#I will be doing just as much as I'm able this time

[lovesickchoi]

📁 FILE 01: CHOI SOOBIN

⋆·˚ ༘ * After a missed anniversary and weeks spent out of sync, Soobin just wants to be close to you again—really close. No rush, no performance. Just you, him, and the quiet reminder that you still belong to each other.

✦ Love Language: Quality Time

pairing: soobin x reader ✮⋆˙✐ 3.8k

warnings: smut, f!reader, no protection, soft dom!soobin, sub!reader, cock warming, slight oral f!rec, praise, romance, no protection, finishing inside

🗂️ click to access all txt member’s files

˚₊ · »-♡→ main masterlist

The apartment is quiet when you finally come home.

Way too quiet.

The kind of quiet that makes your chest feel heavier than your bag slung over your shoulder, heavier than the late hour blinking back at you on the microwave clock.

Stepping inside, you make sure to lock the door behind you. You take off your shoes, drop your keys into the bowl, and glance toward the couch.

He’s sitting there, asleep—just barely. Half curled into the throw blanket, one arm slung over the back of the couch like he was waiting for you but gave up halfway through.

You stand there longer than you intend to, just wanting to watch him for a moment. He stirs before you can say anything, lashes fluttering, voice groggy.

"You're late again..." Soobin grumbles. It wasn't accusatory, just worn thin.

You give him a small apologetic smile. "I know, I'm sorry. I didn't even get a lunch break today."

Soobin nods and tries to smile back, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He looks toward the TV, and the silence stretches on longer than you'd like. With Soobin's recent comeback promotions and your new late-night shifts at the office, quality time together was few and far between.

Even when you managed to spend time together, it was never just the two of you. There were always friends around, always the other members. Never a moment that felt truly yours—never a chance to just be alone with Soobin.

And still, he loved you with a quiet kind of devotion. Soobin would wait up long past midnight just for the quiet privilege of walking you to bed. Even the smallest moment alone with you was worth losing sleep over.

You were so used to running—meeting quotas, ticking boxes, always being on—that you hadn’t noticed how little of yourself you’d given him lately. Not your stories, not your softness. Not your time.

And apparently not even your memory for important days, like today.

You realize it the moment your eyes flick toward the calendar on the fridge. The date. Your heart sinks.

"Shit," you breathe. "Our anniversary..."

Soobin doesn’t even flinch. He just watches you quietly, eyes soft but ridden with exhaustion.

Your own eyes shift down to the uneaten container of food and unopened bottle of wine on the kitchen table—he waited to eat.

"You didn't have to wait."

He responds quickly. "I wanted to." Soobin doesn't say for you, but it's written all over his face. He'd do anything to savor a moment with you.

"I am so sorry, Binnie," you're barely able to get out. "I care about you so much. I would never..."

You feel a twist of guilt settle in your stomach, but he doesn’t pile on. Nor does he guilt you. That’s not who Soobin is.

“You didn’t forget because you don’t care,” he says softly. “I know you. You just… never forget things like that. I know how overwhelmed you've been.”

Soobin doesn’t say more. He just lifts the blanket, a wordless invitation smoothed between the wrinkles in the couch cushions. When you lie down beside him, it’s quiet again. The kind that’s warm this time—full of unspoken things and shared breath. His arms curl around you instinctively. He presses his face into your neck like he’s been holding in the need to feel you all week.

"I hate this," he breathes out, almost like he's embarrassed to say it. "Hate only seeing you like this."

You swallow hard, because you feel it too. You've never been good at this. Never been good at showing Soobin just how close you want—no, need—to be near him.

You try to apologize. To say something, anything about work. About your stupid boss, the lack of breaks, the lack of appreciation, the unpaid overtime.

And he lets you ramble on. Because this is his favorite thing in the entire world—hearing your sweet voice talking about your day, getting to hold you while you do it. His eyes are sparkling and trained on your face, attention undivided as you vent. Soobin's heart thunders beneath his rib cage.

You’re halfway through telling him all the messy details—words spilling too fast, casual but unfocused, like you’re trying to outrun your own exhaustion. There’s a thin sheen of energy in your voice, but it’s cracked at the edges. You yawn mid-sentence, barely stifling it behind the back of your hand.

Soobin notices the way you press on like you aren't seconds from collapsing. He always does.

You brush it off like you usually do, reaching for a water bottle on the coffee table, already moving on to the next thought. But before you can, Soobin gently lays his hand over yours.

“You’re tired.”

You blink at him. “I’m fine.”

“You come home and talk like you haven’t breathed in hours," he chuckles through a sigh. There’s no judgment in his voice, just a quiet hurt.

That makes you stop. Not because you disagree, but because he said it like he’s been holding it in for too long. You never really knew how to be present with him. Even in times like this, when you knew he needed it most.

He sits up straight, shifting his body to face you fully. His hand doesn’t leave yours.

“I know you don’t like stopping. I know being tired makes you feel like you’re falling behind. But I promise it's okay to slow down once in a while.”

"Binnie..." Your voice trails off.

“You didn’t forget on purpose,” he says again, because he needs you to believe it. “But I still need you. I still want today to matter. Even if it’s just here, like this.”

His voice dips, eyes searching yours. "I know we've both been working a lot. But to be honest, this has been really killing me. Can't we just take our time tonight?"

And then he’s pulling you in—slowly, gently—his arms around you. The kind of embrace that doesn’t demand anything, only offers.

You don’t fight it, don't say anything. You just let yourself sink into his chest, right into the warmth of him. It’s the only place where you don’t have to be composed or efficient or fine. You just needed to be his.

His hand slides up your back. “Just… be here,” he murmurs into your hair. “For a little while.”

And for once, you let yourself stay still. His lips brush the crown of your head, barely there.

You feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against your cheek, the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath your palm. He doesn’t rush you. But when you tilt your head up to look at him, his eyes are already on you. Warm and desperate. It’s not lust, not at first. It’s pure longing.

He cups your cheek, his thumb brushing beneath your eye like he’s trying to memorize you. You can’t help but lean into his angelic touch. Then his mouth is on yours. A slow and needy kiss that says I’ve missed you, stay forever.

You can feel the tension in his body, the way he holds back even as his fingers slip under your shirt, testing you, as if he’s asking for permission with every touch.

You give it with ease.

When you shift into his lap, straddling him, wrapping your arms around his neck, the ache of it all hits him.

Soobin holds you like he’s scared you’ll disappear again. His tongue is pressed between your lips, scaling every inch of your mouth that it can reach. An exasperated moan leaves you in a low sigh, and he swallows it down greedily. You unravel against one another, piece by piece.

The growing tightness in Soobin's pants presses firmly against you. You were beginning to throb for him and his attention alone. No distractions or distance, just this—focused and intentional.

Even though your lips moved unhurriedly, you have to pull away for air. But he doesn't let you escape so easily, keeping his forehead pressed firm against your own.

Soobin wants your attention on nothing but him tonight, that’s a promise he kept for himself. Before your mind can race, he's rubbing circles with his thumb over your leggings, stealing your mind away from stress and thoughts of work, locking them away where they’d be forced to put Soobin at the forefront.

Your leggings, usually an inconvenient barrier, were completely soaked through to the skin. It left Soobin no problem in rubbing every sensitive spot you yearned for him to reach.

A shaky breath leaves your lips. "Fuck, been needing you so bad. Been so stressed out." His eyes are trained on the outline of your folds, your cunt basically sucking in the soaked fabric and begging for his finger to follow suit. He wondered just how well you would suck his cock in if you were dripping and swelling like this already.

He groans loudly without remiss, throaty and strained, head dropping against your shoulder in self-control.

He continues to rub you lovingly, tearing his gaze from between your thighs to your face, smiling at the blush blooming across your nose and cheeks. His eyes flood with warmth when he speaks. "I want to do something."

“I’ll do anything,” you answer to him like you always have. Your time, your mind, your soul—he’s always had access to all of it, whenever he wanted.

Soobin’s smile spreads wide across his face, unable to contain it. His hands grip your hips before slipping beneath your shirt, slowly lifting it over your head with care.

Your breath catches. He looks almost shy when he speaks again.

“Can I just… stay inside you tonight?” His voice is hushed and reverent. “I don’t want to rush. I just—want to be close.”

A nod is all you need to deliver him. His hands are gripping just beneath your ass, standing up from the couch as he holds you. Your legs lock around his waist, keeping him close amidst the trek to your shared bedroom.

You noticed how deliberate Soobin was tonight—every step he took toward the bed felt endless. And when he finally lays you down against the soft cotton sheets, it’s like the world exhales. For the first time in a long time, you feel breathtakingly alive.

His movements flow into each other, rewriting time just to make this moment last longer. The only moment he disconnects himself from you his to peel off his own t-shirt. Your clothes are stripped from your body as well, more carefully than ever. Tender fingers work at the hem of your leggings, dragging them down your goose-bump ridden skin.

Soobin's lips are the only things moving quickly, wanting to feel your warm skin against them. He's kissing a trail across your chest, down your stomach, breath sucking in at the laced panties staring back at him.

The black material is sticky, soaked, and completely lost between your folds. Your head rested gently against a pillow slightly cocked to the side, peering down at him through hooded eyelids. He was so beautiful. All the time in the world belonged to you two.

"Mm, fuck baby," you're already whining out. Fuck these new schedules. Fuck your late nights. This is what you've both been denied for too long.

Large hands splayed across the curvature of your hips, gripping the flesh and securing you in place. Between your legs, he helped himself to one long, and slow drag of his tongue up your cunt. He breathed you in, fabric and all, with greed. It felt like a reward for the time he'd spent patiently craving for your presence.

Tender teeth got hold of your panties, dragging them halfway down your legs. A chill shoots up through you, his teeth grazing your inner thigh just enough. Soobin's fingers took over, sliding the material the rest of the way off.

One more lewd kiss against your cunt, this one hard and claiming, and he's up on his knees removing his sweatpants and underwear just as painfully slow. You'd never felt so prepared for Soobin in your entire relationship. Thighs and sheets stained with splotches of your sweet arousal, out of control.

Now fully undressed and erect against his toned stomach, Soobin takes his place next to you on the bed. He's propped up, back against the headboard, looking at you expectantly.

"Come here," his voice is so careful as he pats his lap. His voice holds the kind of care reserved for precious things.

You swing a leg over his waist with his help, straddling him where he sits. Soobin is silent, but his face says everything. His chin pressed to his chest as he looks between your legs, lips drawn rough between his teeth.

He keeps his hands at your waistline, lifting his hips just enough to align himself with your sopping entrance. You both hiss softly as the head of his cock slides against your folds, hot and thick. But he doesn’t push in just yet. He’s waiting for you again, asking for permission.

“Can I?” he whispers, even though you’ve already said yes in every way that counts.

You nod and sink down slowly, inch by inch, until he’s fully inside you. Neither of you moves. You just sit there, wrapped around him, buried in each other.

Your walls clench instinctively, and he emits a broken groan. But he doesn’t move, he doesn't fuck up into you—just presses his face into the crook of your neck and breathes.

This isn’t about sex for either of you. It’s about connection. Closeness. The ache to feel like you still belong to each other. Skin on skin, hearts syncing with every breath, you melt together until you’re not sure where he ends and you begin.

Soobin stays nestled inside your warmth for so long that you begin to lose track of time. His hands draw lazy circles over your back, his lips brushing your shoulder in silent worship. Your arms hang around his neck, holding him close. Every now and then, your walls flutter around him, and he exhales a quiet curse into your skin.

Every moment spent inside you is marked by a kiss—some soft and delicate, others deep and bruising, left like claims on your neck. Soobin's voice is hushed, whispering over and over how much he adores you. His hands roam your body like he's rediscovering it all over again, tracing every dip, outlining the shape of you with his touch. He’s etching you into him.

Eventually, the stillness turns to tension. You shift your hips just slightly and feel him twitch inside you. His breath hitches, and you notice.

“Don’t do that,” Soobin murmurs, voice taught with restraint.

Your faces are pressed close, cheek to cheek. He can feel the graze of your hardened nipples against his chest, your shaky, uneven moans fanning hot against his ear. And suddenly, he’s entirely too aware of you—of how impossibly tight and perfect your body feels around him, like you were made to fit just like this.

"Sorry, Binne." You don’t mean for it to come out as a whimper, but it slips, drenched in need. “I’m just so full…”

You try to remain still, but your eyes are already glassy with want. And when your lips find his again, more desperate this time, he gives in.

He starts to move, gently at first. Rolling his hips into yours like it’s the first time all over again. You can tell he's afraid to shatter the moment, but can’t help needing you more.

Soobin's hand finds your hair, gripping firmly—not to dominate, but to really see you. He pulls back just enough to watch your face, to pass every wave of pleasure back and forth between your eyes. He makes love to you like he’s savoring it, dragging his cock in and out at the perfect angle, hitting your g-spot again and again with a patience that feels more like devotion than control.

But it’s not enough, not with how he feels inside you. How his cock stretches you open just right, how his eyes celebrate every inch of you like you’re the only thing that’s ever mattered.

So you shift again—this time intentionally—lifting your hips just slightly before sinking back down. The friction makes your mouth fall open, a soft moan filling the air.

Soobin groans, his hands flying to your waist. “Baby…”

But you’re already moving again. A slow, teasing roll of your hips that pulls breathless curses from his lips. Your hands brace against his chest as you rise onto your knees and start to bounce—gently, at first, letting yourself adjust, letting the stretch fill you again and again. His cock drags along your walls in the most maddening way, kissing your sweet spot again and again.

His fingers dig into your sides, but he doesn’t stop you. He wouldn't dare. Instead, Soobin just watches you with his lips parted, chest rising and falling with every bounce. The expression on his face is pure awe. He can’t believe this is real. Spending time with you has never felt this heavenly. You're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

“You feel so good,” you whisper, voice trembling as your thighs work to keep the pace. “So big…”

He sits up more to meet you halfway, arms wrapping around your waist as his mouth finds your chest—kissing, sucking, biting gently at your sensitive skin. Every time you sink down, his cock hits deeper, and the pleasure tightens in your belly like a fuse burning too close to the edge

“Just like that,” he breathes, kissing up your throat. “You ride me so well, baby. So fucking good for me…”

Your movements grow faster, more desperate, chasing the high together. Each bounce has you both gasping, moaning, gripping onto each other like you’ll fall apart if you let go.

His hands slide up your back, anchoring you to him, and when your forehead presses to his, his voice is barely audible.

“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.” Soobin’s thumb finds your clit, rubbing slow circles that have you squeezing tight around him. The sudden surge of pleasure makes your entire body jolt—your thighs trembling, your rhythm faltering.

“F–fuck!” he cries, his voice cracking as his core tightens beneath you. One hand claws at your back, desperate to ground himself, while the other keeps working your clit, coaxing you closer to the edge with each drawn-out stroke.

Your body trembles in his lap, chest heaving as you ride the crest of sensation. His name leaves your lips in a gasp, hips stuttering as you start to unravel for him. But Soobin doesn’t let up—he leans in, kissing you fervently. His voice is gravelly in your ear.

“That’s it, baby… you’re doing so good. Let go for me. I’ve got you.”

And you do—your whole body shaking as pleasure rips through you, fluttering tight around him, squeezing him so perfectly he groans through gritted teeth. Your forehead drops against his shoulder, breath caught somewhere between a sob and a moan. Soobin holds you through it, murmuring praise into your hair, letting you ride the waves until your hips finally still.

But he’s still hard, still tucked deep inside you. You blink, dazed, and meet his eyes.

“Soobin—”

“Not done,” he breathes, cupping your cheek. “Let me love you a little longer.”

He shifts, lifting you slightly before guiding you down onto your back, never slipping out. His body settles over yours, and he kisses you so slowly you forget how to breathe. It’s not rushed, none of this was. He wants to remember every expression and sound you make beneath him.

Soobin starts to move again, hips rolling deep, cock gliding into you with a drag that has your toes curling. Each thrust is slow yet hard, filling you to the brim. He's making sure you'll feel him for days.

“Still so wet,” he whispers, voice shaking from restraint. “You were made for me, weren’t you?”

You nod with teary eyes, hands gripping his shoulders as he begins to fuck you just a little harder—still slow and sensual, but with the kind of focused passion that makes your whole body scream.

His lips find your neck again, then your jaw, then your mouth, speaking softly with his pressed on yours. “Want you to feel everything, baby. Want you to remember this whenever our schedules are busy.”

“Don’t say that,” you whisper, clutching at him.

“I won’t go anywhere,” he promises instantly, fucking into you with a little more urgency. “I’m right here. You’re mine.”

You moan his name again as he rocks into you, shifting his angle just slightly to hit your g-spot head-on. The overstimulation begins to take you over. Your back arches off the bed, and he catches you with one arm wrapped beneath you, pressing your bodies flush together, like even air between you would be too much distance.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” he murmurs, watching your face. “So good for me.”

You barely manage to choke out a response. You’re too full, too overwhelmed, and too wrapped up in the heat of his body and the impulse in his gaze.

He slows again as he nears the edge, you for a second time that night. Thrusts going deeper, heavier, until you’re clutching his hair, pulling him closer, whispering into his ear, “I want you to cum inside.”

Soobin groans deep in his chest at your admission and presses his forehead to yours, breathing unevenly.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Please.”

It only takes a few more slow, grinding thrusts before he’s burying himself to the hilt and pulsing inside you, arms shaking as he holds you close. His lips tremble against yours, his moans drawn out and desperate as he fills you. The inappropriate sounds quickly have your own, blinding orgasm flowing from you with ease.

He still doesn’t pull out.

Instead, he kisses you again, even sweeter, before shifting both of you onto your sides, tangled together, still joined.

You’re panting, but your heart is calm. You feel full in every way, wrapped in his warmth, your body and soul entirely his. Soobin strokes your hair, nose brushing your cheek.

“Stay just like this,” he whispers. “Let me keep you.”

You nod, one leg hiked over his hip, arms tucked against his chest. “Don’t let go.”

“Never,” he murmurs, breath hitching when your walls flutter again. “Fuck. You’re still gripping me so tight…”

You press your face into his neck, smiling softly. “That’s ‘cause I want you to stay.”

He chuckles, fingers tracing your spine. “Then I will. All night, baby. However long you’ll have me.”

You both fall quiet, still connected, warmth shared between flesh. The room feels sacred, filled with love, comfort, and the kind of silence that means everything. You make a mental note to call out of work the next morning.

Soobin stays inside you until you’re both asleep—bodies tangled, time slowed, nothing left to say but everything left to feel.

tags: @bunnysoonie @zznblr @twilght-talks @gyudollies @beomgyusluver @dawngyu @boba-beom @taebatu @simpforseoho @another-lemon-tree @yyeonbinn @chubichubs @jooyeonsvape @txt-thelmi @zorange13 @jellyyjn

feedback/comments/likes are always appreciated <3

[lilhughesy]

A Lake House Love Story | Jack Hughes x Fem!Reader

warnings! mentions of insecurity and hints towards sex (nothing graphic). word count: 3.0k

summary: When you and Jack are at the lake house, it seems like there is something in the air that changes the dynamic of your friendship.

You were one of the many friends that were invited to the Hughes Lake House every summer. From his parents' lake house during your teen years to the lake house that Jack and Quinn bought together in Michigan. It was always a highlight of your year and something to look forward to. With being reunited with all of your friends, who all played in the national hockey league and were scattered across America and Canada during the year, alongside being able to take time away from the real world and simply relax.

Although you weren't a hockey player in the NHL, like the rest of the guys, you were involved in the sports world. From being a student athletic therapist and part-time student coach while studying at the University of Michigan to now being an athletic therapist for the Vancouver Canucks.

Your life was fast paced and it was busy. From the busyness of the Canadian city itself to constantly tending to the different hockey players on a daily basis. You loved it though, it was everything you could have ever asked for. Plus, it was a bonus to be working on the same team that your best friend played for.

The contrast in living styles in Vancouver compared to your summers spent in Michigan was evident. Where in Michigan, you got to spent time under the sunshine with different books that you'd been meaning to read throughout the year and you were fully relaxed. It was seen with everyone who attended the lake house. Everyone coming from the constant on-the-go lifestyle, to the more slowed down and chilled one. Everyone seemed happier, lighter, brighter, and content.

Another difference between your life in Vancouver and your life in Michigan, includes your love life. In Vancouver, you were too busy and didn't think much about dating, rather focused on your career. However, in Michigan, it seemed that the same love story that started when you were nineteen just continues onwards.

You sat in the passenger seat as Quinn drove the both of you to the lake house for another summer. The crisp summer breeze filled the car, with its sweet scent flowing through your hair as you drummed your fingers to the music.

"You have no idea how excited I am for this summer," Quinn said to you, briefly glancing over at you.

"So am I," You nodded, giving your best friend a smile, "Especially after that season... You deserve this break."

He lets out a light chuckle to your words, "Yeah, so do you though."

You only shrugged, "I'm excited to get through my TBR, one of my tote bags is just books that I've collected this past year."

"I'm definitely going to borrow a few of those," Quinn grinned, "Do you think that you and him will make it official this summer?"

Heat rushed to your cheeks, "Maybe... Who knows, I just can't see him as the type to date older."

Quinn rolled his eyes, "You're a year older than him, like nine months older than him."

"But still!"

"You say that yet you two still act the same every summer," He sighed, turning onto the driveway, "It's getting painful to watch, y'know."

You scoffed and lightly smacked his shoulder, "Shut up."

He flashed a teasing smile as he parked the car, "Luke and Jack are already here and I'm assuming that the rest of the guys are coming this afternoon."

You gave a brief nod before climbing out of his car, barely even having time to take in the sight of the familiar Hughes lake house before you were engulfed in your favourite arms.

"Hey you!" Jack mumbled into your hair, planting a kiss on the crown of your head, "'m so happy you're here."

You wrapped your arms around his neck, "Hi, J," You said with a little giggle, "I'm glad you guys decided to invite me again."

"As if it would be summer without you here," Luke joked, standing patiently next to his brother, "Alright, lover boy, let me hug her too. I haven't seen her since March."

Jack let out a complaint under his breath as he released you to allow Luke to greet you properly. You smiled at the curly headed Hughes brother, "Hey Luke."

"Hi Y/N, I hope Quinn didn't try to kill you on the drive here."

You laughed before the four of you made your way into the house. Both Jack and Luke helping Quinn with the bags, and you being responsible for carrying your tote full of books.

₊˚ˑ༄ؘ

Two weeks into the break and the lake house was in full swing, with Trevor competing with Ethan in shotgunning contests on the dock, Cole and Dylan belting their hearts out to drunken karaoke at night, and quiet mornings spent in Jack's room.

The morning sunlight brought a comforting softness and warmth to his room, peaking through the cracks of his blinds. You cuddled further into his mattress, letting out a content sigh at the weight of his arm lazily resting on your waist.

You felt him shift in his sleep, before pulling you closer to his bare chest. Jack's breathing was still heavy as you glanced over your shoulder to his eyelids flickering, indication that he was fighting to stay asleep. A small smile drew upon your face as you rotated your body to face him better.

"Good morning," You whispered to him, placing a delicate kiss on his jawline.

You watched as he tried to pretend he was still asleep with the corners of his mouth tugging upwards. Your hands slowly traced up the skin of his bare back to his hair, where you gave a light massage to his scalp.

"Mmm," He mumbled, snuggling his face into the crook of your neck, "Feels nice."

Jack's voice was raspy and low, with sleep prominent in it. He sighed as you continued to play with his hair, with your own eyes fluttering closed.

"Good morning, baby," Jack said with multiple light kisses to your neck, collarbone, and shoulder, "We should stay here all day."

You let out a breathy chuckle, "You say that every morning, J."

"Do I?" He asked, pulling away to look at you. His blue eyes catching some of the morning sun, which only make them look brighter, "So why haven't we stayed all day in bed yet? I'm very convincing."

"Because we will get FOMO from whatever the rest of the guys are doing."

Jack rolled his eyes before placing a loving kiss on your lips, "I just like spending time with you."

"We should get out of bed," You told him as you start to pull away from his arms, "I'm sure everyone is waking up right about now."

He gave you the infamous Hughes pout as you slipped on his t-shirt from the ground over your previously naked figure before getting out of bed. You gave him another look, seeing him flop back onto the bed, "I think everyone is hungover, more like." Jack grumbled as you walked away from him and towards the ensuite bathroom.

You closed the door behind yourself, sighing as you looked at yourself in the mirror. You brushed your teeth, with a lazy hand on your hip while you dwelled on your thoughts with the typical question of 'What am I doing?'. Which has been bothering you more than ever, after Quinn brought up the fact that you and Jack had been doing the same routine of acting like a couple in the summer to back to friends during the year. At now being at the ripe age of 24, where you started considering looking for a more serious relationship in comparison to the occasional flings and situationships you had during college.

You tied your hair up before washing your face, massaging your cleanser into your skin when you felt Jack wrap his arms around you.

You gave him a weak smile in the mirror as you pat your face with a towel, "Whatcha doin' here?" You asked him.

He rested his chin on your shoulder, clearly admiring your in the mirror, "The bed got cold and lonely without you there."

"You're awfully clingy," You lightly joked, turning away from him to rehang your towel, "For someone who's not my boyfriend." You said under your breath while doing so.

You could feel him straighten, "What did you say?"

"I just said you're being clingy, more than usual." You tried to laugh it off, while avoiding his eye contact.

His thumb brushed under your chin, tilting your face to look at him, "I heard what you said after that though."

You swallowed, "Am I wrong? You aren't my boyfriend, Jack. Besides, I was just teasing your clinginess."

"Do you want me to be your boyfriend?" Jack questioned, his eyes and facial features being somewhat unreadable.

You hesitated.

Of course you wanted him to be your boyfriend. No other man has ever treated you as well as him. Jack knew you so well and could read you better than anyone (other than maybe Quinn). But did he want to be your boyfriend? Especially when there's hundreds of other beautiful girls that probably deserved him more than you?

"I- Um," You sputtered, "I don't know."

His face dropped slightly, "I thought we agreed to this being just for fun, nothing serious, and no strings attached."

His tone was a bit harsher than before, you nearly flinched at his words.

"Yeah, whatever Jack," You sighed, finally pulling away from him, "Like I said, I was just teasing you earlier. No need to take it seriously, 'cause this is just for fun, right?"

Jack's Adam's apple bobbed, "Yeah... Sure."

You rolled your eyes when you turned away from him before heading out the bathroom. You grabbed clothes from the dresser, changing out of just his shirt to a bikini with shorts and a tank top. You headed downstairs, in attempts of avoiding the building tension between you and the boy that you had woken up with.

The kitchen was filled with coffee and breakfast aroma, with Ethan and Luke on pancakes duty and Dylan cooking eggs for everyone. You approached them to grab a mug from the cupboard to make a coffee, "Morning."

Luke, Ethan, and Dylan all shared a glance before looking back at you.

"What?" You asked, noticing their shared looks.

"No, nothing." Luke mumbled, turning his focus back to his pancake-making and Dylan nodded along with him.

Ethan kept his gaze on you, "Trouble in paradise, sweetheart?"

You scoffed, "It's none of your business, Eddy."

"Did someone piss in your coffee?" Luke snickered, "I'm kidding, it was a joke,"

"I'm fine, okay?" You told the three, "Is Quinn awake?"

"Yeah, he's reading on the dock I think." Ethan answered, motioning to the back doors.

You thanked him before grabbing your mug and heading outside with your Birkenstocks on your feet. You walked down the grass, feeling the morning dew graze your skin as you made your way to the dock.

You sat in the empty chair next to Quinn, bringing your knees to your chest and resting your mug on your knees.

"Good morning," Quinn greeted you, closing him book carefully, "You okay?"

You shrugged, your eyes focusing on the lake in front of you and admiring how the sunlight sparkled on the water, "Jack and I kinda had an argument this morning."

"Did you?" Quinn asked as his eyebrows raised, "Over what?"

"I made a stupid joke about how clingy he was this morning considering that he wasn't my boyfriend and he asked if I wanted him to be and then it went downhill really fast." You explained to Quinn, "I shouldn't have said anything in the first place to be honest."

Quinn sighed, placing his book on the dock before readjusting his position to be more comfortable, "Well I don't blame you for saying something. I would also be fed up with him after multiple summers of acting like you're a couple when you're not."

"But do you want him to be your boyfriend?" He questioned, "Like genuinely, outside of just hooking up in the summer and shit."

"Obviously," You chuckled, taking a sip out of your mug, "I just cannot see him wanting to date me, I guess."

"You're being insecure again when you shouldn't be," Quinn told you, "You always get like this every time we talk about Jack, you always say some bullshit about not being pretty enough or skinny enough or how you're not a model or influencer or whatever. When in reality, if Jack actually were to care about those things, which he doesn't, he wouldn't still be waiting for you every summer."

"I guess so."

"He cares about you, Y/N. He's talked to me about it so many times. You just need to talk to him about it, like actually talk to him." Quinn emphasized, before picking up his book again, "I promise you, it will go the way you hope."

You nodded, looking away from Quinn and back to the water before getting up from the chair, "Thanks Quinny."

"You know I always have your back, Y/N."

You give him a smile and a squeeze to his shoulder. Multiple thoughts dance around your head as you made your way back inside, this time being greeted to plate loads of food in the kitchen. You saw Jack walk past Luke to sit next to Cole, him barely sparing you as second glance as you closed to door behind you.

"Breakfast." Ethan smiled at you while holding a plate towards you.

"Thanks, Eddy." You take the plate from him and sit by the kitchen island, away from the table where Trevor, Jack, Cole, Ethan, and Dylan sat.

Luke leaned against the counter in the space next to you, "Talking to Q helped?"

"Yeah," You said to the youngest Hughes, "He always knows what to say."

"I don't what you're going through but I can tell he cares a lot about you." Luke told you as he took a bite from his plate.

"Yeah, I care a lot about Quinn too, he's my best friend."

Luke rolled his eyes, "Not Quinn."

You gave a confused look at the boy before he motioned with his head towards his other brother. You sighed, glancing over to him to see him already looking at you.

"You should talk to him." Luke continued before pushing himself off the counter and walked to sit at the table with the rest of the guys.

You sat in thought, only poking at your breakfast now. You still contemplated exactly what you would say to Jack. Despite the reassurance from both Quinn and Luke, you were nervous on addressing the topic that the two of you had been avoiding for years.

You eventually made your way back to your shared room, in search of a book to bring onto the boat.

"Hey," Jack said from behind you, "You alright? You didn't eat much of your breakfast this morning."

He sat down on the foot of the bed, watching you flip through different books.

"I wasn't feeling too well."

"Luke said you went to talk to Quinn this morning," Jack added, "And by the way you've been avoiding eye contact since I entered the room tells me that you aren't sick, but rather something is bothering you."

With the lack of response from your behalf, Jack continued, "Was it something that I did? Was it this morning? I'm sorry if I have been too clingy, I can reel it back."

"Jack, I don't want to keep doing this thing we've been doing." You finally told him, looking away from your pile of books. You watched his expression drop,

'What?"

"I can't keep doing this thing where we act like we're dating when we're at the lake house but then act like different people when we're back to our normal lives," You explained to him, "Every summer its like we live the same lake house love story where we cuddle on the boat, go dancing at the bars together, and we share the same bed- Not to mention the hot mind blowing sex we have. But the second we go back to regular life, I'm just Quinn's friend to you."

"So what are you saying?" He asked, his voice cautious of the fine line he was dancing on, "Do you want me to stay in the spare bedroom?"

"Jack," You shook your head before moving to where he was seated to stand in between his legs, "You can stay in this room with me, but I want us to be together officially. Every summer we basically act like a couple, so why don’t we make it happen?”

He chuckled, his hands going to your hips, "I've been wanting to ask you for that for a while now."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I was scared that you would say no to being my girlfriend." He said, his cheeks tinted pink from his slight embarrassment.

You laughed, "So I had to be the one to ask?"

"Does it matter though? You're my girlfriend now." Jack grinned, standing up to kiss you, "So what were you saying about hot mind blowing sex that we have?" He repeated against the skin of your neck.

Your jaw dropped, "Jack Rowden Hughes!" You exclaimed, slapping his bicep.

"Why are you hitting me and why are you using my government name?" Jack laughed, kissing your jaw, "I'm just repeating what you said!"

"I'm going outside." You huffed jokingly, as you picked up a book from your pile.

He continued to laugh while he followed you outside to where everyone else was lounging and soaking up the Michigan summer sun. Before you knew it, you were upside down on his shoulder as he carried you towards the group. You let out a squeal, "Jack! Put me down!"

He placed you carefully on your feet, before swaying you to the music that Trevor had playing off the large speaker. Jack spun you around before dipping you dramatically, causing giggles to escape your lips.

Jack gave you a cheesy grin as he pulled you close to his chest, “I’m so glad that I can actually call you mine now.”

“We probably should’ve done this sooner,” You teased before pressing a kiss on his lips, “But better late than never.”

“My beautiful girl.” He murmured against your lips. Jack pulled away before leading you towards the docks, “I’m taking my girlfriend on a boat ride! Be back later!” He shouted to the rest of the guys.

"Well it seems like they fixed their problems," Luke said to Quinn, who hummed in agreement.

"They're good for each other." Quinn chuckled, leaning into his chair as he watched the way you and Jack practically skipped down towards the boat.

[bernardsbendystraws]

ೃ࿔*:･ Snow .ᐟ Reader x FWB.ᐟ Matt

ALTERNATE ENDING - You're finally ready to talk.

⚠︎ angst, unresolved ending, bitch i'm fucking crying idek what else to say

[ Can be standalone. Previous - P1 P2 P3 ] → au masterlist

The more you thought about it, the more you needed it to stop. All of it—everything, it’s all too fucking much. One moment you were in a drought of emotions, then Matt called you out—he triggered a flood. You’re drowning. 

You like him—you liked when he played the role of being your boyfriend for a brief moment, but it was more than that, it was far more atrocious than just a simple fond feeling. 

“Hey, can we talk now?” Matt asks, patting your knee as you sit side-by-side on your living room couch. 

You told him to come over, you said you were finally ready to talk. In all reality, you’re not ready, but you know you’ll never be ready—not for this type of conversation. 

“I don’t wanna do this anymore, Matt.” 

The words are choked coming out of your mouth. You try to hold your breath, trying not to cry as you feel the waves of emotions thrashing against every corner of your mind and heart. 

Oh god.

The look on his face is dreadful, defeat clouding his features as a stray tear falls down his cheek, quickly accompanied by more droplets that seem to get heavier in weight from how rapidly they scurry down his face. 

This is it. It’s really happening—it’s really over. 

“What?” he asks, his throat feeling unbearably tight as he tries to take in a deep breath. 

It hurts. No thought in your brain can agree, no throbbing in your chest is eased to feel relief, not like you hoped it would. 

This is supposed to be for the better. 

Honestly, the more you thought, the more you realized you did have feelings for him—feelings your brain wouldn’t let you concentrate on without pushing relentless words that made everything so confusing. 

You can’t be with him. Your heart has been bruised and battered to the point where you can barely care for yourself. He deserves better. 

The tears strolling down his face make all the second thoughts come rushing in before being mirrored back with affirmation—this is for the better. 

All you do is hurt him. You can’t even figure out how to be happy for yourself, you’d only drag him down. You can’t be that selfish. 

Matt is sweet, caring—he’s everything pure about the world with enough understanding to get into anyone’s heart. It’d be unfair for you to have him, hold him hostage from all the things he deserves—all the things you’ll never be able to give him.

“I’m sorry,” you sigh, your chest binding with pressure as your breath halts in your chest. 

Matt’s bottom lip wobbles, his mouth opening and closing as he tries to find the right words. “Are…are you sure? I—just—why? I…I know this is scary, but we can—”

The shake of your head makes his lips smack shut, a desperate attempt at holding back a sob as he realizes the determination in your eyes. This is it—this is all he’ll ever have with you, and it’s over. 

“I can’t do this right now. My…my heads everywhere, I don’t—it’s gonna be okay, Matt,” you coo, your brows scrunches as you pat his shoulder.

Matt goes to put his hand on top of yours, stopping as he realizes it’ll be the last time he ever holds your hand. He can’t do it. 

His hand falls to his lap, a burning sensation crawling through his knuckles as he aches to reach up and intertwine your fingers—but he can’t. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to let go.

A moment of silence passes. Matt rubs his hands over his face, trying to gather himself as your hand drops from his shoulder while he stands up. His eyes stay trained on the floor. Shame makes your body freeze as he grabs his keys from his pocket. 

“I’ll…I’m just gonna…I’m gonna go,” he puffs, his throat squeezing as he says the painful words. 

You stay frozen, your heart aching. It’s like a heavy ice block in the middle of your chest as you watch him walk through the door, a cold so shocking that it burns.

Matt walks through the door, shutting it behind himself, refusing to take glance over his shoulder. He can’t. He knows his heart will try to convince him to stay—to beg on his knees and plead with his entire soul, but that’s not fair to you. 

The words left your lips after you said you were ready to talk, after you had time to think. It wouldn’t be fair for him to try and convince you. He cares too much to interfere with your decision, no matter how much it breaks him to understand that this is truly it—the end. 

A slight glimpse of how he walked into that door with a bouquet of flowers rings through your mind, a small smile pulling on your lips before you breathe in reality. It’s impossible to reminisce happily about the memory. Instead, you feel something shatter—like ice shards stabbing through your chest in a way that makes you too aware of how you’re breathing. 

He’s gone. 

He’s really fucking gone. 

All the good times, all the fun things…they’re all just memories. 

That’s all he’ll ever be now. 

He’s a memory. 

A/N: Someone hug me I'm fucking sobbing holy shit. Sorry in advance. Especially to @weirdothatwritess @chrisbratt333 @sturnsblogs @lovesturni0l0s and more 😭😭😭

ITS AN ALTERNATE ENDING DW. THE OG ENDING IS RESOLVED.

·˚ ༘ �� 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒊𝒈 𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒔, 𝑹𝒐𝒔𝒆 𖧧

꒰ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ๑ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ๑ 𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 ꒱

[leashybebes]

i don't have a prompt to give you but like. thank you for all of your writing today, it really made me feel some kind of fantastic way. (did you have an idea for a prompt that hasn't been sent in? consider me asking for that.)

you are so kind and i am so late with this. HOWEVER. have 1.7k of...something.

5 times tommy kisses someone on the cheek, one time someone kisses him on the cheek

1.

His date to junior prom is called Michelle. She's his lab partner in chem class, and she has pretty brown hair, tumbling in curls to her shoulders. Tommy picks her up from her house, because Michelle's really sweet and there's no way he wants her anywhere near his asshole dad.

His friends are all talking in the run up about how they're gonna get laid, and Tommy jokes along because, well. It's not like he doesn't wanna have sex. Of course he does. Michelle's great.

So he picks her up from her house and he hands her a corsage and her mom takes photos and her dad gives him a hard glare that rolls easily off the shoulders of someone who's lived in Thomas Kinard's house all his life and Tommy's hands are sweating and his suit is uncomfortable and her dress is pretty and he doesn't know how to dance and he's so fucking relieved that someone spiked the punch and at the end of the night he walks her home and kisses her on the cheek.

He kisses her on the cheek and she does the same to him, leaving a peachy-orange smear of lipstick and Tommy walks around the neighbourhood until it's late enough that he doesn't think his dad will be awake to bust his balls for being home early, and he doesn't try to figure out whether the feeling rolling in his gut is relief or disappointment. 

2.

His mom won't look at him in the aftermath. It's the first time his dad's ever been on his side in an argument. Well, kinda. If shut up, Sarah, it'll make a man out of him and Christ knows I haven't been able to can really be called being on Tommy's side. His dad had signed the paperwork when his mom had refused, so they all knew this was coming, but his mom's been tearful and furious and a little drunk ever since. 

Tommy's seventeen and he leaves for basic in the morning and his mom still won't look at him.

"Mom, c'mon," he says, trying one last time. "I'll be fine."

"You don't know that," she says, and he hates and regrets how scared she sounds, but he just - he can't stay here.

"I'll write you," he promises. She still doesn't look at him, so he bends down and kisses her cheek. Her skin still smells of the same Nivea Creme it has his whole life, the stuff that comes in the little blue tin.

"I love you, mom."

He lets the door close quietly behind him, doesn't make the trip down to the den to say anything to his dad. Nothing left to say there.

3.

The first man Tommy fucks more than once is called James. They meet in a bar, Tommy blows him in the bathroom, and James suggests they get a motel. They do, and he proceeds to make Tommy see god for the rest of the night and into the early morning hours. They talk after - James works in finance (boring, he says, but I'm not complaining about the money. Tell me more about firefighting, though), he's lived in California his whole life. He tells Tommy how cute he is, how much he'd like to see him again.

He's maybe ten years older than Tommy and so handsome it makes him ache. Tommy's so caught up in it that he doesn't think twice about the fact that they either go to Tommy's little shithole apartment, or James says something about treating him and whisks Tommy away to a fancy hotel in San Francisco or Malibu or even Portland once, for a three night stay where they barely left the bed.

He doesn't think about it until he sees James at the grocery store one day and approaches with a smile, with his heart beating harder in his chest the way it always does when he sees that handsome profile, that scattering of salt through the thick pepper of his hair.

"Hey," he says, and in the aftermath, he can hear the excitement in his voice, the ridiculous way it dips and rises on a single syllable.

James's eyes widen for a split second and he says, "Oh, hey. Tommy, right?" and Tommy has a split second to be confused before he registers the woman at James's side, the way James is putting an arm around her waist, the way he's saying, "Honey, this is Tommy, we go to the same gym. Tommy, this is my wife Suzanne."

Tommy feels sick. He feels like he's going to pass out. He feels like he isn't real. James's eyes are wide and terrified, and Tommy can't believe - 

He smiles and shakes her hand, ducks his head to kiss the cheek she offers him (whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck). 

"It's lovely to meet you," he says, like he isn't in the middle of his own personal apocalypse, like fire isn't raining down on him from the sky.

Stupid, he thinks as he walks away from them, abandons his basket, has a panic attack in his truck. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He doesn't hear from James again.

4.

Tommy's been dating Jackson for three months. They haven't really defined it yet, haven't had the are we exclusive talk, because Jackson's a little younger and he hasn't been out for long. Not that Tommy has, either, but he's trying to be cool. And anyway, it's not often that Tommy gets to feel more experienced than the people he's dating, more knowledgeable, more settled, more queer.

The sex is crazy good, and Jackson's cool with Tommy's weird schedule - they met on a call, after all, so he knew right from the start - and more than anything, it's fun. They don't just fuck, which has been most of Tommy's relationships since James, and that's not - it's not a complaint. Tommy's pretty settled in his own company. But Jackson likes art, and karaoke, and baseball and hiking, so they date. They're dating. Tommy likes it a lot.

And then.

"I think I met someone," Jackson says, and his eyes are sparkling, his smile bringing out a dimple Tommy doesn't think he's ever seen before. Tommy can't even be mad. "I think he's really special," Jackson says, as though that needed saying, with the look on his face.

"I'm happy for you," Tommy says, and he is. He is. He's just also a little…wistful. Not all the way to sad, but…yeah. Wistful. A sense of oh, that could have been something.

They part outside the coffee shop which, on reflection, should have been a sign. They've never just met for coffee before.

"Hey," Tommy says, and gives Jackson a hug, kisses him on his soft cheek. "Don't be a stranger, okay? Good luck with your guy."

"You're so cool, Tommy," he says, and Tommy smiles like that's enough.

5.

Tommy was not expecting Evan Buckley.

Wasn't expecting him to capture so much of Tommy's attention as he's flying through the tail end of a literal hurricane. Wasn't expecting to spend so many hours dissecting that tour and their texts running up to it. (Was that flirting? Was that? Okay, but that had to be, right?) Wasn't expecting to kiss him in his bougie-ass kitchen and watch a softly stunned expression spread over his gorgeous face.

Wasn't expecting that mortifying first date to leave him feeling anything other than like he'd dodged a bullet. Wasn't expecting Evan to reach out again and look at him in the sunshine with so much hope on his face that it makes Tommy feel like he's turned completely transparent and Evan's looking right into the mess at the heart of him. He certainly wasn't expecting an invite to a wedding, of all things. And he definitely wasn't expecting Evan to kiss him - try to fucking inhale him - in the hospital lobby in front of god and everybody and then drag him into the wedding like he's the guest of honor or something.

He also wasn't expecting the enthusiasm, the abandon, the sheer confidence with which Evan took him home that night and took him to bed and took him apart. 

Oh god, Tommy thinks, once Evan's fallen asleep and Tommy's wide awake in the city lights that aren't muted at all by the decor appropriate but definitely not black out blinds on Evan's huge windows. This one's gonna hurt.

He kisses Evan's cheek, warm with sleep, rough with stubble. Evan turns towards Tommy in his sleep, one hand reaching out, a soft murmur leaving his parted lips.

Yeah. This one's gonna hurt real bad.

+1. 

Another coffee shop. Another hopeful smile. Another time that Tommy's heart turns over in his chest at the sight of Evan Buckley.

But everything is different now. Evan is different now. He's marked by grief, and he's more serious than Tommy's seen him, and he's so - he's so calm as he lays it out:

"Listen. I haven't stopped thinking about you. Through all - all this. Through everything before. I miss you. I really miss you, Tommy. I miss the way you see me. The way you know me. The way you like me. I miss your shitty sense of humor and your bitchy eyebrows and how kind you are. Tommy. God, Tommy, life is so short. I want to try again. What do you want?"

Tommy feels like the world is tilting under his chair, like the coffee is going to come back up, like he's on fire.

"That," he makes himself say through numb lips. "I want that. Evan, I want - "

"Okay," Evan says, and smiles, small and real. He leans across the table, big hand tilting Tommy's head, soft lips pressing a gentle, lingering kiss to the angle of his cheekbone. "Okay."

Tommy closes his eyes, tries to imprint every little part of his moment into his memory. Wants to go to his grave remembering exactly how that kiss felt, the smell of Evan's aftershave, the touch of his fingertips, the warmth of the sun.

Evan sits back in his chair and Tommy thinks be brave. Be brave for him. Be brave.

"Hey," he says, and fiddles with his cup. "I'm pretty sure you're the love of my life."

Evan smiles and catches hold of Tommy's hand, brings it to his lips and kisses it. "Well. That works out nicely."

[written-in-knife]

@jadecat4 On it🫡

Blessed

Riddle, Azul, Kalim, Vil, Idia

Written with fem!reader in mind, can be read as any gender, literal hurt/comfort, swearing, kinda fluffy

tw: graphic descriptions of injuries, getting hit by vehicles, and hit and runs

Average around 650 words per character

pt.1 :: pt.2 :: pt.3 coming soon

Rounding out the housewardens, most of these dudes are canonical crybabies, I'm so excited lmaoo These are actually really fun to write? I'm most likely going to do more of these for everybody else, so stay tuned for that I guess. Also I'm a tags yapper if yall have any interest in my commentary

Riddle Rosehearts

It took you a long time of dating Riddle to convince him to leave campus with you. He had responsibilities, an entire dormitory of students to keep an eye on, he couldn't do that if he left campus with you. He only agreed to it after midterms were over and after you got Trey to promise he would uphold the set standards for a single evening. Even then, it was hard to get him to leave.

"My love, we're going to dinner, not on vacation." You teased as he went over his list with Trey for a fourth time. "Trey promised he would call if anything goes wrong, you'd be back here in fifteen minutes at most."

"I-I know!" He stammered, cheeks flushing at your light tone. "I just want to be sure."

He was able to get through the list once more before you pulled him out the door, Trey giving him a friendly shove on the way out. It's not as if the two of you had never been on dates before, but they were smaller affairs around the campus, never out in public. He was surprised to find that it was actually much more relaxed off campus, not having to fear any ridicule or drop in reputation from strangers he would never see again if he did something especially embarrassing in his lovestruck state. And you made it incredibly easy to be lovestruck. You were well aware at this point of his aversion to PDA, which made it all the more surprising when he was the one to reach out and grab your hand after you'd left the restaurant. You chatted idly about the food, your week, the weather, anything that popped into your heads as you started back towards campus. It was all incredibly easy with you.

You made it into a more residential area, watching a group of young kids playing basketball at a hoop just off the sidewalk. Riddle pointed out one of the kids, joking that he reminded him of Ace as he made the shot and missed, sending the ball bouncing away. You stifled a laugh as you watched the boy chase after the ball into the road. It was clear the kid wasn't paying attention to anything but the ball as a car came speeding down the road. You were behind the kid before you even realized what you were doing, the driver of the car laying on the horn, trying to swerve out of the way, to slam on the brakes as you shoved the kid forward as hard as you could. Riddle watched in horror as the car knocked you to the ground, stopping on top of you, one of your arms pinned under the tire and only your head and shoulders sticking out from beneath. He ran to you, ignoring the crying child who ran back towards the house, and stooped down to try to see your injuries. The car started to back up, dragging you across the road as it did, the tire rolling off your elbow with a sickening crunch. He shouted for them to stop as your blood smeared across the road between you, but they couldn't hear him. Or maybe didn't care. The best he could do for you was grab you under the arms to keep you from dragging further. Once the car had backed up enough to see you again, they spun the wheel and hit the gas, planning to leave. Riddle instinctively flung a spell at them, hitting the back passenger side door and only resulting in them driving faster. He so badly wanted to chase after them, make sure they were brought to justice, but he couldn't just leave you. He was very careful in how he rolled you over, supporting your head and trying his best to keep your arm still. He had to see your injuries, he had to see what he needed to fix. Your face had slammed into the pavement from the force at which you were knocked down, your nose clearly shattered, a still growing goose egg on your forehead, skin was ripped and flayed from where you were dragged across the rough surface, and your elbow... He wasn't sure how to fix something so incredibly crushed, nearly unrecognizable. But he had to try. He tried to triage what looked the most life threatening, the head injury of course. It was hard to see where he was aiming as he kept trying to blink tears away. In the time it took him to think through his plan, your body had settled. He was about to start his spell when there was another chilling crunch, moving his hands to see your nose repositioning itself, the goose egg shrinking, the road rash weaving shut. Your eyes were open.

All he could do was watch, frozen, as you sat up and turned to him, your injuries all but gone by the time your hands landed on his shoulders. You were saying something to him, he couldn't make out the words over the relieved sobbing coming out of his mouth. You pulled him into your arms, holding him tight and close as he clung to you. Even upon returning to the dorm, he didn't let go of your hand-- PDA be damned-- as he dragged you to his room. You weren't going to be leaving his side for a bit while he processed what happened, and with him so close, you really didn't mind.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul often bribed you to accompany him to town to meet with his vendors, promising to get you whatever you wished if you simply kept him company. You didn't need to be bribed to spend time with him, but if it made him feel better about asking, you weren't about to stop him. It was always fun spending time with him, especially when you were able to introduce him to new things. The first time you suggested boba was a treat to watch as his expression went through several stages of confusion before eventually coming to the conclusion that he did, in fact, enjoy it.

This time he took you for smoothies after meeting with his final vendor. You tried to always keep your requests from going too far out of the way and this one was just across the street. You listened intently to him talk about a new drink he wanted to serve at the lounge, an affogato. Apparently Floyd had read about it online and demanded to try it. He talked about how it ended up being quite enjoyable as he reached into the pocket of his jacket, trailing off as he reached into the other. You watched him pat around at his pockets for a second before groaning, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry, my pearl, I think I left my wallet..." He sighed heavily.

"No, you had it when we left." You reminded him. "You probably just left it across the street. Save our spot, I'll go get it."

You gave him a wide smile and a kiss on the cheek, stopping any argument he may have had and running out of the building before he could come up with a new one. He chuckled at your antics and shook his head, watching you jog up to the street for a moment before turning back to the menu to see what he would want. While examining the menu, he heard a loud gasp and a "holy shit" from other patrons. He was going to ignore it when he heard one of them say "they hit somebody and they're just gonna drive away?!" Azul's head snapped around so fast, he worried he may strain something, until he looked out the large windows past the worried patrons. He couldn't see much, but he did spot hair that looked far too similar to yours. In the road. His heart dropped, and he silently begged that it wasn't you as he bolted out of the shop to the scene of the accident. His resolve nearly shattered as he approached. It was you. Broken limbs and torn skin and so much blood crumpled in the middle of the road. He barely thought about it as he ran forward, stammering out healing spells to try to fix it. He would do anything, pay any price, for this to not be happening, not be real. He tried so hard to choke down the sobs in his throat to keep working on you, because it was working! Skin was stitching back together, bones were popping back into place... He wasn't doing this. He pulled his hands away as he watched you grab your own mangled arm, shaking it out like a dish rag to pop the bones back into their correct place, groaning only slightly as you did. He was still choking back sobs as you sat up and turned to him.

"So, what flavor are you getting?"

The question stopped everything dead in its tracks, the tears, his shaking, his breath. He just stared blankly at you for a moment before he broke out laughing at the ridiculousness, which quickly devolved into crying. You apologized quickly, picking the both of you off the ground to just go home. He didn't care about his wallet, he didn't care about his image, he just wanted to go home with you, glad that he still could.

Kalim Al Asim

You and Kalim snuck out on occasion to go do things in town without Jamil, turning your phones off to keep him from calling you. More often than not, it was just the two of you wandering around, enjoying each other's company. You'd ended up finding some really cool spots on these outings; an arcade, a candy store, a little art studio that was only open to the public three days a week, even a little shop that made their own henna. Kalim was always excited to go and find more with you, always with you. He figured the plain clothes of his club outfit made it harder for people to recognize him and called it good enough, plus it made the lie that he was just going to club meetings easier for Jamil to believe. You usually ended up wearing his hat or flannel while you were out, Kalim loving to see you in his clothing usually distracted him from buying out everything that even partially caught your eye.

The two of you were walking out of a shop, fingers intertwined, you laughing at something Kalim was gushing about. You'd barely made it halfway down the block when there was a squeal of tires from behind you, and you glanced back just in time to see a black van with tinted windows hopping the curb to barrel in your direction. You barely had time to shove Kalim into the recessed doorway of a shop as the van sped down the sidewalk, bowling over you with ease before popping back into the road and speeding away. Kalim couldn't see you from the doorway, you'd been dragged further down. He started to praise you for being so quick to save you both as he got back to his feet and returned to the sidewalk. The praise died in his throat with a strained gasp when he spotted you, mangled form limp on the concrete. He wasted no time ripping his phone out of his pocket, holding the button down to turn it back on as he ran. He was already sobbing heavily as he scooped you into his arms, he tried not to think about the way your spine moved too easily, or how your legs were bent in the wrong places at the wrong angles. He held your too still body against his chest like it would shield you from what had already happened, blood soaking into the white shirt, into his skin. He could feel it slicking his hands. The second his phone was back on, he dialed Jamil who answered in one ring. Kalim didn't give him a chance to get a word out as he sobbed incoherent explanations and directions to him, begging him to come help, to come save you. He was too distracted trying to give Jamil directions to where they were, eyes too full of tears to see your legs pop back into place. It wasn't until he felt you reach up to crack your neck back into the correct position that he froze, quickly looking down to see you laying in his arms as if nothing had happened, smiling sweetly up at him. But he could still feel your blood on his hands. He resumed his sobbing, dropping his phone to the ground to put both of his arms around you, holding you as tight as he could allow himself to as he cried into your shoulder.

When you made it back to the dorm, after getting cleaned up, Jamil sat the two of you down in Kalim's room to lecture you about how reckless and irresponsible these trips had always been, how the van had likely been aiming for him. Kalim wasn't listening, not fully. He'd tangled his limbs up in yours, holding you close with his ear resting over your heart to listen to it beat as you combed your fingers through his hair. You responded to his every whispered apology with quiet reassurance, and he could do nothing but believe you when you told him it was going to be alright.

Vil Schoenheit

You'd gotten permission to leave campus for the full weekend with Vil as his date for his latest movie premiere in Maquillaville. The first day went by in a daze of flashing lights and shouted directions, the only thing keeping you from being too overwhelmed was Vil, always at your side. Fingers laced with yours, an arm around your waist, he could tell when you were getting too tense and was right there to ground you again. Despite the absolute flurry of activity, it was actually a highly enjoyable time. The movie was amazing, Vil had done a remarkable job in his role, even if he was sick of being type cast. You held hands through the entire premiere, Vil lifting your hand to his lips to gently kiss your knuckles when you quietly gushed about him being on screen.

The next morning, you headed out to the train station. Vil planned for the two of you to take the long way back to school so you both could bask in not having any responsibilities for one day. You were hoisting the bags out of the trunk of the cab and passing them to Vil on the sidewalk as he talked about what you could do to pass the time in the private cabin. You'd handed him the last bag with a smile and were closing the trunk when you heard a loud crunch from behind you. You didn't have time to turn around before the car behind you was pushed forward and slammed into your back, crushing you between the two vehicles. Vil screamed your name as he watched the car that had caused the accident back away from the one it had slammed into you and sped away. He was pissed that they were just leaving, but there were more pressing matters to attend to. He couldn't see any of your injuries yet, your lower half still firmly pinned between the cars, but there was a distressing amount of blood pooling at your feet and you had yet to lift your head. He could feel tears streaming down his cheeks as he grabbed your hand the same way he had at the premiere, albeit shaky and a lot tighter. There was no warning when the cab pulled forward to release you from the pin, no way for Vil to keep you from just crumpling to the ground at his feet. He paid no mind to the blood that would soak into his pants as he knelt down next to you, lifting your head to rest in his lap. He only got to see how disfigured your pelvis and upper legs were for a moment before they started to move, flattened bones filling back out to return to their normal shape. He was too focused on your injuries disappearing before his eyes to notice your hand reach up to cup his cheek, causing him to startle and yelp.

"Are we going to miss our train?" You asked, far too casually for his liking.

He sighed heavily, leaning his head further into your touch. "Yes, darling, we are going to miss our train."

Idia Shroud

It was hard enough as is to get Idia to leave his room, let alone Ignihyde, let alone the campus. There was one thing you could get him to join you for in town, and that was game releases. There was just something about waiting in line for a physical copy release. You didn't know if it was the nostalgia or what, but it got Idia off campus with you early in the morning to wait for the store to open. And so what if afterwards you dragged him somewhere in public to grab breakfast? He was already off campus, how much worse could it possibly get?

The two of you hadn't even made it to the diner yet, Idia hidden in his hoodie listening to you excitedly talk about this new game release and how you couldn't wait to play it with him. He'd chime in with his own commentary here and there, just loud enough for you to hear him, while giving the minimal strangers on the sidewalk a wide berth. He pulled out his phone to look up the answer to a question you'd asked about it, while you pulled slightly ahead of him to cross the road. He'd only looked down for a second when he heard tires squeal, then a sickening thud and crunch. In the brief moment it took for him to look down at his phone, and back up, you were laid out on the pavement, a car peeling off down the street away from the scene. He nearly fumbled his phone in his hurry to press the emergency beacon for Ortho to follow as he hurried over to you.

"No, no, no..."

The sight was nearly enough to make him pass out; the back of your shirt ripped open-- a disturbing amount of skin along with it-- from where the car went over top of you, your hand and one of your legs were nearly unrecognizable from where they had been crushed under the wheels, your hand was too close to your head, way too close. He ripped his hoodie off, pressing it into the large wound on your back with shaking hands. He couldn't do this again, he couldn't lose another person that meant so much to him, not again. He was begging for you to stay with him under his breath, through his panicked tears, when he felt movement under his hands. He saw the disfigured shape of what had been your hand start to writhe with the movement of the bones underneath as they returned to their correct placements. That was all he saw before he passed out. When he came back to, he was in his bed in the dorm. For a moment, he thought it was just another horrible nightmare until he looked over and saw you at his desk, wearing one of his clean hoodies, playing on your phone with the start menu of the game the two of you had picked up on his screen. You glanced over, giving him a wide smile when you met his eyes, as if you hadn't been mutilated in the road the last time he saw you.

"Hey, you okay?" You asked, moving over to sit next to him on the bed.

He didn't say anything, just grabbed your hand-- the one that had been crushed-- and pulled it to him to press the back of it against his cheek. He probably wasn't okay, but he was so immensely glad that you were.

I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO USE MY WORK TO TRAIN AI

MASTERLIST

[ooffmlsorry]

Please Stay

Law x f!reader// hurt?/comfort

Summary: If Law doesn't tell you how he feels, he'll lose you forever...

A/N: this has been plaguing me for days. I wrote half of this in a trance at work for christ's sake! This might have a part two. Takes place at the end of Wano even if I haven't gotten there yet, I'm kind of extrapolating. Reader has a DF kind of like Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy

"You're not a Heart Pirate!?"

You blink once. Twice. "Uhh...no. I'm just kind of here actually...." You pick at your skin a little to avoid Nami and Robin's shocked gaze. "I met Law on Punk Hazard same as you guys."

"I'm going to miss you soooo much!!" Ikakku draped herself over you dramatically. "I want another girl on the crew!" She whined. "It's miserable with just guys!"

"I thought you guys had a thing going on?" Nami asked.

Hiyori nodded. "I mistakenly thought your closeness to him was romantic in nature as well."

Law was outside listening. He only stopped because he heard his name...coming from your mouth, specifically. He wasn't even going to try to fool himself into believing it was because you were obviously talking about him to the Straw Hats. This wasn't a strategic trade of information--not really. This was "girl talk," and like a pathetic teenage boy skulking around outside the girl's locker room, he wanted to know what you were going to say.

You laughed loudly. Shocked. "Oh god, no!" Whatever is there (soon to be was there) didn't have a name, and you weren't going to be the one to give it one. When you make a wish you tell no one.

Outside Law's hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white between the ink. Oh god, no!? Why the hell not!? He should've left then, but he couldn't make himself leave. How much more time would have to hear your voice? Even if what you said hurt. Maybe it would make it easier to leave you.

Ikkaku shook her head and grinned. "Exactly! My captain's not like that, although..." She paused to think. "He does touch you a lot--"

"Every time you two have had to run somewhere, he grabs your hand!" Nami interjected. "At first I thought you were like Zoro and got lost easily but you're fine! He's just always on you!"

Law hated that Nami was right and that it was so obvious even a Straw Hat (albeit a smarter one) had noticed. When did he allow this? Had the two of you always been this way? He could trace your touch all the back to the day he met you on Punk Hazard. Small contacts of skin as he nursed you back to health. That felt like a lifetime ago.

"Not to mention, you work quite well together. You were able to work with us on his behalf while he went to save his crew members in Rasetsu," Robin said. "That's why we're confused."

"Wow! I didn't know that!" Ikkaku said.

They all were silent, staring at each other.

"So there's truly nothing going on between you and Law?" Hiyori asked.

"Absolutely not!" You said definitively. "Law and I are just...existing in the same space and time....together."

Robin chuckled. "How poetic."

Nami snorted. "So if Law kissed a woman in front of you right now, you wouldn't be jealous?"

"I don't see him doing that," you said in a neutral tone.

"Because you'd be blind with rage?" Ikkaku giggled.

Law frowned so deeply it hurt his face because he knew if someone asked the same question of you, he would be livid. Was he really like a territorial dog over a bone...a "bone" that wasn't even his.

"Because he wouldn't do that." Honestly, you had thought of it before, there were definitely women in Wano that had made eyes at him and..."That would be his right," you said contemplatively.

"I can't make him do anything." You hate how suddenly sad you sound. "I can't make him ask me to join the crew. I can't make him take my advice or listen to me. He does what he wants. What does he need me for?"

"Then you won't be going with him either," Robin said in that thoughtful way you've known her to speak sometimes. Not quite a question, but still a statement--ipso facto.

Your chest tightens. The food you just gorged yourself on sits unpleasantly in your stomach. "No," you said quietly.

Way to bring the fucking mood down, Y/N.

Law's chest ached sharply, an incision pain. That's what it felt like. You weren't going with him. It was as sure as history set into the stone of a poneglyph. Your paths diverged here.

"Did you ask him?"

Your mouth tasted sour and your words came out bitterly. "I'm not doing that." You tried to lighten the mood. You sighed deeply and stretched. "Some things end before they start or they just end, you know? But I've had a lot of fun!"

The truth of the matter was you didn't know if whatever you and Law had going on was strong enough to make out to sea. He found you on the brink of death on Punk Hazard thanks to Cesear's gas. Sitting by a fire in Wano, his hands where they shouldn't have been, your heart fluttering against his ear, he told you saving your life was supposed to be his last good deed.

At the time his confession buoyed you, he was supposed to leave you on Punk Hazard, but then there were the Straw Hats, and Cesear's experiments, and Dressrosa, and Corazon, and Zuo, and Wano, and against all odds, you were still with him. But maybe, he was just telling you you weren't supposed to make it this far in the first place. Your train has arrived at a station, it's time to get off.

The somber mood held on regardless, maybe because Robin wouldn't let it go. It's not like she's some kind of hopeless romantic. Did she want you to cry in front of everyone? Why was the woman you idolized so much still talking? "You have feelings for him," she said. This was decidedly not a question.

If someone had asked ten minutes early, there would have been squeals and pokes and giggles. You would've flushed, your stomach filled with butterflies. Acknowledging your feelings for Law now just felt cruel.

Law kept listening. His ears strained like his life depended on hearing what you said. It shouldn't matter what you say.

"I could fill an ocean with all the things I feel for him, that doesn't mean anything. He's his own person too," you said. Your voice was getting swallowed up by a lump.

It didn't mean he wanted you too. It didn't mean you were sure this would work and he was too. It didn't mean he wouldn't start to control you, that you wouldn't start to resent him. All it meant was that right now, you're staring down the barrel of leaving him and you didn't want to. All it meant was sometimes it felt like your heart beat solely for him.

Law listened to you speak with such sadness, like you were talking at someone's funeral. Eulogizing. Why weren't your feelings enough to propel you to talk to him? Because he's his own person? When has that ever mattered to anyone? Corazon forced him to live. Why couldn't you force him to love you?

He let out a tight shuddering breath. He already knew the answer: because that's not who you are. You try not to treat him like precious glass. He's told you not to, and you try, but it never lasts long. If he had met you at any other time he would've hated the way you are with him, so gentle and easily fooled by his walls and masks. But after Dressrosa...he needed you. When he pushed you away, you left without an argument, quieted yourself around him until he was ready. And when you did come, you came with things he needed and didn't ask anything else of him.

Whether by Haki or your Devil Fruit, you could feel Law's presence now. He was right outside the door listening. You could feel him yearning, it wrapped around you like a thick sent, lassoing you like prey.

You stood suddenly. "I need air," you said. "And when I come back we're talking about something else. Anything else! Please! I hate sappy goodbyes."

Law couldn't help scoffing. It was only a matter of time before you noticed him. Maybe you had the whole time and spoke because you knew he was listening.

You closed the door behind you to find Law standing there like you knew he would be. Being face-to-face with him was...hard. For having won against Kaido and Big Mom he looked so sad...which was your fault.

"You shouldn't eavesdrop if you don't want your feelings hurt," you said. Why even try to be mean with him, you know you can't.

Law just looks at you in the way he knows you hate. He knows without your Observation Haki or your Devil Fruit you'd be lost to reading him.

Sadness is clear. Longing. Anxiety. Desperation. Admiration.

"You're reading me," Law said finally. "Stop it."

"If you don't talk you know I won't understand," you said. "It's all best guesses and instincts anyway, especially without touching you."

Law wasn't listening anymore, he was looking at the door behind you. Where the other ladies were definitely listening. Even Robin probably was, even if she smiled and claimed innocence later. "I'm not talking here," Law said.

You couldn't help smiling to yourself, private as always. It was awkward to step into Law's arms again, he didn't wrap his arm around anyone else he Shambles away with. Only you. And you were both painfully aware of the press of each other's bodies no matter how loosely Law tried to hold you.

You had no idea what you were doing to him, leaving the ball in his court. So that was it, then? He either flayed himself to the bone or he would never see you again. But no worries, don't rush. He scoffed and looked away from you.

You were spirited away somewhere private, the lights of town at a bit of a distance. Bugs hummed loudly out here.

You don't need your Devil Fruit to feel how charged the air is with Law's emotions. Desperation and anguish were so loud it screamed. Law's eyes bore into your back.

You felt nauseous, both from teleporting and the conversation you were about to have. "You heard my side," your mouth is so dry your lips click as you speak. "Your turn. I won't rush you, though."

His heart pounded.

Just say something!

"You want me to do more than tell you to stay," Law said. His voice shook, it was degrading and embarrassing. "I can't do that...I can't promise anything."

You sighed. The lump in your throat grew larger, "I know. That's why I won't ask."

Damn you, Law wanted to say. He wanted you to be selfish enough to want him but never selfish enough to leave him. He was pathetic.

"Stay...stay anyway, Y/N," Law said. "Come with me."

You've woven yourself into his new existence beyond his past. You've become a part of his life. It feels like his DNA has changed and you're a part of it now. And he's too much of a coward to learn how to fill it with something else.

He took a deep breath and tried to force out the words you needed to hear. The words he wanted to give you. "Please come with me. I don't want..." I don't want to lose you. "I don't..." I don't want to leave without you. The words kept getting stuck. "Don't..." Don't go. Law clenched his fist and growled in frustration.

You stopped Law's struggling, pulled him into your arms. "That's close enough. Thank you," you said quietly, gently. You ease your arms over the tense muscles under his skin. He was cool to the touch from the sweat clinging to him.

The relief settling over his body bleeds into yours and you feel everything Law's keeping inside of him. You felt something new swirling in there with everything else since the last time you touched his skin. He wasn't sure what he was feeling, so you weren't either, but he was afraid it was beginning to be love. You can feel it through the contact of his skin. Something like love.

"Come with me, Y/N," Law said quietly into the top of your head.

You pulled back to look at him. "You want me to join your crew?"

"I...I want you to come with me," Law's cheeks flushed heavily and his eyes moved away from yours. Joining his crew and coming with him were two different things to Law, a delineation he was making right now.

"Oh... you mean as something you can't leave behind," you said. Your face felt warm. You could practically hear Penguin and Shachi in your head: "We don't care if the Captain brings his girl on board!" "Anything to keep him in a good mood and off our asses!"

"Yes..." Law spoke tentatively. "As something I can't leave behind."

You exhale deeply and swallow, you're careful not to push your anxiety into Law. He was battling his own already. "So we're seeing where this goes....Okay."

I think it'll kill me if I don't, Law thought.

You looked into Law's eyes. The mask was cracked, you could see the fear in his eyes and feel it too. But he was trying to look resolute for whatever reason (bless his heart!). His jaw was clenched, eyes almost defiant in an attempt to hide how absolutely terrified he was.

You could feel him gearing up for something but you had no idea what. Like he was bracing himself. You stare up into his handsome face, a hand cups the side of his face and you smile. "What's going on in there?" You spoke like you were talking to a spooked animal.

Law deflated slightly with an exhale, expression grim. He pressed his forehead to yours. "Nothing. I'm happy you said you would come with me," he said.

"I'm happy too, Law" you whispered back.

You were going with him. He could work up the nerve to kiss you later...even if it took another five months.

[navydoves]

Blood Bag - Chapter 3

"I'm not a monster."

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

✎ᝰ summary. you’re a vampire, you need blood. sylus is the most powerful man on this side of the planet. he has what you need.

✎ᝰ cw. you’re a vampire/sylus is a human, yearning sylus, depressed sylus, lonely sylus, luke and kieran are side characters, not unrequited but maybe a little, ANGSTY, erotica, lots of pining here bro, sylus is super pathetic now

✎ᝰ wc. 8.4k ✎ᝰ. a/n. this is my favourite chapter so far, ong there should be only 1-2 left. i didn't realize just how much i yap bro. anyway this one is a lot more angsty than the previous two (imo) but also a lot more erotic. not proofread, will fix as time goes on. hope yall don't hate me for these long ass breaks in between lmfao... enjoy!

luke and kieran, as young and average looking as they seemed, were professional fighters with heavy training under their belt. they knew what it took to be in hand-to-hand combat even without fancy powers to help them.

of course, these skills were the result of their years of training; only taught to them by the best of the best. the frontlines were not their designated position under sylus's care, but they were more than prepared for anything that came their way.

ghouls? goblins? A-tier criminals? all trained to handle them effectively. even with the latest vampire outbreak, sylus had ensured that if anything, the twins should be equipped with the basic defensive skills when dealing with a vampire.

so, what happens when the man who taught them everything they knew about strength, power, and being able to fight... doesn't do just that?

well, luke and kieran were faced with this problem head-on.

"b-boss?" luke whimpers so softly that in normal situations, his voice wouldn't be able to be heard. thankfully, the dead silence between all four persons in the room really helped emphasize the mix of fear, shock, and uncertainty in the him.

kieran was much the same. except he couldn't find his voice and his tense stance and wide eyes did all of talking.

sylus looked between the twins with an unsettling gaze. much like them and much like you, he was staggered in position—cradling you against his body. just for a moment does he glance down at you, his piercing glowing red eyes meeting your scandalized gaze.

everyone takes their moments.

sylus squeezes his eyes shut and tightens his grip on you before wetting his lips and— "OUT!" sylus's booming voice startles everyone in the room, especially you who is closest to him. the twins jolt back and in contrast to how long they stood there, they quickly scramble over each other out the bedroom door and down the hall.

their bedrooms weren't far down, and without thinking, both of them rushed into the closest one which happened to be kieran's. with the door slammed behind them, they take off their masks and catch their breath by the wall. time did move so slow for them, because it felt like hours before they even looked at each other.

to neither of their surprise, the other one was crying. slightly flushed cheeks and wet eyes, the twins had the same look of confusion and worry. "k-kieran," luke chokes out. "i don't know," kieran responds. luke wets his lips and wipes away rouge tears with the back of his hand. "m-maybe this is all part of his plan? maybe he was u-upset because we... i don't know... sabota-" "what kind of fucking plan is this?" kieran interjects with a much hasher tone of voice than luke carried. "you can't tell me boss had no other way of getting information from her than by... letting her bite him? god, and even if that was the case... the way he was holding her, the kisses, the..." kieran retches in his mouth. "i don't like this, i don't like this one-bit luke." luke sniffles. "then, what are we gonna do? talk to him? kieran raises his gaze to the ceiling and rubs his lips together. "there's nothing else to do. you know that better than me, luke." the twins left themselves in an awkward and tense quiet, a complete contrast to what was happening down the hall.

“fuck, fuck!”

“sylus, calm down.”

“how am i… they weren’t supposed to see that!”

you were sat at the edge of the bed watching sylus pace back and forth with his hand over his mouth in stress. the moment had been embarrassing for all parties, sure, but you had no emotional connections to the twins, making this whole ordeal a little better for you to deal with. as opposed to the man in front of you, that is.

“what’s the issue? they saw us, okay, and? then what?” you huff.

sylus stops his pacing and grits his teeth at you. “you don’t understand, they’re… they’re like my sons. it’s… it’s not easy to just let them see me like that…”

“like what?”

sylus hesitates. “vulnerable.”

you shake your head in slight annoyance but let the tension go in the next exhale. “you’ve been vulnerable this whole time, why are you just now getting uncomfortable?”

“what?”

you exhale again. “since the moment i’ve stepped foot in here… no… since the bar, you’ve been nothing but a wreck, a mess. and that’s just what i’ve seen of you. i can’t imagine how long this misery of yours has lasted. if those two are ‘like your sons’ then they’ve definitely picked up on it. yet you’re upset now?”

sylus furrows his brows and stares daggers into you. his lips twitch as if there was a rebuttal or two just waiting to bite back at you. “what do you know about me?”

you look around at his bedroom condescendingly. “clearly enough to invade your home and clearly enough to make you upset. your anger is misplaced with me. just try to calm down." you scoot off from the bed and walk over to sylus to guide him back to where he was previously sitting. he might've dragged his feet there, but he eventually sat down on the edge of the bed again, body slumped over as if he were mourning. "sylus," you whisper. "whatever it is you're about to say i don't want to hear it. you have no place to console me. we're not equals. you're my hostage, my prisoner here. don't... don't speak to me with such familiarity." "i'm not trying to. honestly... i just want more blood. we were interrupted after all." sylus lifts his head and turns to you with squinted, disbelieving eyes. your audacity never left you, it seemed. even when the man who was your lifeline was in shambles, you still had it in you to be selfish. but if sylus said that your drinking and sucking weren't pleasurable to him as well, he would be lying. it was a mix of your familiar warmth, your gripping hands, your gently sinking teeth, your soft, needy noises that was capable of finishing him. and even after every drinking session, when that fatigue creeped in from blood loss and pain, he was still okay with more.

maybe that was what he was feeling right now. fatigue. and maybe it wasn't just from your drinking, but from the weight of his life.

"why... why am i keeping you alive again? please remind me," sylus murmurs with slight dejection. you think on it for a moment. "i can take a guess as to why, but i don't think you'd like the answer. but i can no longer be your prisoner, your hostage, if im dead."

sylus wets his lips and shakes his head slightly, almost as if to erase your illogical argument from his head. it was only illogical because he couldn't understand why he wasn't leaving you for dead, prisoner or not. maybe what luke said was right. maybe he was treating you more like a guest than the vampire that tried to turn him. or i guess, knowing what he knows now, the vampire that tried to feed off of him. "sylus," you interrupt his foggy mind. "shut it." sylus shifts backward onto his bed and scoots until his back was against the pillowed headboard. he didn't say anything nor make a gesture, but his open form and slight melancholy told you that he was giving himself up to you once more. without much hesitation, you follow. climbing up on the bed and onto his lap. you move the cuffs of his collar away from his neck and admire the bloody bites you placed there earlier.

sylus's head was turned away from you slightly, like he was avoiding what was happening right before his eyes. unlike normal, where you would dive right in without thought, you stay still for a moment to look over sylus's expression. the usually hunter-like vermillion eyes had dulled into soft redwood.

what you would do to give him back the life he lived a predator. here now, he seemed like prey.

you lean into his neck and make sure to sink your teeth were where your previous bite was to avoid extra damage to his skin. that sweet, tangy blood you've come to love as dragon's blood hits your teeth right away and courses through your body.

immediately, the same sensations came back into you.

you felt your mind haze and it was accompanied by fluttering eyes. your hands found purchase on sylus's forearms where you gripped and squeezed him. your head buried itself deeper and deeper into the crevice of his neck as if there was more blood to be found there. but your worst habit were your noises.

sweet whimpers and moans escape your lips every second of your feast. it almost sounded like you were crying or... were doing other, more intimate things. but in all honestly, one could argue this was as intimate as it got. drinking blood for nothing but for the sake of your survival, given to you by a man who had everything to lose.

this was the pleasure sylus got from you.

he instinctively cupped the back of your head. and no matter how hard he tried to tell himself not to, it only felt natural to lean down and nuzzle you right back. he was a virgin to you; in all things affection and need. he was a virgin losing his scales every time you sat on his lap. he's experienced every type of pain and pride there was, but the experience of satisfaction and wholeness he got from you was brand new. this was a part of living he never truly knew, so why would he ever kill that by killing you?

your eager sounds and hefty grip made sylus groan softly. there was sweet, sweet pressure between your bodies, creating warmth that fueled both of you. it was still a mystery to him how human you seemed, even with your fangs inches deep into his neck.

"urgh... you're making a mess," sylus murmurs, noticing blood drops running down his neck.

he watches you quickly pull out from your bite and lick up the lines of blood from his neck. your eyes meet briefly, but you were too focused on drinking to truly notice how sylus stared down at you. he watched your tongue lap everything up, fast and with loud slurps.

the sight was enough to make him full body shudder, leaving him unprepared for your next bite. you were back at it, slurping and drinking as if you didn't get several pints worth in the last one.

another soft groan escapes sylus.

the pain wasn’t unbearable. it was in fact, completely bearable. barely anything to the injuries of sylus’s past. it was the overwhelming, affectionate feeling that was unbearable. leave it up to sylus to find a blood-sucking vermin like you, “affectionate.”

“‘m almost done,” you growl softly in-between sucks. sylus doesn't respond, he just lets you continue drinking with all the desperation you could muster. when your noises finally died down and the grip on his arms loosened, he knew you were done. he watches you pull back and lick the remnants of blood from your lips before wiping your mouth all-together.

sylus glances down at his neck - all cleaned and shiny from your saliva. he couldn't see the bites, but he could definitely feel it. a prolonging, insistent ache beat from his neck and all throughout his body. he felt a little lightheaded, a little sluggish and weak. and still, despite all the bites and sucks, he felt the furthest thing from dead. "i'm sorry," you mumble softly while glancing over sylus's slightly enfeebled body. "i... didn't mean to take so much. you just... taste really good." "bodies reproduce blood all the time. it's not like i won't get it back." you nod slightly, feeling a little awkward now that you've had your fill. "what are you going to do about... those boys?" sylus hesitates. he closes his eyes almost as if to forget the memory from earlier. "it'll figure itself out. they'll have to understand one way or another." you furrow your brows. "understand what?" you press sylus. "understand why you need to... keep me alive? what will you tell them?" "that i need to keep you alive to further investigate you, simple." sylus retorts, getting a little annoyed at your questions. "it won't be a big deal if we don't make it one." "what?" you scoff. "you know you aren't keeping me alive to investigate me further. so you're just gonna li-" "what do you know?!" sylus barks at you.

immediately you flinch back in surprise.

there's a moment between you two; one where you take a breath and recover from the sudden jolt of anxiety and one where sylus simmers in regret. "i..." he trails off. his expression softens and his eyes avoid your form. "so you're going to put me back into that cage? am i just living under your scrutiny? is my life still in danger? will my last days be in this fucking estate of yours?" "don't," sylus growls but then eases his tone. "don't... be so fucking hypocritical. you chose to break in here for your own selfish reasons. if you die in this house, then you chose your coffin. but i've given you more than enough blood to satiate you. you don't get to be angry." another moment. "can you just please be honest then?" you whisper, a new despondent tone lacing your voice. it doesn't go unnoticed by sylus. "if i die i'd rather it be in here, anyway. i don't have anywhere else to go, anyone else to see. i've spent the last who knows how many years just... getting by. i was fucking selfish but... if anyone knows about surviving, it's you." sylus brings his avoidant gaze back to you and stares into your dilated eyes. this was a new emotion. sadness. "what do you need me to be honest about?" he asks very softly. "why are you keeping me alive?" sylus shakes his head. "i don't know." "you do." "i don't," he repeats. "that's not a question i can answer for you. but you've made a great effort to get under my skin, get into my estate, terrorize me, take advantage of me, and use me. i hate you as much as i respect you and i haven't respected a nuisance like you in a while." he takes a deep breath, pausing to think about his next words. "if you want me to kill you, though, just say the word. i am also your lifeline as much as i am your murderer." the strange poeticism of sylus's words make your chest feel a little lighter. he felt much more... human this way. i mean - he was, unlike you. but up until now you saw him much differently - like he was a ferocious thing unable to be bested.

"i don't want to die..." sylus frowns slightly. not at your words but at your tone of voice, it was small... helpless even. "you'll stay alive then, but only here. only with me. i can't have you out in the n109 zone."

he sees your nod.

he sees himself lose more of his light.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

like a baby, you were put down to sleep.

but as a vampire, you didn't need sleep.

and you insisted that you didn't want to go to sleep.

but sylus didn't listen.

you were in some dark corner of the estate, purposefully hidden away from the cameras and any attention that may conglomerate in the house. and while your vampire biology enjoyed dark, quiet spaces, you yourself didn't like being put to the side and kept away like you were some sort of monster.

it was fine, you thought.

you could enjoy the peace in this little nook of the house without worry.

without being a part of what was happening between everyone else.

sylus was stood in front of his bedroom mirror once more, staring at the injuries imposed by you on his neck. he hesitated between covering up the bites due to shame and leaving them out for the next inevitable feeding you would have. he traced the outline of the red marks on his skin - intimately in the shape of your fangs.

each thought of his played out like tides, coming and going with the intensity dependent on the wave. everything was foggy, and the clearer thoughts almost seemed to vanish before he could become too emotional about them.

there was no reason to be standing in front of the mirror like he was.

but he was anyway.

what was just as strong at the pain aching in his neck, though, was the yearning he felt underneath his skin. this wasn't a thought that would flounder away, it was an anguish that was apart of his body now. but it had nothing to do with the pain of his bites, and he couldn't just ignore it.

time almost became lost on him. who knew how long he was stood there, and who knew how long it would've been before he left, if it wasn't for a distraction. "boss."

sylus flinches slightly at the unexpected voice coming from behind him. he looks over in the mirror and sees the twins standing there, postures tense. "luke? kieran? when did you get in here?" "we've been standing here for a while, boss." "oh... i didn't notice." a pause. then luke steps forward.

"boss we need to talk, like seriously. we just... want to clear things up, okay?"

sylus furrows his brows and closes his eyes, a slight groan escapes him. "i... i know, but right now isn't the time." "then when can we?" kieran suddenly responds with a gruff voice. it was obvious he was more passionate than his brother. "you always go back on your word with these things, never wanting to tell or involve us in anything. we wanna know if you're being serious here, boss." "kieran, it's okay. let's just-"

"you know i have my reasons," luke gets interrupted by sylus, "i've always done my job of protecting you two, and this situation is nothing different. i know you're confused, but you just can't... there are things you wouldn't be able to understand." "like what?" kieran raises his voice. "like why you're letting that vampire girl feed off of you and why you're suddenly coddling her like she's some baby? you can't torture the girl but you can let her torture you?" "she's not," sylus bites back a retaliatory yell, "she's not torturing me. like i said kieran, there are things you wouldn't be able to understand. but i'm doing what i need to, okay? what's your issue here?" "the issue is that we... we worry for you, boss," luke chimes in softly, his voice a lot more timid than the two men around him. "we care for you and... well we've noticed you've been a little off lately. and then this whole vampire thing happened and... we... we just want our boss back..." luke's smaller voice eases the welling upset in sylus's chest, but still - there was lingering frustration about the situation he's ended up in. he didn't want to answer to anyone about anything. not to you about his intentions, not to the twins about his feelings.

suddenly the vulnerable, unaccepted dragon he once was reincarnated into his bones.

judge-y, judge-y, judge-y.

that's all everyone did, that's all everyone was.

judgmental.

can't lead a sovereignty without scrutiny and demands, can't find companionship without dismay and disapproval, couldn't be a dragon without ridicule and cut horns. everyone was always so against him, one way or another. no wonder he couldn't recognize himself, who was he if not the opinions of other people. "i... i am your boss," sylus whispers, tightening his grip on the counter. "i am your boss and i've always been your boss. whether or not you think i've changed doesn't matter. i'm hundreds of years old, dammit! i have the right to change if i want to." sylus looks up to the mirror at the twins again. they were a bit farther back, kieran in front of luke in an almost defensive position. it was a regretful sight. "boss..." kieran mumbles, "what have we done here to... even warrant this from you?" sylus sighs. he pushes himself off the counter and turns to face the twins. they both avoidant eye contact but sylus didn't. "nothing," he says, "you've done nothing. and that's how i want to keep it. you two are just boys, you've done nothing wrong except be led by a man like me... i didn't want to have this conversation now for this reason. i knew i'd say something i'd regret." sylus weakly points to the door. "im sorry... you two need to leave." the twins glance at one another before looking up at sylus. the dejection and resolution in his voice was unnerving as much as it was upsetting. they both could feel their throats become itchy and burn up with emotion as sylus's rejection hits them.

it wasn't worth it anymore, not now and not like this. luke was the first to turn and tug his brother out with him. the bedroom door closed softly behind them, leaving a both a literal and figurative wall between sylus and them.

they stood out in the hall for a moment to process the conversation just had. "he's not well. he is not well, luke." "fuck... i know." "it's that bastard vampire girl. i want to find her and just kill her. she's turned boss into a zombie." luke shakes his head gently then continues guiding his brother down the hall to their bedrooms. "no... i don't think it's that simple, kieran. boss has been like this for a while now, even before she arrived. all the days we wouldn't see him because he'd be cooped up at base or in his office. all the negotiations that ended up in killing sprees like he needed to let something out. he stopped spending as much time with us, he stopped... being himself a while ago." they reach their bedrooms, the crow masks come off immediately. "that vampire made things worse, sure, but... it always felt like he was headed down this path." kieran furrows his brows and wipes away a few rogue tears that spilled earlier. he licks his lips and hesitates on his words. "are you saying it's always been hopeless?" luke frowns at his brother's emotional voice. "no," he whispers, "i just don't think we're strong enough to deal with him. i don't think anyone is. this is... his life. his choices. what can we do?" kieran bites his lip gently and groans softly in frustration. he makes intense eye contact with luke and wipes the last of his tears. "we keep trying, we keep talking. we'll regret it if we don't do anything, so we have to... we have to try. for him. o-okay?" luke hesitates for a few moments before giving his brother a single firm nod.

"okay." ⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘ the n109 zone was never in anything but darkness, which made it perfect for a vampire to inhabit in - but still, without some sort of window or even artificial light, it was hard for you to tell what time of day it was.

it had been long, that's all you knew. long since sylus dragged you in here and asserted to you to not leave and to not make noises. you didn't really like being docile, but here you were, unmoving and silent.

at least there was a bed, you thought. a bed, a blanket, the darkness, and some silence. it reminded you of the crevices you hid in when you first arrived into the estate, and how stupidly you made the mistake of trying to get fresh air, leading you to get caught by those two with the crow masks.

you haven't heard many noises in your time in this room, only the faint creaking noises of the house. the estate was big enough that a party on the other side could barely be heard from where you were at - so when you finally did hear a noise, it startled you.

it was heavy footsteps from down the hall that became louder and louder with each passing second. it was a bit unnerving to say the least, but you were scared of few things in your life.

you stilled until the footsteps stopped right outside the bedroom door. it was tense for a few moments before the door swung open, letting in faint light from down the hall. your keen night vision scanned the area and could immediately recognize the form that was now entering the room. "sylus?" you whisper. he doesn't answer. the door closes on his way in and you instinctively sit up warily. as powerful as this man may be, he wasn't a threat to you - but his behavior was odd. you furrow your brows and repeat his name. "sylus." and finally, a response. "are you hungry?" you shift uncomfortably at the question. you weren't, but the thought of drinking from him again was enough to stir you. you swallow and close your eyes to refrain from just pouncing on him. "no... not really." "are you sure? you've been in here for two days, you're really not hungry?" two days? what? "i had a lot to drink last time, i've been quite satiated," you respond softly, the idea of being stuck in here for two days being unfathomable to you. "your blood is thick and course. i'm no longer hungry like i was when i arrived. i feel... normal."

it was quite strange to you how honest you were being here, but that look in sylus's eye made it hard for you not to be. the look of deep pitted exhaustion. you pitied him too much to lie right now.

"sylus," you say his name again after a short silence, "why have i been in here for two days?"

sylus shifts slightly to where he could hear your voice. he's been staring at darkness this whole time, just taking in your presence by listening to you. without your face, the familiarity sylus felt from your voice was stronger.

a voice he knew. a voice for him. "i didn't plan on it being this long, but i've been... distracted. my sense of time isn't great right now. im sorry it's been this long." you shake your head, sylus couldn't see it. "uh... no, it's fine... i suppose. is... is everything alright?" sylus doesn't answer your question and steps forward to where the sound of your voice was coming from. he stops when he bumps into the bedside table where the small lamp was. slowly, he reaches for it and turns it on to its dimmest setting. finally, you two make eye contact.

he sees you in the middle of the bed, sat rather politely and squinting from the light. and you see him, towering over the bed and face a bit sunken and eyes scrutinizing you. he's lost weight.

once your eyes adjust properly to the light, you look over him better. the scars on his neck were healing, but his healing process that would usually take a day was now taking longer - given that the last time you drank from him was over two days ago. he wore something fairly normal. low V-cut shirt and black pants. you can't help but think the shirt was intentional. "were you ridiculed by them?" sylus suddenly asks, crouching down to your level by the bed. "by whom?" you respond. seeing him at this level was flustering you a bit. "philosians. you're from there, yes? did they ever... hurt you? physically, mentally, emotionally, anything?" you shake your head and wet your lips. "no, they were... family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances. i never felt... ridiculed. why do you ask?" sylus furrows his brows together and looks down at his lap. this was a hard talk. "because they still do it," he murmurs. "you said it yourself, they still tell stories about me all these fucking years later. i can't escape them, one of them even broke into my house." you tense up at his words. "i'm... not like them. i'm part of the n109 zone now, it's been eons since i've been in philos. plus, i told you i never believed those stories anyway. i'm different in every way possible from the girl i was back in philos." sylus raises his head and meets your eyes with his dilated, angry ones. "but, you know. you said you never believed those stories, but you also said you somehow knew they were about me. how could you have known they were about me if you didn't think of me as the monster they say i am? the horrible things they've lied about, you had to believe them and figure it they were about me." you bite back your small whimper. it was bad enough he'd forgotten you, it was worse that he was accusing you. "sylus that's not-" "there's more you're not telling me but i... i don't know if i want to find out anymore."

the anger plaguing sylus suddenly dissipates and becomes replaced with despair. his hands clench until his knuckles turned white, and once again, that tension just disappears. like he didn't have the energy to continue the emotion. "i don't want to know anymore, i don't care enough, i can't think straight." sylus admits with his head going back down again in a resigned, hung position. "i've built my life ground up and i just... i have nothing to feel for it. it's just here, i'm just here. and i feel nothing, nothing at all."

frustration lines sylus’s voice before it too dissipates once more. being this vulnerable and honest was unnatural for him, it made him uncomfortable to wallow at the knees of someone like you. but just like his anger, just like his frustration, it was hard to have energy to care or regret anymore. one minute the emotion was there, the next it was gone. and what it left was nothing. a devoid of anything.

sylus feels your hand rests atop his head and flinches slightly. he brings his head up to look at you and sees your slightly awkward, tense, and pitiful eyes. your touch was anything but, though. in fact it was warmer than what he would expect from a vampire.

“i… feel that way too, sometimes,” you mumble. you avert your gaze to avoid sylus’s aching eyes. “i had to.. rebuild my life after i became a vampire. everything i knew and loved was no more, and i was no more. and decades later, here i am, with what to show for it except for desperation?”

sylus’s expression clenches in understanding and in pity as well.

“i’ve mourned for what i’ve lost, who i’ve lost. i’ve mourned for those who’ve forgotten me. and even when hope is staring me right in the eyes,” you glance at sylus then quickly look away again, “i can’t feel anything either. i’m also a monster people try to stay away from. even if i’ve never hurt anyone and even if i blend in, i’m… still a monster.”

a fleeting feeling of embarrassment washes over you, realizing that you were reciprocating sylus’s honesty with your own. you swallow tentatively and shake the thoughts of regret from your mind. it came naturally to you. to look at that face and to be the most honest version of yourself, it was who you are.

“i… im sorry,” sylus whispers. he lays his head in your lap and closes his eyes. “im sorry.”

immediately you tense up. you weren’t sure what to make of sylus’s sudden earnestness but it was worlds better than being at the receiving end of his ferocity.

gently, you move your hand back and forth on his head of hair and exhale with emotion. there was simmering uncertainty between you two.

“i don’t want to be kept away again,” you break the silence. “makes me feel like an animal. like the monster you keep talking about.”

sylus nods just slightly in your lap acknowledging your request. he felt a responsibility to keep you away from all the prejudice he once felt. even if you were the “enemy”.

after a few minutes of unusual but mending silence, sylus raises his head off of you and starts climbing the bed. immediately you lean back and look between his eyes. it was moments like these you remember just how much bigger he was than you.

“are you sure you don’t need any blood?” sylus rumbles out. his palms were pressed into the mattress on either side of your hips. a single knee of his hoisted him up on the bed and helped him tower over you. he was looking down at you and eyeing every mix of emotion that passed through your eyes.

you sputter. “u…um, i’m not that hungry but… do you want me to feed?”

to your surprise sylus nods, but just barely so. “yeah,” he mumbles, “i want you to feed.”

“w-why?”

sylus squints his eyes at you. “because… you need to eat, and i promised to keep you alive.”

“but… i just said i wasn’t hungry.”

sylus clenches the bedsheets beneath his hands. he stares you down but it wasn’t to intimidate you, but to figure out what to say next based on your reaction. safe to say you were confused.

“let me feed you,” he whispers, “i want to give you myself.”

the sequence of expressions on your face would be amusing to him if it wasn’t for such a gray atmosphere in the air. he leaned in closer, your noses almost touching, and repeats himself. “let me feed you, i know you want it.”

and oh boy you did.

from the way your hands gripped in your lap, to the way you swallowed mouthfuls of spit imagining it was his blood, you wanted it. and he was dangling it in front of you like candy.

“but if i keep taking blood when i don’t need—“

you yelp as sylus suddenly pushes himself forward and pins you against the bed with his own body. and just as quickly, he turns your bodies over so that you were the one laying on him. cups the back of your head with his palm and angles it to his neck.

“it’s okay, drink,” he whispers gruffly, “just drink.”

and that insistence—even after you denied needing it, even knowing hunger wasn’t plaguing you right now—that insistence makes you break.

you can barely register it but within seconds you wrapped your arms around sylus’s neck and pulled yourself closer to his skin for a bite. like second nature at this point, your fangs meet his skin and breaks it’s healing barrier. immediately, you start drinking.

a groan leaves both of you as pain and pleasure circles between your bodies. it didn’t even matter if you were hungry or not anymore. physical hunger played no part in how much you needed this lifeline of yours.

“yes,” sylus moans breathless, “yes, just like that. take what you need.”

you snarl in response. obviously, you were happy to comply.

when your fangs sink in deeper sylus can’t help but throw his head back from the overwhelming sensation. it was so unpleasant but your eagerness, your need for him gave him an unending satisfaction. he knew pain well enough to know when it was searing, and your infliction upon him was anything but.

“you,” sylus chokes out softly, “make me feel something i never have. like this…” you growl in between his words, “like this i’m perfect. i’m wanted. i’m not a monster.”

he pushes your head imperceptibly further in. you were already so close but the need to fuse with you in the moment was so strong. this was your kindness, he needed to be one with your kindness. he was your virgin, after all.

just as usual, sylus’s blood was thick and sweet with a nice course feel to it on your tongue. all you could think about was how different dragon’s blood was to rat’s blood or bird’s blood. it was pure, healthy, and potent. everything you needed.

his muffled, pitiful words were distant to your hazed mind. all you selfishly cared about was getting in another fill of his blood. there was a time where hurting sylus like this was unthinkable—but now, as a vampire, with needs far more important than sylus, you couldn’t care less.

sylus smiles to himself and closes his eyes for a moment. he could feel that familiar lightheaded sensation come back to his body. but instead of frustration or fatigue, he only felt empowered.

when he opens his eyes again, he was greeted with the top of your head so close to his face. like second nature, he leans closer and kisses the crown of your head. and what was one peck turned into several. silent but sweet thank yous from him but barely appreciated by you.

even when the groaning and slurping finally stopped and you finally pull back from his neck. sylus couldn’t help himself but continue his affections.

your flushed expression and red-stained lips was addictive. he leans into closer and licks away a few rogue drops of blood from the corner of your lips and then pulls back with a smile.

“are you full? was it good for you?” he whispers while stroking your cheek tenderly.

you could barely register sylus’s softening demeanor but respond with a slight nod anyway. “yeah… mm.. good.”

sylus’s eyes become rounded with emotion. he pitches your cheek affectionately. “do you need more?”

you shake your head, “no…” you whisper. your senses start to slowly come back to you. you’re suddenly hyper aware of how close you are to sylus’s face and how kind he’s being to you. “was… was it good for you?”

sylus’s smile drops slightly but twitches back up again. “yeah, it was.”

“why?”

“it feels good.”

“how?”

“it just does.”

you flit your eyes down to the bites on his neck and the other bruisings that were healing. “it doesn’t look like it feels good. it looks painful.”

“it is.”

“then why does it feel good?”

sylus takes a moment, thinking about how to respond. “because… i think you give me something i need. i haven’t done anything like this before. with someone who… i guess needs me, likes me.”

you straighten at his words and fumble back into a sitting position from where you were laid. on his lap now, you don’t know where to look or how to feel about this words. “wh-why do you say it like that?” you almost laugh. “i’m just… drinking blood…”

your reaction makes sylus flushed as well. he sits up awkwardly and clears his throat, wondering how to move forward after saying something so embarrassing.

“i know,” he mumbles, “but it’s different for me than it is for you. but… we both benefit from it, so doesn’t really matter how or why.” he pulls you in closer just slightly. “just matters that we both get what we need.”

you nod with an incredulous look on your face. this was amazing news for you, it seemed. not only a source of blood, but of the finest blood out there. yet still, the sudden shift in sylus didn’t go unnoticed by you.

“yeah,” you smile just slightly, “doesn’t matter.”

the next few moments of silence consisted of you and sylus simply staring at each other, awkward but understanding smiles on your close faces. it only takes a few more moments for sylus to decide to move on. he picks you up effortlessly and attaches you to the front of his body. your legs instinctively go around his hips and your arms around his neck.

with you hoisted up against him, he clicks off the dim light of the room and walks out. he turns his head slightly to catch a glimpse of your side profile.

“no more hiding out. let’s go to my room.”

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

“are you sure this is a good idea, kieran?” luke whisper shouts to his brother. he hid behind his back like something was going to come out of nowhere and snatch him away.

“i thought we agreed,” kieran scoffs. “boss isn’t going to talk to us if she’s around. did you see the way he carried her into his room? all… lovey-dovey and shit? fuck, it’s disgusting. she has him hypnotized or something. so we can’t get answers out of boss, we have to get answers out of her.”

“i know, i know,” luke sighs, “but… can’t this wait until she’s awake?”

luke stares at sylus’s bedroom door with unease. just by chance did he and kieran see sylus and you walk into his bedroom. or rather, sylus walking in and you attached to him like a vest from the front. with the lights off and no noises coming from the bedroom, it was somewhat safe to assume that the two of you were asleep. even if… vampires didn’t really need asleep. the twins would take their chances anyway.

“no, it can’t,” kieran insists with his arms crossed. “if she’s wide awake then that means boss would be too. and you know we can’t do this if he’s awake. we just gotta do this efficiently, yknow? efficiently… quickly… intimidatingly…”

“kieran,” luke murmurs while eyeing his brother’s antsy form up and down, “stop moving around so much it’s making me nervous. let’s just… do this and get it over with. do you have the weapons?”

kieran nods. “and more in the bedroom if we need them. i wish i could just kill her instantly but… we need information out of her.”

luke smiles to himself. “you sound just like a boss… y’know when he still gave a shit about a vampire being in the house.”

kieran smiles back. it was a moment of humor in an otherwise daunting environment. “yeah… i learned from the best.”

the twins face the door head on and with one final shared breath, reach for the knob and click it open. the hallway light spills in just a sliver, illuminating the bed that was in the middle of the room.

two forms there, one noticeably bigger than the other. you and sylus.

the twins felt their heart rates pick up at the intimate sight. it was just you two sleeping next to each other, but it was wrong. you weren’t supposed to be there, you were supposed to be dead by now.

they swiftly walk in, not bothering to be too slow with their pace. they needed to get in and then get out.

at the side of the bed where you were laid at, they gaze down at you. hair mussed up and expression peaceful in sleep. thank god you actually were asleep.

the twins glance at each other before giving the other a firm nod and going in immediately. luke covers your mouth with his palm and hoists you up harshly while kieran moves back and holds a silver-plated knife to your neck—courtesy of all the weapon crates still in security.

immediately, you wake up from the yank of your body. any noise you made was pushed back by luke’s palm and soon you realize from the knife on your skin to not make any noise at all. the two boys you keep seeing around the estate were now here with you.

you glance at sylus beside you who was still unmoving and fast asleep. you curse the fatigue that was causing him such deep sleep. it was evident from the first bite you took how long he slept afterward, and while that was good for you then, it was life or death now.

the twins nervously drag you off the bed and out the bedroom, closing the door behind them. there was complete silence between the three of you because everyone was on extreme high alert.

you’re lead to another bedroom across the hall—kieran’s bedroom—and forcibly sat in a chair. your arms are tugged back by luke and then locked at the wrists with silver handcuffs, then same done to your ankles. you notice how many weapons were on the floor and tables of the room. they were all the n109 zone’s high tech vampire equipment.

it was only once you were completely bound and helpless that the twins even acknowledged you.

“listen,” kieran murmurs very lowly. “i won’t waste my time on idle talk. you know why you’re here right now. what have you done to boss?”

luke steps forward, backing up his brother. “you’ve been feeding off of him, right? you’re making that man sick for fuck’s sake. listen… we don’t know what your end goal is here, but the last thing boss needs right now is to deal with you anymore.”

your eyes, blown wide from sheer astonishment at the situation, look between the twins. you laugh incredulously. “what?”

kieran brings the knife back up to your neck. “this isn’t fucking funny.”

you glance down at the knife. “you two are just like him. empty threats and desperation. i’ve had this song and dance with your boss. he put me in a cage and threatened to starve me but he needed me for information, so he kept me alive.”

kieran’s face scrunches up in disapproval. “have you not spoken? is this little… charade of his to get you to speak?”

you shake you head. “i’ve already told him what he wanted to know.”

the twins visibly look taken aback. this whole time they lived on the hope that maybe, just maybe, this was all a tactic for sylus to find the answers he needed. even if it sounded a little crazy to them, they didn’t know any better. boss never shared his plans anyway.

“what?” luke whispers. “how can we trust you?”

“how am i supposed to prove that you can? you two already seem to hate me.”

“of course we fucking hate you!” kieran suddenly yells. the force of his emotions causes the knife in his hand to accidentally knick your skin. “you’ve… you’ve turned boss into a zombie! he won’t even speak to us anymore! he’s always with you! or… or just not there…he’s so hollow… it’s like… it’s like you’ve done something to him!”

“i didn’t do anything!” you yell back, equally as angry now. “he wanted this!”

“bullshit he wanted this!” kieran retorts. his eyes start watering behind his mask but the tears couldn’t be wiped away right now. “why… why would he want this? why would he want to be your stupid fucking… blood bag?! he’s the fucking sovereignty of the n109 zone. he’s not going to let some weak vermin like you… use him!”

“kieran,” luke interjects whilst putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “kieran, calm down. you’re only going to make yourself more upset. you don’t need to fight with your voice, we have weapons.”

you start struggling against your confinements and thrash around in the chair. you were so sick of being the main villain in this story. so what, you did sneak in. but it was the house full of impulsive men who got you to this point. it was so clear to you that these boys knew nothing about their boss despite being “like his sons”.

“i can’t fucking take her anymore, luke,” kieran cries softly with the knife slowly pushing more into your skin. “i can’t fucking take looking at her face and i can’t fucking take looking at boss and wondering what happened. we can fix it. whatever boss is going through, we can fix it. but we just need her gone.”

luke nods in agreement, his own tears threatening to spill. “i… know. i know. i can’t imagine boss wanting this either. it’s not right… it’s not like him. but we can’t kill her, not yet.”

you watch the emotional exchange between the brothers with a bit of regret in your heart. if you hadn’t manipulated, lied, and taken advantage of sylus in his vulnerable states, this wouldn’t be happening. but at the same time… you missed him and needed blood.

you missed him, you needed blood.

you missed him, you needed blood.

you missed him, you needed blood.

the two emotions of love and greed overwhelmed your judgement and here you were, however much time later, suffering the consequences of your desperation.

every single one of you was desperate for something it seemed. you, sylus, the twins. it seems like everyone was working off trying protect something and fulfill themselves.

you weren’t lying when you said you related to sylus in his emptiness. at some point you started feeling nothing but… well, nothing. you were in a cycle of trying to survive and trying to keep your identity a secret. and still then, the thought of dying and being reborn was worse to you. you kept on living for the sake of it, and only when you met sylus at that bar, did you feel your two new emotions.

love and greed playing out over and over again in an endless cycle until you ended up here, tied up to a chair, facing the consequences of your own actions. but even here, you didn’t regret a single thing.

“please,” kieran almost whimpers. he drops the knife to the floor and drops to his knees along with it. “please, just tell us what you did… please just tell us why boss—“

the door opens to the bedroom.

the familiar creaking sound catches the attention of all three of you. it plays out like déja vu.

the twins look back, slightly horrified.

you look up, slightly hopeful.

sylus stands there with a menacing look to his face. his hands are clenched into fists by his sides but he makes no other show of his anger. the only sound breaking the barrier now was his voice, and it was as smooth and low as ever.

“what are you two doing?”

just wanna say ty all for your support! means the world

tl: @seventeen-x , @webshooterrr9 , @theycallmesoup , @satansdaughter123 , @tyasmaple , @jaynawayna , @jadeymeciela , @namjooningera , @phisen , @eepamaawo , @lolaisoffline, @floofycookie, @thejmins, @multisstuff, @meowgumiiii

[moon-fics]

Pairing: Bob Reynolds x Reader

A/n: I haven't done any creative writing in months. I'm finally doing it again so PLEASE! PLEASE don't be made if I fuck this up.

Request: reader comforting bob (any bob, could be Reynolds or Floyd) after a nightmare abt a mission gone wrong 🙏🙏 may it be filled with all the comfort our dear robert could ever ask for 😌😌😌

Warnings: Swears, mentions of violence

Your first warning was the lights flickering. It was sudden and lasted way longer than a faulty wire would. Your second warning was the vibrations coming from your mirror. The third warning won't be as kind if you ignore it.

You know these warning signs, and you often look out for them. So, you rush out of your room. The dark hallways of the tower are barely lit, but you know your way to his room. You've run to them so often it's almost ingrained in your mind.

You don't even knock before opening his door and closing it behind you. You're met with a familiar sight of Bob curled up on his bed, trembling and gasping. He isn't awake and won't wake up unless someone helps him.

You stumble over to his bed and nearly trip on a Rubik's cube. You grab his shoulders once you reach him, shaking him lightly. This is a strategic mission because Bob is not a gracious person when he wakes up. With his powers, it's a 50/50 chance you get thrown across the room. Thankfully, the only time he's attacked in his sleep, you were able to dodge. Can't say the same for Alexei.

"Bob, wake up," you say while still shaking him. His oversized sweater is covered in sweat that sticks to your hands. "Come on, Bob. Come back to me." You say softly. You've found that yelling has never had a good outcome. So, using a softer tone is the only solution.

After a few seconds, you can see him stirring. His eyes move behind his lids, and his lips press together. You've memorized most of his face and reactions at this point. You've spent so much time with him it was only natural.

With one last shake, he's startled awake. A yell escapes his throat before dying out quickly. He frantically looks around his room before his eyes find you. Oh, do they find you.

It's like a puppy finding its owner after thinking it was lost. His eyes soften, and his breathing becomes controlled. It's rapid, but he's trying to slow it down.

"Did I-?" He can barely ask before you nod. "Was it bad? Did someone get hurt?" His usual questions.

"No, no one was hurt. You didn't do anything bad," You assure him while climbing onto the edge of his bed. You don't give yourself the entitlement of holding him or getting under the covers without her permission. "Was it a bad nightmare?" You ask.

He swallows whatever saliva is in his mouth and nods. "Yeah, it wasn't the best," He chuckles weakly. He pats the space next to him, allowing you into his space. You gladly take it and scoot closer to him.

"I, uh, I couldn't save anyone," He clears his throat awkwardly. You've both gotten into a groove of skipping the 'wanna talk about it' and the 'no, I'm ok'. It always leads to him talking about it and her comforting him back to sleep. "We were on a mission, and you wouldn't leave my side. I don't know what happened, but you were all hanging off a building, and suddenly I wasn't strong enough," He continues.

Having nightmares about bad missions or impossible situations isn't new to anyone in the tower. However, it is to Bob. He wasn't trained as an assassin or for combat. He was just some guy who got dealt bad cards and one wild card.

"Yeah, well, if we go down, at least we do it together," You nudge him. It's clear that doesn't help as his frown grows. "Hey, nothing is going to happen. I'm right here, and Bucky is right across the hall snoring." You say.

You gently rest a hand on his and squeeze for proof. He isn't alone anymore. He has a whole team of people who care and want the best for him. You're both silent as time passes. He can feel your pulse in your hand and how warm you are. Definitely not dead.

"Can you stay tonight?" He asks softly. His softness used to break your heart at how sad he seemed. Now, it's comforting. He doesn't sound as sad but more meek-like.

"Only if you don't kick me in your sleep again," You agree. A half smile spreads on his lips as an answer. You know he's going to kick you, and it's going to be annoying. However, you at least get to have a pretty view the entire night.

He turns over on his side and shifts under the covers. You carefully get under them as well and adjust yourself. Your chest presses against his back, and you wrap an arm around him.

You find it comical that a man this muscular likes being the little spoon, but you have no complaints. If it gets him a good night's sleep, you'll hold him all night.

"I'm right here," You repeat while shutting your eyes.

[legendofmorons]

Warriors and Wild who are painful reminders of the past for eachother BUT they still care. Give me brothers that would do ANYTHING for eachother BUT have a ton of almost matching baggage neither enjoys examining.

Warriors who does make Wild think of the army. Wars makes Wild think of the worst nights of his life without meaning to. Wars moves and talks like the knights Wild knows, but the knights Wild knows are HORRIBLE.

Wild Recognizes that Wars is NOT those knights. He Recognizes that Wars isn't trying to dredge up the past. He Recognizes that while he hates how effective Warrior's Captin's Voice is that Wars rarely uses it on purpose and that sometimes its good that there's that voice.

Warriors who looks at Wild and sees so many lost soilders who were still hopeful. He sees Wild and he Recognizes that the champion IS smart, and strategizes even if Wars can't always choose the same strategies. Wars looks at Wild and sees all the traits the army crushes out and is maybe even Jealous of how much easier it is for Wild to let himself have emotions. (Wether Wild actually has it easier around feeling or not is up to interpretation but Wars IS on the outside looks in...)

Wars KNOWS he can depend on Wild to step up if things go south and the plan goes out the window. He knows Wild is kind, adaptable, and capable even if he doesn't agree with all the decisions. Wars Knows Wild isn't trying to dredge up the past.

Give me Warriors and Wild who (while accurate or not) see eachother as mirrors of the past... but maybe hope for the future.

Warriors is not just a good knight and hero. He's a good and loyal man. He's got lots of integrity, and he's a good leader. Wild appreciates that most of the time, warriors can be trusted to help pull everyone through. Wild admires the easy (EXTERNAL) confidence and the ability to plan in such detail.

Wild is not just a bit of a free spirit who adores adventure, he's a kind and hardworking man. He's canonicaly good with kids (see both LU comic when he's around Wind AND Totk where we learn Wild was a teacher), he's friendly, and he's incredibly fast on his feet (physical and mental!). Wars admires his wilderness survival skills and his ability to put people at ease. The captain appreciates the work Wild does.

Give me Wars and Wild who admire eachother. Yes, they cause unpleasant memories sometimes, and yes they both Certainly annoy eachother because some of their personality traits clash a bit, but they Care about eachother.

Wild and Wars may not agree on strategy but they're able to see the value in the other ideas. They may not be best friends, they may argue over tidyness sometimes and they may even argue about authority and how far that extends bur that dosen’t mean they don't care.

For every bad memory, there's a gesture to help.

For every clash and argument there's still the trust that they want the best for eachother and the group.

Even with the distance that may very well exist between them, they are still brothers, and they are still able to step in for each other.

Wars almost never under estimates Wild. (Critical observation.)

Wild rarely puts everything on Wars. (Independence.)

Also if Wars found out about the way Wild usually (fanon?) ended up selectively Mute and in the army PRE CALMITY, the captain would have a FIT.

Give me Wild and Warriors who stay up together on the worst nights and maybe they don't have some great big philosophical conversation but they are there for eachother and a reminder that the army DIDN'T take and break everything.

I'm not sure this is coherent... my head hurts so much I can feel it in my hair...

[tobesolnelyx]

Hi!! I'm a huge fan of your blog!! Just wanted to say you make every day of my life so much better💗

Okay, so we’ve got the fratboys Shauna, Lottie, Jackie, and Nat… but how do you think they would react to a pregnant R? Who’d be the most excited? And… could someone have been careless on purpose? 👀 I’d love to hear your thoughts!

— juno || fratboy!yellowjackets x pregnant!reader 🌫️

a/n: thank you so much anon! that’s so sweet <3. read that and immediately thought about juno by sabrina carpenter 😭

summary: your girlfriend accidentally knocked you up! fluff. unexpected pregnancy. g!p yellowjackets girlies.

warnings: none! pure fluff!

shauna shipman who is terrified at the begging. you come to her, pregnancy test is in your hand and before she have a chance to greet you, you push small thing into her fingers. she stares at that, then at you, and you see how colours just drain off her face. you don’t have to say anything. of course she’s smart enough to understand. for once in her life she’s serious. thoughts are racing in her head, wondering when you two forgot about protection. well…you had many occasions, actually.

but once she’s used to that thought? she goes insane. she insists to do everything. she cooks, cleans, brings groceries. you try to tell her that you’re fine, you’re able to do things by yourself. not like she’s listening. she nods, acknowledging it, but still do all that.

she reads every single article in internet about being a mom, how to take care of someone pregnant, how you’d know if it’ll be girl or a boy…she even adjust diet for you. she doesn’t orders you what to eat or do, but she’s always there with advice. she actually might know more about pregnancy than you.

not to mention that she absolutely panics at first, when your waters breaks down. fortunately, she’s smart enough to get her shit together in time. overall? she’s going to be a great parent. maybe a little bit overprotective but still.

lottie matthews who laughs at you in disbelief at first. she acts like it’s all a good joke and you’re just messing with her. once she get used to thought that you’re really pregnant, she needs solid ten minutes to proceed. she sits on your bed and stares at the wall. later that day, she wraps arms around you, gently caressing your belly.

“i’ll take care of everything, i will,” she murmurs into your neck. and you know that no matter what you’ll decide, she’ll be there to help. to make things better.

the next day, she wakes up early. she goes around the apartment, studying it. at the end of this weird journey, when you’re in the kitchen, she lets out a small tsk, and hitting dad pose, she says:

“we need a new one,” she states and you furrow your brows.

“new…?” you stare at her.

“apartment,” she sighs like she’s talking about something obvious. “with another room. for our kid.” she explains. “unless you decided that you don’t want to…?”

and with that, she buys new apartment next week. not like it’s much for her dad to pay. even if her family is usually totally shitty, her parents are more than ready to give you financial support. so lottie decides to spoil this kid before it’s even born. of course, she arranges room, she buys furniture and assembles it. like proper baby daddy.

jackie taylor who offers you support immediately. of course she’s terrified. it’s not something she really planned in her life. not that early at least. but she guesses you might be way more scared than she is. god, at the end she’s not the one carrying her baby. and jackie is always there to take responsibility. she doesn’t know how she’s going to explain all that to her parents. or how she’ll manage to be a parent, but she’s there.

so she gives you kind of a pep talk. well, sweet pep talk. she reassures you, tell you that you’ll be great, that you two gonna get through this together. and she really means it cause… in the inside she’s excited. something about the fact that she managed to impregnate you is extremely hot to her.

she starts making plans. obviously she makes sure you’re okay, that you’re ready to keep this child. then, on those late evenings, she curls at your side. she spreads kisses all over your belly and rambles to this kid…well, fetus more like.

“you’re gonna play soccer,” she states and you shake your head, giggling softly. “or not. it’s your decision,” she adds sheepishly. “but if you do, i’ll make you a star player.”

“jax,” you say, brushing her hair. “you know that they can’t hear you yet?” she huffs only at that.

“shhh, im creating child-parent bond,” she says seriously like it’s the most important mission right now. with that, she keeps talking about everything she’s planning to do as a parent.

also! she’s on instant by your side when you say you need massages cause your back or your legs hurts. she can gently loosing knots for hours. everything for you. and it’s pretty much godly experience — her hands are stronger than they seem to be.

natalie scatorccio who denies it. you tell her that, and few minutes later she’s outside, taking a long walk. she doesn’t go drinking, but she just leaves. for a moment you’re scared that she won’t come back. regardless, she does. she always do. after few hours of pacing around the campus and trying to proceed everything, she returns to you.

she slips in your sharing bed, her hands gently wraps around your belly and she spreads kisses all over your neck. her fingers are tracing your abdomen. like she’s scared to hurt something so fragile. this little life growing inside you.

“we’ll get through this together,” she murmurs into your skin and you finally relax after hours of uncertainty. “i’ll be there, i promise, i just…” she presses another kiss and you melt. “needed a moment.” she finishes quietly.

natalie is scared — no wonders. not like she ever had proper parent figure. and sure as hell, she doesn’t exactly knows what to do. her eyes widens anytime you grimaces because of pain or discomfort. her hands are tentative, careful and soft. especially when she touches your stomach.

she’s stubborn to do everything for you. only to keep you well and happy. and even if she doesn’t exactly know what to do, or god, how this whole being parent works, she tries. she helps you to pick clothes for kid. she’s there to soothe your doubts and fears. sometimes you see her in the bathroom or living room, when she reads on her phone one of those articles how to raise a child. she won’t be like her parents. she can’t be.

[oopsiedaisydeer]

how to lose a guy in 10 days

slow burn, mutual pining, dual pov, fake dating, angst, comedy, miscommunication, fluff, enemies to lovers (kinda)

word count - 700ish

day one

Boston bars on a Thursday night had a specific flavour… half-sour beer, half-sweat, half-despair.

The kind of place where office workers unwound and undergrads overcompensated. She fit somewhere in the middle, technically employed, emotionally unmoored, trying not to think about the fact that she was doing this on purpose.

Her drink came sweating in its glass. She took one long sip and scanned the room, reminding herself: first guy who smiles.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Two minutes later, in walked Matt Sturniolo, hat tucked in his back pocket, rings on his fingers like he was trying a little, but not too much. 

He had spotted her immediately. Alone at the bar, one heel slightly hanging off her toe, like she hadn’t decided whether she was staying or leaving. When she met his eyes and smiled, he thought, Shit. That’s her. 

He walked over anyway.

“Hey,” he said, leaning just close enough to be heard over the ambient buzz. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She raised her glass. “Bit late for that. This one’s already mine.”

Matt blinked, smile just a little crooked, like he didn’t trust it to land right. “Right. So… maybe your next one?”

She tilted her head. “You always open with math talk?”

He laughed, nervous but genuine. “Only when I’m nervous.”

That made her pause. She expected smooth, maybe cocky. Not this. “You’re nervous?”

“A little. You looked like someone who’d see through bullshit.”

He gave her a look as he did this, scanning her posture, the way her skirt hiked a little too high from how she sat, unintentionally flirty, hair slightly wavy, haloed by the bar’s neon light. 

She smiled again, slower this time. “Fair.”

They talked. Not for five minutes. Not for fifteen. For nearly two hours.

He asked her favourite movie. She said The Truman Show and then wouldn’t explain why.

She asked about his worst habit. He said, “Saying I’ll call and then forgetting my phone exists.”

She gave him a look. “That’s comforting.”

“You haven’t given me your number yet,” he said. “So technically, I’m still innocent.”

She snorted. “Charming.”

Someone’s laughter cracked in the background, but all he heard was the ice clinking in her drink as she laughed at him.

“Flattered. You’re terrifying, by the way.”

She tried to hide her smile behind her glass.

“Do you always go to bars alone and talk to strangers?” he asked her then.

“Only on nights when I’m feeling creative on my mission to try and ruin my life.”

He laughed, the sound coming all the way from his stomach. When he finally caught his breath, he told her, “then I guess I’m your lucky mistake.”

“You wish.”

He raised his eyebrow at her and she looked away, already reminding herself the point of all this flirting. But fuck, it didn’t hurt that he was hot. 

When the bartender called last call, she didn’t check the time. Neither did he.

She pulled on her jacket. Matt cleared his throat, watching her down her drink as he subtly pulled out his phone.

“Can I get your number?”

She raised an eyebrow, playful but cautious. “Already?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to find you in this bar again next Thursday.”

She tilted her head. “You planning on being here again next Thursday?”

He grinned. “Only if you are.”

She looked at him for a long moment, like she was weighing something. Then handed him her phone.

“Text me something weird,” she said, a small smile on her face. “So I know it’s you.”

As they left the bar, Matt held the door open for her, and she slipped past him, brushing her hand gently over his forearm as thanks.

I'm gonna make you wish you were dead, she thought to herself as she looked into his eyes.

As Matt met her stare, there was only one thought on his mind: You're already falling in love.

Later that night, as he was brushing his teeth he remembered the girl from the bar. He pulled his phone out, letting the toothbrush dangle from his mouth as he found her contact.

Back in her apartment, she tossed her phone onto the bed, feeling the kind of buzz that had nothing to do with alcohol.

And across the city, Matt lay in bed staring at the ceiling, already wondering what the hell kind of trouble he’d invited into his life. Because this girl?

He ran his hand through his hair sighing, realising he had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into.

But for fifteen grand? He was all in.

One down. Nine to go.

dividers by @bernardsbendystraws ꨄ

a/n: i hope you guys like this <3

[yuurivoice]

I'm Writing A Novel, And I'm F*cking Terrified!

Not quite the headline you all might have been expecting, but yes, it's true! After writing hundreds of thousands of words over the past decade for all of my scripts, promotional material, and every other thing you could imagine—I'm looking to put pen to paper in the way I used to dream of. 

Long before I picked up a microphone and started making questionable noises into it, I was a storyteller. I wanted nothing more in my life than to create stories and characters that touched people, and most importantly, inspired them to create stories of their own. I was a seven year old kid fresh off of playing Final Fantasy VII when I knew I wanted to write. 

It was my first dream.

That dream and I have been on a wild roller coaster ride over the years. I've been in the trenches, roleplaying in dark corners of the internet. I've written professionally as a journalist all thanks to lowkey never telling anyone my age online as I got through high school. Oh, and while I was doing that, I was also writing sad boy poetry on LiveJournal and Myspace. 

You know me for my voice, but that voice has been developed through a lifetime of finding creative ways to string together enough words that when I slap a period at the end of it, the audience locks in. I've written 99% of what you've listened to from me. I take great pride in that, and that won't be changing any time soon.

The thing that brought me this far, the thing responsible for all of the daydreams and fantasies about wonderful worlds filled with characters and stories that fueled my creativity, was the hope that one day I'd write a novel.

If you've been a creative of any sort, you're likely very familiar with how effective hope is at creating something. It's a wonderful seed but until you start watering it and drag it out into the light of day, it cannot grow. So, consider this me dragging a big ass pot of soil out into the middle of our lovely little garden. 

There are so many beautiful stories we've grown together already: BitterSweet, Shattered, Lost & Found, and an entire extended universe that's coming to life in Evalas!

I want to create more. I want to entertain and inspire more. 

But what I don't want is to have come all this way and never taken a shot at the one dream I left behind. I want to write a novel. I have always wanted to write a novel. 

I don't give a damn if I'm scared. I don't care if I'm rusty and my writing is clumsy and ineloquent. I don't care that I have to dig deeper to find more time and energy to create and develop and refine. 

I'm able to say that because of you. 

Do you realize how powerful that is? That you could lift up someone who has been as tired and lost as I have been throughout my life? Have you seen me??? I'm a big son of a bitch!

This isn't me just saying thank you, though. I want to invite you along for the ride!

Let me introduce you to Ryland Dane. If you’ve enjoyed my storytelling thus far, I have a feeling you’ll appreciate what this fella has in store for the future! Every follow on every platform makes a huge difference and helps fuel this rocket we’re going to ride on this journey, and I appreciate you very much.

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If you are in the industry, a beta reader, editor, agent, or published author and would be interested in working with me in the future, please don't hesitate to reach out to my business email at rylanddanewrites@gmail.com! I'm sure there are a few of you lurking, and I am always keen on working with professionals who are familiar with my work and this journey I've been on!

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

it's certainly possible there were some "false negatives" so to speak but IMO the fact that students who were able to parse about half the literal meaning of the text were placed in the "competent" category mitigates the fact that it's a somewhat unnatural way to read. in addition... idk if you read the actual specific forms of confusion that the students displayed and the actual quotes where you see them grabbing randomly onto whatever information they deem potentially relevant, but to me - and again, i'm going here on both the study and the way it aligns with things i have previously observed solely in students who struggle with reading - there is a specific pattern of haphazard engagement that to me makes it pretty evident these students would be unlikely to succeed at independently reading this text regardless of how they did it.

i also personally think that while it's unnatural and it may take time... if you can't give a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of what you've read, then IMO no, you didn't really understand the sentences you read, and if you didn't understand the sentences you read, you didn't really understand the passage/book/whatever, even if you're able to glean the large arcs of plot, character, etc. i'm not sure what you mean by "especially verbose text" - in my experience as a reader and when working with students, wordy, complex texts are precisely the texts where attending to sentence-level comprehension is most crucial. it's a strange exercise but if someone were to give me a pop quiz on a book i was reading by asking me to restate the sentence i'd just read and i couldn't do it, i would take that as a cue that i'd been glossing too much to fully understand it and should go back and parse it more carefully. speaking anecdotally, there have actually been times when i've been working with struggling readers and forcing them to "translate" sentence by sentence has improved comprehension - and i have never once encountered a student who understood text better in long stretches than in short ones, at any scale, although i have encountered students whose lack of comprehension at a medium stretch wasn't immediately evident and seemed to me at first to be simply a lack of precision - when it started to become apparent, these students displayed much more significant short-term (sentence-level) failures of comprehension than i had anticipated when i thought they were simply speaking in generalities rather than failing to comprehend specifics.

the facilitators also gave students the option to read silently if they weren't comfortable reading out loud (which i appreciate because i actually am one of those people who loses a lot of comprehension if i have to read aloud lmao)... overall i mean of course it's a single small study at a pair of demographically similar colleges and not definitive proof of anything but i appreciate it not for its shocking numerical results but for the way it qualitatively describes with some imperfect degree of systemization phenomena i have spent many many many hours of my life encountering and thinking about and trying to articulate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

couple other notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

[alllgator-blood]

updates/vent/idk

feel the need to post SOMETHING on here cause I've been gone so long, I don't think I'm going on a long hiatus or anything, I just don't like posting/replying to anything when I'm not doing well. I haven't been able to draw in a few weeks but I HAVE been working on plushies. I'll try to post some pics when they're done, I think you guys will really like them- I have shamura pretty much done aside from their robe, and aym + baal just need their faces and clothing details. About to start work on leshy but idk if he'll be done anytime soon, he's gonna be ginormous I hope. Actually the amount of cotl plush toys I've made is in the double digits and I haven't bothered to post any of them so I should really do that sometime...

give me til this weekend and I'll try to get some pics! Shamura in particular is my fave but I'm biased so that's no big surprise...

anyway vent type stuff below the cut, I can't get into detail about anything so it's a lot of nothing but it's mostly just an explanation for not being on much recently I guess.

I want to apologize for not responding to messages or asks or mentions or anything. I'm at a point where I can't mask like at all, and I feel sick thinking about posting or talking to anyone and pretending I'm alright, but I can't really talk about what happened either- so I'm at an impasse. I don't really know how to describe the year I've been having without getting into detail of what's been going on, and that's not terribly appropriate I don't think.

I wish I could concisely convey my feelings recently in a way that's not overshare-y, especially because there's not anything anyone can do to help, so I don't want to startle anyone?? I just don't feel good knowing there's people who want to talk to me but all my stupid ass can do is lay in bed and imagine I'm dead instead of typing some words back to them. I have a laundry list of conditions (big surprise huh?) so I easily crumple under any kind of stress, and when it's this prolonged with no reprieve or clear way out, it's hard to make it to the next day. It's hard to go online and seeing everyone able to act so normal while I feel like I'm in hell, idk. Waow it's just like that kallamar comic I did where he wanted 1 day off.....

All this stuff below the cut is pretty pointless but I think I just wanted to feel like I at least put it out there *somewhere* that I'm not alright, so I don't feel as guilty isolating. I promise there is a reason I've not responded to anyone in weeks or opened my messages. With time I'll get over it, I've lived this long so w/e, I just need time to feel shitty I think.

[directdogman]

A little bit more information about Crown, Milt + Marla's leanings + role in their triumvirate

It's fair to say that while Callum Crown was just a guy, Callum Crown the leader was essentially three people acting as one. By the time Crown ran for president, three people pitched in on his speeches. I'm sure I've given bits and pieces of this away in other posts, but I believe there's a few points I haven't expressed thoroughly, so I'm gonna discuss what each contributed, what they excelled at, how they saw the world and how it shaped policy.

Crown was naturally the engine of the trio. He was the guy with the grand ideas, the boundless optimist who could never accept the way things were. He always thought bigger and was never content with anything, be it his own ideas or the ideas of others. He worked himself tirelessly and saw his whole life as something that was supposed to be led exclusively in the service of mankind.

Crown saw the world kind of like a big machine and everywhere he looked, he could see imperfections that wound up slowing the machine down and harming innocent people. He felt those in power were incompetent hacks, who were only placed in their positions by circumstance, by the same hand of fate he had to overcome. Crown, of course, was born with a disability and had to invent his own prosthetic limbs in order to leave his garage. His mother never could've bought actual working prosthetics for him, given the nail-biting poverty his household faced. Crown was keenly aware that if not for his gumption and stubbornness, he never would've left his garage.

Similarly, he saw career politicians as ignorant fools who were incapable of understanding how screwed up the world was and how far the rabbit-hole descended. The zany optimism and grandiose, sweeping ideas seen in Crown's speeches were certainly his touch.

Then, we have Marla. Marla, like Crown, also had a disability and faced hurdles in her professional journey that Crown did not, being a woman in the mid-20th century. Marla, if she had been a man, would've sought higher office for herself, but knew she never would've been elected due to gender norms. This caused her to coalesce with Crown and urge him to move further on his path, seeing him as a surrogate fighter on the political stage not just for humanity, but for herself.

Crown's mayoral victory had a lot to do with her, as she interviewed Crown and wrote scathing editorials attacking Crown's opponent for his opposition to Dialtown's saviour. Marla's main focus was the pursuit of justice, a fight which she fought with even more fervor than her husband. Her main strength when writing for Crown (and delivering speeches on his behalf) was rousing feelings of indignant anger. Righteous anger directed towards those with power who would not actively use their station to fight the system. Marla was essentially an anarchist and wanted to fight and dismantle the system, something that put her at odds with her husband's plan in the end. It's easy to see why Crown fell head over heels for her.

Marla encouraged Crown to prioritize ideas that righted systematic wrongs, continue his fight for labour rights and focus on fixing systematic mistreatment of people before seeking total efficiency and technological advances (which Crown believed would benefit humanity as much as, if not more than advancing social policy first.) Though, trusting her judgement, Crown often took her cues as gospel.

The Crown 'saviour' narrative was also Marla's invention. Indeed, Crown's political career allowed her to actively help shape a better world, something that she would never have been able to do to the same extent without him. When Crown's paranoia set in and he began confiding less in her as president, leaving her to run smaller projects of her choosing and deal with the increasingly agitated press on her own, she felt this was a personal betrayal, as her opportunity to right wrongs in the world and affect policy had vanished. At this point, Crown was now solely concerned with the 'big picture', things like technology and projects like The Dialup.

Milt, unlike Crown + Marla, did not grow up in poverty and had an upper-middle class upbringing. He was university-educated and understood the middle and upper class in a way the other two could not. He saw those in power not as evil, but rather short-sighted and ill-equipped. Milt's main skill was humanizing Crown and somewhat neutering Crown and Marla's socialist rhetoric by marketing Crown not as a left-wing pro-labour candidate, but as an independent populist who would target corruption + lobbying, tackle electoral reform and stand up for the working stiff, implementing balanced (but radical) policies that would benefit ordinary Americans.

Milt emphasized Crown's humble upbringing, the adversity he'd overcome just to leave his house, alongside his sweeping success running Crown Mechanics, which made him sound like the most competent man for the job. Milt also emphasized his patriotism, writing him as a candidate who sat between both political parties, but fought for ordinary people. This is how Crown roped voters like Norm in.

Crown and Marla had some reservations about Milt's alterations to their scripts, but the 'us vs them' populist angle appealed massively to Crown, given his view on the political elite of his time, and the emphasis on the idea of fairness and the push for electoral reform pleased Marla's sense of justice. Both knew deep down that by appealing to a wider range of voters, they had a chance at winning, so Milt's suggestions were largely used.

Milt's leanings were less justice oriented than Marla's, he believed that systematic change would heal people, create a world where people were more free. This angle helped massively in winning over certain states. Like Crown (and unlike Marla), Milt too was massively interested in technology over social reform and he encouraged Crown to escalate the space race once he gained office and even helped Crown pick researchers for a project from fellow university alumnus.

Of course, Milt wound up being eventually relegated to the sidelines during Crown's presidency just as Marla was, namely over his repeated opposition to the idea of the Dialup. Crown took his inability to sell the idea to Milt as a personal failing, one he was internally hard on himself over. He was convinced that the Dialup was the ONLY way to ensure the world could be renewed, the only way to make sure that all people could be free. He felt that if he could somehow figure out the right words, find the right evidence, get the ball rolling on his own so Milt could 'see' his vision, he could convince Milt that the plan was the right call.

He didn't confide in Marla about the Dialup, fearing his enemies could torture information out of her. Given Milt's military experience, he didn't feel it could happen. It's the same reason Marla was never told the recovery code for Crown's memory deletion feature. Crown chose very poorly by not confiding more in her.

Crown's time at the UN is something I haven't talked about much, but many of his speeches during that time (one I may show off soon enough) were erratic and frankly, sounded crazy. This is due to Crown's overwork, mental strain (+ guilt) from losing Milt/Marla and naturally, losing their input from his speeches. Marla's focused indignation at the injustices of the world and Milt's humanization of Crown were now missing. There was no longer any voice other than Crown's, explaining his sweeping ideas in a way others could understand. And so, he explained his grandiose vision, depicting himself as a man who would split the heavens just as mankind had split the atoms, with no idea of how he sounded. The human element was gone. Crown was back to being the zany salesman, peddling wares that nobody else could understand the value of. Alone again, except this time, the whole world could see it.

Hope this was insightful :)

[seat-safety-switch]

If there's one thing I hate, and I think we can all agree on this, it's slow drivers. Folks, I'm just trying to get where I'm going. Why are you wasting my time, sitting in my lane, holding me up? If you don't know where you're going, just pull over and phone someone who does.

Have you been feeling like you have too much optimism and faith in the course of our civilization lately? It's probably because you haven't been driving much. After just five minutes driving in a straight line, you'll turn into a regressive, psychotic crank like the rest of the commuting rabble.

Recently, I was forced to walk places for a little bit. It's not my fault: blame whoever at Plymouth in the 1970s decided that cars need oil. And batteries. And engines without a hole in the block. Round tires. Functioning starters. A windshield that's not covered in "parking violator" shame stickers and impound receipts. Really, it's amazing that any of my several dozen Malaise Era sedans have ever run. Be that as it may, I needed some food from the grocery store, and so I had to walk there on my own.

Now, I've walked a pretty good distance before, usually because one of my cars broke down and I had to go home to get another. This is the first time when I've had to walk away from my house. I found the journey somewhat exciting, as soon as I got over the anxiety of not being surrounded at all times by a two-ton steel-and-rust cage. When I got there, I picked up my two-litre of Pepsi and my four-litre of milk, and turned around to head home. On the way back, I saw something amazing.

An enormous traffic jam had formed in my neighbourhood, thanks to two SUVs making kissy-face at the highway on-ramp. If this had happened while I was in my car, I would have been stuck here with the rest of them, swearing at their idiocy while keeping an eye on my water temp gauge. Instead, I was able to walk past the vast quantity of stranded traffic, and pick up the barely-leaking 12-volt car battery that had been ejected from the shattered mass of one of the cute utes. At road speed, I never would have noticed this. On foot? I was noticing all kinds of sweet garbage stuck in the gutters from various low- and high-speed crashes.

It took a little bit of rearrangement of my load in order to carry all this heavy, awkward junk all the way home, but I got there. That evening, after dinner, my Volare had a working starter battery again, courtesy of the Hyundai Whatever that had given its life attempting a low-speed merge into a Hyundai Somethingelse. That wayward battery was now ready to be devoured by whatever rat-chewed wire kept sparking against the floor whenever my fifty year old shitbox was parked in one spot for too long. I was ready to rejoin the commuting masses.

Did I learn anything from my momentary experience as a member of the human race, instead of the rat one? Yes. I probably should buy some shoes, because boy do my feet hurt.