#Not really sure why you’d ask me that knowing it’s something I draw but sincerely it’s ok to unfollow people when something upsets you

[pixlokita]

Why do people like ggy? I don't like what it does to Gregory's characterization and how it makes Vanny pointless.

he’s just 👉👈 so sillay ! But that’s ok if you don’t like it :’> everyone has something they like and dislike >> just focus on what you like tbh

[feraliminal]

Cross-Faction Diplomacy

Titan TV tries to give Titan Speaker reassurance, but makes things worse. They both use various forms of communication to calm down. Ship-ish, but with plausible deniability.

I’m back from a super busy week and I want to start turning some of my (many) scraps into actual fic! This was inspired by speculation on how the Alliance communicate and think, and an essay on consciousness called “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” which concludes that you can’t know unless you are one.

—

“Why did you call me? Is that it?” The TVmen’s titan gestured across the hill range from where they stood with the speakermen’s titan, towards a very tiny, very new base. It was a few floodlights casting a glow over a few shipping containers, and a few speakermen on night watch, instead sitting on their arses and playing cards. This was exactly what they’d expected to see, no surveillance system had picked up anything more interesting than a few wandering toilets for miles, at least none that they had access to. But they also suspected it was worth keeping up appearances - two things could be happening, either the speakermen had picked up something big on surveillance that wasn’t linked to the Alliance’s general network -

- or their titan had pulled off a sneaky social call

“Strategic importance, and we’ve only got to make sure nothing happens until everything else arrives in a few hours.” Titan Speaker insisted through a speech transmission, using their faction’s habit of transmitting emotion data as well. In this case, it was something like you trust me, right? “And nothing else is happening.”

The emotion thing, Titan TV found hard to know what to do with. TVs didn’t do it, unless they really meant it. Or were trying to convince someone they really meant it. It was difficult to know if and how to respond, and they recalled Polycephaly describe addressing those kind of differences as cross-faction diplomacy - and as a pain in the arse. They switched to transmission too, encrypting it in case anyone at the base was feeling nosey. “Sure. What’s this really about?”

“Seriously?” Titan Speaker made a dismayed buzz. “You aren’t supposed to say that.”

“What was I supposed to say?” It seemed obvious that this was a way to justify an in-person chat without factions having to figure out a playdate protocol. But with the spectre of cross-faction diplomacy hanging over them, Titan TV tried to do the emotion thing. It didn’t work. Sincerity somehow became contempt-fondness. You’re an idiot but I like you hadn’t been the intent, but it was sincere.

The speakers’ titan tilted their head, lights shimmering a little brighter. “I guess you weren’t supposed to do that either,” they teased. “I thought you’d think meeting to talk is a waste of time, but…?”

“If you need to say it in person, I trust it’s important.” A dozen possibilities, and none particularly easy to contemplate. The TVs’ titan noticed they were shifting their balance a little, foot to foot, and stopped it.

Transmitting uncertain-awkward-worried, Titan Speaker looked out towards the little base, then up at the night sky, as if the words they were looking for were floating around. “Not important, I just… I dunno. I want to ask something first. Does it now feel like there’s more than one… uh, you?” They gestured with their finger, as if drawing an air-circle around the other titan’s primary and secondary screens.

“No, not a lot different. My conscious processing is more or less the same, just spread out and harder to kill.” Not a lot different was still different - the first time they’d switched from automated to conscious control of their secondary heads was an experience they still hadn’t entirely come to terms with and didn’t want to revisit just yet. Not while they needed to be in the here and now for whatever was going on in Titan Speaker’s own head. “Are you thinking about upgrades?”

“No. Well, yeah, maybe one day. But I asked because I’m thinking about weird brain stuff.” Wrapping their arms around themself, the speakers’ titan crouched down on their heels. They started to transmit something, a jumbled, ghostly kind of feeling, then paused. “Okay, I called you to talk about…”

But they didn’t. They stayed silent, on comms and audio.

The TVs’ titan noticed where the pools of light cast by the pair’s respective glowing components overlapped. The new outpost sat in its own pool of light downhill, part of a landscape of similar little points of light that made their mental map of the Alliance’s networks mirror the night sky. In the outpost, the guards were swapping tunes. Twenty miles away, a turret was dealing with one of those wandering toilets, the only other thing remotely interesting happening. Titan Speaker’s glow was receding “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Titan Speaker flopped back off their heels into a slumped seated position, and signed ‘No shit.’ Then, when their companion turned their main screen to watch, ‘Sorry, do you understand this? I’ve never seen a TV do it.’

“We understand it, we don’t tend to use it ourselves.” It was one of (many) indicators of how well the speakermen and cameramen had managed to operate as one, and their people hadn’t. “Use it if you need to, I can try too.”

‘Thanks. You don’t have to, it’s dark and my vision’s low resolution, so if you’re not used to sign…’ The speakermen’s titan shrugged, paused again, and with a might-as-well-go-for-it burst, quickly signed, ‘Being able to remember what I did when I was infected is still freaking me out and I want to know what you make of it. I know it’s not the same, but it’s all weird brain stuff and you’re the weird brain stuff faction.’

It was difficult to reconcile the ridiculousness of being called the weird brain stuff faction with the desperation in the request. Titan TV felt their screens flickering and needed to make an effort to hold back whatever might leak into the transmission. “You need to ask your science team.”

‘I don’t mean that, I don’t mean what happened to me, but what happened to me.’ They emphasised the last sign with a sharper movement, and had stopped transmitting emotion. The TVs’ titan supposed it was for similar reasons that they’d chosen not to - this needed straightforward discussion now and a fuckton of firepower later, save the anger for then. ‘They said it wasn’t me, but I was there, the parasite made me do it and I did it, it’s like, now I know I can do that, I can’t trust me not to do it again.’ They paused. ‘I haven’t asked again. I didn’t want to freak them out as well.’

“That was your body, and your body saved data. The intrusive thoughts are probably just subconscious metacognition systems sorting it all out. Really, ask someone, engineers think about this stuff so we don’t have to.”

Titan Speaker shifted to stare straight at their bigger companion, signing more slowly with a perceptible shake in their hands. ‘Me is also what my body does.’

The Alliance had shared (heavily redacted) schematics for the titans across faction borders, so Titan TV knew that what their companion was perceiving. Audio data and electromagnetic signature first, then visual data was a secondary source. But still, they angled their side-screens to illuminate their body and softened all their lights to reduce glare. Even with simulation or data transference, it would be impossible to know what it was really like to inhabit Titan Speaker’s perceptual space, with all its memories, meanings, metacognition. And even if visual data wasn’t that important, considering it was part of how Titan TV showed respect from their own perceptual space. “It won’t happen again. That was not you in any meaningful sense of what you are.”

‘I’m tired of everyone saying that.’ The speakermen’s titan rocked forward to crouch on their heels again, made an intention movement to stand that didn’t go further than a twitch, and clasped their arms around themself. They switched to comms again, and the transmission came out cracked with static. “I thought you, of all people, would get that. Everyone’s telling me it didn’t happen but… I was forced to kill my friends and I just… I just want to be allowed to feel like shit about it.” They let out a distorted audio “Fuck.”

“Fuck.” Titan TV echoed that statement, in reverse.

Neither of them had much to say right after that. There wasn’t really else that could be said. The TVs’ titan watched their companion looking up at the stars, softly illuminating their own little patch of red light. They uncoiled, slightly, from their gargoyle crouch, still hunched but dropping on to their knees.

No longer bothering to keep their slight swaying motion in check, Titan TV offered, “We need to get out of here. There’s a suspected underground lair, you’ll be able to locate it, and we’ll blow the roof off. I don’t have clearance to investigate yet, but two of us will be more than enough to overcome anyone’s concerns about risk.”

The sag in Titan Speaker’s shoulders was unexpected. “No. I’m not outsourcing my shit, not to my engineers and definitely not to everyone else by sneaking off.” But not nearly as unexpected as what they shared when they were the first to use emotive comms again. No anger, just sadness, confusion, and grief. Uncoiling a little more, they signed ‘Stay here. Sit with me.’

It wouldn’t have felt right to say no to this poor creature who’d sooner arrange an awkward clandestine meeting with someone they, really, barely knew than upset their friends. Titan TV shook their primary head with exasperation, and settled down cross-legged on the hillside. Titan Speaker watched, looked away and signed something to themself, then did an ungainly shuffle-flop to move right beside them.

They both took their time to adjust to the dissonance of this whole thing, pinging little status requests and presence acknowledgments at each other until they realised that they no longer needed to and had been enjoying doing it just for the sake of it. The speakermen’s titan trilled their approval and did a tiny wriggle.

“I like watching you move,” Titan TV commented.

‘I like that you moved your screens so I could see you better. Can I lean on you?’

“Yes.” Titan TV’s side-screen was obscured by the smaller titan moving closer and working out how best to arrange their speaker array, finally settling in and gently nudging their head against the screen casing. Making an adjustment themself, the TV leaned in little too. Staying had been the right decision, providing a few stabilising moments for both of them.

When they leaned back, the TVmen’s titan thought they felt something that could have just been an artefact of their movements, but it was a bit too persistent for that. Suspecting what it was, they inclined their primary head against the top of their companion’s array, and there it was - a barely perceptible vibration that was becoming more noticeable until it somehow managed to travel through their body and into the ground under them. It made their vision blur very slightly at the edges, but otherwise didn’t feel unpleasant. “Purring?” they rumbled, purr-like themself.

“You don’t mind it?” There was a new contentment in the speaker titan’s transmission, and the vibrations became a little wobbly. Signing would be tricky in this position, but they were making the most of that by sharing emotive comms freely. “Kind of. I’m just… feeling everything. Grounding myself. No sense of impending doom?”

“That’s oddly specific. Infrasound?” What Titan TV felt as a vibration was likely composed of echolocation and electrolocation and, being too low frequency to be useful for scanning, the infrasound component was probably just there for communication or self-soothing. They found it fun (if a little tragic) to imagine someone, possibly the cameramen’s titan, getting creeped out by an overenthusiastic purr. Cross-faction diplomacy again. “We use it too. Although admittedly not for purring.”

“For…?” Titan Speaker looked up, blinking their lights at their companion, who went ‘ ≽^•⩊•^≼ ‘ and said “Slaughter.”

“Terrifying.” They’d both aimed for a deadpan delivery - but it was interrupted for the better by the speaker titan’s failed attempt to suppress a squeaky giggle.

“You’re terrifying, you see sound and your idea of grounding is making the earth shake.” The TVmen’s titan wondered if speakermen were able to perceive the world as assemblages of vibrating particles. It was one thing to have the knowledge of that, it must be unsettling to really feel it. There was a lot to learn about the other factions, and their titans. “You’re well worth my time. We’re a sample size of three, and should be sharing data.”

With an affectionate hum, Titan Speaker bumped their head against the bigger titan’s chest and released a silent burst of something that interrupted their train of thought as well as their vision, and really did feel as if it had made the earth shake for a split second. A mischievous confirmation of you bet I’m terrifying.

“I’ll find something really strategically important next time.”

[jfleamont]

Jily microfic of the day... let's say Thistle

Thank you @constancezin for the submission! This one's for you :)

Thistle - 639 Words

“How did this happen, exactly? Were you rolling in the grass? At four in the morning? Shirtless?”

The question, Lily realises, is dumb. Of course that’s not what he was doing. She knows very well that this is probably one of James’ many secrets. However, she’s determined to figure this one out, with or without his help.

Lily starts applying the thick paste on his right shoulder, careful not to touch the thorns even if she’s wearing a glove. Her other hand, however, rests on his other shoulder. For balance, naturally. And because the heat of his body is a nice distraction from her annoyance towards him.

He’s sitting on the desk close to the window in the common room and she’s between his legs; she wishes this was happening under different circumstances, but one can hardly complain when James Potter asks - no, wait, begs for help.

“That is precisely what happened. Lily, I’ve always told you how awfully smart you are, haven’t I?”

She fixes him with a glare. She’s not really in the mood for banter, not right now, and he notices. “Then, since I’m so smart, you should know that I’m not buying this. If you want to tell me how you got thistle thorns in your shoulder, I’m all ears. But don’t lie to me, please.”

While the paste does its job, she casts a couple of silent charms to speed up the process, not looking at him all the while. She can feel his eyes on her, studying her. 

“Tell me why you were awake this early, then. Were you waiting for me?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. 

“I know you and the lads were out all night. It’s the full moon, James! I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”

James sighs. “You already know why, but I can’t tell you how. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

He looks sincerely apologetic, and she knows he’s telling the truth. “So it is something dangerous! James, I swear—”

“It’s not! Don’t worry, I’m safe from Moony’s furry little problem, trust me.”

Lily takes a step back, but James grabs her hand and draws her closer once again, and she doesn’t protest.

Both of her hands are in his lap, and James squeezes them reassuringly, but this does not pacify her. “Why did Sirius and Peter get here before you? I thought something had happened to you.”

At this, James chuckles lightly. “So what, you thought they’d leave me alone and go to bed? Some nice friends I got, right? I was hungry so I went to grab some food, that’s all, and I noticed that my shoulder was hurting only later.”

A tentative smile appears on her lips. “How is food more important than sleep?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I sleep better with a full belly.”

Lily doesn’t know how to stay mad at him, it has become more and more difficult lately. And there’s nothing to forgive, really, he’s entitled to his secrets. She just wishes he’d trust her, and she tells him so.

“I do trust you,” he says, and the worst part is that she knows it’s true.

Silence falls between them, but neither of them look away.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” she speaks after a while.

“I know.”

“And are you sure there’s nothing I can do to make you tell me?”

James seems to ponder this for a moment, then he speaks. “I’ll tell you this: if that lovely brain of yours managed to solve Moony’s mystery, you can easily solve mine.”

“Deal,” Lily replies. It was her plan all along anyway, but she hopes she’ll get more out of him soon. Maybe by bribing him with a kiss. Or a date. Or both, she’s not picky.

[captaincherrie]

Nefarious pt. 4

Aaron Hotchner x OC

summary: In a constant game of life and death, two people meet. Changing their lives and those of everyone around them.

Warning: mentions of murder, death, talk of mental health issues, angst all over (its Criminal minds after all)

AN: this is a filler chapter. Its mostly angsty but nothing really bad happens yet.. I hope you all enjoy. As always, let me know what you think!

disclaimer: I do not own criminal minds or its characters. The only thing originally mine are the characters and storylines I created!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where does the good go?

Janice Lee wrote ‘draw a monster, why is it a monster?’

Stepping into Natalie Baum’s home a trail of goosebumps ran over Derek’s back. He looked at Rossi, who stood next to him uneasily. As they walked in, a few things came to notice. The room held a cold grey color, not too much furniture and it was squeaky clean. If someone came along mention they had to use it as an operation room Derek would believe them.

David observed the room quietly. His hand rested on his holster, ready to act on his nerves as they were telling him something was wrong. The living room of the cute 80-year-old grandma who worked on her roses everyday held no warmth or life. There were no photographs or signs that a life had been lived in this house. Those beautiful roses outside were nowhere to be seen inside in the house.

“What can I do for you boys?” Natalie smiled at them.

Derek looked at David before answering, “Ma’am as stated before, we need to ask you some things about your neighbors.”

“Your home is very clean Natalie; it doesn’t look very cozy.” David remarked.

Natalie frowned, “It hasn’t been cozy since my husband died 2 years ago. He had a stroke, died on his way to the hospital.”

Derek and David shared a look once again before Derek took the initiative to start the conversation.

“Mrs. Baum, I wanted to ask you about your neighbors. What were you doing the night they were murdered?” Derek asked softly. He didn’t want to scare her, but he needed to confirm her alibi first. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had seen people of age surprise him.

“I was with my niece Christy; she is my sisters’ daughter. She has 3 kids, they’re such angels. We never had children of our own and when my sweet John died, I was all alone. Now I visit Christy and her kids a few times a week. We eat together and sometimes I watch the kids while she does something nice. Her husband left her a while ago, the little shit goblin.” Natalie snarled.

Before Derek could let out a laugh at the last remark, David interfered.

“Do they live nearby?”

Natalie smiled “Oh yes! They live a 10-minute bus ride away. That sweet bus driver always makes sure I’m on time. You can imagine I’m not the fasted walker at this age.”

David smiled back at her while nodding his head. He stood up from his seat to look around.

“We gathered from Ben that you sometimes babysat for the Taylors, is that correct?” Derek asked.

Her smile quickly disappeared when the Taylors were mentioned. “Yes, I do. I’ve met them when they moved here, sweet family. They started inviting us for the holidays a few years ago.”

“So, you’d say that you knew the Taylors well?” David inquired.

“I would say so, yes. Meggie even cleans my house. Poor soul needed a distraction, we talked about it over coffee once and now she comes by once a week.” Natalie answered sincerely.

This made Derek and David look at each other.

“Meggie? You mean Megan Barlow, Allison’s sister? What did she need a distraction from?” Derek asked this time.

With a sigh Natalie answered, “Oh, I don’t like to tell other people’s business. But since you’re from the FBI I’ll tell you. Megan was in a horrible accident 6 months ago. She lost her husband and her two children. I believe she was pregnant at the time too, but when their car hit the water, she was the only survivor. Took her months to recover, just got out of hospital last month. She was a stay-at-home mom, so you can imagine she wanted something to distract herself.”

With a buzz of his phone, Derek stood up and nodded to Rossi.

“Thank you for telling us, Natalie. We will be in contact if we need more information.” David said as he touched her shoulder in a comforting way.

As they made their way to the door, they heard Natalie mumble an “of course” before slowly following them.

Once Derek and David reached the car, Derek pulled out his phone.

“Hey Baby girl, Megan Barlow only got out of the hospital last month, can you send me everything you have on that please?” Derek spoke to Garcia in a rushed tone.

-

At the station it seemed like time wasted away. Emily and Spencer were still staring at a map of the area as they tried to work out a geographic profile. Hotch was still bowed over a pile of files with JJ. Josie and agent Cole stood together in the lunchroom, both a cup of coffee in hand.

Derek and David arrive at the station with a haste, smashing the door behind them. This seemed to draw the attention of a group of officers and the BAU team. In a beeline Derek and David made their way to Hotch’s office, with Spencer and Emily in tow.

With furrowed eyebrows Derek spoke, “Megan Barlow has been in an accident six months ago. Car to the water, she lost her three children and her husband. Apparently, she was pregnant too. We were just with Natalie Baum, the Taylors neighbor. She told us about it. Megan seemed distraught when she arrived here. Garcia just sent me information. Apparently, she was a stay-at-home mom and after she got out of the hospital she stayed with a friend for a month. Megan refused to speak to her sister, they only spoke at the night of murder. Hotch, I have a bad feeling about this one”

The stoic look on Hotch his face remained as he listened to the story. Once Derek was finished speaking, he grabbed his phone to dial their technical analyst.

“You’re speaking with your personal Wikipedia, you ask, I answer. How can I help you Sir?” Garcia answered cheerfully.

“Garcia, please send me all you have on Megan Barlow, including her files from the hospital.” Hotch ordered.

With a small sigh she answered, “Sir, some of these are sealed. Shall I-“

“Garcia, give me everything you have. Unseal them, I need all the information I can get.” Hotch interrupted as he hung up the phone after.

With a small sound coming from the laptop that was open on the table, the files Garcia sent started flooding in. Ready to be examined one by one by each team member.

As Hotch took a stance next to the laptop, he started giving out instructions. “Alright everyone, start searching through those files. See if you find anything that can lead us to creating a profile.”

While finishing his last sentence he made a run through the door of his office, his eyes searching for a brunette agent. He wasn’t sure if she’d be willing to speak to him again after the way he lashed out towards her last night. He had been so stressed, he missed Hailey and Jack, Jack mostly. His wife had been acting distant lately, but that wasn’t what occupied his thoughts right now. He needed to find Josie and tell them what they discovered.

There she was, seated behind a desk. Her hair now loose, no longer in the ponytail it was in this morning. With a focused look on her face, she worked on whatever was projected on her screen.

“Agent Lovejoy, can we have a word please?” He hushed as he reached her desk. In all truth, she had seen him the moment he came out of the office. However, after he had been such a dick, she decided to ignore his presence for as long as she could. Apparently, that was until now. He called her name, he wanted to speak to her. The critical look on his face didn’t make her feel any better as she nodded while standing up to follow him to the office.

Once they reached the office, agent Cole had already found her way there. She was ready to hear whatever news Hotch had to bring.

As he told them their recent discovery, Hotch saw their faces fall with a horrified expression. Too many times had they seen awful endings involving kids in trauma cases like this one.

“I would like for you to call to the social worker that has visited them. Talk to them and ask what their insides are. After that we will go to the hotel, you two should get some rest too” He finished.

An icky silence fell upon them as an anxious feeling filled the room.

Read the next part here

[abitnotgoodiebag]

was it enough to penetrate your dark world?

Ao3 Link

Akaza was used to having the upper hand. On this particular night? He did not.

akaza/rengoku kyojuro | 5.3k words | e | smut, blood kink, dom/sub, edgeplay, bloodplay, violence,not safe or sane, add'l spoiler-y notes under the cut at the very end

was it enough to penetrate your dark world?

It is not even a question that Akaza is used to having the upper hand. In every instance that he has encountered the Flame Hashira he has always initiated the fight and always finished it, leaving Kyojuro a little worse for wear, but on the whole intact and ready for their next meeting. There is a definite pecking order in their interactions, and Kyojuro is at the bottom. At least that’s how it has always gone before.

That is no longer the case.

Kyojuro is the one unquestionably on top in this situation. Kyojuro is the one holding tight to his sword, already two inches into Akaza’s neck. The demon is the one on his knees for once, the wood floor harsh against them. Kyojuro pushes the sword harder and Akaza grimaces as it slides through his fingers like butter, again. He is failing entirely to keep the blade at bay, which is unfortunate because he had not planned on dying tonight.

“Wait, Kyojuro,” Akaza says, still trying to stop the sword's progress, but Kyojuro will not give even a millimeter and keeps the pressure steady, his blade making it further into the Upper Moon’s neck than it had ever been before. “Wait.” He tries again.

“Why should I, demon?” Kyojuro asks through gritted teeth, pushing harder still.

“Because you don’t really want to kill me,” Akaza says, clenching his jaw harder and wishing he had eaten much more recently than he had. He was hungry, and hungry, for him, meant tired. So he had spent the day sleeping in some random inn in some random town, intending to rectify that come nightfall. Damn the Hashira for finding him hours too soon! “You’d have done it while I was sleeping if you did.”

“I admire your belief in me, but it is already taking a considerable amount of strength to do this,” Kyojuro says, breathing heavily. “Your waking up was inevitable.” 

Akaza must keep him talking, the pressure on his neck is easing up with each word. “Nonsense, Kyojuro! You’re the strongest Flame Hashira I’ve ever fought.” Akaza knows he is pushing the limits of Kyojuro’s patience, but it was never said that he had complete control over his mouth. Anyway, it was a nice change of pace for Kyojuro to say anything even remotely positive toward him, such compliments must be returned. “So strong that there are surely even more productive things you could be doing? Killing rampaging demons?”

“I am the only Flame Hashira you’ve ever fought, and you are a demon!” The force is strong once more, sun-drenched metal nicking Akaza’s spine, and the pain radiates through his whole body.

“Not a rampaging one.” Akaza sighs, blood joining the tired words oozing from his mouth. As usual, Kyojuro is being unreasonable. “It’s like you don’t listen to me at all.”

Kyojuro is unamused. “You may be here to do something nefarious. Every time I encounter you you’re doing something nefarious.”

“You wound me.” The sword bites harder and Akaza really should stop talking and die or start begging since they’re both starting to sound ridiculous. “Fighting you isn’t nefarious.” Akaza mutters, petulant. “You really want this to be the last time we meet? I thought we had an understanding. I would rather neither of us die, if possible.” 

“You would beg for your life?” Kyojuro’s gaze is cruel and Akaza loves the look, it’s radiant on him. Akaza nods, the blade kissing him harder with each movement. “Go on.”

Akaza tries to sound appropriately contrite. “I really don’t want to die today?” There, nailed it, he thinks as his lips stretch into a frown of attrition.

Kyojuro raises a doubtful brow.

His yellow eyes slip shut, “Kyojuro, please. I don’t want to die.” Akaza’s brows draw together, hoping that he is conveying his sincerity in a way the human won’t doubt. Kyojuro is still silent, so Akaza continues. He tells him that he will never harm another slayer, even the Hashira. He says he’ll never eat another human, he will survive off animals. Not only that, but he swears that he will never even leave the safety of the forest, he will become a recluse and never see another human for the rest of eternity. It is obvious to both of them that Akaza is lying, but he keeps going, making increasingly absurd promises until Kyojuro scoffs.

Akaza holds his breath, completely still, as he feels Kyojuro’s battle spirit flicker peculiarly. Akaza cracks his eyes open once more, gazing up at Kyojuro through pink lashes. He presses his blade further in and despite what Kyojuro may think, if one of them has to die tonight it will not be Akaza, although he will go to great lengths to keep the Hashira alive, it won’t be at the price of his own life. Pity, he didn’t foresee having to kill Kyojuro for quite some time.

The fresh blood running down Akaza’s chest catches the slayer's eye and--ah, that’s how it is.

“And besides all of that, you don’t want to kill me either,” Akaza says, hoping that Kyojuro will make this easy and agree. Because his red and gold eye still intensely following the blood says he should. “Imagine all the things we could still do? I know you learn something new every time you face me. I do too! You think this is a satisfying end? We have so much more to teach each other.” Akaza bats his eyes playfully, loving the barely concealed evidence of Kyojuro’s dark desire.

“Wants don’t matter,” Kyojuro replies, and Akaza would snort if it wouldn’t be unnecessarily painful. Kyojuro really does have the most ridiculous morals. “Neither does a satisfactory end to our…acquaintance.” 

“But Kyojuro, I would never want to not satisfy you.” He insists, widening his eyes slightly. “Truly.” 

Kyojuro gets a thoughtful look on his face. He hums to himself, and Akaza doesn’t move, lest he disrupt any thoughts of possible mercy. 

“What lengths will you go to to stay alive, I wonder?” It comes out as close to a purr as a human can sound and hearing those words from any other mouth would turn Akaza’s stomach, but these are coming from Kyojuro’s so Akaza shivers instead.

The air is charged, prickling across the demon’s skin. Akaza has never been one to hold his tongue and he won’t start now, “Great big ones.” He drawls, even more flirtatious and Kyojuro’s eye hardens. “Massive, even.”

Kyojuro leans on the sword in warning. “You will do exactly as I say, do you understand, demon?”

Akaza smiles wide enough to show his red-tinted fangs and answers that he understands perfectly. He even tucks his hands demurely behind his back and arches his back, cutting himself further on Kyojuro’s sword. He’s sure the effect is lessened by the obvious wickedness in his eyes, but that can’t be helped.

Kyojuro removes his sword, but Akaza doesn’t let the wound heal fully, leaving it raw, stinging, and still leaking blood slowly. Kyojuro follows the glistening movement hungrily, white pupil dilating. It gets even larger when Akaza deepens his breaths, Kyojuro watching his bloody chest move with lingering interest. Kyojuro doesn’t have any idea what he had gotten himself into and Akaza is delighted to be able to show him, this would be fun.

He admires the Hashira’s determination, too, as Kyojuro still hasn’t let go of the sword and doesn’t look like he will anytime soon. Luckily, for Akaza, it isn’t realistic for him to keep hold of it all night, and Akaza intends to drive Kyojuro to distraction in the best of ways.

Calloused fingers grab Akaza’s chin and pull him closer to the slayer leaning over him. Akaza lets his eyelids droop once more, anticipating the softness of Kyojuro’s lips. Instead, his head and neck are jerked up, aggravating the remains of the wound Kyojuro clearly enjoyed making. Kyojuro stares into his eyes, inspecting the kanji there intently. Akaza isn’t here to have a staring contest, he’s here to do dirty things with a demon slayer so he can’t help it, he growls in annoyance.

The Hashira bares his teeth and sneers right back, sword inching back up menacingly. “Ready to die, after all?”

The taunt silences Akaza, and he childishly returns the scrutiny until Kyojuro finds whatever he is looking for and releases him, taking a step back.

“Take off your clothes.” Kyojuro’s instruction leaves room for nothing but compliance.

Akaza scrambles to remove his bloodstained belt and pants, tossing them to the far corner of the room where he’d lazily discarded his haori earlier. Kyojuro watches, quiet and assessing, and Akaza removes his fundoshi as well. His cock has been interested in the events for quite some time and newly freed, it hangs in the air, heavy and full, his prayer beads the only things remaining on his body.

Kyojuro remains quiet as he removes his own haori, carefully placing it along the back of a nearby chair. He turns his back to Akaza like it’s nothing. Like the demon would stay there, waiting for the Hashira’s approval. Like the sword in his hand is enough of a threat to keep Upper Moon Three bound to his command.

Being agreeable, Akaza stays where he is, watching the rest of his uniform get carefully folded and stacked on the seat. Akaza feels a buzzing under his skin until Kyojuro turns back and returns his gaze to where it should always be, on Akaza. 

Kyojuro is not fully aroused yet, and that is a matter Akaza plans on addressing immediately. Akaza wants to change Kyojuro’s life. Wants to make it so that the Flame Pillar would never be able to scrub yellow eyes and the color blue from his mind by the time the sun rose.

If Akaza is the one that Kyojuro wants, he will be back. Again and again and again. For eternity, if Kyojuro ever gives in and admits that demons have the better lot in life and accepts Akaza’s proposal. He can’t get ahead of himself, though. First tonight, then forever.

“Lay down, demon,” Kyojuro commands, taunting, and Akaza flings himself back down to the futon, not giving a damn about his blood getting everywhere. If Kyojuro wants to see him hurt before fucking him, Akaza will throw himself onto a pile of sun-soaked blades. Laying at the feet of this man feels better than anytime Akaza has kneeled before Muzan, and this treacherous thought just makes his own cock grow harder, impatient for Kyojuro's touch.

Kyojuro stands above him, looking down in disdain, and Akaza grins back as he runs his tongue across his lower lip, slowly removing all traces of his blood. Kyojuro can act unaffected all he wants, but Akaza has seen his pupil expand and contract, he can hear the hitch in his breath and the stutter of his heartbeat, no matter how he tries to hide it. Kyojuro wants him, despite the fact that he is a demon, and it’s a heady thought.

“Yes, master,” Akaza answers, and he means it.

Kyojuro cannot stop the satisfied smile that quirks his lips before smoothing out his expression once more. He kneels over Akaza’s stretched-out torso, red sword gleaming in the low light. He lowers it gently, trailing the tip from the gash on Akaza’s neck down, watching it rise and fall with the dip of each sharply defined muscle. 

Akaza shivers. “Are you going to fuck me or butcher me, hm?”

A flick of his wrist and Akaza feels cold, followed by the sting of the skin on his left pectoral splitting open. “I might do both. It depends.” He smears a cold, bloody mark on Akaza’s shoulder and grins sharply at the demon’s questioning look. “On whether or not you can give me a satisfying end.”

Kyojuro always exceeds every single expectation that Akaza has easily, and seeing this deliciously dark side of him makes him want to let him do whatever he wants. He stretches out even further underneath the Hashira, back arching, hands above his head, exposing his bloody neck and torso in one fluid motion. “You will be very satisfied, I promise.”

Kyojuro’s eye darkens as his smile widens, a devilish thing, “Stay just like that.” He drinks his fill of Akaza’s obedience before continuing. “And I will see if you keep your promise.”

Akaza cannot let that slide, Kyojuro isn’t nearly as appreciative of the ways he can bend his own body as he should be. He frowns, “I will make you forget anyone before me, Kyojuro.” He can’t help his light growl.

Kyojuro looks hurtfully skeptical, and Akaza thinks that it's offensive that they are not touching at all.

Seeming to have the same thought, Kyojuro shuffles forward on his knees and grabs Akaza’s hair, yanking his head off the futon. He hisses at the twinge to his neck, but doesn’t move. He will let Kyojuro hurt him over and over until he is given everything that Kyojuro can give. “I highly doubt that, I have a very strong memory.” 

The slayer’s cock is directly in his face and his words have Akaza moving with purpose. The urge to prove Kyojuro wrong is strong but he doesn’t immediately swallow him down. A treat this rare deserves to be savored and Akaza is going to take his time and milk every single moment for all that it’s worth.

He leans forward and drags his tongue and bottom lip along the underside of Kyojuro’s cock, flicking his eyes up as he slides his tongue to wrap around the tip. He closes his lips and pulls back lightly. The hand in his hair grips tighter but doesn’t direct him in any way so he continues his slow pace, sucking light kisses up and down Kyojuro’s length wondering how long he will be allowed to control the pace.

Kyojuro’s cock is flushed and full and Akaza has never been one to enjoy things in moderation. Even Kyojuro’s blood would come a close second to this, sweeter than any marechi he had ever tasted. If there was anything other than blood that could sustain him, it would be this. He will always want more because, at their core, demons are greedy creatures that are never satisfied. 

He slides forward, ignoring the burn of torn flesh, swallowing around Kyojuro and earning the most exquisite moan he has heard in centuries. So good that he must answer it with his own to let Kyojuro know that this is exactly where Akaza should always be, in his bed. Akaza doesn’t need air and he has no pesky gag reflex, he has nothing but warm, wet heat for Kyojuro to do with as he pleases. Kyojuro’s fingers are rough against Akaza’s scalp and his head is jerked when Kyojuro starts to move, shallow thrusts giving way to fucking Akaza’s bloody throat with abandon. Akaza swallows again and again as his vision begins to cloud with tears. Kyojuro grunts and slams forward until Akaza’s face is pressed tight against wiry, blonde hair.

Tears and blood mix as Akaza moans low and long. Kyojuro cries out and rips himself away, sitting back heavily on Akaza’s stomach. Akaza groans, frustrated, and grips the futon hard enough to rip it. Why is Kyojuro doing this? Why will he not just let Akaza show him that he can make him feel good?

Kyojuro laughs, Akaza’s frustration clearly pleasing him. “I’ll give you one thing, you’re good at that.” He looks down into Akaza’s eyes, his own dancing with an impish fire. “But I intend to have you screaming my name by sunrise and you can’t do that with your mouth full, even if it was made to be filled with my cock.”

Akaza didn’t think he would die, but now he isn’t so sure, because Kyojuro saying that with a demonic smirk on his face is doing its best to kill him. He arches his back again in an attempt to get Kyojuro to slide backward onto Akaza’s uncomfortably hard prick, whining as it fails. He opens his mouth to beg Kyojuro to put his cock in him somewhere, but he is beaten to the punch.

“If I give this to you, will you be good for me?” Kyojuro grabs himself and strokes slowly.

Akaza bites through his lip, beyond ready to follow every command. It's with a bloodstained smile he answers. “I can be good for you, Kyojuro.” 

“We’ll see.” Kyojuro’s smile borders on cruel and the barb stings worse than both cuts. Nevertheless, Kyojuro spreads Akaza’s legs and takes his place between them. He drags his sword down Akaza’s neck again, this time cutting into the right side of his chest. His fingers dig roughly into the newly exposed muscle and Akaza moans low and long as he realizes what Kyojuro intends to do. 

“So fucking good--” Akaza pants. “Master.” 

Kyojuro shoves a blood-slicked finger inside the demon without a second thought. “You love this don’t you?” Kyojuro asks, detached, roughly adding a second finger far too quickly.

Lying would be foolish, besides, the Hashira must like it too, to open him up with his own blood. “Yes.” He hisses, squeezing his eyes shut. Kyojuro keeps brushing maddeningly over that spot inside him, making his body feel whispers of pleasure mingling with all the pain.

Nichirin has them flying open again almost immediately. Kyojuro has cut even deeper into his chest. He catches the demon’s wild gaze and squeezes. Wetness flows freely down both sides of Akaza’s body painting both him and the linens crimson and Akaza has never seen Kyojuro look as dazzling as he does at this moment. 

The roughness of Kyojuro’s fingers coupled with the bright, new burst of pain make Akaza’s toes curl. The mattress is firm against his head as he presses back into it, beyond caring about pain radiating down his body. The pleasure that Kyojuro is giving (sparing as it is) more than makes up for it. The veins in Akaza’s arms bulge and the sound of the futon ripping immediately follows, joining the clatter of the sword against the floor. Akaza doesn’t care, he was never going to leave before seeing this through. Besides, Kyojuro didn’t want him dead, he couldn’t, not after this. He can’t pretend anymore after this.

Akaza’s stomach is taut as Kyojuro collects enough blood to coat his cock and his quiet, pleased hum causes Akaza’s erection to jump. He’s so ready to be touched, but again Kyojuro ignores his wants. Instead, Kyojuro grabs his hip and lines himself up catching Akaza’s eyes once more.

“Ready, demon?” Kyojuro does not wait for an answer before he is fully seated in one deep, punching drive. 

The Hashira grunts and his hands leave bloody trails down the undersides of Akaza’s thighs as he pushes them both into the air, finally moving in earnest. Akaza rips the futon again as he keens, straining to keep his hands above his head. Kyojuro asked him to stay like that so he will, he promised to be good. 

Kyojuro is enraptured by the sight of Akaza’s body swallowing him greedily, blood coating the place they're joined. Akaza wants this always. Sinking into the beginnings of bliss, he starts to babble. He tells Kyojuro that his offer still stands, that they could do this every day, hour, minute, whenever they want. He says that demons don’t grow old, he’d always be young and strong and beautiful. That they could have endless lifetimes together. 

Kyojuro pulls out and slams back in hard. “Why should I become a demon?” He snorts and fucks another whine out of him. “To be like you? A Pillar’s whore?”

Akaza bites his cheek until he tastes blood, he would be Kyojuro’s whore. With dick this good, the Pillar can do whatever he wants to him, whenever he wants.

“What else are you even good for?” Kyojuro pushes forward, crowding over the demon and surrounding them both with the shock of his hair. He doesn’t stop until Akaza’s knees are pressing into the mattress near his head and groans as Akaza follows the movement easily, inhumanely flexible. 

Kyojuro’s question brings color to his cheeks and fire to his belly. He can’t find an answer and he stops trying when Kyojuro sets a punishing rhythm, his harsh breaths tickling their faces. He releases Akaza’s thighs to plant his hands on the bed, caging him in. Akaza takes advantage of his freedom to hook both legs over Kyojuro’s shoulders, crossing his ankles like that’s where they’re meant to be.

Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “It’s bad enough I’m fucking you instead of killing you outright. At least you’re useful before you face justice. You’ll learn your place if I have to keep at it for the entire night.”

Akaza growls and he can’t do it anymore, not when Kyojuro is telling him that he would rather fuck him than kill him. His hands snap forward, grabbing Kyojuro’s hair and pulling him forward. Kyojuro tries to resist but Akaza doesn’t let him, instead pulling him close enough to share a breath. “ Forever, Kyojuro.”

Kyojuro’s retort is to bite him. First his jaw, then his bottom lip. It could never be confused with a kiss, but Akaza likes it all the same. He would let Kyojuro devour him if that was what he wanted. His contented sigh is caught between blunt teeth, making him moan again as Kyojuro pulls at his lips. 

Kyojuro has always been the very picture of duty, so seeing this beast inside the Pillar is a wonderful discovery. Their lips brush, soft as air, as Kyojuro pulls back. Blue fingertips stroke Kyojuro’s neck, Akaza having lost control of them in his pleasured haze, his body moving without his active input. Not a single thought of tearing into the weak flesh, so close to his fangs, even begins to cross his mind. No, the only things in his head are Kyojuro’s arms, his teeth, and his cock.

“What good is forever if I lose my purpose? My family?” Kyojuro pants, gruff. “To be with you?” Kyojuro hammers his prostate with every other word. 

How is this man able to play Akaza so masterfully? Akaza, in a deluded thought, wonders if there were other demons that experienced the heaven of being the Flame Hashira’s lover. He’ll have to kill them, along with everyone else who dared touch what belongs to him. His ire fades quickly, he is starting to feel heavy, like sinking into a warm bath. 

Kyojuro continues his assault on both fronts. “You want me to leave the Corps? To fuck you stupid and eat people? It’s absurd.”

Barely listening, the sparks racing under Akaza’s skin are growing warmer, stronger. He can’t do anything but worship at the twin altars of pain and pleasure. Kyojuro is making him feel as if he is the most despicable monster to ever roam the night, but that can’t be right. He wouldn’t do this if he thought that, would he?

“Every hour. Every sec-” Akaza’s voice breaks off into a pained whine as Kyojuro roughly bites his neck, just above the weeping gash.

He spits the demonic blood back in Akaza’s face. “I will never join you, Akaza.”

Kyojuro says his name in a deliciously low rumble and it’s all he needs. Powerful abs clench and Akaza paints them both with his release. The blood and cuts littering his body fade away in his ecstasy but the Hashira is not finished yet. ‘Kyojuro’ falls from Akaza’s lips in a slurred litany as the man himself straightens up. Boneless, a striped leg slips to the mattress and Akaza can barely stay conscious as he is spread open so shamelessly for the Hashira to use as he pleases.

“Kyo, please.” Akaza doesn’t know what he is begging for. For relief? For more? Tears are gathering at the corners of his eyes, but Kyojuro doesn’t stop moving. What he does is worse, Akaza thinks. All of the nerves in his body are painfully alight and the slower, steady rhythm is doing the opposite of helping. Everything is muffled and intense at the same time, his body sending too many conflicting signals to process the stimuli correctly. 

“You’ll take what I give you.” He says, biting the calf still resting near his face and rolling his hips even more slowly.

Akaza’s eyes prickle and he gasps. “I can’t- please-” He pants out. “I can’t.”

Kyojuro ignores him and keeps up with the maddening, unrelenting strokes. He has no idea how, but his cock is swelling again. It’s too prickly, like his blood is boiling, bubbling inside his veins. It’s too much and his eyes are dangerously wet.

“Kyo!” Akaza cries, squeezing his eyes shut. Warm tear tracks carve their way down his temples into his hair. “Can’t. Please, I-” Akaza’s eyes shoot open at the rough feeling of Kyojuro’s fingers being shoved in his mouth.

“You clearly need something to fill that mouth, don’t you?” Kyojuro looks down at him lazily. "Hm?"

Sucking hard, Akaza groans, heedless of the drool running down his chin. Tingles run from the crown of his head to the base of his spine and embers of heat, deep within his body, start to spread. They burn hotter and hotter until it feels like he is cocooned in Kyojuro’s flames as well.

Akaza chokes and whimpers, but makes no other noises as he comes again, going limp after a short spasm. He has nothing left in him, Kyojuro has taken it all, and if he decides to pick up the red blade and finish him, Akaza will die with a smile on his face, leaking the Hashira's release.

No such thing happens. Instead, Kyojuro follows him into the little death, grinding slowly until he’s been milked of every last drop. Akaza lays still, breathing shallowly and staring at nothing, his vision nothing but white fog. 

Completely unaware of the time passing, he feels a subtle change in the air and flicks his eyes back to Kyojuro whose yellow hair bleeds back into charcoal, sclera doing the same. The red lines dancing all over his skin and blood-dipped hands make Akaza’s heart stutter in his chest as Kyo stroke's his side lightly. 

This is his Kyojuro. The one who said ‘yes,’ when asked to be with Akaza for an eternity. The one who left his life behind decades ago, old family and friends long dead. He said 'yes' to eternity.

Akaza is too blissed out to be horrified at the fresh tears warming his face, but he’s sure that Kyojuro will be an ass about it later, the fucker.

“I know, gorgeous, I know." Kyojuro leans over him and presses his forehead to Akaza’s, surrounding him and blocking out everything else, as he always does. "Just breathe.” 

He breathes in and out slowly and Akaza matches each breath until he stops floating and settles back into his body. He tilts his head to kiss Kyojuro lightly, nipping at his lips. 

“Am I to assume by your face that you enjoyed yourself?” Kyojuro smugly asks, because apparently ‘later’ is now.

“Fuck you,” he mutters back, although the kisses that follow take the heat out of the insult. “You didn’t even want to try it. I should be the insufferable one.” 

“Who says you aren’t?” Kyojuro smirks. 

Akaza says nothing, just bites his chin roughly, sucking at the wound. Kyojuro’s growl drives him to move along Kyojuro’s neck as Kyojuro mirrors him. They sink their teeth into each other simultaneously and Akaza smiles at the familiarity of it. Kyojuro still tastes amazing, no matter that his blood is no longer human, it will always be his favorite.

-----------------------------

Earlier that day:

“I just don’t see why it’s necessary.” Kyojuro protested, sinking his fang into the pad of Akaza’s thumb, sucking lightly. “It’s a lot of build-up for sex that we can have without all the build-up.”

Akaza rolled his eyes, “Where is your sense of fun? You’re telling me after all these years you don’t want to spice things up?”

Kyojuro didn’t look convinced. “Are you saying I’m bland?” His eyes glowed, showing off the kanji for Upper Moon Two that had been there since Muzan was able to use intel provided by the both of them to find that sun-walking Kamado brat and absorb her, spelling the end of the Demon Slayer Corps. “I’m not hot enough for you?” 

“Well, I wasn’t going to say it that plainly…” Akaza trailed off, glancing sideways at Kyojuro, loving how riled up he still got at a silly bit of taunting. As if he could ever be anything less than completely obsessed with Kyojuro, in this lifetime or any other. They had eternity and to Akaza that wasn’t nearly long enough.

“And this thing will make you happy?” Kyojuro asked, churlish, put out by being called boring. It’s not his fault that time did nothing but march on, what were they supposed to do? Start yet another cult, like Douma? Randomly ‘improve’ human architecture like Nakime? Take over the global criminal underworld as Muzan had? He supposed this request was one of his more reasonable ones. “You want to pretend?”

“It’s called roleplaying, Kyo, and yes, I want to try it,” Akaza said, reclaiming his thumb and pressing a kiss to Kyo’s neck. “And I’m only following your advice or did you forget that you’re the one who still insists that humans aren’t completely useless? They seem to enjoy it, why can’t we?”

“Akaza, those men are all actors.” Kyojuro never made anything easy, which was half the fun, honestly. “Bad ones, too, if that’s what they think sex sounds like.”

The two overly muscled, oiled-up men on the screen added their overexaggerated groans and grunts, further illustrating Kyojuro’s point. They did act terribly. They did have stupid lines. They did fuck each other in positions that were more about camera angles and lighting than pleasure. Akaza didn’t care.

“Kyojuro,” He whined. “What else do we have to do?” There were only so many drills and reps one could do before they became tiring, and if there was a choice between training and having Kyojuro on top of him, well, Kyojuro was winning every time.

Kyojuro sulked, but Akaza knew he would do it. The pouting was mostly for show, Kyojuro loved to manhandle him and he would have ample opportunity to do so in the scene Akaza had in mind.

“Don’t you miss your sword?” Akaza sweetened the pot, lapping lazily at Kyojuro’s throat and dragging his teeth over the skin light enough to make Kyojuro shiver. “You only use it when we fight, but imagine the things you could do .”

“One sword isn’t enough, now you need two?” Kyojuro leered and Akaza magnanimously refrained from scoffing at his horrible pun. “First I’m boring, and now my single sword doesn’t satisfy, what’s next?”

“You’ve already got your lines together,” Akaza murmured fondly before taking a tiny taste. He could never help himself, Kyojuro’s neck would always be a snack.

“You’ll have to find a bed to get ‘trapped’ under, or a washing machine to get ‘stuck’ in.” Kyojuro mused, sounding as if he were seriously considering where to ‘free’ Akaza from.

“Or,” Akaza pulled back to meet his eyes. “The big, bad Hashira could stumble upon the hungry, sleeping demon.”

Kyojuro’s eyes glowed red as his smile sharpened. “I’m listening...”

-----------------------------

The firm knocking on the door is no surprise to either of them, they hadn’t bothered to be quiet, and the late hour practically guaranteed a complaint from one of the other hotel guests. No matter, room service had arrived.

Kyojuro is up and off the ruined bed in a blur, but Akaza rises leisurely, shifting into his human form. He doesn’t bother dressing, why bother getting his clothes dirty? The peephole reveals two discreetly uniformed security personnel. He opens the door with a smile, his fangs glinting in the bright hall lights. “Won’t you come in?” he asks and feels Kyojuro’s flaming presence flicker in giddy anticipation of a good meal. “We’re starving.”

FIN

additional tags: roleplay/cnc, demon kyojuro, established relationship

[offbrand-deltatraveler]

(I just want to start this with, YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER THIS. I just want to write something to you and you don't need to release this.)

...Hey I'm just checking in and uh...

You REALLY seem to be in a downward spiral. You're wishing people dead and, uh, that's a bit harsh, y'know?

Like people can do some REALLY horrible things, but can't everyone change and be a bit better of a person everyday?

And for artists, I don't know the whole story, and I'm going to admit, I think you're exaggerating, but artists need you to reblog their stuff within an hour or how Tumblr works is that it's dead and likes don't change things. (Of course this paragraph is null if you're not and that's valid and annoying.)

And I'm not sure this makes sense but, check how you're treating others. I'm saying this out of experience, and maybe projecting a bit, but PLEASE... When I was in a server full of my bestest friends, when I wasn't there I was surrounded by negativity and treated everyone else harshly.

Don't stoop to the level of those who cause you trouble. Be the change that you want to see.

Sincerely,

Anon

I’ve addressed this in a previous post, but I indeed am in a bit of a downward spiral. A lot of things have been going kinda South recently, and “Garbage in, garbage out” and all that

But I realize this is an issue and am trying to tone down on it

That being said though, while that sucks for them, I’m literally not obligated to reblog anything from anybody. The #1 thing Tumblr hammers into your head the most is that your blog is like a second home, or bedroom more specifically, and as such, you decide who comes in and what you decorate it with. “Curate your online experience” and so forth. But then suddenly you’re the bad guy because what you’re doing with your space isn’t beneficial to other people anymore

It’s like if some Karen from across the street came to your door fuming because you refused to put a custom sign of hers in your backyard. I’m an internet stranger who talks about Sanrio lore and pixelated class clowns, not your corporate slave /lh

People also often act as if people who say that stuff don’t know how it feels for your hard work to go unnoticed. Such people haven’t seen all the Headcannoned Timeline lore posts and Deltarune OneShots I’ve written who’s only reblogs are one I made myself as an announcement. Heck, I even tell people to ask me about the Headcannoned Timeline in my pinned post and bio and I’ve yet to receive a single ask related to anything Sanrio. I mean, hell, I’ve been busting my ass all month making a demo for a story that I know fullwell is only gonna be appreciated by like 6 people. And, wanna know why I’m not complaining the same way everyone else is?

Because unlike them, I know how it feels to be put on blast, having people wish death on me and claim that I “Don’t deserve anything” for just not feeling like reblogging something. Sometimes people just don’t feel the way you’d like them to about your shit. That’s life. And yelling at and guilt tripping them isn’t gonna make them any more interested. So I just accept that the people who reblog it will reblog it and the people who don’t don’t. It’s my responsibility as the artist to make myself more visible to those who want to see me, not everyone else’s responsibility as a hypothetical audience to pretend they like me because it will make me feel better. And if your post will die on Tumblr if it doesn’t get reblogs in a certain amount of time, then just. Don’t post it exclusively on Tumblr? There’s probably one social media platform out there where stuff doesn’t just die like that. Or you could just draw what the audience would be more likely to reblog, but that’s boring

I never really got what people expected to get out of that, anyway. Isn’t it better if people interact with your art out of genuine appreciation rather than felt obligation? Like. Being underrated sucks, but I think it would suck so much more to be reblogged because someone was guilt tripped or harassed into doing it. A lot of artists on this site seem to be setting themselves up to be “It don’t matter if they hate you if they all say your name!” people

Anyways,

Yeah, again, things haven’t been as great as usual and, as a result, I also haven’t been as great as usual. But that’s hopefully gonna be turning around going forward

[staygoldwriting]

Eddie is the type of boyfriend to stutter and freeze when you so much as hold his hand. Poor boy is touched starved and just loves being near you. He can’t think straight when you’re around.

If you surprise him with a flower that you picked on the way to meet him “just because it reminded me of you” his face warms with a light blush. He presses every flower you give him in a lil songbook he has dedicated to you.

It is time for soft, first relationship Eddie 😌

🌹Now a series!! Part II is here🌹

Is this... my call to action??? To write the fluffiest thing I've ever done so far (maybe except for Bunny Garden)??? 😍

✨First Love✨

(in which y/n is a senior prep and best friends with Nancy, and Eddie is head-over-heels in love with her) 785 words

“Hey, Eddie, hi everyone!” you said cheerily as you approached the Hellfire table at lunch. 

Eddie looked up from his lunch to see you standing in front of him, a wide, sincere smile on your face. He blushed as you two met eyes, and as he went to smile, a little bit of chocolate milk came out of his mouth, causing him to hide his face in embarrassment. 

“Hey, Y/N, what’s up?” Mike asked, trying to draw attention away from a flustered Eddie.

“Well, I was up late baking cookies last night, and I called Nancy, and she said you all have a club meeting tonight? Hellfire, right?” you asked, pointing at their shirts.

“Yeah, why? You wanna join?” Gareth asked, snickering. Eddie, now recovered, kicked him in the leg.

“Well,” you said, looking from Gareth to Eddie, “I thought maybe you’d like some cookies for your meeting tonight,” you held out a tupperware. “I made some chocolate chip, some oatmeal cookies, and some lemon ones. If you’d like, I’d be really happy to share them with your club. And Mike can bring the tupperware home, I’m sleeping over with Nancy tomorrow anyway,” you smiled, bouncing on your heels. 

“Um, sure, yeah, thank you, Y/N,” Eddie said, holding a shaky hand out to receive the cookies. His hand brushed yours slightly, making his blush return. 

“I like your rings,” you said sweetly.

“Oh, um, thanks.” Eddie was completely red at this point. 

“Well, have fun, and let me know what everyone thinks of the cookies! Mike, don’t hog all the lemon ones! Oh, and good luck with ‘The Cult of Vecna’,” you said in a scary voice. 

Eddie’s heart soared when he heard you talk about Hellfire, as if Nancy Wheeler’s best friend would ever be interested in something like that. He knew you were always nice, but he convinced himself that you were just cordial for the sake of Mike. He secretly dreamt that he was the reason you were so nice, that maybe you wanted to be friends… or even more. 

“Ha, nice memory, Y/N!” Dustin cheered, snapping Eddie out of his trance.

“You can come by if you want,” Eddie said quickly, then instantly regretted it. He felt his ears get hot and his hands start to shake again, this time along with his breath. You looked at him with wide eyes.

“Are you serious?”

“I-I mean, you could, but I know you probably have better things to do--”

“No, I don’t!” you exclaimed. “I just didn’t think I could go to Hellfire! Isn’t it exclusive? I wouldn’t want to intrude or anything like that, D&D seems so special and precious to you guys, and I wouldn’t want to ruin that, and gosh, now I’m rambling, but yes, I would love to stop by if you all would be willing to have me.”

“Eddie might, but I’m not,” Jeff spat. “It is exclusive. A prep like you can’t just waltz in and--”

“Hey, come on, she’s cool!” Mike argued. 

“Yeah, and besides, you’re not the leader, Eddie is! He invited her so she can come,” Lucas added.

“It’s okay, I don’t want to cause any trouble,” you said sadly. “I’ll just ask you guys how it went on Monday. Thank you for the invitation though, Eddie.” 

As you left to turn around, Eddie glared at Jeff angrily. He was still blushing intensely, but it could easily be disguised as fury. You looked back, wringing your hands, then went to your table to grab something. As you walked back to the boys, the same look of shock reappeared on their faces. You stood there, shuffling your feet as you let out a breathy giggle.

“I don’t know if I can wait until Monday,” you chuckled, then nervously held out a piece of paper. “This is my number, Eddie. Maybe you can call me after and tell me the details?”

Eddie’s mouth hung open as he stared at you in disbelief. Frozen, Eddie tried to speak, but nothing worked. Dustin sighed loudly, took your number, then placed it in Eddie’s hand. As Eddie closed it, a goofy smile broke across his face. You blushed and smiled brightly as you saw his happy face.

“I’ll talk to you later then,” you said, turning to go back to Nancy, breathing a sigh of relief. You looked back to see Eddie gazing at you, still grinning widely. You waved sweetly, then, in a rush of confidence, blew him a kiss. 

Dustin groaned as Eddie’s face didn’t change. He pretended to catch the kiss, then slapped it on Eddie’s cheek, making you giggle. Meanwhile, Eddie’s heart was beating too much for him to care.

[iwadori]

Hiiii!!!! can you do like when you guys are supposed to meet up and they waited for about an hour or so and kept texting you you but you haven't replied so they thought you ditched them and got mad at you and stuff then they decided to go home and while on their way home not too far from their school they found you unconscious body with a large wound on you back and your head bleeding?.

can you pleaseease do tsukishima, yamaguchi, ushijima, bokuto (I'm sorry if that's a lot)

Haikyu Boys when you get hurt Pt 2 (Ushijima,Bokuto

Part One Part Two Part Three

Word count: 2.6K

Genre: angst, fluff

masterlist

Ushijima

You were having the worst week this week,  from battling a cold and your boss making you do all sorts of extra jobs (that were definitely not under your job description.) As easter was swiftly approaching you and Ushijima had your annual plans of going to the local kids community center and helping them with an easter egg hunt. But you don’t think you can manage it this year.

Ushijima gets home from practice with 4 bags just filled with easter eggs ranging from all different sizes, “woah there Toshi, you’ve got enough there too feed all of england” you laugh  

“I don’t think these eggs will be able to sustain England Y/N” he says seriously making you laugh even harder. As you were laughing, you felt another migraine come along making your cringe in pain. “Toshi, I don’t think I can do the easter egg hunt this year?”  

He sits down next to you alarmed that something is wrong, “why what happened Y/N” he asks

“I’ve been feeling terrible all week, and I even have a migraine right now” you say to him thinking he would understand.

“That’s it?” he questions thinking what you said was a joke “I think you can handle a migraine, remember we’re doing this for the kids”

His words were making you feel slightly guilty since maybe you were being over dramatic. “Y/N if it’s really ‘that bad’, i’ll make you some tea so you can feel better,” he says going into the kitchen to start on your tea. You murmur a quiet “thank you” and you end up falling asleep, hoping that by the time you wake up your head stops pounding.

As you wake up, you realise you slept all the way through the night and over to the next day as when you look at your clock it says 12:32 pm. You look at your nightstand and saw that Ushijima wrote you a note saying:  

Y/N I've left out early to set out the easter egg hunt, I’ve made you breakfast so eat up and get prepared for the event which starts at 4pm. Please don’t forget.

Sincerely – Ushijima Wakatoshi.

You chuckle at the fondness of the note, before realising your pain. Your brain felt like it was having a live concert inside that definitely was not going to end soon but you still got up prepared for the day. You didn’t want to let Ushijima or the kids down.  

When you go to the kitchen , you see the cute breakfast that Ushijima made you consisting of all of your favourite foods and with another simple note of him saying ‘ I love you. ‘ Ushijima has always been a lovely boyfriend, treating you like the queen you are always making sure that you were okay. Of course, his bluntness and his lack of social cues was something to get used to but when you did get accustomed to it, it only made you fall in love with him more.

You got ready, feeling even more sick as the piping hot shower that you usual have, did not help as when you were showering you felt heavily faint. However, you persevered since you did not want to let Ushijima down.

You finally were prepared to leave the house, with the community center being on 15 minutes walk away you were leaving out at 3:50pm since you were planning to take your car anyways. When you leave your home, you realise that you forgot your car keys so you dash up the stairs (a bit too quickly) to go and find them. Scrambling through your draws, your head is pounding harder and harder and the more it pounds the quicker your moving making you even more faint. You eventually find your keys and you’re ready to zoom to the community center but your body gave out and you pass out tumbling down the stairs landing at your front door.

Ushijima was waiting outside of the community center waiting for you to arrive it was 4:05pm and he was wondering where you were (knowing that your place was only a 10 minute drive away) he sent you a few texts asking where you were but when you don’t respond Ushijima becomes slightly annoyed, plastering a fake smile on his face and entering the community center, starting the easter egg hunt.

The easter egg hunt came to a close at 8pm and Ushijima assumed that you would’ve showed up some time in the middle of the event, but you obviously didn’t show. After making sure that all the kids left safely Ushijima decided to call and text you more and when you continuously don’t respond and your calls go to voicemail he says ‘Y/N, im really disappointed with you right now. How could you do this to me? You said you would show up, the kids were really upset, how could you be so selfish?’

He walks to your house knocking on the door, but when you don’t immediately answer he knew something must be up now, since you haven’t responded to any of his texts and calls and didn’t show up he figured there was something deeper then you just ditching the event.

He used his key to open the door, surprised when the door hit something. He tried again hitting the ‘object’ that was laying at the door again. He carefully pushes the door to make enough room for him to fit through the gap. When he entered, he was startled at the sight of you, there you lay completely knocked out with a blood stain next to your head. He knelt down next to you and touched your cheek you were extremely cold, he had to get you to a hospital stat. He called an ambulance, panicked. Worrying about how long you’ve been out for since it would have to be atleast more than 4 hours he assumed.

You woke up in a foreign room, with your head slightly stinging. You place your hand on the back of your head and wince, then you remember you need to be at the easter egg hunt so you bolt up ready to move.  

“I don’t think that’s wise for you to do that Y/N” Ushijima says to you  

“Toshi, what happened?” you ask still in pain

“It seems you fell down the stairs and hit your head” after he said that all your memories come flooding back, and you remember rushing to the community centre, looking for your keys, and then falling down the stairs and everything going black.

“I’m sorry Ushi for missing the easter egg hunt, I really tried to get there,” you say with an apologetic look on your face  

“It’s fine Y/N of course you wouldn’t of been able to get there after falling down the stairs” he says “Also, this is proof of why you shouldn’t run down the stairs”

You eventually get discharged with the doctor telling you all you need to do is rest and stay off your feet. Ushijima took the doctor's orders very seriously, becoming your loyal servant and waiting on you hand and foot, tending to your every need. He did also make you were eating healthy and taking all your medicine so you could have the best recovery possible.  

Also, after realising that this could’ve all been avoided if Ushijima didn’t guilt trip you in the first place for having a migraine, he made sure to never ignore or dismiss when you say you are ill or have anything wrong with you even if it’s a migraine, a lost limb or a simple paper cut.

Bokuto  

The Olympics were coming up and Bokuto couldn’t be any more excited than he already was. Everything he’s talked about for the past month he manages to find a way to relate to the Olympics, and as annoying as it got sometimes you were just as excited for it as much as Bokuto was.  

Bokuto was heavily busy with extra practices so you were bored and lonely, since your boyfriend was at practice all the time so you chose to take up a new hobby. You decided to paint, although you weren’t an award-winning painter you still found joy in it. Being Bokuto’s girlfriend you had some slight unwanted attention on you: the usual fans of Bokuto that just followed you to have an extra aspect of him in their life's, or his fangirls that adored him.  

You didn’t mind the fangirls for the most part since majority of them were pretty tamed and did fawn over your relationship. However, there was the minority of fans that did make it known to you that they DID NOT like you at all. When you started posting your paintings, it seems their hate for you amplified since they always found the need to leave an astray of mean comments on your post. But that didn’t mainly bother you since you thought that they only had that energy behind the screen.

The days went by getting closer to the Olympics, with Bokuto always asking you every day “Y/N you are coming to my games, right?” to which you always replied “Of course Kou, I’m coming” which always made him smile.

When the Olympics came, you’ve went to all the games cheering Bokuto and the team on as they were winning round after round. Whilst this was going on, the group of girls that were sending you horrible messages and making mean posts about you weren’t stopping. At first, you didn’t care for them but it seems their posts only gotten worse making comments about your artwork, your face, your body type ect.  

You didn’t want to tell Bokuto as you felt that it would ruin his Olympic momentum and you thought you could handle it all on your own.  

It was nearing to the final game of the Olympics, and Bokuto was ecstatic he made sure that you promised you’d be there claiming that you was his ‘good luck’ charm.’ You were excited to go too, the feeling of watching Bokuto play was exhilarating seeing him fully in his element was great for you to see.

On the last game day, Boktuo was already at the stadium since him and the team had to be there earlier to practice and you planned to meet him there just before the game started at 4:30. You went to a florist before the match getting Bokuto the biggest boquet that you could buy.  

On your way to the stadium you here somebody whistle from behind you, you turn around and see a group of girls waiting behind you smirking. “Hi?” you say more like a question then a statement “do you want something from me?”

Some of them laugh, but the one standing at the front who you mentally lable the ‘main one’ steps closer to you and says “We want you to stay away from Bokuto” you realise that these were the girls sending you hate online for these past weeks.

Before you can even blink, the girls jump you, hitting, kicking and clawing at you. You are in pain, screaming and crying for them to stop and leave you alone. You lay there, letting them beat you up thinking that you’ll probably end up dead out of this. All you can think about is Bokuto, you didn’t get to wish him good luck, or give him your flowers (that you spent a fortune on) or even tell him that you loved him one last time.

You think the girls eventually stopped but you couldn’t tell because your body was throbbing and you hurt all over. You tried to get up still wanting to go to the match but you collapse going out cold.

Bokuto was scanning the crowd over and over for you, hoping to spot you there. But he couldn’t, he was wondering where you were getting sadder and sadder by the second since he really believed you were his good luck charm and he probably wouldn’t be able to win without at least seeing your face once.

They didn’t win. Bokuto knew he wasn’t playing at his best, since all his mind was on was thinking about where you were. You’ve never missed one of his games, so he was incredibly worried. After he accepted his second-place medal, he rushed out the stadium to go to your house but he was stopped by some fangirls ‘I guess signing autographs is the least I can do’ he thinks, the fans were being a bit odd today but he didn’t have time to focus on that as his mind was racing thinking about you and your whereabouts.  

One of his fans did give him an alarmingly big boquet of roses which he appreciated ‘these must of cost a fortune’ he thinks. Although it was a probably a long shot, he decided to ask the fan if he saw someone who looked like *whatever you look like* to maybe see if someone else saw you. Which the fan replied “yeah I saw them with some guy at this restaurant whilst we were going to see you!” they exclaimed.

‘A guy’ he thought ‘that most likely wasn’t you.’ Seeing Bokuto’s confusion, the fan followed up with “I'm pretty sure it was her I mean we all know who Bokuto Koutaro’s girlfriend was.” Bokuto didn’t reply just walking away making sure to thank them for the flowers.  

He was rushing towards your house on foot (since all the taxi’s and ubers were fully booked because of the Olympics) whilst running he stumbles across your passed out body all black and bruised with scratch marks and bleeding all over you. “what happened” he whispered, knowing you obviously weren’t going to respond.  

He picked up your near-dead body, and cradled you in his arms taking you back to the stadium (since he knew that getting an ambulance to come here or running to the hospital would basically be impossible.) When he got back to the stadium, he did get odd looks from strangers but he didn’t care, his only agenda was making sure you were okay.

You woke up, and saw Bokuto pacing the room repeatedly you tried to get his attention by saying his name but your throat was damaged. He eventually notices you and runs to your side, stroking your face softly and giving you a gentle hug making sure not to hurt you.  

“Who did this Y/N?” he asks with worry in his eyes  

You ignore his question and look at the silver medal wrapped around his neck making you sad “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the match, I tried I really did try” you said with your voice sounding even worse after you said every word.  

“Don’t be silly, I’m just glad that you’re okay babe, I was really worried about you.” he said

The Medic came in and said that you had multiple broken ribs, but beside that you were fine you just needed to rest your throat and let your bruises heal. You eventually told Bokuto that it was some of his fans, he was upset that you hid this from him for so long but he was just glad that he got to you as soon as he did. He managed to play at the next Olympics and you were there fully present, with your even bigger boquet of flowers watching win gold.

Authors Note: I tried to make it as close to your request as possible, but I hope you enjoy as I really do think this is my favourite work so far.... :3 Comments and feedback appreciated.

[sanguineterrain]

Brooklyn Honey - Bucky Barnes x Reader

(Repost!) Hello, this is for the lovely @wkemeup​’s 9k writing challenge. I decided to go with the song prompt “Life in the City” by The Lumineers. It really reminded me of 40s Bucky.

Title: Brooklyn Honey

Summary: Life in the city ain’t always so pretty, but you’ve got Bucky and he’s got you.  

Pairing: 1940s!Bucky Barnes x female!reader

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: nah

***

“That’s so not how you do it.”

“Sorry, I must’ve missed the day you wrote the manual on how to put up curtains.”

“You sure did, and I can tell you as an expert, the nails aren’t supposed to resemble a mountain range.”

“Smartass. C’mere.”

Bucky’s palm opened and you took a nail, carefully tapping it into the wall.

“Or is it the skyline you’re going for?”

“You’re pretty mouthy for an assistant.”

“I keep it interesting, doll.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“James Barnes, what on earth are you doing in there?!”

Your eyes went wide and you hurried to scramble off the chair you were standing on. Bucky put a hand on your back, shaking his head.

“Buck—”

“I got it, don’t worry. Keep hammering.”

“But—”

“Honey, don’t you trust me?”

“Absolutely not.”

More knocking, faster and louder this time.

“Coming, Mrs. Anderson!”

Bucky buttoned up his shirt, smoothing his pomade-slicked hair back, and went to answer.

You stepped down from the chair anyway, daring to peek around the corner. 

He had his arms up, trying to fill the entire door frame and hide the obnoxiously yellow curtains you probably weren’t supposed to have. Mrs. Anderson, Steve and Bucky’s busybody next door neighbor, was a small, shriveled, old woman with a perpetually pinched face that looked like it had been stored in a jar of formaldehyde for the last twenty years. She kept trying to look over Bucky’s shoulder but he wouldn’t let her, moving when she did.

“—could’ve sworn I heard hammering coming from this apartment.”

“Oh! You must’ve heard me fixing my bike.” 

“You don’t have a bike, James.”

“Did I say my bike? I meant Steve’s.”

“Steve rides a bike?”

“Absolutely. Keeps him fit.”

“I don’t recall seeing him ever—”

“Well, bye, Mrs. Anderson! Always a pleasure to see you, ma’am.”

She gave another stern look before shaking her head, walking away.

You sighed as Bucky shut the door with his foot, a too sly smile on his face.

“Didn’t I tell you to trust me?”

“I think you might be a worse liar than Steve.”

“Well, ouch, doll.”

“First of all, who’s ever heard of needing a hammer to fix a bike?”

“We can be the first.”

“Next time, I’m answering the door.”

You clambered back onto the chair, returning to knocking in the nails. 

“I still don’t understand why you wanted curtains in the first place.” 

“It adds a homely touch, doll. Aren’t you the one who’s always complaining about how drab this place is?”

“Of course, but it’s not my apartment.” 

“It could be, with how often you’re over,” Bucky said sweetly. 

“Keep dreaming, Barnes.” 

“I will,” he assured with a smile that could melt butter. 

You shook your head and returned to focus on the curtains. True, the first one was beyond help in terms of nail placement, but the least you could do was try and make the next one even. 

Bucky had offered at least ten times to do it himself but there was no way he was getting his hands on a hammer after what had happened when he’d tried to install some shelves last winter. 

Besides, you were better at decorating when it came down to it. At least, that’s what Bucky kept insisting, letting you do essentially anything you wanted to the apartment. 

The chair suddenly groaned under additional weight and you startled as you felt the side of a body press against yours. 

“How’s it goin’?”

“Bucky, this chair really isn’t meant for two people.” 

“You sure? Seems pretty sturdy to me.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Bucky wrapped an arm around your waist and you fixed him with a look. 

“What? Don’t want you to fall.”

“How valiant of you.”

“Ain’t it?”

He hopped off before you could scold him further, grinning up at you. 

“Beer?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Bucky disappeared and returned a minute later with an open bottle for you, holding it so you could sip safely while still perched on the chair.

Then you kept hammering, eyes narrowed as you focused on not hitting anything other than the nail.

Bucky watched from the floor as you did so, leaning back on his hands.

“What’re you looking at?” you asked after a while, glancing at him from the corner of your eye.

He shrugged, a gentle smile on his face.

“The city.”

***

“Honey, I’m home!”

“What did I say about that, Barnes?”

“You said… you’ll love me for all eternity because you’re as sweet as honey?”

“I think it was more along the lines of, ‘don’t call me honey unless you mean it.’”

“I always mean it, Y/N.”

And that was a little more sincerity than you were willing to explore, so you pointed to the bag instead.

“What’s that?”

Bucky grinned, setting a giant paper sack on the counter.

“Lemons.”

“What?”

“Lemons. You know, the little yellow fruits that make you do this?”

Bucky puckered his mouth and smacked his tongue, eyes screwed shut.

“Lemon’s not a fruit.”

“It sure is! Fruit got seeds. Read that in a book about agriculture. We produce a lot of corn, did you know that?“

“Okay, Bucky, the presiding question still remains: why do you have every lemon in the city?”

“There was a good deal at the docks. Dirt cheap for produce. Some guys told me they were takin’ some home for their wives. Didn’t want you to feel left out.”

“I’m not your wife.”

Bucky just grinned. You rolled your eyes.

“I don't know who taught you this, but the way to a girl’s heart is not twenty pounds of lemons.”

“Think of all the lemonade we can make.”

“Unless you’ve also got FDR and his cabinet in those bags, we’re gonna have a lot of leftovers.”

“Look at it this way: no vitamin C deficiency. One less thing to worry ‘bout.”

“Bucky.”

“They’re not all lemons, doll. I got other stuff too. Tomatoes, cabbage, snuck some cucumbers, even bananas.”

You sighed, smiling tiredly. This ration was taking its toll on everyone. You knew Bucky was doing his best, had seen the vegetables and thought of you and how much you missed having cucumber salad and tomato sandwiches like you used to.

“Thank you, Bucky, really. I appreciate you.”

You brushed past him to begin preparing the excess vegetables you three wouldn’t eat this week to pickle. Salt and sugar was going to be hard to gather, but you’d manage. You always did.

“Welcome, doll.” 

He beamed, eyes full of warmth as he watched you. 

“You gonna stay for dinner?”

“I dunno. Seems like Steve’s gettin’ kinda tired of me,” you laughed.

“Never. ‘Sides, even if he was, doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, really?”

“Nope. ‘Cause you stay for me.”

“And where did you get that idea from?”

He shrugged.

“Seemed kinda obvious, doll. You’re smitten, admit it.”

“Oh dear, you’ve got me all figured out. However did you know?”

“I’m a bright fella.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You ain’t saying no…”

“Really, I have to say no? Can’t you tell I only stick around for the great deals you get on produce?” 

“But it’s me that gets the great deals, so really, you’re still staying for me.” 

Bucky was against the counter now, shoulder to shoulder with you. 

You sighed, hand on your hip as you stared at the table. 

“What the hell are we going to do with all these lemons?” 

“We’ll figure something out. Always do, don’t we?”

You hummed, leaning your head on his shoulder, aware he was talking about more than the lemons. 

“Yeah. We always do.” 

***

Steve had been home for a while, wordlessly letting you in when you’d shown up an hour ago. You didn’t have to explain anything to him anymore. 

The record player was on, crooning gently. Steve was in the corner, drawing, away from the window after the breeze had whipped his papers around one too many times.

“Can’t believe they’re building another skyscraper down on Lawrence.”

Steve frowned.

“Really? Won’t be able to see the sunset now.”

“Yeah. And Brooklyn’s not exactly known for its scenery to begin with. Saw a rat and a pigeon fighting over a pretzel this morning.”

Steve chuckled from the floor, shaking his head.

“Times are tough. Even for rats and pigeons.” 

“Sure are.”

“Nice curtains, by the way. I like the color.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Did Bucky ask—?”

“No,” he answered, smile evident in his voice. “But that’s alright. I know he’s just tryin’ to gauge what you like.”

“What?”

“Yeah, after the war’s over and all, he’s gonna try and buy a nicer place.”

“And he wants my furnishing tips?”

Steve shrugged, gaze soft and knowing.

“Guess so.”

You cleared your throat, pushing a lock of hair behind your ear.

“Want some lemonade?”

“Jesus, there’s more? I thought we’d run out of bushels.”

“You’d think, right? I put ‘em in the icebox so they won’t spoil so fast.”

“Sure, yeah. Thanks, Y/N.”

You were in the middle of stirring the pitcher when Bucky came in.

He didn’t greet you or Steve immediately, like he usually did, instead setting down his keys, then slapping the mail onto the table. 

“Well, hey there, mister. Fancy a drink? Today’s special is sour lemonade, your favorite.”

Bucky looked up, startled, and glanced at the pitcher before nodding, attempting a half smile.

“Sure, doll. Thanks.”

“Everything okay, Buck?”

He nodded, slipping away to the bathroom with a sigh.

You turned to Steve, who shrugged.

“Long day at the docks, I guess.”

***

June twelfth. That was when Bucky was being shipped out, somewhere in Europe, too far from you. This entire year you’d been holding your breath, hoping, needing the draft to leave him alone. 

Now they were taking him away from you in less than a week. 

You were in the apartment, lying on the floor, on Bucky’s second to last day. That’s how he found you upon coming home. 

“Trying to count all the cracks in the ceiling, doll? You’ll be here all night.”

You had a glass of lemonade by your head, spiked with a bit of rum. It was already warm, because it was summer and things were supposed to be warm in the summer.

The curtains danced in front of the window, yellow like sunshine and all those goddamn lemons in the freezer. The only respite from an otherwise colorless world.

“This city is so ugly.”

Bucky looked up at the sound of your voice. He walked over, crouching by your arm.

“Think so?”

“Yeah. Can’t find a single pretty thing in the city.”

“I can.”

“Can you?”

“Sure. She’s looking at me right now.”

“That was sappy.”

“Yes it was.”

Bucky lay down, rolling onto his side next to you, taking a sip from your glass.

“But I ain’t mean it any less.”

You hummed, closing your eyes.

“Well, for what it’s worth then, I think you’re handsome.”

“Oh, yeah?”

You could hear his proud smile.

“Don’t make me take it back.”

“No, I’m just surprised to hear it is all.”

“Surprised, huh? I’m certain I ain’t the first one to call you handsome.”

“You’re the only one I wanna hear it from.”

Something fluttered in your chest.

“What d’you say then? You and I, think we can take on a city as ugly as ours?”

He smiled.

“With you, doll?”

“Yeah.”

“With you, of course.”

“Good. I’m gonna hold you to that.”

Bucky propped his head up on his elbow. It was quiet again, with only your occasional sighs and his quiet breaths.

“What’re you looking at?” you breathed, opening your eyes.

“You.”

Bucky flicked a drop of lemonade from the tip of your nose.

You turned, now face to face.

And oh, Bucky’s blues. Those had been your color even before the curtains.

“I’m gonna miss you,” you blurted.

He smiled a little sadly.

“Gonna miss you too, Y/N.”

You pushed your lips together, taking a deep breath.

“You were right, you know.”

“‘Bout what?”

“That day when you brought home all those lemons. You said that I stay for you.”

Bucky’s lips quirked, gaze fond like it always was.

“All those times I stayed for dinner and pretended to know what I was doing putting up those curtains. I stayed for you.”

You wiped your nose quickly, sniffling.

“And I’m gonna keep staying.”

“Yeah? What if the bridge collapses tomorrow?”

“I’ll swim.”

“Even in the winter?”

“I’ll get myself a pair of ice skates.”

“You don’t know how to skate, doll.”

“That’s right. So you better come back safe and teach me.”

Bucky leaned in, nose brushing your cheek. He rolled over and carefully straddled you, holding his weight.

“I’ll be there, honey.”

“Now what did we say about that?”

Bucky’s eyebrows pinched in thought.

“Don’t say it if I don’t mean it?”

You hummed, pulling him closer, arms around his neck. Bucky’s lips were a millimeter from yours, breath fanning over your chin.

“Mm, I think it was something about eternity.”

Bucky was soft, tangy and sweet. His scruff scraped your cheek and your fingers curled into the baby hairs at the nape of his neck.

He slid his hands under your back and turned so you were on top, head on his chest. You lay like that for a while, listening to his heartbeat, arms strong around you. 

Yellow fluttered in the breeze, tacked unevenly onto the wall, catching your eye. 

Bucky glanced to the side, chuckling.

“Don’t let Anderson take our curtains away.”

“Of course not. I spent a weekend on those. She’ll have to fight me for ‘em.”

“Good God. Now I gotta worry about you brawling with old ladies and Steve getting into alley fights while I’m gone?”

“Nah. Steve’ll help me.”

“Oh, great.”

You reached up, brushing his jaw with your knuckles.

“Call me honey again.”

“Honey, honey, honey.”

You reached up to get just one last kiss, except it definitely wasn’t going to be the last. It couldn’t be.

“They’re not gonna take you away from me.”

Bucky shook his head, kissing you much slower this time, trying to memorize you before time ran out.

“Never. ‘M gonna think of you and I’ll be back ‘fore we know it.”

You nodded, wishing hard, hoping somebody was listening. 

“Then, when I come back,” he whispered, promise riding on the summer air.

“We’re gonna make the best damn lemonade you’ve ever had.”

And maybe this city could take away your sunsets, your tea and jams, even your summer.

But if there was anything that was yours and yours only, it was the lemon pulp on Bucky’s lips and the undissolved sugar on your own, as bitter and pretty as home.

[pingutats]

could you write a really fluffy bit on harry kissing every single self harm scar on your body? like, stroking them and cuddling with you and reassuring you that your body is beautiful and okay even with scars? 🥺

thank you for requesting this! this was genuinely quite therapeutic to write so i’m glad i did it — it’s longer than i meant it to be at about 2.4k words, but anyway. here’s a difficult conversation with new boyfriend!harry. 

major trigger warning for discussions of self-harm and scars. this is not a story for everyone, and could definitely be triggering if you are not in the right headspace. please be responsible and look after yourselves <3 

this is also pretty unedited so forgive any mistakes. okay!! onwards!

It’s getting late when Harry asks you, ‘Do you want to spend the night?’

The meandering film you found on Netflix is drawing to a close, finally. The characters are on a boat, drifting away into an Italian sunset. You barely have a grasp of how they got there — mostly, you just listened to Harry talk over the dialogue about a pretty little café he knows just around the corner from where this scene was filmed, or how cool the water gets at night there and so the actors must have been shivering. All of it wrapped up, of course, in a quiet suggestion to take you there someday so you can see for yourself. You get a little thrill every time he says something like that. It means he’s thinking of a future with you, which means he wants one, even though it’s only been just over a month since you’ve been seeing each other.

He trails his fingers up and down your arm, bringing up goosebumps beneath your sleeve, and looks at you. ‘Or I can drive you home, if you’d rather sleep in your own bed.’

You hum. ‘No,’ you say. ‘I’ll stay. I’d probably end up falling asleep in the car anyway. I’m so tired.’

His dimple appears. ‘Good, because I’d probably fall asleep at the wheel.’ He grabs the remote and turns the TV off, then pushes himself off the couch with a groan. He holds his hand out for you. ’C’mon, then.’

You grab his hand and he hauls you up, his other arm coming up to your back to pull you into his chest. You fall against him, grabbing his biceps to steady yourself. The two glasses of wine you’ve had tonight have thrown your balance off. He presses a kiss to your hair as you giggle. Then he brings his hand up to your jaw to tilt your head up to look at him properly. You nearly melt at his green eyes.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I can sleep on the couch.’ His gaze is completely sincere.

You haven’t slept together before, both in the literal and figurative senses. You haven’t had sex with anybody at all, actually, and Harry seems to have picked up on your hesitancy. He’s never asked for anything. He lets everything stay on your terms. 

That’s what makes you trust him.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ you tell him.

He holds your gaze for a moment longer, just to make sure. ’Right,’ he says, breaking into a smile.

He finds a new toothbrush in his cupboard for you, and you brush your teeth together. It feels like a big step to do these nighttime rituals with him. It’s so domestic. He shares his cleanser with you and offers his moisturiser that smells like vanilla. You imagine spending every night like this.

As he leads the way back into his bedroom, he pulls his shirt off. ‘I get hot at night. D’you mind?’

You giggle — you can’t help yourself, at the sight of his muscled torso with all of its tattoos. He’s so handsome. ‘Not at all,’ you tell him.

He throws the shirt into a hamper in the corner, and the birds on his chest seem to fly with the movement of his shoulder, then looks back to catch you ogling him. He chuckles, and the sight of his dimples gives you butterflies.

‘You like?’ he asks.

You narrow your eyes. ’Are you flexing?’

He relaxes. ‘Yeah, a bit. Just wanna impress you.’

You snort at that. ‘Like you need to do anything to impress me.’

He grins. ‘D’you want something more comfortable to sleep in?’ He rummages around in his drawer for a moment, then pulls out a t-shirt and holds it up for you. It has an incredibly faded image of Flinstones characters on the front. ‘How’s this?’ he asks.

You smile at his courtesy. ’Perfect. I love your t-shirt collection, by the way. Where the hell do you find things like this?’

‘Oh, you know… Here and there.’ He tosses it to you.

You catch it with some semblance of grace — you’re proud of yourself for that. ‘Thanks.’ You glance at the bathroom door. ‘Alright. I’ll just… get changed in here,’ you say, slipping through the ajar door.

‘Alright, love.’

You shut the door, and realise you’ve forgotten to turn the light on, leaving you in pitch-black. You grope against the wall for the switch and turn it on, and take a deep breath. Why are you so nervous, so frazzled? It’s just Harry. You shimmy out of your leggings, then pull your sweater over your head.

You look at your reflection. Well. There’s a problem. It’s easy for you to forget when you’re alone, or wrapped up in layers of clothing — it’s just a part of your body now. Artefacts from a different time, years ago. Even the memory of how you got them — how you gave them to yourself — is slipping away, thank God. It’s all a haze. These scars were carved by a girl that you don’t see much anymore. They aren’t really a painful reminder anymore, just a fact of life. You know they're there. The problem is, no one else expects it.

You stare down at your wrists, seeing the lines that never faded. Maybe if they were all like the thin white lines, barely visible until you look closely, you wouldn’t mind. You’re going to sleep, anyway, and it’s not like he’s inspecting your forearms. No, it’s the three darker ones, hard twisting scar tissue that you can feel even through sleeves. Times where you went just a little too deep, were a little too reckless. The ones you regret the most. They’re big, and ugly, and too obvious. He’d notice them right away.

But he gave you his t-shirt.

You look at your reflection in the mirror, furrowing your brows. You adjust your pose, twisting your arms around so the inside of your wrists are hidden, facing behind you. You look ridiculous. You know, as soon as you see Harry, you’ll reach for him, and he’ll see.

Would that be so bad?

You look down at your arms again. It’s been years, and they’re still there. They’ll probably be there forever. They’re as permanent as the tattoos on his skin — except those are beautiful, and what you have is not. You can’t show this to him. The world where these scars exist, and the world where he exists, should never cross over. It wouldn’t be right.

You pull your long-sleeve back on, covering them again. Then you put the t-shirt, which is long enough to be modest on you. This is fine, right? It’s better than any alternative, at least.

You leave the bathroom holding your folded sweats up to your chest, nervous now realising that you are standing in front of Harry in just your underwear, more naked than you ever have been in front of him.

He’s checking something on his phone as he sits on the bed, back against the headboard and long legs stretching down the covers, but he brightens up at the sight of you. His gaze drops to your legs — which makes your cheeks burn, but his boyishly excited expression dissolves your nerves — then rises up again to your shirt. He frowns at the long-sleeve. 

‘Are you cold?’ he asks. ‘I thought it was pretty warm but I can turn the heat up if you need.’

You shake your head, dropping your sweats on the floor beside the dresser. ’No, it’s fine.’

He sits up straighter, swinging his legs over the side so his feet rest on the ground. ’Can’t be comfortable to sleep like that.’ He hesitates. ‘You didn’t have to wear the t-shirt if you don’t want to.’

‘No, I want to. I do.’ You wrap your arms around yourself, trying to figure out how to navigate this situation in a way that won’t end in him being annoyed or disgusted. ‘It’s just…’ You trail off, but one glance at his frown, at the way he leans forward and hangs on every word, makes your resolve crumble. You’ll have to have this conversation at one point or another. ‘Okay. Shit, Harry, can I talk to you about something?’

The way he answers immediately makes you want to cry. ‘Yeah, of course. Anything.’ He sits up straighter, pats the covers next to him, inviting you to sit down.

You sigh and cross the room to sit next to him, not daring to meet his eyes. How the hell do you explain this?

He moves his arm behind you once you’re sitting. Not touching you, but enough so he’s close. ‘What’s wrong?’ he prompts. ‘Do you need me to drive you home instead? Because I didn’t—’

‘No,’ you interrupt. ‘It’s fine. It’s just, I kinda…’ You take a deep breath. ‘Okay, please don’t freak out?’

He frowns. His next words are measured. ‘I’ll try not to. Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah,’ you whisper. It feels like the greatest effort in the world, but you curl your fingers around the end of your sleeve and pull it up, revealing your wrists. ‘So, I have these…’ Your voice shakes.

‘Oh, baby,’ Harry says quietly, and that’s all you need to hear. His arm behind you reaches around and pulls you into his chest, hugging you close to him. His thumb rubs circles into your shoulder as you sniffle, his other hand resting on top of yours.

‘It’s in the past, you know,’ you say, muffled into his shoulder. He smells good, you notice. Not that it’s really important right now, but you appreciate it all the same. ‘Not a big deal. Just didn’t want to scare you or anything. ’S embarrassing.’

‘Listen to me,’ he says, pulling back and holding your face in his hands. He waits until you manage to look him in his eyes. They’re watery, you realise, and that might be the most painful thing about this night. ’It’s not embarrassing, alright? I don’t want you to feel like that. They’re part of you, and I really like you, every part.’ He smiles. ‘I really do, you know.’

You sniff, wiping at your cheek with your fingertips, trying to calm your tears. Suddenly all your fears seem ridiculous. Did you really expect him to turn you away, disgusted? Ask to never see you again? You knuckle at your eyes. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

‘Hey.’ He springs from the bed to grab the tissue box from the dresser and brings it to you, pulling out a tissue and dabbing under your eyes himself. He’s so gentle. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry, that you were worried to show me.’

You chuckle, grabbing a tissue from the box and blowing your nose. What more can you say to him? He’s so wonderful to you. It’s early days still, and you’re wary of moving too fast and coming on too strong. You aren’t experienced with relationships in the same way that you know he is. But you love him. You’re sure of it. You’ll tell him, one day. Soon.

‘You don’t need to wear my shirt if you don’t want to,’ he repeats once you’re calmer.

‘I’ll wear it.’ And to show him, in your sudden burst of confidence, you undress right next to him, taking off both layers and then putting the only t-shirt back on. You turn to him, and giggle. He’s turned his head away. ‘You can look,’ you tell him, nudging his knee with yours.

He looks back with a sheepish smile. ‘Didn’t want to be a creep.’ He scoots backwards onto the bed, settling his back against the headboard. ‘C’mere.’

You crawl over to him, settling with your back against his chest, sitting between his legs. His arms wrap around your middle, anchoring you to him. He presses kisses to your neck, the scruff on his cheeks tickling you. You curl up, twisting your neck away, giggling.

‘Harry!’

‘Sorry, love.’ His hands relax, and find your own. He rests his chin over your shoulder, and gently turns your palms upwards, so your wrists are visible to him.

You shiver, but allow it. You feel this is important. You don’t want to hide with him.

‘Y/N…’ he says quietly. You feel his chest push against your back as it expands with a breath. ‘Am I… am I allowed to touch them?’ he asks.

You’re surprised. You thought he would want to avoid them. You nod, then, realising he can’t really see you, you add, ‘Yeah.’

Your fingers are tense. You can’t help it. His thumb presses into your palm, massaging the tension away. He pulls the back of your hand to his lips and brings it back to your lap.

You close your eyes.

When he finds the first hard lump of scarring with his thumb, he pauses. He takes a shaky breath, then he runs his thumb up and down the length of it.

‘Y/N,’ he says softly.

You squeeze your eyes shut tighter. ‘Mm?’

‘You’re beautiful, you know.’ He pulls your hand back up to his lips, but instead he kisses the biggest scar on your wrist. ‘No matter what. You are.’

‘Harry,’ you whisper, because you don’t know what to say.

He kisses the scar again, then trails his lips up your wrist, covering them all. ‘I don’t want you to be ashamed of anything. You survived. That’s a wonderful thing.’ He drops your hand and cups your jaw, turning your head towards his. He leans around your shoulder to face you properly. ’I’m so fucking proud of you, you know?’

You never were good at taking compliments, so you just cross the distance between the two of you and kiss him.

When you’re lying together in the dark a little while later, with his arm thrown over you protectively and his soft breaths hitting your neck where his t-shirt doesn’t cover, you feel safe. Your arms are bare, you’re with another person, and you feel safe in this situation for the first time in years. It’s a wonderful feeling. All because of Harry.

You can’t wait to wake up in the morning and see his face again.

[skzsauce01]

Clementia

Anniversary Request Special

Description: You’d always had a special place in your heart for Lee Minho even though he gives you countless reasons to hate him. How long will your patience last?

Warning: alcohol, sexual assault

Word Count: 2.5k

Pairing: fem!reader x Minho

“Y/N—”

“Go away, Minho.”

“Y/N, look at me.”

“I said no!”

“Well I said I’m sorry.”

You snap around to face him. “Sorry isn’t going to cut it, Lee Minho. You screwed up. You. Screwed. Up. I gave you one request, and you couldn’t even do that.”

“I had my reasons!” he protests.

“Yeah? Well let’s hear them.”

He emits a few noises but can't come up with anything. His face flushes red, but not as red as yours.

“There’s no excuse for breaking someone’s heart ever. Remember that.” You turn on your heels and begin walking away until he says something even more repulsive.

“Why do you care so much? She’s not even your real sister!” he calls after you.

You pause, unable to comprehend how such words could ever enter your ears. You then slowly walk back to him as he stiffens with every step you take.

“Not my real sister?” Your voice is soft, but it is effective.

“I mean—”

“You’re saying the girls at Epsilon Phi aren’t sisters?” Your voice begins to rise. “We’re more sisters than you and I were ever friends, Lee Minho! We love each other more than biological families do, but of course you wouldn’t know how that feels, would you? All you have in your chest is a cold, hard piece of coal!”

You turn away and break off into a run this time. Tears stream down your face from being insulted and betrayed by someone you held with high esteem.

You like Lee Minho. Of course, you’d never admit that. To the world, he is just some kid of your mom’s friend who annoyed you to no end, but through the arguments and time spent trying to prove each other wrong, your feelings grew bit by bit. When he had a relationship with your very own Little, you held in your feelings and wished them both the best. After all, you love both of them, and their happiness together was good enough for you.

That is, until Minho broke things off as nothing but a fling.

Minho has always been a huge flirt, but he’d promised to take her seriously this time. You made him swear it, and you emphasized how much your Little meant to you. Now, because you’re his family friend, your Little won’t even speak to you. Minho had ruined your and her relationship, and evidently yours and his too.

He didn’t used to be like this, all manipulative and amorous. You remember he used to follow you at the heel, caring about nothing more than sticking gum in your hair. It wasn’t until senior year of high school did he start hanging out with random girls and trying daredevilish things. You missed the old Minho, but you thought you’d accept him for all his changes since you did, after all, like him.

Until this moment, that is.

What he did was too much. What he said was too much. You know he is becoming toxic, and if he is going to continue down this path, even your love isn’t going to bring him back to your heart.

Minho watches your waning back then slams his fist against a nearby tree with a curse. You didn’t give him enough time to explain, not that he would have been able to in front of you.

You’d forgive him though, right? You have to. When he messed up before this, Minho could be sure you would. But now, he isn’t so certain. He has never seen you so angry and disappointed before, and he did that to you. Him. Minho lets out another string of curses and trudges back to his room.

He tries making it up to you the very next morning. He shows up to your 8 AM class with a cup of coffee and slides it onto your desk before sitting down himself.

You don’t even look at him. You just take the cup and slam it down in front of him, causing its contents to spill and burn your fingers. He quickly takes your hand in his and begins wiping it with his sleeve, but you recoil your arm and take out your own napkin.

The next place he tries is at your neighboring frat party. He knows you would be there, so he wears his tightest black jeans and a loose button-up. This trick has worked with other girls, so he hopes it would on you.

He takes the dance floor with his powerful dance moves and charisma. He can see you deliberately turned away from him and chatting with someone else, so he dances towards you. The cheering circle that has formed around him moves as well, engulfing you into the crowd.

You finally turn to make sure you don’t bump into anyone. Minho takes this chance to shoot you a wink which draws the crowd’s attention to you. They cheer and push you towards him despite your protests.

Minho takes your arm and leads you in the dance. You used to like dancing with him; your and his flow matches perfectly, and the two of you could revive a dying party just by dancing together. Today though, you just aren’t having it.

Minho puts a hand on your shoulder and scoops his hips low earning a cheer from the crowd. You can hear them calling your name, anticipating your response. You look down at Minho and immediately recognize his choice of clothing.

I wonder who’s going to have her heart broken tomorrow, you think with a dry laugh. Minho flinches, recognizing that sound. You take his falter as a chance to fling his arm off of you before walking away.

A chorus of oohs fills the room, and the crowd splits like the Red Sea for you.

You hear your name from his lips again. “Y/N!” It is more strained now than it was last night. Desperate. Defeated.

You gave him some thought after hearing the sincerity in his tone, but you are glad you did not turn around that night when you see him in class with some other girl on his lap. Whatever. He’s dead to you now, so why should you care what he’s doing?

Minho watches as you walk farther and farther from him. He pushes the girl off and continues to stare with narrowed eyes at you as you greet your new seat neighbors.

This isn’t how he predicted you would react. Truthfully, he kind of knew this attempt wouldn’t work. For one, it hadn’t worked once since he first tried it in high school. He thought hanging out with other girls would make him more attractive, more desirable by competition. At least, that’s what some then-college kids told him. Once he started, he just found himself unable to stop. It was a self-feeding cycle, really. Holding onto other girls and charming them numbs the void in his chest, but you ignore him whenever he acts like this which only further widens the gap. 

What is he to do though? This is the only life he knows, and so, it is the life he leads. Not all love stories can end happily.

And his sure doesn’t seem like it is going to. 

Sirens wail in the background. With the amount of girls he’s fooled around with, he kind of had it coming. Minho stares at his wrists, not daring to think, but one thought keeps recurring in his mind: you. He is going to disappoint you yet again. You already hate him, and now you are going to see him handcuffed too.

The cold wind makes him shiver when you, his emergency contact, open the door and step into the station. Your eyes immediately find him, and you make your way over.

“Y/—”

“Are you hurt?” you ask plainly.

Despite your icy tone, those three simple words fill him with a warmth he hasn’t known for a long time.

“I’m okay.” His hands reach forward, wanting to grab yours and keep you with him, but you’ve already walked away to announce your arrival to an officer.

“Miss L/Y Y/N?” a young official greets a little too enthusiastically. She looks familiar, you note.

“Yes, I am she.”

The officer looks pleased by your annoyed attitude towards the defendant. “Mister Lee is here tonight because of an accusation by Miss Choi of assault,” she informs you coyly.

You look at him. “Minho,” you said with a chilled voice. “Is it true?”

“No! Y/N, I wouldn’t—”

“It’s okay. I believe you.”

“Excuse me?” the officer sputters.

“I believe him,” you repeat. “He’s been going out with more people than I have fingers, but he never laid a finger on them.”

“But Y/N, that doesn’t mean he can’t start now,” the officer protests. “You’re his contact, but you hate him now. Surely, he’s changed”

“First of all, it’s Miss L/N to you, Officer” —you read her name tag and pieces begin to fall together from her eagerness to convict Minho to the inkling you felt the moment you saw her— “Yoo. And secondly, is it not against the law for you to be working on a case where your cousin’s the accuser?”

“How did you—!”

“Nothing escapes us Epsilon Phi sisters, even news from other sororities. Besides, Minho never plays with the same girl twice. As expected, this report is filed for an incident two months ago. You, Officer Yoo, knew I was his contact and waited for us to get into yet another fight before having your cousin put in the accusation, didn’t you?”

She scoffs in your face. “That’s a bold accusation from yourself towards law enforcement.”

“Where is the accuser right now? Shouldn’t she be here for interrogation as well?”

“Well she—” the officer looks increasingly flustered. “She needs rest after having to relive the memories of what happened. We’ll call her in tomorrow. Anyway, Mr. Lee Minho, I can hear your testimony now in room #3.”

Minho stands obediently.

“Wait. I request someone else interrogate him,” you object.

“We’re busy right now,” Officer Yoo huffs. “We can’t just let you choose who does the job.”

You cross your arms. “Sure. Interrogate him and have the entire case be nulled after I file a conflict of interest.”

Officer Yoo grits her teeth but returns to her station to call for another officer.

In the meantime, you turn to Minho. “Don’t answer anything you don’t want to, especially if they start leading you on with questions. It’s in your rights to remain silent, alright?”

Minho nods numbly at your words, still confused as to why you are so nice to him. Before he can figure it out though, an older man appears from the back and takes him to an interrogation room.

“Mr. Lee Minho?” 

“Yes.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Chief Jeon. I’m just going to ask you a few questions today; is that alright?”

“Yes.”

The chief nods and pulls out some papers. “Would you mind describing what happened with Miss Choi?”

“Well I was with—” he gestures towards the papers with his accuser’s name on it— “and we were hitting it off. She bought me a couple of drinks and at some point leaned in to kiss me. I realized something at that point, and I stopped her. She got angry, saying how she spent all that cash on alcohol for me, and threatened to accuse me of assault if I didn’t do what she said, but I knew I couldn’t do it.”

“Because of what you realized?” the chief repeats.

“... Yes.”

“And what was it you realized?”

“Do I have to say it?”

“According to the law, no, but if it can help you with your case, you might want to.”

Minho fidgets with his cuffs. “They can’t hear me from outside, right?”

“No. They most certainly cannot.”

And so, Minho tells him.

Minho turns around while the metal bars clang shut behind him. The chief thinks he has a pretty good chance, but due to the gravity of the accusation, they still decided to keep Minho in holding to give the accuser more time to make her case.

You stare at him from the other side, arms crossed. Minho takes the fact that you’re still here at two in the morning as a good sign for him.

“Thanks for being here,” he tries to start a conversation.

“I didn’t really have a choice.” So cold.

“I’ll change my emergency contact.”

“Please do.”

He winces. “Look… Y/N, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for insulting your sisterhood and for hurting your Little. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

He looks at you with those doe-like eyes of his. For once, you don’t feel anything while looking back at them.

“That’s not why I’m mad anymore. In fact, I’m not even mad,” you tell him. “My Little told me what really happened. She told me that she was actually the one who dumped you after you adamantly refused to kiss her. I asked some other girls you’ve seen and they all said the same thing. That’s why I was so confident with the officer earlier. I guess I owe you an apology for getting angry when you weren’t at fault.”

“Then”—he holds out a hand sheepishly— “truce?”

You look at it but keep your arms crossed. “Taking a step back from you has made me see things I wasn’t able to before, Minho, and that’s made me realize how much you’ve changed. You were my friend, my rival— someone who never failed to get on my nerves but also someone I couldn’t go without. But now” —you drop your arms and shake your head— “I can’t even recognize you anymore.”

You take a step back to leave. You’ve done this many times before, like when he stuck a plastic spider down your shirt or when he called you stupid in front of your crush in fifth grade, but something about this time feels different. Something about this time tells him you aren’t turning back around once you left.

A sudden despair grips Minho and he runs into the bars. “Wait!”

You pause, offering him one last second.

“Your Little,” he gasps, “did she tell you why I wouldn’t kiss her?”

You nod. “The others I asked did too. They said you were thinking about some other girl while you were with them.”

“Not ‘some other’ girl. One other girl.”

“I know.” You begin to walk again.

“Then why are you leaving?” He reaches a hand out, trying to grab any part of you. “Stay with me. Please, Y/N, stay.”

You don’t pause a second time. Out of desperation, he cries out, “Y/N, I love you!”

That makes you stop midstep. He holds his breath as you put one foot back then the other next to it to face him. You are so beautiful when you look at him. He melts under your gaze as you focus on him and only him. He’ll cherish you this time when you give him another chance. He’ll quit this playboy lifestyle. He won’t take advantage of your patience anymore. He’ll give you all that his heart has to offer. He’ll make sure you’re the only one in his eyes. He’ll love you. He loves you.

“Minho.” You relax your shoulders and straighten your back. You tilt your head just slightly forward and erase the edge off your tone. “I loved you.”

[cloudteawrites]

chapter: five ( 4.7k ) rating: mature (death, past abuse, eventual smut) genre: mystery | romance | hurt/comfort tags: bts x reader | ot7 x reader | hybrid | poly summary: when an estranged uncle leaves you his massive fortune you wonder if the universe is playing a joke on you. when that fortune comes with seven hybrids, you know for sure that it is. << first < previous | next > last >>

The grocery store was a mess of color and light. You swore you’d never seen so much food in one place. 

Back when your mom had been alive, you’d never really gone to traditional grocery stores. You’d always just visited markets where your mom knew the vendors and could talk down their prices on ugly produce and day old bread. After she’d died, you’d eaten whatever the staff in the group home had provided, then whatever you could scrounge up from convenience stores. Most of the time since you’d aged out of social services, you survived off the free rice and kimchi available in your goshiwon. 

Occasionally, you’d eat at work with your free staff meal, but you tried to avoid it. You knew the sight of you wolfing down ramyeon and cold kimbap as fast as you could made Jiah worry. If she ever saw you looking too haggard, she’d try to slip some home made meals to the front desk of your goshiwon when you weren’t looking and that was as embarrassing as it was helpful. 

For as long as you could remember, the question of where your next meal was coming from had hung over your head like a dark cloud. It didn’t seem like that was going to be a problem any longer. 

Aisle after aisle stretched out before you, blindingly bright. It looked like an amusement park. You were finding it hard to stop staring. You reached out in a haze and picked up the juiciest apple you’d ever seen. Sure, you sold them all the time at Quickstop, but they’d always been dull and just the slightest bit bruised. This one was perfect: fire engine red and still wet from the mister. It was cold and heavy in your hands. You almost felt like crying.

“You good?” Yoongi is beside you, leaning over on the shopping cart, his chin in his hand. He looks dreadfully bored. 

“Yeah,” you tell him, setting the apple gently back in its place. “Yeah; just got distracted for a second.” You give a single tug on the front of the basket to move him along, and he follows, shuffling against the bright white linoleum. 

“Why aren’t you getting that?” He calls, just before you can round the corner into the dry goods aisle. You turn and look at him over your shoulder, confusion slightly furrowing your brow. “Don’t you want it?”

Your eyes flick from his face back to the glittering heap of fruit. You gnaw at your lip. “...They’re 6,000 won a kilo.”

Yoongi purses his lips. “That’s not what I asked you.” 

“I don’t need them,” you huff, trying to stave off the beginnings of another argument. “There’s more important things...like you three and getting you clothes and better furniture and-” Before you get the chance to finish, the gray haired man has ducked back around the corner. He returns with two three kilo bags of apples and dumps them unceremoniously into the cart. 

He looks up at you, brows raised and his eyes daring you to say something. All you do is sigh. “Yoongi-”

“Jimin likes apples.” He says, before you can get a word in edgewise. “They’re for him.” You can’t argue with that. He pushes the basket forward and you two drift down the next aisle. 

There’s a question resting on the tip of your tongue and as you compare brands of rice, you spit it out. “So...what do you guys eat? I read an article that said to mainly feed cat hybrids fish, but...”

“But we’re not house cats.” He finishes, flipping over a box of cereal to read the back. His nose wrinkles at something he finds and he slides it back onto the shelf. It’s cute, you think- or would be if you couldn’t see the tips of his razor sharp incisors poking out when his lip curled up. Yoongi senses your gaze and looks over at you. You look away quickly and make yourself busy reading a label. “We can eat pretty much anything you’d eat. Not too much processed shit or we’ll get sick. Whole foods are better.”

You nod, making a mental note to forego sodas and chips. “And when you’re shifted?”

He shakes his head. “We don’t really eat when we’re shifted down unless we plan on staying there for a long time.” 

You choose a 10 kilo bag of rice, tug it out from the shelf with a little grunt and plop it onto the basket’s bottom shelf. That was good, you supposed. You were worried you were gonna have to watch three big cats rip into raw meat whenever it caught their fancy.  “Why don’t I push the basket and you can pick out things Taehyung and Jimin would want?”

He nods and shifts to the other side of the aisle. “What’s my limit?”

You pause for a moment, then stand and fix him with a strange look. “What do you mean?” He isn’t looking at you. He’s comparing two brands of cereal, scanning the nutritional facts on the back. 

“How much am I allowed to spend on food?” he questions, simply. “-and what foods are we allowed to eat?”

You balked at him. “.. .you want me to control your diet?”

“I don’t want you to, but most owners prefer a certain look.” He turns his flat, yellow-grey eyes on you. “So what is it? No carbs? no sugars? Low fat? No fat? Dairy-free-”

“Oh my God, no!” You yelp before he can list any more diets. You’d said it a little louder than you’d intended and a well-dressed mom at the other end of the aisle fixes you two with an odd look before hustling her twins into another part of the store. You wince, but continue in a quieter but no less urgent voice. “I mean, I’m not gonna tell you what you can and can’t eat that’s…” 

“It’s not unusual,” Yoongi cuts in before you can give voice to your thoughts. He sets one of the cereal boxes, decorated with bright colors and little cartoon animals, back on the shelf and tosses the other -something in a dull green and white box with a little piece of wheat on the front- into the cart. “You didn’t feed us last night.”

A pang of guilt shoots through you. You curl your fingers around the bar of the cart, stare at your knuckles. “I’m sorry,” you tell him, with all the sincerity in the world. “I was tired -and I know that’s not an excuse- but I fell asleep without thinking of you guys. It won’t happen again.” 

“Relax,” Yoongi drawls.”It’s not the first time we’ve gone hungry; I’m sure it won’t be the last.” He starts drifting toward the end of the aisle, but before he can go, you catch him by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. 

There’s barely an inch of fabric between your thumb and forefinger, but the look Yoongi gives you makes it look like you’d yanked him back by the collar. He whirls on you, eyes narrowed and lips twisted into something sour. You’d overstepped by grabbing him. Still, you speak. “That was the last time. I mean it.” 

The hybrid’s face shifts from irritation into something unrecognizable. He’s looking at you like there’s an equation written behind your eyes that he’s trying to work out with his own, like if he looks deep enough into them he’ll find the answers etched across your sclera. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up as the seconds drag on, but you don’t look away. Instead, you hold his gaze and let the moment swell under almost unbearable tension.

Yoongi gives first. He tugs his sleeve out of your grip and shuffles back out of reach. “Whatever you say,” he scoffs, stalking off into the next aisle, his ears tilted back and tail tip flicking in irritation. 

You sigh. You’d done it again. The urge to catch him again wells up in you, but you tamp it down. ‘Time and space,’ you remind yourself. ‘Give him time and give him space.’ Satisfied once the distance between the two of you is enough, you go to follow after him, but hesitate as you pass the cereal he’d been looking at. You tug it off the shelf and place it in the basket underneath a few other things so it’d be hidden. You don’t know why and if he asked you about it later you were sure you’d draw a blank. If nothing else, you told yourself as you hurried to catch up with your hybrid, he’d have a choice.

The rest of the grocery trip passed in silence, just as it’d begun. Yoongi didn’t so much as look at you, but that was fine. You were focused on watching him. Anything that he gave more than a passing glance went into the basket. If the bobcat hybrid noticed your rapidly increasing haul, he didn’t say anything about it. He was silent.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Even when you flinched as the cashier announced the total and you waffled between trying to walk home or calling a taxi. Even in the lobby then the elevator on the way up as Mr. Park talked both of your ears off and you had to stop him from carrying your groceries in and stocking the fridge himself, Yoongi had remained eerily quiet. It’d given you time to think. 

You didn’t know much about hybrids. If you were honest with yourself, you hadn’t known anything about them prior to what you’d anxiety-googled yesterday afternoon. You were so far out of your depth, it was miracle you hadn’t drowned yet. Still, you weren’t completely oblivious.

In between Yoongi’s open hostility, Jimin’s blase attitude toward his own objectification and what snippets you’d heard about Taehyung’s early life, you knew something must’ve been very, very wrong with the people who’d had them before they’d been foisted upon you. The expectation that you were supposed to treat hybrids like actual pets made you uncomfortable enough without the assumption that you’d be dressing them up like dolls and locking the snack cabinets at night. 

A spike of anger shot through you. They might’ve been different than humans but they were still people. They hadn’t deserved whatever shady things their owners had done to them and you didn’t want them to come to expect them from you. You shift the grocery bags up your arm, freeing up a hand so you can punch the code into the door. There was no way around it. The four of you would need to sit down and have a good long talk. 

The second you punch the code into your door it swings open. “Hey, Jim-” the greeting dies on your tongue. It’s not Jimin who meets you at the door, but Taehyung, freshly showered, the curly ends of his hair dripping water onto the white tile and the front of his sweatshirt damp. His eyes were still hidden behind his hair but you could see more of him than you’d been able to that morning when he’d shifted. 

Well, not more of him. He was wearing clothes now, for one- a dark brown version of the sweat suit Yoongi and Jimin both wore. He was taller than you, which you’d known when he’d wrapped his arms around you, but looking up at him now you have to tilt your head back a bit. “Oh,” you say, a little dazed. “Wow.”

The corners of his mouth quirk up in a smile. “Hi.” His voice is still as deep as it was this morning. Was it always like that? He turns his attention to the hybrid behind you and his lips part in a blindingly bright boxy grin. “Hi, hyung.”

Yoongi hums a hello and slips past you through the door. His shoulder brushes against Taehyung’s and the younger hybrid chuffs happily a little in his throat. He leans down as the older man passes and bumps their foreheads together affectionately. Their tails twine together briefly before the gray-haired hybrid is out of reach and dropping an armful of groceries off in the kitchen. 

“You shifted up,” you remark “Did something happen?” There’s a tick of concern in his voice. You step to the side of the doorway so the pair can talk without you in the middle.

Taehyung shakes his head, water droplets scattering. His hyung let out a hiss that erred just on the wrong side of animalistic as some of them hit him. You freeze, but the tiger hybrid just laughs. “No, Jimin and I were just-” His smile falters. You can’t see his eyes but his ears have twitched downward and his tail is suddenly stiff, only the tip ticking back and forth. The hybrid lowers his head, and you finally catch sight of eyes, gleaming amber and full of fear. Behind him, you see Yoongi catch a whiff of his junior’s souring scent and his head whips toward the pair of you, ears straight up and his whole body on high alert. 

Worry draws your brows together. “Taehyung?” you call softly. You reach out with your free hand to touch his shoulder, then think better of it. Your fingers hover uselessly and inch away from him. In this moment, that distance feels a mile wide. The line of his shoulders is rigid and he’s withdrawn into himself. “Taehyung, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you-”

“We went out.” He blurts, snapping his head up to look in your eyes. His own are wide and earnest. “You left your backpack open and I saw the list you made with all the phone numbers and passwords and the door code was on there and I really wanted to go to the park. Jimin told me to wait but I made him come with me; we were only gone for fifteen minutes, I swear. We didn’t even make it; the same police officer from earlier was still on the street.” 

“Taehyung-”

“Please-” he cuts you off before you can even get a word in edgewise. “Please, just punish me; Jimin didn’t do anything. The whole time he was trying to make me go back. He only went with me so I wouldn’t be alone.” 

Your heart wrenches in your chest. You do touch him, then. Your fingertips barely graze the material of his sweatshirt, but he flinches and you pull away. Your hand drops to your side, limp. “Can you and Jimin meet me in the living room?” You ask him, careful to keep your tone light and non-threatening as possible. “We need to talk.” His ears droop, but he nods and shuffles off to do as you ask. You trail behind him into the penthouse, making sure to give him enough space. The last thing you wanted to do right now was crowd him.

You drop the groceries on the counter in the kitchen and look up to find Yoongi squinting at you. He’s coiled up like a spring, ready to bolt at any moment. You try to give him a reassuring smile, but it comes out watery and wan. “It’s okay,” you tell him. “We’re just gonna talk.” You can tell he doesn’t believe you. 

Still, he follows you into the living room, takes a seat on the couch while you settle cross-legged on the ottoman across from him. A few seconds later, Jimin and Taehyung slink down the stairs. The tiger hybrid is clinging to his hyung who, for once, isn't smiling. Jimin’s face is settled into a cool mask of neutrality. You almost don’t recognize him. 

They sink into the couch on either side of Yoongi, their backs stiff and eyes on anything other than you. For a moment, the four of you sit there in uncomfortable silence. You speak first. 

“Jimin, Taehyung, Yoongi-”

“Y/N,” Jimin cuts in, “Whatever Taehyung told you-”

“-I’m sorry.” You finish. That seems to surprise them. You interlock your fingers on your lap and look at each one of them individually. “I’m sorry that I didn’t check to see if there was food in the house last night. I’m sorry that I didn’t make sure you had the things you needed to feel comfortable here. I’m sorry that I made you feel like you weren’t allowed to leave.” 

Taehyung swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He’s got a death grip on Yoongi’s arm with one hand and the other fisted in the fabric of his sweatpants. “You...You’re not mad?” The tremor in his voice makes your heart ache. 

“No,” you tell him with all the sincerity in the world. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sad that you were ever around someone who made you feel like you needed to apologize for wanting to see the sun and I’m angry that they made you think that was something to be punished for.” It was true. Beneath your sadness, beneath your shock at his expectation of punishment, anger was twisting in your gut. What type of person would reduce another to fear and trembling for the sake of leaving the house? “I’m not going to...to punish you, I need you to know that.” You tell him, before looking at Jimin and Yoongi. “Any of you. Ever. I’m never gonna hurt you.” 

Taehyung’s jaw is clenched like he’s trying not to cry. All the wind has gone out of Jimin like a deflated sail and the leopard hybrid just looks exhausted. Yoongi’s rubbing soothing circles in both of their backs. You can’t tell from his face, but by the way his ears have relaxed, you think he was worried about your reaction, too. 

You let out a little exhale and slouch. “Whatever happened to you with your previous...the people you lived with before? It wasn’t okay.”  You’re as firm with it as you can be while still keeping your tone gentle. “They were supposed to take care of you and love you and help you grow, but if they starved you, if they made you feel this bad, if they treated you like property, then fuck them. I don’t want to be anything like them.” You admit. “I don’t want to be your owner and I don’t want you to be my pets.”

“What do you want us to be to you then?” Yoongi rasps. Despite the question, there’s no challenge in his voice. He’s genuinely asking. 

One corner of your mouth quirks up and you give him a small shrug. “Friends, maybe? Eventually, if we can. For now let’s try…” you search for the word you want. “Roommates?” You supply. “We live together, but you guys don’t need to feel like you owe me anything. I’ll get you phones tomorrow, if you want, and copies of the credit card. We can get you clothes and furniture too. And if there’s anything you want to do or want to see, go see it. The door code is 0613.”

The tension that’d run between the three hybrids like a livewire is gone. Now they’re...if not relaxed, then at least relieved. There’s nothing else to be said. You stand and move to hurry into the kitchen so the trio of hybrids can have their space. The last thing you wanted to do after having a talk about their freedoms was crowd them. Before you can take three steps there’s a hand wrapped around your wrist, holding you in place. It's Taehyung's. 

The tiger hybrid is looking up at you, his eyes beseeching and a nervous tremble in his bottom lip. “Don’t go,” he croaks, sounding like he’s still unsure just how to use his voice. He tugs once on your coat sleeve. “Please.”

Your eyes flick from him to his hyungs. Jimin’s looking at you with apprehension, perched on the edge of the couch like he’s a split second away from helping the tiger hybrid drag you down- but Yoongi’s face is turned away from you. As usual, you can’t tell what he’s feeling. “I’m just going to the kitchen,” you assure him. “I’ve gotta put the food away-” Your brain short circuits as the tiger hybrid flips your hand over and presses his face to your palm. His eyelashes brush against your lifeline; his lips trace the veins in your wrist. 

You’d never say it outloud, but it was hard to deny you were touch starved. You could count on one hand the amount of times someone had touched you gently since your mother died. You didn’t show yourself kindness most days and you’d come not to expect it from others. The world was cold and cruel, and you were far too old to be seeking solace from strangers. You’d thought you were above it, but the feeling of Taehyung nipping at your radial artery is almost enough to make you go to pieces. “Just a little bit,” he huffs, his voice muffled against your skin. 

“...The groceries will get warm,” you argue, finally managing to make your mouth move. “Do you wanna eat hot kimchi?” 

“I’ll put them away.” Yoongi is up and vaulting over the couch before you can get a word in edgewise. With him gone the last of your excuses goes up in smoke. Taehyung smiles against your skin and you let yourself be pulled down.

No sooner have your legs touched the cushion, then Taehyung is snuggled up against your side, his arms wrapped loosely around your middle and the cool tip of his nose pressed into your neck. “Tell me again,” he murmurs softly. “Can you tell me again that you’re not mad?” He wanted reassurance. The least you could do was give it to him.

You slip a hand into his hair, scratch gently at the base of his ears. He chuffs happily, the sound vibrating in his chest as he presses closer to you. “I’m not mad at you, and you’re not in trouble, buddy.” You tell him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

A warm presence on your left tells you Jimin’s settled in beside you. Sure enough, a second later a golden tail is tracing the edge of your calf. “Don’t leave me out,” he purrs, settling his chin on your shoulder.

You slide a hand into his hair too, letting the locks slip through your fingers as you pet him. “Never.”

The three of you stay like that for what feels like an hour. Even when their hyung finishes putting the groceries away and returns to sit with them -albeit at the far end of the sectional- they don’t seem like they’re in a hurry to disentangle themselves from you. You’re surprised to find you don’t mind it. The weight of two grown men against your shoulders was heavy, but not uncomfortable and they were warm and the steady hum of Jimin purring is almost enough to lull you to sleep. You cut a movie on and order samgyeopsal. You think they’re gonna kill the delivery man for making you get up, and they stay glued to your back even as you pay. It’s not until the first movie goes off and Taehyung and Jimin are playfully bickering over what to watch next that you’re able to slip away to the bathroom.

You shuffle quickly down the wide hallway, trying to remember which door the closest bathroom lay behind. You careen around a corner and run smack into someone. They let out a huff and you stumble back a few steps, an apology on your lips. You look up and find Yokngi there. Guilt bubbles up in your stomach. Between Jimin purring in your ear and Taehyung rubbing his cheek against your hand every ten seconds, you hadn’t even noticed he was gone. “Sorry,” you mumble. 

He quirks an eyebrow at you. “For what?”

You’re not even sure you know.

He stares at you and you stare back, frozen. Finally, the bobcat hybrid sighs and gestures at you. “C’mere,” he mumbles. 

You approach hesitantly, not trusting him to not suddenly snap at you. “Why?” You ask, apprehensive. Should you have not let Taehyung and Jimin scent you? He’d been around the entire time and hadn’t said anything, so you’d thought it was fine. Maybe you’d made a mistake. You gnaw at your bottom lip and creep slowly closer to the hybrid before you. Another miscalculation, another mess-up, another mile tacked on to that incalculable distance between you and Yoongi. Should you apologize again? Would taking a shower help wash their scents away?

Before you can volunteer to do any of that, Yoongi reaches forward, hooks one finger through your belt loop and drags you toward him. You feel a yelp crawling up your throat, but it’s stopped dead in its tracks by the feeling of Yoongi cradling your jaw and his lips pressed against the column of your throat. His spine is tense and his tail is ticking in the way it does when he’s irritated. “...What are you-?”

“They’ve both scented you.” He murmurs. “If I don’t, they’ll think I’m rejecting you. My job as their hyung is to put them at ease. If I can’t do that, I’m useless.” Despite his closeness, despite the way his fingers were slipping into the hair at the base of your skull, despite the little nips he’d started giving you, you could practically feel his reluctance.

You exhale and push against his shoulders. “Yoongi…” He doesn’t budge. “Hey-”

“There’s no good reason for me to not just mark you and get it over with.” There was that word again. You’d forgotten about it in the whirlwind that followed, but Jimin had joked about marking you earlier, hadn’t he? And Yoongi’d gotten upset with him. From what you were gathering, it was a lot more serious than scenting. 

“I don’t want you to.” That gets his attention. The hybrid pulls away and fixes you with an odd look, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“What are you talking about? Owners always want us to mark them.” You feel that same twinge of anger again. The articles had said scenting was a sign of trust and security. It was used to mark family members. Had the people they’d been with before forced their way into their family without the hybrids consent? Without Yoongi’s? No wonder he’d been touchy about his juniors scenting you right away.

“Well, I don’t.” You give him a gentle nudge and put a few inches between the two of you. “I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with or not ready for.” You offer him a smile you hope comes across as reassuring. “You not wanting to is a good enough reason for me. Besides,” you say, turning to head back to the living room, the original reason for your trip forgotten. “I’ve never been marked before, so it’s not like i’m missing out on anything.”

At that, something flashes in Yoongi’s eyes that you have no name for. It passes as soon as it’d come. “Come back when you’re ready!” You call over your shoulder, retreating back down the corridor before he can say something one way or another. 

When you settle back on to the couch two minutes later, There’s a movie queued up and ready to be played. It’s an action movie, one you haven’t seen before. “Yoongi’ll be back in a second,” you tell the boys. “Let’s wait for him.” 

Taehyung hums his ascent, leaning in to settle back in the crook of your neck- but something stops him. He hovers near your neck, takes a few short inhales and tosses a look at Jimin behind your back. You frown. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah!” Taehyung responds a bit too quickly, lacing your fingers together to distract you as Jimin gives the other side of your neck the same treatment. The leopard hybrid purrs, seemingly happy at what he’s found. His ears swivel up and a second later, Yoongi slinks back into the living room. 

“Hyung…” Jimin starts, his voice taking on a teasing lilt.

“Play the movie.” His hyung orders. He does, but there’s still a little smirk on his lips.

The screen darkens and the opening credits roll as Taehyung and Jimin settle back against your side, careful to avoid your neck. Yoongi drops onto the couch, this time only a foot away from the three of you. You allow yourself a little spark of relief. The distance was starting to close.

[shotorozu]

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 [𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐜𝐬]

[ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴇ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ]

˚✧₊⁎ ★ 200 & 300 𝖋𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖎𝖆���

legend : [Y/N = your name] quirk not specific, they/them pronouns.

notes : if i get the definition of flirting wrong, then IM SORRY NO ONE HAS SERENADED ME, AND NO ONE HAS EVER FLIRTED WITH ME?? so tbh idk.. anyway im still making a new fic WAXAXA, hawks’ entry is a lil short so.. I sincerely apologize for that- 

fluff - mild spice :))

　　*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･''･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘆𝗮 𝗶𝘇𝘂𝗸𝘂

↠ man cannot flirt on command 💀 seriously, don’t ask him to because he will say some cheesy stuff. but he really could without even realizing it. one thing that catches you off guard is when he’s talking to you, then suddenly— his eyes drop to your lips, especially before you guys got together, and surprisingly! his eye contact game is 😳. after that, he’d be a little bit more bolder with his touches without even realizing it either so.. yeah. every day, he’ll whisper compliments into your ear— so you’d be the only one to hear them. also! he keeps extra hair ties if you need any, especially if your hair is on the longer side. it’s not a lot but !!

𝗯𝗮𝗸𝘂𝗴𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗮𝘁𝘀𝘂𝗸𝗶

↠ he likes teasing you with love, pinching your cheek, etc. (but he will probably beat the shit/stare down anyone that does the same) but he always makes sure to check on you. he’s not the biggest on pda, yet he will sling his hand around your waist, and he’ll stare at you with love, and you’d only notice it. in private, he’ll put you on his lap, and pat your thigh, commenting how soft you are just to get you flustered. you guys compare hands a lot and it’s usually in silence— since he love bullying you out of love, he loves catching you off guard by dragging his hand down your back, tricking you that he’d do something more (unless.. you want him to,) only for him to draw his hand back ;) bakugou is a major tease lol.

𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗼𝗿𝗼𝗸𝗶 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗼

↠ okay so this man is the reason why i thought of this idea. it’s canon he writes letters, so.. LOVE LETTERS!! you should be honored— his letters are close to literature. anyway, if he sees your shoe laces are untied, he will bend down to tie them, doesn’t care when or where, he will do it for you. he links pinkies with you in public especially when he wasn’t comfortable with touch yet. he looks like the type that would just.. tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear (LOL IS THAT EVEN FLIRTING?? im sorry.) he will randomly hold your face in his hands and he will just stare at you, his stare is just full of love🤍. agh— i love him a lil too much.

𝗸𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗺𝗮 𝗲𝗶𝗷𝗶𝗿𝗼𝘂

↠ if there’s another person that’ll shower you with compliments 24/7, it’s this guy right here. will always keep your bottle of water full so you don’t get dehydrated, and he’s also the type of boyfriend to just give you a massage, just because he can. he wouldn’t want his s/o to be sore! he will also learn how to do your hair, so if you don’t feel like it— he’ll do it himself :)) if you’re eating and you have something on your face, he’ll wipe it off with his thumb. kiri really likes giving you presents (bc he thinks it’s manly :))

𝗸𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶 𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗸𝗶

↠ cheesy puns are his trademark, especially if it relates to something relating to his quirk, or your quirk. your personal hype man, if you feel down— he’ll be the first person to tell you how beautiful you are, and he will shower you with compliments. his love language is sending you really random memes and tiktoks at 2am. he doesn’t do this to everyone bc he knows everyone will be really annoyed by this, but you’re special!! therefore, these memes are reserved for you :)) denki likes playing with ojiro’s tail, so with you— he’ll be tracing circles on your arm, running his finger up and down, while pinching soft skin. a bonus if you get easily flustered ;))

𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗼𝘀𝗵𝗶

↠ if there’s anyone that just really likes staring at his s/o intensely, then it’s shinsou, todoroki, and bakugou. since he’s always staring at you— he will notice if you have an eyelash on your face, and he’ll take it off for you, while getting up close in your face. if you’re staring at him back, he’ll boop your nose and he’ll chuckle at your flustered reaction. like shouto, he likes tucking a stray hair behind your ear— and he’ll carry extra hair ties if you need any. he’ll probably pop in a flirtatious remark here and there though, since he kinda likes teasing you (but it’s very mildly though)

𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗼

↠ again, another person that’ll tease you with love just because (especially if you’re from 1-A.) but surprisingly, sweet talk would be one of his best ways of flirting, since it catches you off guard quite often, and leaves you flabergasted. he’ll get real defensive if anyone else teases you though! monoma will definitely play footsie under a table with you just because he can, and it always manages to put a nice flustered look on your face. it’s adorable! like kiri, he also likes giving you small presents just because he believes you deserve it.

𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗼

↠ the best at sweet talking :)) mirio is really smooth with it, and originality? 10/10. since it’s quite canon that MIRIO TOGATA IS A FLIRT, anyhow- it’s reserved for you and you only. lingering touches also count, like if you’re passing something to him, his hand will linger on yours for a little longer, before smiling at your reaction. also another killer at the ‘flirtatious’ eyes thing, if there’s anyone else that can nail it, and practically make your heart skip a beat, then it’s him alright.

𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶 𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗶𝗸𝗶

↠ never ask him to flirt, just don’t. it’s kinda like izuku’s case but a lot worse. has to get talked into doing one of those cheesy pick up lines by mirio and nejire, but it never goes smoothly on command for him. anyway- on the brighter note, his touch subconsciously lingers a little bit more than usual, he doesn’t really notice it (don’t point that out please.) and he really likes feeding you in general, since his quirk heavily involves with food, it’s practically one of the few ways this shy boy can flirt. 

𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗶 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗼𝗿𝗼𝗸𝗶 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝘆𝗮

↠ oh there’s a lot to say tbh. he’s definitely not shy/afraid of making sexual innuendos as a way of flirting, and his intense flirtatious stare is one of the many few ways he likes to show interest in you, if it would be intensely looking at your eyes with those intimidating cerulean eyes, or if it would be his eyes scanning over your figure and smirking. everything besides being not so pg, another way of him flirting is lingering touches. doesn’t care where or when, but you’ll catch him toying with your fingers. 

𝗵𝗮𝘄𝗸𝘀 | 𝗸𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗼 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗮𝗺𝗶

↠ tbh everyone portrays hawks as this professional flirt, but in reality he’s probably the farthest from that, since he’s kinda a workaholic. but if you’re in a relationship with hawks- then that mean’s you’re special. will he sweet talk you? yeah, but it’s most likely full of bird puns anyway, but it’s the though that counts. 

　　*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･''･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

likes and re-blogs are appreciated, thanks for reading! 

i do not own bnha/mha and it’s characters. boku no hero academia/my hero academia belongs to horikoshi kohei, i only own the writing.  

do not plagiarize my work :))

[belphies-cuhm-sluht]

If It Means That Much To You (Mammon x GN!Reader) Slight Angst -> Fluff

I realize now that if I had written this last night and Levi's tonight, I could have posted in the order of the brothers... but I goofed up on that... Whoops! It's slightly angsty, just the teeniest tiniest bit, but soft Mammon is so sweet. I don't write enough for him, feel kinda bad for skimping out on Mammon fics. So here's a Mammon fic!

Word Count : 1.7K Warnings : Slight angst;

The smile spread across your face as you swiped through the pictures that you had taken with your boyfriend. You both looked happy, and it wasn’t fake like those other couples that you had seen way too many times back in the human realm. This was the first time in what seemed like your entire life that you had been one hundred percent, without a doubt, happy. You had someone who loved you more than words would ever let him express, but he didn’t need words to tell you, he always showed you that he did, whether it be through the way he would hold you, or even just the way he looked at you. The way his lips would crash against yours whenever he saw you after being apart for five minutes or more. Even the way that he looked at you, you could see the emotion, so raw, you could feel it, you could almost hear it, just by looking into his eyes. His love, and his adoration for you was unmatched, other than by your own feelings towards him.

It was a perfect relationship, anyone would be able to tell just by looking at the two of you together. They would be able to see it through the multitude of pictures that you took together, pictures that he would never let you upload. Every picture was taken within the House of Lamentation, or somewhere deep in the garden behind the house, places where no one other than his brothers would ever find out that the two of you were together. It never really bothered you, not enough to bring it up to him at least. Lately though, it had been getting under your skin a little more than usual. It could have something to do with the fact that his latest modeling gig had garnered new fans for him, which should have been a good thing, but reading through their comments on his Devilgram posts had bugged you more than it should. He wasn’t the type to feed into their comments, whether they were raunchy or sweet, he would reply with a simple “Thank You” to as many as he could. You on the other hand, you weren’t allowed to comment on any of his posts, and while he hadn’t explained why that was, you just went along with it. At least you could still like them, and that was enough for you, at least up until now.

“Hey Mams, isn’t this picture cute?” You asked, idly flipping through the latest pictures you had taken together. They were taken in his bed after a long night of… fun… Both of you looked especially worn out, but the smiles on your faces were honest, sincere, and you loved waking up next to each other. His and your hair was completely messed up, and neither of you cared. It wasn’t a modeling shot, but it still looked perfect. You wanted to show him off, show the rest of the Devildom that he was yours and you were his, show them how lucky you were, and what better photo to use than one where you’ve woken up together. “I was thinking of uploading it to-”

Those words had caught his attention, drawing his eyes away from his own phone where he was scrolling through more comments and liking them, giving them the basic reply. The thought of you uploading anything like that though had made him stop, and now he was grabbing your phone from your hands and slipping it into his pocket. “Ya don’t haveta upload nothin’. I know we’re happy, so da you… nobody else needs ta know.” He smiled at you as if his words would actually make you feel better, and most of the time they did. It’s not that he was wrong, and maybe demons didn’t fully understand the concept of essentially showing the world that they were happy, that they had found love and being excited about that, but in the human realm it was a normal thing.

“Alright… I’m gonna go get myself some breakfast… you want anything?” You didn’t want to argue with him about it, you didn’t want to blow it up into something that it didn’t need to be, so changing the subject entirely was the best option. You pushed yourself up off the couch and started heading towards the door, grabbing your jacket off the edge of the bed on your way over. You turned back to face him, to see if he was going to answer your question, and he was turned completely around on the couch, pouting up at you. “You don’t have to worry, Mammon. I’m taking Beel with me.” Which was something you always did when you went to get breakfast… or really any food related item. Mammon was one who worried about your safety often, and since he didn’t like going out in public places with you, he would always tell you to have one of his brothers take you.

His pout only grew as his eyebrows lowered, crossing his arms over his chest. You weren’t really sure what he was trying to do or why he was even doing it, but you were hungry, and you really wanted to know if he wanted anything so you could get going. “Well… just remember who yer first demon was. Beel ain’t no better than me.” He huffed before turning back around and you were left in the doorway feeling nothing but confusion. You weren’t even sure what he meant by that, it made absolutely no sense to you. Obviously you thought Mammon was the better brother out of them all, you wouldn’t put up with so much of his crazy antics or try so hard to keep him out of trouble if he wasn’t your favorite. He also never had a problem with Beel taking you before, so you weren’t quite sure why it was a problem now. “Tell ya no and ya wanna go runnin’ off ta get food with Beel…”

“You know… I can still hear you.” He had whispered the last part, but his whispering sounded more like breathy screaming, especially when he was irritated by something… something that he shouldn’t even be irritated by. “I can go with Asmo or Satan… It doesn’t have to be Beel.” He groaned at the other two brother choices and now you were getting irritated. You didn’t know what he wanted, you were confused, and you were hungry, and he wasn’t explaining anything, and it was just really really annoying. “I don’t know what you want! You don’t want to be seen together, you don’t want me to leave the house by myself, and you don’t want me to leave the house with your brothers either. What do you want?”

His head whipped around so he could face you again, his eyebrows quivering slightly as he looked at you, his voice softer now. “I never said I didn’t wanna be seen with ya…” He sighed, shaking his head. “I just didn’t want anything ta happen…” You weren’t sure what he meant, or what could possibly happen if the two of you were seen together. Simple Devilgram photos couldn’t be enough to stir up problems, could they?

That’s when your brain, your already ticked off and, at this point, hangry brain started piecing together the puzzle, or at least, you thought you were piecing it together. “You mean you didn’t want your fans to get upset… If they saw a picture of you with someone they’d stop giving you likes and commenting on your posts.” His eyes narrowed as he listened to your assumption. He was shocked and even… hurt… that you’d think that that was why he didn’t want you to be seen with him. What was more upsetting was that he had apparently, at some point, given you reason to believe that he cared more about his fan base than he did about you.

He got up off the couch quickly, practically running to you and pulling you into his arms. You weren’t sure if you were just hearing things or if he was actually crying, or maybe he was coming down with a cold… but you could definitely hear him sniffling. “It ain’t about them… It’s about you…” He took a shaky breath, and that slightly verified your thoughts that he was crying, or at least on the verge of it. His hand held the back of your head, keeping your face buried in his chest so that you couldn’t see him, but you could still hear him, his voice vibrating his chest as he spoke. “I owe lotsa Grimm ta lotsa people… demons… witches… I dunno if they’d try ta snatch ya up… take ya away from me ta get their money back…” He finally took a step back, cupping your face lightly as you finally looked up at him. “I don’t want nothin’ ta happen to ya… I don’t wanna lose ya, Y/N…”

“Mammon… I-” You felt awful, terrible for even assuming that he would care more about his fans than your feelings. You had never once thought that he was doing it to look out for you, to take care of you because you meant that much to him… Because he loved you. Sometimes you fail to remember that he was greedy, and he did like to gamble, and usually that money came from other people's pockets. It was hard to remember because with you he was completely different, he never asked for your money and all of your dates were free, spent in his room or the living room or the gardens just enjoying your time together. Everything he did… he did it for you.

“It’s okay… If it means that much ta ya… Upload the pic… If it makes ya happy… I’ll even go out with ya… keep ya safe. No one messes with The Great Mammon’s human…” He smiled proudly, and you let out a small giggle as you shook your head. You didn’t want to worry him anymore than he already did about you, he didn’t need that.

“I know we’re happy… You know we’re happy… No one else needs to know… Right?” The words that he had said earlier made more sense now. You both were happy, and if anyone else knew, it could potentially ruin both of your happiness.

Things were perfect just the way they were. You had the perfect relationship, and it meant way more to you than a little picture being uploaded onto the internet.

[cower-before-power]

Naked Attraction

Summary: A typical day in your art class turn into anything but when you’re introduced to your nude model for the week- a devastatingly gorgeous man named Levi.

Pairing: Modern AU Levi Ackerman x F!Reader

TW: Nudity, swearing, suggestive content, age gap (reader is 20, Levi is 30), dick jokes, reader is thirsty and lewds Levi hard, perhaps poorly written stuff about art and drawing because I literally know nothing haha

(minors please do not interact, just to be safe)

Link to A03 here

A/N: Hello all! This is my entry for @ghost-party’s Meet Cute Collab with my darling husband Levi. I’ve never written for him before so I was a little nervous haha, I hope I did him justice! Thank you to everyone who reads, likes, comments, and reblogs- you are all wonderful and I appreciate your support! I hope you enjoy, my sweet potatoes!

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“Morning,” Jean greets you with a crooked smile and a steaming cup of coffee. It’s the good stuff from the café by his apartment, your favourite thing to help your brain shift into creative mode. “You’re later than usual.”

You grab the cup from him, sighing as you feel the warmth bleed into your hands. “Overslept. Barely had time to get dressed and brush my teeth.”

Jean’s eyes rove over you as you sink into your chair, humming to yourself as you sip on your drink. “I can see. Do you know you’re wearing two different shoes? And I think your sweater is on inside out. Why do you still even have that ugly thing anyways?”

“Thank you for your comments,” you roll your eyes. “I know I look like a hot mess and I don’t need any words from you, Mr. I Asked The Nude Model Out And Got Shot Down.”

Jean’s ears turn red, and he shoots you a dirty look before busying himself with arranging his pencils. “Shut up.”

You snicker to yourself as you set up your own area. Last week’s model had been a soft, pretty brunette that had instantly made Jean all starry-eyed, like a teenage boy with his first crush. It was generally considered a bit taboo to ask out the nude models, but he’d thrown that aside and gone for the kill after she’d slid back into her clothes. She’d laughed and patted his cheek like he was a naughty child asking for candy before dinner. Then proceeded to walk out and climb onto the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle (but not before making out with said boyfriend for a good 5 minutes, minimum).

Jean had been left with red cheeks and no date, and you’d been left with great blackmail material.

“I wonder who will be our victim today,” you decide to take mercy on your poor friend and change the subject. “Most likely a guy, since we had a woman last week.”

“We’ll know in about 5 minutes,” Jean looks up at the clock on the wall. “Old Cueball is never late.”

Sure enough, in exactly 5 minutes your very bald and very punctual professor casually strolls through the door. A short man in a green coat is following him, presumably your newest subject. You crane your neck, trying to get a better look at his face, but all you can see is dark hair falling like a curtain over pale skin.

“Good morning class,” Professor Pyxis greets you, tossing his briefcase down on his desk with his usual nonchalant air. “I see you are all ready, so let’s get right to it.” He gestures to the person beside him. “This is Mr. Levi Ackerman. He’s your model for the week.”

The class murmurs in curiosity as the mentioned Levi Ackerman turns to face the room.

You swear your heart actually skips a beat.

Steel gray eyes observe the room from a face that practically begs to be immortalized through art. Every line is hard and strong, covered in clear skin that looks like it would slide under your fingers like the smoothest silk. Your eyes drink in his features greedily, from the regal bridge of his nose to the proud edge of his jaw. You decide your favorite thing though, is his cheeks. They are utterly cherubic, round and full and dusted ever so lightly with the lightest shade of pink.

He’s possibly the prettiest man you have ever seen.

“Hey, I know him,” Jean whispers, cutting off your entranced thoughts. “That’s Mikasa’s distant cousin, the one I told you she found on Ancestry.com last year. I’ve met him once, he’s got a stick so far up his butt, he’d need surgery to remove it. Never would have pegged him for the type to do this sort of thing.”

You vaguely remember a previous conversation involving Jean’s childhood friend and some long lost relatives.

“He doesn’t look that uptight,” you muse, too busy admiring the way his lips glint temptingly under the fluorescents to really process Jean’s words. “He’s beautiful, like something out of a Renaissance painting.”

Jean opens his mouth to reply, but Pyxis begins to speak.

“As usual, draw whichever side of him is facing you, all angles will be graded equally,” your professor plops himself down in his chair, already scrolling through his phone to find the playlist for the day. “Completed drawings to be submitted to me by the end of class on Friday. Please remember be respectful and courteous to our guest. Mr. Ackerman, whenever you’re ready.”

The man nods to your professor, already slipping out of his coat as he steps up onto the platform in the center of the room. You watch, mesmerized, as he proceeds to shed himself of his clothes. It’s rigid and methodical (he folds his clothes like he’s worked his whole life in a department store), but somehow oddly endearing. Every inch of his body that is revealed is consumed eagerly by your shameless stare, and you sincerely hope you don’t start drooling. By the time he carefully removes his final items, you feel like you are vibrating in your seat.

Holy fucking shit, he’s built like a god. Like Michelangelo himself carved him out of a block of the most pristine marble. You trace your gaze down the column of his throat, over the strong shoulders and sinewy arms, the impressive set of abs, the thighs that look like they could crush your head and you’d be nothing but happy about it. It takes a minute before you’re able to make yourself look between his thighs, and when you finally do, you have to looks away immediately. Good grief, even that is stupidly handsome. You can’t help but wonder if it would feel as nice as it looks.

Your face heats from your lewd thoughts, and you grip your pencil so hard it almost snaps. Beside you, Jean snickers.

“You okay over there? It looks like you’re about to explode.”

“Can it,” you hiss, glad that the ambient music Pyxis chose will probably keep your conversation private. “I can’t help it that I’m looking at the most gorgeous dick attached to the most gorgeous man I think I’ve ever seen.”

“You haven’t seen mine.”

“I don’t own a microscope.”

“Ooooh, see if I buy you coffee tomorrow, bitch.”

You stick your tongue out at him before turning back to your easel. As you move, you catch the gaze of Levi, his expression unreadable. Warmth creeps up the back of you neck, and you duck behind your sketchpad in embarrassment. You seriously hope he didn’t hear you, he’d probably report you to Pyxis for being creepy. You decide to lock all your stupid horny thoughts deep within the recesses of your mind, and take a few deep breaths to clear your head.

It works, and as you touch pencil to paper, the desire to create overflows inside of you.

Unsurprisingly, you become utterly engrossed in your work, your pencil sweeping over the pad with almost a mind of it’s own. Levi is the perfect model; you swear he’s not even breathing as he majestically hold his pose without even a quiver. The contours of his body spring to life on the page, and you can’t stop the joyful smile that blooms on your lips as you work. It’s times like these, when everything is so perfect, that you truly realize just how much you love making art.

Before you know it, Pyxis announces class is over, and you’ll resume with Levi tomorrow. The man of the hour begins to re-dress as your fellow classmates pack up their supplies and file out. You absent mindedly wave to Jean, who is practically sprinting out the door so he can make his next class all the way across campus. You’re still engrossed in your drawing, staring at it with critical eyes. It good, one of the best starts you’ve had all year, but now that the high of creating has worn off, you can see where you need to improve.

“You’re very good.”

You gasp and jump, whirling around to find Levi standing behind you, eyes fixed on your sketch. How did he even get there? You hadn’t seen him or heard him.

“Oh, uh, Mr Ackerman!” You squeak, your heart racing like you’ve just run a marathon.  “T-that’s very nice, I mean, thank- thank you very much!”

“It’s Levi,” your muse says, seemingly unbothered by your stammering. “Yours is going to be the best one here.”

You blink stupidly at his bold statement. “Did you look at all of them?”

“No,” Levi’s voice is firm, a tone that brokers no argument. “But you had the most joy on your face while you worked. That much passion doesn’t churn out stuff that looks like shit.”

“Oh, that’s only because you are such a great model,” you gush, insides turning warm at his praise. “You stayed so still and you looked so damn regal and you’re just so pretty and-” Your eyes go wide as you realize the absolute words vomit leaving your mouth, mortification slithering up your spine.

“I’m pretty?” Levi raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m pretty?”

“No!” You shout, and the man’s other eyebrow joins the first. “No wait, yes! I mean, fuck, I mean you are probably the most handsome man I’ve ever seen!”

Levi’s eyebrows have now practically become one with his hairline. You wring your hands, wishing the floor would just open up and swallow you. “I-well- come on, people must tell you how good looking you are! I can’t be the first.”

“No, but you certainly are the most enthusiastic about it,” Levi deadpans.

Oh, someone just put you out of your misery now.

“I’m sorry,” you offer, cringing internally at your complete ineptitude to hold a conversation with an attractive man. “I....get carried away sometimes.”

“It’s fine,” Levi’s stoic expression softens just a little. “It’s kind of nice to hear, actually. Usually I’m told I’m good looking, but ‘far too short’.”

“That’s bullshit.” you say vehemently, honestly shocked people would deny this man his godhood over something as trivial as height. “Who cares if you’re shorter? It doesn’t detract from you. What’s that phrase again? Good things come in small packages? Well, not that you’re small, I’m not saying that, I just meant-”

“Yes, you did seem to find my package....good,” Levi interrupts, and you swear you see the corners of his lips twitch upwards.

Your eyes widen in horror as your brain replays your hushed conversation with Jean. “You heard that?!”

“I’m told I have exceptionally good hearing.”

“Oh fuck me,” you groan, burying your face in your hands. “I am literally so, so, sorry. That was completely out of line. I have no excuse other than it’s clearly been too long since I’ve gotten some, but that’s no reason to make you uncomfortable. Please, if there’s anything I can do to to make it up to you, I’ll do it!”

“Have tea with me.””

Your head shoots up, surprise coloring your features. “What?”

“Tch, you heard me,” Levi tuts, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out his phone. “I haven’t got free time till Saturday-stupid Shitty Glasses wanting to trade shifts-but if you want to go out, give me your number and we can work out the details.”

You stare at him with your mouth open, unsure if this is really happening or you’re vividly daydreaming again.

“Umm, are you sure?” You ask, wondering if you should pinch yourself to see if you are indeed imagining things. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m wearing two different shoes and my sweater is inside out. Believe me when I say these sorts of fashion statements happen more often than not. Plus, I practically salivated over you like some sort of horny middle aged suburban housewife who hasn’t been laid in years.” You pause to take a breath, once again unable to stop the words from spewing forth like a fountain. “And I’m so awkward! I mean, are you comfortable in this conversation? And I can’t stop talking once I’ve gotten going, and I say the weirdest shit, and, and-”

“I like you,” he says simply, as if he’s just declared something as obvious as 1+1=2. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about all the stuff you just said, you’re just... you, and I like it. So, do you want to go on a date or not?”

“O-oh,” you suddenly feel shy, your tummy filling with butterflies at the look of sincerity on his handsome face. You’d never met anyone quite like Levi Ackerman before, and you weren’t about to pass up the opportunity to get to know the man behind the drool-worthy muscles.  “Uh, yes, please, I would like that. Very much.”

An almost relieved expression crosses Levi’s face, and he hands you his phone to type in your number. You notice the time as you do so, and sigh sadly as you hand him his device back.

“Well I better go,” you say reluctantly, suddenly fervently wishing it was Saturday already. “I’ve got another class in 15 minutes.”

“I’ll walk you there,” Levi says briskly, slipping his phone back into his coat. “To make sure you get there safely. Someone might murder you on account of their eyes being assaulted by that garish sweater. ” The corners of his lips twitch upwards once again, and you grow warm all over, from both his gentle teasing and the knowledge he isn’t quite ready to say goodbye yet either.

“Excuse me, I thought you said you didn’t give a ‘flying fuck’ about my attire,” you huff, but you’re grinning as you quickly pack up your bag.

“I don’t care it’s inside out, but you have to know that is the ugliest fucking color know to man,” Levi says, holding out his hand. Your brain malfunctions slightly for a moment, until you realize he’s offering to carry your bag for you. The butterflies inside you whip themselves into a frenzy as you pass him your stuff, your hand just grazing over his. Handsome, funny, honest, and sweet? How is this guy even real?

“I’ll have you know, this sweater is an absolute delight. When it’s inside right,” you stick up your nose, but unable to stop he laugh that slips past your lips.

Levi rolls his eyes in an almost playful manner. “Doubtful .”

You’re not sure where it comes from, but a sudden rush of confidence fills you. “If you’re so offended by it, maybe you should just rip it off of me.”

The tips of Levi’s ears turn a delightful shade of pink. You’re sure your own skin is hot enough to cook an egg on.

“Wear it Saturday then,” Levi’s ears may be flushed, but his eyes flash with something that makes your spine tingle. The insinuation of his words has your gut clenching and your mind whispering fervent prayers to please please please make Saturday get here faster, I don’t ask for much, please!

“Only if you wear your modeling outfit,” you manage to say, trying your best to sound coy when you feel like you might combust into a pile of lust and giddiness. “I’ve never seen someone wear it so well, and I want a closer look.”

If possible, Levi’s eyes grow even darker, and you just know Saturday is going to be one of the best damn days of your entire life.

“Deal.”

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Taglist: @clovertitan @millenialfanfictionaddiction @stigandr-the-cat @axoxtxhxh @bowandcurtsey​ @chaotic-nick​ @manjiroarchiviste​

[robininthelabyrinth]

CQL-Verse: Wen Ning did a whole lot of risky stuff saving JC and the bodies at Lotus Pier. What if NMJ hears and gets talked into helping protect him and the Wen remnants by the Jiang bros, because even if he's a wen, he still 1. whole ass poisoned wen chao 2. straight up commited treason and was punished for it to protect sect heirs and 3. is extremely baby brotherable. you can fit so much h/c into this bad boy

ao3

Untamed

1

Wen Qing was angry about the trials, but Wen Ning thought they made a reasonable amount of sense.

After all, how was the rest of the cultivation world supposed to know what they did in the war without a proper trial? It was only reasonable for them to make certain assumptions about them based on their surname, the same way everyone assumed that those surnamed Jin were rich, those surnamed Lan were beautiful, those surnamed Jiang were bold to the point of arrogance…

The Nie were supposedly known for their tempers, but Wen Ning hadn’t seen much evidence of that so far.

In fairness, his only experiences with a Nie were, firstly, with Nie Huaisang at the Cloud Recesses, which he was fairly sure didn’t count, and now, during the trial, with Nie Mingjue.

Nie Mingjue laughed the entire trial.

“You poisoned the wine,” he sniggered. “At their own celebratory feast…! And then you just went straight to Yiling, where your sister was in charge. And it still took him how long to find you?”

“Weeks,” Wen Ning meekly admitted.  

“Can we go back to the bit where you saved Wei-xiong from the giant dog beast using stolen needles?” Nie Huaisang asked.

“No, we cannot,” Nie Mingjue’s deputy – a somewhat long-suffering looking man that they all called Meng Yao – said. “He’s already gone over it four times, Huaisang.”

“But –”

“No.”

“Spoilsport! Look at how much fun da-ge’s having; it’s not fair.”

“He’s the sect leader. If he wants to hoot like a shrieking monkey, he’s entitled to it.”

“I’m not hooting,” Nie Mingjue protested. “I am recognizing talent.”

“Talent.”

“Exactly. Talent.”

“At…what, exactly?”

“Causing trouble,” Nie Huaisang volunteered. “I recognize it from Wei-xiong, I could spot it anywhere.”

“Could we possibly proceed with the trial?” Meng Yao asked, obviously deciding not to continue with that discussion. “We have six more to finish today. Can I assume that given the evidence of Wen-gongzi’s subversive activities and his subsequent imprisonment throughout much of the Sunshot Campaign, he is absolved of all crimes and allowed to go free?”

“You spoilsport,” Nie Mingjue said, rolling his eyes at him. “Yes, I think so. Wen Qionglin, you are free to go your own way – though if you wish to stay here in Qinghe as a guest cultivator, we would be glad to have you for however long you wish.”

Wen Ning thought that sounded all right.

2

The Nie sect were known for their tempers, and justly so, but Wen Ning quickly figured out that he didn’t need to be afraid of Nie Mingjue’s occasional outbursts (quickly roused, quickly doused) or Nie Huaisang’s temper tantrums (petty) and occasional grudge-holding (rarer but much more dangerous).

No, Wen Ning figured out very quickly in his first weeks that the one to be afraid of was clearly Meng Yao.

Wen Ning had been weak and sickly his whole life in a sect that valued strength above all; he had survived hiding behind his sister, but she couldn’t always be there for him, no matter how she tried. He’d soon learned that surviving on his own meant being quiet and obedient, never making trouble or drawing attention to himself, and it also meant being extremely attuned to the minute expressions that might signal the difference between Wen Chao being angry enough to throwing a teacup at his head and being angry enough to order him to be taken outside and beaten until unconscious.

The same skills helped him in the Nie sect, where people were very often angry. Wen Ning could tell the difference between Nie Mingjue raging to let out steam (moderately common and generally innocuous, easily ignored) and being actually upset (typically only dangerous to the furniture, which was a nice change, but more worrisome in the sense that he might go and do something stupid afterwards), and he could tell that Nie Huaisang’s true anger, so rarely triggered, tended more towards the cold and hidden (definitely a sign he was going to do something, but unfortunately for everyone involved it’d invariably be far more malicious - enough to make you long for stupid).

He could tell that Meng Yao was, despite all his smiles, very often angry.

Like Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao’s temper was easily roused to the point of fury; like Nie Huaisang, his anger lasted a long time and usually called for some malicious action before it could be properly assuaged.

“Senior Meng,” Wen Ning tentatively said one day when his curiosity got to be too much for him. “Could I ask a rude question?”

Meng Yao’s temper, hidden deep in his eyes, flared at once, preemptively, and Wen Ning shivered and looked down at the ground. He had known what he was risking, but he hoped that asking permission in advance might allow him to get the question out with minimal reprisals – cold meals for a few days, perhaps, or being assigned to the training yard only when the most sadistic training-master was supervising, but only for a week or so.

“Of course, Wen-gongzi,” Meng Yao said, and he sounded nice and pleasant and like no question could possibly be rude enough to cause him any disturbance. It was a little frightening how good he was at that. “I can’t imagine what you would want to know that would be rude.”

“Are you related?” Wen Ning blurted out. “To Sect Leader Nie, I mean – his family –”

Meng Yao stared at him. His mouth was slightly hanging open.

“…it’s a stupid question,” Wen Ning concluded, feeling ashamed. Of course Meng Yao had been promoted entirely on merit; it was only his imagination getting away from him. “I’m sorry. I’ll go –”

“No, wait,” Meng Yao croaked. “Related – to the Nie sect – forgive me. How did you reach that conclusion?”

“I mean, you’re obviously treated as part of the main family,” Wen Ning pointed out. There were plenty of Nie cousins that weren’t treated anywhere near as well; both Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang were not only protective but almost possessive over Meng Yao’s time and dignity - surely by now everyone knew that the surest way to get them each angry in their own ways was to slight Meng Yao. “You wear Nie braids like them – you wear clothing like them – you have a temper like them –”

Meng Yao started laughing.

“…did I miss something?”

3

“I’m surprised you didn’t go to the Lotus Pier after you’d been absolved,” Nie Huaisang said, tapping the weiqi piece on the board a few times before making a move. “Given your fondness for Wei-xiong and all that.”

“Wei-gongzi’s very nice,” Wen Ning said vaguely, staring down at the board. He’d played a lot of weiqi in his life – including against Wen Ruohan when the man had still been remotely sane, mostly because he’d been the only one stuck back at the palace with him more often than not – but playing against Nie Huaisang required all of his attention. The first time he looked away, he’d get lured into a trap. “Very kind.”

“And yet you stay here,” Nie Huaisang prompted. “In Qinghe, with us, when even your sister picked the Lotus Pier.”

Wen Ning had never been without his sister this long before. He knew that she still expected him to come to the Lotus Pier. She hadn’t expected him to last the week without her; she’d said as much when she first went, huffing at him for being ridiculous – a Wen as a guest cultivator in the Nie sect, of all places? – and telling him, in between reminders to take his medicine on time, that she’d prepare a place for him there so that he would be comfortable when he arrived.

Her letters, in the weeks and now months since that time, had never overtly asked when he was going to finally get around to moving there, and had recently developed an almost quizzical tone, as if she’d finally realized that he wasn’t.

“I like it here,” Wen Ning said, and moved his piece.

Nie Huaisang moved his own almost immediately in response, which meant that Wen Ning had made a horrible mistake that played straight into Nie Huaisang’s hands. Not an uncommon occurrence. 

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “We like having you here, too.”

Surprised, Wen Ning looked up.

Nie Huaisang was smiling at him – he smiled nearly as often as Meng Yao, but unlike Meng Yao, he never smiled if he didn’t want to, so his smiles were actually sincerely meant each and every time. He had a wide range of smiles: nervous smiles, cheerful smiles, devious smiles…

Wen Ning was good at reading expressions, but he had to admit he’d never had to work as hard at it as he did with Nie Huaisang.

“We’re a very nice sect, really,” Nie Huaisang said, and even seemed to believe it. “We’re always open to people who are like us. The only thing we can’t tolerate is injustice and betrayal; as long as you stick with us and put us first, you’re ours, and we’re yours.”

That sounded nice, Wen Ning thought, and moved a piece blindly. “You think I’m like you? My sister doesn’t think so.”

“I think you fit in very nicely,” Nie Huaisang said, and his smile had teeth to it. He moved quickly, again. “You’re angry and resentful, but you don’t let it get in the way of what you want - just like us. Your sister probably doesn’t think that about you, either, but then again, that’s why she’s in the Jiang sect, with their heads in the air, dreaming of the impossible. I bet she never even noticed that you had a temper.”

She hadn’t. Wen Ning had been her baby brother and nothing else for a long time; he never had to defend himself as long as she was around. 

He’d never had the chance to defend himself.

(He didn’t resent her for that. He didn’t. She was his big sister, his favorite person, and he loved her so much that he didn’t mind the way that all her fussing sometimes made the world feel cramped and small, as if he were being forced into a place that he’d long since outgrown.)

“Do I have a temper?” he asked, and moved another piece.

“Oh, yes,” Nie Huaisang said. “You’re like me – slow to boil – and like Meng Yao, hiding it behind your eyes. You’re even a bit like da-ge: you don’t need to be the one get the frustration out as long as something deals with it, but if nothing does, it nags at you and wears at you, like a thorn stuck in your flesh, until you can’t be silent any longer. Until you have to do something, or else you’ll explode.”

That sounded about right, Wen Ning thought. He’d never really had a chance to explode in the Wen sect, out of fear of what they’d do to his sister if he did, and he’d been sick with it – he’d limited himself to little rebellions, nameless pranks, right up until he met Wei Wuxian, who was kind to him, and couldn’t stop himself from helping him. He sometimes thought, in the days he’d spent in the dungeons, that if he died he’d come back as a fierce corpse, soul-calming rituals or no, and he’d might even enjoy it if only for the opportunity to finally vent his feelings – to finally pay back every single injustice that he’d ever seen, each one marked down in his heart in an indelible list of regrets.

Maybe Nie Huaisang was right. 

Maybe that was why he stayed here, in the Nie sect, the sect of do not tolerate evil instead of the Lan sect’s chivalry and righteousness or the Jiang sect’s attempt the impossible.

Maybe he wanted to fight back for once. To have a temper, to have rage, to be something more than Wen Qing’s shy, stuttering shadow.

“I like it here,” he said again, but if his words were the same then the flavor was different: he meant it this time.  

He understood, this time, what he meant by it.

Nie Huaisang smiled at him and moved another piece. Winning the game, Wen Ning noticed.

“Good,” he said. “Now move over – sit in front of the mirror. I’ll show you how to do your hair right.”

“Really?”

“Really. Also, Da-ge’s been practically champing at the bit to teach you saber, and Meng Yao has been making grandiose plans about redoing the way we recruit and train doctors with you leading the charge, so if you’re not up for either of those, now’s the time to say something.”

Wen Ning settled down in front of the mirror.

“No,” he said. “Those sound good to me.”