the train speakers crackle. There’s an announcement, first, in Japanese, then heavily accented English. We will be arriving at Izumo station in thirty minutes.

A ticking time bomb. Half an hour of honesty.

“Your turn,” Yuki urges gently. Like he, too, might detonate the time bomb by dissecting what’s still unsaid between you two. “What are you sorry for?”

A lot of things, you think, but you decide on the most glaring one. “That I didn’t text.”

Yuki doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing. Something on his face seems to ask, We’re still stuck on that?

You are, very much so. You’ll be stuck on it until it’s out of your system, until Yuki understands.

“Are you about to tell me why you didn’t?” he challenges.

You hedge him with a taunt. “If you ask nicely.”

He chuckles. It sounds far too fond to be mistaken for anything outside affection. You’re not expecting him to actually take you up on it; you half-pray he lets it go. Because what business did Yuki Tsunoda have begging you for—

“Please.”

There’s no shame on his face. Just an earnest sort of thing, a reverence you don’t deserve. It makes you burn from the inside.

Yuki is asking you. Not commanding, not demanding. Asking, testing, seeing how much you’ll give and how much you’ll hold back.

And maybe you’re tired of holding back.

You take a deep breath. Steel your nerves.

“It’s not because I found out you’re Japan’s golden child,” you mumble. “It’s—it’s the numbers.”

“The numbers.” You feel the tips of your ears flare at the way Yuki repeats the words. That heady mix of amusement, confusion, disappointment. Here we go again, he’s probably thinking, because he knows you but doesn’t know you.

He knows you enough to recognize that numbers matter to you, but he doesn’t know what numbers you’re talking about just yet.

So you let him fucking know.

Inhale.

“40% of couples in long-distance relationships break up,” you blurt out, ignoring the way his eyes widen imperceptibly. “Usually, they already start seeing cracks four months in—”

He says your name as a low laugh escapes him. That burns, too. How your name sounds on his lips. How you’ve liked the sound of it since that very first time, months and months ago.

You go on, “—and I looked it up too. Love at first sight has happened to about 60% of people. That may seem like a big number, but the results are inconclusive—”

He says your name again. A little more perplexed, this time.

You ignore him again. Breathless, red-faced, with your heart at your damn feet, you keep going. “—and I don’t know how to do this,” you say, that damn helplessness rearing its head. “Numbers don’t hurt you. People do. I don’t want us to end up as a statistic in some grad student’s study about why Formula One drivers can’t date.”

Exhale.

He stares at you. You stare at him. Japan flies by; the world spins on.

The time bomb ticks, ticks, ticks.

His next words are a statement, not a question. “You didn’t text me.”

It’s your turn to look at him like he’s beating a dead horse. “We’ve established that,” you say dryly.

“That means the statistical probability of you texting me was zero,” he says before you’ve even finished your sentence. “Is that right?”

You wince. There’s a lot of things you could say about hypotheses, about sample sizes, about his gross misuse of the term ‘probability’, but you’ll let him have this. It’s a callback to the scribbled note, the one you answered with your silence.

“Right,” you respond.

He changes the whole equation with his next question. “How much of you wanted to text me?” he asks, his eyes a little wild, his hands clenched into fists in his lap.

Because this—this is the question that mattered.

Not why didn’t you text, not what would have happened if I had. He’s asking about the nights you spent staring at the newly saved contact, about the moments you typed out something only to hit backspace. That Google search you made about How to text first. That one evening you got drunk and contemplated outright calling, just to see if he would pick.

Countless variables. Endless numbers.

How much of you wanted to text Yuki?

“A hundred percent,” you answer, and he melts.

Not in an obvious way. His shoulders slouch forward; his hands stop fidgeting. He takes in a shaky breath, the sound of it rattling in his chest, and then he stares straight at you like it’s the last time he’s going to get to do it.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” he confesses. Your heart damn near stops in your chest.

“What’s stopping you?”

If it’s a matter of distance, you’ll close it. You’ll climb into his bunk and kiss him senseless if you have to. You mean to say all that, except Yuki’s laughing, his head thrown back and his brow scrunched, and you don’t want to miss a moment of that joy.

You watch. You wait. You crack a grin when he manages, voice tinged with frustration, “Fucking Isack had me trying all these crazy ramen flavors. I think you deserve more than a garlic-flavored kiss.”

And now you’re giggling, too, because Hadjar had tried to set you up but was also ultimately the one blocking your paths. You and Yuki probably look insane—weathering this laughing fit as the overhead speaker announces you’ll be at the end station shortly.

You have an itinerary. Plans. Bookings. You’re not about to rearrange that for Yuki, just as much as you don’t want him to ditch his friend for your sake. You give the boy the next best thing.

“Okay,” you say. “Next time, then.”

Yuki chokes on air mid-laugh. “Next time?” he repeats, and, oh.

The hope in his tone is enough to make you think garlic-flavored first kiss be damned. You’ll do it. You just want to see if his smile tastes as good as it looks, as good as it sounds.

You hold yourself back. Barely.

You’ll take your chances instead. Any chance you have with Yuki—no matter how small it may be—you’ll take it.

You fish out your phone from your pocket. Yuki watches, bewildered, until you show him your screen. A text, sent mere seconds ago, starting a conversation thread with a contact named Yuki 🐮✈️🚗—

next time. ⛐

#yuki tsunoda x reader #yuki x reader #f1 x reader #formula one x reader #yuki tsunoda x you #yuki tsunoda drabble #yuki tsunoda fic #f1 fic #formula one fic #f1 fluff #formula one fluff #yuki tsunoda fluff #⛐ kae prix #⛐ yt22 #simpleng handaan lng para sa bday ni yuki tsunoda.. JKLASDCKDALC

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saintshadow · 1 day ago

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ALCHEMICAL GOLD:

HOW TO TRANSFORM UR CURRENT SITUATION

↳ a/n: I hope you all enjoy this reading, I’m really trying to work on having more cohesive and attractive layouts for my readings. Feedback would be wonderful! 🩶⚔️

☿ 𝓹𝓲𝓵𝓮 𝓲 ☿

You may be the first of your family or friend group to choose or think differently. Ie; coming from a family of alcoholics and choosing sobriety- coming from a family of abuse, Christianity, Strict//Traditional values & choosing whatever is true to YOU. I sense that people respect this different frame of mind. You have a massive impact on your close ones, I see that maybe in the past it has even led to violent outbursts from friends or family. Perhaps you feel trapped by the circumstances of life, you feel like others cannot comprehend your ideas. It may feel difficult, because there may be part of you that understands your connection to your community or your family is an INHERENT point of your success in spite of the fact they make you feel held back. I’m in tears with this pile, you guys are amazing and I hope you know and feel that. Even if others don’t always acknowledge what you are doing or what you are capable of- deep down they know.

You definitely reincarnated from your bloodline.

Your advice is to stop waiting for approval from your partner, mother, sister, brother, friends, WHOEVER- whoever's approval you're waiting on- they're unfortunately not going to give it to you likely until it's a bit too late. I understand how painful this is for you, and for some I understand that rather than approval someone may have died or passed away- and you are wanting to know that they support you. I see a lot of you are very hopeful for the future, but you're waiting- so patiently and very obediently for something. I heard someone whisper "go" it was a woman's voice, I feel that you are far more powerful than you or anyone else could have anticipated. Maybe you weren't born into the best circumstances- perhaps you almost became a statistic. Take wise action, don't move on pure impulse. You know what you've been wanting to do- so you need to go and do it. For those who feel confused by this pile I feel called to recommend pile 2 to you though I haven't written it yet. With the 7 of Pentacles, The Magician, and the Ace of Pentacles-

it's clear to me you have everything you need to make this happen. You have literally nothing to worry about, in fact. There's some kind of truth or situation you may feel called to share publicly. For some this could have to do with bringing justice to a situation, speaking on a horrific thing that happened- defending a loved one even? If not that, then you are being called to take measured steps to re-establish yourself socially. You're supposed to cut through something, someone could have used your name or reputation as a punching-bag. I heard something about cutting off the head of the dragon, and it's weird bc I was watching Percy Jackson Yesterday- I remember the scene with the hydra in the book and that is coming to mind for me. You're revealing something about yourself to others. The way you carry yourself, I heard "emblem". So that definitely makes me think of your public image. Embrace the lessons that difficulty as a child taught you, I feel very sad for your childhood pile one. It is abundantly clear to me that you have been misunderstood for a very long time. People get upset with the things they cannot understand, you are not bad. I promise. The things your family taught you- the values, the structure and foundation no matter how broken have endowed you with great wisdom and strength. You have everything you need my love, I promise you that you do. I know some of you don't feel ready, some of you may feel angry or frustrated or stagnant, just take the leap of faith. Start doing the thing, start working the process, don't give up now. You have a vision that goes far beyond what other people could visualize, it doesn't matter if they think it won't work. Not when you KNOW it will.

Find the wisdom in your heartache, and work to defy all odds. Take the pain as an opportunity to reflect, to gain knowledge- as a step towards your ultimate truth. Rework the way you experience pain. I know it's tiring, it's frustrating, it's unfair- but this lesson isn't to punish you. It is to propel you, there is a reason this theme continually pops up. I think this group should study their Chiron placement, there seems to be something there. Your pain heals others, your pain opens the door to wisdom, healing, truth, and release. Allow yourself to exist truly and freely as the most authentic version of yourself while working to rise above the pain as often as s possible.

☿ 𝓹𝓲𝓵𝓮 𝓲𝓲 ☿

You need to sit tight through this period of uncertainty, I'm seeing the sails on a ship moving direction/course. So much has built up to now, you're tired of sitting and waiting in uncertainty. You're tired of pain, boredom, confusion, and the likes. It feels like rage, ready to bubble over- you may even be losing your faith in the divine. Because it seems like nothing works. Like nothing goes in your favor, you are angry. Scorned, you feel scammed. This is because intuitively you know a wish is about to be fulfilled, it's starting to come together now. Most ironically, I sense that you're preforming a type of martyrdom right now. You are sacrificing for a future that you're scared you won't be able to see. You feel as if you are blindfolded in the dark, and honestly you are- I also get frustrated at these circumstances. I find them to be unnecessary and unfair, though I am a human and probably super biased because I get the same way sometimes.

Your blessings are secretive, they aren't coming to you in a normal way. It's so weird, I really don't know why this is the approach your spirits are taking. It looks like it's because you need to learn something about balance and calmness. You have to develop a better discipline with negative emotions so they are taking this opportunity to teach that skill.

It's giving "we're going to literally make your external experience match your internal experience until you realize you're the problem" Let me tell you friend, some beautiful shit is headed your way- it's genuinely best if you just get with the memo and recognize that good things can happen to you. A lot of this "negativity" you're feeling is literally a release, you're purging a lot right now, and it's hard for you, I really do get that honestly. It isn't easy, it's in fact quite difficult and I'm sure overwhelming to feel forced into this position. You're tired of suffering, but you must take action to end your own suffering, and not like killing yourself cus I just get the vibe some of this group has been suicidal.

Fight your negative thoughts, when they tell you "something bad is happening everything will go bad" argue, point out the work you've done and the blessings you've reaped.

I get this vibe that any conflict you're seeing is not actually "real" so to speak, like- literally ignore it lowkey. Not like don't pretend it exists, but don't FEED it, it's fickle- it will come and go. There are so many other things in your life that have an actual sturdy foundation. Hold onto your healthy love/romance/friendships/relationships, hold onto your talents and gifts, hold onto your future desires- and keep your eyes ahead. Don't fixate on the dramas and bullshit of the now. Focus on something that showers you in hope- because I promise- just because you aren't seeing it in the now doesn't mean it isn't here. Once it all arrives, you'll FINALLY understand my dear.

Knight of Pentacles, 2 of pentacles, the empress, the queen of cups, and the 2 of cups.

Slow and steady wins the race, keep balance the best that you can- reap the fruits of your labor, penny pinch, be mindful of keeping the balance in check- and with a hopeful and emotionally calm heart look towards your future. If you've been feeling downtrodden or drained, you have a pick me up coming. Very soon, and it'll put quite a bit of pep in your step. You will see things changing drastically in your life very soon. Trust the process, I know you're starting to get fed up but just trust and believe in yourself. You are going to do just fine, frfr.

Since this pile is a bit shorter than 2, here is some further advice for tapping into this empress version of you: This is a hard one Pile Two, but- this is about releasing control. Going with the flow of life, while tending to your metaphorical "garden". When you feel the fear and control flaring back up, remember that you literally can only do what you're able to do. Stop to appreciate the things you do have, and look for a new perspective or find a way to avert your attention. This is a battle, girl, so you gotta buckle up and dive in. You are rewiring your mind and this is not an easy task, but you will come out better for it.

☿ 𝓹𝓲𝓵𝓮 𝓲𝓲𝓲 ☿

Pile 3, I can tell you're working on something important to you. You're really transforming yourself, I see that a lot of what you need to do to transform your life you are already doing. So perhaps this is going to be more like an explanation of your life's current "season". I want to start by highlighting an interesting combination of cards pulled on the side, they seem to be the shift in the tide. We have the high priestess, the sun reversed, and the 2 of wands, all forming a little pyramid. The sun being the furthest towards the bottom, the high priestess being more towards the middle, and the 2 of wands being on top. You are observing a lot right now, you are looking at the world and your environment and everything at large and you may be realizing how small your view had been for so long. The wisdom is being culminated within you in every moment you gain clarity. I see you may have a message to deliver to this world. A light shines deep within you, this sun reversed to me paired with the high priestess almost reminds me of the black sun. The light concealed within darkness, the eternal flame I also heard. You are opening something up inside of you, something that once opened cannot be stopped. This is a good thing, you may be realizing that your past emotional patterns do not serve you anymore. You are slowly culling them off, one by one, plucking them from the root so they may never return. I see you are building your wish fulfillment, perhaps you are looking to be a spiritual elder, or a person with authority. Someone who other people listen to and rely on, some of you could even be working to enter politicians, teachers, preachers even- Wisdomatic souls with much to give to others. People may begin to respect you more, you could find that the deeper you step into this energy the more "correct" things feel, the more things fall into place for you and the more you realize that your grapple with control was fruitless.

For those in relationships that are healthy and who will resonate strongly with this message then take it: Hold on to your person, and be steadfast, trust that something is being done in your favor and remember how much the two of you have overcome in the past. When the world seems out of control, confusing, and overwhelming remember the peace you will have one day. Remember what this is all for, you have a beautiful future ahead of you. Some of you could become very wealthy for your esoteric or spiritual knowledge, others could become very wealthy for their depth of knowledge on a particular subject- in especially niche or unknown//misunderstood areas.

You will taste true independence, and possibly even some sort of fame or recognition. You will be blessed with a higher position of authority and people may just start to really respect your hustle more. If someone isn't for you, then let it be what it is. Perhaps some of you have some friends/family members who can be fickle/unreliable. Be more intentional with what friendships you'll decide to keep & why? Be more mindful about what you share with friends and family right now as well, even the people you trust. Keep things to yourself, and be patient with the growth of the fruits of your labor bae.

#tarot community #tarot online #tarot reading #pac #pick a card #tarotblr #pick a pile #askbox #pac tarot #pick a picture

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chimerafeathers · 2 days ago

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#i don’t go here but i think mirabelle had every right to react the way she did #how was she supposed to know siffrin cared at all if they were acting like he didn’t? #secret goodness only gets you so far if you aren’t willing to be honest about it with the people you love (via @kaiju-lightning)

i don't know to what degree you "don't go here" (what context or information you have or don't have outside of what's in this post) but, if you didn't know, Siffrin isn't like. some asshole with a secret ultra-hidden deep-down heart of gold that no one can see. they're just kind of quiet a lot of the time, and when they do speak up, it's usually either lightly jokey or very sweetly supportive. Mirabelle doubting his motives is VERY much fueled by her anxiety; none of the others (including Bonnie, a pre-teen) sincerely think that Siffrin doesn't care about them, even after Siffrin spends a day burning all their bridges.

more specific spoilers ahead!

there's a flashback in the very beginning of the game where Siffrin remembers Mirabelle checking in with them, trying to make sure he's really willing to be on a dangerous quest with her, and he tells her point-blank that traveling with them all is the happiest he's ever been. they're being completely honest, but Mirabelle doesn't really know that! because like! how could that possibly be true?? they're on a dangerous quest that they may not survive, for a country that he has no ties to, AND THEY JUST LOST AN EYE??? it doesn't make sense that nothing in his life made him happier than they are right now! maybe they're teasing her, or just trying to make her feel better, or something that would make more sense than that.

Siffrin's also in the habit of reminding Mirabelle not to bite her nails too much when she's feeling anxious. they start visibly panicking whenever they think someone is upset (especially if he thinks it's his fault or it's aimed at him). they lost their eye protecting Bonnie and only really cared that Bonnie was safe afterwards. he spends a lot of time trying to be quietly reassuring or keeping people happy with his jokes. Isabeau at one point calls them nice, and says he "always listens to what everyone has to say, and always tries to give advice even though they're not always very good at it"—that's all specifically about pre-time-loop behavior!

it's really not a secret AT ALL that Siffrin cares about the party in general. the "secret" part is how MUCH and how DEEPLY they care. it's the difference between "yeah, we had a great time together! i really enjoyed hanging out with you. we should keep in touch and hang out again sometime" (where everyone thinks everyone else is at, emotionally) and "i care about all of you more than anyone else i've ever known and the thought of you leaving is painful, but i can't bear to ask you to stay with me when you all have lives and homes and jobs and families to get back to and i don't want to keep you from your goals. i'm fine with just 'keeping in touch.' it's FINE"

it's also worth noting that the "secret" part is also kiiiiinda a secret even to Siffrin himself? as in, they're trying so hard to accept the fact that everyone will leave, that it's completely normal and natural for them to go back to their own lives, that they're shoving all their feelings about that into a tiny box and burying it in the back of their mind.

all of this to say, yes, Mirabelle absolutely has a right to be upset when Siffrin hurts her! but the reason she reacts so strongly is that she struggles much more than the others to consistently read Siffrin's behavior as sincerely friendly, because of her own anxiety and hangups. it's NOT because Siffrin is outwardly cold, callous, rude, flippant, or anything like that at a baseline.

hope that clears things up!

i really love how intensely Mirabelle reacts to act 5 Siffrin botched friendquest.

Isabeau is mostly operating out of concern and, eventually, hurt. he already knows something’s up before Siffrin gets to him. he knows something truly awful must be wrong for Siffrin to be lashing out like they are, and as soon as he can’t handle the situation anymore, he leaves and asks (with strained cheer) for time apart to cool off.

most of Bonnie’s anger comes from being upset and afraid that Siffrin would willingly put themself in danger for no reason, when that’s exactly why they’ve been so unsettled since the eye incident. they hate that Siffrin values their own life so little, they hate that they’re the cause of any pain or loss for him, and here he is, putting himself in that situation AGAIN. on purpose. it’s loud and explosive, but it’s familiar, too, being “hated” by Bonnie for this reason.

Odile pushes, and keeps pushing, until her concern overwhelms Siffrin and they strike where they know she’s most vulnerable. she gets physical, just for a moment, grabbing his collar before controlling herself and letting go. her fury shuts down into cold detachment, and she walks away.

but Mirabelle—dear, sweet, gentle, loving Mirabelle, “the most wonderful being on earth,” with her secret “ruthless side” that largely involves lightly badmouthing people behind their backs and then apologizing—slaps them. immediately.

and then COMPLETELY RENOUNCES THEIR FRIENDSHIP.

not just “we’re not friends anymore,” but “we were never friends in the first place.”

that’s!!! pretty extreme!!!!

of course, she ALSO starts by asking what’s wrong. something must have happened for him to act like this. but as soon as Siffrin brushes her off, she jumps past that line of questioning and dives headfirst into re-evaluating everything she thought she knew about them as a a person.

if he could say something like that to her and not see anything wrong with it, then she was wrong to treat him as a friend, wrong to read camaraderie into his teasing, wrong to think they must care about them all under their aloof demeanor.

that’s how Mirabelle phrases it—“I was wrong about you”—but i think that there’s a hidden layer of I was right about you, too.

she talks about the way they tease her like she had to convince herself that he was doing it in a friendly way. she says they talk like they “know better than her” like that’s a thought she’s had for a LONG time.

“Always soooo mysterious, Siffrin, always talking as if you're better than me! As if you know me!!! But you don't, Siffrin!!! You're just as lost and useless as I am!!! So stop!!! Talking!!! As if you know me!!!!!!”

none of this comes across as a new, sudden way to view Siffrin for her. it doesn’t shock or confuse her. it makes her angry, defensive, almost like she was waiting for something like this to happen at some point. the feeling of resentment, frustration, jealousy, being patronized and condescended to—this is something she’s been actively pushing down and rejecting this entire time, but they’ve given her ample reason for it all to boil to the surface. violently.

Mirabelle’s kindness is not inherent or easy. it’s a choice she’s making. she treats Siffrin warmly because she gives him the benefit of the doubt—refusing to act based on anxiety-fueled, cynical speculation, and reassuring herself that his actions are driven by care and friendship even if she can’t quite see it.

“I was wrong about you” doesn’t mean she always and without question believed them to be a fundamentally kind, caring person from the beginning—it’s that her first, colder instincts were right, and she was wrong to convince herself otherwise.

never mind that she asked what was wrong at first. she barely gives them time to speak in their own defense, to explain what they really meant by what they said. all of her suppressed doubts and frustrations are getting aired out now, now that all the trust she’d so deliberately placed in him has been betrayed. her pain feels bigger than this singular moment, so when she hurts him back, she makes sure it extends back through the entirety of their relationship for him, too.

“You're awful. You're not my friend, not my ally, not anything. You never were.”

like the others, she goes back to the clocktower and tells Siffrin not to come back until later. but there’s a finality to the way she ends this confrontation that isn’t quite there with the others. Isabeau and Odile reach their breaking point and remove themselves from the situation, asking for space to cool off but still somewhat leaving the door open for Siffrin to tell them what’s really going on at some point. Mirabelle is the only one who tries to fully cut ties—after everything else she says, her “I don’t want to see you until tonight” reads to me somewhat as “I don’t want to see you anymore unless I have to.”

I can’t wait to never see you again.

even back at the clocktower, Mirabelle doesn’t really defend Siffrin’s place in the party when Odile suggests leaving them behind out of concern for their trustworthiness on the most important day of the journey. Isabeau and Bonnie protest out of sentimentality and faith in Siffrin’s abilities and connection to them, and Mirabelle agrees, but…

“I agree, but... B-But would he even agree to come with us, still? Maybe they won't even come back tonight...”

she doesn’t say much outside of that. maybe the stutter and hesitation here are signs of regret about how things happened, but she lacks Isabeau and Bonnie’s confidence that Siffrin even wants to come back to them in the first place. she doesn’t trust that their bond was real anymore. maybe it never was in the first place, or maybe she broke whatever was there herself.

and she’s still mad when they finally catch up to Siffrin at the King! and she makes sure Siffrin knows that—after saving them, assuring him that he no longer needs to fight, that they’re all there for him. she still cares, of course she still cares—she’s still hurt, too, but they can figure that part out once there’s less world-ending stuff going on.

she’s the first to say that they all reserve the right to still be angry at Siffrin later—and that they’ve already forgiven him.

she’s also the first to say we want to stay with you, too. it’s not just you.

she was wrong! she thought they didn’t care but they care so much, it’s overwhelming, it’s world-ending.

i think she’s gonna be wallowing in guilt post-canon the moment she remembers what she said and did TO SIFFRIN and not just what Siffrin said to her. especially now that she knows Siffrin’s exact hangups, and especially especially if she figures out what Siffrin was trying to say.

they put themself through hell out of loneliness and fear that none of the others cared about him the way he cared about them, he was going insane from repetition and exhaustion and hunger and trying to keep them all safe and together, and all they did in the midst of all that was say something kind of mean to her one time (that turned out to not even be MEANT to be mean it was supposed to be HELPFUL they just SAID IT ALL WRONG) and she SLAPPED THEM? and told him that they WEREN’T FRIENDS AT ALL??? how could she!!! she should have known better!! what they said hurt a lot but still!!!

so when they eventually manage to try to talk about it, they end up almost in, like, a guilt competition.

Mirabelle apologizing for how she reacted, that she shouldn’t have yelled or hit him, that she doesn’t want to be the kind of person who acts that way out of anger and she’s sorry that she made Siffrin expect that reaction from her, she should have known better and believed in him more and they only messed up like that because they were losing their mind in a time loop but what’s HER excuse—

and Siffrin going nononono stop I deserved it—(HUH DON’T SAY THAT NO YOU DIDN’T)—and that he should never have said such awful things to her, ever, and she was under so much pressure already with the weight of the country and everyone’s lives and futures and her religion and their whole party counting on her to do this impossible task because she’s the only one who can, all this unbearable expectation and hope crushing her, and they KNEW that but they thought they could skip to the ending as though her feelings didn’t matter at all, like helping her wasn’t as important as saving a little time—

until they’re just. in tears together, apologizing for all the horrible things they did in between complimenting each other’s strength and kindness and resilience and how much they admire each other and saying that no, everything you did was completely understandable, actually, the only one who sucks here is me. which neither of them will accept coming from the other!!

they’re so similar, in ways they couldn’t really understand, before.

warm, affectionate, perfect Mirabelle, the resolute hero, a beacon of compassion and hope for all those around her, who wears her heart on her sleeve, her fear making her courage shine all the brighter—nothing like the insignificant, forgettable Siffrin, too terrified to be known, too fragile to touch, too selfish and disgusting to bear letting go.

cool, mysterious, unflappable Siffrin, the worldly traveler, as charming and silly as they are confident and skilled, who brushed off losing an eye like it was nothing, accepting the risks of this journey with barely more than a shrug—nothing like the anxious, stagnant, underserving Mirabelle, a fraud and a nobody crumbling under the weight of a mission too important to be entrusted to someone like her, doubting herself, doubting her friends, doubting her mentor, doubting her faith, too weak and brittle to bend and change the way the world needs her to without breaking.

not worth bothering others with their problems. they should be able to handle this alone. stay positive, stay calm. breathe in, and out.

they’ll struggle with it, still—the hiding, the minimizing—but now, they understand each other a little better. they can hold each other accountable for what they leave unsaid.

it’ll get easier, eventually. they have plenty of time.

#sorry i don't mean to put you on blast or anything. but siffrin is genuinely very sweet!#they're just also quiet and easygoing in a way that Mirabelle reads as overly casual or insincere sometimes #isat #isat spoilers #mypost #replies #kaiju-lightning

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rafes-honey · 3 days ago

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𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐒𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐭. ౨ৎ

(Summary - You always say you love Rafe and he always replies with “I care about you to.”)

There was a time when you thought love would fix Rafe Cameron.

Like if you just held him hard enough, loved him loud enough, stayed patient and sweet and sunlit long enough, the shadows in him would dissolve. The anger, the numbness, the mess Ward left behind. You thought you could kiss away the bruises on his heart like they were nothing more than cuts from falling off a bike.

But Rafe wasn’t broken in the way you understood.

He was twisted. Twisted by a lifetime of never being enough, of being told to toughen up and silence the soft parts of himself until they shriveled into something cold and cruel. And for a while, he let that version of himself bleed into you. The version that yelled when he was scared, pushed when he wanted to be held, ran when he should’ve stayed.

You still remember that night the fight.

It started like most things with Rafe did: soft, then sharp.

He had been distant all week, buried in work, too tired to come to bed, snapping over things that didn’t matter. The dishes. The mail. The way you left your sweater draped over the porch swing instead of hanging it up. You tried not to take it personally. You always did.

But that night, you couldn’t take it anymore.

You were standing in the kitchen, barefoot in one of his old shirts, arms crossed so tight your knuckles turned white.

“You know what I don’t get?” you said, voice quieter than your rage should’ve allowed. “You say you care about me. You say you’re trying. But I don’t think you even love me.”

He didn’t look at you.

Just stood by the fridge, jaw clenched, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets like he was trying to hold himself together.

“I’ve said I care. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah. Physically. But emotionally? You’re a ghost, Rafe. I tell you I love you and you just say I care about you too. Like it’s a fucking business transaction.”

Your voice cracked on the last word. You hated that it did.

Rafe’s eyes darted up to meet yours. There was something in them you couldn’t read not anger, not softness. Just… conflict.

“I’ve never said that to anyone,” he muttered.

You blinked. “Said what?”

“That I loved them.”

The room felt smaller suddenly, like the air had thickened. Your stomach twisted.

“So what, I’m just another girl you’re fucking until you find someone you can love?”

“No.” His voice was sharp now, laced with that familiar frustration. “You don’t get it.”

“Then make me understand, Rafe, because all I see is a guy who takes and takes and can’t even tell his girlfriend he loves her after everything she’s given him.”

Silence. Heavy. Immovable.

And then your voice broke completely. “I love you so much it hurts. And I don’t think you feel anything close to that for me.”

His lips parted. But nothing came out.

And that silence hurt worse than if he’d screamed.

You’d gone to bed alone that night. You heard him outside on the porch for hours, pacing, lighting cigarette after cigarette and never finishing one. You cried until your eyes swelled shut, gripping a pillow that still smelled like him and wondering how long you could keep loving someone who couldn’t love you back.

But something changed after that night.

He didn’t say it not that but he changed.

Therapy became more than just a checkbox. He stopped deflecting. He let the sessions carve into him, dig up all the rot and guilt and twisted wiring. He started talking. Really talking. To the therapist, to you. Not always easily, but honestly.

He started showing up. Not just coming home, but being home.

And he got the job. A real one. Building houses, pouring foundations, laying the kind of bricks he said felt solid beneath his fingers. You used to joke that Rafe needed something outside of his brain to break and rebuild, and construction was just that. Each wall he built was another piece of him coming back together.

The two of you bought a house too big, a little old, with hydrangeas out front and floorboards that creaked when it rained. You called it “haunted cottage core.” Rafe hated that, but not really. He rebuilt the staircase by hand. Repainted the kitchen cabinets with you one weekend, both of you speckled in white and blue paint, laughing until your ribs ached.

But he still hadn’t said it. And some nights, that silence still echoed.

Then came the ring.

His mother’s. Found it in a box from Tannyhill, tucked between old photographs and hair clips. Simple. Silver like center like a piece of ocean frozen in time. He stared at it for hours that night.

He didn’t know what it meant if he was worthy of using it. If she’d want him to. If you’d want him to.

But every time he imagined losing you, the air left his lungs.

And that meant something.

So the night he did it, he didn’t plan anything grand. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t you.

You were on the porch, sitting on the swing, wrapped in a blanket, hair still wet from your bath, wearing the hoodie of his you always stole when you were sad.

He sat beside you. Silent. For a long time.

Then, his voice quiet, almost hoarse. “I know I’ve been… a lot. I know I’ve hurt you.”

You looked at him slowly, heart already racing, but said nothing.

“I used to think love was something people said just to get laid. Or control each other. Or pretend shit was okay when it wasn’t. My parents? Yeah. They loved each other. And they still broke everything they touched.”

You watched him, your heart breaking in slow motion.

“But then you came along. And you stayed. Even when I made it impossible. You stayed.”

You swallowed hard. “Rafe…”

“I didn’t say it before… because I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like.” He reached into his hoodie pocket. Pulled out the ring. “But now? I get it.”

He dropped to one knee right there on the porch, the light from the windows casting a soft glow across his face. His hands were trembling. He didn’t care.

“I love you.”

You gasped, lips parting like they wanted to say finally, but the words got caught behind your tears.

“I love you so much it scares the shit out of me. And I should’ve said it that night. When you begged me to. But I didn’t want to say it until I meant it. And I mean it now.”

His voice cracked. “You’re the only person who ever made me want to be better. You’re the only thing in my life that’s ever felt real. So I’m asking you… will you marry me?”

You dropped to your knees too, hands flying to your mouth, laughing through your sobs.

And you whispered the only word that ever felt big enough for the moment.

“Yes.”

He slid the ring on your finger, and you didn’t even look at it. You just kissed him like your soul had been waiting years for this exact second.

And in that kiss, in that trembling embrace, in that breathless, beautiful collapse into each other Rafe finally understood what love felt like.

It felt like safety.

It felt like pain.

It felt like home.

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joshujin · 22 hours ago

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dude, nice try! part one

series masterlist • submit a request

joshua hong has had the immense privilege of living 30 whole years without ever feeling so much as an ounce of jealousy. that is, until you come prancing into his picture-perfect life on your dumb burner account with evidence that his long-time girlfriend is cheating on him… with your boyfriend.

as he gets tangled up in your chaotic plan to get back at your adulterous partners, he begins to wonder if this growing discomfort in his chest was ever even heartbreak to begin with, or if it’s something entirely new to him—something that has the ability to eat him alive from the inside out.

♫ get him back! olivia rodrigo ⟡ hot girl bummer blackbear ⟡ lackin’ denise julia ⟡ mascara xg part one: 9.4k words pairing: joshua x fem!reader cw: strong language, mentions of/implied sexual activity, reader is highly emotional and tbh kind of crazy maybe even toxic but idc bc i support women’s rights and wrongs <3 tags: strangers to partners-in-crime to partners PERIOD, joshua pov, pining, he fell first AND harder oops, he’s also so incredibly whipped from the jump, a few smau bits but mostly writing, no smut, inspired by get him back! by miss rodrigo, basically john tucker must die except joshua is sophia bush hehe iykyk a/n: as stated in the teaser, this was a request for jealous!shua, though you should consider joshua’s affair with jealousy a slow burn in this one haha. if you read the teaser, i suggest you do not skip the parts you recognize here because i did cut some stuff out for the sake of length when i posted the preview! okay enough blabbing, enjoy!

dividers by cafekitsune! cover by yours truly!

prologue

the first message from you came in the middle of the night, as if the idea of reaching out to joshua had kept you up and tortured you mercilessly until you just couldn’t physically take it anymore. in retrospect, the thought of that is silly to him considering your first and only message was ridiculous and absolutely ineffective for what you were trying to do. but it makes him smile anyway. you’re just… so you.

of course, there was also the fact that joshua had been sound asleep at 3 a.m., so your plan really wasn’t well thought out—more a product of the rage that joshua isn’t sure whether he admires or should have you committed for.

his instagram notifications had been off back then, back before he felt the need to see everything you were doing and saying and posting on the stupid app.

it made sense that he kept you waiting, not noticing your first message until about halfway through his sunday morning.

he remembers feeling like it was an unfair assessment to make of his own long-term relationship, especially coming from a stranger. he also remembers having to sit back in thought for several minutes after reading that to contemplate what on earth you could even mean.

of course he loved mina. she was his girlfriend of a little over a year. you don’t stay with someone for a whole year and not love them, right? it was such a bizarre idea to him at the time—the thought that anyone could be in a relationship and not love their partner.

unfortunately, he learned that you were right pretty early on in your friendship. you've proven it enough times now that joshua knows you often are—right.

as he sits here next to you now, frowning at the odd sensation in his chest and listening to you frantically explain yourself to the bewildered officer across from you two, he realizes that not only did he never love mina, he's also starting to wonder if he ever loved anybody.

he has let go of all his ex-girlfriends so frighteningly easily when he thinks about it. on the other hand, he’s had a single month with you and he can’t imagine his life without you in it anymore. the thought makes him nauseous.

so now, it’s not a question of whether or not he ever loved mina; he knows he didn’t. now… he’s wondering if maybe, without even knowing it, he was just letting each relationship he’s been in happen to him—if he was just passing time.

passing time until what?

he doesn’t have the courage to respond to his own thoughts with the obvious answer, but he knows it’s the wrong question.

he watches you speak at a million words a minute, your cuffed hands waving in the air erratically and your brows pinching in the middle as you plead your innocence. he was sure you thought it was a pitiable enough expression for the officer to let the two of you go, but really, it was just painfully cute.

he bites back a sigh.

yeah. it was the wrong question. passing time until *who?

one month ago

“i believe her.”

joshua looks up from where he’s pulling up your messages on his phone and glares at jeonghan. “she’s a stranger. and you haven’t even seen what she said. how on earth can you already believe her?”

his best friend shrugs casually, bringing his straw to the corner of his mouth and sipping his americano nonchalantly like they’re not discussing the possibility of joshua’s girlfriend cheating on him. “i have eyes? ears? literally any one of the five senses? pick one and it can definitely pinpoint mina for the absolute snake she is.”

“okay, you’re biased, you hate everyone i date,” he mutters, returning to his phone so he can show jeonghan your conversation—if he can even call it that. most of it was just you screaming.

“yeah,” jeonghan agrees easily. he never made an effort to mask his feelings, something joshua still wasn’t sure if he appreciated or loathed. “because you date the most vapid, boring people.”

“oh, i’m sorry my tastes aren’t up to your standards,” he snarks, not bothering to look up.

“y’know, i’m glad you apologized—someone had to,” jeonghan says dramatically, making joshua roll his eyes. “i don’t know why you keep dragging these duds not only into your life but my life as well. why should i have to suffer too? you don’t even like any of these people.”

joshua immediately puts his phone down on the table. this is now the second time in 24 hours someone has claimed he doesn’t love or like mina. jeonghan raises an eyebrow at his sudden attention.

“what makes you say i don’t like mina?” he asks, eyes narrowing.

the man sitting across from him scoffs before putting his drink down and leaning his elbows on the table. “do you like mina?” jeonghan dodges the question.

“of course i like mina,” he says incredulously. “why would i stay with her this long if i didn’t like her?”

“beats me, i’d like to know too,” he retorts.

“jeonghan.”

he sighs, knowing he’s wearing joshua’s usually never-ending patience thin today. “okay, fine. you like mina,” he says in a way that blatantly confirms he doesn’t believe him. “what exactly do you like about her?”

“what?”

“what do you like about her?” he repeats easily.

“what do you mean?” joshua asks when his best friend doesn’t clarify.

jeonghan looks at him like he has two heads. “what do you mean what do i mean?” he asks, irritated. “it’s not some kind of trick question. what do you like about your girlfriend, dude?”

joshua is dismayed at his own silence. he realizes the first things that come to mind when he thinks about mina are physical traits. he likes her long hair. he likes the way she dresses. he likes the way she does her makeup. he likes her lip gloss—wait, no, not really because she doesn’t let him kiss her when she has it on… which is almost always. sure, she’s pretty, but… what does he really like about her?

he doesn’t have the time to ask himself what it could mean that he doesn’t have a meaningful answer, and jeonghan doesn’t have the time to laugh in his face and drive his point home. because at that moment, his phone pings, and it’s one message from you, just a little over 24 hours since your last message about him being heartless went ignored.

joshua glances down and feels his stomach turn.

i have evidence.

an hour later, joshua and jeonghan are sprawled across the latter’s living room. when they’d seen your message, both of them had quickly and wordlessly vacated the cafe they were holed up in, gotten to jeonghan’s apartment frighteningly fast, and rifled through the series of messages you sent—all of them photos you took of your boyfriend’s phone screen.

at first, joshua was just annoyed at how hard snapchat made it to read messages; most of the ones sent by whoever your boyfriend was were deleted. he was ready to wave you off and call your “evidence” a reach. but then, he got to more damning photos—photos he was a little vexed jeonghan got to see too.

because they just proved his know-it-all best friend right. mina was a fucking snake.

he’s shocked at the lengths they went to to be able to communicate with each other without being caught.

but perhaps the most damning piece of evidence of them all comes last: a photo of a woman’s naked back as she laid on her side in a bed—that wasn’t joshua’s or mina’s—away from the camera. it could’ve been anyone. the small tattoo at the base of her neck told joshua exactly who it was.

it wasn’t something he could refute anymore; you were obviously not a random person and you definitely weren’t mingyu playing some kind of sick prank.

“so what now?” jeonghan asks, both of them still starfished on the floor and staring at the ceiling after spending several minutes furiously swiping and cussing at his screen. “let’s fill all her shampoo bottles with hair remover,” he answers his own question before joshua can even open his mouth. “oh! or we can follow her around, inevitably find this tool, and kidnap him! i’m sure this y/n person will appreciate that too!”

joshua doesn’t bother entertaining his best friend with a proper response, choosing to ignore the suggestions altogether. his mind is racing a mile a minute, trying to find the point in his relationship mina might have started straying away. has it been happening the entire time? or did she recently decide joshua wasn’t fulfilling her needs to her liking?

“… his car and it’ll probably break down and explode at some point later that week?”

he frowns, realizing jeonghan has been suggesting ridiculous things they can do to mina and your boyfriend the entire time he was contemplating his relationship. it’s his first time getting cheated on, but he isn’t surprised at his best friend’s reaction to it. he’s more surprised when silence blankets over them for several long seconds before jeonghan asks:

“are you okay?” he sighs. “i know that’s a dumb question to ask. you’re obviously not going to be okay after finding out your girlfriend cheated on you.”

his frown deepens at that. it’s a fair statement. he always imagined this kind of thing would throw him into some kind of jealous rage—emotions he’s not really familiar with. rage like yours.

he wonders if he had been the one to find out about this, would he have had a meltdown the way you did? make a burner account and find you to tell you the way you did? try to find someone to commiserate with—even if it’s a stranger—the way you did?

no, probably not. he was telling the truth when he told you that all he would do is break up with mina.

and he’s incredibly confused to find that, contrary to what jeonghan is saying, he feels very okay with that. he can’t really imagine caring enough to do anything more, and he doesn’t know why. shouldn’t he care more?

if you and jeonghan were wrong about him loving mina the way he was so convinced you were, why didn’t he care more?

“joshua,” jeonghan reaches over and pokes his shoulder. “speak. you’re scaring me.”

he snorts. “i’m fine.”

“okay…” he responds slowly. “so still in shock?”

“no, i really think i’m fine,” joshua says, shaking his head at the ceiling. “i feel… normal. i guess just confused about when and why she decided to cheat.”

“you did nothing wrong. she’s just a conniving, slutty ingrate who doesn’t know that she’s throwing away the most decent man in the universe,” he assures him. “which brings me back to my initial question. what should we do now to punish said conniving, slutty ingrate?”

joshua sighs. “we’re not doing anything. i am breaking up with her as soon as she gets off work.”

jeonghan perks up, rolling over onto his stomach and crawling to him until his head appears in his line of vision. his best friend has a shit-eating smile on his face that makes him instinctively roll his eyes.

“can i be there?”

he knows he should say no. it’s an absurd request and it shouldn’t even take joshua more than a second to answer. but as he thinks about it, jeonghan continuing to smile at him like a little devil on his shoulder, he thinks it might be nice to have him there and shame mina for cheating in a way he knows he doesn’t really care to do himself.

he shrugs. “sure, why not?”

jeonghan squeals with delight, scrambling to get up. “come on, we have to make sure you look smoking hot so it hurts her twice as bad. you can borrow my leather pants.”

“leather?!” joshua repeats. “it’s the middle of summer!”

joshua texted mina to let her know he wanted to talk to her after work and he would be dropping by. she told him several times that tonight wasn’t a great time and insisted they wait until tomorrow, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a shit about her convenience, so here he is, with jeonghan practically vibrating with excitement at his side, standing outside her apartment building.

“i still think you should’ve worn the leather pants,” his best friend says, “but you look killer. she’s gonna shit herself.”

joshua recoils at the idea but thanks him anyway.

“ready?”

he sighs. “yeah, i guess. ready as i’ll—oof!”

he stumbles a few steps and right into jeonghan as someone violently shoves him, continuing to push and slap at both him and his best friend until they’re several steps away from the entrance to mina’s apartment.

“what the—”

“and what the hell are you doing here?!” a female voice shrieks.

he wants to yell at this stranger for putting her hands on him. he wants to tell her to have some manners and to get away from him. at the very least, he wants to glare at her until she shrivels up in shame and scurries away. but all ideas of even attempting to do any of that die as soon as he lays eyes on the stranger.

your instagram photos don’t really do you justice (of course he looked. he really thought mingyu was pranking him and had even mentally applauded him for his effort to find a cute girl to post so consistently). your photos were well-taken and curated perfectly for your profile, but now that you were—for some weird reason—standing in front of joshua and jeonghan, he can confidently call your photos dirty liars. he can’t blame them, though. he has a feeling no camera in the world can capture how pretty you actually are in real life.

prettier than anyone i’ve ever dated, his intrusive thoughts remind him. prettier than mina.

“well?!” you screech when neither of them answer you, making them both flinch. you don’t notice your effect on them, though, because you’re busy frantically looking between them and the entrance of the building like you’re scared the three of you will be seen.

he knows jeonghan is thinking the same, exact thing he is because he is never rendered silent.

“i—uh,” joshua stammers for what he thinks might be the very first time in his life. “we…”

jeonghan glances at him, face twisted in amused confusion before he schools his expression and points his signature stunning smile at you. “you’re y/n! hi!”

“who the hell are you?” you turn back to them, cross your arms, and practically bark at him.

his best friend’s laugh is exaggerated and several decibels louder than it has any business being. it grates joshua’s nerves. he glares at him but jeonghan pays him no attention. “i like her,” he mutters to him before saying, “i’m jeonghan.”

“okay, jeonghan,” you spit his name like venom, obviously unimpressed, making him giggle.

joshua rolls his eyes at him and his increasing giddiness. his best friend doesn’t date often, but he shouldn’t be surprised that he enjoys this kind of vitriol. jeonghan is, at his core, attracted to the same chaos and mischief he himself is made of.

“what are you doing here?” you ask again, raising an eyebrow at joshua to make it clear you’re talking to him.

“i’m… here to break up,” he answers weakly. “with mina! i’m here to break up with… mina.”

he doesn’t know what’s come over him, but being confronted by you in person and unnervingly close in his vicinity has him forgetting how to properly communicate. the thought of blocking you was a lot easier when he had no idea if you were a real person. now, he feels like there’s no escaping you.

“what are you doing here?” jeonghan asks the question he forgets to return to you.

you ignore him, eyes staying trained on joshua as you speak, and something about you pretending like his best friend doesn’t exist forces him to fight down a smile.

“you’re not breaking up with her today,” you order him confidently, like you know saying it is enough for joshua to agree. if the way his palms start to sweat are a sign, you might be right. “she’s up there with siwoo.”

“who’s—”

“my boyfriend,” you answer before jeonghan can even finish his question. “i followed him here when he told me he was getting drinks with coworkers.”

joshua’s stomach flips. he’s not really sure how anyone can even think about another person in your presence, let alone cheat on you. maybe your intensity scares siwoo, though. it definitely kind of scares him.

“you mean… they’re up there right now… and they’re probably…” jeonghan’s sentence trails off, but you’re you and you don’t shy away from finishing it.

“fucking?” you ask with a biting and sarcastic enthusiasm. “yeah, jeonghan! probably!”

joshua winces. your rage was already palpable via DMs, but it’s near suffocating in person. it grabs him by the neck and shoves his face back into the dilemma he was quietly contemplating back at jeonghan’s apartment: why isn’t he sharing the same anger? why isn't he doubled over, throwing up at the idea of mina having sex with someone up in her apartment at this very moment?

“are you hungry?” you direct the question to him.

“what?” he asks dumbly.

“are. you. hungry?” you repeat, irritation laced in your voice.

“i am!” jeonghan announces.

you give him a blank stare before looking back at joshua. when he fails to say anything, you sigh, your temper appearing to deflate infinitesimally.

“they’re going to be a while,” you inform him like you’ve done this before. “there’s a fried chicken shop i like nearby.” okay, so you’ve definitely done this before. “we can eat and… talk, i guess.”

“we would love to talk. right, joshua?” jeonghan asks, pinching his side with more force than necessary. he fights to keep from jumping.

"sure," he finally agrees. "i could eat."

"thanks for ignoring me amidst my weekend-long menty b, by the way," you say sarcastically as you set down a pitcher of beer and three glasses next to the tray of friend chicken on the table.

"ment—?"

"mental breakdown," jeonghan whispers to him as he reaches to pluck a piece of fried chicken from the tray.

instead of depositing it on his own plate, he stretches across the table to put it on yours. joshua's eyes involuntarily narrow at the gesture. he doesn't realize he's glaring at his best friend until he speaks again.

"what?" he pouts at him but his eyes glint with mischief. "ladies first."

"thanks," you murmur, not-at-all sounding thankful. jeonghan snorts. "well? explain your rude behavior." he looks back over to you to find you sulking. you add more chicken to your plate even though you haven't touched the one jeonghan gave you.

"ah." joshua shakes his head. "i was just... not all the way convinced you weren't my friend trying to mess with me."

"mingyu," you say the name a lot like you said jeonghan's and for some reason, it makes him smile.

"yeah," he confirms, laughing a little. "mingyu. he's been known to play a prank or two on me."

"our joshua is just very gullible," jeonghan supplies as he serves joshua chicken now. the statement feels like a crack to the ribs. it's what mina called him when she was messaging siwoo. gullible. "so he's slow to trust."

joshua doesn't have a chance to argue that because you're, once again, ignoring jeonghan to ask him another question. "and now?"

"now what?"

"i take it you're all the way convinced?" you clarify as you tear into your first piece of chicken like you haven't eaten in years. with a full mouth, you add: "i mean, i assume you are if you're here to break up with your girlfriend."

"uh... yeah..." he nods slowly, distracted.

joshua is often described by his friends as a gentleman—elegant even. with the exception of jeonghan and mingyu—the two people who know him best—he is always polite and accommodating. he's careful that his clothes are always pressed and lint-free. he always has good posture, and he does his best to remember his table etiquette, especially in the presence of elders. he tries to be buttoned up and put-together almost all of the time, sometimes even to his own detriment.

so staring at you, wiping soy garlic sauce off your mouth with the back of your hand and talking with your pieces of chewed up chicken tucked into one, puffy cheek, he should absolutely feel repulsed.

he frowns at you and knows it probably looks like he is repulsed by you. but really, he's just confused about why you look so endearing sitting there, eating like it pains you to while taking turns glaring at your drumstick and glaring at him and his best friend.

"hello?" you wave your saucy fingers in front of joshua's face. "is he always this... spacey?" you ask jeonghan without taking your eyes off him.

"i'm glad you asked! no," the man next to him answers—also through cheeks full of chicken. "i've actually never seen him this nerv—"

"sorry, what were you saying?" joshua interjects before everyone at this table, including him, has to face the fact that yes, he is very much nervous and he's unsure why.

you sigh as you wipe your fingers on a napkin. "what is it about me that men's eyes just begin to glaze over as soon as my mouth opens?" you complain, the signature rage joshua has come to expect from you in the one hour he's known you bubbling back to the surface.

his eyes widen in horror at the thought of you mistaking his fascination with disinterest. "oh! i didn't—no, i'm not—i—"

"what joshua is trying and failing miserably to say," jeonghan cuts in, sneaking him a look that screams get it together, "is that no one here is ignoring you. he's just... trying to process all of this. after all, you had all weekend to think about this, and he just realized you were telling the truth, what? two hours ago?"

you stare at jeonghan with the same unimpressed expression you’ve been forcing on him since you met him. after a moment, your gaze travels to joshua, and he gives you a meek smile. you finally hum in understanding.

“sorry, i know i’m projecting. i’m just all…” you wave your hand wildly near your temple to mimic a muddled brain. “siwoo has done a number on me.”

joshua finally gains enough composure to string a sentence together. “i’m sorry i ignored your messages… and blocked your burner account.” you cringe at that but nod an acceptance of his apology. “and i’m sorry i’m not fully present right now. jeonghan’s right.”

kind of. not really. he was processing your existence more than he was processing being cheated on, to be frank.

“i’m just… trying to understand what’s happening, i guess. for what it’s worth, i find it really unbelievable that anyone would ever cheat on you.”

he ignores the way jeonghan inhales deeply and slowly through his nose. only joshua would be able to tell it’s the equivalent of him scream-giggling and kicking his feet when he’s trying to be discreet.

your eyebrows rise like you’re shocked joshua is capable of more than grunts and one-word replies.

“ditto,” you say plainly. joshua can’t help the immediate laugh that escapes his mouth at that, and he’s pleased when you smile for the first time since you met. “mina seems dumb. and not just because she and siwoo are ruining my life. you’re very handsome. and if you blocking me on instagram so fast is any indication, you seem very loyal too.”

you say it easily, as if giving out compliments like that is no big deal to you. maybe it isn’t, but even if that’s true, he’s going to appreciate it nonetheless.

unfortunately, that appreciation manifests in a fierce blush joshua feels spreading across his face like wildfire, much to his mortification. he doesn’t remember the last time he blushed like a pathetic schoolboy with a crush. it was probably when he was an actual pathetic schoolboy with a crush.

he clears his throat, choosing to ignore the compliment. “yeah, i guess we have the same, bad taste in dummies.”

you suddenly groan, throw your head back, and blink rapidly at the ceiling like you're trying your best not to cry. both men glance at each other and fidget awkwardly at the abrupt change of mood, neither of them being great at handling a crying woman. joshua has little to no experience with it and jeonghan tends to fall back on ill-timed jokes during times of distress.

"i followed him here months ago," you tell them unprompted. “i followed him here so many times because he was always so fucking sketchy. but his lie always involved ‘one of the guys,’ so i just thought his friend lived in that building.”

“and you found out this weekend…?” jeonghan asks carefully. joshua rubs the back of his neck nervously.

you nod, squeezing your eyes shut briefly before bringing your line of sight back to them. your eyes are glassy but your efforts to keep from crying were mostly successful.

“he lent me his laptop because mine stopped working,” you explain, rolling your eyes like having a broken laptop on top of all this is almost enough to send you over the edge. “his texts are connected on there too. i was at a cafe with a friend, and one of those verification texts came through. i ignored it but a few seconds later, it messaged again and i saw that he’d replied on his phone.”

“he told her it was safe to text,” joshua says, remembering the photos you sent.

“yeah…” you breathe, hugging yourself tightly and rubbing your arms as you try to self-soothe. “and i just sat there in front of my friends, watching him make plans with her in real time… brainstorm the lies they agreed to tell us… and i just had to pretend to be normal or else i would’ve burned that cafe to the ground.”

jeonghan coughs as he chokes on his chicken a little. joshua pats him on the back absentmindedly, eyes never leaving you, even as his best friend stretches across him, still coughing, to pour everyone a glass of beer. you sniffle as you accept your glass with a small nod, your body visibly relaxing as you take your first sip. he tries not to gawk when you down it all in one go.

joshua thinks this is probably what someone in love should look like when their heart has been broken: drunk and sad. now that the initial shock of seeing you in person has worn off, he can see how tired you really look. there are dark, bruising circles under your eyes, visible even under your makeup, and your hair looks like it was haphazardly put up into a ponytail to avoid having to wash or brush it. your eyes are tinged pink, a little swollen, and dull, like you’ve been crying all weekend. you have been crying all weekend.

and joshua? he’s asking himself why he hasn’t felt the urge to cry at all yet because right now, he could be the poster child for soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend who is going to be okay has been okay, is okay, and will always be okay. aside from his irritation with mina and her insane audacity, today is like any other day.

he’s never had his heart broken before this, but maybe it’s just different for guys. he read somewhere that men’s emotional intelligence develop a lot slower than women’s; maybe he just hasn’t reached a level of maturity you have.

“anyway,” you say as you stifle a tiny burp that makes jeonghan giggle for the nth time tonight, “i’m going to ruin his life.”

okay, so maybe maturity is the wrong word.

“wh…” joshua glances at jeonghan for confirmation he heard correctly.

his best friend’s eyes are lit up with excitement as he leans forward with impossibly even more interest in what the pretty lady across the table has to say. joshua would slap him if they were alone. what for, he doesn’t know, but he would.

“sorry, what was that?” he asks, trying not to sound judgmental at the risk of setting your anger off again.

“she’s going to ruin his life,” jeonghan answers for you giddily. “what are you going to do? i told joshua he should fill mina’s shampoo bottle with hair remover.”

that earns the two men another smile from you, but this time, joshua finds himself annoyed it was because of something jeonghan said.

“oh my god, that’s vile,” you say even though you’re grinning and obviously love the idea. “maybe i’ll add that as a little cherry on top for siwoo.”

“oh, he’ll be so ugly,” jeonghan claims like he’s already daydreaming about it.

“you don’t even know what he looks like,” joshua murmurs.

“i don’t need to,” he responds, smiling as he stares off into the distance. “a stupid motherfucker who can cheat on our lovely y/n, here, like that has to look like ass.”

you roll your eyes at the compliment but your cheeks turn a cute shade of pink anyway.

“well, making him bald will look like child’s play when i’m done with him,” you match jeonghan’s dreamy tone, and joshua feels a chill of fear from having the two of you at the same table crawl up his spine. why was he a magnet for agents of chaos?

“is that why you haven’t broken up?” he asks. “you’re scheming to ruin his life?”

you frown. “what makes you think we haven’t broken up?”

joshua shrugs. “maybe the fact that you followed him here and then shoved me and my best friend into next week to keep us from attracting any attention?”

jeonghan snickers and your cheeks turn a darker shade.

“ah, right.” you nod once. “sorry about that.” you don’t look sorry at all and joshua finds himself thinking it’s amusing. “i suppose that was a bit… rude.”

joshua hums like he’s contemplating your apology but he knows it’s clear he’s fighting a smile as he brings his beer to his lips.

you sigh. “anyway, yes. that’s why i’m still with him. he doesn’t even know i know. i’m trying to get my ducks in a row and figure out the most devastating way to leave him.”

jeonghan smirks. “my kind of girl.”

joshua’s foot finds his best friend’s and stomps on it as hard as he can without thinking twice about it. it almost shocks him—how much it felt like instinct—but after the day he’s had, he thinks he’s entitled to a bit of a tantrum. maybe this is how he is when his heart is broken. a little mean.

“ow, what the fu—”

“so what’s the plan?” joshua asks loudly when your eyes snap up to jeonghan mid-sip over the glass of your beer.

you lick your lips clean of foam before setting the glass down, and joshua forces himself to look away when he notices how plump and pink they are.

“well, to be honest… i haven’t been the smartest,” you admit, seeming timid for the first time since you barged into his DMs. it’s an odd look on you. “i—um. i kind of rely on him… financially.”

the explanation comes tumbling past your lips after that like you’re afraid the two of them are going to judge you if you allow even a second of silence to pass.

“i had a job! i had a great job! but siwoo’s a bit traditional, and he comes from a more conservative family that really buys into gender roles, and i mean, fuck that, right?”

you give them no chance to agree.

“i’m a feminist! i swear to god i’m a fucking feminist!” you’re practically shouting now and the two men are so stunned, they can’t bring themselves to notice or care that the other patrons of the restaurant are starting to look over. “but i was in love! and i thought i was going to marry this moron! so i convinced myself i wanted to stay home and i wanted to clean the house and take care of a man—”

you say the word with so much disgust, both joshua and jeonghan struggle to keep from laughing.

“—and he was so happy when i quit my job like he’s been asking me to, and i thought i was happy too, like, what woman doesn’t want to be taken care of by a rich man?!”

you pause to burp briefly but it still isn’t enough time for either of them to get a word in.

“though again, i was in love! i was looking at that shithead through rose-tinted glasses! he’s nothing but a spoiled mama’s boy with a rich family! that asshole doesn’t have to do anything for the wealth he has! so, like, really… what woman wants to be fake-taken-care-of by a 30-something-year-old mama’s boy?!”

the words come with even more disgust than “man.”

“and he had the nerve to act like he was better than me because i had to work for everything i had before him! like, dude. if your bank account is still connected to your fucking mom’s, lower your goddamn voice when speaking to me!”

his best friend’s mouth drops open in absolute joy-filled shock at your biting remark. he’s enjoying meeting someone as chaotic as he is too much.

“and what was it for?! empty promises that he would propose soon?! endless faked orgasms for a man who’s afraid to give a woman head?!”

jeonghan chokes again, this time on nothing. joshua has more decorum but he can’t help the way his face turns bright red.

“you’d swear i was harboring a monster down there the way he cringed at the mere mention of oral, like, what is he, 12?!”

joshua has to avert his eyes to the ceiling of the restaurant at the mention of your “monster,” and he can’t even get it together long enough to nudge jeonghan when he bursts into hysterical laughter. they might as well be nonexistent, though, because you keep barreling through your rant.

“i was on track to be a director before 30! i was a fucking star! and look what he made me!” you screech, words slurring.

it takes your slurred speech and yet another burp for joshua to realize with mild horror that the pitcher of beer is almost empty, and that he and jeonghan are still on their first glasses. he elbows his best friend, who’s still cackling, and motions at the pitcher. jeonghan sighs happily as the last of his laughter leaves him and mutters a quiet: holy shit, pretty aggretsuko can drink.

“he turned me into a housewife! and i remind you: I AM A FEMINIST!” you slam your palms against the table to each word to punctuate your point. joshua can see why you picked aggretsuko for your burner account. “i support a woman’s choice to be a housewife if that’s what she wants, but my dumb ass didn’t realize that this isn’t the life i wanted until this fucking weekend! god!” you groan miserably. “all of this heartache and for what?! he cheated on me and now i’m jobless and about to be homeless and completely broke, and i…”

you abruptly run out of steam, slumping in your seat and looking at your near-empty glass of beer pitifully. joshua has the urge to round the table and give you a hug, but he stays put, trying to process the whiplash of witnessing what he imagines is a mini “menty b.”

you take a few breaths before quietly saying, “i can’t believe this is what being in love got me.”

something violently lurches inside joshua’s chest when you say that.

“i can’t believe something that’s supposed to be as beautiful as love blinded me so badly.” your voice cracks. your eyes well with tears and this time, you make no move to stop them as they begin to streak your face. “how the hell can love hurt this much?”

joshua’s mouth falls open to say something—anything. any kind of comfort or kindness or advice. but no sound escapes his lips as he watches your heart break into tiny, little pieces in front of him.

he’ll look back at this moment and realize this was the first time his heart knew something before he, himself, did: what he had with mina wasn’t love—that he had actually never even been in love before. there’s no world where mina would ever have the kind of effect siwoo has on you on him, and there isn't anything mina can do that would make joshua scorn the concept of love because it's something he never even experienced with her in the first place.

but for now, all he can think is that, despite barely knowing you and despite being somewhat afraid of you, he has an insatiable want to fix this for you. he wants you to stop crying. he wants to see the rare smiles they were gifted tonight on your face once more. most of all, he wants to make the man who made you cry sorry for ever entering your life.

the words are out of his mouth before he can think twice about them.

“i’ll help you.” you immediately stop crying and look up at him with wide eyes. “i’ll help you ruin this idiot’s life. and when the two of us are through with him, i promise you he’ll be afraid to breathe within a 10-mile vicinity of you.”

joshua is surprised you haven’t already responded to tease him about his fickle typing bubbles because for the last ten minutes, he’s tried and stopped, tried and stopped (stopped, stopped, stopped) to find a response to your question that was not only honest with you, but with himself.

it’s not lost on him how unconcerned and unbothered he was with the repulsive and heinous death his relationship suffered last night. jeonghan made sure to point it out the entire way home, all while nearly choking him and stimming his socked, shoeless feet against his torso during his piggyback ride.

“so are we going to talk about the fact that you had zero reaction to mina having a guy up in her apartment?” jeonghan muttered not one minute after demanding joshua carry him home.

“we were in the presence of a stranger,” joshua grumbled, adjusting jeonghan higher on his back. “how should i have reacted?”

jeonghan hummed in thought. “i guess if it were me, i wouldn’t have really cared about strangers. i would’ve started with busting into her apartment and hoping you were present to keep me from committing second-degree murder. that’s a start, no?”

joshua sighed. “you’ve known me practically my entire life. i’ve never been like that.”

“i know.”

he said it in a resigned way, as if a visceral reaction was a healthy one and joshua was depriving himself. as if jeonghan wanted more for him—like he wanted him to cause a scene and make a fuss. the thought confused him but he stayed silent as his best friend continued.

“i kind of just… i don’t know, worry?”

joshua smiled. he could practically hear the wince on jeonghan’s face from having to be serious as he spoke.

“i lowkey expected a meltdown like y/n’s from you at my place. are you sure you’re okay? i feel like i’m waiting for the aftershock of an earthquake.”

“are you saying you think i’m emotionally repressed?” he asked, putting the pieces together and saying what jeonghan was dancing around.

“well, if you think that’s what i’m saying, who am i to argue with your interpretation of my words?”

he snickered. “i literally cried when you told me about that deep-sea anglerfish that swam to the surface of the ocean to see the sun before it died. i wouldn’t call myself emotionally repressed.”

“okay, repressed isn’t the right word,” jeonghan conceded. “it’s just—ugh, hold on.”

he suddenly started wriggling in his hold, obviously asking to be let down without vocalizing it. joshua squatted down to let him off his back, and before he could straighten all the way up, jeonghan had him by the shoulders and was turning him around almost violently.

“ungh!” joshua grunted as he came face-to-face with him.

“listen,” he said, capturing joshua’s face between his hands, forcing his wide, surprised eyes to meet jeonghan’s. “i’m going to ask you something seriously, and i want you to answer just as seriously, okay?”

joshua frowned. “okay…”

jeonghan nodded curtly once before speaking. “your girlfriend of over a year is cheating on you.”

“dude. i kn—”

“uh-uh, i’m speaking,” he deadpanned, tapping a finger against joshua’s temple.

he sighed. “okay, go on.”

“your girlfriend of over a year is cheating on you,” he repeated, this time slower and with more emphasis, as if it was something he was convinced joshua didn’t totally understand. “she went out of her way to sneak behind your back, and not only lie to—your—face!” he practically shouted. “but laugh about lying to your face with that scumbag asshole. and when you went over to break up with her, she was entertaining her side-piece in her apartment!”

joshua fidgeted under his hold. having it repeated like this did hurt him, and although he spent a lot of this time wondering why he wasn’t as affected as you were, he felt a little sad and lonely now, standing there being reminded that his relationship just imploded.

“in all of this,” jeonghan continued, “the most reaction i saw from you was some quiet cussing when we looked through y/n’s screenshots, and i know you’re capable of being upset.” he smirked. “anglerfish aside, i know that you can express emotion healthily. so…” he took a deep breath.

when he didn’t say anything for several seconds, obviously hesitating, joshua raised his eyebrows. “so…?”

jeonghan’s gaze flicked down to him from where he had been frowning at nothing above his head.

“so…” he inhaled slowly. “do you think you really… truly loved mina?”

he hadn’t been able to answer a barefoot jeonghan last night, and even after tossing and turning for hours and thinking of nothing else this morning, joshua finds that he still doesn’t have an answer.

if he measured love by how heartbroken someone was after it ended, he’d say you were (are?) madly in love with siwoo and he’s basically been in a committed friendship with mina—apparently a shitty one at that. but is that even the proper way to measure love? did the way he cared for mina for the past year count for nothing? a tender, aching hurt bloomed in his chest when jeonghan stopped him and forced him to look at his love life closely, and it has just grown since then. he doesn’t know if it’s telling him that love is more than the way it ends or if it’s telling him he’s been living life without it.

the jarring sound of his phone ringing interrupts his introspection, and he’s startled to find your contact on the incoming call. he quietly gets up from his desk and vacates his cubicle, where he has been neglecting his work to figure out a way to respond to you. he slips into one of the office’s private phone rooms and answers.

“hello…?” he rolls his eyes at how confused his sounds. smooth.

“you’re taking ages to reply,” you inform him, forgoing a normal greeting. “thought i’d call and see what has you so committed to sending me nothing but typing bubbles.”

joshua sighs harder than he needs to, sinking into the seat in the booth. “do you have nothing better to do than stare at my messages and wait for a reply?”

“no,” you scoff. “should i remind you i’m a stay-at-home girlfriend?” you spit the words out like you’re ashamed of them. he knows that you are and winces, silently chiding himself for the poorly timed joke. “i’m not doing anything for that cheater and his apartment while i have to continue living in this hellhole.”

“fair,” joshua says quickly. “sorry. forgot for a second.”

you snort. “it’s fine. what are you thinking about?”

“um, i’m at work, so… work?”

“no, dude, in regard to my question,” you remind him, laughing. he squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to groan. he knows he’s not doing a good job of convincing you that you don’t make him nervous. “why are you overthinking your answer so hard?”

“i’m not overthinking,” he mutters petulantly. “i’m just…”

“thinking overly hard?”

he hates that he cracks a smile at that. “fine, i might be overthinking.”

“oh! well, welcome to my page. i’m glad we’re now on the same one.” he can’t help but grin even wider at your apparently never-ending well of sarcasm. “so what are we overthinking about?”

we. you just met last night—barely agreed to help each other last night—and already, there’s a we. and already, joshua feels comfortable with the notion of that.

he shrugs even though you can’t see him. he slides down until his neck meets the curve of his seat and he stares at the ceiling as he speaks. “i was there to break up with her last night.”

you hum. “i remember. and you still want to.”

it’s more an observation than a question.

“well, i guess that’s what i’m overthinking about.”

“bro, i get it,” you say, shuffling around in what he assumes is your bed. he narrows his eyes at the word bro. “staying with your awful partner and pretending like everything’s okay when all you want to do is strangle him is certainly not for the weak.”

“okay well, thankfully, i don’t want to strangle mina.”

you laugh again and he suddenly wishes he’d gotten to see and hear you do that in person last night. “so what do you want to do to mina?” you ask as the sounds of you moving around the apartment come through the phone. “please don’t say nothing. i already feel like a horrible enough person as it is.”

the statement derails joshua’s train of thought. “why do you feel like a horrible person?”

“probably because i’m committed to doing whatever it takes to burn siwoo’s life to the ground instead of just breaking up with him and moving on like a normal, well-adjusted adult, and if you say ‘nothing,’ it will just remind me moving on is exactly what i’m supposed to be doing. and i don’t want to do that! not without fucking some lives up first!” you end your ramble with a grunt of frustration.

“i don’t think that makes you horrible,” joshua counters. “i think that just makes you… human? i feel like the normal reaction is to want to hurt someone as badly as they hurt you, right?”

at least from how joshua sees it, he thinks that’s probably the normal reaction. if jeonghan’s pressing questions say anything, it’s that his lack of reaction isn’t normal.

the sounds in the background pause like you’ve stopped to think about what he said. after a few moments, your only response is: “thanks.”

“i’m just being honest.”

“i know. thanks for saying it anyway,” you sigh as you continue to do whatever you were doing. “well?”

“well, what?”

“you haven’t answered my question.” you repeat it for him. “what do you want to do about mina?”

he groans, letting his eyes fall shut. “i want to break up with her and forget she happened.”

“do all men move on that fast?” you ask, sounding genuinely curious. “like, do you all just decide you don’t love someone anymore and move on after, like, a week?”

“i’m not moving on fast,” he argues, opening his eyes once more and sitting up. “i just want to give myself a chance to move on at all.”

“so mature of you,” you comment. something tells him you don’t believe that, though, and you prove him right with your next sentence. “or you just don’t love mina as much as you think you do.”

“what is with you guys and insisting i didn’t love my long-term girlfriend?” he complains.

“who’s ‘you guys’?” you sound too excited to realize more than one person in his life has made this observation about his relationship.

“nobody,” he practically hisses, not wanting to give you and jeonghan something to bond over and tease him about.

if he had his way, he’d probably make it so that you two never hung out again; your threatening energy as a duo honestly freaked him out a little and something about the way his best friend acted around you irritated him to no end. but he knows that helping you with siwoo will probably entail jeonghan butting in somewhere at some point.

“i loved mina, okay?” he insists, annoyed with the way he sounds like he’s trying to convince not only you but himself. “why do you even think otherwise?”

he doesn’t think he needs to point out that ultimately, you two don’t really know each other. you don’t have enough evidence to make such a massive assumption about him.

“i don’t know,” you mumble, “ugh.” he hears something clink against what sounds like porcelain. “i guess i’m having a hard time knowing that i’m devolving into this… child who’s having a world-war-sized tantrum, but someone who’s going through the same, exact thing i am is able to handle his emotions maturely... and gracefully… and just walk away. you’re so level-headed. meanwhile, i feel like my anger is consuming me.”

he rolls his lips over his teeth and bites, like that will help him from saying something too intimate to someone who’s still virtually a stranger. he suddenly feels sad for you again. it shoves away the newly formed pain in his chest that jeonghan forced there last night and burrows deep in his ribs the same way it did when he was watching you sob over fried chicken and beer.

“it’s kind of funny,” he starts, his voice soft and hesitant. “i thought something was wrong with me for not reacting the way you were.”

“nothing’s wrong with you,” you assure him. “sorry, i know me joking that you didn’t love mina probably makes you feel that way. i’m just trying to find an excuse for why you’re doing this so well and i’m… not. guess it’s easier to tell myself you’re moving on so fast because you didn’t love her in the first place.”

“you know,” joshua starts making his own observation as he thinks about the way you apologized for projecting your feelings about siwoo on him last night, “you’re super self-aware.”

“pfft, well as my therapist would point out, what good does that do if i’m aware i’m being self-destructive and i do it anyway?”

he smiles. “does that make me an accomplice to your self-destruction?”

“of course. you’re still willing to help with project destroy-siwoo-and-maybe-y/n-in-the-process, though, right?”

he grins wider. “of course,” he parrots before getting serious again. “but hey, i’m definitely not a good bar to set yourself against when it comes to break-ups. i’ve had too many to be someone you want to compare yourself to. you’re not not doing well.” he frowns at himself. super eloquent, joshua. “i think you’re handling this as best as you can. plus, i’m not going to pretend like siwoo doesn’t deserve everything that’s coming to him.”

you giggle like the thought of siwoo’s life crashing to the ground excites you. he knows it does. “okay, well if you’re committed to enabling me, i’m not going to make you stop.” joshua laughs loudly at that and you join in. “you have a nice laugh,” you tell him once you both stop.

“yah,” he whines. “are you always so bold?”

“didn’t we already establish that i am? what’s the big deal, anyway? i think we should all compliment each other more. it balances out my devotion to rage and revenge.”

he shakes his head, smiling once more. his cheeks are beginning to hurt. “fine. i’ll try to get used to it.”

“good!” you chirp as he hears more clinking in the background.

“what are you doing, by the way?”

“uh, i’ll tell you later,” you give him a non-answer before quickly directing his attention elsewhere. “so are we leaving mina out of this? should i just let you move on and grieve however emotionally healthy people grieve and tear up the mina section of my revenge plans?”

he snorts. “wow, okay, i need to stop letting your antics surprise me.”

“i agree. it’ll make this friendship easier for you.”

“i’ll bite. what’s in the mina section?”

“oh, nothing huge yet since i know nothing about her. i have jeonghan’s brilliant hair remover bit in there though.”

joshua glares at the wall across from him. he agrees that jeonghan is generally brilliant but he’s irked to hear you say it anyway. “right.”

“mhm,” you hum.

“well,” joshua sighs, knowing that after several minutes on the phone with you, he has yet to give you an answer and he should really get back to work. “i guess that’s what makes the most sense for me. tearing up the mina section of the plan.”

honestly, nothing really sounds better to him than getting her out of his hair.

“okay,” you agree quickly. “i can’t lie, i’m a bit disappointed because the scorned woman in me of course also wants to ruin mina’s life, but you’re the boss.”

he has no idea why he’s the boss when this is all your master plan, but he appreciates the grace you give him. he knows it’s probably not easy for you to redirect your disdain for mina and refrain from including her in your mission to ruin lives. well, life—one life: siwoo’s.

“at least i can keep my girl’s girl reputation in tact.”

he smiles at your priorities: 1. ruin siwoo’s life 2. remain a girl’s girl.

“exacting revenge on mina would do nothing to your girl’s girl reputation,” he assures you. “she’s the one who isn’t being a girl’s girl. she’s the asshole here.”

“oooh,” you sing, very clearly delighted, “joshie’s getting mad!”

he’s glad you’re not here to see him blush for no reason. when he’s too flustered to respond, you chuckle.

“i guess we don’t really need to go after mina, anyway, huh? you’re probably just as angry at siwoo for stealing her away too,” she thinks aloud.

he stills.

joshua is a little embarrassed to admit he didn’t even consider that. he’s typically a proud man—humble and grounded, but he takes pride in himself nonetheless. is it weird that he didn’t think twice about the fact that siwoo disrespected him and his relationship by pursuing mina? up until now, his anger was mostly feeding off of your sadness.

“joshua?”

“uh, yeah,” he stammers. “yeah. siwoo’s enough.”

“figured. we’ll make him pay real good for the both of us then.”

joshua nervously squirms in his seat. “yup. well, i should get back to work,” he says awkwardly. if you notice, you don’t point it out for once. “let me know what we should do next whenever you’re ready.”

he can practically hear the smile in your voice. “okay, and you let me know how breaking up with mina goes.”

if he had his wits about him, he'd probably give you shit for sounding so happy about the looming end, but he doesn't. so all he does say is:

“bye, y/n.”

“later!”

just a few moments later, he’s back in his cubicle when another text from you comes in.

he wasn’t scared, just like he wasn’t annoyed that you ate like you were discovering food for the first time. the right word didn't come to him until he was almost done with the report he had been working on before you texted: he was charmed.

a/n: thanks for waiting! hope you liked it! as you can probably tell, this is already way longer than i planned on it being so i’m not entirely sure how many parts this will be, but it’s my priority fic rn so i’ll work hard on updates! for now, keep reading to see a teaser for the next part! (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

if you’d like to be added to the tag list, comment here or send me an ask! if you requested to be on the list but weren’t tagged in this post or the reblog, it’s bc you don’t have an age indicator on your page. pls add that if you want to be tagged next time.

part two teaser

and when he felt a little better in his own skin and ready to put a “realer” version of himself out there, he met mina. mina, his longest relationship, and up until now, someone he was convinced was his first love. he said as much anyway. he was the first to tell her he loved her, he reminded her he did every day, and he thought they had a nice, long future ahead of them. what he pictured in that future exactly, he had no clue. but after an odd and somewhat unlucky streak in dating, he finally felt like mina was a nice and comfy place to land.

he’s never been more wrong about something in his entire life.

and after the laughable amount of breakups he’s experienced, he’s also never been angrier after the end of a relationship in his entire life.

mina was proving to be a lot of firsts for him—first cheater, first master manipulator and liar, first person who’s ever made him wonder if he could possibly switch over to dating men instead… or simply stop dating at all! sure, he would die alone but he would die in peace.

whatever the case, he's quickly approaching the conclusion that “first love” is not among those firsts, and it probably never was. no amount of teasing from you or jeonghan did it, but in less than a handful of minutes spent breaking up with mina, he is a million percent sure this was not someone he could have loved. or else what did that say about him and his taste?

sixteen minutes earlier

joshua arrives at mina’s apartment exactly two hours after work ends for her—5 p.m. every day because she always scheduled a pilates class at 5:30 p.m. thirty minutes for her to get to her class, one hour for her to finish it, 30 minutes for her to get home, zero minutes for her to get clean because he doesn’t care how presentable she is when he dumps her.

plus, however long it takes joshua to end this.

he hadn’t bothered to tell her he was coming over; he didn’t think she really deserved that courtesy. he may be intent on a clean break, but he also wanted this to be as annoying for her as it has been for him.

so at a prompt 7 p.m., joshua finds himself casually leaning against the elevator’s railing, ascending the floors of mina’s apartment and feeling almost excited to be free of this experience.

after he got off the phone with you, he decided he would bite the bullet when work was over. he spent the rest of his day absentmindedly finishing his reports, periodically stopping to scribble an idea for what he would say to his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

he takes the folded piece of paper out of his pocket now and runs over his options again.

his levels of shame and self-pity were sky high when he first pulled out his notepad at the office to write his thoughts out, but after texting you and letting you know what he planned to do, you insisted on meeting at a cafe beforehand to brainstorm together while he waited for mina’s pilates class to end. and once you both workshopped the entire list, his embarrassment diminished almost completely.

it was clear you took this a lot more seriously than he did. he doesn't know what he expected; you probably have a manila folder stuffed full of notes for what you plan to do to siwoo.

as such, you were very helpful. sure, you were also really distracting, with your subtle, spiced perfume he recognized as lola james harper, and your daunting and unrelenting eye contact, and the way your eyes smiled all on their own when they weren’t busy crying over siwoo, and the fact that you graced him with your laugh in person for the first time (every bit as fun as he thought it would be), and everything else that came with just existing in your presence.

all of it was really distracting—almost to the point of it being entirely counterproductive for him. almost, if it weren’t for the fact that you were so determined on his behalf to make this the most unpleasant experience for mina. he was mostly pleased with where you two landed, and if anything, he at least had a better idea of what he wanted to say. he reads the completely ruined paper, a mess of his black ink and wrinkles where you kept trying to grab the paper out of his hands. it was already a vulnerable enough occasion talking about this with you; he did not need you seeing his notes on top of it.

TALKING POINTS FOR BREAKING UP WITH EVIL GF i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because someone sent me proof! — cannot say this without exposing that y/n knows about siwoo!!! i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because i went through your phone and saw your text messages! — better, but am i willing to look crazy just to cover for y/n? yes what am i saying NO this will do ✓ how could you do this to us, mina? i loved you! — seems disingenuous? note: yell at jeonghan and y/n for putting ideas in my head later! i literally gave you everything you could’ve wanted, and that still wasn’t enough? what does any other man have that i don’t? — ok met with y/n for feedback. she says this sounds pathetic and that i can't let her think this has affected me. but she cheated on me? this LITERALLY affects me. i will come back to this one ok y/n made a different, better point: i am perfect and i should not present myself as lacking. so true. she's very good at this! do you really think anyone with half a fucking brain cell who's willing to homewreck a relationship is really going to give enough of a fuck about you to be capable of putting up with your insufferable ass and treating you as well as i did? — y/n suggested this one. had to workshop bc she's alarmingly vulgar. plus, it sounds a little toxic to say i "put up" with mina ??? not sure do you even regret hurting me? — y/n says this is silly bc siwoo and mina obviously do not regret anything, but i told her i do want mina to feel guilty even if i'm not sure that i'm all that hurt. she now agrees and says i should add: "or are you just so heartless you don't care?" she said this more colorfully, but i will remain respectful why should i remain respectful? mina is literally the most disrespectful person i have ever met. i will say what y/n suggested: ↳ my bad, i forgot your commitment to being a heartless fucking asshole has you by your ugly ass neck and it's squeezing with both hands and i hope it kills you GET HELP! — more for catharsis. will not be yelling this at her you're going to regret this and if you think there's a world where i take you back when you do, you're mistaken — wow, no notes from y/n! must be very good. definitely say this one!! please never contact me again — note from y/n: "why are you being so goddamn polite? tell her to fuck off and if you ever see her number on your phone screen, you'll set up an appointment on her behalf to get a lobotomy." ????? note from ME: have a serious discussion with y/n at a later time about why i, a MAN, can't just talk to WOMEN like this!

tag list: @coupsma @tokitosun @nothingbutadeadesceane @ateez-atiny380 @minghaofied @reiofsuns2001 @turtash @https-seishu @gaslysainz @dawn-iscozy @mrsjohnnysuh @sunnysidesins @thepoopdokyeomtouched @faizaa09 @hearts4itoshi @iamdkayyyyy @randojeon @iwannakisspoutycheol @youre-on-your-ownkid @justanotherkpopstanlol @sanaxo-o @seokqt @bath1lda @ilouvwonwoo @littlemisshyperfixation @mxelatrix-x @papichulomacy @o-schist @sumzysworld @alyssa19123456

#svthub #joshua x reader #joshua x you #seventeen imagines #seventeen scenarios #seventeen fic #svt imagines #svt scenarios #svt fic #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #joshua x y/n #joshua hong #joshua hong x reader #seventeen smau #svt smau #joshujin fic

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perry-the-human-fanzine · 3 days ago

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A FANZINE? A PERRY THE HUMAN FANZINE?!

Welcome to this first little intro to what this fanzine is going to be! Some things might change as we get organized, but for now, here are the main details—so exciting!

Non-profit. I have no idea how to use platforms like Kickstarter and similars, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable handling other people’s money. So this zine will be completely free, made purely for love and our monotremed muse.

For all audiences. No explicit content, at least in this first edition.

This is a Perryshmirtz-friendly zine. You don’t have to be a shipper to participate, and the content won’t focus on the pairing, but keep in mind that a large portion of the fandom centers their work around it. Respect and community are key.

If all goes well, sign-ups will begin on June 5th (baby, we are back), and there will be two checkpoints: June 21st for submitting the first part (don’t worry, this part is just basic info about your version of Human!Perry), and August 1st for submitting the rest (fanart and fanfics). The official release date of the complete zine is currently set for August 31st. PDF download links will be posted on this blog so that anyone interested can access it.

Fanart: Traditional or digital—it doesn’t matter. We want every Perry flavor we can get.

Fanfics: The saddest thing you’ve ever read? Perry on an actual day off? Write, write, write—we want to read it all.

Articles: We are people of culture.

Printable. On the other hand, the design will be print-friendly for home printers—for those who enjoy binding their own books—or even for print-on-demand services, as long as, of course, it's not for commercial use. It’ll be as accessible as we can make it.

English: This will be the official language. If it’s not your native language or you struggle with it (look at me), don’t worry—there are tons of tools online to help you, and you can even ask another participant for help.

This zine is open to suggestions, so if you have an idea you think is amazing… we’re all ears.

Spread the word! If you have friends outside Tumblr who have their own version of Perry, encourage them to join in. The more, the merrier!

Summer belongs to you! Remember, this is a fan project made by fans for fans, just for fun. If you have any doubts or run into issues during the process, don’t hesitate to reach out via blog messages, chat, or the Discord channel (which doesn’t exist yet, but will be the sing-up day). The main goal of this zine is to have fun.

#perry the human #fanzine #perry the platypus #phineas and ferb #human perry #humanization

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bambieyedoll · 2 days ago

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⋆·˚ ༘ * PAUL LAHOTE HEADCANONS 𐚁̸.ᐟ

𐙚 paul x sunshine!reader

paul imprinting on you is… chaos. beautiful, confusing chaos.

you’re warm sunshine bottled into a girl—always smiling, always finding a silver lining, humming while making breakfast, waving at strangers.

and paul is the storm. loud. angry. intense. the second his eyes meet yours, he knows he’s screwed.

at first, he tries to stay away. he thinks he’s going to break you. you’re too soft, too good, too sweet.

the imprint drags him toward you like gravity, but he fights it—snapping at sam, pacing through the woods, snarling at embry when he teases him about his “angel girl.”

you notice him watching you. always at a distance. always with that unreadable look in his eyes. but whenever you smile or wave, he turns away like it hurts.

you start bringing muffins to the beach just in case he shows up. you bring extras for the guys too, laughing as you hand them out, and paul hates that they get your attention. he doesn’t speak, but one day you offer him one anyway.

“you don’t have to eat it,” you say gently, holding it out like peace. “i just wanted to make you smile.”

and something shatters in him.

after that, paul caves. the imprint drags him in, and he lets it. but he’s awkward at first. doesn’t know what to do with someone like you.

you’re too kind, too patient, and he keeps waiting for you to realize he doesn’t deserve you.

one night you find him sitting alone on a log after patrol, shirt torn, hands bruised, shaking. he won’t look at you. says you should leave. but you don’t.

“even storms have soft centers,” you whisper, brushing his knuckles gently. “i’m not scared of yours.”

that’s when he really falls.

you’re the type to greet the world with a smile, even when it doesn’t deserve it. paul is the type to snarl at the world for not treating you right.

you’re soft and sparkly. he’s sharp edges and heat. and he’s never been more certain of anything than this: you are his to protect.

paul is ridiculously protective. the guys joke about it, but he will growl at anyone who makes you even slightly uncomfortable.

you once tripped over your own feet and he nearly phased because he thought someone pushed you.

you’re the only person who can calm him down when he’s spiraling. you sit in his lap and hum under your breath, hands in his hair, and he just melts.

you always smell like vanilla and lemon and something safe, and he leans into you like he’s trying to crawl inside your warmth.

you surprise him with tiny love notes. stuffed in his pockets, tucked into his gloves, scribbled on napkins. they say things like:

“hope your day is full of good things!” and “thank you for everything you do for me, mwah!”

he keeps every single one in a shoebox under his bed. if he’s having a rough shift or a post-phase migraine, he’ll pull one out and just hold it in his hand for a while. sometimes he reads them out loud to calm himself down.

paul absolutely melts when you call him pet names. he pretends he’s annoyed “babe? really?”, but the minute you call him “honey” in that soft voice, he’s a goner.

the pack is shocked when they hear paul laugh. like, really laugh. it’s when you run up behind him and tackle him into the sand, squealing with delight, and he grabs you and spins you around, laughing so loud it echoes.

you’re always trying to cheer everyone up, and paul watches you do it with this stunned softness, like he doesn’t understand how someone like you exists in a world like this.

he’ll mutter, “you’re too good for this place,” under his breath while tucking your hair behind your ear.

he never thought he’d have something like this. something warm. something gentle. you show him love doesn’t have to be earned through pain—it can just be.

“you’re not a monster, paul,” you tell him one night as he stares at the scars on his hands. “you’re the safest place i’ve ever known.”

he doesn’t say it often, but when he does, it breaks you a little every time:

“i don’t know what i did to deserve you, but i swear i’ll never let you go.”

paul has a sixth sense for your moods—if you’re even slightly off, he notices. he’ll wordlessly pull you into his lap, bury his face in your shoulder, and grumble, “what happened?” like he’s ready to fight the universe on your behalf.

you are the little spoon. always. no debate. paul wraps around you like a human furnace, arms locked tight, chest against your back, face in your neck. if anyone walks in on it, he growls until they leave.

when he’s on patrol, you wait up for him, no matter how late. you sit on the couch in one of his hoodies, drowsy-eyed and soft, holding a blanket for him. he acts annoyed every time:

“i told you to sleep, baby.”

“then stop being worth waiting for,” you whisper, and he just melts.

you decorate his room with little plants, fairy lights, and photos of the two of you. he pretends to grumble about it but secretly stares at the pictures when you’re not looking.

on bad days, you surprise him with his favorite snacks and pull him into a pillow fort you made in your room. you put on movies and crawl into his lap with that sunny grin. paul doesn’t even like most movies, but he’ll sit through five hours of them just to hold you.

you call him “my grump,” “wolf boy,” and “sunburn baby” when he scowls in the sun. he pretends he hates it. he doesn’t.

when you’re cold, he literally radiates heat, so you cling to him like a space heater. he’ll cock an eyebrow like “oh, now you want me?” but then tuck you under his arm with a satisfied smirk.

the pack always teases him about how soft he is around you. he threatens to rip their faces off, but when you giggle and say, “aww, paul, you’re my softie,” he shrugs and kisses your forehead like, “yeah, i am.”

you give him little doodles and crafts you make—like a friendship bracelet made of yarn and glitter. he wears it under his cuff and doesn’t take it off. ever.

paul grumbles every time you drag him to the farmers market or local craft fair, but he loves watching you light up over fresh honey, handmade earrings, or tiny potted succulents. he always ends up carrying the bags without complaint.

you sit on the kitchen counter while paul cooks shirtless because he runs hot and “it’s too damn warm in here”. you keep stealing pieces of food before they’re done, and paul keeps smacking your hand with the spatula—gently, of course.

you’re always slipping your cold hands under paul’s shirt, just to hear him yelp. he glares at you every time, but the glare never lasts. instead, he grabs your hands and warms them with his own, muttering, “you’re lucky you’re cute.”

when you’re lying in bed together, wrapped up in each other, you trace the lines of his chest with your fingers and whisper things like:

“i hope you know how loved you are.”

and he swallows hard and says, “i know, baby. ‘cause you show me.”

he tells you he loves you in his own way—by cooking for you, fixing your car, rubbing your feet, making sure you lock your doors, and standing between you and any threat. but sometimes, when the world is still, and you’re curled into his chest, he says it out loud:

“i love you so much it’s stupid.”

he’s incredibly possessive—but in a quiet way. like resting his hand on the small of your back in public, pulling you into his side when someone stares too long, or throwing an arm over your lap when you sit with the pack.

you make him flower crowns once. jokingly. paul sits there, arms crossed, deadpan expression, wearing the damn daisy crown like a war medal. the pack never lets him live it down. he doesn’t care.

“she made it,” he says simply. “i’m wearing it.”

he loves when you play with his hair. you’ll sit behind him on the couch and run your fingers through it while he leans into your touch like a literal golden retriever with rage issues.

you randomly climb onto his lap while he’s watching tv or doing absolutely anything. he never complains—just opens his arms like “of course you belong here.”

you always doodle on his arm in pen—little suns, flowers, your initials—and he never washes them off until they fade. he even glances at them during patrol, tracing over the lines with a smile.

when you’re brushing your teeth, he always comes in behind you, wraps his arms around your waist, and rests his chin on your shoulder. you try to keep brushing, but he keeps kissing your neck until you’re squealing and spitting toothpaste everywhere.

you tried to teach paul how to bake once. it was an adorable disaster. the cookies were burnt, flour was everywhere, and paul insisted the baking soda was “a scam.” but he kissed you with a flour-smudged face and said:

“you’re the only sweet thing i need anyway.”

when you wear his oversized hoodie, paul physically malfunctions. he stares. you catch him doing it, and he just shrugs like:

“can’t blame me, baby. you look too damn good.”

paul has a very specific smirk reserved just for you—the kind that makes your stomach flip before he even opens his mouth. he’ll lean down next to your ear, voice low and husky, and say something like:

“you gonna keep looking at me like that, or are you gonna kiss me, sunshine?”

when you’re excited, you ramble and wave and talk with your whole face. paul watches you with this soft, dazed smile like he’s being baptized in sunlight. and the second you stop to ask, “am i annoying you?”—he genuinely looks offended.

“the only thing that’s annoying is that i can’t kiss you every time you start talking.”

when you tell him “i love you,” he looks at you like you’re the sun. like you just saved his life. and he doesn’t always say it back right away—sometimes he just kisses your forehead and breathes it in like a prayer.

he’s not good with words, but he’s terrifyingly good at loyalty. you’re crying once because someone you trusted let you down, and paul holds you with this quiet ferocity, arms locked around you, whispering:

“you don’t need anyone else, alright? you’ve got me. i’ll never let anything happen to you.”

you don’t even have to ask him to walk you to your car or stand between you and a crowd—he just does it. every time. like his body has been reprogrammed to shield you on instinct.

he always says “be careful” when you leave the house. always. even if you’re just going to the store. it’s always “text me when you get there” or “don’t talk to creeps.” it’s never controlling—it’s that raw, fierce love that says please come back to me safe.

you think paul’s the one protecting you—but what you don’t see is how much you protect him, too. from himself. from his anger. from the part of him that thought he didn’t deserve good things. you smile at him like he’s worthy of every ounce of love you give—and it undoes him.

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contamination-zone · 2 days ago

Text

5 times Fresh acted like an animal, and 1 time Color 'Got it.'

[first chapter - prev chapter - next chapter]

beta read by @/calamarispider

[UTMV fic] Contains: Platonic Fresh & Color, Fresh & Killer, and Color & Killer, misunderstandings, abuse, food warning [forced to eat dog food] [4,000~ words]

“What would you do if you got out?” It took Fresh a moment to realize it hadn’t imagined Killer speaking. “Nightmare knows we all want out. Saying something to me can’t make this any worse with him.” “I don’t know, run off? Hide in a ditch? What do you want me to say?” Its voice got scratchier and more rough as it spoke, leaving it to end the sentence coughing. Killer was quiet as he watched it, his eyes those same empty black pits. “Okay.” He finally said. What was that supposed to mean? He believed it? Got what he wanted? Just felt like saying that? It stifled a growl and just silently followed him.

Fic undercut or on ao3!

“You look tired.” From behind him; Killer, he recognized instantly.

Color turned to look at him, smiling something small, “how can you tell? You were looking at the back of my skull.”

The other didn’t answer, just slinking closer so they could settle their head on his shoulder, and their hand on his other. Color laughed; the slant of his shoulders told them all that? Trust his closest friend to always notice when he felt off.

“Is it really that bad…?” He asked. Sometimes it wasn’t. They were scarily observant, and when they pointed things out to Color, it wasn’t always something anyone else would notice.

His hopes were dashed when Killer huffed, annoyed, “Yes.”

“Sorry about that…” Color said, lifting a hand to cup Killer’s cheek, “you know why.”

He leaned into the touch, but let his eyes fall half-lidded in a ‘done with this’ expression. “If I’d know you’d want to keep it, I wouldn’t have brought it here.”

“Hey!” Color chided, “don’t talk about Fresh like that. And I’m not ‘keeping it,’ it just… needs a little help getting on its feet. I’m sure it’ll strike out on its own when it’s feeling better.”

Killer gave him a piercing stare [it resembled all his other expressions, but Color could guess the intention]. He was still happy they felt comfortable enough to get snippy with him; it hadn’t been too long since Killer got away from Nightmare, and any agency they showed couldn’t help but make him smile.

“Okay,” he huffed, “even if it doesn’t, I’m happy to give it a place to stay. You know that.”

They wrapped their arms around his shoulders, more of a hug than the lean they were doing beforehand. “Yeah yeah, just the type of monster you are.” The words were blasé, nearly apathetic, but Color knew there was affection underneath. It made the guilt worse.

“Yeah.” It felt bad to agree, when he knew Killer clearly felt a little jealous of all the attention Fresh was getting, but he really couldn’t do anything else. Even without the six Soul’s influence, he didn’t think he could leave a monster to flounder without help, let alone one as clearly traumatised as Fresh.

“I’m going out tomorrow,” Color said, instead of any of the words he’d wanted to about duty or greater good, about how really, he was sorry, “just ah, to get clothes for Fresh. Want to come with?”

A silent stare, so he knew Killer was really considering it. Finally, just before he could take it back, affirm that Killer didn’t have to do anything they didn’t feel comfortable with, they answered, “sure, Color. Sounds good.”

He smiled. It’d be nice to spend some time with his best friend.

———

He woke early, because he knew he’d need that sort of energy.

Any type of routine was difficult to manage for him, after so long in a space without time or need for anything of the like, but he thought he’d been getting his morning routine pretty locked down lately. Brushing his teeth, getting dressed, cooking breakfast- all things he’d struggled with right when he got out of the void, but not as much these days. It made him feel good, that he’d made such clear progress, hopeful for those he was helping to be able to do the same.

Of course, there was more than just him who relied on that routine [probably the only reason he tried so hard with it]. With that in mind, he knocked on Killer’s door, letting him know breakfast was ready.

They were opening the door before he even stepped back, already awake and waiting. A little unsettling, but he knew Killer just liked to follow the routine they usually did, even if it wasn’t enforced at all; that meant, of course, leaving his room when Color went to fetch him for breakfast.

“Breakfast is on the table,” he told Killer, already moving to Fresh’s room. Killer followed him instead of heading to eat right away— a clingy mood already, probably because Color promised to hang out.

“Joining me?”

They gently pushed their shoulder to his as they walked, a silent confirmation. He smiled, “Got it.”

He gently rapped his knuckles against the door, with a warning that Killer would be joining as well.

Fresh made an acknowledging noise, and he wondered if everyone woke up before him.

Just like always, when he entered it regarded him with wide eyes and an attentive posture. Nothing too nervous though, and he smiled at it, glad Killer’s presence didn’t seem to be a problem.

“Morning, Fresh.”

“G’morning.” It mumbled back. It eyed Killer and gave him a slight dip of its head in acknowledgment, to which they regarded it with a blank stare in turn. Neither seemed to be blinking.

“Ooookay-“ Color interrupted, “Got breakfast! Bacon and eggs good?”

It turned its attention right back to Color at that, giving him a shaky nod before standing up, silent in its movements. It was almost alarming how such a large and imposing monster just disappeared into the background.

On the way to the dining table, Killer and Fresh regarded each other again with nothing but a quick meeting of eyes before their attention went back to him, and he wondered how well they knew each other from before they got out from Nightmare’s thumb. There had to have been a little affection on Killer’s half, else Color didn’t know why he’d decide to take Fresh with him at all. Neither showed it though, barely even acknowledging the other ever, so he wondered if his theory was wrong. Still, the little glances could mean anything. He knew they were both very clever.

They made it to the table before the silence got too awkward, and the three settled in to eat breakfast. He passed Killer the bottle of ketchup for his eggs before he asked.

“We’re, me and Killer,” he said, once they were all sat, “going out to buy you some clothes. Got any preferences?”

It shifted awkwardly at that, frozen with a fork halfway to its mouth. “Uh- I’m good with anything, man.”

“It likes colorful things.” Killer said as Color was trying to figure out how to press for more info without spooking it.

“Killer,” he hissed, though there was no vitriol. While he did trust Killer to be right about things like this, he just… wanted Fresh to feel the agency of choosing to reveal facts about itself. Make it feel like what he got for it was its choice.

Killer had no remorse on his face, though he did do a token, “sorry.”

He sighed, though didn’t push further. There was no was no way he’d be able to stay mad at him anyway, and they both knew it.

Looking back at Fresh, it had a pinched look on its face, eyebrows pressed downwards and mouth in a frown. When it noticed him looking, it quickly schooled its face into something more ‘open’ looking [though he doubted it really was].

“Were you confused on something?” He asked.

It was silent for a bit, but after a glance at Killer [for support?], it mumbled, “You ain’t mad? That sorry was sooo off base.”

There was a well of sadness in his chest at that. Did Fresh think he’d get angry at Killer and treat them as badly Nightmare assuredly was when he himself got mad at the two of them?

“No, no,” he reassured it, “I love Killer, he’s my best friend- I just got a little annoyed is all. And even if I did get mad, we’d talk it out.”

Fresh hummed, the picture of easy acceptance, but he could tell it was going to be mulling that over for a while underneath the surface.

Coughing into its fist, it changed the subject, “I do like colorful things- brighter the better.” More shifting, eyes catching sneak peeks at him before skittering away. He made sure to smile encouragingly. It couldn’t keep eye-contact. “The sweaters you let me borrow were pretty rad too…”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he smiled wide, something settled in him knowing he didn’t shove it into anything it didn’t want to be wearing. His eyes couldn’t help but drift to the collar at that, but he didn’t linger. Anytime it caught him staring it would clutch at the tag and press it close to itself— whatever meager comfort it brought to it, he would never understand. That was okay though, he wasn’t going to force the issue.

It nodded, shy, and didn’t say anything else, fully focusing its attention on breakfast. He didn’t press, letting it retreat out of the conversation.

Breakfast was done quickly and he was left feeling satisfied for more reasons than how good the eggs tasted. Progress was made today, which he was glad for.

Killer had already ambled out of the room, in the direction of the door most likely. Before Color left, he turned to Fresh.

“We’ll only be gone for a few hours, hope you don’t get too bored without us.” He laughed, “you have free reign of the house, just don’t go into either me or Killer’s rooms without a good reason, yeah?”

It nodded, giving him a thumbs up, “you got it. Same as always.”

He… did usually give the same spiral every time he left. “Sorry sorry, repeating myself here” He laughed, “I’ll get outta your hair. Bye Fresh.”

“Ah- see’ya.” It said, awkwardly.

He took that as his cue that he’d probably started to overwhelm it, and left to follow Killer out.

He’d left it alone in the house a few times already— things were going to be fine, he reminded himself.

Killer bumped shoulders with him as he got out, and he smiled, relaxing at the support. With his best friend at his side, things felt a lot more manageable. Maybe it really was going to be okay.

———pov: Fresh———

It woke to a kick to its side, and a sharp hiss from above ordering it to get up. It sounded like Killer.

The other must have been on pet duty. Usually he didn’t feel so energetic to it though. Maybe that was because it felt so awful today— it must’ve not woken up when he’d first tried to rouse it. Everything felt kind of hazy, a rare occurrence even though it just woke up; it was almost always quick to categorise its surroundings, it had to to survive.

His hand curled around its collar and dragged it up. Speaking back was usually useless, and it didn’t really want to deal with whatever power trip Killer was on, so it went limp. He wasn’t allowed to harm it too much, so it had some leeway to make his life difficult, at least until Nightmare got back from his trip and heard about its attitude.

This was doing nothing for the phantom of throat pain it was already dealing with, and it choked down any coughs. It needed to look unaffected— coughing and spluttering would be the opposite of that.

A pull, “get up.” The sharp words weren’t helping Fresh want to work with him anymore than the painful tugging.

Still, it noted something; a hint of genuine emotion colored his words. It hadn’t seen that with Killer often, the other usually a mask of empty cheer. “There’s even something innit for you.” He continued.

It regarded him with a half-lidded stare, asking, “What?” in a voice sounding a bit gravelly, and it forced itself not to cringe. Even after years away from its normal act, things that contradicted its image still got to it.

It tried to ignore the discomfort, focusing on the moment at hand, Killer’s offer. There wasn’t much that interested Fresh these days, except the possibility of escape; it highly doubted that was what Killer was suggesting.

“Got a special treat to go with your food today.”

Boring, bordering on insulting. Treating it like a mangy mutt excited for a bigger slice of meat, as if it wasn’t still going to be rotten.

“It’s going to be dog food either way.”

“Cat food.” Killer corrected.

It regarded him like he’d said something particularly stupid, but didn’t argue further. Whether it was dog food or cat food, neither made the idea of a treat alongside it any better. “Fine, fine. Lead the way, ‘boss’”

Killer didn’t take the bait like the other two would. Maybe he really didn’t care how similar to Nightmare he acted. He just pulled harder on its collar until it had no choice but to get its feet under it. At least it could be comforted by the fact Killer was going to be punished for leaving bruises on its neck.

Once up, Killer wasted no time in clipping its leash to the collar, before setting a brisk pace to the kitchen. A no-nonsense attitude. It was both better and worse than the others. They, at least, seemed uncomfortable interacting with it. Still, it meant there was less hesitance, that things would be over with quickly.

It wouldn’t have been able to keep pace if its legs weren’t almost double Killer’s in length. Normally it didn’t have trouble with that, but its joints ached and it felt a headache forming. It didn’t want to be doing this right now.

Its feelings on the matter didn’t matter though, not to anyone but Nightmare anyway [and he certainly cared about them in a way wholly unhelpful to it]. They found themselves at the entrance to the kitchen much quicker than Fresh would have liked.

Killer looped the leash around one of the many knots of stone and wood the castle seemed to have in abundance [courtesy of being made by Nightmare, a plant adjacent… thing, Fresh thinks], and started prepping Fresh’s ‘meal.’

It hesitated to call it that. Meals were supposed to be alive, squirming, and, most importantly, containing magic. What Nightmare had scheduled it to eat whenever he was gone was not that, not in anyway at all. The cheapest dog or cat food one could buy, usually smushed up with a spoon and mixed with kibble. All served up to it in a little red dog bowl, only labeled ‘pet.’

Another way to demean it, Fresh was sure. When Nightmare was in, he’d only feed it new hosts or sweet treats Nightmare was enjoying himself. An association the guardian of negativity was trying to brute force into existence, that he meant it was getting fed real food.

It stubbornly refused to wish Nightmare was here so it wouldn’t have to eat this horrid mixture while sick just to spite him, resolving to be extra awful to its ‘owner’ when he got back.

Of course, if Killer really was giving it a treat along with its dish, that could throw a wrench in things. It couldn’t see any reason Nightmare would want it to associate good things with anyone but him.

It was shaken out of its thoughts by the sound of Killer setting the bowl down on the floor. It was the usual fare, though something about it seemed… off.

“And the treat?”

“It’s in there.” He pointed at the bowl of slop. So the treat was a lie.

It huffed, but settled on the floor and picked up the bowl to start eating anyway. Killer, similarly, took a seat at the kitchen table.

It couldn’t really refuse to eat, even if the meal served no purpose further than making it suffer. Nightmare would be less than happy to hear it wasn’t following one of His orders. Egotistical prick.

It tipped the bowl and resolutely ignored as much sensory data as it could. It was the same as always, but it couldn’t help but think Nightmare got it the most putrid smelling wet food he could find because he knew its sense of smell was strong. Unfortunately it had no nose to pinch, so it just tried not to breathe until it was done.

It could feel Killer’s eyes burning into it as it finished. The gaze didn’t wander as it coughed and gagged, nor when it pushed the now empty bowl back in his general direction. What a creep— not as bad as Nightmare, but that would be impossible.

There was a slight, almost imperceptible, sweet after-taste. It didn’t believe Killer would actually put a treat in, so maybe it was a placebo. It didn’t have time to linger though, because Killer was already wrapping the end of the leash back around his clawed hands. And well… tiny sweet aftertaste didn’t make up for the fact that the rest of it tasted rancid.

“What would you do if you got out?”

It took it a moment to realize it hadn’t imagined Killer speaking, and another to understand he was talking to it.

“What?” Fresh hissed, eyes narrowed. The words just screamed ‘trap.’ It would make the rest of the day make more sense too; Killer could definitely be trying to influence it into disobedience with the treat and the extra emotion in his voice could be from the stress of the plan.

He didn’t respond, just looking at it with his awful empty eye-sockets. It glared back, spines raising as he didn’t elaborate or back down.

Eventually, seeming to realize he wasn’t going to get anywhere unless he gave in more, Killer said, “He knows we all want out. Saying something to me can’t make this any worse with him.” There was a gentle tug on the leash, a silent continuation it could practically hear in the air ‘and not answering could make things worse with Killer.’

“I don’t know,” it grumbled, annoyed, “run off? Hide in a ditch? Go back to eating people? What do you want me to say.”

Its voice got scratchier and more rough as it spoke, leaving it to end the sentence coughing.

He just hummed, and it felt like tearing something apart with its teeth. Would it kill someone for these people to say what they thought aloud? Did they get some sort of sick thrill in leaving it confused?

“Okay.” He finally said. If it wasn’t so frustrated with the lack of information it had, it would find that fascinating. What was that supposed to mean, ‘okay.’? He believed it? Got what he wanted? Just felt like saying that?

It stifled a growl and just followed him silently.

——

It couldn’t stop thinking about the day before Killer took it here, to live with him and Color. Looking back, the signs that something strange was going on were so obvious. He was just digging for information on how it would act once he took it here— see if it would be a good gift for Color, it now knew.

The fact that he did, took that short and angry response and decided it was worth it to steal it away as a gift for his… for Color, it didn’t know how that made it feel.

Insulted, to be treated like a commodity to pass around, or… it shook its head, it couldn’t be thinking about this right now. Already it could hear the gentle knock at the door; Color, coming in for their morning routine and inviting it for breakfast.

It did as it was bid, replying with polite little one-word answers to all his questions, ignoring how Killer was at Color’s heels. Not regarding them with suspicion like it wanted too. Clearly he was Color’s favorite— it couldn’t get on his bad side.

It kept trading glances with Killer as they made their way to the table, wondering why he decided to follow so closely to Color’s morning routine to even follow him to its room. They gave nothing away, of course, and it nearly stuck its tongue out in annoyance. Nearly, of course, because it still didn’t know these monsters’ preferences, no matter its best efforts. Nightmare would have found the brattiness cute [except the times he very much didn’t], but it couldn’t get a read if the same would hold true for Color— and Killer, but he wasn’t in charge, so it didn’t care for his response much.

The meal turned awkward when a question aimed at it, and that it thought it’d answered… not well, but good enough, was answered by Killer as well. Color hadn’t said he wanted Killer’s opinion.

It froze, carefully still as if that would make it turn invisible. It barely kept in the stressed squeak when Color berated Killer and they gave an absolutely lacklustre apology; Killer was valuable, liked, Color’s favourite, so of course he wouldn’t punish him, but what if Color decided to take out his anger on Fresh instead…?

There wasn’t any type of explosion though, and Color didn’t even seem particularly angry. Just a bit miffed at Killer’s actions. That was- that was just weird!

The emotion must have shown in its face, because Color was asking if it was confused. It felt stupid, but quickly hid anything negative before it could get too annoying.

A response was probably still expected though. It looked at Killer, who didn’t seem stressed at all, and it nervously asked, “You ain’t mad? That sorry was sooo off base.”

There was something so soft on its owner’s face, it felt a little sick looking. “No, no,” he cooed at it, like it was a skittish animal, “I love Killer, he’s my best friend- I just got a little annoyed is all. And even if I did get mad, we’d talk it out.”

That was… really weird. Best friend privileges maybe? It really couldn’t see a world so nice to it that that courtesy would extend to it as well. The information was still useful though, so it stashed it away.

It couldn’t focus on that right now though, remembering the actual focus of the conversation. He’d appreciate it keeping on topic, hopefully. “I do like colorful things- brighter the better,” It mumbled, eyes darting towards him nervously as it tried to gauge his reaction. Neutral still, so it flaked on some flattery, “The sweaters you let me borrow were pretty rad too…”

There it was, a wide satisfied smile. It relaxed as it heard his next words, “I’m glad to hear that,”

Thankfully, it didn’t have to navigate any mine-fields as breakfast was finished and Color told it all the rules for when he was out.

“You have free reign of the house, just don’t go into either me or Killer’s rooms without a good reason, yeah?” He reminded it. He always mentioned the free reign of the house everytime, and it could hear a hidden order when it was given one— it would be expected to not be in its room when he was out. An easy enough task.

After some painfully awkward farewells, it skittered off to the living room and to the couch in front of the TV. It knew it was probably allowed on the furniture, but didn’t really want to do so when Color wasn’t there to invite it on.

Instead, it carefully settled behind the couch, pressed in-between it and the wall. Small and comfortable, a perfect place to wait until Color got back.

It smiled to itself, feeling proud of how well it had been doing recently. Maybe it could even get as much affection and leniency as Killer. Maybe it could even get more. A pipe-dream, but… it wanted Color to look at it like that too.

Only for its safety of course. Having his affection, his attention, his soft smiles, gentle laughs— it shook its head before settling more comfortably behind the couch. Now was not the time for those thoughts; it didn’t know how it was supposed to compete with Killer and… it already lived a life more pampered here than nearly all its time with Nightmare.

It let itself relax and get ready for its long wait. It liked this. It didn’t need to sully it with even more wants.

#fresh #fresh sans #fresh!sans #color #color sans #color!sans #killer #killer!sans #killer sans #fresh & color #fresh & killer #utmv #undertale multiverse #puppydraws #puppywrites

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