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robcognitivepersonality · 2 years ago

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The Mastermind & the Architect

How I get along with INTPs as an INTJ

I love INTPs, you guys are my type of friends to hang out with. Honestly I don’t see that awkward anti-social stereotype that looms over being an INTP. Hanging out with you, there’s no peer pressure to speak of, no Chad’s to deal with, no sense to impress anybody. We chat over beers, get high, play video games, share insights about life and people. Type descriptions have painted you as these emotionless sentient robots, totally missing the mark that you are also socially very intelligent. Perhaps the most socially intelligent of all the types. Oftentimes you deliver the most insightful life advice. Your awareness of public sentiments is completely slept on.

I guess it’s just my own anecdote, but the INTPs I know somehow manage to always be in the know. Like Varys in Game of Thrones, you have a 6th sense of little birds spread out everywhere informing you things. Be honest, am I correct that you possess the juiciest gossip details? No worries, I’m not here to know them if it’s not my business. But damn those juicy details can be so accurate though.

The word ‘socializing’ by the mainstream definition may not necessarily apply to you. But you definitely are out there exploring whatever tickles your curiosity. Shit I’m convinced you’re everywhere, physically and virtually. Even if you’re one of the minority that literally hides in Mom’s basement, you’re all over on the Interwebs. I see you in all kinds of subreddits, discord servers, subculture forums, MMORPG worlds, etc. It puts my lurking game to shame. And you know everything. And in some circles, you’re very popular.

You range from vibing and lurking to leading group conversations where everyone quiets down to listen to you. “STFU @everyone, our INTP lord is talking.” It’s a reputation rightly earned! You are the trusted beacon of truth and sentinel of knowledge. Whatever you say will be considered highly advisable. I’d be so busy taking notes and learning, or sometimes I have no idea what’s going on looking like a clown. I’m the socially awkward penguin here.

That leads me to another point: ‘leadership’ by the mainstream definition may not necessarily apply to you either. Yes we know it’s not your charming charisma that we’re gravitated to. It’s your talent for solving problems and discovering insightful information that enable you to command the most value and respect amongst your peers. The most conscientious of you implement so many new processes, enforcing standards, and become our role models. You advise us to make better decisions, give us confirmation checks and confidence boosters, and build us processes and systems that will enrich all of our lives.

"Reality is far too diverse, broad, elusive, ambiguous and complex for us to pin down. Even the limited empirical data we do manage to collect can only be interpreted within the framework of a subjective paradigm. It is, therefore, not really neutral. But in our desperate search for closure and reassurance we confabulate entities and explanations to construct huge edifices of assumed truths. They make up the world we actually experience; a self-woven cocoon of stories, not facts.” — Bernardo Kastrup

That’s all thanks to your Extraverted Feeling and Extraverted Intuition. It’s a stack that makes you altruistic, unpretentious, and unassuming. You help without ulterior motive, except for figuring what things could be improved. If there’s anything egotistical about you, it’s to be understood that your intentions are for the best of the tribe. You playfully and intensely explore deep in the tangled webs of any system, whether we’re talking about society, a software application, or the constructs of reality, searching for how it’s all pieced together while wearing the face of a mild-mannered pleasant person. You sync with the social atmosphere without trying to disrupt it. Like why kill the vibe for no reason right? The music is fine, don’t mess with the playlist.

The contrast with my Introverted Intuition and Introverted Feeling is that, instead of having this kind of symbiotic relationship with the community vibe, I am trying to figure out how to fit my ego into the mix. That doesn’t mean I’m doomed to disrupt everything in my path and that people need to bend themselves for me. On the contrary, I’m constantly reformulating my self-concept so that I can fit like a jigsaw puzzle piece. I daydream about what puzzle I’d like to belong to. I imagine where I’d like to be whether I need to come to emotional terms with myself or change the world around me. So, unlike you, I don’t have the itch to understand how everything is made. I just need to know the relevant things in order to fit in.

Who I am and how I feel is all in my own imaginary world; and it’s the most real thing to me. Everyday I remind myself that the idea of Me is nothing but a fleeting fantasy. There’s always a difference between that and what’s actually real. My existence would be nothing but hopes and dreams if I have nothing to show for it. NiFi in itself is a function pair of existential delusion. That’s why I can be so anal about empirical truth, and put so much value on evidence. I hang on to my SeTe objective concrete perceptions very tightly, as my life literally depends on it. And I make sure I’m correct. The way I see myself would be wrong and not real if it was based on false information.

While both our Thinking-Sensing functions want to get to the bottom of the truth, I love how you don’t care about being right or wrong. You don’t feel attacked about being proven incorrect. You don’t care about being smart. You don’t judge yourself when somebody questions your logic. All of your energy is spent on proving theories, since none was deemed necessary on proving yourself. This is where your intensity lives. Spending all of your energy digging deep down to get to the bottom of understanding whatever you’re focused on. After all, truth only stands after being excavated, scrutinized, and ruthlessly tested.

The funny thing is that truth is elusive. The world as we see it is a playground that is too vast, complicated, and ever evolving to truly be conclusive about it. There are so many ways and angles to look at something, all of them could be correct. Hence the knowledge vault that is your mind is always cracked open. I’d like to think it’s a never ending adventure, like building elaborate sand castles on an infinity beach. But you tend to admit getting lost in these thoughts can make you go crazy. Everything can be explained, we just don’t know how yet. Introverted Thinking and Introverted Sensing gets down to the nitty gritty and figures it out.

“The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know… The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else’s mind.” — Noam Chomsky

That means you are a Sensor. Yep. With all the shit-talking about Intuitives being smarter, it just happens that the type regarded as the smartest is a Sensor. That whole thing is bullshit anyway. Intuitives generate ideas on top of ideas diverging away from the concrete. On the other hand, your Extraverted Intuition observes the complex and abstract universe so you can render it in with more detail and reduce ambiguity. Life’s troubleshooter doesn’t generate speculations, you search for them. You spend your time trying to make sense of it all. No stone is left unturned. Your knowledge vault is full of concrete minute details of what you understand about stuff. And you can be a real stickler about those details.

My SeTe seeks to consume those TiSi details. Especially if it’s about something I value, I want to hear everything that starts with “Well, yes no maybe. The devil is in the details.” When pursuing my goals, I like to research and make solid logical reasoning to ensure I know what I’m getting into. INTPs have been the indispensable sources of guidance for someone like me who’s driven to stay informed. People say it’s good to be well researched. But where do all the sources come from, you know what I mean? Abe Lincoln once said “behind every great INTJ is a great INTP,” right? You guys have saved my ass, humbled me, and made me happier along the way. There’s seriously not enough credit given for the good and value you have contributed for me and society at large.

When I look into myself, I see that being wrong feels like downing a glass of whiskey. It burns and I’ll just have to tough it up. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? To stand corrected is character building. I’ve built up my tolerance, but it used to be so painful. It wasn’t an experience I’d like to go through often. To not be wrong and be hurt again, I dive down the information rabbit holes studying to gain back my confidence. What actually happens was that I’ve been burying myself hiding under the mounds of data I gathered. I didn’t want to be exposed and thought as stupid. I didn’t want to be seen as a fraud. I didn’t want to find out my existence has no real value. I didn’t realize I became someone who was very insecure about who he was.

And here you are as I’m watching you gracefully prancing around without that kind of fear holding you back, waltzing on the line between the realm of what you know and the much bigger one of what you don’t know. I’ve heard you say “no idea” many more times than I’ve ever said it. I’ve seen you routinely make brainfart mistakes. I’ve caught you being wrong on so many counts. Yet you still stand as the one many of us count on to solve problems. That takes a lot of courage to do what you do. It’s mesmerizing. Needless to say, I really look up to you.

"We are in the seat of the US government, a government that was founded by people who were, at one point, ruled by kings they couldn't overthrow. So, what did they do, right? They started over. They came here, to the New World. And the way we win is by creating a new, democratic, decentralized Internet... One where it is the users, not the kings, who have sovereign control over their data. This, I promise to you: I will help you end this tyranny by building an Internet that is of the people, by the people, and for the people, so help me God." —Richard Hendricks, from Silicon Valley

Modeling you I realized it wasn’t even about accumulating knowledge, but about humbling myself and embracing my vulnerability. Exposing myself will push me over the hill of Mount Stupid down to the Valley of Despair; a place you’re very familiar with. That’s the first step to enlightenment — I know… It’s silly to make this an epic journey. For I can only imagine that tumbling back down to the bottom of the Dunning-Kruger effect is just a normal Tuesday for you. While we can question the popular misconceptions of that curve, there’s still reason that you tend to sell yourself short.

And there, I see that you can feel just as unsure and as unconfident as I am, perhaps even more! That comes with such a relief for me. I admit that I’ve felt intimidated by you. Yes as crazy as that sounds, I’m scared to push back when you’re sure about something. I just assume you’re more right. But the more I understand you, the more I see you enjoy stepping in and help out. Whether it’s answering a noob question or one even you don’t have an answer for, it’s as if it was an invitation to get to know each other.

Who cares who’s got the bigger brains. The point has always been about building an amiable relationship by meeting together intellectually. You’ve shown me to not take intelligence so seriously, that there’s no such thing as a dumb question, that it’s OK to say “I don’t know.” I learned to loosen up about being logical. And ironically that made me see the truth: I am an emotional person who had been suppressing his feelings over logic. And I projected this suppression onto others. I shunned people who weren’t bearing the same brunt that I’ve endured to keep my emotions down. I wrongfully believed emotions were weaknesses. I’ve looked down on “stupid” people because I was trying so hard not to be one.

Knowledge doesn’t define us. It’s simply a means for what we want. While I used it to isolate myself, you use it to connect. Information is to food as logic is to cooking, you’re the master chef offering your talents for people to get together and enjoy. I’m the pretentious Yelper giving you 5 stars and a Like. And I gotta be honest — I feel I’ve gotten unfairly way more out of you than you have out of me. You’ve never asked for credit, but I’ll always feel indebted to you. It’s not enough for me to acknowledge what you do. I guess you could trade your thoughts for my opinions.

Like me, you’d rather be left alone observing the world. Like me, you’re fascinated by how it’s all put together. Like me, you wonder where you fit in the vast elaborate structures of it. Well it’s not much… But you have a special place inside my imaginary world. This world that I die trying to make into reality by acting and proving myself who I think I really am. I am your friend. I am someone who deeply appreciates who you are. Someone who wants to be like you. Someone who knows he wouldn’t be where he is without you.

“To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that’s exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.” — Hayao Miyazaki

I hate to say that this is all I got to give back. But I’ll definitely act on it. After all, feelings are like theories. They’re not real unless we materialize them out. You know that. Your feelings have always stood by your logic, wherever they came from. Many times they’re the reasons why you get deep in your head, why you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone, or why you get these bursts of flow state solving problems. You care for the good of your community. There really is a rose tinted bias in you. It really is the thought that counts. You recognize and solve the questions we should be asking ourselves to live in a better world.

In these moments you become the most genuine and sincere out of all the types. Unriddling the mysteries of the universe and discovering how we’re all connected speaks for who you really are: a human being who’s trying their best with what they know and understand about being kind with one another. Because of that, I’m inspired to be who I really am and to live as genuinely and sincerely as I can. To not hide under the truth but to stand proudly on top of it. I’ll live out my self belief as someone who will leave this world a little better than he found it. Thanks to you, we can make this true. Together as data points serving for something bigger than ourselves.

#mbti intj #intj thoughts #intj #intp stuff #intp #myers briggs #mbti #jungian #16 personality types #16 types #carl jung #cognitive functions

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yoonpobs · 4 years ago

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dilf (and love) | knj | m

pairing: kim namjoon x oc

genre: fluff, domestic fluff, smut, established relationship, marriage and kids lol

warnings: light dom/sub themes, pregnancy kink, penetrative sex, oral sex (f & m receiving), DILF JOON

words: 6, 702

summary: it's been too long since you and namjoon had time to yourselves

“God take that thing away from me!” You whine as you smother your face with your hands.

Jin pins you with a dry look as he catches a glimpse of ‘that thing’ who is looking up at you with big eyes and a toothless grin.

“That thing is your child …” Jin says blandly.

“That thing is ruining my sex life.” You narrow your eyes at Chanmi as she babbles some incoherent words with her ten-month-old vocabulary. You’d think as the daughter and apple of Kim Namjoon’s eye that she’d be able to read, write and speak sixteen languages at the age of one.

You still allow Chanmi to wrap her chubby fingers around your thinner ones and you can’t help but coo at your daughter. While she may have been the one thing that disrupted any intimate moment between you and Namjoon, you would fight anyone that would ever dare to mess with her. Your own husband included.

“Please, spare the details,” Jin mutters under his breath as he watches Chanmi fondly as she attempts to tug at your sleeve in hopes of getting your attention. You squeeze her cheeks before lifting her up in your arms and hold her close to your chest. You whine because she smells so … fresh. Just like a little bread baby that was all yours.

God, you loved her.

“My old sex life brought me this angel.” You grin up at your daughter who just smiles at you, unknowing of the context of your words.

“Can you stop using such vulgar words in front of your child?” Jin scolds you but doesn’t do anything much to take Chanmi out of your grasp.

You roll your eyes.

“She’s like 300 days old. She doesn’t even know how to shit at a decent hour let alone understand what sex is. Penis in vagina. Destroying pussy. A hole in one. Railing—”

Jin slaps his hand over your mouth to get you to stop talking as he glares at you.

“Why did my brother marry a heathen like you.” Jin seethes.

You shrug nonchalantly as you turn your head to see your dumbhead yet smart-ass husband that was attempting to glue back the shards of glass from the wine glass he broke earlier in hopes of you not realising.

“He needed to put his 148 IQ to good use and I’m the best investment his finance major ever got him.”

“The only good thing that came out of your marriage is this cutie.” Jin coos at his niece and you have half the mind to withdraw his Chanmi visiting card because whenever he was over all he did was berate you and your … unique ways of parenting.

But Jin would still say he cared for you as far as a brother-in-law would but with the added benefit of the fact that he was your best friend before he became your brother-in-law. You were an interesting character, to say the least, and the only reason you managed to befriend Jin was due to the fact that you didn’t know what boundaries meant and had invaded his personal space on the first day of lectures when you leaned over him to throw something at a know-it-all. Jin had been annoyed, but then an unlikely friendship bloomed out of the mutual distaste for ‘Howard from Accounting’.

He introduced you to Namjoon just because he thought that it was hilarious that you and his brother were polar opposites. Jin didn’t even expect the two of you to get along with each other let alone fall in love, but life had a funny way of saying ‘fuck you and your expectations’ to Jin when he least expected it.

The only thing that he regrets is the fact that now he had to listen to both you and his brother whine about your sex life, or lack thereof after the two of you became parents. Being a mother was hard because there was no manual to tell you what was right or wrong when it came to your baby but the experience itself. When you first fed Chanmi softened shrimp in her meals and caused an allergic reaction; you cried for hours straight because you felt like you should’ve just known.

Namjoon was a good partner and an even better father because he was understanding. The first few months postpartum he respected the fact that you weren’t ready to show your body to him because of the way it changed after giving birth to Chanmi, and he never told you that you were in your head for feeling that way. He validated all your feelings through all the rough edges that you gave him when you were going through your own things.

You finally felt comfortable to get naked around Namjoon at the five-month mark where your sex drive returned to that of when you were in your early twenties and just begun knowing how to truly enjoy sexual intimacies with a partner, but a five-month-old baby didn’t allow for much intimacy with your hot ass husband either.

It sucked because Namjoon had always been broad and very dad-like, and after he officially became a father to Chanmi you just felt like salivating over him every waking second you got because … God … Namjoon was a gift from the God’s themselves. Whenever you saw the way he handled Chanmi with absolute gentleness and care you felt like dropping to your knees and sucking the soul out of him. It didn’t help that he wore his glasses every night when he tucked her into bed and read her Shakespeare because it would ‘help with development’. You loved your husband but he was a little excessive.

“Oh God stop drooling over my brother!” Jin grimaces when he sees the bedroom eyes you were shooting Namjoon from where the two of you were with Chanmi.

You sigh dreamily and lean against your palm as you check out Namjoon’s ass.

“I can’t help that your brother and my husband has an ass like that.” You click your tongue.

Chanmi giggles again and it’s like a bell chiming at your favourite cafe when you cuddle her closer, feeling comfort in her scent. She smelt just like home and bubbles.

“How about I give you a sibling, huh?” You whisper to Chanmi who just opens her mouth to babble. Jin on the other hand facepalms himself and sighs.

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’m horny.” You shrug.

“Correction: you’re insufferable on a daily basis but absolutely horrifying to deal with when you’re horny.” He sneers.

“I just need to bed him and I’ll be fine.” You drawl, as your husband who spent the better half of your conversation fixing the wine glass grins to himself with his dimples when he finally placed the last piece of glass back into place. He was so meticulous and cute for the wrong reasons.

“Jesus, stop …” Jin groans.

“Jesus would definitely tell me to go get that dick because I deserve it.” You pat yourself on the back and wince slightly when you smell the telltale signs of Chanmi’s poop permeating the air.

“Say … would Yoongi mind having Chanmi over your place for the weekend?” Jin recognizes the devious expression you have on your face and knows that there’s no way out of it.

“I don’t have a choice do I?” Jin sighs.

You shake your head.

“Nope. Cause’ I texted Yoongi yesterday and said he totally wants to see his niece. The baby bag is all ready to go and it’s in the nursery.” You cock your thumb to the room down the hallway and Jin thinks to himself of all the reasons why he shouldn’t have introduced you to his brother at all seven years back.

“It’s weird without her …” Namjoon frowns as the two of you stand in the nursery as if you were mourning the loss of your child. It felt a lot like it, though.

The two of you never spent more than a few hours away from Chanmi ever since she was born and it felt weird to not smell her vomit from the kitchen or hear her giggles as you cooked dinner. You missed Namjoon and the spark you had in the first years of your relationship but you also felt a little empty without Chanmi’s presence with you.

“I miss her.” You whine into Namjoon’s chest and he clutches you tightly as if to say that he mirrored your sentiment.

“Should we call them?” You look up at him with wide eyes and he smoothes the frown lines on your forehead and chuckles, offering a gentle kiss to your temples.

“We called fifteen minutes ago, remember?” He chides you gently.

You huff, “I just … it’s so quiet. Where are my baby babbles?” You pout.

Namjoon sighs and rubs his thumb comfortingly on your arm when you look around at the purple nursery with reminders of your daughter that wasn’t currently with you.

“Let’s enjoy what we have, okay love?” Namjoon offers, “I miss Chanmi too but I miss this too.”

You smile at him the way he first fell in love with you years ago and leans down to place a peck onto your lips.

“I miss having you all to myself.” He whispers against your lips and you shiver at the way his broadness is clouding all your senses.

“You always have me Joon.” You tell him in a tone as soft as his.

His chest rumbles when he laughs and you feel so warm in the comfort of your husband's arms and you felt it too. Besides the physical aspect of having sex with him, you missed holding him like this without a care in the world. Most of your cuddle sessions were left to the nights you slept next to each other in bed because the two of you were either exhausted with work or trying to care for Chanmi. It’s been a long time since you could just feel Namjoon’s presence with you.

“Besides … we can finally, you know …” He mumbles shyly into your hair and the devil horns that you hide most of the time reappear.

“What, Joon?” You smirk up at him, hands trailing slowly down his chest.

Your husband was so big that every room he walked into he basically commanded the attention of every single person that would come across him. That’s what happens when you’re six foot and broad like him. But you loved the fact that you were the only one that got to see the much softer side to him that he didn’t just show anyone. The fact that he was the CEO of his own company made his persona ever more intimidating than he actually was but you knew he was a huge softie on the inside.

The two of you were very different in many senses. From your personalities to the way you approached conflict. Namjoon was very diplomatic but you were anything but. He was truly the most empathetic and understanding person you’ve met in your entire life and you’ve seen a total of ten therapists in your teenage years. Namjoon was the balance that levelled your temper and uninhibited tendencies to always be the loudest person in every room. With every time you snarked at someone who pushed your buttons came Namjoon that placed a gentle hand on your back with a soft whisper of comfort.

In fact, most people thought the two of you would have never lasted. You heard those mean girls in college that made petty bets on the fact that you’d probably end up leaving him because you were too much of a bitch to deal with someone as kind as Namjoon. You remembered most of your fights being about your insecurities and how you always thought that Namjoon deserved better and with him telling you that you were the one for him.

Looking back, you laugh because the two of you were theoretically horrible for each other but exactly what the other needed. Namjoon needed someone free-spirited enough to manage his meticulous tendencies and you needed someone willing to see you for more than your erratic behaviour.

“What’s that pretty head of yours thinking about?” Namjoon hums when he realises you’re not paying attention to him anymore. He clasps your hands together to bring back your attention to him as you look up at him with eyes so full of love.

“Just reminiscing on the old days.” You tell him and he snorts.

“You say that as if we’re ancient.”

“You’re not fooling anyone. I heard your joints cracking when you bent down to pick up the strands of hair on the floor.” You tease.

“And who’s fault is it that I’m constantly bending over to pick up strands of hair because she sheds like a cat?” He retorts playfully.

“We’re both old.” You pout, playing with his fingers and admiring the glimmer of his wedding ring. You can’t believe you bagged a man like Namjoon.

“I still got it, though.” He adds thoughtfully and you raise an eye at his comment.

“Got what?”

“My game.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you suggestively and you burst out laughing because it was so on-brand for Namjoon to make a comment like that but blush when you got a little more touchy-feely with him when he least expected it.

“How about you show me then?” You whisper as you turn around to press yourself against his chest, ensuring that your cleavage was on full show to his line of vision when he looks down at you.

“Did I ever tell you how much I love your tits after the pregnancy?” He tells you breathily and you snort.

“So you didn’t like my tits before I gave birth to your child?”

He rolls his eyes and reaches his hands below your thighs to lift you up so that you could wrap your legs around his waist. The way he could effortlessly carry you and lift you up always made your heart and nether regions flutter because he was so big that he basically towered over you. Especially when he became a dad it was like his hot factor exploded exponentially. He basically became the epitome of a dilf.

“You and your mouth,” He tsks as he carries you out of the nursery and into your bedroom, “I just may need to shut you up.”

You whine into his chest before he tosses you down onto your mattress as he towers over you, looking over your body like you were the finest piece of art he’s ever seen. Namjoon always had ways to make you feel like a million bucks even though you were in an old camisole and your old college varsity sweatpants.

“Why don’t you do it then?” You tease back.

You were different from the women that Namjoon has been with prior to your seven-year-long relationship as most of them were pliant and quiet, and took whatever he gave to them. Don’t get him wrong, he loved playing the dominant character in bed but he also needed a brat to push his buttons and it was exactly what you were. Even if the two of you were so fundamentally different in personalities, the two of you were definitely sexually compatible.

“Flip over.” He demands and you whine before reluctantly turning over.

“I want to see you.” You whine petulantly.

You feel him rather than have him verbally respond to you because he delivers a tight slap to your ass as you gasp at the impact. He rubs his hands soothingly over your butt cheeks and squeezes them as he leans over your body, crowding your back with his body heat.

“Don’t be a brat ___.” He sneers into your ear and the moan is stuck on your throat when you feel him drag his hands all over your body until it reaches under your body to reach for your tits.

“Fuck. I love your tits.” He groans.

Namjoon’s hands immediately trail down your body until they reach the hem of your shorts and you wiggle your ass back at him teasingly. You hear him growl and you always knew that Namjoon was an ass man and your ass made him weak.

“Need I remind you that you’re in no position to tease, sweetheart?” He whispers into your ear and you feel the goosebumps erupt on the surface of your skin.

“Fuck. Please—Joon, touch me.” You gasp as you feel him pull down your shorts to be greeted with a cheeky pair of panties that left little to imagine of what hides underneath. Your husband had the talent of getting you obscenely wet without doing much and it’s proven again when you feel the uncomfortable ache between your legs as he flips your body over once again to get a good glimpse of your heaving body, as well as the stain on your panties.

His knuckles trace the inner side of your thigh carefully as he avoids the place you need him the most while you feel more wetness pool at your entrance. You’ve been deprived of his touch for way too long and that caused your sensitive reactions to anything that he did. You missed his fingers so much and having him so close yet so far away from your pussy was destroying your restraint.

“Namjoon p-please!” You cry when he finally cups your mound with his large palm.

He digs the heel of his palm straight into your clit as you arch your back and let out a low moan.

“So wet baby and I’ve barely done anything.” He taunts you with the low baritone of his voice.

“You make me so wet Joonie.” You pant when you feel him grind his palm into your clit some more, providing the satisfying friction that you’ve been craving.

The feeling doesn’t last long because he’s hastily removing your panties from your legs and tosses them somewhere over his shoulder. His face is directly in front of your pussy and you can’t help but feel flustered at the proximity of his breath to your hole. You’ve done this a million times before but the familiarity is slightly lost due to the time between the last and the present.

“Where’s the brat that couldn’t shut her mouth before, hm?” He mumbles and you feel every breath against your pussy. You squirm and feel his large hands wrap around your thighs, locking you into position so you wouldn’t be able to move.

“It’s just been so—ah—long,” You tell him breathily.

“Too long. Missed this pussy.” He says as a parting gift before he dives straight into your clit and begins to lap rounds over the hardened bud. You let out a high pitched moan at the pleasure he was providing you with just his tongue alone, and the way that he knew just where to focus on your clit with tense figure-eights.

“Ah—ah, fuck—Joon!” You groan as your hands wrap around his hair to tug at it. You feel him moan against your pussy, which sends vibrations up to your core and causes more wetness to pool at your centre.

Namjoon is relentless when he digs his hands harder into the meat of your thighs to prevent you from moving too much as he continues to suction on your clit, focusing his attention on it as much as he could. After years of being together, he just knew what you loved and this was it.

You liked it messy. Wet and fast, and Namjoon always gave it to you good. He pulls away momentarily so he could look up at you with a hooded gaze and you let out a high pitched whine when you see the glistening of his chin all the way up to his nose with the signs of your wetness staining him. His fingers run up your thighs teasingly and you shift under his ministrations only for him to smack your right thigh harshly.

“If you move you don’t get to cum.” He threatens you and you immediately still your body with the impossible threat.

You feel his fingers run up and down on your slit as he gathers all your wetness into one place, hovering slightly over your clit. You have to keep your whine to a minimum because Namjoon got real mean when he wanted to. But he was a good lover—so good.

Your hole is throbbing with a need to be filled, and your husband picks up on that immediately as he prods your entrance with the tip of his index finger. You attempt to grind down on him as you make eye contact with the dark eyes that threaten to take away your orgasm.

“I said. Don’t. Move.” He reminds you.

You whimper in silence as he teases your hole a little more before he decides to return home into the warmth of your walls. The moment that barrier was broken, you feel him go straight for the hook as he reaches his index finger all the way up until his knuckles. You hear Namjoon hiss under his breath as he begins prodding your walls until he finds—

“Fuck—there, Joon—ah!” You gasp, head tilting backwards when your husband finds your g-spot.

Namjoon smirks to himself and slides another finger in to hook them upwards into your g-spot, unmoving as he stills himself against the area; causing pure, unaltered pleasured to run through your veins. You’re vibrating and twitching all at once because you can’t control the involuntary response that comes with your husband's demon fingers that are causing every possible pleasurable feeling to run through your system.

You can’t keep the moan to yourself either as Namjoon looks at you with awe, but you miss it because your eyes are too busy being rolled to the back of your head at the way Namjoon skilfully thrusts into your pussy.

“H-Harder, p-please Joon—wanna cum so bad.” You moan and run your fingers through his hair to bring his mouth closer to your mound.

He lowly chuckles and shakes his head at your sex drive. And the next thing he does next nearly makes you cum on the spot.

The way he gathers his spit at the back of his throat was borderline pornographic as you see the way his throat revs up. He drops the glob of spit directly onto your clit and uses the hand that wasn’t in your pussy to spread the lubricant all over your slit. He purposefully grazes your clit but doesn’t apply enough pressure to make your head spin, but just enough for you to whine in want.

“Your pussy is so pretty love.” He coos, leaning into your mound to deliver kitten-licks to your clit, and the warmth of his tongue with the added addition of his fingers feels all too much.

“J-Joon!” You gasp when you feel him thrust his fingers rapidly in and out of your pussy that your body hitched up the surface of the bed. Every thrust was accompanied by the direct assault of his tongue on your clit as he presses down on the hardened bud with the purpose to drive you closer to your orgasm.

You were painfully close, and the precision of his fingers at your g-spot allows you to revel in the way the coil in your body is ready to snap, so close to release. Namjoon leans down so that his head is where you love him the most, between your thighs as he scores the final goal and presses his tongue against your clit.

“Oh my god Joon—fuck—s-so good—I’m gonna cum!” Your back arches off the bed uselessly because of the way that Namjoon uses his other hand to pin you down, arms wrapped tightly around your stomach.

“Come for me pretty girl.” He coos against your clit and the vibrations is what sends you over the edge.

He fucks his fingers into you as you orgasm, kitten licking your clit with just enough pressure for you to whine as you buck your hips up into his mouth involuntarily.

“Fuck. Baby—hurts.” You whine, pushing his head away from your pussy when the overstimulation gets to you.

Namjoon places one last teasing peck on your clit, which causes you to twitch and pinch his neck as he chuckles, dragging his hand up your body to bring you closer to him.

“Still got it, hm?” He whispers against the column of your neck as you roll your eyes.

“Just kiss me you fool.” You pull him in for a kiss, and your tongue immediately finds its place home in Namjoon’s mouth.

It’s probably because it’s been so long since the two of you could feel each other like this, without any rush to get it over with but with the freedom to enjoy each other’s bodies as much as you’d like. Namjoon’s hands were the truth of that as he trails his arms down the sides of your waist and tugs you closer to him by your hips until he reaches for the hem of your camisole to tug it off your body.

He grabs the mounds of flesh in his hands and squeezes them hard enough to cause another gush of wetness to drip down the side of your thighs and onto his sweatpants. Besides the fact that he delivered a mind-blowing orgasm to you, the stained wetness of his sweatpants from his pre-cum and your slick is enough for you to push him down onto the bed.

“I’m gonna suck your cock.” You kiss him on the lips one last time before you’re leaning down to palm him over his sweatpants.

He hisses above you and grabs the back of your neck lovingly that it has you snorting.

“You know if you’re laughing at my dick my feelings are going to be very hurt,” Namjoon says from above you.

“It’s just …” You shake your head and giggle as you clench your fist around the outline of Namjoon’s cock as he lets out a low breath of approval at your action.

“You used to shove my head onto your cock the moment I reached your pants and now you’re so soft.” You tease.

You hear his breath hitch and the grip on your neck tighten at your taunting words. The excitement already pooling in your stomach at the roughness that would ensue from your husband.

“Me? Soft? Is that what you want baby?” His tone is warning and you know he’s serious.

You shake your head as you look up at him with innocent eyes, a stark contrast to the hand that continues to fondle his balls over his sweatpants.

“Don’t be a bitch and take my cock out.” He sneers, and you smile to yourself cheekily—knowing you hit a sore spot.

You happily oblige as you pull Namjoon’s sweats down to be greeted with your husbands cock. The visual itself has your pussy throbbing, and every time you’re faced with it, you always burn with the prospect of his thick cock pounding into your pussy.

“Now suck it like a good girl.” He guides your head towards his dick but you’re proactive enough to fully start licking at his tip, tongue teasing his slit as you hear him let out a low groan.

Your eyes are locked on his figure, as his head is thrown back. You want to grind on the sheets but you know that would delay him fucking you so you decide against it. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t appreciate the visual that your husband was giving you from where you were.

Namjoon had always been handsome. But there’s something about seeing him throw his head back in pleasure because of you that has your stomach churning with pride. You’d shamelessly admit that you were more on the possessive side, purely because you knew there were many men and women out there who desired Namjoon in more ways than one; and you didn’t like sharing one bit.

You spit onto his dick as your hands worked the rest of the length that you didn’t engulf in your mouth as you hollowed your cheeks to create a suction. Your tongue begins to tease the underside of his shaft, the way he likes the most and you know he’s enjoying your focus there because the hand that grips your neck is now tightly clutching your hair in a fist.

“Fuck. That’s it, baby.” He groans.

Motivated by the praise, you sink deeper, hands resting on his thick thighs as you push yourself until your nose reaches his pelvis. You’ve taken his cock like a champion on many occasions, and you can only thank him for that like the numerous times he had to guide you down on his cock were probably the only reason why your tiny throat could welcome his thick girth.

The sounds of you chocking on his dick was a lot for Namjoon, mainly because he couldn’t get enough of his wife but also because he’s been waiting out to bust a nut down your throat—actually your pussy—so long that he can’t handle the onslaught of pleasure your mouth brings him.

“Baby—baby,” He tugs you off his cock and the redness around your cheeks with the tears that pool at your waterline is enough to make his heart soar. Even though you were nasty in bed, he loved every single part of your forwardness.

“Your mouth is amazing but I need to cum in your pussy.” He tells you.

You whine at his declaration and allow him to manhandle you until you were face down ass up, ass pressed tightly against his pelvis as you grind your wet cunt over the hardness of his dick.

“Fuck—you’re so wet, baby. You like sucking my cock?” He growls, arms reaching around your stomach to pull your body flush against his chest.

When you reach your hand to wrap around his head to balance yourself, you see a view of your bodies together in your mirror. Courtesy of when you first moved in and due to you and Namjoon’s egocentric tendencies of wanting to see you guys fucking each other.

“S-So much Joon.” You garble.

His hand reach down to cup your mound and digs his palm into your clit as you grind down against his hand. You feel him loosely trace over your clit to gather your wetness into his hand to lather it over his dick.

“I’m gonna fuck you so good.” He whispers in your ear when he lines his cock against your entrance.

You whine, excitement erupting inside of you—until he finally slides it.

It definitely takes you by surprise because your husband was big. And the fact that you haven’t had his dick in you for months made it much more of a pleasant surprise when he bottoms out completely in one swift thrust of his hips, which causes your body to fall forward as your hands grip the sheets beneath you.

“Fuck. This tight pussy’s mine, right?” He growls.

You nod your head into the sheets as he begins with a few experimental thrusts as you adjust to the slight, yet pleasurable, sting in your lower half.

Until you squeeze his hand on your hip to give him the go, Namjoon settles for slow thrusts into your pussy, but it’s enough to prod at your pleasurable spot because not only is Namjoon smart, kind, funny, handsome and ridiculously a great father—he is phenomenal at sex. Probably why he knocked you up on the night of your honeymoon with your bundle of joy.

Namjoon begins snapping his hips into yours relentlessly like a man starved, and starved he was. He’s missed the wet heat of your pussy; and God did he love your daughter—but he missed this—your pussy.

“F-Fuuuuu—” You’re heaving.

Namjoon continues to thrust into your pussy, angling his hips upwards so that he’d reach places deeper than ever as your eyes roll to the back of your heart in pleasure.

“Fuck—this—tight—pussy—” His words follow the sharpness of his thrusts and you don’t even know where to grab because all your sensations are heightened, especially when Namjoon reaches a hand down to your clit to begin rubbing it vigorously.

“Nam—Joon!”

You’re so wet that the squelch of his thrusts is echoed in your bedroom, and the only thing you hear besides that is your loud moans and the heavy breathing coming from Namjoon.

It’s only when he plants his knees firmly into the mattress and brings your hips to meet his thrusts is when you feel your pussy clench uncontrollably around his cock as you wail out his name.

“Fuck, baby—you’re clenching—so—hard.” He groans, pushing his hips deeper into your pussy.

“Love your cock,” You moan, “Fuck—Joon, please—fuck your cum into me.”

“Yeah?” He grits his teeth and flips your over effortlessly, dragging your leg over his shoulder as he begins pounding into you even harder as he admires the way your face contorts in pleasure.

“Yeah.” You nod your head like a sex-crazed maniac because your husband was just too good with his hips.

“Gonna give you another baby.” He whispers when he leans down into your face as your eyes widen at his declaration. Your pussy reacts too, gushing out even more wetness as it becomes tighter around Namjoon’s cock.

“Fuck. You like that idea? A sibling for Chan’?” He grinds his pelvis into your clit as his words spur your second orgasm for the night on.

“No shit?” You gasp when he revs up his spit in the back of his throat, looking at your mouth invitingly.

“Yeah,” He says breathlessly, and you open your mouth to welcome his tongue when he drops the glob of spit down your throat.

You whine, feeling your orgasm coming so closely.

“Fuck Joon—I’m gonna cum.” You gasp.

You feel Namjoon’s hips stutter and you know he’s coming soon too.

“Me too baby.” He tells you while giving you the set of most adoring eyes ever. Even as he’s fucking you into the next dimension, Namjoon makes you feel so utterly loved and whole that you can’t imagine spending the rest of your life with anyone else.

He snaps his hips the hardest he’s ever done throughout the entire night, and you feel your pussy throb so much; signalling to you and Namjoon that your release was right there.

“Baby—I’m gonna—I’m gonna c-cum,” You grab onto his shoulder to pull him closer to you.

He welcomes it and leaves open mouth kisses onto your mouth as he fucks into you like a mad man.

“Cum.”

That’s all it takes for you to reach an explosive orgasm, one that quite literally causes you to blank out for a second because while Namjoon’s hot cum spurts into your pussy short after you came, he feels your body go limp in his embrace; causing his eyes to widen.

Only until you’re blinking up at him dazedly is when he holds you to his chest, as you feel his chest rumble when he chuckles.

“Baby … I thought you died.” He cards a hand through your hair and you smile at him, stupidly in love.

“If I die because of your dick I’d be happy.” You grin at him cutely. And he scoffs at the way you look so cute after you’ve been fucked to hell and back.

“My horny little monster,” He flicks your forehead as you bring him close to your chest, his dick still settled inside of you. But there was a sort of intimacy that you couldn’t quite put words to, but welcomed the gesture nevertheless.

“Were you serious?” You ask after a while of sharing a few intimate pecks to each others’ lips.

He finally pulls out to roll on his side as he reaches over to pull your close to his chest. He raises an eyebrow at your expression when you feel his cum leak out of you.

“God you really didn’t jack off recently, did you?” You ask.

He pecks you on the nose as he quickly tugs clean boxers over his legs and disappears into your on-suite. You sigh to yourself dreamily, thinking of how lucky you were to be with someone as loving and compassionate as Namjoon was.

You weren’t necessarily unlucky when it came to your relationships prior to him, but there would always be dealbreakers that caused splits to be more bitter than neutral. Namjoon was the only man in your life that you could speak to without fearing any judgement from because he wasn’t like that. He knew how to make you feel wanted and also how to want yourself, all while being your best friend and partner.

When he returns, he returns with a damp cloth and immediately begins cleaning up the mess between your thighs, even as he cheekily mentions how there was more from where that came from as you slap him on the shoulder.

Once he ensures he’s satisfied, he tosses the cloth into the laundry basket and grabs a big t-shirt of his to slip it over your body. You hum in satisfaction as his scent overwhelms you, even more so when he tugs you close to his body and he looks at you with all the love in the world.

“You asked if I was serious earlier?” He repeats your question and you nod your head looking up at him.

“Yeah.” You let out a breathy smile when he leans down to pull your face towards his own as you admire all the freckles and pores on his skin, fingers tracing loosely over the wrinkles that come with age.

“I know it’s sudden but … I’ve been thinking about our family and—I want our family to become bigger.” He tells you like it’s a secret. You know he’s been mulling over it for quite a while because he looks a little unsure of himself, but all you can do is smile widely at him.

“Really?” You ask, playing with the hair on the back of his neck when you feel his fingers trace over the skin on your back.

“Of course. I love you, and I love Chanmi. I’ve always wanted kids and you brought the best gift in my life to me and … I can’t explain how happy I am when I’m with the two of you.” He smiles at you gently.

You don’t know if it’s because he just fucked you so good, or was it because you were lovesick, but your eyes water because Namjoon was Namjoon.

“But—if you’re not ready then I understand and we can—”

“Yes.” You interrupt him.

His eyes widen as you see the excitement begin to pour into his irises.

“Wait—really?” He asks innocently.

You nod your head and kiss him on the lips softly, no rush as he returns the gesture, holding you close onto his chest where you feel the best in his arms.

“Yes really. I want what you want. And I think it’s about time Chanmi gets a sibling, no?” You tease.

He groans like you’re unreal as he buries his head into the crook of your neck as you caress him gently. Namjoon was really just like an oversized baby and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“When?” He asks.

You tease your fingertips down to his chest and offer him a knowing look.

“Now?” You feign indifference but you can see the wide grin he sports on his face.

“Fuck. Don’t say that. I think my dick is going to fall off at how hard I fucked you just now,” He whined.

“You’re getting old,” You massage his shoulders as he sighs.

“I am …” He acknowledges, “But we’ll grow old together, right?”

The prospect of a future of unknowns with Namjoon only makes your heart bloom. You nod your head, not another word need to be uttered as he holds you in his arms, excited for what’s to come.

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adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy · 4 years ago

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A/N: If there’s anything I learned from doing this, it’s that vampirerry is an utter WHORE. Good for him!!!! As for myself, I’m done with the semester and my term projects and finals left my singular brain cell fried, so this was a nice way to get back into writing again. I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thank you to the anon that suggested it, this was super fun to do! :D

read you’re someone i just want around here

word count: 6k

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Harry is very attentive when it comes to aftercare with Y/N. The sex they have is often rough and includes toys, degradation, and multiple rounds, so he believes aftercare is non-negotiable. Rough sex can be fun, but if it’s not followed by a lot of communication and post-performance support, it can take a hard emotional toll on a person. Even when intimacy isn’t meant to be inherently sentimental, there has to be a certain level of connection and etiquette surrounding it, or it could end badly for both parties involved. He always checks on her immediately after they finish, simply to gauge her headspace and how her body is responding, and after he’s made sure she’s alright, he goes into his usual routine of skin-to-skin contact and gentle coddling. Reassurance and praise is just as important afterwards as it is during, because it’s good to let a partner know that your appreciation runs deeper than just the physical need felt in the heat of the moment; everyone deserves to feel valued beyond their body.

Harry proceeds to clean Y/N up after every session, because it’s the least he can do since she’s usually the one getting the brunt of the work. He’ll fetch a clean towel dampened under warm water to wipe her clean, or he’ll offer to help give her a bath or a shower— whichever route she prefers. Harry dresses her, and changes the sheets if need be, and tucks her into bed to ensure she’s nice and comfortable. If it’s been a particularly intense session, he’ll go the kitchen and bring back a snack and a drink— a granola bar and a Gatorade, or some chips and her favorite juice, or if she’s feeling especially hungry, he’ll happily go out of his way to prepare her an actual meal— and he insists on feeding it to her bit by bit until she’s come to enough to handle it on her own. If she’s not hungry, he at least brings her a glass of water and urges her to drink it; better to be safe than sorry. After that, more cuddling is the status quo, which normally ends in Y/N falling asleep in his arms, and Harry has absolutely no problem with that at all.

B = Body Part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Harry’s favorite body part of Y/N’s is probably her chest. Yes, he likes it for sexual reasons— obviously— but there are innocent reasons for his fascination, as well. He likes how responsive she gets when he touches her there— how he can get her going just by groping her the way she likes it, or by using his mouth to tongue across her nipples until she’s writhing in pleasure and whining for more. He loves leaving hickies all over her tits, probably more than she likes receiving them. It’s just so fucking hot seeing himself marked all over her, especially when she’s putting on a bra and he can see all of the dark bruises scattered across the cleavage spilling from the undergarment. Filth aside, he also enjoys loving all over her chest. Absentmindedly cupping them while they’re snuggling, nuzzling his head between them while they’re watching television, massaging them under her shirt with his large palms as she sits back against his chest, sipping a glass of wine and chatting away, unwinding after a long day. It’s a form of intimacy; it provides a type of closeness nothing else can.

As for his own favorite body part, it’s a tie between two different areas. He loves his thighs— they’re one of his most prominent features. They’re thick and meaty and sensitive, so they’re the perfect sweet spot to touch when he wants to get riled up. Given his previous response, it can be easily deduced that he likes to get hickies there, as well. The marks look great peeking out from under his briefs (for the short amount of time they last, anyways) and they make a great accessory to the large tigerhead tattoo along his left thigh. It’s artwork, really; a proper Picasso.

His other favorite body part...well, take a lucky guess. It’s likely not that far off— literally, considering it hangs right between his thighs.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Harry’s personal preference is cumming inside. He adores feeling the way Y/N tightens around him when he finally orgasms (she’s just so warm and soft and unbelievably tight; it’s like she was made for him), almost as much as he loves seeing her reaction. Her body will immediately start to wriggle and her back will arch as she releases broken little whimpers, clinging to his shoulders with her nails and begging him to fill her until he’s milked his worth. Hearing her ragged breathing and feeling her sweaty chest stutter against his is enough to do him in, but when she goes as far as to gnaw on his ear and whine a soft little, “Want it all, baby. Want you dripping out of me when we’re done.” Well, that’s enough to kill him all over again.

Of course, there are times when Harry likes seeing himself all over her, too. On her outstretched tongue, or smeared across her pretty face and plush lips (she looks particularly cute when it ends up all over her eyelashes), or streaked over the valley of her tits, or pooled at the center of her tummy. If he’d been taking her from behind, then he likes seeing it run down the backs of her thighs, or splattered across the dip of her spine. And if she’d been giving him a handjob, then seeing himself dribbling down her fingers is just as good. Why? Because those fingers usually end up in her mouth, which means he ends up all over her tongue, and so the cycle comes full circle. How poetic.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Did Harry suggest wearing a matching set of a vibrating cock ring and buzzing bullet to do grocery shopping once? Yes. Did he drop three glass jars of peach preserves by accident as a result, causing them to have to book it out of the bread aisle while trying to look as unsuspicious as possible, which failed horribly because they were literally hobbling like a crippled elderly couple? Also yes. Did they end up fucking in a Target fitting room? Definitely.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

A lot of experience. Tons. Immense amounts. Insane amounts. Two hundred years of the same seven continents just means two hundred years worth of sex across every single one. And it gives you plenty of time to find the clitoris, as well as giving you a chance to learn the female anatomy like the back of your hand. That being said, Harry doesn’t doubt he could make Y/N cum with his wrists tied behind his back and a blindfold strapped to his face. In fact, he’s made her cum just by using his thigh, so that in itself is enough credibility to last him several more lifetimes. The toy chest in his closet and the fact that he’s well-endowed are bonuses— he knows more than enough tricks to keep her satisfied with just his tongue. Not to mention his fingers— they’re long for a reason.

F = Favorite position

Funny enough, Harry doesn’t have one. He’s spent so many decades cycling through every possible position in existence, it’s gotten to where he can’t pin-point a preference; all positions are unique, and they each have their own appeal. Reverse cowgirl is nice because he likes watching the way he stretches Y/N open with every plunge of her hips, and it also gives him the luxury of marking his rings across her ass in the process. Regular cowgirl is nice, too— having her chest bouncing in his face is nothing short of a divine miracle, in his opinion. Doggy style is a staple, and there’s always different add-ons he can apply to spice it up; for example, taking her from behind with her wrists tied to her ankles, or bending her over the kitchen counter with her face pressed into the marble, or fucking her against his glass wall with her hands and chest flushed to the cool surface as their breaths fog the floor-to-ceiling window.

Missionary is a tried and true option, and just like it’s prior counterpart, it can be enhanced with a variety of extra tricks. Bondage is a good condiment, against the wall is always a nice touch, spread-eagle never goes wrong, and just having her legs wrapped around his lower back is more than enough. However, he does have two favorite variations of the position. The first is when he mounts her legs onto his shoulders or along the inside of his elbows to open her up more, and then just ramming his hips down at a very specific angle that hits her g-spot just right, pounding her into the bed so hard she tears the sheets off the mattress. The second is a cowgirl-missionary hybrid: he sits back on his heels and uses the steep downward slope created by his thighs as elevation, pulling her ass onto his tilted lap and swinging her legs over either side of his hips. He gropes her waist with his palms and yanks her forward, bouncing her against his cock and watching her completely dismantle as he nudges all the right places with as much speed and force as she deems fit.

And then there’s fucking from the side, but that’s a whole other extensive conversation he doesn’t have time for.

Actually, maybe Harry will entertain it for a minute or so. He usually throws one of Y/N’s legs over his neck to get a deeper range, manhandling her roughly onto her side and yanking her closer to his body by her waist, grasping it with stern vigor and holding her down against the mattress, grunting out a gravelly, strict command along the lines of, “Stay fucking still.” He’ll drill into her at a brutal, consistent pace, staining his fingerprints along the curves of her torso and sponging damp kisses onto her ankle, smirking into her skin as he watches her fist at the duvet in a futile attempt at maintaining her bearings. It’s pretty evident that she can’t, though; the way her eyes lull around their sockets from his harsh stride does a terrible job at hiding her lack of self-control, alongside the fragmented curses she gasps out whenever he nudges her g-spot with the head of his cock.

“Oh, that was such a pretty noise. Did I hit that little spot you like?”

Her response will be begrudging, as always, which he thinks is ridiculously useless considering he can see her burying her face into the pillow to hide how her jaw drops open in sheer rapture. “No.”

“No?” The vampire leans forward, stretching her leg towards the headboard and preening at the garbled squeak that escapes her gritted teeth, plunging deeper as he lowers himself to her level. He knots her hair around his knuckles, tugging sharply until her face is tilted back enough to meet his fiery gaze. “Then why are you starting to shake?

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

It depends on the mood, honestly. There are definitely serious moments, but Harry enjoys the humorous ones just as much. He already adores making Y/N laugh and smile on a regular basis, and that desire only grows when he’s buried between her thighs, simply because she just looks so fucking cute laughing with her hair splayed around the pillows in a messy halo, her sounds of glee stuttering due to how sharply she’s jolting against the bed. He loves feeling her giggle into his mouth as he cracks sarcastic jokes and makes stupid witty comments that break the intensity in the air, especially because she’s usually clever enough to return them with some of her own. Then they both end up snickering like idiots as he tries to keep a solid pace, which eventually tapers to a messy, haphazard stride as their laughter drowns out their goal to the point where he has to take a genuine break to collect himself. There’s tons of examples— how could there not be? Sex is hardly ever perfect, so awkward moments are not only expected, but guaranteed. What better way to handle them than with a bit of humor?

There was an incident once where Harry accidentally knocked their foreheads together so hard, they both bruised (which he responded to with, “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Cosmopolitan meant when they suggested matching couples tattoos.”). Another time, he got so into the moment he didn’t realize he was jack-hammering the top of her head into the backboard until she brought it to his attention (and made a comment saying it sounded like a sped up version of the beat to We Will Rock You). A bad case of the hiccups. Y/N burping right in his face halfway through his orgasm. A random leg cramp that made him think he was going to need amputation to survive. Accidentally rolling off the bed or couch onto the ground and nearly dislocating both of their spines in the process, getting his cross earring tangled in her hair and nearly ripping off his ear trying to get it out, and the unfortunate collapse of a pillow fort he’d spent over an hour building. He even sneezed in her face once, and when she instinctively went to shove him back, she wound up slamming her palm into his nose so hard he nearly passed out. Nose bleeds aren’t necessarily sexy, per se, but he just dug blindly through her nightstand until he found two new tampons somewhere in that black hole she calls a drawer, shoved them in his nostrils, and kept going. No one can ever accuse him of being unresourceful.

Queefing. Lots and lots of queefing, which he usually starts mimicking with his mouth, and then she responds to that by whining and telling him to cut it out, and then he takes to mocking her whining instead. It normally finishes with them laughing so hard that Harry’s cheeks hurt from smiling so big, but it’s a good type of pain. The best type of pain.

H = Hair (how do they groom?)

Harry likes keeping himself neat and orderly, but he doesn’t enjoy going bare, so trimming is his grooming preference. There’s just something so unappealing about a completely smooth dick— it looks like raw chicken and it’s fucking disgusting. He doesn’t have anything against a good bush, but it tends to get unruly and he’d rather not have to overcomplicate his shower routine. And honestly, he can’t trust himself because last time he had a full front yard going, he got shitfaced and tried to braid it on a dare. Keeping the hedges trimmed is the ideal landscaping option, and it just looks way hotter— a uniform dusting of hair is a good accessory and it just makes everything look more cohesive, given that he also fancies keeping his happy trail thick. It’s all about aesthetics, isn’t it?

I = Intimacy (the romantic aspect)

It’s no secret that Harry’s been somewhat detached from intimacy for the last two hundred years or so. Intimacy is reserved for genuine romance, and that’s something he hadn’t entertained since before the lightbulb was invented. But now that he has Y/N, intimacy has crawled its way back out from the deepest recesses of his subconscious, where it had been shoved into a bottomless pit with the rest of his trauma. He likes it— he likes opening up to her in any way he can, because sharing those obsolete parts of himself with someone again is more fulfilling than he ever imagined. He likes kissing her randomly when she’s halfway through a sentence, just to feel her words die off abruptly in her throat as she gives into his gentle gesture, a delicate smile spreading across her satin lips. He likes whispering sweet phrases of encouragement into her hair when they’re tangled amidst sweaty limbs and rumpled sheets, reminding her of how much he cares for her and how beautiful she looks when she’s so far gone and how she makes him feel like his entire body has been set alight. He likes sponging soft pecks across the stretch marks along her thighs and across the dimples on her belly, her skin candy and velvet on his tongue as she releases a watery sigh that lets him know he’s doing all the right things in all the right places. He just likes letting her know she's special to him, in any and every way he can.

Intimacy forges timeless bonds, and he reckons that assumption is unarguable, considering he knows a thing or two about eternity.

J = Jack Off (masturbation headcanon)

Harry likes to jack off, obviously. Who doesn’t? It’s why he has an entire section of his toy chest dedicated to self-pleasuring tools. Vibrating cock rings, an array of lubes that range from temperature-changing to sensation sensitivity, and a few pocket vags that get the job done whenever Y/N is out of commission (usually because of work). His favorite one is an electronic sleek black model that is made of a premium silicone material and has a variety of massage settings, suction strengths, and internal textures. It’s designed to make the session feel more real, and yes, it was expensive, but self-love is always worth the splurge.

The beauty of living on his own is that he can get off wherever and whenever he wants, without having to stress about someone interrupting an important step in his pampering routine. He usually does it in his room and on his bed, simply because Y/N’s pillow is close by and the experience is heightened when her scent is swimming around his hazy, bliss-drunken mind. If Harry is feeling particularly needy, he’ll ditch the toy all together and just hump one out against the mattress or cushion. If it’s a particularly restless day, he’ll take a toy downstairs and lazily play within himself on the couch while browsing through Netflix. Those instances usually average a few tamer orgasms rather than a single large one, but he’s not complaining; his stamina comes in unapologetic waves that stem from a never-ending supply, and he certainly has the time to kill. If Harry gets the sudden urge in the shower or while he’s relaxing in his jacuzzi, he won’t bother fetching a trinket; he’ll just stroke one out with his hand, using the cool metal of his trusty lionhead ring to tease the tip until he brings himself to orgasm. It turns out daylight crystals have more than one use.

There is one common factor amongst all these different choices, though: Y/N is present in every fantasy. And if the vampire is feeling especially bold, he’ll grab his phone and take a video of whatever he’s doing to himself, and then she’ll have a nice little gift waiting for her once she gets out of the café for the day. That usually leads to him receiving a present in return later that evening, and then he’s dialing her contact before the clip is even done playing, and then what he does during his alone time doesn’t require him being so alone anymore.

K = Kinks

Harry has tons— in fact, he has so many, he can’t really keep track. And he also has the sneaking suspicion that if he were to ever jot all of them down, he’d end up locked in some type of sex addict rehabilitation center. Bondage is a big one, so he’ll start there. He’s great with ropes, given that he learned his way around them ages ago. Chains are nice, but they can be a pain to set up without the right equipment; he’s thinking of getting a reinforced metal hook installed into his ceiling, like the one in his storage closet, which he uses to keep his punching bag secure. Handcuffs, obviously— velvet-lined, straight metal, fuzzy coverings, he’s got it all. Dominance, degradation, Daddy, Sir, choking, brat-taming, spanking, flogging, slapping— impact play in general, to be honest— spitting, wax, praise, begging, masochism, branding (mild stuff, no molten metal shit), collaring, discipline, dirty talk, edging, exhibitionism, face-fucking, face-sitting (with him on the receiving end), giving oral (is that a kink? It is now.) gagging (both the action and using the actual object itself), breeding (he hates that term but that’s the official name, unfortunately), teasing, voyeurism, role play, and… he thinks that’s it. Oh, and blood, but that doesn’t really count for apparent reasons.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Y/N’s couch is sacred, at this point. Their entire relationship started on that lumpy, worn excuse of a sofa, and it’s seen them through their progression from strangers to friends with benefits to lovers to more. It’s comfortable enough, the dark color hides any explicit stains, and the cushions always smell of her signature mixture of honey and lavender combined with Snuggle fabric softener. It’s finicky, but irreplaceable. His kitchen counter is a close second. It’s provided a lot, taken a lot, been through a lot— through a lot of Lysol wipes, to be specific. If it wasn’t marble, it likely would have been reduced to chunks and rubble by now, courtesy of his enhanced strength gripping the edges as he slams her against the smooth surface. The backseat of his Cadillac is consecrated, as well; there’s just so much erotic appeal to fucking in a car with rock music blaring in the background, muffling the obscene sounds of bodies connecting and a mixture of fever-pitch moans. The couch, the counter, and the Cadillac— the Unholy Trinity.

The jacuzzi is nice, too, but for the sake of his clever little “c” alliteration, he’ll leave that one as an implied token.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

As much as Harry claims he likes full submission in bed, he can’t deny that he loves being challenged. Delivering punishment and coaxing out an orgasm is so much more satisfying when he has to fight for it; it’s so fucking hot watching his girlfriend try to best him in a power struggle, especially when she finally— and undeniably, since he always wins— caves under his will and winds up begging him for what he otherwise would have gifted her freely. That’s where the brat-taming kink comes into play. He likes it when she mouths off and makes snarky digs, and he enjoys it even more when he tries to set her in place and she amps her disobedience as a result. There’s nothing more attractive than a battle of wits with someone who is a perfect match in every way. And when she channels her attitude into physical gestures, it riles him up beyond compare. For example, when she smirks and rolls her eyes, despite the fact that there’s trails of tears staining her cheeks and mascara smeared all over her waterline? Christ, he could go feral.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

No feet, no feces, no beastiality. There’s probably more, but those are the ones off the top of his head.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Receiving oral is great— he highly recommends it, solid ten out of ten— but giving it is so much better. Harry’s always been a giver, even when he was young and barely knew his way around a woman’s undergarments. The stereotypical expectation for a person who is beginning to explore their sexuality is that everything they do, they do for their own gain. It’s a selfish realization, yes, but it’s a primal type of selfishness that no one can truly be blamed for. It’s a simple concept: when you start having sex, you want as much personal benefit as possible. It’s only natural. But from the second Harry became sexually active, he came to find that providing release to his partner outweighed the bliss he could get from letting them pleasure him instead. It’s not direct pleasure, but rather cognitive, which more often than not translates itself physically. And when it comes to Y/N, that euphoria manifests tenfold.

Nothing compares to having his face buried between her legs as she tugs and yanks at his hair desperately, her chest heaving and jaw falling open as he uses his tongue to unravel her from the inside out. Spitting sloppily onto her folds and hearing the raw gasp of aroused shock that escapes her sore throat, which causes his swollen lips to spread into a dirty grin as he latches onto the sensitive bud at the thick of her core, fiddling with it until her legs are trembling uncontrollably around his sturdy shoulders. Watching her features go slack as he bobs his neck fervently between her thighs, swiping the bridge of his nose across her clit over and over until the entire bottom half of his face is drenched in her excitement. Fucking his tongue into her and feeling her buck against his jaw as she holds him in place with her fingers tangled in his curls, whimpering his name repeatedly in a voice so shattered, he could probably build a mosaic with the fractures. Feeling her drip down his chin and into the collar of his shirt, savoring how sweet she tastes as he pins her hips down against the bed and groans feverishly into her cunt, his ego idolizing the image of her so disheveled under his influence.

A measly blowjob is hardly any competition to that. Harry could very well cum just from eating Y/N out. In fact, he has, and that in itself is all the proof he needs.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

This is one of those other factors that depends on the mood. If Harry has been waiting all day for it, his impatience bleeds into his rhythm, which means he settles for fast and hard. It means he settles for bending her over the back of his couch with one palm around her throat and his other fingers in her mouth, pounding into her with so much force, the sofa starts shifting across the ground. If Y/N has been teasing him endlessly for a decent amount of time, it’ll be rough and deep, but not fast; he’ll drag it out for as long as possible, just to make her regret acting like such a spoiled brat. That’s when he brings out the paddle, or the crop, or just manhandles her across his lap and spanks her until she’s apologizing profusely through her whines. If he’s in a soft, romantic headspace, it’ll be slow and sensual, with lots of gentle caresses, giggly kisses dusted across eager lips and droopy eyelids, and penetrating strokes that make his toes curl and tummy clench.

Pace is relative, but the message behind it is all the same: I want you more than anything, and I’m going to show you just how deeply I mean it.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Quickies are fun, Harry will admit. They’re filthy and messy, and they show just how far gone two people are for each other to the point where they can’t wait to feel one another at a later time; that they need to be together now, or they’ll go absolutely insane. Quickies are saved for when the urge strikes at random times. For when he’s out with Y/N at a park, sitting under the shade with his head in her lap as she combs his curls out of his eyes and thumbs over his chin affectionately, and the sun filters through the tree canopy just right to where it illuminates her lashes and the suppleness of her cheeks in a manner he deems ethereal. For when they’re at the mall, walking hand in hand and licking at ice cream cones as they survey the shops, and she reaches over to wipe a bit of Rocky Road off the corner of his mouth, replacing the stain with a soft stipple of her lips instead. For when they’re out eating dinner and playing footsie under the table like immature teenagers, and she’s trying to steal a French fry from his plate but he keeps fighting her off with his fork because, “I told you to order your own, but you wanted those disgusting potato skins instead!” And she’s laughing so brightly and unapologetically, giving him a look that so obviously tells him she can’t wait to get him alone, and nothing seems quite as flawless as that fraction in time, then and there and nowhere else.

These simple but memorable moments cause him to get love boners, which he jokingly refers to as “sniffy stiffies,” where “sniffy” has to do with being sentimental, and “stiffy”...well, that one is pretty self-explanatory, no? It always ends with them shagging in the car, or in the family bathroom of a diner, and in the case of the park, in an obscure area of the forest that lines the jogging trail.

Quickies are just that— fast, but meaningful nonetheless, because they come from a place of genuine emotion. They’re fleeting, but unforgettable. Sniffy stiffy quickies, if you will.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Taking risks is the norm in Harry’s life, especially when it comes to his sex habits. He’s proven time and time again that he has no problem riding along the seams of a dare and just barely making it out unscathed, so experimenting outside of the bedroom is just another day in the life. Fingering Y/N in a music room in an antique shop, getting road head during a two hour drive back to Los Angeles, ripping his girlfriend’s panties out from beneath her dress at one of California’s most prestigious restaurants— the list is endless, really. Harry likes to think he has a gift for coming up with inspirational quotes on the spot, so he’ll lend his expertise here and now: “A life without risks is a life that isn’t worth shit.” It even rhymes, so he knows sorority pledges will have a ball putting it in their Instagram bios. A bit of charity work for the bird-brained.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Endless stamina. Literally. Vampires don’t stay tired for long, so he could be ready to go again within seconds. And he can last long, as well; his stubbornness and pride depend on it, and he likes making his partner cum first as an ego boost. He can go as many rounds as Y/N can and more, though he won’t push it. He doesn’t want her to end up in the ER with a bruised cervix.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Harry could run a sex shop from his closet; Y/N doesn’t take the piss by calling him “Fifty Shades” for no reason. He uses them on himself, he uses them on her, and he got high once and tried to sword fight Y/N with a dildo, so it’s safe to say he definitely uses them quite a bit. If his Lovesense Lush 3 vibrator could talk, he’d be drawn and quartered for excessive debauchery.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Harry loves teasing, that’s no mystery. Winding people up is one of his most practiced skills, so of course that would channel into his intimate life. He’s mastered it, though it’s not like it’s hard. A drawn out blink here, or a feathery touch there. An inch of space between his and Y/N’s lips to establish some tension, or squeezing her inner thigh with his palm hard enough to draw a tiny squeak from her chest. Touching her through her clothes, or leaving a trail of wet kisses down her throat and stopping right at her cleavage. Biting the sensitive skin along the inside of her knee, or dragging the tip of his cold nose down the center of her twitching tummy. Lapping slowly at her nipples until they perk up, or sinking a single long digit inside her and keeping it there just to feel her clench around it needily. And once he gets a pattern going, teasing molds into edging, edging molds into begging, begging molds into praise, and before he knows it, he’s hit four of his kinks with one roll of the dice.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Harry is very vocal in bed, and he’s not ashamed of it. He knows for a fact that Y/N loves it, and if him being loud gets her worked up, then he’ll let his throat go out in the process. He’s noticed that in different situations, he has an arsenal of sounds for each. If he’s being rough and dominant, he tends to groan, grunt, and growl. If he’s being desperate and needy, he turns to whines and whimpers to communicate how he feels. If he’s too zoned into the moment to distinguish all his emotions, broken moans and stuttered mewls are his default. No matter the circumstance, they all take the same route: they start low and soft, and escalate in volume proportional to the intensity of the moment. So what if half the building is hearing him orgasm for the third time as he mocks his girlfriends sobbing pleads and calls her his “dirty fucking whore”? Let’s be honest, it’s probably the highlight of their week. He has a great voice— a sultry, deep baritone that compliments his English accent nicely— and anyone would be lucky to hear it spew the filth it does. He’s yet to get many complaints, so he doesn’t intend on stopping.

W = Wildcard (random headcanon)

An honesty hour moment seems interesting, so he’ll confess a few tales from his past. The first time Harry ever went down on a girl, it was against a tree in a garden and he nearly asphyxiated under all the layers of her gown. A couple of years later, he ended up getting oral from a reverend’s daughter against a tree, too, for the morbid irony and associated religious revenge. And to drive the point home, oral was only the beginning of what she gave him. His first decade as a vampire was definitely his pettiest.

X = X-Ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

It’s not uncommon knowledge that Harry’s well-endowed. He remembers how insecure he was the first time he had sex— a shocker, he knows; he was insecure?— and how he knew barely anything regarding sizing and how to use his assets accordingly. But it’s been ages since then, and now he definitely knows his way around his own body (let alone his partner’s), and he most certainly knows that he’s above average not only as a person in general, but when it comes to what’s in his trousers, as well. Harry won’t specify inches— he loves how speculation drives others mad— but it was big enough to give Y/N a decent pause the first time she pulled down his pants, and it’s big enough to leave her absolutely fucked every single time, without a single miss. If that’s not credibility at its finest, then he doesn’t know what is.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Harry’s sex drive is insatiable, to say the least. His vampirism combined with his narcissistic tendencies makes the ideal cocktail— cocktail— for the constant fuse that’s always burning under his skin. He’s ready to go at all times; Y/N just has to say the word and he’s pulling on a pair of sweatpants as he grabs his keys, hopping down his complex’s corridor toward the elevator on one foot as he tries to get his last shoe on the other. Lazy morning sex is probably his favorite; he’s come to find it’s when he’s most pent up, usually after a sleepless night of feeling Y/N’s body heat radiating through all of his cold limbs. It also sets a great tone for the rest of the day, and he just loves seeing Y/N wake up to him lying on his side with his temple resting on his fist, his elbow propped against the mattress as he poses the other on his hip in a theatrical diva stance. He’ll smile at her giddily with all his pearly teeth, dimples twitching as his lashes flutter dramatically, dirty intentions written clear all over his face (“Good morning, hon—” “Wanna have sex?” “Harry, it’s ten in the morning.” “Is that a yes? Because it’s not a no.” “I haven’t even brushed my teeth!” “That’s fine, I’m gonna stick my dick in there anyways.”)

All in all, his libido is insane, and he’s lucky that Y/N’s is up to par or else he would have worked her into an exhaustion-induced coma by now.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Harry just...doesn't. Maybe once every few weeks, but definitely more often now than before he had his girlfriend. Sleeping just comes way easier when he has someone he cares about resting beside him, their inherent warmth thawing the stiffness from his muscles and putting his racing mind at ease. He feels safe enough around Y/N to let his guard down— both literally and metaphorically— and that seems to help with his supernatural insomnia; it sedates that nocturnal hyper-instinct in his brain that demands he be aware at all times, muffling the animalistic part of him that has been manning the reins for the better half of the last two hundred years. He doesn’t need to be so on edge anymore when everything he needs is just an arm-length away. Especially when she’s usually willing to lend her chest as a pillow, and who is he to neglect her wishes.

#ysijwa #harry styles smut #vampire!harry #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x oc #harry styles x you #harry styles dirty one shot #harry styles mature #harry styles dirty fanfiction #harry styles fanfiction

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marauders-venting · 3 years ago

Text

I Love You

pairing: wolfstar (remus x sirius)

genre: fluff

warnings: none

words: 2304

note: based on a textpost by @moonyspadfoot45

a/n: yes i know disposable cameras didn’t exist until the mid 80s but i wrote that part before i googled it and i don’t want to change it so we’re gonna go with it

Remus sighed in the direction of the stack of boxes that looked like it was about to topple over.

“Sirius?” he called, walking into the living room.

“Yeah?” Sirius replied, peering at Remus around the stack of boxes from the couch where he was sitting.

“I swear to god if you and James used any of the boxes marked ‘fragile’ for your fortress…” He left the sentence hanging as he reached up to lower the box on the top. “How did you even manage to stack the boxes that high? Did you have to stand on a chair or something to reach up here?”

“Rude,” Sirius said, coming around to Remus’ side of the fort. “I’m not that short.”

“James had to do it, didn’t he?” Remus teased, turning around.

“Moony, stop making fun of me,” Sirius pouted. “Come on, we’re going into the fort.” The ‘fort’ was made of boxes that contained all of Sirius and Remus’ possessions stacked to form walls with a sheet stretched over the top. And it was right in the middle of the living room of Remus and Sirius’ new apartment.

Sirius grabbed Remus by the hand and pulled him into the fort. The sheet, which was their makeshift ceiling, was hanging so low that even Sirius had to sit on the floor. They sat down and Remus looked around. Then he spotted a box labelled ‘kitchen ware’ and turned to Sirius.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. “I was looking for that box for like an hour! I nearly called the movers to ask them to double-check that they hadn’t missed any boxes!”

“I didn’t know you were looking for it!” Sirius said defensively.

“I literally asked you if you’d seen the box!” Remus said, laughing and shaking his head.

“Uhhh,” Sirius started, scrambling for an excuse, “I’m sorry, Remus, but you should know by now that I answer most questions wrong.”

“That is the worst excuse I’ve ever heard,” Remus said.

“Then you obviously haven’t heard any of the excuses I gave McGonagall for breaking the rules,” Sirius said.

“What are you talking about, I was there 90 percent of the time,” Remus said.

“Yeah but when you were there you were giving the excuses.”

“Yeah, my excuses were good, they got us out of detention,” Remus said.

“Feels weird knowing I’ll never have another detention,” Sirius said, lying down on the carpet he and James had brought into the fort earlier. “I keep thinking we’re gonna go back at the end of the summer.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Remus said, lying down next to him. “It feels like just yesterday you were asking me to move it with you and now we’re here. In our living room. In a fucking fort.” Sirius laughed and kissed Remus lightly.

Remus remembered the day Sirius had asked him to move in. He’d never forget it. It was their first anniversary and they were up on the astronomy tower, the same place they’d gotten together the year before. Remus remembered how hard he was trying to put aside his anxiety about the upcoming exams just for that day. Sirius made it easier. Sirius made everything easier.

“Can I give you my present now?” Sirius asked. Remus had felt his cheeks heating, despite the fact that he was quite cold up on the tower, in the cool breeze stinging his face.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” he muttered.

“I know,” Sirius said. “But I wanted to. Besides, you were the one who planned out this whole day. And you're the one who’s taking me out on the Hogsmeade weekend after exams.” Remus supposed it was true. He had planned out the day down to the last detail. He felt very cliche doing it but it was worth it to see the look on Sirius’ face. And to feel Sirius’ lips on his.

“Oh alright,” Remus gave in. He was curious now. Sirius handed him a small grey box. Remus cocked his head at him but Sirius’ expression was unreadable. He opened the box and inside it was a silver key and a disposable Muggle camera. Remus picked up the key and turned it over, examining it.

“Pads, what is this?” he asked finally. He was afraid he had ruined something. That this was something sentimental that he was supposed to understand.

“It’s a key,” Sirius said. Remus rolled his eyes.

“I’d figured that much out myself, funnily enough,” he said. “What is the key to?”

“Look at the camera.” Remus did. He picked it up and, glancing at Sirius to make sure this is what he was meant to do, looked through the photos in the camera.

“An apartment?” Remus said, still confused.

“Our apartment,” Sirius said. He was looking at Remus, his grey eyes alight.

“What?” Remus said, gaping at him.

“Only if you want it to be,” he added hurriedly. “I just thought… Everybody's been talking about living arrangements after school and I–I thought maybe you might like to live together. I mean, I haven’t finalised anything yet so we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Or we could still pick a different place. The owner’s of this one won’t vacate it until August so we’d have to figure something out for the first month and a bit after we graduate but I’m sure the Potters won’t mind if we stay there for a little while. And Lily and James might want to be alone in the beginning but I doubt they’d kick us out if we showed up but… do you hate it?” He had barely breathed in between words until now. He looked up at Remus nervously, biting his nail.

“Are you kidding me? I love it,” Remus said. “Sirius, this is… this is incredible. You’re incredible. I—” Remus hesitated. He knew what he wanted to say. But he couldn’t form the words. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“So you’re saying you’ll do it?” Sirius asked. “You’ll move in with me?”

“Yeah,” Remus said. “Yes, of course I will.” Sirius beamed at him. But then something occurred to Remus. “Sirius, you haven’t paid anything yet, have you? If you have I’ll pay you back, I—”

“Shh, don’t worry about that now,” Sirius said. “We’ll figure out all the technical details later.” Remus bit his lip.

“Okay,” he said. He could put it out of his mind for that night.

“Happy anniversary, Moony,” he said. And then he kissed Remus, there on top of the astronomy tower and Remus felt just as much excitement then as he had when Sirius had kissed him there for the first time, exactly one year previously.

And here they were now. In their apartment. They ended up deciding on the one Sirius had originally chosen, the one that he’d shown Remus photos of that evening. The owners had ended up vacating a bit earlier than they had said because there was still a week until August. Sirius had stayed at the Potter’s for the first few weeks and Remus had gone back home. But as they were spending every waking moment at Lily and James’ house anyway, they suggested that Remus and Sirius just stay with them. They had invited Peter to stay with them too, just while Sirius and Remus were there but he’d turned down the offer (“After seven years of sleeping in the same room with three other blokes, I think I’ll be good on my own for a while,” he had said). He still came over every day and stayed until around midnight but he always preferred to sleep at home. He said he’d never get used to it if he stayed at Lily and James’.

James, Peter and Lily helped them move in too. They’d been with them to Ikea a few days previously to buy furniture. And they had come over today to help start unpacking things. Well, Lily and Peter helped unpack. James was more interested in building a fort out of the boxes with Sirius.

Remus remembered worrying that he might spend less time with his friends after school since they’d no longer be living in the same big castle but so far the amount of time he spent with Lily, James and Peter had not decreased even a little.

But Lily and James had gone home now and Peter had gone back to his studio flat; Remus and Sirius were alone, together in their new apartment.

“Are you hungry?” Sirius asked, snapping Remus back into reality. “I could make you dinner.”

“You’re going to make dinner?” Remus snorted. “I’m sorry but have you ever made food in your entire life?”

“I have actually,” Sirius said. “Mrs Potter taught me how to make food when I lived there. I’m not as good at it as James is but I can make something edible without burning down the kitchen. Although I nearly did that the first time I tried to make food.”

“Well, that’s very convincing,” Remus said sarcastically. Sirius elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m kidding!” he said. “I’ll be on standby with the fire extinguisher.”

“What’s that?” Sirius asked.

“Kind of in the name, babe,” Remus said and then he crawled quickly out of the fort before Sirius figured it out and elbowed him again.

But Remus was pleasantly surprised because not only did Sirius manage to not light the whole house on fire, but he even produced some pretty good food.

“You know, this is quite nice,” Remus said, taking another bite. “Mrs Potter must be a really good teacher if she managed to get you to this level of cooking.”

“Why can’t you just have a little bit more faith in my talents, Moony?” Sirius said. “But yeah, she’s a great teacher. James, on the other hand, is a terrible teacher. It’s not that he can’t cook because he can. He just can’t teach other people to cook. But don’t tell him I said that.” Remus snorts.

“As if you haven’t already told him that to his face.”

“You know me too well,” Sirius sighs.

After dinner, Sirius goes to shower and Remus continues unpacking boxes. The more boxes he unpacks, the more he realises how much crap they’re missing. But he’s not too worried about it. They’ll go to the store tomorrow and find whatever it is that they’re missing. It’s nothing essential. The only essential thing to Remus in this house is Sirius. As long as Sirius is here, Remus would be fine.

Remus opens another box with a utility knife. He looks inside and his jaw drops.

“Rem?” Sirius asks, coming into the room, his hair still wet from the shower. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Remus says. “Look at this.” He takes out the contents of the box and sets them on the table. It’s photos. Loads of photos of them from school.

“Wow,” Sirius says, looking through the photos. “Oh my god.” He holds one of the photos out to Remus laughing. Remus looks at the photo and starts laughing too. It’s him sitting next to a dog, a stag and a rat. His friends in their animagus forms and him in the middle, smiling awkwardly as Lily takes a photo.

They spent a little longer looking through the photos, laughing at how much they had changed since the first day they’d met each other in first year. They all looked so little. And now… well, now they’re grown up. Remus didn’t feel like it though.

He returned the photos to the box, deciding he’d find a place for them tomorrow. He was reaching another box when Sirius took his hand.

“Come to bed, darling,” he said. “It’s nearly midnight and you’re still unpacking boxes.”

“Yeah, okay,” Remus said. He smiled and laced his fingers with Sirius’.

He showered and put on a massive sweater (despite it being midsummer) and clambered into their new bed, where Sirius was already waiting for him. Sirius pulled him in and kissed his forehead before resting his head against Remus’ chest.

As they cuddle in their brand new bed, in their brand new apartment, Remus is overcome by the urge to tell Sirius, to just say it. To say what he wanted to say months ago on their anniversary but had been too afraid. He doesn’t even care if Sirius says it back. He just wants to say the words. He wants Sirius to know. Sirius deserves to know.

He lifts Sirius’ chin with his hand so their eyes meet as he brushes his thumb against Sirius’ cheek.

“I love you,” he says.

“I– I–” Sirius stutters.

“And you don’t have to say it back or anything,” Remus assures him. “I just wanted you to know.” Tears spill from Sirius’ eyes.

“You’re crying?” Remus said, sounding concerned. “What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

“No, nothing wrong, I just—” Sirius hesitates, sniffing. “That’s the first time anyone’s told me that,” he admits.

“That’s a shame,” Remus says, pressing a kiss to his temple. “I’ll always remind you how much I love you. I love you so much, Sirius.” He pulls Sirius into a tight hug. “You deserve so much love.” Sirius kisses him softly. It’s a quiet, gentle kiss, tears still flowing freely down Sirius’ face.

“I love you too,” Sirius whispers.

“You don’t have to say it just because I did,” Remus says.

“I’m not,” Sirius said. “I really do love you.” Remus smiles as he feels the blush blooming on his cheeks. And suddenly he can’t remember what was holding him back in the first place. He feels like an idiot for waiting so long to say this. He loves Sirius. He loves Sirius with all of his heart and he’s going to make sure Sirius knows it.

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bts-weverse-trans · 4 years ago

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201128 Weverse Magazine ‘BE’ Comeback Interview - Namjoon

RM: “I spend a lot of time thinking about where I am now” BTS BE comeback interview 2020.11.28

The story of BTS’ new album BE started on April 17, 2020 when group member RM announced its production on the BANGTANTV YouTube channel. In the seven months that followed until the album’s release, RM’s mind was full, his thoughts flowing in and out of his head.

How do you feel about the unique approach you took to making your new album, BE? RM: The other members were a ton of help to me. My lyrics made it on the album, but the music I composed didn’t, so I’m really thankful to the group for the music. How should I say this? I feel like everyone is doing a great job. There are so many parts in these songs that I’m indebted to them for. “Stay” was originally going to be the title song on Jung Kook’s mixtape, but everyone liked it so much, and they all agreed to put that on our album. That’s how much influence they had. I’m really happy my room idea was chosen to be the album photos. Since we’re spending a lot of time in our rooms because of COVID-19, we laid out the idea of each of us decorating a room in our own style. I can’t remember for sure (laughs) but I think I’m the one who came up with that. I made a comfortable room, one that’s modern and warm because that’s what I like.

There’s a painting in the middle, and symmetrically arranged figurines. RM: The figures are from my own collection. I wanted to show one of my paintings, but that didn’t pan out. But still, those are the things I hold most dear to me right now, so I let the room embody the things I wish I had, too.

It’s well known that you like art and frequent exhibitions, but how do you feel when you look at art in your home or another space where there are no people, like in the album art? RM: Someone said, “You don’t have to buy this painting; it’s yours so long as you’re looking at it.” That’s my favorite sound bite these days. What I most envied about painters was that, even after they died, their work would be hanging up somewhere, maybe even in another country, still defining that space. Musicians leave behind their songs and videos, too, but it’s only through fine art that viewers in the future are able to completely meet artists from the past. I’m envious that this is only possible for painters. These days I’m trying to find spaces where I can have more relaxed viewing experiences.

There’s a full experience involved, from the time you get ready to leave your house until the time you’re actually looking at artwork in the gallery. RM: That’s perfect to me. There’s art you can keep at home, and then there’s art that should always be viewed in museums.

What effect do you think that type of experience has on your music? You didn’t compose any of the songs but instead participated in writing the lyrics to all of the tracks. Did that experience affect your lyric writing in any way? RM: I think it’s helped me develop a way of thinking using all the senses. I used to be attuned to speech and focus on language and auditory textures, but now I can look at my thoughts from many different angles. That’s why I spend more time studying art now. I’m waiting for the day that it all comes to the surface, like when you paint the base on a canvas over and over so the colors pop. It’s hard to answer in one word if it has a direct influence on my work, but I think people who create music develop a way of seeing the world through their personal experience and their creative process. Painters naturally exhibit their art over a very long period of time. I think it gave me an eye for looking at the world in one long, continuous stroke. So now it’s become a little challenging for me to write lyrics these days. I’ve become more cautious.

Why is it so challenging? RM: I used to have so many ideas pouring out that it was hard to pluck one out. So I would stack them up like a Jenga tower and ponder over which one to remove. But now, it’s hard to even add a block to the stack. I’m not sure why but, when I look at these artists whose works span their entire lives, I sense that the rhythm of my creativity is slowing down more and more. That’s the source of my dilemma. I’m only 27 years old. I still need to wander around and get tripped up a little. But am I just trying to imitate what the fine artists are doing? Or maybe BTS experienced so much in the past seven years, that now it’s time for us to take a breather? I’ve got so many questions, I feel like my hair’s turning white. That’s why none of my songs are on the album. I wrote some, but they were too personal to use there. I don’t exactly like myself like this, but I have to see through to the end in this direction and find the answer.

Maybe for that reason, your rapping has shifted focus to the lyrics more so than trend or musicality. It emphasizes the feeling of the words over a particular format or beat. RM: Exactly. In—was it 2017? Pdogg was talking to Yoongi, Hobi and me about our style, and said, “Namjoon, it feels like you’re becoming a lyricist,” and it really stuck with me. I have a lot of thoughts lately when I watch Show Me the Money or listen to hip hop songs from the Billboard chart. My music started out all about my life as a rapper, so I spend a lot of time thinking about where I am now.

So you’ve started to ask yourself who you are as a musician? RM: I listened to Lee So-ra’s seventh album again today. I keep changing my mind but, if I had to pick between her sixth and seventh album, I like her seventh a little more. And then I listen to the most popular songs on Billboard, and I feel kind of thrown off. Um … There’s something Whanki Kim said that’s been running around in my head lately: After moving to New York, he embraced the style of artists like Mark Rothko and Adolf Gottlieb, but then he said, “I’m Korean, and I can’t do anything not Korean. I can’t do anything apart from this, because I am an outsider.” And I keep thinking that way, too. That’s my main concern lately.

You can feel that on BE. As the members take on more prominent roles as songwriters and producers, characteristics of old Korean music—the kind of music you likely listened to in middle and high school—gradually entered your sound. But your music isn’t from that era, and it sounds like pop, but not quite. RM: The sound has to fit with the whole album so I couldn’t incorporate that feel into BTS songs, but the songs I’m listening to most lately have been Korean. Songs like P-Type’s “Don Quixote,” Dead’P’s “Spread My Wings,” Soul Company’s album The Bangerz. The impressions the songs from back then have left on me, the lyrics from back then and the lyrics from now, they’re different. So BE is both Korean and pop; it’s very unique, in my view.

I think that’s especially true for “Life Goes On.” It’s got a pop melody, but compared to “Dynamite,” it has a very different feel. It doesn’t slip deep into the sentimental, instead allowing the melody to flow naturally. RM: Exactly. The chorus is totally pop, and one of the writers was also American. But the song doesn’t really follow American music trends, weirdly. So I don’t know how “Life Goes On” is going to be received. It’s really calm, almost contemplative. So there’s lyrics, like, “Like an echo in the forest,” and, “Like an arrow in the blue sky.” The song kind of feels like that: It could just float off and disappear. It might even come off as bland next to “Dynamite.”

If nothing else, it seems the song will stick around for a long time. Maybe kids now will listen to it later on in the future. RM: I hope so. That’s the one thing I really hope for, people in the future, thinking back and saying, “Oh, right! Remember that one song?” That’s what my favorite artists and other people who leave a lasting impression on me have in common. One thing common among the songs that have affected me a lot, like Lee So-ra’s seventh album, is that the lyrics they utter in their voice along with the overall sound stick with me. I hope when people look back, my words uttered with the sound of my voice, echoes for a long time in an auditory or visual way, or even throughout their entire lives. But that’s the dilemma: We have all these bling-bling symbols of our success, but we’re not that kind of team.

And yet, BTS’s career path is even more “bling-bling” than ever. “Dynamite” was the top song on the Billboard Hot 100. RM: I was the first one to check our position (laughs) but I didn’t want to get too excited about it. I was scared of facing disappointment so I put the brakes on out of habit, and restrained myself. But on the other hand, I feel like I should relish this moment. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing; shouldn’t I enjoy myself a bit? But I disliked that sensation of only feeling elated so I tried to be as objective as possible. I was just one small part of everything that made this happen.

It reminds me of that part, “Running faster than that cloud of rain / Thought that would be enough / Guess I’m only human after all,” from “Life Goes On.” RM: “Only human” sounds so appropriate for me right now. One time, I saw a dark cloud over the N Seoul Tower while I was walking along the Han River. I was with a friend and we talked about where the border between where it’s raining and where it’s not might be, and suddenly, we came up with the idea to run and find that spot. But after running for 10 minutes, the cloud was even further away than it had been. At that moment, the puzzle pieces snapped into place. You think you can go faster than that dark cloud? No. That’s what I realized then. And I just like what Whanki Kim said, that maybe I can’t do anything not Korean, because that’s what I am. I used to work late and then stay up all night when things weren’t working out, sometimes walking from Samseong to Sinsa station, thinking everything through. But now, like the saying, I realize that maybe I can’t do more than what I am.

On Weverse, you said that you gained some muscle from working out. Could the change to your body improve your creativity in the long term? RM: I started to think I better change myself a little, physically or mentally. I’m talking about being steady. I used to bombard myself with challenges and worries and just get over them, but now I think it’s time to find that one sturdy thing and plant myself there. The best choice was working out, and I think it’s changing my behavior a lot. I’m hoping that, if I keep working out for a year or two, I’ll become a different person.

Music is your job, but also your life. Like you expressed in “Dis-ease,” how would you say you feel about your work? RM: This is my job and my calling and I feel a great sense of responsibility. I think I’m lucky and happy that I can solely worry about my creative process. And I feel very responsible to those people who put their trust in me, so I try not to cross any lines, judge myself honestly, and always be professional. Those are the responsibilities that come with the job—the things I have to do and the promises I won’t betray. But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to be happy while I do it. That’s not always going to be possible, but that’s generally how I feel.

Well then, how do you feel about BTS at the moment? RM: BTS is … Well, it’s really hard to tell. (laughs) When BTS started out, I thought, “I know everything there is to know about BTS,” but now it’s, “I don’t know a single thing about BTS.” In the past, I felt like I knew everything, and that anything was possible. Call it childish or ambitious. But if I were to ask myself, “What is BTS to me?” I would say, we’re just people who met each other because we were meant to. But it feels like the stars aligned and a startup company became a unicorn, with perfect timing and lots of smart people. Looking back, there were a lot of ironies and contradictions in this industry. I thought I figured them out one by one, and then finally understood the whole thing. But now I feel like I don’t know anything at all. Anyway, to sum up: My young, reckless twenties. The events of my twenties. There were a lot of contradictions, people, fame, and conflict all tangled together, but it was my choice and I got a lot out of it, so my twenties were an intense but also happy time.

And what about you, as one individual person? RM: I’m a real Korean person. (laughs) A person who wants to do something in Korea. I think millennials are charging into society stuck between the analog and digital generations, and what I chose is BTS. So I try to integrate myself into our generation, try to understand what people like me are thinking, and try to work hard to capture that feeling without being a burden on them. This might be another kind of irony itself, but this is who I am. I’m a 27-year-old Korean. That’s what I think.

Trans © Weverse

#bangtan #namjoon #weverse #weverse magazine #comeback interview #be album #201128 #2020

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scarletwinterxx · 4 years ago

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You're My First Love (series/nct 127 - Mark)

based off of their new single First Love🤍 go stream it!! it’s such a bop, it’s literally on repeat all day😂 anyways this is just a bunch of short scenarios abt the members being your first love or you being theirs you get it hahah i hope you like it!

For my other works you can check them out here, and for my other story series’ you can check them out here.

All works are copyrighted ©scarletwinterxx 2021 . Do not repost, re-write without the permission of author.

TAEIL || MARK || HAECHAN || JOHNNY || DOYOUNG || JUNGWOO || YUTA

You and Mark have been in a relationship for so long you often get teased that the two of you are like a married couple already. He always tells you what’s his is yours. The thought of that makes you smile, how he trust you with everything and shares his whole world to you.

You weren’t complaining about this one bit. It was no secret that he’s probably the busiest person right now so he don’t get to spend as much time with you as much as he would like to. You both settle with talks over the phone or even a short text message to let each other know you’re both okay when his schedule gets very busy.

“Passport?”

“Check

“Tickets?”

“Check”

“Toothbrush”

“I can buy toothbrush there you know”

“Mark?”

“Mark?” Mark asked back, looking up from his suitcase and acting like he was about to put his head inside the suitcase

“Just checking to see if you’re actually listening” you joked, passing him the folded clothes so he could put it in with his other stuff

“I’m listening babe, so you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“On tour? Definitely not” you chuckled at the pout he’s now sporting a pout, you can't help but tackle him with a hug making him land with his back on the floor and you on top of him with both arms secured around you

"I'm going to miss you" you said but your words were muffled by his shirt since your face was smushed against his chest

"What was that baby? I can't understand you" he laughed, you pulled your face away and looked at him "I said I'm going to miss you"

He looked at you for second before pulling you down to him, your lips meeting with his.

Kissing Mark feels like it's the first time everytime, you get this sudden rush and warmth all over you. You can't help but smile through the kiss making him pull away briefly,

"Oh before I forgot, look what I found" he suddenly said before sitting up pulling you with him

You watch him walk to him bedside table before pulling something out from the drawer. He then took out a box before walking back to sit beside you,

"What's that?"

"All the letters you wrote me" he said with a smile

You were kind of not surprised he still had those, he's a sentimental guy and knows how to take care of things he holds near and dear to his heart.

"Oh my god, some of those has got to be like 5 years old"

"You wrote this one when we were 15"

"Nooooooo" you said trying to take the envelope from his grasp, it was useless anyways. Mark has probably read all of this atleast a hundred times over. When he's away for tour and too busy, he likes to read them before going to sleep. It's nice to know that there's someone who loves him like you do, he sends a prayer to the skies that he had someone to like him like that.

"Look, you even said I'm your first love" he said, reading the letter outloud. It wasn't like he was teasing you, he sounded more like he's reminiscing on happy memories

"You are though" you mumbled, looking through the other letters you've given him through the years

"Will you write me letters?"

You looked back up to him when he asked you the question, "Do you want me to?"

"Ofcourse" he answered with a small smile

"For the record, you're my first love too" he said making you roll your eyes because this time you know he's teasing you

"yea yea you've mentioned it once or twice"

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yandere-daydreams · 4 years ago

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Title: A Hoarding Problem.

Pairing: Pro-Hero!Yandere!Touya/Reader (Boku No Hero Academia).

Word Count: 2.5k

Synopsis: Todoroki Touya has a problem, and he’s not sure he wants to fix it.

TW: Hero AU, Minor Spoilers, Kidnapping, Mutual Extortion, Emotional Manipulation, Slight Gaslighting, Bondage, Implied Infantilization, Mention of Sedatives (No Actual Use), and Themes of Poverty.

Todoroki Touya had a problem.

He had a lot of problems, technically. His secretary always managed to schedule the most important meetings at the least convenient times, his coffee never seemed hot enough but always burnt his tongue, and despite his fame and wealth and strange, cult-like popularity, the only thing journalists ever seemed to want to talk about was his father, why Touya didn’t inherit the ‘Endeavour’ title, how long it’d take him to live up to all those stacking, swelling expectations. He had a lot of problems, dozens, hundreds. He had a lot. Everyone did, but Touya didn’t have to deal with everyone else’s.

He just had to deal with you.

You were one of those concentrated types, your smile always a little too personal and your stare always a little too intense, like you were trying to see how much his organs would go for on the black-market before you bothered to cut him open. You were put together, too, and if he hadn’t taken the liberty of following you home so many times, he never would’ve guessed you were staying at some cheap, back-alley motel, the kind meant for people who just wanted to be anywhere but the place they used to be. A run-away, he’d guessed, at first, but you were too old for that, and you were too good at pretending you weren’t living out of the suitcase Touya was starting to get tired of rummaging through. Maybe you were a petty criminal, a villain too minor to be on his radar - he didn’t know, and he really wasn’t interested in finding out. All that mattered to him was that he’d met you, decided he liked you, and hadn’t been able to think about much else since. It was an issue, really, and it was starting to get in the way of his work. It was starting to get in the way of everything.

But, he’d had this kind of problem before. He knew what to do. He knew how to handle it.

You seemed to want to be handled, too.

You were laughing, again, but he wasn’t really sure why. It might’ve been something he said, your own little joke, but he didn’t mind the sound, all bells and wind chimes and a practiced ease that threatened to divert his focus, as he tried to keep his eyes on the road. You were slumped in the passenger seat, and if he checked, he was sure you’d be looking out the window, counting turns, memorizing street names, doing what little you could to track the convoluted, darkened route he’d been sure to plan out days ago. You’d come willingly, but you wanted to make sure you’d be able to find your way back without his help. For his own sake, Touya pretended you were just being cautious.

“I didn’t expect a Hero to live so far from the city.” Your voice was just as light, just a notch more confident than it had been at the convenience store you both frequented, the one you’d been working at when he stumbled in, closer to sunrise than sunset and ready to fall in love with the first person who smiled at him. The job hadn’t lasted, but Touya couldn’t think of a reason to mourn the loss. You wouldn’t have been desperate enough to take him up on his offer, if you still had a steady income. “Didn’t mark you down as one of those ‘cabin in the woods’ types, either. I’m not going to find, like, a box of dismembered body parts or anything, right?”

“Obviously,” He scoffed, his tone just playful enough to be disarming. “I try to keep my victims in one piece. Hackjobs aren’t as satisfying as you’d think.”

That earned a jab to his side, an offended ‘my hackjob would be’, but you lost interest in the exchange as soon as he reached the driveway, coming to a stop in front of that sprawling, climbing villa, three stories of concrete and glass, a stark contrast from the forest that surrounded it. You took a moment to take it in, scanning over the building, a predator evaluating its docile prey. When you turned towards Touya, your smile was just a little wider, your expression just a little brighter. “I really can’t thank you enough,” You went on, your tone so sentimental, Touya could almost ignore the hollowness behind it. “You sure you’re alright with this? My last place fell through, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find somewhere else to--”

“Don’t worry about that. All this is curtesy of the Hero Commission, and they don’t keep track of who comes ang goes.” Touya didn’t wait for you to finish, he didn’t have to, even if he did let himself enjoy your faux-gratitude as he undid his seatbelt. “Besides, it’s my job, right? I wouldn't want to find out you went and got yourself hurt because I couldn’t be bothered to clean out my guest room.” There was a slight pause, a short hesitation. You flinched when he raised his hand, but you didn’t pull away as he cupped your cheek, only learning into his warm palm. “Besides, I can’t say I’d mind a little company, all alone out here.”

In his defense, he wasn’t going to kiss you. Really, he wasn’t that mean, but he didn’t have a chance to refuse, not before your lips were on his, your hands in his hair, all sudden passion and over-eager excitement. He was stunned, at first, but Touya recovered quickly. Biting back a smirk, he leaned into the gesture, slinging an arm around your hip, tilting your head back and doing whatever he could to bring you close, to keep you close, just like he’d been dying to for months, now. He could feel you stifle a laugh, moving to pull away, but Touya only drifted to your neck, nipping at the edge of your jaw before he found your jugular, aiming for the sensitive area just above it. You only chuckled, blunt nails running over his scalp. “And I thought I was the needy one,” You chided, half-hearted pushing at his chest. “It’s cold out here, Todoroki. At least take me inside first.”

Right. Of course. He got carried away.

He almost forgot why you were actually here.

He didn’t let you go. He didn’t want to, so he didn’t bother trying, pulling you over the center console in one swift motion, leaving you in his lap, his face buried in the crook of your shoulder and an arm under your thighs, supporting your weight as he jerkily kicked open the door, letting you duck your head and giggle, always giggling, always trying to pretend to be meek and harmless and innocent. He wondered if you’d stop, eventually, if you’d drop the act once he decided both of you should show your true colors. He’d be lying if he said he hated the idea of choking it out of you.

The front door wasn’t locked. He didn’t bother, not with his profession, not when he knew he’d be coming home with you, tonight. If you noticed, you didn’t seem to mind, focusing on locking your ankles behind his back, on swallowing down that small, pained groan as he slammed your back into the nearest wall of his darkened villa just a little too hard, pretending not to notice as your smile wavered in the minimal light. “I don’t think this counts as protecting the--”

You were cut off by a loud thud, metallic and hollow, like someone hitting drywall with a baseball bat. You paused, for a second, your gaze flickering to the space behind him, but he was quick to kiss your cheek, to bring your attention back to where it should be, on him. “‘s just my roommate,” He mumbled, hoping you’d be too used to the excuse to linger on it. “Don’t pay it too much mind. He’s probably just fucking around.”

This time, your smile dropped completely. “The Hero Commission... lets you have a roommate?”

He caught his mistake a second too late. He opened his mouth, ready to explain, but another noise interrupted him, a rattling this time, followed by another deafening, irritating thud. He grit his teeth, but you only stiffened, your next shove to his chest a little more insistent than the last. “He might be hurt,” You started, the concern in your voice more genuine than it’d been all night. “We should check on him, that sounds--”

“It’ll be fine.” He spoke a little too quickly, a little too aggressively. Instantly, your eyes widened, your entire body going tense against his, and Touya had to fight not to lose his composure completely. It was too soon. It was too early. He wanted to be sweet. He didn’t want to be mean, not with you. “Just ignore it, sweetheart, it’s not important. You’re here for me, right? The brat shouldn’t--”

It was a slip-up. A petname so common, he hardly noticed he’d said it until you were scrambling, writhing, digging your nails into his biceps deep enough to break the skin, forcing him to let you go out reflex alone. You barely managed to catch yourself, but you stayed on your feet, shoving past Touya while he was still hissing out curses, clutching at bleeding wounds and broken scars. There was another thud, and you moved to sprint in the direction it’d come from, but he was a Hero, he was trained for this. You were on the ground before you could take a step, Touya straddling your stomach, his hands around your neck. He didn’t squeeze, though, he didn’t want to strangle you. He was going to be patient. This was going to be different. “Just behave,” He growled, fighting to hold onto the last threads of his restraint. “It’s not important. I’m important, and that’s all you have to care about. That’s all you’re ever going to care about, from now on.”

You didn’t hesitate. As soon as he finished, you were jerking forward, your forehead colliding with his and forcing a ragged scream from both of you. He’d give you credit for that. Villains and Heroes fought with quirks, specialized weapons, tactics and strategies and purpose. This was blunt. This was thoughtless. It was impulsive, and it was stupid, and it worked, letting you push him away as he recoiled, suddenly too focused on his pounding skull to care about what you might find. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. None of your little tantrums would.

He’d find you, eventually. After that, the results would be the same.

That might’ve been why Touya took his time, pushing himself to his feet slowly, following the sound of your footsteps before they abruptly stopped. He tried not to be bothered by it, even if there was a familiar pang of anxiety when he saw you, your mouth agape and your body slack, leaning against a door that should not be open. He might’ve walked a little faster, out of habit, but if you noticed him, you were too distracted to care. He couldn’t blame you. Not when he knew what you were looking at.

He got a little carried away, with the girls’ room. Pale pink paint coated on every surface, fairy-lights strung along the ceiling, and a white, circular rug, fluffy and stainless and just small enough to stop before it reached the three cots, settled along each of the walls, each with its own frilly sheets and plush mattress and bare, metallic frame, something Touya might’ve considered swapping out if their opponents were a little more grateful. Two were empty, the first a spare if he needed room for a future ‘guest’ and the second a reminder to check on the bitch in his basement, and the third was on its side. That was what you were focusing on, what he couldn’t seem to pull you away from as he slotted himself against your back, wrapping an arm loosely around your waist.

That, and the girl sitting in front of it, a ball-gag stuffed in her mouth and a collar around her neck, thick and leathery and attached to a chain, keeping her tethered to the nearest wall. There were a few noticeable dents in the plaster around her bracket, but Touya had better things to worry about.

There was a garbled scream, something that might’ve been a warning, but Touya silenced her off with a glare sharp enough cut glass. “Shut it,” He barked, all pretense of patience gone. “Shut up, or you’re going to spend the next week in a muzzle. I’ll deal with you later.”

“You kidnapped her.” At least you waited your turn, even if the delay did little too soften the disgust in your voice. “You’re a monster. You’re supposed to be--”

“A hero?” You tried to shove him away, to pry him off of you, but he only tightened his grip. “And you’re supposed to be an innocent civilian, aren’t you? Something soft and appreciative I can feel good about helping, fuck, and forget about the next day, right?”

“Don’t try to--”

“Where do you keep the bottle, sweetheart?” Now, it was your turn to go tense, to know he saw something he shouldn’t have seen. “Don’t lie to me. It won’t be pretty, if we start off this relationship on a bad foot.”

You hesitated, for a moment. He saw your swallow, watched your eyes dart towards anything that could’ve been considered a weapon, but his fingers slipped under your shirt and you bowed your head, giving in at the slightest threat of something worse. He liked that about you. Such a simple thing, too afraid of pain to take the risk. “My jacket. There are pockets on the inside - it’s on the right.”

He’d give you credit. It looked realistic, if nothing else, a translucent orange bottle with a white lid, the label scratched off in a way that could’ve been mistaken for nervous fidgeting, if Touya didn’t know better. With one hand, he popped off the lid, barely glancing at the unmarked pills inside before letting out a pleased hum.

Sedatives. Not lethal, but effective. The type you could get from any low-ranking Villain with a surplus supply and a greater need for clients than most.

The type that could be slipped into wine glasses, mixed into water. The type that’d keep your trusting, unsuspecting host nice and unconscious while you helped yourself to anything that wasn’t nailed down. While you robbed him blind, stowed yourself away in another cheap motel room two towns over, and scouted for the next poor guy who’d be too embarrassed to say anything.

Touya couldn’t help himself. He laughed, loudly and shamelessly, watching as you withered, glaring at the tiled floor. He couldn’t tell if it was fear of loathing, half-suspended terror or that deep, ingrained hatred any good predator should feel when it’s caught in a trap, but your voice couldn’t have made it more clear. “What’s your plan?” You spat, all humiliation, all spirited, adorable anger. His grin widened, the lasting tension in his shoulders dissolving, but if you noticed how much he enjoyed your little show, you didn’t bother trying to keep your mouth shut. “Arrest me? Hand me over to the police and let me tell them all about your creepy, fucked-up dollhouse?” You never looked up. You never so much as tried to meet his eyes, let alone glance at the ‘victim’ you’d been so intent on saving a few minutes ago. “Let me go. You don’t have another choice, unless you’re willing to get your hands dirty.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’m not gonna kill you.” It wasn’t a lie, but you didn’t seem to believe him, going rigid as his lips brushed against the nape of your neck. It was a fleeting gesture, but he didn’t let himself linger. He’d have plenty of time for that once he got you used to your new role, under his care. Once you got used to him. “I’m not gonna hand you over, either. That’d just be a waste.”

He might’ve been a little mean, after all. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have given you so much time to answer, so much time to tremble. At least you didn’t try to get away, this time. You were already learning. “I… I don’t--”

“I’m going to take care of you, angel. Just like I’m taking care of her.”

There was a moment of stillness, a small, ragged sob, but Touya couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty. He couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but satisfied.

Because Todoroki Touya had a problem. Because he was awful and hungry and greedy, and he had a problem.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted to fix it.

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leiawritesstories · 3 years ago

Text

Speak To My Heart

Rowaelin Month, Day 15: A bad day

Word count: 3422

Warnings: language, bit of depression, fighting. In short, there is angst in this fic. Hope the ending makes up for the rest.

Linguistics and foreign languages are two of my personal passions, so please bear with the bits of language talk that I couldn’t resist including. Brief word of clarification: a lot of expressions we use in English either translate into something extremely rude or don’t make sense in other languages. Translation companies have been trying for quite some time to make sure they don’t accidentally send a client a translated instruction manual that reads “fuck your mother” instead of “for questions, contact your local energy department.” All right I’ll get off my soapbox. :)

The phrases in foreign languages, marked with *, are translated into English at the end. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rowan’s day had been shit. The second he walked through the door, he’d been bombarded with an endless slew of crash reports, malfunctioning equipment, faulty passwords, and best of all, having to rewrite half the security firewalls because one of the rash young idiots in his department couldn’t be bothered to check his work for errors before sending it to management. And management thought it was the department boss’s job to fix all of his employees’ fuckups.

He hated IT.

Even more so since being promoted to department chair.

All he wanted to do was the fun stuff--program design and development, fixing the flaws in his own designs, and of course making those who tried to break into his company’s systems regret their pitiful existence. But Cadre Tech’s bitch of a CEO refused to let the best software engineer on her staff actually do his job.

Most days, he could cope with the pile of useless shit she directed to his desk. Most days. Today was not one of those days. Probably because on top of all the meaningless tasks he’d had to field, he was also forced to sit through one of Maeve’s bullshit “department head strategy sessions,” where every department chair had to pretend they gave a single shit about any word coming from their CEO’s garishly red, pinched mouth.

As if she knew anything her staff actually did.

Thanks to the compulsory meeting, Rowan was stuck in his office at nearly ten o’clock, painstakingly combing through the final draft of the update to CT’s translation program. This program had shot the company to fame and fortune, or at least insane stock value. “A Google Translate that actually translates,” their marketing department called it, and by the gods, that stupid slogan worked. And made sense. Rowan knew the program was just as good as it claimed to be.

He’d put in the hours, alongside a team of linguists, software engineers, designers, and people fluent in at least one other language. Frequent were the sessions where the project whiteboard turned into a jumble of words in twenty or more languages, Spanish alongside Arabic next to a column of simplified Japanese characters spilling over into a row of Cyrillic lettering. Rowan himself spoke German and some Spanish, but even he was lost amid the cacophony of eighteen different people switching from language to language, trying to figure out how idiomatic expressions translated from one language to another and what words should never, ever be placed together.

It took the team well over a year of bickering, or as they called it, friendly linguistic disagreements, to make it from loosely mapped concept to functioning program. By the time it hit the market three years ago, the software had been so well promoted that companies all over the world snapped up their chance to finally communicate properly with the client they’d offended years ago with a bad translation.

At launch, of course, Maeve stood in front of a sea of shouting reporters brandishing microphones, smiling her serpentine smile, and proceeded to thank the creative team for all their “contributions” before taking all the credit herself.

Said creative team went to the bar that had become their usual gathering spot that night to get drunk and shit-talk their horrible boss, not necessarily in that order.

His favorite memory of that night was hearing the chief linguist, an outside contract with multiple advanced degrees who spoke eight separate languages besides English fluently, refer to Maeve as “quella puttana rugosa che non riusciva a convincere un cazzo a venire a dieci metri da lei se si vestiva da figa.*” The Italian speakers on the team were crying with laughter, and so was everyone else, once she translated it.

And then she downed another shot of vodka and hissed something that sounded like “sukya bliyad, no puedo mich betrinken con esta ordures.**” When everyone blinked in confusion, she sighed and relayed the sentiment in English.

Nobody had laughed as hard as Rowan. Aelin Galathynius just had that effect on him.

She brightened his darkest days.

But she couldn’t ease the strain of today.

And it was all his fault.

Aelin glanced up at the clock on her wall and cursed in three different languages when she saw that it was nearly eleven. Without meaning to, she’d spent all afternoon and evening writing lesson notes on idiomatic expressions. She really couldn’t help herself once she got into the topic; it was her pet project.

And the subject of one of her dissertations. Yes, she had multiple.

She’d worked her ass off for years to get through college, then through graduate and doctoral work while teaching at universities to offset costs, then earned a full-time teaching position at one of the top-ranked universities in the world. She got to teach linguistics, her lifetime love, and give guest lectures at other universities and at conferences, teaching people all over the world about the complexities and interrelatedness of language. Hell, she spoke ten; she’d be qualified to speak on linguistic relationships by virtue of that alone.

Gods, she was the chief linguist behind the most successful translation software ever produced. Even if the bitch who owned the rights to said software had literally threatened to sue over ownership rights if any of the people who’d poured their figurative blood and sweat and literal tears into building the program tried to claim a small piece of the credit each of them so richly deserved.

That software and her role in its creation--even though Maeve Ond had claimed the public credit, the creative team spoke at interviews and made news features for their work in Cadre Tech’s massive success--had solidified her credentials as a professor of linguistics, had boosted her into her lecturer spot.

Last year, her university granted her tenure.

She should have been overjoyed, and she was, but not as much as earning tenure deserved.

Because there was nobody to share her joy.

Three years ago, in the wake of CT’s overnight jump to worldwide fame, Aelin fled a love she did not and never would deserve.

She told herself she would never look back. But she did. Almost every day, she looked back at the life she’d shared with Rowan and tried to convince herself that she did the right thing.

Try as she might, she could never silence the whisper that echoed always in her mind.

“You broke both of your hearts”

Someday, she told herself, someday she would be back in Doranelle. Someday, she would have a chance to apologize. Someday, maybe she could fix the Rowan-shaped chasm that gaped wide in her heart.

Yet here she was, sitting in a very nicely appointed hotel room in the university district of Doranelle, typing furiously away as if burying herself in notes and prep for tomorrow’s lecture could make the urge to contact Rowan disappear.

Three years earlier. Doranelle.

“Knock, knock.”

Rowan’s head jerked up from where it had most definitely not been slumped on his desk. “Wha--Oh. Hi, Aelin.”

“You’re falling asleep, buzzard, let’s go home.” He heard laughter in her soft voice.

“As if you won’t just get home and start cross-checking every single one of the phrases on your ‘potential problem’ list.”

She chuckled, walking over to him. “Fine. We’re both perfectionist work whores. Doesn’t mean we don’t need sleep.”

“I know you too well to believe you’re actually going to sleep.”

“All right, you win. Come home now, I’ll make some food, and you can put me to bed.” She winked saucily at him, leaving very little doubt what putting her to bed would entail, and he was up out of his chair in seconds.

“Hand over your computer, Fireheart,” he grinned as they walked into the small house they shared on the outskirts of the city.

“What?”

“Your computer, love. I’m leaving both of our work bags on the shelf by the front door so we can actually catch some rest tonight.” He pressed a finger to her mouth to silence her protests. “Uh-uh, Ae, we have interviews tomorrow and I won’t let the genius behind this program’s flawless word-to-word be anything but well-rested.”

She sighed, but he saw the love in her eyes. “Here, then, my dear brilliant software engineer. Leave your notebook, too, because I know if it’s anywhere near you, you’ll be up at three in the morning scribbling blocks of gibberish and picking apart your faultless code until you go insane.”

Both of their work satisfactorily put aside, Aelin made good on her promise to cook Rowan dinner.

And then he made very good on his promise to put her to bed.

The next morning, they were both awake with the sunrise, content to lay curled in each other’s arms as the morning light spread across their room.

Rowan drifted back into sleep, waking for good when he caught a whiff of coffee from the kitchen’s direction.

“Morning, you sleepy buzzard,” Aelin grinned, sipping from her mug.

Rowan dropped a kiss on her head as he reached for his mug. He took a long drink, sighing as the milky, sweetened caffeine hit his mouth.

“I will never understand how you drink your coffee black, Fireheart.”

“Not all of us need to sweeten the hell out of coffee to drink it, Ro. Maybe if you can’t handle the real thing, you should go back to your pretty little cups of crappy cafe tea.”

“Mention my pretty little teacups again, Ae…”

She giggled. “You be quiet and drink your coffee-flavored milk, my love. We both know you’re impossibly grumpy until you have caffeine in your veins.”

He grumbled something unintelligible as he drank his coffee.

They were nearly late to work that morning, even having planned an extra half hour to arrive, thanks to Aelin wearing what Rowan dubbed her “sexy professor suit.” She fixed the pins in her French twist in the car, making herself once again a portrait of professionalism, and slipped Rowan’s hand from her leg.

“Two hands on the wheel, Whitethorn.”

He pouted. “But I’m a safe driver and I want to hold your hand.”

“My hands are over here, love, not down by my skirt.”

When he pulled into his spot, Aelin closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath.

“You good, Fireheart?”

Gods, she loved hearing him call her that. “Yeah. I just…needed a moment to settle myself. To tell myself the cameras aren’t here to tear apart what I say.”

Rowan wrapped his hands around hers. “Dr. Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, the bland reporters are here to stand in awe of your expertise. Not a single word you say will come across as anything but brilliant and beautifully said.”

She squeezed his hands, her usual confidence returning. “I love you, buzzard.”

“I love you too, Fireheart. Let’s go talk about our amazing achievement.”

The day sped by in a blur of reporters, interviewers, teleprompters, practiced speeches, lights, cameras, and crew. When the last bleached-blonde anchor of the last interview of the day cut her crew’s cameras, Aelin flopped against her second-in-linguistic-command, Dr. Nehemia Ytger, the expert on ethnic African languages.

“If I never see a news crew again, it’ll be too soon,” she sighed. “I’m beat.”

Nehemia snickered. “But we’re done talking about how proud we are that Maeve and her marvelous company have done such a grand service to the world.”

Aelin snorted softly. “Right. And now we servicepeople want to go home and take off our heels.”

“Amen to that.”

As the team filed out of the studio, Rowan made his way over to Aelin. “Holding up?”

“Not anymore,” she said, leaning casually into his side. “My heels are killing me, there’s a hairpin stabbing into my scalp, and I really, really need to pee.”

Rowan laughed, deep and husky. “Let’s get you home, then.”

“I’m stopping in the bathroom first.”

Just before she left the ladies’ room, Aelin heard voices in the break area. Familiar voices--Rowan’s, Maeve’s, and the snippy, borderline whiny tones of Remelle Frelau, who worked in the marketing department and had a hell of a boner for Rowan.

“--looking at revenue over--” Maeve’s voice cut out, but from the gasps of the other two, the revenue was through the roof.

“And it’s all thanks to this genius here,” drawled Remelle, who if Aelin had her guess was probably clinging onto Rowan like a platinum-blonde leech.

“Ms. Frelau, this was the product of a team. No single person could possibly have made it happen alone.”

“Oh, call me Remelle, or even better Remy. And you’re the team leader, so you practically did create it by yourself.”

Aelin snickered to herself. Vapid bitch had no idea what she was saying.

“That’s not how teams work, Ms. Frelau. We wouldn’t be here without Dr. Galathynius and Dr. Ytger’s language expertise, not to mention the creative genius of the engineers, graphic designers, linguists, and programmers.”

“Ms. Frelau, though her judgment is clearly biased, has a point, Mr. Whitethorn,” Mave said. “You demonstrated remarkable collaborative leadership qualities throughout this project, and I fully expect that you will continue to do so.” Maeve’s heels clicked away. Rowan’s voice followed her.

“Thank you, Ms. Ond, but I have to credit Dr. Galathynius--”

“Will you stop kissing that woman’s ass?” snorted Remelle. “Gods, she’s not worth your time or your praise; all she does is translate words into different languages and you idiots drool over that like it means anything.”

Aelin jerked like she’d been slapped. She knew Remelle was a self-centered, shallow, spiteful bitch, but she hadn’t known she would do this.

“--did more for this project than you and your useless whiteboard of catchphrases,” growled Rowan.

“I don’t care what she ‘did for the project,’ Rowan, she’s never going to be good enough for you.”

“Thank you for caring about my welfare, Frelau, now please kindly fuck off.”

Aelin chose that moment to saunter out of the bathroom and head straight for Rowan, her face showing no hint of having heard that conversation. She did note with satisfaction Remelle’s vain attempt to march out of the room with some semblance of dignity. Too bad her heel caught on the seam of the hallway carpet and the break room’s tile flooring and she had to grab the doorframe to keep from collapsing.

“You’re awfully quiet, Aelin.”

“Just thinking. Processing, really. It’s been a hell of a day.”

Rowan nodded. “I bet.”

“And hearing fucking Remelle rip into me for being useless…didn’t make it better.”

“Shit, you heard that?”

“Yeah. I heard that.” Her voice was hollow.

Rowan pulled into their driveway and shut off the engine. Reaching across the console, he cupped Aelin’s face in his hands. “Aelin. You are brilliant. You are terrifyingly smart. You are a force of nature. Nothing, nothing you will ever do is useless. Don’t let that jealous bitch make you think you are less than the perfect woman.”

She smiled tentatively at him. “She…she told me before that last interview that I could never be enough for you. Because you--because of Lyria.”

Rowan raked a hand through his hair. “Ae, can we talk about this inside?”

That night, he told her about his former fiancé, Lyria. He told her about their whirlwind romance, their youthful dreams. He told her about the horrific crash that stole away Lyria’s life. A drunk trucker, a narrow pass in the mountains. He showed her the box in which he kept all the memories of that life. He cried. Aelin cried. He curled against her, let her comfort him.

“Sometimes, I wish she was still here. She’d understand everything. She always did.”

Aelin had no response. She let Rowan fall asleep, his weight shifting off her and into his bed, and looked through the box. Everything she saw served as another reminder that this was the first woman he loved, the woman who understood everything.

She was worthy of him.

But was Aelin?

The more she looked at Rowan and Lyria’s happiness, the more the answer solidified.

No.

When Rowan woke up the next morning, Lyria’s box sat on Aelin’s side of the bed, a side that had not held Aelin.

He glanced out the window.

Her car was gone.

He got up and frantically paced through the house.

Everything she’d brought into his home was gone.

As was she.

Present day.

Rowan opened his front door mechanically, pulled off his shoes, dropped his work backpack on its shelf, and was halfway to his bedroom before he realized he’d just opened his front door. His front door that was always locked.

Someone was in his house.

Someone who either had a duplicate key or insanely good lockpicking skills.

Exactly one person owned a duplicate key to his house.

Aelin.

That’s impossible, she lives in Orynth, she can’t be here, he told the traitorous part of his brain that leapt with joy at seeing Aelin’s face again.

He turned around and made his way through the kitchen--nobody there--to the living room. He flicked on a lamp, casting a soft light around the room.

And nearly had a heart attack.

Aelin Galathynius sat on his couch.

For a moment, he just gawked at her. She looked so…different. Older. Gone was the infectious smile that had captured his heart. Dark shadows smeared under her eyes, testament both to the long hours she devoted to her work and to recent sleepless nights. She was twisting a ring on her right hand, a familiar sign of her nerves. From his angle, Rowan could see a hint of dark script on her wrist. A tattoo. The Aelin he knew didn’t have tattoos.

“I’m not a ghost.” Her voice, weary and hollow, broke the tense silence.

Rowan crossed the room, propped an arm on the fireplace. “Why?”

“Why am I here? Why did I leave? Why did I cut you out of my life?”

“Everything.” He couldn’t keep the waver from his voice, but his eyes burned into hers.

She took a steadying breath. “I’m here to apologize, first of all. I’m here to face what I ruined and to try and start mending it. I’m here to come to terms with everything I broke when I left three years ago.”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, it certainly wasn’t that.

“I’m sorry, Rowan. I’m sorry I left like that. I was…I was scared.”

“You can’t just run away from your fears, Aelin!” He couldn’t keep the frustration from his tone. “You can’t just abandon someone when you have a bad day!”

“I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have left! I know I can’t run from my fears; I’ve spent the last three years trying and fucking failing to do that! But I don’t know what else to do.”

“Saying something about it would have been a good first step.”

“I’m bad at emotions, Rowan. I tried. It wasn’t enough.”

“That’s not a good enough excuse.”

Aelin flicked a tear from her face. “I know.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry, Rowan. I should never have left. I let some stupid comment root into my head and make me doubt myself. I made myself believe I would never be good enough for you. I left you. I loved you, and I still left you. I still love you, even though I’ve tried to suppress it. I can never make up for that. I…I just wanted to tell you how much I’ve regretted that horrible decision all these years. I want you to be happy, Rowan, I--”

“How am I supposed to be happy without a source?” He’d dropped onto the couch, close enough to touch her but still keeping his distance.

“What?”

“You didn’t just take yourself away, Aelin. You were my happiness. I’ve spent three fucking years trying to make myself believe I’m better without you in my life, and I can’t.”

She was unabashedly crying by that point. “What do you want me to do? How can I make up for abandoning you?”

“Stay.”

Her gaze locked onto his, both of their eyes pooling with tears.

“Stay with me, Fireheart.”

“But--”

“I never stopped loving you either.”

A choked sob ripped out of Aelin. Rowan couldn’t hold himself in check any longer; he reached out and tugged her gently into his arms. To his shock, she didn’t resist, burying her face into his chest as sobs shook her shoulders. When she calmed, he tilted her chin up.

“Will you stay, Aelin?”

“Yes. Even though I will never deserve your forgiveness, yes.”

Translations:

* = “that pinched old whore who couldn’t convince a dick to come within ten metres of her if she dressed up provocatively” (Italian)

** = loosely translated as “Fucking hell, I can’t get drunk off this garbage.” (in order, Russian (badly phonetically spelled out because Rowan POV), Spanish, German, Spanish again, French) (the Russian doesn’t directly translate, so it could mean several different variations of expletive)

Might there be a second part? Perhaps......

#my writing #rowaelin month #aaaaaangst

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fridayfirefly · 4 years ago

Text

Hardcore Hide-and-Seek

Read Hardcore Hide-and-Seek on AO3

Masterlist

Written for Maribat March Day 27 - Contest

There was a dull ache behind his temples that just wouldn't go away. The harsh, bright lights of his computer screen and the fact that he hadn't slept in almost 36 hours combined to give Tim a headache so powerful he could barely think.

"Sweetheart. Honeybunch. Cupcake. Darling." Marinette poked him in the shoulder after each pet name. "You need to go to bed now before you pass out on the keyboard." She gently pulled on his arm, guiding him away from the computer.

"Not yet. Give me... two more hours."

"No way. You need to sleep."

"I just need to finish this one program to search and identify every pedestrian walking by all five of Jason's safehouses, get it up and running, and check it for bugs. Then I can go to sleep."

Marinette groaned. "Nine hours, that's all I'm asking."

"You know how much can be done in nine hours? In nine hours Damian will have checked half of The Bowery, Cass and Steph will have combed through all of Crime Alley, and Dick and Babs will have hacked their way into every street-facing camera in Gotham."

"First of all, you're not going to find Jason if you're too tired to think straight. Second, finding Jason first means nothing if you're too tired to catch him." Marinette rolled her eyes. "Third, I think this whole contest is ridiculous. I swear, you Bats play the weirdest games."

"It isn't weird. It's good practice for our tracking abilities," protested Tim.

"It's extreme hide-and-seek tag, that's what it is. Now get to bed. If you get nine hours of sleep tonight, I'll help you catch Jason tomorrow morning."

"Fine." Tim cast one last longing look at the computer before Marinette pulled him out of the Batcave.

----------

The light of morning woke Tim up, reminding him that he had been too tired the night before to set an alarm. "What time is it?"

"It's nine in the morning. You were right that Cass and Steph searched through Crime Alley. They checked all three of Jason's safehouses but found nothing. Damian got sidetracked by an armed robbery while searching through The Bowery and was barely able to check a few blocks. Dick and Babs got access to the traffic camera and the video of two different security companies, but they weren't able to get any of your facial recognition programs to run on any of the feeds."

"Wait, what?" asked Tim, still not fully awake.

"I was serious about helping you. I don't do anything halfway," said Marinette.

Tim sat up, "That's great! Our odds of winning triple when we team up. What were you saying about Babs and Dick?"

"They can't get your facial recognition program to run."

"That's because I tweaked some of the code right at the end to require a confirmation from my laptop. That way if any of my codes fall into the wrong hands, I'll know." Tim grabbed his laptop off of his desk and opened it. A pop-up appeared in the corner of the screen.

[user: Babs requests access for FACIAL RECOGNITION]

There were three options underneath: YES, NO, and IMITATION RUN. Tim clicked the third.

"What does imitation run do?" asked Marinette.

"It will go through to all of the video feeds, but it won't actually flag anything. It will just run passively. Dick and Babs, however, won't know that."

"Clever. That should set Dick and Babs back. Now how are we going to find Jason?"

"Jason knows that we have programs to monitor anywhere where there are security cameras. That means he'll be staying away from traffic cameras. He's lying low - probably in a safehouse."

"Cass and Steph checked all three of the safehouses in Crime Alley," objected Marinette.

Tim shook his head. "Jason has more than three safehouses in Crime Alley. Those three are just the ones we know about."

"How are we going to find these safehouses?" asked Marinette. "If there's one thing Jason's good at, it's disappearing."

"That's the problem. Jason only has to last three more days before he wins. It's entirely possible for him to just hole up in his safehouse and never leave."

"On the other hand, that means that we've got him cornered once we figure out the location of his safehouse."

Tim nodded. "Let's get searching."

The problem with finding a safehouse is that there isn't much to do once a person is successfully hidden inside. It's impossible to search every single building in all of Crime Alley (though Steph and Cass together were giving a remarkably good effort of scouring for signs of Jason), so Tim and Marinette took a different approach.

"I designed the burner phones that all of the Bats use in our safehouses, which is how I know for certain that there are no trackers in them. However, if I send out a system update, they all update automatically. When the update is installed, it will send back a confirmation to the main servers. I can trace that message back to figure out the location of all of the burner phones."

"How long will that take?"

"Half an hour to get everything ready to send out a system update. Fifteen minutes after that before all the phones are updated and send their confirmation messages. From there we can start checking safehouses."

Marinette grinned. "See, I told you that you would think better with a full night of sleep."

"You were right," Tim admitted.

"You start the system update, I'm going to make breakfast."

Marinette left the bedroom and Tim wondered how he got so lucky as to have her with him.

----------

After collecting the locations of all the safehouse burner phones and cross-checking the results with the list of known safehouses, there were five unconfirmed safehouses left.

"Two in Crime Alley, two in The Bowery, and one in East End," reported Tim.

"Let's hit East End first, then move onto The Bowery, and end in Crime Alley," Marinette formulated the plan over a plate of pancakes. "What are the official rules to this game, anyway?"

"Jason got twelve hours to hide. Then we get five days to track him down and tag him. The winner gets to drive the Batmobile anytime Bruce isn't in town for the next six months."

Marinette playfully rolled her eyes. "Of course the prize is driving the Batmobile." Getting up from her finished breakfast, Marinette started putting on her coat and shoes. "Come on, Tim, let's go win you Batmobile privileges."

The apartment in East End was empty, save a few rats that scurried across the hallway of the apartment. Marinette wrinkled her nose and she peered out the grimy window. "Who's safehouse do you think this was?"

Tim fished a half-empty carton of cigarettes out of a drawer in the kitchen. "Jason's, probably, but given the amount of dust in here, I don't think he's been here for a while."

The brick house in The Bowery was a little cleaner but still abandoned. The little front yard was half dirt and half weeds. Pinned up on a bulletin board in the front hallway was an empty postcard decorated with the logo for Haly's Circus. Tim concluded that it was Dick's safehouse and they moved onto the next safehouse. It was in an apartment complex in Crown Point, the seediest district of The Bowery. It was stocked with knives, guns, and a box of neatly labeled poisons.

"Damian's safehouse?" guessed Marinette. "He's the only one I could see having poison kept on hand."

Tim nodded, "Probably."

The second-to-last safehouse was on the border between The Bowery and Crime Alley. It was small and run-down, but it seemed that at one point it had been well-maintained. The mailbox was hand-painted yellow, with blue letters reading: The Brown's.

"Stephanie's old house," said Tim, realization.

"Sentimental choice for a safehouse," noted Marinette.

It felt wrong to enter the house that Steph grew up in, so they moved on from it. There was no way Jason was inside, not when Steph and Babs had already search the known safehouses in Crime Alley.

Tim sighed as they drove to the last location. "We've only got one safehouse left to check. I'm not sure what we'll do if Jason isn't in it." Tim had forgotten to consider that Jason might have gotten a burner phone from somewhere else, other than the supply cupboard in the Batcave.

"If he isn't there then we'll go back to the drawing board, I suppose. But don't lose hope yet. I have a good feeling about this one," Marinette reasoned.

The final safe house was a nondescript apartment building: brown brick exterior, cigarette butts on the sidewalk, and grimy windows.

"Do you think this is it?" asked Marinette.

Tim shrugged. "We'll just have to find out."

There were eight apartments in the building, four on the first floor and four on the second. Tim and Marinette quickly swept the first floor, but none of the apartments were Jason's. They then moved to the second floor. Tim quickly picked up on a dusty footprint on the carpet. He recognized the tread-marks from the bottoms of Jason's shoes. "Second door on the left," whispered Tim. "You head outside and make sure he doesn't escape through the windows."

"I'll let you tag him," Marinette whispered in response, slipping down the stairs.

Tim waited a full minute for Marinette to get into position, then crept up to the door. Taking a deep breath, Tim waited for the moment to feel right. Then another breath. Bang!

Tim broke through the door, revealing Jason sitting on the bed, scrolling on his phone.

Jason swore and reached for the gun on the bedside table, but he didn't get a chance to fully react before Tim tagged him out.

"Goddammit!" Jason threw the gun on the bed in frustration. "How did you find me?"

"Burner phone," chimed in Marinette as she popped through the window.

"You said they didn't contain trackers," Jason accused.

"They don't. But when I issued a system update, they all sent a confirmation which I was able to track," Tim said smugly, trying not to gloat too hard.

Jason whipped open a drawer in the cramped kitchen and pulled out the burner phone, tossing it to Tim. "Next time, I'm picking out my own burner phone."

"If it wasn't the phone, we'd have found something else. Admit it, we were good," said Marinette.

Jason rolled his eyes. "Good job, Replacement. You too, Pixie Pop."

"See you at home," Marinette chirped. "Now that this silly contest is over, I have Tim to myself for the next two days. No more sharing his with his computer."

Tim smiled at the thought of finally spending time with Marinette. "Let's go."

"I thought you'd never ask."

@maribatmarch-2k21

#maribat #MaribatMarch2021 #timari #timinette #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Tim Drake #my work #miraculous ladybug fic

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stillness-in-green · 3 years ago

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MVA In Memoriam (3/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party)

Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade

Chapter 229 – All It Takes Is One Bad Day

• The full first page, of Jin getting mobbed by Puppet!Jins, them tearing his mask off, and flinging it and then him away. Saved them a bit of budget, I suppose, but it’s a shame to lose the drama and the violence of Twice having his mask pulled away, since it’s decent foreshadowing (indeed, possibly intentionally so, on Skeptic’s part) for the violent bewilderment he’ll be subject to shortly.

• Re-Destro’s line, “Not when he’s using his meta-ability to puppeteer, unless you want another nagging lecture.” They didn’t keep the first nagging lecture, so of course they wouldn’t keep this. I’m still annoyed, both on general principle and at the loss of RD’s implication that these nagging lectures are a regular occurrence, especially if one tries to bother Skeptic when he’s using his meta-ability. Has RD himself been on the receiving end of one? Possibly so! But you’d be less likely to think so just from the anime.

• Re-Destro’s line, “This allowed our warriors to momentarily hold back and stay out of danger.” Because why would the audience need to know that Skeptic planned for and Re-Destro cares enough to observe something like that lol?? Obviously the MLA is perfectly content to just throw their peoples’ lives away because, whatever, more where that came from! Dammit, anime, the fandom believes this enough as it is without confirmation bias from your cuts!

• Skeptic’s “fufufu” laugh, because the anime is allergic to the MLA having fun.

• The police officer’s line, “Sure, but in a case like this, you’re still to blame.” The rest of the exchange hints at it, of course, but there’s a horrifying callousness to a police officer just saying straight to the face of a teenaged orphan facing his first offense, “Yes, you were obeying the law perfectly and this guy just ran out in front of you, but it’s going on your criminal record anyway, whatever.” A weight the anime lost, and another that makes me very suspicious of the patterns behind what, precisely, was put on the chopping block.[1]

• Jin’s narration, “That police officer couldn’t have known. Me neither.” Demonstrates that Jin doesn’t really hold his fall against the one policeman. It’s a consistent thread with Jin’s character that, while he’s very jaded, he’s not actually vengeful, nor is he looking to enact systemic change. While he’s very defensive of his friends, people who hurt Jin himself are never in any real danger of him coming to collect his pound of flesh in return; he just rolls with it as part of how the world works, in the way of someone who was never given reason to believe any different. This line is a good example of that.

• From Jin’s old employer’s angry rant, deletes the note that the client that called is angry, and that the client said, “That young punk of yours did this!” It’s nothing that wasn’t obvious from the rest of the conversation, but I do I think cutting it loses a sense that this guy is just unloading all of his frustration and fear on Jin. The length of the screed, the extra details—it clearly communicates that Jin’s boss is so angry and upset he’s not paying any real mind to filtering, but just recounting every point of contention the moment they come into his mind.

• In modern society, when you’re someone without roots… Well, not a lot of people can relate to that.” It isn’t just the police that failed Jin; it’s a whole society that’s distrustful of people who don’t have a place in the fabric, and thus are unwilling to try and bring them into it. Like Tenko, there are a thousand little places where someone could have reached out a hand, but no one ever did. The audience can intuit this, but I feel it’s better to be clear about it—it’s not just the legal system that screwed Jin over; it’s every other person that never tried to help him because they were afraid of his eyes or distrusted a guy who had no connections. When Shigaraki comes, he’s not going to be coming for heroes alone; he’ll be coming for this entire tapestry of indifference and timidity.

• Skeptic’s lines, “Hrm? Fighting back? I was sure he’d either flee or cower in place... We didn’t anticipate such unity between them.” This gets at two things. Firstly, and once again, that the MLA did their research; that they came into this with educated expectations and a definite plan. Secondly, an in-character observation of what the arc has been showing the audience all along: that the League isn’t just a disparate gang of hoodlums anymore; that they’re developing real bonds. Those bonds mark them as unusual—Re-Destro comments on it in 223, as did Overhaul in 147; even Mr. Compress remarks disapprovingly on Twice’s “habit” of getting overly attached to people. It’s striking that, even though the MLA knew from Giran’s records that the League was uncommonly well-bonded, Twice’s devotion still fell outside Skeptic’s parameters.[2]

• Again Skeptic’s line, “Now his legs.” The drones don’t actually get this far (though you can see them gearing up for it on the next page), so it’s a reasonable enough cut, but it does emphasize the ludicrous, over-the-top extremes Skeptic in particular is willing to go to in securing what he wants. If, you know, “Kidnap the doubler so we have a method to make copies of the Grand Commander at our leisure,” wasn’t bonkers enough.

• Twice’s line, “Even against Gigantomachia!” It really highlights just how much mental energy Twice has been dedicating to avoiding injury, that he was able to keep it in mind even fighting a foe as overwhelming, and for as extended a period, as Machia. And like, the anime blitzed over the Machia fight so quickly, and with so little visible wear and tear to the League, that it really could have used all the reminders it could find room for about how intense those six weeks were.

• Twice’s line, “I won’t watch a friend die!” Such an important line that the composer named an entire track for it, not that the anime gave us that track in the moment it was clearly scored for. They added in a new line later in the scene which mostly gets the important sentiments back in, but loses out in being slightly less fitting to his breakthrough. See the Additions portion of the write-up on Chapter 230, following.

Framing Shifts

• The policeman in Jin’s flashback looked up at him in the anime, where in the manga, his eyes stay down on his paperwork the entire time. I realize that anime can’t just still-frame every panel of a manga and call it an adaptation,[3] so characters will do things like move and look around in different directions just in the course of inhabiting a room, Still, in this case, it has the effect of making the officer look more alert and engaged than he was in the manga, and given that this whole chunk of backstory is about Jin slipping through the social safety net, it feels appropriate to me that the officer should be completely checked out.

Additions

• A new shot of Jin(s) in his pre-massacre doppelganger army days. Didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know—it’s little more than a new angle of the gang in the truck—but it was nice to see.

Bonus Note

• They left Re-Destro’s phrase, “My company,” alone when he was talking about the micro-transceivers Skeptic was using. That’s accurate to the manga, but I’d like to remind everyone that, at that point in the anime, viewers whose only reference is the anime itself have no idea that Re-Destro is a businessman. The show skipped the commercial, RD’s intro, the dinner scene where his company comes up, and Giran’s association of RD with Detnerat; it will further go on to skip Shigaraki recognizing him from the commercial. The news report mentioning Detnerat was ten full episodes prior to Episode 110, and was followed up on in not the faintest degree. For heaven’s sake, would it have been so hard to have Hirata Hiroaki say, “My Detnerat’s,” instead of just, “My company’s”?

Chapter 230 – Sad Man’s Parade

• Deleted the MLA members that are attacking Compress as they get pushed off by the Twice wave. Not the first time, and not the last, that the anime didn’t animate the random MLA people on the street. It’s hard to take the threat of their numbers seriously when the anime kept deleting them from what are supposed to be crowd scenes, you know?

• Mr. C thinking worriedly about Dabi as he’s mulling over Geten’s strength and disregard for catching his own people in the collateral damage. It’s just a, “Dabi—!” but it’s yet another tiny cut that shaves away at the manga’s clear depiction of Leagues’ concern for one another—even Mr. Compress, who claims that such things aren’t very villainous.

Framing Shifts

• Changed the random MLA’s exhortation to kill all the Twices to a generic, “Damn—!” I know American censors have often taken issue with the words “Kill” and “Die” in kids’ cartoons, but I was never of the impression that that was the case in Japan. And it’s not like the show made any bones about Curious planning to kill Toga. A rephrase to save a second and a half on dialogue, maybe?

• Had Skeptic give his lines about failure on the way over to the elevator instead of stalking over in silence, and then dumping the whole monologue all at once. The manga’s extended silence over three identically sized panels is much funnier and more characterful. I grow ever more confident in my assessment of Skeptic as the second-most ill-treated MLA character in this adaptation.

• The return of the Doom Choirs for the Twice Parade. I really wish the anime would lay off slathering Doom Choirs all over everything, especially a moment like this: a triumph for Twice, and, true to form for Twice, also crammed to the gills with visual and verbal gags. The Doom Choir is out of keeping with both the victory and the comedy—Mine Woman, later on, served the Parade much better.

Additions

• Gave Twice a new line, “I will protect my comrades!” It was nice to make up for his, “I won’t watch a friend die!” but the latter is more characterful, especially since a more literal translation is, “I won’t kill my friends!” Which is, you know, relevant to the fact that Twice has problems telling himself apart from things that just look like him, and he just had to intervene to stop some of those look-alikes from killing one of said friends. At least it got his use of nakama back in.[4]

• A new little cut of animation as the action went back to Geten and Dabi. I suppose the Dabi fans liked it, and it was nice to see more of Geten’s ice dragon, but I’d have much preferred they could keep the scenes we already have before adding new ones.

Chapter 231 – Path

The scene of Hawks wondering why he hasn’t heard from Dabi and his subsequent flashback to the last time they spoke were relocated to the beginning of Episode 102, the first thing the audience saw after the prior episode ended with Shouto inviting Bakugou and Deku to come intern with him at Endeavor’s. In the manga, of course, it’s not “a few weeks ago in Kyushu,” it’s “meanwhile in Osaka.” Also, the order of the scenes was flipped—the episode led with the flashback, then returned to the modern day. It really makes the timeline needlessly confusing—the viewer has no real context for what we’re seeing and when, especially since the anime neglected to specify how much time passed between the two scenes. You have to assume it was enough time for an outcry to be raised over Jeanist’s disappearance, but the random shot of a bird flying over was not at all helpful there.

Alterations included (as usual, outright removed material is in bold text):

1. Cut Hawks’ thought, “That’s why you keep calling,” and his line, “What’s the job?” I know I should give a breakdown here about Hawks’ mentality and training, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to complain about any lines Takami Keigo loses. God knows the anime gives him plenty enough bonus material.

2. Spliced in the flashback scene of Hawks reporting to the Commission from Chapter 243, but subtly changed it to suggest that it took place after the phonecall in which Dabi demanded Hawks kill a non-Endeavor top hero, rather than it taking place right after Hawks and Dabi’s first contact, which is what the manga implies.

3. Deleted several key shots in the Jeanist apartment scene, with the effect of making Hawks way less creepy. We got an anime-original shot of his eyes, narrow and serious, but not either of the shots of his big, off-putting grin and widened eyes as he pulls a feather-blade on Jeanist. We also lost a shot of Jeanist turning to face him, framed between extended primaries of Hawks’ Fierce Wings. It’s not like the anime dropped the fake!Dead Jeanist plot, so I’m not sure why the shift, unless it’s just that they wanted to keep Hawks likable for the merch-buying crowd, not creepy and unsettling. And while I personally never believed that Hawks really killed Jeanist, a lot of people thought it was plausible, no doubt based on how off-kilter he comes across in this scene. It loses a real frisson, to just play it straight.

• Shigaraki decaying a missile in mid-air. So Dabi can get those little animation flourishes but Tomura can’t, huh, anime? I see how it is. I. See. How. It. Is.

• Spinner’s little side comment about all the ice everywhere. A nice demonstration that Geten and Dabi’s fight really is affecting huge swathes of the city; that’s certainly apparent already in a bunch of the wide shots showing exactly that, but it’s helpful to have the more zoomed-in moments, too. Also, I do enjoy those little side quips wherever we get them, and the anime often removes them.

• Thinned out the crowd guarding the route to the tower somewhat (it’s particularly noticeable on the mid-distance rooftops) and, as best I can tell, removed Shigaraki and Spinner from the shot. Why keep all the lines harping on the 110,000 number when a) it’s not even accurate to the MLA’s forces, just the League’s assumptions, and b) the studio doesn’t even have the resources to adequately convey the numbers the manga does portray?

• Somebody in the crowd being defiant about Twice’s multiplication and vigorously declaring that the League are all just sacrifices for the MLA’s Revival Party anyway. The background nobodies? Allowed to express even bog-standard over-confidence? Well I never. How dare those people think their lives count enough for them to get dialogue.

• Spinner’s, “This keeps happening!” Of course he couldn’t have that line in the anime, since the anime cut the other big place Trumpet clearly used his power to rile up his followers. What other times were you even talking about when you said, “Every time he talks,” Anime!Spinner? That scene was the first time we even saw Trumpet since he welcomed you guys to town.

• Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. He just called him a damn moron (bakayarou) in the anime; he uses the considerably more specific baka kyouso (Google Translate gives “guru”; jisho gives “founder of a religious sect”). He uses the same term again immediately afterward—Viz’s translation gives, “More like chrome dome cult!”—which the anime also deleted.

So here’s another example of the anime doing everything it could to erase the presence of cults in the HeroAca world. The easy assumption to make is that this was tied to broadcast standards about the depiction of what Japan refers to as “new religious movements,” which—and pardon the brief swerve into real life historical horrors here—have been very unpopular in Japan since Aum Shinrikyo and the sarin gas attacks in 1995. But were these elements removed because the anime didn’t want to represent anything that smacks of new religious movements at all, or because the depiction of both the MLA and particularly the CRC are explicitly villainous and calling religious movements, even made-up ones, evil on TV leads to a lot of angry phone calls?

• Re-Destro’s line, “Unlike my good Miyashita, there’s nothing charming about you.” Of course they’d cut this, having cut the Miyashita scene, but I hate it anyway. As I said earlier, RD’s invocation of Miyashita in front of two people who are going to have not the slightest clue who that is tells me that Re-Destro really does miss and feel bad about killing the guy. Cutting the reminder that RD still feels that sting makes it much too easy to assume that Shigaraki’s right about RD hiding up in his tower, uncaring of the blood shed on his behalf, when if you read Re-Destro with even the slightest of attempts at good faith, it’s clear that those losses weigh very heavily on him.

Incidentally, and not to harp on the art again, but in the manga, Stress is still visibly spread down from RD’s temple to the ridge of his brow over his eye socket. The anime returned it back to its normal resting state, again suggesting that the death toll mounting in the streets below (as well as, possibly, the new stress of confronting a quirk as powerful as Double) left RD completely unmoved. The spread was back in the following shot, so it was probably just an art error, but it would be nice to have had fewer of those, especially when they impact characterization as much as what RD’s Stress blots are doing at any given time.

Framing Shifts

• Had Machia doing this weird cannonball skim just over the ground, when in the manga, he’s still half-buried, spraying earth and stone everywhere. The manga never namedrops Machia’s Mole quirk during the story itself, but it’s important to know for later that Machia can not only tear through obstacles, he can tear through obstacles extremely quickly.

Additions

• Gave Hawks a few new lines about how too many unexpected things happened for their last arrangement, and that Dabi should have given him more warning. Largely seemed to be there to give the anime an excuse to flashback to the High End fight, in case the viewers had completely forgotten about Hawks and Dabi having a clandestine meeting and sniping at each other in the aftermath of that event. An understandable addition, but deeply frustrating in the context of all the lines that got cut.

Chapter 232 – Meta Abilities and Quirks

• Dropped a third instance of Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. I don’t know what the S&P restriction is on this, but given that the movie was allowed to create and villainize an entire international terrorist cult, it is really incomprehensible that the MLA doesn’t get to keep their designation as such. Why?? Because the movie involves going out and defeating its cult, but the series is going to engage in a more sympathetic treatment?[5] Because the self-selecting movie crowd is less likely to complain than the TV audience? Did they just not want to draw attention to how much the movie was ripping off the MLA’s whole shtick? What??

• Missed that RD’s swole arm swipe wipes out the puppets Skeptic left behind; they just vanished from the scene entirely after Twice’s arrival. It’s hard to blame the anime for this; the manga also seems to lose track of the fact that they’re right there in between RD and the elevator—they’re nowhere to be seen anywhere between the end of Chapter 231 and the aforementioned arm swipe, where you can see them getting obliterated. Both versions could have stood to be more attentive to this; indeed, the anime could have fixed it, small error though it is.

• A sort of twitchy sparking around Shigaraki’s hand right after he decays the tower. This is foreshadowing that Shigaraki’s big AOE decay attacks are hard on his body, which will become extremely apparent after he unleashes it on the city at large during the climax, and factors into his decision to accept the mysterious power Ujiko offers. The damage Shigaraki sustains there doesn’t come out of nowhere; Horikoshi is, on the whole, extremely good at layering in foreshadowing many chapters before the foreshadowed elements come fully to light. It makes the writing look much messier than it actually is—more convenient, more pat—to delete this stuff.

• Shigaraki recognizing RD from the Detnerat commercials. Well, they ditched the Detnerat commercial, so of course they ditched this. Still, it lost one of the indicators that Shigaraki is, despite not receiving a formal education, actually quite up to speed on current events—even, apparently, when those current events are happening while he’s been fighting Machia in an isolated stretch of mountains for six weeks! I already suffer enough through fanon characterizations of Shigaraki in which he’s a basement-dwelling feral manchild glued to his gaming console whom AFO bans from accessing information about the outside world, anime! I don’t need you dropping the scenes that most clearly demonstrate otherwise!!

• In the anime, Baby!Chikara’s face was unmarked, just a normal infant face—you’d never even know the kid had a meta-ability just to look at him. In the manga, the skin of his face is clearly darker, contrasted against the paleness of his mother’s hand. It’s obvious that he’s not “normal” looking, and thus equally obviously would have attracted negative attention in his era.[6] Also had his mother smiling; her face in the manga is too shadowed and vague to make out an expression, befitting the murky tragedy of her story and the fear she must have been living with.

Framing Shifts

Additions

• A little thing: they had Twice echo, “Cushion?” when Clone!Shigaraki told him to get ready to cushion Giran’s fall. If anything, Re-Destro and his little thought-bubbled question mark is probably the one who should have had this reaction line.

• Added a visual for Clone-araki catching himself on the window. A perfectly reasonable way to fill screen time while a dialogue beat was ongoing.

• Added a panning still over a reaction shot from a bunch of Twice clones when the tower came down. It had a few good faces in it.

---

So, generally, this episode was better. I definitely still had issues with it, but compared to what came before, when they were trying to cram 5+ chapters into the episodes, there were far fewer cuts, and what cuts and tweaks there were, were relatively minor. Definitely nothing that made me want to throw chairs Jerry Springer-style the way 108 and 109 did.

Sadly, I can't say the same for the remaining two episodes. Come back next time for Part Four, Episode 111: Shimura Tenko, Origin.

FOOTNOTES

[1] After witnessing the massacre that was Episode 108, I was convinced they were going to cut the policeman scene entirely, and just go right to Jin getting fired for hitting someone with his bike, letting the audience think it was his fault completely rather than cast aspersions on police and the justness of the law. I was pleased they kept it at all, but less pleased with the steps taken to soften the sharpness of its accusation.

[2] Of course, it’s not like the MLA themselves don’t understand the willingness to give everything for the people who matter. They just label those feelings Devotion To The Cause, and don’t think the League is capable of such resolution.

[3] Netflix’s Way of the House Husband, be told.

[4] Nakama is, of course, a shonen standby, but, to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited; I don’t follow a lot of shounen series), it’s pretty rare to hear the word coming out of a villain’s mouth! Jin calling the League his nakama ties into how the League are both sympathetic villains in the larger story and also the protagonists of the current arc, thereby operating under a lot of protag tropes for the duration—foreshadowed by Spinner’s earlier talk of Shigaraki and his boyish, dream-chasing eyes.

[5] Sometime after the mass arrests, one hopes.

[6] This could well be a coloring error in the manga, but if so, you’d think they’d have corrected it for the volume release. Especially given that, again, the color is in a different shade/screentone than the shadow that covers most of his mother’s face, and her hand stroking Chikara’s chin isn’t shadowed at all.

#my villain academia #bnha #bnha meta #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #my writing #stillness has salt

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hypnomicimagines · 4 years ago

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For Honor [Samurai!Yamada Ichiro/Reader] - Chapter 1

Having a handsome bodyguard wasn’t a negative.

You had rejected the idea of hiring someone outside of your normal circle, why couldn’t you simply be protected by the guards you’ve come to know rather than a total stranger? Once it had been explained that you needed someone who knew the terrain much better you had quieted down, knowing that defying your parents would only make it worse on you. You were to go to a neighboring kingdom through an off the road path with only this bodyguard, your parents swore he had a great reputation, to your new husband. You wouldn’t be married as of yet, this was supposed to simply be a test, but you hadn’t been too fond of the idea.

You didn’t care enough to fight it, however.

You set off in the early morning hours without even seeing your bodyguards face as you’re escorted into the covered wagon behind him by your father, who wishes you safe travels before handing you a large pack of food that should last you. There’s a change of clothes as well for you to change into once you’ve reached the castle, your looks should be impeccable upon first entering, though there are likely people waiting to do your make-up and such before you even catch a glimpse of the prince. First impressions were as important as your safety and you supposed it was lucky that you weren’t the fussy type of princess who would object to not arriving in style. The weather for the trip is at least cool enough that you don’t complain about being shoved into the back of an oversized wooden box, drawing the curtains to look out at the scenery when your imagination starts to bore you.

“What’s your name?”

“…Yamada Ichiro.” He didn’t strike you as the strong silent type but he hadn’t offered up much in the way of information since you first started traveling together hours ago, leaving you even more curious about him. You’d only seen the side of his face when he had turned to look towards rustling trees, analyzing a potential threat, spotting an interesting eye and a beauty mark right under it. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“I’m okay.”

“We’ll be stopping for the night soon, princess.”

“Understood!”

After another hour passed the journey was on pause for the evening and you find yourself sitting directly next to Ichiro who had started a fire, saying you’d have to cook and warm up quick so he could put it out before you’re caught. He was making a small meal out of the rations your parents had packed for the two of you, feeding the horses nearby before returning to sit by your side. The sun hadn’t set quite yet which meant you had more of a chance to see your bodyguard’s face, gasping as you catch a glimpse of red and green.

“Are your eyes two different colors?” You reached over to grab his chin, turning his face towards yours so abruptly Ichiro nearly dropped the meat he was cooking into the fire. He’s clearly startled but you’re paying his facial expression no mind, instead peering deeply into his eyes with a fascination he’d seen on countless others. “They’re beautiful…”

“…You should ask for permission before grabbing someone like that.” Ichiro was fighting to keep a straight face, placing a rugged hand over yours and gently removing it from his face. You must not have been used to asking, simply doing as you wanted when you wanted because of your status, so he couldn’t fault you too much. It wasn’t a harmful action, but having his visual eccentricities pointed out always managed to embarrass him; it certainly had nothing to do with the fact it was a genetic factor that tied him strongly to a father he’d much rather forget.

He wasn’t used to beautiful women touching him either.

He couldn’t chase the thought of how soft your delicate hand was, especially when it was compared to his; when he had touched your hand earlier you had seemed surprised at the roughness, but that was the life of a swordsman. Before he’d become a samurai he had led a far less honorable life, one of hurting the innocent just for the sake of money, but he had turned himself around. His hands still felt like they were stained by the blood of those he should’ve been protecting rather than collecting money from but there was no point in staying in the past. If he hoped to ever make up all of his misdeeds then he’d have to keep moving forward, starting by taking care of his brothers and protecting those that needed help.

He had actually checked into your family before he’d taken up this job offer, knowing he couldn’t turn down his nose at money but if he were to help a family who was infamous, he would never forgive himself. You yourself had seemed pleasant enough in the short time he’d known you even if you had hardly talked, something that he predicted would be changing now.

“So, do you have a family? Tell me about them.”

“…I have two little brothers who are waiting for me at home.”

You nodded your head as Ichiro recalled some of his fonder memories he had with his brothers, talking about their shaky relationship but how he was sure they would protect each other when it truly came down to it. You can see the fondness for him shining through in his eyes which only made you feel a little more… confused. The love of his brothers was attractive, as was the fact he had turned such a bland meal into something edible. You could listen to this man talk for an eternity if you had to, another plus that he managed to tell stories in such a captivating way that didn’t have you bored to tears. The number of men that tried to woo you with the most basic tales of heroics were innumerable but the ones who talked so fondly of their family and their home were few and far in between.

Your heart skipped a beat when you noticed a flustered look on his face and Ichiro looked away.

“I didn’t mean to talk so much… I apologize.” He coughed into his hand, shifting uncomfortably on the ground as he tried to regain his composure. It wasn’t normal for him to be so thrown off by someone staring intently at him but there was something about your gaze that made him the slightest bit nervous.

“I feel like I could write on your life now. The great tales of Ichiro.” You smiled at him as you tried to steady your heart. “I didn’t mind listening to you at all.”

“My life is… hard to describe in simple terms. I’m sure you understand the sentiment.”

“I think my life is far more boring than yours!” You laughed, placing down the rest of your food. “I’ve been stuck within walls my entire life, the outside world is only books. I’ve done my best to speak with others from different walks of life but once they learn I’m a princess, they always become so stiff and formal. I much prefer someone who’ll freely speak about jumping in the mud on rainy days with their brothers rather than someone who thinks throwing big words at me will make me swoon.”

There was an implication there that Ichiro picked up on, that you were comparing him to those that had actively tried to woo you, and he was worried for a second that he was appearing more unprofessional than he’d like. He bowed his head again in an attempt to apologize but you held out your hand, patting the top of his head briefly before withdrawing.

“Sorry, I should ask to touch, right? But that’s a sign of affection, correct?”

“I- uh, yeah. I ruffle my brother’s hair all the time…” It was certainly different having you do that to him though, the vice like grip around his heart tightening further. You looked even more beautiful in the light of the setting sun, the fire highlighting your eyes; he had been speechless, antsy, when he had first laid eyes on you and he was thankful that you had given him a few hours to get his bearings together before you tried to talk to him. You had made such a strong impression upon him that he knew he wouldn’t be forgetting you soon; you reminded him of the princesses in old fairy tales that he would read to Saburo at night.

“Should we sleep? Are you joining me in the back?”

“I’ll keep watch out here.” Ichiro began the process of putting the fire out, helping you up the wagons steps the minute he’s done. He watched carefully as you settled yourself in before closing it up tightly, only the front portion with slightly parted curtains giving you a glimpse of the moon. You can hear him shuffling about as he wiped away any traces of the two of you being there before he settled himself on the front of the wagon, leaning back against the wood and allowing his eyes to slide shut.

You caught one last glimpse of your bodyguard before you fell asleep, hoping you’d get to ask him even more questions tomorrow.

#Yamada Ichiro #Ichiro Yamada #Hypnosis Mic #Hypnosis Microphone #Hypnosis Microphone Imagines #Hypnosis Mic Imagines #Hypnomic #Hypmic #Hypnosis Microphone x Reader #Yamada Ichiro x Reader #AU #Scenario #Female Reader

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blinder-secrets · 4 years ago

Text

Between Palms

fem!reader x michael gray

warnings: power imbalance, role play, mild nsfw (its a slow burn but hang in there trust me)

wordcount: 4,125

It seemed silly really, a birthday meal at Arrow House, but here you were. Invite accepted and fulfilled, even though you were just there as a plus one. An almost family member. Michael had you living in his house, accompanying him to every event, and yet your finger was still empty of the ring you both knew would come eventually. He’s waiting for the right moment, you suppose. It doesn’t really matter. Everyone knows he’s yours, and you’re his. Even Polly is starting to treat you like a daughter.

‘Is it his actual birthday today?’ you ask Michael, as he takes your coat in the entry way.

‘Don’t know.’ He passes it to Mary, who you’ve only just been introduced to. 'Tomorrow I think.’

You hum. This was the family version then, they’d spend his birthday alone, just the two of them. ‘It’s quite sweet, isn’t it?’ you muse. You’d never have marked either Tommy or Lizzie as the sentimental sort.

Michael snorts. ‘Sweet, yeah.’ From his smirk, you know he doesn’t even remotely agree.

‘The meal is being served,’ Mary tells you, careful in her interruption. ‘If you’ll follow me?’

‘Oh, course, sorry.’ You nod and gesture for her to continue; you’d almost forgotten that the both of you were late. ‘Come on,’ you say to Michael, offering your hand.

He takes it readily, his palm warm and soft against yours. From the look of him, his sharp suits, his set hair and his square jaw, you’d always assumed he would shy away from touches like that. That he’d keep his hands in his pockets and his character professional, impenetrable. But, he never does with you. Whenever you give your hand, he takes it, locks his fingers around it. He’d let you pull him half way across the world, you think. If you tried.

In the main dining room, you’re met by the rest of the family. They’re seated already, talking and drinking around the platters of food, the plates already filled with some expensive cut of meat. The conversation stills as you enter, a few of them beginning to stand to greet you.

‘No, no don’t,’ you say quickly, waving them down again. ‘We’ve got time for that later.’

‘Tommy,’ Michael says, acknowledging him with a nod. ‘Happy Birthday.’

‘Yes,’ you add, ‘we left your gift with Mary.’ You’re sure he doesn’t care what it is, you don’t even know that he’ll ever open it. It’d had felt wrong to go to a birthday party without taking something.

Tommy almost matches your waiting smile. It’s as much of a response as you’ll get. ‘Please,’ he says, gesturing to the two empty chairs, ‘sit down. Get a drink.’

You take your seat which is, of course, next to Michael. Your Michael. He’s holding the chair out for you, ready to tuck it in as you sit. Always the gentleman like it’s second nature. Like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. You smile up at him in thanks, but he just touches your shoulder briefly before sitting himself. ‘Looks great,’ he comments, eyes down as he scans the lay of food and alcohol before him. His accent’s stronger when he’s with them, like he picks it up at the door. At home it almost disappears, melts into something softer, some remnant of his upbringing. You haven’t decided yet which it is that you prefer. It’s what he says that charms you.

‘It’s nice of you to have us, Tommy,’ you say, leaning around Michael to smile at him.

He’s sitting at the head of the table, as uninterested in the food as you’d expected him to be. His eyebrows raise in response to your comment, and he half-shakes his head, as if to say, oh it’s no problem, no trouble. From the way Lizzie’s smiling beside him, you know that it was all her really. Her idea, her planning. She wanted him and the family to have something nice for once and so here you were.

‘And Lizzie, of course,’ you add. ‘Thank-you.’

‘Our pleasure,’ she replies gently, lifting her glass. ‘Please, eat. Before it gets cold.’

You nod and bring your focus back to Michael, who’s lit a cigarette and is now resting between drags. It sits between his fingers on the table, smoke pulling up and over his plate, swirling his meal in grey. How he doesn’t mind, you have no idea. He may as well peel it open and eat the tobacco instead.

‘Michael,’ you scold quietly, knocking your elbow against his. ‘Put it out.’

He clears his throat and sits straighter, lifting the cigarette for a final taste. ‘Was in my head,’ he comments on the exhale, before taking another sharp, final drag. ‘Think we should do something like this.’

You watch him lean forward and stub the cigarette out, into the ashtray in the middle. ‘Do what?’

‘Have a dinner,’ he says, sitting back again. ‘For you, for your birthday.’

Snorting, you shake your head and turn to pick up your cutlery. The house you have together is nowhere near big enough to accommodate for the Shelby side, let alone your family too. Not that you would invite them anyway. They’d see Arthur and go running, hear Johnny Dogg’s jokes and flush red with shame.

‘Yeah? And who would arrange that?’ you ask. You take a bite and throw him a closed-lip smile between chews. ‘I’m not doing it.’

He shrugs. ‘Well, I will.’

The beef is cooked perfectly, you cut another piece off as you reply. ‘You’re good with numbers, Michael, not parties.’

‘Alright.’ He picks up his fork limply, too focused on the side of your face to even consider eating something himself. ‘Mum will,’ he says to you, then, turning to her, ‘you’ll help, won’t you?’

Polly scoffs from opposite. You hadn’t realised she’d been paying attention, but of course she had. She never misses anything of interest. ‘Not bloody likely,’ she chides. ‘You’ll have to do something for yourself one day, Michael.’ She’s smiling, teasing with her lips soft and curling, but it still sours him.

‘Fine,’ he says, slouching. ‘No party, then. Christ.’

You almost roll your eyes, but it isn’t often that he suggests something like this. Something flashy. Normally, any gesture of affection he has for you is quiet, private. Tucked away just for the two of you. A big party like the one Lizzie’s thrown for Tommy is entirely new; you hadn’t meant to shoot him down so quickly. Sighing, you soften your voice and say, ‘We can have a party, baby.’ He hums. You put your hand to his face, thumb angled for his chin, but he tilts his head away in the last second.

Before you can complain, Polly catches your attention again. ‘Here, love,’ she says, ‘have some more potatoes.’ She holds the dish up for you, over the centre of the table and the glasses between.

‘Sure, thanks.’

You take the offering and when you pull the dish toward you, the bottom catches on your wine glass. It tips quickly, spilling red over the table, over you. You half expect it to shatter against the edge of your plate.

Cursing loudly, you abandon the dish into Michael’s waiting hands. ‘Sorry, fuck, sorry.’ You stand quickly and the commotion hushes every conversation that had been rolling within the room.

‘You’re meant to drink it, love,’ Arthur laughs, from whichever end he’s sat at — you’re too busy patting your napkin frantically onto the tablecloth to check.

‘God, sorry, sorry Lizzie.’ It’s stained, it’s definitely stained and ruined.

‘It’s on your dress,’ Michael comments, like you hadn’t noticed.

‘Never mind the dress,’ you snap back. ‘The sheet’s ruined.’

Tommy clears his throat. ‘Its just the tablecloth, [y/n], sit down.’

‘It’ll do more damage to your dress, love,’ Lizzie adds, sympathetically. ‘It’s alright.’

You pause, huffing slightly, then sit clumsily back into your chair. It’s always you, it seems, to stand out like this. To be un-calculated, accidental. Every Shelby is so precise, and so careful, and so in control of everything at once, somehow. Michael’s a Gray but he’s got it too, the grace. Lizzie isn’t even blood related and she holds herself the same. What is it about you? What do you lack?

‘Don’t worry,’ Michael says quietly, interrupting the thought by pouring words into your ear. ‘Don’t get yourself worked up.’

You don’t answer him, you just pout and dab at the stain on your lap. The wine’s sunk in deep already. It looks purple, not red, against the fabric.

‘Mary could help,’ he offers, after sighing at your silence. ‘She’ll be in the kitchen.’

You nod and stand, clutching the soggy napkin in your palm. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ you say to the table. Your voice only catches the attention of Polly and Finn, but no-one else challenges you when you turn to leave. It’s just another of your quirks, they must think, just something you do. They either don’t care, or didn’t see.

You hurry from the room with your ears turning hot. Michael will tell you later that you were being silly, worrying over nothing, but right now it feels mortifying. Leaving the room to see a maid about a stain. In the middle of a dinner party, no less.

When you reach the kitchen, Mary startles. Her eyes widen at the sight of you, like your presence alone means she’s done something wrong, like she’s forgotten something and you’re here to chase her up on it.

‘Don’t worry,’ you tell her, gesturing to your dress. ‘I just wanted to see if you had something for this.’

Her expression softens. The gentle folds in her face fall slack and for a moment she reminds you of your grandmother, though she never had the gall to be a gangster’s housekeeper. ‘Is it wine, miss?’

You sigh. ‘Tragically, yes.’

‘There isn’t much we can do for that.’ She hums. ‘But I’ll try, please sit.’

She gestures to the table, and the chairs which are wooden, and bare, and much plainer than the dining set upstairs. It’s welcoming in a way elegance will never be. You sigh into the seat and watch her pull bottles from various cupboards, busying herself quickly. Her dress folds as she does, creasing at her waist, comfortable enough to not restrict her movements. If only yours was like that. The dress you’re wearing is too expensive, and too tight, to be any good for anyone. Now, it isn’t even pretty.

‘Mary,’ you start, stilling her as soon as the idea strikes, lighting itself as a match would. ‘Do you have any spare uniforms?’

Her brow arches slowly, like she’s unsure of your intention and even more unsure of asking for it. ‘Miss?’

‘That I can wear,’ you explain. The thought is rolling, piling up and catching speed in your head. It makes sense really, a worker’s fit for the working woman, an apron for the spills. If the Shelbys can’t find the humour in it, you certainly will.

‘Only the ones the maids wear,’ she says.

You smile. If Michael could see you now, he’d accuse you of plotting something. He’d be right. ‘Perfect,’ you tell her, ‘that’s perfect, Mary.’

If your exit was quiet, unnoticed, then your return may as well have been an explosion. A great tremor to the room and all its inhabitants. You’re barely through the doorway before Arthur’s laugh is bursting from his chest, barking over Johnny’s head toward you. From the noise of it, the rest turn in your direction. Conversation is tossed out the window and onto the lawn. Lizzie laughs, more out of shock than anything else, Polly mutters a ‘Christ’, and you’re sure you catch Finn swallowing his beer like it’s running out. How Tommy reacts, you don’t know, you don’t look.

‘Fucking hell, woman, almost lost me drink over that,’ Johnny says, speaking before anyone else has chance to.

You reach the table and give a half-confident bow, with your gaze sitting easily on Michael. ‘Would you like a refill, mister?’ you ask falsely, twisting your voice high enough that it hardly sounds like you at all.

His eyebrows lift, eyes widening, and then they drop again, quickly, like nothing’s happened. His face hardens slightly. Then, he turns away, facing forward, and he goes very still, and very quiet, and you don’t quite know what he’s thinking. You thought he’d laugh, or at least make some snarky comment about not mingling with the help. Instead, his eyes sit on the whiskey in his hands like you aren’t even there.

‘What the hell you got that on for?’ Arthur asks, amusement in the crinkles by his eye. ‘Eh?’

You force a smile at him. ‘Thought I’d give you something to dream about, Arthur.’

There’s few snorts in response and then Tommy puts them to rest. ‘Alright, alright, sit down,’ he says, lighter than you’d expected, ‘unless you’d like to help serve pudding.’

‘If it gets me on the payslip, I’ll consider it,’ you reply, pulling your chair out to sit.

Michael doesn’t acknowledge you still. The plates are cleared, your wine glass is upright again, refilled, and then dessert is brought out. Everything in order as Lizzie’s itinerary no doubt demanded. By the time everyone’s eating again, your outfit is entirely forgotten about. There’s no comment on the plain black dress, no jokes on the white apron that pulls it tight to your waist, no awareness of it at all. You almost regret not wearing the matching hair-band, maybe if you did Michael would have had something more interesting to say.

When the other guests are suitably distracted, he finally leans into you, whispering harshly by your ear. ‘What’re you wearing?’ he asks. You don’t have to see his face to know he’s frowning.

Your eyebrows pinch, gaze on the spoonful of tart that you’re chasing around the plate. It’s very obvious that you’re wearing what the maids wear. It’s a joke, Michael, ever heard of that? ‘My dress is ruined,’ you answer. ‘I’ve left it with Mary to work on the stain.’

‘And you couldn’t find anything else to wear?’

‘No,’ you say firmly. ‘I couldn’t.’

His jaw flexes. He downs the last of his whiskey like it’s laudanum and you’re the ache. He wants to say something, you can see it, but he holds himself back. He shakes his head like he’s knocking it down, forcing it into his throat with the liquor.

After that, the pair of you eat in silence, and when Tommy invites the party to move into one of the more comfortable rooms, you stand in silence too. You let the rest of them go ahead of you. When Polly passes on her way out, she says, ‘That’s something I’d have done when I was your age,’ and even though she’s being friendly, you wish she hadn’t. The last thing you needed now, was to be told that you were acting like your boyfriend’s mother.

You follow the crowd out of the dining room with Michael behind you. Before you can get much further, he catches your wrist, tugging you back and sideways into one of the shorter hallways. It’s dimly lit, a hardly used corridor between rooms that you’d never been to, never even noticed. He sets you against the wall, careful despite the firmness of his grip, and then his hand lifts from your arm to sit flat on the wallpaper by your head.

‘Are you trying to embarrass me?’ he says sourly, words forced over sharp teeth.

You frown. ‘No? Why would I?’

‘This.’ His chin dips and lifts again, gesturing to the uniform. He isn’t sneering but it’s implied.

‘I had to wear something, Michael.’ You had no idea it would offend him so much. You hadn’t even considered that it’d upset him, embarrass him. It was a stupid joke and a way out of a wine-stained dress.

He breathes heavily through his nose. He’s close, very close. The heat coming off him is warming you too, making the skin beneath your collar sticky with sweat. He lets his gaze sink down your body, then drags it up again, slowly.

‘What’s the problem?’ you ask.

He doesn’t answer. His eyes find yours and harden, the angles of his jaw setting like he’s forcing it to. Oh. Oh, you think, oh, that’s what this is. It doesn’t offend him, he isn’t insulted. He’s embarrassed because you’ve found something out about him, you’ve brought something to the surface that he hadn’t even known himself, and you’d done it in front of his family, without warning.

You smile. It stretches slowly across your cheeks as the realisation solidifies. ‘Does this turn you on, Michael?’ you tease. ‘It that what it is?’

His eyes squint slightly but he says nothing. That’s a mistake — his silence just encourages you, dares you to push it further. You’re right. Now you know you are. You see it in the sharpness behind his expression, in the weighted breaths against your skin. In the way he steels himself before you.

‘Who would have thought?’ you purr, tilting your hips forward.

You catch the material of your dress at the waist, pinching it, so that your movement pulls the hem up your legs. His chin drops. The dress is bunched enough to reveal your thighs, just high enough to show the top seam of your stockings. With his free hand, he pushes carelessly under the apron and lifts, scrunching it by your hip to give him a better view. The air puffs out of his nose like he’s breathing manually, like if he doesn’t force it he’ll stop all together.

‘Have I embarrassed you, Mr. Gray?’ you drip, honey pouring from your mouth, sinking into him like an opiate. It’s new, but it’s easy. It comes naturally. Perhaps it’s always been like this; without you realising, without you caring. A power imbalance that you both liked.

You’re looking at his lashes when his eyes dart back to you. ‘Stop it,’ he warns. The apron falls down again, his hand pulls away from the wall. ‘Don’t.’

‘Why?’ You’re enjoying it too much to pay any attention to his order. ‘Would you prefer I call you Sir?’

He swallows. You bite down on your lip as you wait for a response, half-convinced that he’s about to storm away and leave you there. Then, slowly, slowly like he’s fighting and losing, letting it flood the cracks, letting it pull him under, he leans into you. His palm cups your cheek. His head drops to put his mouth just below your chin, angled and ready by your neck.

‘Say it again,’ he coaxes, voice rough over your throat.

Your breath shakes, quiet, fragile from your mouth. ‘Say what, sir?’

He exhales sharply but it catches, and for a moment it sounds like he’s growled. Your Michael, growling, with his breath hot and heavy against you. If you took drugs, this would be yours, this would be your fix. You run your hand up his side, under the jacket and over the waistcoat.

‘Do you like it, sir?’ you ask.

‘Fuck.’ The words drags out of him, scrapes through his teeth like he hasn’t realised. ‘Bring it home,’ he says, pulling his face up to look at you. He looks serious, so serious, and so desperate that it should be ridiculous.

‘What?’

‘The dress,’ he answers tightly, ‘the outfit. Bring it home with you.’

You’ve won. Somehow, you’ve won. You’d put on a uniform you had no right to wear, and now Michael was begging for you to bring it home. Desperate to have you like this, again, just for him. And you would, of course you would, you’d be an idiot to deny him something like that. To deny something so mutually beneficial. You’d get your dress back from Mary, and thank her kindly, and then take the maid’s clothes home without saying anything else. But, that was no fun now, that didn’t see to the ache that had started to build between your legs. That didn’t feed the hunger. You had Michael alone, in a darkened corridor, needy and tightroping between disciplines, teetering on the edge of his restraint. That’s too rare, too good to lose. You won’t let it end yet.

Instead, you pout your bottom lip and say, ‘Don’t you want me now? Did I do something wrong, sir?’

He groans, eyes rolling to the ceiling.

You’re impatient so, tiring of the gap, you pull him forward so that your hips are together. He’s hard, you realise, taut against his trousers. You’ve barely touched him and already he wants you, his body craves the way yours does. ‘Kiss me,’ you say messily, quickly, forgetting all about the persona you’d adopted. ‘Kiss me, Mikey.’

‘Hm?’ he hums, putting his other hand to your face, holding you still as he settles his attention on you again. He pushes back until your spine is straightened along the wall. ‘What was that?’

The slip in character hadn’t gone unnoticed. It’d broken the tension enough to give him the upper hand, to finally let him make his play.

‘You don’t talk to me like that,’ he says. ‘Do you?’ The words pour out of him thickly, whiskey and languid control melting across your cheeks, over your lips.

‘Sorry, sir,’ you reply.

Now, it was your own breath that came stiffly, unwilling to move of its own accord. Your chest rises against his because you tell it to. The pressure from his crotch grows, firm and wanting against the dip in your hip.

His tongue runs between his lips once. He’s following your expression carefully, noting each shift, each hesitation. He can see you’re cracking, you’re sure of that. The look he has is the look of a man who’s already won. One that has want he wants, but enjoys the sport of taking it. He puts his nose to the hair by your ear and breathes in deeply, sending goosebumps along your skin. ‘Ask properly,’ he says, his voice low, rumbling.

You swallow quickly. You’re flushing hot. There’s fire in you, flames curling and rising, pulling upwards from your thighs, your stomach, swallowing your heart before it can stutter a beat. ‘Please,’ you start, ‘please kiss me, sir.’

‘Better.’

His eyelids flutter once, as he looks to your lips, and then he’s kissing you. Hard. Harder than he has for a while.

Your hands go to his wrists, hanging onto him as he holds you, as he kisses you into the wall, into the house, through the brickwork and into Elysium. You moan against him and he pushes his tongue into your mouth, wanting more. Needing more.

‘Not a sound,’ he pants as he pulls away. His grip on your face disappears and then his hands are on your thighs, roughly, desperately. His palms settle behind your knees and tug them up, lifting your legs off the ground and putting them around his waist instead. He takes your weight like it’s nothing; uses his hips and his own body against you to keep you upright, between him and the wall. ‘Not a fucking sound, right?’

You nod, frantic, already reaching for him again, already pushing your mouth to his for the taste. For the whiskey. For the heat and the need, and the tongue between your teeth, for his cock, hard and ready against the softest part of you.

He pushes the dress up abruptly, piling it and the apron over your stomach. ‘I want to hear you say it,’ he breathes, forcing it between kisses. ‘Say you’ll keep quiet.’ His touch is searing, alight with something so untapped, it’s raw. Primal.

‘I’ll be quiet, sir,’ you answer pliantly. Willingly. He could ask anything of you now and you’d give it to him, you’d bleed it into his palm like molten silver. ‘Please fuck me,’ you beg. ‘Please, sir.’

He growls again and this time it’s on purpose. His face buries into your neck, into the base of your throat. He kisses the skin hungrily, wet and biting, lustful. He takes you and you let him, you invite him to, because you always have wanted it, the imbalance. The game was fake but the power is real, the submission is honest. Cultivated. It was him over you, always, and you liked that. You wanted that more than anything and now you had it, scorching between your fingers. Burning you into the wallpaper.

You moan; his hand goes to your mouth firmly, flat palm against your lips. An order without words. Quiet, he says, stay quiet. All you have to do is oblige.

#michael x reader #michael gray x reader #Michael Gray imagine #michael gray #peaky blinders fanfic #RIGHTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I WAS A BIT CHEEKY WITH THIS ONE #me writing cock one single time: im a smut writer now #let me know what you htink!!!!

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tinysidestrashcaptain · 4 years ago

Text

It's Only Logical - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: The Big Day

First chapter Previous Chapter

Pairings: Logicality/Prinxiety

Warnings: None, this is all fluff!

Virgil’s eyes scanned the jeweler's case with an increasing sense of frantic paranoia. The wedding was literally two days away, and Logan had physically dragged him from his house to finally find Roman’s wedding ring. Perhaps the notion that he could find the perfect ring was one he should have deleted from his brain around jewelry store number three, but he really hadn’t expected it to be this difficult to find a damn ring! And he hadn’t MEANT to put it off this long, LOGAN, but nothing that he saw was really right.

“There are literally ten rings that Roman would wear right in this first row, Virgil. You’re getting married in 48 hours, and you can’t do that without a ring, or so I have been told.” Logan arched a brow at Virgil, who shot him a frustrated glare.

“It can’t be just ANY ring! I need a ring that’s at least as good as the one currently sitting on my left hand!” Virgil held out the hand in question, the ring of red and black melding together in a perfect mix of himself and Roman. “Standard diamonds and gold just aren’t going to cut it here.”

Just as Virgil was about to write it off as yet another failure and melt into a small puddle of panic, Logan spotted a ring in the back of a small case. It was black with a twisting motif of purple, Virgil’s favorite color. “What about that one?”

The ring that Roman had given him sat heavy on Virgil’s finger, and he looked closer at that one ring. It was...him. It would be his favorite color on Roman’s finger, for always. “Excuse me, can I see this one, please?”

“Of course, sir.” The jeweler smiled as she opened the case and pulled the black and purple ring out for Virgil to inspect. As he turned it over in his hands, he thought about how it would look on Roman, about how this flash of dark and color would gleam against tanned skin.

“I’ll take it.” Virgil’s soft smile melted into a put upon scowl as Logan heaved a great sigh of relief. “What?!? It had to be perfect!”

“I’m just relieved that perfection actually exists. What kind of best man would I be if I let you face your future husband without a wedding ring? You’d be dead before you were married.” Logan grinned as Virgil playfully smacked him.

“Yeah, yeah, you saved the day. Now let me pay for this so I can finally check the one thing I’m responsible for in this wedding off my list.” Virgil handed over his credit card with no regrets, taking the small bag from the jeweler with a grateful smile.

“That’s not true, Virgil. You’re also responsible for showing up.” Logan followed him out of the shop, giving the amused jeweler a friendly wave goodbye.

“Nah, that’s what you’re responsible for.” Virgil winked at him as he got into Logan’s car.

“Oh, so I have to add “wrangle Virgil” to my list of matrimonial duties? Thought you were looking forward to this.” Logan laughed as he started the car and drove them towards the cafe.

“Oh, I am. Probably not as much as Roman, if the sobbing over his wedding binder last night was anything to go by.” Virgil shook his head fondly at the memory. “I don’t know, I just don’t see the point of all the fuss, you know? We love each other. We’re in this for life, until we’re old and wrinkly and gray. That’s the headline here, everything else is just window dressing.”

“Don’t let Roman hear you say that! He’s worked very hard on this wedding and it means a great deal to him.” Logan shot Virgil a warning look, arching a brow as his best friend put both hands in the air like he was surrendering.

“I know, and that’s the only reason it matters to me at all. You know me, I hate all the attention, but Roman wants this. He’s been dreaming of this, and I want to give him that one perfect day, you know?” He looked out the window, face flushing at the admission.

“Yeah, I know. Why do you think I agreed to turn Roman’s backyard into his dream garden? Roman wanted to get married at his house, where we all had so many good memories with us and Mom, and I couldn’t say no even if I’d wanted to.”

“His puppy dog eyes should be classified as a lethal weapon, I’m telling you!”

“Oh, his have nothing on Patton’s, let me assure you. Seems to be a family trait.” Logan chuckled as he remembered the way Patton and Thomas had ganged up on him last week. “And Thomas isn’t far behind. I truly stand no chance.”

“Wow, two Sanders Puppy Dog eyes at once? You are well and truly fucked, Lo. There is no escape.” Virgil gave his arm a sympathetic pat as they parked. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the rehearsal dinner. You're still good with all of us crashing at your house for it, right?”

“It’s not like I don’t have the room, Virgil. Go, have fun. Enjoy your last night as singles together, since Roman already asked me to have a guest room made up for you so you won’t see him before the wedding.” Logan laughed as Virgil groaned loudly in protest and threw his head back against the seat.

“Great. Can’t wait. I’ll see you tomorrow, Lo….and….thanks. For everything, you know?”

“You don’t ever have to thank me. We’re family, this is what we do for each other.” Logan’s face softened at his best friend’s quiet words, and he knew why Virgil had said it. Not many people would have given or done as much as he had, and his best friend hadn’t had the easiest life growing up. Of course he’d feel the need to express gratitude, even if it was totally unnecessary. “...Did you ever decide? About your mother?”

Virgil froze, his whole face shuttering like a switch had been flipped. “Yup. Not changing my mind. She may have given birth to me, but she isn’t my mother. My mom is buried out in the cemetery, and my brother is my best man. I don’t need any other family than that.”

Logan felt sentimental tears sting his eyes at that, and he blinked rapidly to keep them at bay. “Alright then. Your family will be right there with you, every step of the way. For what it’s worth, Mom would have been very proud of you. She always thought you and Roman would make a good couple, so she’s probably giggling into her tea right now.”

“Goddammit, why did EVERYONE figure us out before we did?!?” Virgil shook his head as he got out of the car, leaning down to meet Logan’s eyes. “She would have loved all this. Like to think she’s still watching, you know?”

“She is, Virgil. And she’ll definitely be watching on the big day.” He watched Virgil nod once before closing the door and heading into the house, leaving his purchase with Logan for safekeeping until the ceremony.

__________________________________________

It was a perfect day for it, tailor made with candy blue skies and balmy air scented with flowers. Everything that Logan had planted with Patton and Virgil’s help was blooming in an explosion of shapes and colors. There were white chairs set on the lawn, and a shimmery drape of fabric tied with bunches of fresh flowers marked the aisle that Roman would walk down.

Patton turned away from the window, smiling as he watched his mother and sister fuss over Roman’s gown. It was a stunning dress, an elaborate white ball gown with beading and a train, dyed red just at the bottom. Roman had foregone a veil in favor of fresh flowers woven into his hair, and Val had done his makeup in red and gold with lashes that made his eyes look stunning. His brother looked beautiful today, and he could feel himself getting a little misty. “You look incredible, Ro.”

“Damn straight he does! God, I wish I had your cheekbones.” Val giggled as she applied just a touch more highlight before stepping away to let Roman inspect her work. “Virgil is going to absolutely die. I can’t wait.”

“Oh honey, there is nothing straight about today! But I do look spectacular, if I do say so myself.” Roman laughed before giving Valerie a fond hug. “Thank you, menace.”

“You’re welcome, brat.” Val mumbled, blinking back some tears.

“You always were a queen, sweetheart. Today you just look the part.” Lydia grinned as her children laughed, then gently reached out to take Roman’s hand. She placed a beautiful bracelet of sapphires and diamonds on Roman’s wrist, fiddling with the clasp until it sat just right. “Logan asked me to give you something today. Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, isn’t that the old saying? He said it was his mother’s set, so now you’ve got the borrowed, blue and old all in one.”

Roman took a deep, shuddering breath, one hand gently tracing over the bracelet with shaking fingers. “I wish you could have spent more time with Minny, mom.”

“I do, too, sweetheart. She was a special woman, and it’s so sweet of Logan to think of this. And all the work he did to put this together just how you wanted? You’d better say thank you.” Lydia smiled as she straightened Roman’s train, fluffing it a little. “And Patton, you’d better hang on to him.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, I intend to.” Patton laughed as he gave Roman a hug. “Now, you ready to get out there and wow the crowd?”

“Aren’t I always?” Roman laughed as he took his bouquet from Val, straightening his shoulders. He knew it wasn’t traditional for a man to wear the dress, but he’d always wanted a gown and his family and future husband were more than supportive. He felt beautiful, regal even, and he couldn’t wait to see Virgil’s face.

Out on the lawn, just underneath an arch that was decorated with red roses and purple wisteria, Virgil fidgeted as Logan straightened his tie for him. “Not getting the jitters, are you, Virge?”

Virgil smiled at him and shook his head. “I’m not nervous anymore, not even a little jump in my belly, Lo. He’s a good man.”

“Yes, he is. A very good one.”

“I made him wait for so long. Years, when you think about it.” He let out a laughing breath as the music struck up. “Time’s up.”

Logan chuckled and took his place by Virgil’s side, feeling his heart absolutely melt at the sight of little Lily toddling carefully down the aisle in her dress, tossing flower petals, then little Thomas in his suit carrying the rings. He gave Thomas a thumbs up before taking the ring boxes with a smile. Patton entered next, his blue eyes alight with joy as he took his place opposite Virgil, Logan and Thomas, gently holding Lily’s hand.

It was sweet, watching Roman walk down the aisle to Virgil. Watching Virgil’s face light up in awed delight at the sight of his future husband. The ceremony was perfect, soft and lovely with a gentle breeze wafting the perfume of the floral blooms through the air. They had wanted to get married in the garden they would tend, in the home they would live in together, and it struck Logan as a perfectly romantic setting.

Virgil’s vows were earnest and heartfelt, prompting Roman to blink rapidly and fan himself to avoid crying. Roman’s own vows were poetic but heart wrenchingly honest, and Virgil kissed his hand after they exchanged rings. It was perfect, Virgil looking handsome in his suit, Roman looking flawless in his gown, and the crowd broke into spontaneous applause when Virgil swept his husband off his feet and twirled him around before kissing him. Barbara topped off the ceremony by popping the first bottle of champagne to toast the happy couple.

“You do good work, sweetheart.” Patton said as he clinked a champagne glass against Logan’s.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“It’s like a family tree. They two of them sprung from a branch on your tree. You aren’t family by blood but it amounts to the same, really. It’s their connection to you that brought them together. They did the rest, but the connection started it,” Patton said softly, watching his brother beam from Virgil’s arms as the photographer snapped pictures.

“That’s a sweet thought. I’ll take it.” Logan sipped his champagne and blinked back the sting of sentimental tears. He’d been mentally wrestling with his own thoughts and feelings lately, and watching the joy on his best friend’s face today was settling his heart into the comfortable acceptance that this was something he might just want for himself. “I wanted to talk to you about something, actually. It can wait until after Roman has his big day. By rights, a wedding day should belong to the bride, after all.”

“Oh? What did you want to talk about?”

“Let’s just say it’s about connections.” Logan gave Patton’s cheek a fond kiss. “I need to run back to the house really quickly. With all the excitement today, I forgot the very special bottle of champagne I had for the bride and groom.”

“I can go get it,” Patton offered, running one hand down Logan’s back with a smile.

“It’ll be faster if I do it. Fifteen minutes, tops.”

As he walked to his car, he was stopped when Barbara called out to him. “Hey, Logan! Hold up!” She paused by Logan, slightly breathless with a crying Lily in her arms. “I’ve got a cranky little girl here who won’t go down for her nap. Car rides always put her out. We can take mine, it has the car seat?”

“Sure. It’s going to be a quick run, though.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. She’ll be out like a light in a minute.” Barbara gave him a grateful smile as she expertly wrestled Lily into her car seat and started towards Logan’s house. As advertised, the baby’s head started to droop and she quieted before they even got out of Roman’s driveway.

“Works like a charm.”

“From what Patton tells me, it does the same for Thomas, too. She looks so sweet in her little pink party dress.”

“Everything looked so beautiful today! If Shir and I ever renew our vows, I want it to be just like that. Flowers, family and friends. I always thought I’d want a big church extravaganza, but this was so romantic.” Barbara said softly, smiling as she drove.

“It was just perfect for them. So nice to--wait. Slow down! Stop the car!”

“What? What’s the---oh my god!”

They both stared towards Minny’s Garden. Logan had closed for the day to allow everyone to enjoy the wedding. But someone, he could see, had been there. Someone still was. Several of the outdoor displays were overturned, and a car was parked sideways on the grounds, crushing one of the flower beds.

“Go. You and the baby, get back to Roman’s right now.” Logan said, reaching for the door handle. “Call the police as soon as you get there.”

“Don’t! Don’t go in there right now.” Barbara gave him a horrified look.

“It’s my place.” And he was already running.

A/N: Okay, here we are. This is the second to last chapter, and I'm so sorry I made you all wait this long. I hope the ending lives up to everyone's hopes. I'm sorry to say that I lost my tag list, so I apologize to everyone who was on it. :'( Also, there is no difference between this version, the Wattpad, and the Ao3 versions for this chapter and the next.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #logicality #prinxiety #it's only logical #iol fic

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hb-writes · 4 years ago

Text

The Audit

Summary: It’s 1924 in the Little Lady Blinder universe. Clara and Finn make their annual visit to their mother’s grave.

Inspired-ish by this request: Also do the family celebrate her mums birthday? I think it would be a nice occasion where they celebrate her birthday and it’s nice for the twins especially whilst the boys are away polly makes a thing of it. ( I know nothing like this happens on the show, but I think they should) xxx

AN: So while I don’t think the family would celebrate her birthday, and actually find it painful to talk about her most times, I could see Finn and Clara sharing a little tradition like I’ve written about below. It’s not quite what you’ve asked for, but I hope you still like it!

Featuring: Finn Shelby, Clara Shelby (Shelby!Sister), Shelby!Mother

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Clara’s mind was settled on approximately seven things aside from the path she walked along, paying more mind to the questions in her head than the cobblestones at her feet. Truth was Clara had little need to pay attention to where she was going. She was far more familiar with the cemetery and it’s surrounding landscape than she was comfortable with, having buried far too many in her relatively short life.

“You’re late.”

Finn flicked his cigarette away, startling his sister as she glanced up from the pavement. He pushed off the pillar he’d been leaning up against, the entrance a sad excuse for a welcome, composed of no more than two crumbling stone columns and a rusted wrought iron gate.

Clara pulled her coat tighter, frowning as she stepped closer to her brother. “Tommy came back early, said he wanted me to go through some things with him before the… I suppose it doesn’t…” Clara took a breath and met Finn’s eye. “I’m sorry.”

Finn shook his head, closing the remaining distance to pull her into a hug, his chin easily fitting over the top of her head. They hadn’t seen each other for a stretch of time, both of them overly occupied by the vastly different bits of life that customarily kept them apart, the Blinder duties and generally reckless adventures for Finn, and the Shelby Company Ltd. duties, and school, and family business for Clara. It was the recklessness that usually brought them together, the pair accustomed to passing at least a few evenings a week up to nothing particularly good. But with half the family locked away, they’d all had to step up. While Finn found getting up to nonsense revitalizing, Clara had been too busy for it, and far too tired aside.

“Don’t worry about it,” he offered, settling his arm around her shoulder as they walked the familiar route from the entrance to their mother’s grave. “At least it’s not raining again this year.”

Clara allowed herself a light snort, conceded a small smile as she leaned into her brother because there’d been more rainy cemetery visits over the years than not. Clara knew her brother didn’t care for the annual trip quite as much as he used to, had an inkling that he found it a bit asinine now compared to when they were kids, just a couple of orphans grasping onto a handful of wispy memories of a woman they knew very little about. That described them even still.

If Clara was being honest, she found it all a bit silly too, but the ‘do we or do we not?’ of the occasion was never a discussion between them. The only discourse they ever had on the subject, always initiated by Finn about a week ahead out of custom, was in establishing a time they’d both be available on her birthday.

It had been nearly ten years now that the twins had been coming to their mother’s grave and although they’d never told the others, never asked for a sibling’s accompaniment or gave a hint as to what they were both doing sneaking off on their mother’s birthday, Clara had a feeling they all somehow knew.

It was why when not an hour before, as she grew antsy, repeatedly shaking out her wrist to check the time while she sat perched on the edge of Tommy’s desk, something shifted in him. Tommy simply asked his questions about the books and let her go, wordlessly accepting her answer of ‘out with Finn. He’ll bring me home’ when he asked where she was heading off to.

Visiting their mother’s grave usually felt a bit like ringing in a new year but with less of the flair and celebration. Maybe an annual audit was a more apt description, seeing as Clara and Finn kept a ledger, a nondescript notebook stashed in the nightstand of Clara’s bedroom at the Watery Lane house, accessible to them both, though Clara would argue that Finn had more access to the archive now than she did, being as he stayed over on the lane much more often.

Still, neither of them was likely to touch the book between visits to the cemetery, more likely was it that the ledger passed their minds only in the week or so before their mother’s birthday, and even then, neither of them was apt to do more than think on what they’d be marking down, mentally preparing themselves for the occasion, ensuring things went smoothly.

The book came with rules, a certain etiquette that went unspoken between the two of them from conception to practice. The implicit secrecy of the whole thing, and the way they constricted their documentation to a particular day and place had been precedents set from the start. They’d only write while at the cemetery, while in their mother’s supposed presence, and there were limits on what was documented, the format decided nearly a decade prior, each of the entries nearly identical in configuration though the content varied.

Finn and Clara recorded what happened in the preceding year, took an audit between the two of them of anything new they learned about the woman, and made a few promises to themselves and each other, intentions expressed just between the two of them. The words held no true pressure for realization, just an assurance of support from the other in the case they chose to move forward.

This year felt different to them both as they’d prepared though, a bit forlorn and detached and impossible, what with Arthur and John and Michael and Polly locked away, and Ada in America, and Esme and Linda barely speaking with the lot of them, allowing the twins a bit of connection for little more than the sake of the babies, and on the order of their husbands.

Clara had, on a fair few occasions, pondered what their mother would think of their situation, of Arthur and John locked away, of Clara feeling a bit that way herself while her twin brother was left to flounder, feeling lost and redundant as Tommy did what he did, all of his moves in the name of the family he’d allowed to take the punishment for his sins, and all while Ada played at being a neutral party from a continent away.

They went through the motions without discussions, Finn helping Clara to settle the blanket she always brought and taking a sip from the thermos of nearly cold tea while she found the pen and the appropriate page.

“Shall we review?” Clara asked, glancing at the page as she marked the year at the top in bold loopy script, 1924.

Finn took his time with another sip, prolonging the silence with an exhale and with the pen held still against the page Clara trembled, taking no care to pretend that it was only from the cold.

“She’d be ashamed,” Finn finally said and though Clara nodded, she wasn’t entirely sure of what her brother meant. There was far too much she could be ashamed of.

Would she be ashamed that her sons and sister-in-law and nephew were criminals of the worst sort? Murderers?

Would she be ashamed that her once sweet, doting Thomas had ordered it all and let the others take the blame?

Would she be ashamed of the twins? Of their lack of action in the face of the others’ plight?

Despite wanting to fight Finn, despite wanting to say that they didn’t know their mother well enough to say how she would feel, or that they didn’t know Tommy’s plans well enough to decide either way, Clara knew Finn was a bit right, so she swallowed her retort. No mother would wish this for her children, or at least, Clara liked to think that their mother would never wish for this.

And anyway, Clara often questioned those very things herself, pondered if she had put up enough of a fight to Tommy, analyzed at length whether she and Finn and Ada had been too forgiving of it all, but then she thought what choice did they have? Tommy was all they had now, and even if Polly hadn’t been locked away in Winson Green or Ada hadn’t gone off to Boston, Clara didn’t know if she was capable of not forgiving her brother.

She hoped a certain part of her mother would be proud of her, proud of the advanced education she’d received, proud of Clara’s love of stories, and content with the kindness and loyalty she showed to her family, despite it all.

Clara took a sip of the tea, grimacing as the cool liquid hit her tongue.

“Did you learn anything new?” she asked.

Clara hadn’t. The information about their mother, the little anecdotes, usually came so organically, in moments when one of the twins reminded a sibling of some long forgotten trait of hers or when someone was feeling just the right bit of nostalgic, but it had been a busy year, filled with the death and misery and arrests, and very little else.

Finn’s answer came with the slight shake of his head and Clara felt the same difficult swallow as her brother, her eyes growing wet though she’d told herself she wouldn’t allow it. She’d be strong for Finn today, and for Tommy and Ada and John and Arthur, too.

Clara took care as she set the thermos down, a small whimper breaking when Finn took her hand. “She’d be proud of you though.”

Clara coughed and cleared her throat.

“Proud of us,” she said, meeting his gaze.

Something in Finn’s face shifted though he kept his hold on both her hand and her eyes. Clara knew Finn didn’t truly believe it. The sentiment barely registered with him, and she knew that her brother thought that if he had just run a bit quicker, or shouted a bit louder, he could have saved Arthur and John from the current reality. She knew it because despite everything, she similarly held onto the imprisonments, John’s and Arthur’s and Michael’s, like they were her own, like she’d been the one to put them in the cell even if she’d been innocent aside from serving as a bit of fuel to the fire.

Clara put a dash beside the spot she’d designated for the new information and jotted out a few lines below.

“I think this covers the updates.” Clara turned the book towards Finn. “Is there anything...?”

Finn shook his head as he glanced at the information she’d inputted, the neutral bullet points that described the past 365 days honest enough though they were far from agreeable.

“Goals?” Clara asked.

Finn scoffed as she said it and fished out his pack of cigarettes. “You mind?”

Clara shook her head, watching as he lit the cigarette and took a long draw from it, scoffing again as he looked at her.

“You know what I wish for?” Finn said, using his cigarette to point at her the same way Tommy often did. “What I long for?”

Clara shook her head.

“Nineteen fucking fourteen,” he said.

Clara felt a shiver run up her spine at the thought. 1914. Things had been simpler then, lighter, but Clara only remembered 1914, and the tenderly memorialized years that care before it, like mere glimpses of a distant life. She remembered bedtime stories and the one-off moments that had frightened or surprised or somehow otherwise wormed inside her psyche but she’d not give up the decade between just to go back.

“I’ll just take having everyone home,” Clara answered.

“That all?” Finn asked, shaking his head at her. “Can’t believe it would be. I imagine you’re wanting highest marks and employee of the month and a new horse an--”

“That’s what’s most important,” Clara answered, nodding a few times to settle it in her mind. “Fuck the marks and Tommy’s accounting ledgers. I’d just like them all home.”

Finn smiled. “And I’d like for them to take us seriously for once,” he said. “It’s only Esme who ever really listens.”

“Yeah, cause she’s not an idiot,” Clara said. “And cause she’s nearly the youngest in her own family. She knows what a shit hand it is.”

“Ah, well, I wouldn’t know much about that,” Finn said. “It’s you who’s the baby.”

Clara shook her head, a smile on her face despite the words she offered. “Fuck off, Finn.”

Finn smirked at his sister. “Come now, Clara. We’re sitting on mum’s grave, on her birthday of all days, and you’ve gone and cursed twice in less than a minute. What’ll she think of us?”

“It’s been quite a fucking year, Finn. I think she’ll understand.”

“Yeah,” he echoed. “Quite a fucking year.”

Finn watched, quiet as his sister etched two words into the bottom of the page, the twins’ wishes for the next year summed up with two simple words, home and respect.

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