#WHEN I FIRST SAW THAT THE CREW WAS GONNA GET TORTURED I WAS LIKE ‘oh Izzy’s just gonna be into it’

[sunnibits]

DID HE JUST SAY “whatever it is it’s just gonna turn me on” 😳

LMAOOOOO MY EXTREME MASOCHIST IZZY DREAMS ARE CANON I LOVE THISSSS AHHAHAHHAHAHHAHA

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I thought of another 1K fic request for you if you have the time. For a while, I've had this missing scene in my head from Calypso's Birthday where Stede is the one who untied Ed from the stretching device he was tied to. Stede undoubtedly heard Ed screaming in pain and from the angle we're shown, he probably couldn't see him that well, if at all, so he had to be worried sick over hearing his love in pain but not being able to see what was happening. I just imagine him rushing over as soon as the situation is under control and untying him and whispering to him and making sure he's okay. Ed probably has a hard time moving at first because his joints were just popped, so maybe he just lays there for a minute while he adjusts and Stede comforts him.

I really enjoyed this one! It works so well with some thoughts I'd had bouncing around about what I wish we'd seen in this episode.

(Always taking prompts for 1k word fics!)

--

The world had narrowed down to a singular goal and what Stede had to do to see it through.

There was clarity, in moments like this, and Stede was glad for it. Everything he could see, from the rope around his wrists to the knives within eyeshot, became nothing more or less than potential tools. He was, himself, little more than the need to get to Ed. To touch him and kiss him and make sure he was okay, yes, but at times like these his mind could only hold one thing, and there wasn’t even space to think of what could come after.

Stede wondered if the way Ned had positioned them on deck, so he and Ed couldn’t see each other, was another intentional way of hurting them or if it was just a casual cruelty. Stede didn’t even know what was happening to Ed, how badly he was being hurt and in what way, and if he thought about it for too long he thought he might just go mad with worry.

Time went funny, at moments like these, every second sort of melting into the next. Stede knew he’d dream about it for years, probably - picking out Ed’s cries from the crowd, the little broken noises of pain as he tried to keep himself quiet. A shouted threat at the end of one of Stede’s own yelps. A scream that morphed into a cry of Stede’s name and back again, like Ed just loved Stede so much, trusted him so much, that he was hurting and unconsciously thought of Stede as the person who might be able to make it stop -

He couldn’t even deny it to himself, later. Ned Low’s death warrant was written when he’d mocked and hurt Ed in the cabin; it was sealed with the pain and fear and humiliation of having to listen to Ed be hurt and be powerless to do anything about it or offer comfort.

It was all very clever, slipping his bonds and getting Ned’s crew turned against him, and Stede was sure he’d find time to brag about it later. But the instant tides shifted, it all faded into the background.

Stede’s legs wobbled as he ran to Ed.

“They put you on a fucking rack,” he said indignantly, looking Ed over, checking for blood or bruises.

“Bit medieval, yeah,” Ed agreed. His voice sounded alright; little hoarse, but nothing indicating he was in excessive pain, circumstances considered. “Respect the chutzpah, at least?”

“I do not respect the chutzpah, frankly,” Stede muttered, getting to work on grabbing one of the torturer’s knives and sawing through the bonds on Ed’s wrists. 

“Oh, oh fuck,” Ed groaned, starting to pull his arms back by his side and stopping immediately, his face twisted in pain.

“Are you okay?” Stede laid a gentle hand on Ed’s elbow, and Ed flinched.

“Nothing broken, nothing dislocated.” Ed let his eyes slip closed for just a moment. “I’m alright. I’m okay.”

It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

“Gonna help you,” Stede said, carefully taking Ed’s forearms in his hands. “On three, okay?”

They moved Ed’s arms back down to his side, Stede guiding them back very slowly, trying to minimize Ed’s pain. As he’d said, it was nothing time and rest wouldn’t fix, but his muscles and joints were incredibly sore and weak, and his arms trembled with exertion as they brought them down.

“More comfortable?” Stede asked, undoing the bonds around his ankles next. “How do you feel?”

“I’m alright.” Ed shifted a bit, grimacing. “Just…hurts.”

He’d lowered his voice to a whisper as he admitted it. Stede rested his hand on Ed’s thigh as he worked, rubbing soothing circles through the leather.

“For a second there, it actually felt really nice,” Ed joked. “Gave my back this satisfying pop like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, I bet.” Stede sat at his side, taking note of how reluctant Ed was to move. “Right now, on my pain scale, I’d say I’m at about…a four. They mostly just poked me and hit me with a stick. Very impermanent.”

He raised his eyebrows, then, in obvious question. He’d shared. It was a safe space to talk about it.

“I’m at…” Ed considered. “Maybe a seven.”

“Oh, Ed.” Very slowly, so Ed had plenty of time to object if he didn’t want it, Stede took Ed’s hand, giving his fingers what he hoped was a comforting squeeze, and with the other he cupped Ed’s cheek. “You poor thing.”

“I’m alright,” Ed mumbled. “Just need to lie still for a bit.”

Stede’s own wrists were red from the chafing of the rope, he’d noticed, and he confirmed grimly that Ed’s looked just as sore and painful. Slowly, being sure not to move too quickly and hurt him, Stede lifted Ed’s hand to his mouth so he could kiss the scrapes on his wrist.

“Thank you,” Ed whispered.

“Of course.” Stede scritched his fingers lightly through Ed’s beard, making him hum happily. “You just take a breather. You’re doing so well. I’m here, now, and you’re safe, and I’m never going to let you get hurt again. I’m with you.”

He hoped Ed heard between the words. I love you, I love you.

Stede held Ed’s hand and kept a soothing hand on his face, smiling down at him as Ed nuzzled his cheek into his palm. Occasionally, he glanced up to supervise how things were going, making a mental checklist of the crew, making sure they were all okay, keeping an eye on Ned Low as his own former crew tied him up.

He ran his thumb gently over Ed’s cheekbone.

The crisis had shifted. Ed was safe and alright, and Stede had a new priority. He watched Ned with narrowed eyes.

Oh, yes. He wasn’t sure how, yet, or exactly when. But he looked at Ned Low and there was one, singular goal in his mind:

Ned Low was a dead man walking.

[aaasdgnklm]

hey hye wanna hear my epic rant too bad ur gonna anyways

spoiler warning for epic: the musical, the thunder saga

Ok so the thunder saga. genuinely I’ve been shaking so much every time I’ve heard it. I’m gonna go song by song and this is a rant so theres gonna be a shitton of tangents sorry

1. suffering

this title scared me SO MUCH when I heard it cause like oh fuck my poor little guy(hes a king and has fought multiple wars and killed thousands of people) doesnt need more shit happening to him like leave him alone and then the melody was so upbeat and I was like huh?? and then ‘penelope’ starts talking and I’m like. pardon. what. sorry?? I was confused as shit, mostly at how nonchalant ODYSSEUS was. my first assumption was its gotta be one of the gods fucking w/ him but then why is he so casual? so I thought it was a dream. but then there were little things, penelope’s asking him to get in the water(which. reminds me of. someone HAHSBHADBH), and then he says hes scared of the water and I’m like. my guy I hope youre not afraid of the water youre a captain on a ship. but then I realized theres no way odys afraid of the water unless its bcuz of posideon, and penelope WOULDNT KNOW ABOUT THAT so he wouldnt say “you know I’m afraid of the water”. and then ofc shes like “daughter” and I’m like nope. this aint penelope and its not a dream cause then it would be odysseus’ mind making her up and hed never think daughter. And then odysseus asks how to get home and at this point I’m like hm. ok. so this is some kind of water based monster trying to pretend to be penelope to lure him in, right? (ALSO the fact that the only time in the song odysseus drops the act is when he says “but scylla has a cost” is so mmmmmm)and then. and then.

2. different beast

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT THIS IS WHERE THINGS GOT GOOD. like I love suffering but different beast scratches my brain SO GOOD and the rest of the saga was uphill from there I ahhhhhhhh. initial reaction: odysseus’ explanation that he knew what had been happening the whole time was SO GOOD and had my mouth hanging open the whole time. and then when he says “cut their tails off, we’re ending this now. throw their bodies back in the water. let them drown.” ohhhhhhhhhh my god holy fuck this was when it kinda hit for me- odysseus was not fucking around in monster hes actually BRUTAL in the thunder saga and I honestly hope it continues cause fuck yeah character development. also there were SO MANY lines in this that are just SO GOOD. “youve been tryna take my life this whole time” “I know exactly what you are, youre a siren.” “my real wife knows I’m not scared of the water, and my real wife knows I dont have a daughter.” “we found a ship with no crew” “sirens know about every route and horizon now I know how to get back to my island!” “so you can kill the next group of sailors in this part of the sea? nah, you wouldnt have spared me. I made a mistake like this once it almost cost my life, I cant take more risks of not seeing my wife. cut off their tails!” “kill them all!” and then the “odysseus” at the end I’m like why does that sound familiar? MFER ITS CAUSE ITS IN THE “You dont think I know my own palace? I built it.” SOUND CLIP IM

3. scylla

silly little sounds. silly little men. silly little deaths. ok so I watched the livestream so I saw the anamatic and holy SHIT the moment that eurylochus realized why odysseus had him light six torches was BRUTAL. also eurylochus’ confession that he opened the wind bag? ohhhhhhh ok MOTHER FUCKING SON OF A BITCH also when odysseus said “not much to say” god he sounds so tortured I cant with this. and scyllas voice in general is so ahhhhhh ESPECIALLY the “Hello.” and DROWN IN YOUR SORROW AND FEARS. CHOKE ON YOUR BLOOD AND YOUR TEARS. BLEED TILL YOU RUN OUT OF YEARS. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. GIVE UP YOUR HONOR AND FAITH. LIVE UP YOUR LIFE AS A WRAITH. DIE IN THE BLOOD WHERE YOU BATHE. WE MUST DO WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE. with the fucking crunching and screaming in the background lik e ok. I needed this in my life.

4. mutiny

THIS IS MY FAVORITE. eurolychus’ confrontation with begging odysseus to tell him hes misinterpreted the situation, comparing odysseus’ past actions and fights to how he dealt with scylla, finally ending with him yelling at odysseus to “SAY SOMETHING!”, odysseus’ “I CANT.” and the looong pause before the boss battle starts. odysseus and eurolychus’ fight, both of them clearly not wanting to but knowing they have to. the chanting their name in the background. and then when odysseus says “I am not letting you get in my way!” and the sound of a stab- I was so scared hed actually killed eurolychus(yes I knew he dies I watched the overly sarcastic productions video on the odyssey too) and then ODYSSEYUS’ labored breathing and asking “why?” like I’m sorry jorge DID THEY STAB YOU TO GET THIS LYRIC WHY DOES HIS PHYSICAL PAIN SOUND SO GENUINE and then the. the fucking. the fucking luck runs out reprise. the MOMENT I realized it was the melody from luck runs out this is when I started crying.(dw past me it gets worse) the way that the crew is basically like “yeah remember when we asked what would happen if you fucked up? well you fucked up. and now youre finding out.” plus the fact that they are so clearly driving home we dont trust you. you failed to keep us safe. basically telling him ‘youre a bad leader’. that must have HURT. and then the fact that eurolychus bandaged him up and was waiting for him to wake up ough my heart. but also the fact that hes tied to helios’ statue? like. um. buddy. looking an awful lot like a sacrafice there. hahahahahah I’m loosing it. anyways, the luck runs out reprise hitting hard once again. like HARD. holy shit, odysseus’ “please don’t tell me you’re about to do what i think you’ll do” when that was what eurylochus said to him and then EURYLOCHUS CALLED HIM “ODY” I CANT and the eurylochus clearly being fed up(but not fed) while odysseus is actually begging him to please please think about this you can HEAR the desperation the need to get home and knowing if eurylochus kills the cow they probably wont? and then odysseus’ scream of “euRYLOCHUS NO!” cut short by the sound of eurylochus killing the cattle. and then the instant ‘oh no.’ like just INSTANTLY knowing they’re fucked and eurylochus STILL LOOKING TOWARD ODYSSEUS FOR GUIDENCE EVEN THO HE LITERALLY MUTINIED AGAINST HIM LIKE A DAY AGO AND HAS ODYSSEUS TIED UP AND AT HIS MIRCY AND HE STILL DEFAULTS TOWARDS ODYSSEUS FOR LEADERSHIP CAUSE HE STILL TRUSTS HIM and odysseus IMMEDIATELY taking charge and trying to get them out. the rushed full speed ahead melody, the boom of thunder and odysseus’ dread-filled “we’re too late.”

5. thunder bringer

IT LIVED UP TO THE HYPE GUYS!! sure enough the teasers we’ve seen are FUCKING AMAZING in the context of the song, zeus having an inflated as shit ego and taking up SO MUCH space, just like constantly talking about himself even tho IT AINT ABT HIM its so in character for what a massive dick he usually is in the greek mythos. and zeus deadass saying “if i were to make you choose, the lives of your men and crew or your own why do I think theyd loose?” right before MAKING ODYSSEUS CHOOSE. I’m. also odysseus sounds so.. small in this song. I dont know if its the fact hes literally having a mental breakdown or that zeus needs to be the biggest cock in any room he walks into but odysseus’ little “choose?” and him asking “please dont make me do this” JUST LIKE WHEN HIM AND ZEUS FIRST MET, the when does a man become a monster melody playing as odysseus tries to decide with penelopes voice asking him to come home pushing him over the edge wow. just wow. and the the conversation between odysseus and eurylochus? “captain?” “I have to see her.” “…but we’ll die.” “i know” I’m SORRY I CANT FUCKING DO THIS WHY DOES HE SOUND SO BROKEN AND REGRETFUL AND SAD AND OH MY GOD. AND THEN THE FUCKING ANIMATIC SHOWN IN THE TRAILER THE WAY HE JUST POINTS TOWARDS HIS CREW AND THEY ALL LOOK SO BETRAYED AND LOST BEFORE THEY START ATTACKING HIM AND THE LAST SHOT OF HIM CLOSING HIS EYES AS THEY PIN HIM TO THE MAST BY THE NECK WITH THEIR SWORDS AND THEN LIGHTNING STRIKES THE SHIP HOLY. also if you think about it this choice was kind of the final stress test for odysseus, because this is the ultimate decision: should he be a good king, captain, and friend or should he take the small chance to see his wife again? cause its not just about who lives and dies, its about who gets to keep going, who gets to see home, who gets a chance and who looses right now. and how could he choose the people who just stabbed him in the back and have doomed them multiple times over seeing his wife whom he loves and would do anything for? honestly, with what I know about how odysseus is, I wouldnt be very surprised if he was weighing the choice both from the emotional (seeing his wife or saving his crew) and factual (hes probably the strongest and most fit leader among them, they might not do too well on their own, ithaca needs a king and he doesnt know if telemachus can be that, one person has a higher chance of surviving than a large group in a journey(ingreekmythologyanyway), and they did just make a really dumb mistake that odysseus wouldnt have made himself and yeah ok maybe hes a little salty but still.)

genuinly the whole saga is so amazing and I’m so looking forward to the wisdom, vengence, and ESPECIALLY ithaca saga. by the way I could actually do this for every song in the musical/every saga tbh

thanks for coming to my tedtalk, I fucking love epic: the musical

[rhodesrider]

Hey could you do more mafia Judgment day x little! Reader????

Little One

Cg! Judgement Day x Little! Fem! Reader

Warnings: Visible age regression, visible violence and aggression around the regresseed, cussing, nicknames

~~~

Y/N was humming along to her music while putting ingredients in the blender preparing for her Saturday. She scrunched her nose at the veggies that ones of her caregivers told her to put in but she didn’t feel like getting a lecture, so she just did as told. She grabbed a few leaves of spinach and kale and dropped them in the container tooting her nose up like they were poison. She continued her quest of putting in fresh mangos and pineapples, ice and some juice to balanced it out. Her song ended and soon she heard the muffled screams that she was drowning out before. She looked over seeing a man on the floor, tied up blindfolded, muffling for help hoping someone hears him. She was told to watch him,if he does anything stupid she calls one of them back in the living room. Her caregivers were having a meeting about the man. She simple stepped over him after she finished up putting her smoothie in a cup and Bluetooth her headphones to the tv. She turned on her program and enjoyed her time watching her shows while the captive still screamed desperately for help in front of her.

The door clicked opened and heavy footsteps could be heard, the body down below wiggled more. Y/N didn’t hear the aggressive screaming but saw the movement looking down at it. She looked was greeted by kisses on her face making her giggle and blush. She took off her headphones and looked up seeing it was Finn, one of her caregivers and Damien grabbing the body. “Next time munchkin, ask mama for help with the smoothie. You did good and I bet it tastes amazing but you forgot to clean up again.” She pouted at the statement but nodded since she was in her headspace. “What cha gonna do with the dummy?” She calls the people that they bring in for interrogation “dummies” since they show no face at all to her. “The dummy we will handle princess, thank you for watching him for us.” Damien gave Y/N kisses all on her face making her smile. She loves to help whenever she can. “When is mama gonna be ready? I wanna go to build a bear..” she asked looking at the two. Finn forgot to tell Rhea about Y/N wanting to get a new stuffed animal, she cursed under his breath and Damien rolled his eyes knowing it crossed Finn’s mind last minute and called Rhea.

Rhea was getting the tools ready with Dominik and JD. JD was still getting use to the room of screams and torture but that’s how they get info and stuff done. It was honest his first time meeting Y/N, he’s not permitted to speaking to her or anything but he knows that’s the crews girl. Rhea got the call and answered. She sighed cursing under her breath and hung up. “Dom I need to go get something I’ll be out for a while so help them with the fucker if you need to. Same as you JD.” “Ok mami.” Dom nodded and JD nodded as well watching her walk out. JD now has some courage to ask a few questions. “Hey so, about that girl I saw?” Dom looked up at him while he was texting. “What about her?” “Well who is that? No one is really telling me anything.” Dominik rolled his eyes and showed him his lockscreen. A picture of Y/N and him, she was sleeping on him during a car ride in his arms. “Oh so she’s your girl?” JD assumed. “No not just my baby , she’s also Damien’s princess, she’s even Finn’s munchkin, and Mami’s sweetheart.” He said casually. JD was still a bit confused. Seeing the look on his face, Dominik explained more. “We all take care of her, she’s been through a lot and we watch over her and love her equally. She diffuses a lot of anger in the house and she’s a really good person.” “So you have her around all this?” JD asked meaning all the killings the bodies and times where the people come over to talk about the drug exchanges. “We tried not to at first, we were hiding it the best we can. But literally one night when we were talking to a dude, she popped up outta nowhere where. Saying his screams were making it hard to sleep, she didn’t have her headphones on. We thought we were in trouble, and she wasn’t gonna fuck with us no more. But instead she went to the car and got her headphones, put them on and went to Rhea while she was in a chair watching and sat in her lap facing the other way putting on music falling asleep on her.” JD chuckled some, thinking it was kinda cute. “So she’s been around it before and ignores it-“ “Oh no she helps out too.” JD raised an eyebrow. “How?” Dom told him how Y/N wasn’t in her headspace like she usually was for once. “It was a dude that gives us fake money, and was trying to run away. But she saw what he looked like, that was a man that wasn’t the best towards her. He abused her and tried to sell her body. But she escaped.” JD remembered the story. “And someone shot him in the leg.” JD knew that someone was Y/N. “Her face was in so much anger, I’ve never seen it before. She even put one of our bandanas over her lower face to not be seen. Of course I wanted to intervene because it was just me and mami at the time, but she let her finish him off. After that I got the body in the car, and Y/N was silent the whole night. She cried when mami tried to check on her in the back, we both were worried but Y/N explained to us what happened.” JD soon heard the guys come in with the body. “Sorry for the delay, she wanted to make us smoothies.” Finn gave Dom a cup, and Damien gave JD a cup. “She made one for me?” He smiled some. “Yea she’s warming up to you.” Damien smiled. “Now about dude.” He pointed at the body on the floor by the door. “Let’s finish with him because princess wants a game night and I’m fixing to kick some ass in Mario kart.” Damien smirked. “Like hell you will.” Dom smirked back and got up getting ready for the interrogation. JD nodded and finished up his smoothie in two gulps putting the cup down getting back to business.

Later that night,

Y/N was holding her new hello kitty plushie, watching her caregivers and JD play the switch. Her eyes were starting to heavy and she yawned some. “First yawn of the night Cookie Monster!” Dominik tickled her some making her giggle and kiss her cheek. “So who do you want for your tuck in? Remember we go to the mall tomorrow morning.” Rhea reminded her. Y/N thought about it and pointed at JD and soon a weight was dropped on his chest looking at Damien. “Really? You don’t want me or Finny princess?” She shook her head no getting off Dom’s lap kissing his cheek first then one by one the rest of the crews saying goodnight. After she walked to her bedroom, they all looked at JD. He was shocked too. “I…I don’t know what to say..” he was nervous, what if he does something wrong? He’s still a newbie to the group he would hate to be dead. “Just read her a book till she falls asleep dude you got this.” Dom smiled. JD nodded and went upstairs after.

He walked her room that just resembles a gothic like princess theme. The walls were stone and the floor a plain white tile. Lights for comfort and her bed a giant king size, he was amazed. Y/N was in her bathroom changing in her night clothes stepped out jumping seeing him up here so quick. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.” “It’s okies.” She said low and went over getting her stuffed animal and a book getting in her giant bed. He sat on the bed getting the book of 5 minute storybooks with Disney princesses inside. “Ok, nice choice. What princess you wanna hear about tonight?” She thought about it while fluffing her pillow. “I’m not sure…” she pouted not able to choose. JD smiled and closed his eyes pointing at the cover which had all the princesses on it. “Eenie meanie..mineie…” he blindly chose the princess Cinderella. “You want me to read Cinderella?” She nodded as she started to get comfy and had her stuffed animal ready.

Finn went upstairs to see what JD was up to, soon hearing heavy snoring. Knowing Y/N doesn’t snore like that, he peeked in and saw both her and JD sleep in the bed, he had his arm around her protecting her even. Finn rolled his eyes and closed the door, letting the two sleep. “He’s knocked out along with her.” Finn said. “She’s warming up to him finally.” Rhea smiled as she was helping clean up. “That’s good, I remember when she couldn’t even be around him, like hiding and stuff behind me and Damien.” Finn chuckled. “I’m glad she’s giving him a chance.” Damien mumbled as he was washing dishes. Y/N always gives a chance she’s just happy she has people that care.~

[nobodysdaydreams]

📢 I just came up with the most devasting Wolf359 AU today and you're all gonna hear about it. 🚀

My brain really chose VIOLENCE coming up with this AU on father's day.

Here is the set up: the crew gets themselves into a stalemate with Cutter and Pryce that lasts a REALLY long time. The crew can't make it to Earth without getting blown up, but Cutter and Pryce can't get what they need from the crew without gambling too much. The stalemate lasts a long time. Like a REALLY long time, at least a decade. And this is when Cutter decides to play dirty. Well, dirtier than usual, even for him.

Basically, Cutter finds Anne (Doug's daughter), and very much appeals to her the same way he appealed to Miranda, through showing her support, promising her a way to help her disability and make her even "greater" and praising her potential and accomplishment in spite of the adversity she's suffered. He also connects with her via speeches about how his (Cutter's) father never saw the potential in him either. Cutter becomes a sort of mentor to Anne under the guise of "oh look this nice science man is tutoring deaf kids. What a philanthropist!". If we want to go really dark, Cutter has Kate and the rest of Anne's family killed in a terrible accident and adopts her, but he could also just be a mentor to Anne. Either way, she ends up trusting him, and seeing him as more of a father to her than Doug, and starts growing bitter about what Doug did to her and believes that he doesn't care about her at all (Anne thinks he never called, wrote home, or anything, and Cutter stages a whole thing where Anne finds some fake recording he made to make it sound like Doug never cared about her at all so that Cutter can come in and fake comfort her).

Anyway, flash forward through the decades long stalemate between Cutter and the Hephaestus crew, and now Anne's a college student who works for Goddard Futuristics (she's considered one of the higher ups/part of Cutter's inner circle). Like Miranda has her glow in the dark eyes and night vision, Anne has specially made hearing aids created by Goddard Futuristics that allow her to hear whisperers on the other side of the ship and very subtle sounds. Anne's relationship with Pryce and Cutter would be interesting. I can see Pryce being jealous of her (for obvious reasons not to mention that fact that she gets Cutter's attention), but I can also see Pryce finding common ground with her since they have similar backstories that Cutter can't relate to (though Pryce would deny it and whenever Cutter refers to Anne as their little girl, she rolls her eyes and say something along the lines of "for the last time, I'm not playing house with you, Marcus. She's a tool. Like the rest of them."). If Pryce did go with the common ground route, it would be interesting to see if they ever ended up ganging up on Cutter for any reason (I think they'd do this if they were both mad at Hera and Doug at the same time and insisted on making decisions based on this anger), and whether Cutter would find this alliance amusing and endearing or threatening.

But back to the story. So Anne works for Goddard Futuristics now, and the anger she has towards her father has led her to buy into Cutter's philosophy of survival of the strongest, immortality/new bodies, a better future, all of it (though obviously Cutter is lying to her about some stuff because...well he's Cutter, he lies to everyone). So Doug and the crew finally have a show down with their enemies after over a decade in space and who shows up to torture them but Anne. Doug doesn't even recognize her at first, because she's an adult now, but when he does, he's devasted. Anne doesn't believe he's sorry about what he did and insists that this is what she wants now and that Cutter has been a better father to her than Doug ever could be. The crew becomes very conflicted because while they were prepared to fight Cutter and Pryce, nobody wants to kill Anne because despite what she's done, she's Doug's daughter (which is what Cutter was counting on).

Anyway, flash even more forward to Anne discovering recordings that prove her father cares about her and that Cutter is a horrible person, and she eventually breaks down and flips sides. I don't think Pryce would be sad to see her go, and if she was, she'd either get over it, or get angry at Anne for her "betrayal". Cutter might also have more complicated feels by that point if Anne reminds him of Pryce, and I could see him trying to force her to stay. Also at one point, Anne's special hearing aids break, and that's when she discovers that Doug learned sign language for her, just in case he ever got the chance to see her again.

Anyway, feel free to lmk what you think!

[tooxmanyxships]

141 Prompt

Celebrity Romance

Brocedes

Angst with a happy ending pls.

Nico as a hollywood actor. Lewis can be f1 driver or a singer.

I have a feeling this is gonna be turned into a multi chaptered fic (if people are interested in it) so like, take this as a first chapter/snippet.

"Who is it again that's coming to the track today?" Lewis asks, sounding completely uninterested, to an annoyed looking Toto.

"Nico Rosberg," He repeats himself, rolling his eyes as Lewis blinks at him. "Come on, Lewis. You know who he is."

"I think I've vaguely heard about his scandals."

"Stop it." Toto turns more stern. "You will not ruin this for our team. I won't allow it."

Lewis didn't get all the fuss.

Suddenly this 'big' actor guy wants to show himself off on an f1 race track, and for what?

He kind of got why Toto got so excited though. Normally the celebrities wanted to check out the Redbull facility, but this one had explicitly asked for the Mercedes one.

It was something Toto could rub into Christian's face. So yeah, he got that part.

The thing he didn't get was why he had to play a part in this whole cherade and Valtteri easily got out of this mess.

"Why do you need me for this? You can lead him around the factory perfectly fine." Toto was the team principal after all.

"Because I want you to do it. That's why."

No. That wasn't the answer he wanted. Now it was clear there was something more behind this.

"Toto..."

"This is not negotiable, Lewis." Toto's words were final. "You will not let me down."

Lewis groans.

This whole thing was gonna be the death of him.

~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~

It was a big mess. Or at least that's what Lewis thought when Nico Rosberg's camera team started setting things up in the factory.

Cords were running over the floor everywhere and cameras were being set up in the most ridiculous places.

This day was gonna be torture.

And of course.... No surprise..... The man of the hour was late.

And not just 5 minutes, not even 10. The man was 2 hours late.

2 freaking hours.

Lewis' whole day plan was destroyed. Even Toto didn't seem too happy, judging by the way he kept looking at his watch.

Susie was doing all the talking to the crew. The damage control.

Lewis was just sitting on the stairs, scrolling through his phone.

At last.... At last Nico came into the factory, not even looking bothered at all by the fact that he was incredibly late to an event he himself had planned.

Or well, the pretty blonde secretary next to him probably had.

They looked so cliché. The hot shot actor with the pretty blonde secretary. They probably fucked too.

Lewis glanced up at them, looking how the blonde female was fussing over the hot shot's clothes and his hair while the actor talked to Toto.

Oh yeah.... They definitely fucked.

Lewis snorted at his own thoughts, looking back down at his phone, not even noticing that a few minutes later, 4 people were standing in front of him.

One of them cleared their throat and Lewis slowly looked up, seeing the team principal, his wife Susie, the secretary and the hot shot standing in front of him.

Toto's raised eyebrow prompted Lewis to get up from his seat.

"This is Lewis. He'll be your guide through the factory."

"Oh," Nico startled a little as he shook Lewis' outstretched hand. "I thought you were going to be my guide."

Lewis' eyes snapped towards Toto. They narrowed when he saw the guilty look on his boss' face.

"I have.... Other things to take care of, unfortunately."

Lewis scowled at Toto before turning back to Nico, realizing that he hadn't let go of his hand yet. He shook it a second time, just for spite.

"Don't worry, mister Rosberg. I'm a better guide than Toto."

It was Toto's turn to scowl this time, but there was also a little bit of surprise in his eyes.

Susie and Nico's secretary, Lewis still didn't know her name, both chuckled. Even Nico looked a tiny bit amused.

Lewis took it as a one-upping Toto.

Toto quickly regained his composure though.

"Good to see you that confident. I'll leave you to it then." He added a wink as he held his arm out for Susan they both walked away.

Lewis was fucked. He had no idea where to even start this 'grand tour'. Meanwhile Nico, and his assistant, were looking at him expectantly.

Oh he was gonna get Toto back for this.

"Okay, so, uh..." He cleared his throat. "Where would you like to start? Or do you just want to see the cars."

Nico and his assistant shared a look. Nico seemed to just look amused, but his assistant looked slightly annoyed already.

So yeah, it was pretty clear he hasn't been paying attention and doesn't have a clue on what Nico Rosberg is actually here for.

Nico turned towards him, "The next movie I'll be in will be a movie with f1 racing cars. I - - - -well, Vivi, actually...." He gestured towards the blonde assistant. "thought it would be a good idea to get some...insight before actually acting in the movie."

Lewis blinked. With all those cameras around it looked like they were doing a movie already. Not to mention that the actor looked like he didn't even want to be there at all.

This was really going great so far.

Not.

"Okay. How about I show you the cars then."

Nico shared another look with his assistant, then looked back at Lewis and shrugged.

"Sure. Whatever you want."

Whatever he wanted was to just disappear.

But he couldn't do that now, could he?

So, not knowing what else to do, Lewis started leading them towards the showroom with all the cars Mercedes ever raced with.

Of course he gave a bit of information to each one, and even though it seemed like he was listening, Nico looked like he wasn't really there. Or at least it looked like his head was somewhere else.

Lewis saw in the corner of his eyes that his assistant nudged him a few times, so that he would say something, because the cameras were rolling, but whatever he said or asked when he was nudged, Lewis could tell something was going on.

Finally the tour in the showroom was done, which meant the most important part was done apparently, and Nico got a break while the blonde assistant went to talk to the camera crew and Lewis got thanked for the tour and the explanations. Maybe he wasn't needed anymore then.

Lewis saw Nico sneak away outside. He didn't know why, but something inside him told him to follow him, so he did.

Outside the doors, Lewis looked left and right, until he saw Nico go round the corner of the factory and followed him.

When he got there, Nico was leaning against the wall, his lips curled around a cigarette that he was just lighting up.

"Did no one ever tell you those things could kill you?"

Nico raised his eyebrow, taking a drag from said cigarette, blowing out the smoke in Lewis' direction on purpose.

"Did no one ever tell you those cars could kill you?"

Lewis raised his eyebrow this time, making a show of waving his hand at the smoke, then leaned against the wall beside the actor.

"Sorry if I'm going too far, but.... It seems like you don't really want to be here."

"That's because I don't."

He called it.

"So.... Why are you here then?"

"Vivi.... Vivian made me. Said it would be good for me."

"Good for you?"

"Get some inspiration. For the movie?"

Right. The movie.

"And are you? Inspired I mean."

Nico grimaced, taking another drag, exhaling slowly.

"I'm gonna quit the movie. Someone else can have my role."

Lewis gawked at him, "Was I really that bad of a guide?"

Nico had the audacity to chuckle.

"I wouldn't know. I barely heard anything you said to be honest."

"Rude, man."

"Not your fault. I'm sure you were great. I just..... Didn't really want to listen."

Lewis was quiet. Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

Something was slowly dawning on him.

"Who did you lose?" Nico turned surprised eyes towards him. "You said that those cars could kill, so.... Who was it?"

Nico looked kind of impressed by how perceptive Lewis was, then just stared off into the distance.

"A friend. Died way too young."

"What's his name? Maybe I knew him."

"Jules. Jules Bianchi."

Lewis still remembered. That damn truck on the track.....

"I knew him," Lewis' voice was soft. "He was a really nice guy."

"Yeah. He was." Nico took one last drag of his cigarette, then stomped out the stump on the ground. "I should get back inside. Before Vivi starts thinking I've been abducted by aliens. Or just, you know... Did a runner."

Lewis chuckled, "Maybe you should just do whatever you want to do, instead of doing what people expect from you. " He startled both of them with his reply, biting his bottom lip. "Hey. If you need more guidance....."

"Oh if you'd be so kind," Nico snarked, snorting when Lewis made a mock bow.

He just had to suffer through this one more guidance.

Then he'd never have to see this insufferable actor again.

He followed him inside, where the media circus immediately started up again.

Lewis lead the rest of the tour, sometimes glancing over at Nico, who now at least tried to be more attentive this time.

When they came back to the front doors, Nico's outstretched hand was the first thing he saw.

"Thanks, Lewis. It's been....an interesting tour."

Was that a wink from the actor?

"Glad to be of service," Lewis answered, his lips curling up into a little smile when he felt the squeeze in his fingers as they shook hands. "Good luck. With whatever you decide to do."

Something sparkled in Nico's eyes. "Thanks. Maybe I'll see you again sometime."

Lewis seriously doubts that.

"Maybe." He finally felt Nico let go of his hand. He wasn't really aware of it, until he felt his hand being empty and let it drop to his side.

He watched how the crew packed up their things, how Nico and his assistant were arguing about something.

He still didn't get why it all had to be filmed, but he was a bit out of his debt here anyway.

He finally saw the crew leave, Vivian behind them, while Nico seemed to hesitate inside the doorway.

He looked behind him, searching for, and finding; Lewis' eyes.

They're just - - - staring at each other, until....

"How did it go?"

Lewis jumped a little when he heard Toto's voice behind him. He glared over his shoulder.

"Fine, I guess." Toto raised his eyebrow and Lewis shrugged. "Not sure if he gained anything from this, but, we'll see."

Toto just nodded solemnly. Lewis knew Toto would already be glad with any kind of profit they got from this.

Lewis turned his head back to the front door, but the actor was already gone.

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Chapter 1082 - Initial Thoughts

Well this one took a while to get up, likely due to Golden Week and Viz saying no chapter for 2 weeks, but we finally got a scanlation from TCB so let's delve into it!

We've ticked stuff off with Kid and Law, Garp is ongoing, what's next on the agenda?

Spoilers for the Chapter, Support the Official Release

Chopper I don't think Nami will be happy if you eat Zeus

T-Bone Nooooooo! I liked that dude

Tsuru and Sengoku lament his murder as well

I guess it didn't help T-Bone's cause that he was in a kingdom dying of starvation, still why you gotta kill the guy who literally would give you the clothes off his back?

The Cross Guild's bounty system has put some unease in the Marines about people backstabbing them, but at the same time Pirates do deal with that on the daily

Hina shows up now, seems the only prominent Marines we haven't seen recently are Fujitora and Smoker

Hina tells them that Garp went off to save Koby, and took Tsuru's granddaughter with him

The wording implies that Garp is not in SWORD himself, he just 'teamed up' with them, even though his students are in SWORD...hmmm

Over to Buggy, congratulating the guy who killed T-Bone

This guy? I want to hate it, but he probably did it out of desperation, and I know T-Bone wouldn't have fought back against a civilian...I dunno I'm still in disbelief, sad disbelief

Buggy has a system of gassing up the culprit, then assuring them that they'll have protection by joining the Cross Guild

Heh, Barley-sama

The Cross Guild have a new ship annnnd it's Buggytastic, much to Buggy's distain

Yeah you shouldn't leave any creative designs solely under your men Buggy you should've learned that from the posters

The 'Meeting Room' aka Mihawk and Crocodile's torture dungeon where they beat up Buggy's head (settle down fanfic writers!)

Crocodile is still on his plans of Utopia, Mihawk's surprisingly okay with that though, guess a single state where he can just be in peace would suit his desires too

Buggy though disagrees with the plan, stating they're doing things backwards

More context in flashback to come with Shanks and Buggy

Huh, it seems Buggy's rift with Shanks is more than just the treasure map incident, Buggy gave up on Laugh Tale because he expected Shanks to be the one to get there, but then when Roger was executed Shanks decided against going for the time being, which kinda stumped Buggy

It's an interesting new dimension that Buggy's disdain for Shanks is rooted more in disappointment, since he feels let down that Shanks didn't follow in Roger's footsteps

But since Shanks is now going after the One Piece, and Buggy is deemed his equal as a Yonko, he wants to go to Laugh Tale first

Crocodile and Mihawk of course disagree, wanting to be smarter than just picking fights with the other Yonko, but Buggy notes that it's about getting to the treasure

He then uses the crew to rally his point, reminding them all of the reason they set out to sea

Of course the minions love it, so Crocodile and Mihawk have no choice in the matter anymore

Back to the Revolutionaries and there's a ship from afar

Each of the Commanders' subordinates/vice captains are checking it out

Cow Man is Ushiano, subordinate of Morley

Metal arm girl is Ahiru, subordinate of Betty

Round Checkered dude is Gyamble, subordinate of Lindbergh

And the dude eating what looks to be a glass bottle is Jiron, subordinate of Karasu

Sabo's alive!

Gyamble you made the bet you cough it up!

Oh they're Binoculars he's eating

Sabo managed to save some Lulusia people, including the milk girl from the Ace cover story

Koala is rightfully angry and relieved at the same time

He...wasn't on Lulusia when it happened? But we saw him in the light...We haven't seen Catarina Devon for a while...though he did know the people's names

Sabo is having a private convo with Ivankov and Dragon though, noting that what he knows could endanger them

Okay Oda, are you REALLY gonna tell us what happened in the Reverie? Or are you gonna move to another situation and follow up with the Revolutionaries after Sabo's told them?

A lot going down in that chapter, as I suspected though still not done with the external plots, I must admit I do miss my merry band of pirates.

Still in disbelief about T-Bone though, might be one of the 5 fans he has but he was a good guy, one of the few good marines in that whole shindig and to be off-screened like that it just doesn't sit well with me. A big part of me hopes it's some kind of con, and maybe T-Bone faked his death so the people would have money, but that's me being Carrot4Nakama levels of hopeful.

Strangely enough Crocodile and Mihawk did lose points for me, they feel like quitters compared to Buggy's impassioned speech about pursuing the very top of your desires. I suppose Mihawk is less so since he's already the top of his field, but Crocodile feels like he just wants to be a king, even though we know from Miss Goldenweek's (coincidence?) cover story that Crocodile's dream is to be Pirate King. Buggy won some charisma points there, but you had T-Bone killed so minus points for that too! Strangely though I didn't lose points on Shanks, understanding more about why Buggy is mad was illuminating and adds more points there but part of me feels like Shanks knew something Buggy didn't, we never know what Roger said to him after returning from Laugh Tale, Roger also wanted his son to be the one who would shake the world, and Rayleigh even said 'we were too early', so I don't feel like Shanks is a quitter as much, he was waiting for the right moment.

I had no doubts that Sabo was alive, but I am curious about his comment of not being at Lulusia during the incident. He did save a bunch of people so I am more inclined to believe it's actually him, but there is that seed of doubt.

While there's 'no break next week' for Oda there might be one for Shonen Jump so we'll monitor that situation, but it feels like the most earth shattering twists of this arc are still lying in wait.

[sickbaysaturdays]

Have Mercy

By Kit @solacearchiveWhen Medic is kidnapped from her job at a mining camp to serve as conscript labor for the Imperium, she learns that survival means different things to different people, and doing no harm is never that simple.

While this story can stand on its own, it will make a lot more sense if you’ve read “Succor to the Brave,” available in the February archives of this fine blog.

Content warning for suicidal ideation (mentioned, brief) and torture (non-graphic, throughout).

“Get the damn door closed!” Rushka yelled, pulling her coat around herself.

“Sorry, sorry.” Duncan shoved his weight, which was less and less these days, against the barracks door. It thunked shut, sealing out the subzero but breathable air under the cheap radiation dome outside.

“Gonna freeze us all in our sleep,” Rushka muttered, lying back down.

Duncan ignored her and scaled the ladder to my third-tier bunk. “How’s the reading practice, little sister?”

I shut the floppy children’s workbook that one of the guards had given me. “Hard. It’s like being in grade one all over again. Did something happen?”

He shook his head and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “Nah, commandant just locked himself out of his personal computer. The security at her house was insane. Oh, but look what I got for us.” Grinning, he pulled two chocolate bars out of his coat pocket. “Swiped them right off the table when they weren’t looking.”

I squinted at the wrapper in the dim light from the window. “Star-light choc-o-late.”

“See? You’ll be fluent in Dosan before you know it.” Taking his own bar, he swung down onto the middle bunk.

I’d better be. My entire drug cabinet was labeled in the language, and the acceptable number of medication errors is zero.

The chocolate lasted me about four bites, euphoric sugar exploding in my mouth and leaving me wanting more. Chocolate, peanut butter, cinnamon cake, quickbread—once upon a time, before our world ended, I’d told Duncan I’d introduce him to quickbread, Kumitan-style.  

I would never get the chance.

Reveille called us out of bed and out into the razor-cold morning. Pulling too-thin coats around hunched shoulders, we shuffled into line, stamping our feet to keep them from going numb. Cold raked my face as I lined up next to Duncan in the yard, under the naked black sky.

“First work detail,” the guard shouted. He started pointing at people. We didn’t pay much attention; our work assignments were always the same.

The guard finished his work roster. Then he turned to the rest of us, the skilled prisoners. “You and you, follow him,” he ordered, pulling two prisoners out of line. 

I had a brief, nauseating memory of the mining rig cafeteria. The guard continued, picking one or two people out of every dozen.

“It’s going to be all right, little sister.” Duncan bent his knees and shoulder-checked me while the guard wasn’t looking. “Hang on.”

Duncan was in no position to make such promises, but I knew what he meant.

The guard made his way closer to us. I held my breath, sick with fear. I wasn’t even sure which outcome I wanted. Was it better to be picked or left behind?

When he reached Duncan, the guard shook his head. I knew what I wanted then.

“You, with him.” The guard pointed at me, then at a soldier standing by with a laser rifle. “Move!”

Duncan reached for my hand. His fingertips brushed against mine as the soldier grabbed my other arm and yanked me out of line. It was the last time we saw each other.

Different infirmary, same nightmare. No, sickbay. On a ship, it’s called sickbay. That’s what the Dosan characters above the double doors spelled out, s-ih-ck-b-ayee, with an end signifier on the last letter and a place-name marker above the /s/.

There were no other medics on the Enforcer.  The crew made vague, taunting references to what had happened to their last one.

I didn’t have much to do the first week. I studied Dosan from the few computer files I had access to. Marching orders were to sleep in sickbay in case a patient needed my help. A crewman, Suban, brought me food since I wasn’t allowed to mingle with the crew.

She was nice enough, except that sometimes she had plans with her friends and did that instead of bringing my food. I started doing the POW thing and saving the non-perishables in a safe place.

And then a corporal came in with an ingrown toenail. I digit-blocked the toe, removed the offending growth, and provided her with a sheet of care instructions from a file the previous medic had left behind.

“What the hell’s this?” she snarled, waving the slip. “Where’s my off-duty note?”

“T-there’s no r-reason you can’t go to work,” I stuttered. I was so stiff with fear I could barely talk. “The d-digital block—”

“We’re the ones with the keys, flatfoot. Now write me off duty.” Her fingers danced near her sidearm.

The safest way out of this would be to just write the damn note. I went back to the computer. My trembling fingers brought up a blank off-duty note. I made three typing mistakes filling in the blank fields. Baring her teeth, the corporal took her note and sauntered out.

I curled up under my charting desk and hugged my knees, willing the shakes to stop.

The next day, a warrant officer walked into sickbay and, before I could ask him what was wrong, grabbed me by the arms and shoved me into the bulkhead. I barely stifled a scream as he dug his fingernails into my arms.

“You write an off-duty note if someone is in here dying, you got that?” he hissed. “Some enlisted person doesn’t feel like working with an owie toe, you tell ’em too bad, they got to work. I don’t care if they’re mad about it.”

“Yes, sir,” I whimpered. I just wanted him to let go of my arms.

“Damn flatfeet. I don’t care about the labor shortage; using you is a mistake." 

Scowling, he threw me to the deck. I landed on my side on the brushed steel, reflexively curling up to protect my vital organs.

"I have to work with you, but I don’t have to treat you good,” he said, and through tears I watched his boot draw back.

Those days saw me trying to thread an impossible needle. Enlisted people want off-duty notes, fun painkillers, and whatever very non-evidence-based treatment they heard about from their friends. Officers will get very upset if enlisted people present flimsy off-duty notes or show up to their workstations high, and military sickbays simply do not stock trout bladder extract. 

Eventually, I stopped bothering to ice the bruises.

At night, I slept very lightly because there was no point in letting myself dissolve into sleep if I was just going to be yanked out of bed by an angry crewman with a cough that could not wait until morning. Instead, I dreamed of home, deep in the copper-green desert, under the dark orange sun.

Even though it was warm and there was food when Suban deigned to bring it, I wished they hadn’t pulled me out of line that day. Duncan never let me give up and stole chocolate even though he was risking his life. Rushka was good company, too, once you got past the brusque exterior. I would brave the frostnip to be with them again instead of being stuck on the Enforcer, surrounded by people who hated me.

“You gotta eat,” Suban said to me one day, trying to tempt me with some kind of vat meat and grilled vegetables. “When you first came on board, I thought you must have some gut parasite.”

“Actually, that’s because they barely fed us at the POW camp,” I said.  

“We all make sacrifices because of the war,” Suban said. “When I served on the Fist of Glory, we lived on combat biscuits and tube cheese for three weeks once.” She pushed the plate towards me. “Just a bite?”

“My friend’s still there,” I continued, ignoring the food. “My friend Duncan, he’s a software engineer. They stole us from the asteroid mine where we worked. We were civilians.”

Undaunted, Suban said, “But now you have a great opportunity to be part of the Imperium.”

And I think that was the same day they brought me the man.

He was in his forties, fifties maybe, shackled, bruised, and wearing threadbare clothes that needed a wash. He locked eyes with me, pleading silently. 

I looked away because I knew I couldn’t help.

“We need you to make him talk,” the lieutenant said as they muscled him into a chair.

I played dumb. “Talk, as in?”

“Give him drugs so he tells the truth,” the sergeant said.

“There’s nothing like that in my drug cabinet,” I said, hoping I’d concealed my horror.  

The sergeant turned to his lieutenant. “Is she telling the truth?”

The lieutenant laughed. “One way to find out.”

Torture, whether with a lieutenant’s fist or a medic’s drugs, has been proven time and again to be the most unreliable way to gather intelligence. But that’s never fit with the Imperial worldview.

I clapped a hand against my throbbing eye. The lieutenant’s boot rested on my sternum. 

“Which drugs do we give him, Medic?”

I was about to beg him not to hurt me, to insist that nothing in my drugs cabinet, or any drugs cabinet, would suit his purposes, but something inside me chose that moment to wake up.

They’d taken everything and everyone, and now I practiced medicine at gunpoint. It would never end unless I ended it.

I glared at the lieutenant with my non-bruised eye. “Just kill me.”

He made a face. “Do you know how hard it is to find medics in the first place? Gah, just get off the floor and fix the flatfoot, flatfoot.”

I shimmied out from under his boot and staggered to my feet. Approaching the prisoner, I asked, “Is it okay if I take a look at you?”

The sergeant rolled his eyes. “Oh, just do it!”

“It’s a violation of my medical oath to treat someone without their consent,” I said, emboldened by my earlier brush with death.

The prisoner didn’t speak to me, but he caught my eye and gave the slightest nod. From then on, we had an understanding. It was the same way POWs had talked back on that desolate moon: a glance, a head tilt, a flick of the eyes. Maybe if this war went on long enough, we’d develop our own code, a way to say things like I’m from Kumitan, the Cappadine Valley. If you get a chance, tell my family I’m alive.

I never saw the man again. I never knew his name, or where he was from, or if he had family who wanted to know he was alive.

He wasn’t the last.

It wasn’t often, but once a month or so, between the shipboard injuries and illnesses, they brought me a prisoner of war. 

Sometimes the injuries were minor, nothing I hadn’t sustained myself at the hands of an angry crewmember. Other times, I had to crack open the burn kits and orthopedic printing medium. I didn’t ask how any of it had happened. Partly because it wasn’t my job, and partly because I already knew.

I heard about Kumitan while I was printing a cast on a young man’s arm. All the insignias had been ripped off his Harahan planetary guard uniform.

“Hey, Medic,” one of his guards taunted. “Hey, Medic, you’re from Kumitan, right?”

“So?” I turned around, keeping an eye on my patient. Why did he care what kind of flatfoot I was? Kumitan, Harahan, we were all inferior people to him.

Giggling and sneering the whole time, they told me what their glorious Imperium had done.

Days smeared together into numbing repetition—perform hand hygiene, see patients, print care instructions, catch hell.

I was getting better at dodging blows. 

My ears rang and buzzed when soldiers baited me with lurid descriptions of what their Glorious Planetary Infantry had probably done to my family and neighbors back home.

Now when I dreamed of home, I had to dream of the past. After a while, I had to stop thinking about home at all. It made me unbearably sad.

“Oh, cheer up,” Suban told me, cutting up a piece of meat doused in gravy. “It’s steak night! No frowning on steak night.”

“I’ll eat later,” I said. I wanted to lie down and die. My patient last night had done just that. Bayonet wound to the leg, terminal shock, nothing I could do. 

Was he the first patient I’d lost on the Enforcer? Or had the weapons tech died first? I couldn’t remember.

“—steak will get cold, and nobody likes cold steak! Come on, I had to convince them to save some for you. They didn’t want to waste good meat on a flatfoot, but I told them you’re not dumb and sniveling. I mean, you could probably tutor my nieces in Dosan. You deserve—”

Suban kept talking. I focused very hard on my drug cabinet, on the labels in that ancient dead language they’d revived as an affectation.

The weapons tech died during a skirmish with Alliance forces. The Enforcer shifted into normal space, and I, being underslept, malnourished, and generally frail, passed out on the floor from the physical shock of it. I was still getting over my syncopal episode when the ship shuddered on a structural level. 

I would later learn that meant we’d been hit.

In the distance, alarms screamed their emergency messages.

I knew this feeling. It was the calm before the storm.

The storm arrived in the form of a screaming Imperial corporal with a bloody mess of a right leg staggering through the sickbay doors supported by two of his crewmates. I directed them to a bed and gloved up. First priority, stop the bleeding. He was shrieking a lot, so I mentally checked off airway and breathing.

I’d barely gotten the bleeding under control when an ensign arrived, dragging the unconscious body of her lieutenant. The lieutenant had rotten-looking burns on his face and one hand, and his dosimeter was blacked out.

“Decon, both of you,” I ordered.

The ensign glared at me, but I was more afraid of radiation than Imperial officers.

While they were scrubbing down, five more casualties came in, ambulatory but with positive radiation exposure and blood pouring out of them crying out for help I didn’t have beds I was just one little medic with no one to help—

And it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that none of my experience had prepared me for this or that I was exhausted and scared and wanted to go home (home doesn’t exist anymore) and sleep forever. I was going to deal with this because there was no other choice.

Deep breath. Fresh gloves. Into the breach. 

Hemorrhage-airway-breathing-circulation-neurological status. Plug the holes, secure the airway, support the respirations. Stop the pain. Ignore the screams and prioritize. No more beds, minor cases get chairs or blankets on the floor.

Behind me, the doors banged open. More patients.

Medicine becomes very binary at times like this. Hurt versus not hurt. Stable versus unstable. Alive versus dead, or on the way.

Corporal Leg Wound kept screaming for more painkillers I couldn’t safely give him. As long as he kept hollering, his airway was patent. Stable.

I couldn’t help the lieutenant. Forty grays is well past a lethal absorbed dose. The ensign had also taken a lot of grays when she pulled him and the others out of the irradiated section. Whether or not she’d live was beyond my control. Move on.

I moved on to the mechanic with a pelvic fracture. Stabilize with a binder to prevent blood loss. Give painkillers first because ow. I bolused fluids and blood and did a quick scan to confirm that there wasn’t any more internal bleeding. Stabilized, move on.

Which brought me to a weapons tech with a saturated homemade dressing on his upper arm that dripped blood. I apologized for the wait. He said it wasn’t no trouble in an accent that sounded far from the Imperial core. I cut the dressing away, and blood spattered my safety glasses. I slapped some sterile gauze over the wound and pressed hard. 

The wound was too close to the shoulder for a tourniquet, so it would have to be a hell of a pressure bandage.

“Step away.”

The warrant officer stood over me, sidearm hand dangling menacingly. I think it was the same warrant officer who’d kicked me for writing Corporal Toenail the off-duty note, but I had trouble telling the Imperials apart.

I tried to step back and still keep the pressure on the wound, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“This man is a deserter,” the warrant officer said. “He abandoned his post in battle. He will receive no medical care.”

“But—” On Kumitan, and every other Alliance nation-world, medical care was given without condition or stipulation. Prisoners facing life sentences for unspeakable crimes received the same standard of care as schoolchildren. It was part of the oath we took. The oath I took.

“Step away,” the warrant officer ordered. 

He unfastened the safety strap on his sidearm holster.

I should have said something. Like, what are you going to do, shoot your only medic in the middle of a battle? Or said nothing and kept the pressure on the wound and dared him to do something, and maybe he would have and maybe he wouldn’t have, but at least I’d live or die a medic.

But I froze. Some very old animal survival instinct grabbed my arms and pulled them back. 

I stepped away. The weapons tech looked at me, at the warrant officer, at the blood pouring from his arm.

“I’m sorry, I swear,” he said. 

“Glory to the Imperium!”

“Be quiet and die like a man,” the warrant officer snarled. To me, “Stay put, flatfoot.”

The weapons tech took a thousand years to die. 

Small things, like the way the sweat dripped off his face as he went into shock and the way the warrant officer laced his boots, etched themselves into my mind. I had a thousand years to do something, but I only watched.

And then there was a sickbay full of casualties to attend to, some in critical condition, and there was no time to grapple with the fact that one person had woken up that morning and a very different person would go to bed that night. That would take a while to sink in.

I could never remember if my POW with the bayonet wound had been the first patient I lost in that sickbay or the weapons tech. Funny how time goes into a blender when every day brings new horrors.  

My home was gone. My work meant nothing. The only way I could fall asleep anymore was to take strong medication and pretend it was a fatal overdose. The bruises came easier, lasted longer. Waking hours were a dream, a haze of unshed tears that had maybe caused a novel sort of encephalopathy.  

In the Kumitan tradition, members of the lifesaving professions go by titles, not names, while on duty. Driver, Pilot, Medic—it affirms the seriousness of our work.

These days, I called myself Medic because somewhere in all of it, the human part of me had died. The only thing left was the medic.

And so I practiced medicine. Some days when I was half-delirious, the work felt like a sacrifice offered at the altar of some ancient god, Hermes, Asclepius, Sekhmet, Ixtlilton, have mercy on your disciple.

It all came down to mercy. Mercy was what they lacked. Mercy was my trade. A patient came in howling from skin burnt down to exposed nerves and I shot mercy straight into their veins.

And then one day, about a Kumitan year after the reign of nightmares and angry black boots began, there was mercy for me.

Ever since the weapons tech, I got a gnawing dread whenever the battle klaxons went off. This was no different. I waited and waited until the dread overwhelmed me, and still no casualties came. Laser fire echoed down the hallway, but my sickbay was silent as a tomb.

And then two enormous laser rifles stampeded through the door, and I threw my hands in the air and begged them not to shoot me because you can dream of your death all you want, but when it comes you won’t be ready.

I did not die that day. They told me, in the simple words you would use with a child, that the Alliance controls the ship now, not the Imperials. That they would not hurt me.

And there was medicine to be practiced.  

It was finally over, and I had never felt so unwell. Syrupy exhaustion lived in my bones and my skull, no matter how much I slept. Sometimes I had nightmares, jarring, bloody fragments that woke me up gasping in a cold sweat. Bright lights hurt my eyes, and any voice louder than a murmur set my teeth on edge.

But I couldn’t tend to myself. There was work to be done, medicine to be practiced, patients to be seen. Ancient gods to be appeased.

Every morning, Corporal Flynn, my command-assigned bodyguard, knocked on my cabin door and got me up for PT. The hollow shell that used to be me put up a perfunctory argument and peeled itself out of bed, dressed, and pretended to be a person for the next twelve hours because that was what these people expected.

But I wasn’t. I had done unspeakable things, and I never didn’t think about it. 

Stretching on the gym mats, I thought about the weapons tech. Updating vaccines, I thought about the POW from Harah with the smashed-up arm. Chatting with Lucan, the medic from the Libertad, I thought about Duncan, whom I had left behind on that desolate moon. Any normal life I lived after all of that would be indecent.

Corporal Flynn thought I didn’t put my name in the Kumitan survivors’ registry because I was afraid to know what happened to my family and friends. Actually, it was because I didn’t want them to know what had happened to me.

In any case, the registry was for survivors, and I had not survived.

And every so often, the floor dropped out of the universe. I thought the childhood asthma had come back, until Corporal Flynn pointed out that the β-2 agonists I was taking by the lungful only made it worse. They walked me up and down the less-trafficked corridors, or sometimes just held me until the shakes stopped. We didn’t talk about it after.

Usually, the episodes came right after I was done practicing some serious medicine. On the Enforcer, I’d realized medicine was like pressure holding the nitrogen in a deep-sea diver’s blood. Release the pressure, release the nitrogen, and you have decompression sickness.

And now there was no medicine I could practice, nothing to offer the ancient gods, no mercy for this disciple. There was no first aid kit in this cargo hold, and when I asked about the one topside, my answer was the familiar boot.

“They’ll be fine,” the warrant officer snarled, and clomped back up the ladder.

Fine, fine, fine, yes. From my position between the cargo bulkheads, I could only see their hand, and the hand hadn’t moved in a little while.

I couldn’t see the rest, but I knew they were there. Specialist Begay, Corporal Quinlan, Specialist Suarez, and a few others from the Libertad’s forces that I didn’t know. 

Gunnery Sergeant Wong had gotten Lucan and Mechanic Constanzakis to safety, I hoped, and Dr. Wick had been at the CASH hospital when we were ambushed.

Drawing my knees up to my chest, I wondered if the shackle chain was cold enough to use as an ice pack for my arm.

“Hey, flatfoot.”

“That’s Medic to you.” I didn’t even look up. Let them shoot me. I would trick them into showing mercy.

“Okay, fine. Medic.” The voice was hushed , furtive. “I got a question.”

“Trout bladder extract is a scam,” I said.

The ensign kneeling on the deck in front of me actually snorted. “No, not a medical question. You were on the Enforcer before it was captured, right?”

Where was this going? Where was the trap? Slowly, I nodded.

“Um, did you know this ensign?” She produced a digital photo and tipped it towards me.  

It showed her, younger, and another woman in military dress uniforms, fists raised in the Glorious Salute. I frowned. Most of the Enforcer’s crew were faceless monsters. But this one, I knew.

“Oh. Her.”

The ensign’s face brightened. “Do you know where she is? I couldn’t find out anything after I heard about the Enforcer.Was she taken prisoner?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I almost was. “She died in battle before the ship was captured.”

“Oh.” The ensign bit her lip and blinked hard. “Damn it, Eliza! How—what happened? You were the medic; you couldn’t save her?”

Oh, I tried. I gave that woman every radioprotective and growth factor and immunotherapeutic that I thought would help, not to mention transfusing ungodly amounts of platelets. It wasn’t enough. That old monster sepsis caught her in the end.

I wouldn’t tell her friend that, though.

“You should know, she was a hero,” I said instead. “She ran into a contaminated section to help evacuate the crew members trapped there. They survived because of her.”

Squinting through unshed tears, the ensign stared at her photograph. “Damn it, Eliza. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

The engines droned on below my feet. I leaned back against the bulkhead, wincing at the loud scrape of shackle against deck.

My lance corporal’s hand had moved a few times. At least they were alive. There was no response when I called out to them, or any of the others, but between the cargo bulkheads and the drone of the engines, they probably couldn’t hear me. Clever holding pen design on the part of our captors.

The ensign returned, walking toe to heel so her horrible boots didn’t clomp on the metal deck. She crouched in front of me.

“Medic,” she said.

I glared at her. She had some nerve coming here, knowing what they were going to do to us.

“What does the Alliance do to prisoners?” she asked.

This was interesting. “Prisoners of war?”

“Yeah.”

“Depends on what they did during the war. If there’s evidence that they committed human rights crimes, they’re sent to Station New Haag to stand trial. And yes, a flatfoot counts as a human under intersystem law.”

She ignored my barb. “And if they’re convicted?”

“They go to prison, I guess.”

“Or maybe they’re executed?”

It took me a second to realize what the word she used meant. “The Alliance has never used death as a punishment.”

“Really. What are the prisons like?”

“I’ve never been to one. But if you mean do we treat you the way you treat us, the answer is no. We show mercy.”

“Oh.” She paused and looked back over her shoulder at the ladder. “That’s not what they tell us.”

“Who do you believe about the Alliance, the Imperial propaganda machine, or someone who actually grew up there?” I asked.

She left, and I dozed against the humming bulkhead, or tried to. Sick anticipation forced my eyes open. I knew what the Imperials would do to us. Quinlan and I had skills; they would use us, especially her. In such a rabidly xenophobic society, linguists were hard to come by.

The other infantry people, my lance corporal, were only useful to the Imperium as sources of information. And Imperials showed no mercy when they thought you had information. I shuddered, thinking of all the patients who’d told me their stories without saying a word.

I did not want that to happen to Corporal Flynn but I’d failed to stop worse things.  I hugged my knees and closed my eyes and—

The ship shuddered, structure-deep, as a ship-to-ship bolt struck its hull.

The world was very far away for a while, a pale, tinny replica of something I used to recognize. I didn’t fight it. Occasionally I recognized something—the flash of laser fire, or the clomp of heavy black boots, or an ensign kneeling on the deck and shouting I’m not resisting! but none of it seemed very important.

Gunnery Sergeant Wong was in there somewhere with a big pair of laser cutters. Everything smelled of burning metal, and then she and my lance corporal embraced like old friends.

The edges sharpened. The edges belonged to the sick bay on the Libertad.

“Hey, you.” Dr. Wick smiled down at me. “How do you feel?”

I had to think about it. “Okay, I guess. Are the lance corporal and the others all right?”

“Everyone’s in one piece. Corporal Flynn went to the commissary for snacks a few minutes ago. 

Do you remember what happened?”

No. “Yes.”

“Good. You were pretty out of it when they brought you in, but I couldn’t find anything physically wrong with you. Figured I’d just let you sleep it off.”

“Thanks.” I raised myself up on my elbows, wincing as my bruises made themselves known.  

Dr. Wick put her arm around me and helped me sit up. I had the strangest urge to lean my head against her shoulder. But this was Carolyn Wick, co-author of one of the most referenced books on combat medicine. I shrugged her off and tried to look like I had it together.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked me.

“Sickbay, the Libertad.”

“Good.” She ran me through the basic neuro exam. “Is anything bothering you right now?”

There was the black, disgusting sludge that had lived under my skin since the Alliance had captured the Enforcer, but some things medicine could not fix. 

Still, being back in shackles had reminded me of old ghosts and unfinished business. And that gave me an idea.

“Medic? You with us?”

I pushed myself off the exam table. “Pardon me, Doctor. There’s some business I need to take care of.”

The prisoners from the Imperial runabout were being held in the Libertad’s brig. When Lance Corporal Flynn returned from the commissary, pockets stuffed with biscuits, I asked them to take me there.

“You sure?” they asked.

I put a hand on their shoulder. “I’ll be fine. This time, they’re the ones in cages.”

Seeing my scrubs and medical insignias, the soldier on brig duty let me inside without question. Corporal Flynn posted themself just inside the hatch.

The ensign was in the last cell, lying on the bench with her jacket open. She sat up when she saw me.

“Medic.”

“Ensign.”

“You were right,” she said, gesturing to an empty meal tray on the floor. “Three times a day.”

I wasn’t here to chat about the conditions. I pulled a couple of paper photos out of my shirt pocket and passed them through the slot. They were a few years old, but freshly printed and decent quality.

“What’s this?” the ensign asked.

“I told you what happened to your friend,” I said. “Now you help me find mine. His name is Silas Duncan. He’s a software engineer. The last place I saw him was the prisoner of war camp on satellite moon KL-33.

"We’ve captured a lot of you, and we’re going to capture even more. On the transports, at the camps, in the prisons, you show those pictures to everyone you meet. Someone’s seen him. Someone knows what happened to him. You are going to find my friend.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Corporal Flynn asked me as we stepped out of the hatch.

“I hope I will.”

“Hey, Medic, you forgot to sign the visitors’ log on your way in,” the soldier on brig duty said, tapping his tablet.

“Sorry,” I said, taking the pen he offered.

Name, the sign-in sheet demanded.

Mercy, I wrote.

—–

If you’ve read all the way to the end, please either like, reblog, or reply (you can just leave a dot or other mark so I know you were here).

Also, if you’ve been a regular reader, please consider leaving a comment in the replies!  I’m about to start a new job that will leave me with less free time, and I’m debating which direction to take these stories.  I’d like to know: do you have a favorite character or character you’d like to see more of?  What’s your favorite type of whump, either in general or in the stories?  What have your thoughts been on this story, or the series in general?

As always, enjoy your Saturday in sickbay, and make sure to tell all your whumpy friends about it.

[youwearlavenderwell]

I just know they're gonna torture us with the miscommunication trope in season 2.

First, when Oluwande and the crew tell Stede that Ed left them there to die & the last time they saw him, he was getting in touch with his emotions; singing and mourning. Stede, in his ever-delusional glory will explain, oh it must be a misunderstanding, he'd never abandon you like that, even if I did break his heart, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for all of this.

Then, when Stede and his crew finally catch up to Blackbeard and the revenge, Stede only speaks to Izzy (which is increasingly infuriating) and Izzy tells him to fuck off. This is his only warning.

"I want to speak with Ed!"

"Ed is no more, Bonnet. And he's given me orders to kill you on sight."

And what the hell is Izzy even doing here?! He betrayed Edward. Fury licks at Stede's boots.

Meanwhile, Ed truly believes that the only reason Stede would track him down is to take back his ship and his belongings. And he's too petty to play nice about it. Fuck. You. *Petulant child mode activated*

(I don't think he'd actually let Izzy kill Stede though, he'd wanna do it himself - or try to - let's hope it makes him cry).

I also think they're gonna make us wait until episode 3 or 4 before Ed and Stede actually interact again. Which will be excruciating but it is a common trope for a reason. We love the angst.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

yeah so. gonna talk a little bit abt those posts i just reblogged.

The real-life Edward Teach dealt in slave trade. The real-life Stede Bonnet owned a plantation. I just reblogged a bunch of posts about what that means for the show and what that says about the writers, and I encourage people to look at those if they haven't already (I tagged everything as #ofmd crit and will continue to do so, also if you are viewing this post on my blog you can scroll to the bottom and click the Previous Post button). The people in those posts discuss the issue much better than I can. This post is just about what this means for me, for this blog, and for the fics I have in process.

This is gonna get long so TL;DR: I am going to keep participating in this fandom. I will no longer blindly praise Waititi/Jenkins/etc. Anyone who is unable to enjoy this show or participate in this fandom due to the real-life history is perfectly within their rights to feel this way, and criticism of the show and the fandom is warranted. Criticism of my decision to continue participating in the fandom is also valid and warranted. If anyone wants to discuss this with me feel free, although I would prefer you read this whole post first. Thank you.

Honestly it's embarrassing that I (and so many others) needed to be told about the actual facts behind this show. My perception of pirates has been fully shaped by popular media, and while I had always known that the show's lighthearted tone was glossing over a lot of real-life atrocities, it never occurred to me to connect some very, very obvious dots. I thought of real-life, historical pirates as violent, murderous thieves, something the show routinely confirmed in a lighthearted way—and I was comfortable with the show spinning murder and torture as a joke. In no way was this condoning real murder, and besides, most of the murder and torture jokes were aimed towards the British, which at that point in history were actively invading and colonizing a huge chunk of the world. The show, I thought, didn't even skirt around that part of history! Unlike other shows (Bridgerton comes to mind), Our Flag Means Death acknowledged the atrocities that were occurring at that time, and was very clear with the fact that they were atrocities. I thought that pirates (both in the show and in real-world history) operated in a sort of Robin Hood-esque way, attacking and stealing from ships from European kingdoms and merchants who would trade with said kingdoms, and maybe also attacking each other if they had beef. It didn't even occur to me that, like, pirates would probably want to cash in on the whole slave trade thing going on at the time.

And then there's the part with the real-life Stede Bonnet. I'm genuinely so ashamed that I didn't put two and two together. Stede was a wealthy landowner—what kind of land did I think he owned? He just, like, had some nice gardens and that was it? He just had money from owning land and doing nothing with it? In the first episode, when he had the crew dress up and pretend not to be pirates, when the crew members of color had to pretend to be slaves, I seriously just went, "Oh, Stede has to pretend to be racist to get along with his rich racist peers that he hates," and put zero additional thought into it. That absolute lack of critical thinking was honestly so fucking pathetic and really speaks to how much my white privilege has allowed me to enjoy media uncritically for years. I'm trying to do better, and I will continue to try and do better, but this whole situation has been a lesson in how much farther I need to go.

What's more embarrassing, though, is my initial reaction to learning about the connections that the real Bonnet and Teach had to slavery. This is an ugly confession, but when I saw those posts my first instinct was to pretend I never saw it and just keep blogging about the show. I'd been having so much fun basking in some incredible firsts when it came to representation (a gay romance at the center of a mainstream show, multiple queer romances, a nonbinary character, diverse body types all being portrayed as desirable) and I wanted to keep enjoying that. Literally, in the simplest terms possible: thinking about the show made me feel good, thinking about slavery made me feel bad. I wanted to keep feeling good, and ignore the thing that made me feel bad.

But my ability to enjoy the show in the first place was a privilege. The slavery and colonization and genocide that happened in this era literally built the world I live in now and all the inequalities that I benefit from. There were people who watched this show because they heard all the hype, and ended up disappointed as yet another piece of media being praised for its diversity ended up being steeped in antiblackness. The ones who actually spoke out about this, despite the fact that this show is Tumblrs new favorite thing and that everyone and their mother have been praising Taika Waititi and David Jenkins for weeks, have stepped into the line of fire by literally just pointing out literal historical facts that should've been common knowledge to everyone from the beginning. The fact that this history wasn't common knowledge is proof of how glamorized pirates are in the public conscious, and the creators of the show really did not do enough to dispel this myth—if anything, Our Flag Means Death is just contributing to it. Yes, David Jenkins mentioned some of these truths in this one interview, but the way that soooo many people (me included) were surprised to learn that a rich landowner who lived in a British colony in 1717 owned slaves definitely shows that this one interview really did not do enough to educate people—and as far as I know, that's the only time anyone from the show acknowledged this part of the actual lives of the characters from the show.

And, y'know, maybe the right thing to do is to stop talking about this show altogether. Delete my blog, delete my fanfiction, pretend Our Flag Means Death never existed. I won't lie, a big reason (probably the biggest reason) I don't want to do that is because of my own selfish interests. I like this show. I like talking about this show. I really, really don't want to give it up.

But I also feel like me giving it up wouldn't really... do anything? I have this tiny sideblog and one chapter of a fanfiction posted that has like, some people excited, but pretty much nothing would change for anyone but me if I cut this show out of my life. I'm not going to end racism by boycotting a show. I'm not going to educate the masses about the history of slavery and piracy by deleting my blog. I feel like the only way that me not talking about the show anymore would benefit anyone is I would be able to pat myself on the back for my sacrifice.

So, instead, I'm making this post to pin at the top of my blog (and link to when I post new fics/chapters) Edit 9/25/22: jk lol. The main change is that my attitude towards the showrunners, and the show as a whole, has definitely shifted. I said a lot of things in the tags of a lot of posts that were uncritically praising the creative team behind Our Flag Means Death. I still believe this show was put together by some very talented people, but they are not without fault. I'm not going to go back and find every post I ever made or reblogged where I said I owed David Jenkins my life or whatever, partly because I'm lazy but also because I don't want to hide my past mistakes. I feel like pretending I didn't go through a learning process here would be disingenuous. I'm not going to pretend I didn't mess up, but I'm going to try to do better.

(That being said I do have like, more than 200 posts in my queue. I'm not gonna try and go through all of those to make sure I'm not asking Taika Waititi for his hand in marriage in the tags of each and every post because that would take forever, but as they come out of the queue I will try and pay attention to what I put in the tags back when I first queued it and edit them as needed. This goes for my main blog, too—I think I might have a few posts about Taika Waititi in there, and I'll watch to see what comes out of there.)

So, yeah, this post is both a disclaimer that yes, I know about the main characters owned slaves in real life, and yes, I'm still blogging about this show. Sorry. If you don't like that, that's totally valid, feel free to block me. This post is also a PSA to people who might not know that the main characters owned slaves in real life. If I'm going to keep talking about Our Flag Means Death, the least I can do is be vocal about the historical atrocities that the show is obscuring. If Jenkins et al aren't going to scream it from the rooftops, at the very least I can.

And also maybe this post is a call to action for people who were really bummed to hear about all this and their way of coping was to get really mad at the people who pointed it out: Hey! Maybe Don't Fucking Do That??? Sorry that thinking about racism makes it harder for you to enjoy your gay pirate show, but don't fucking get mad at people who were never able to enjoy the show in the first place? White fans especially, we have no right to tell POC, especially Black people, how to feel about slavery. The people who are frustrated that this show got so popular have every fucking right to feel that way. Just because a show has queer rep doesn't mean it's above criticism.

[scoopsahoy]

Would you be willing to do something with Isaac Lahey where like the reader is being tracked by Gerard and his crew without Chris and the reader wakes up and Isaac's sitting in her room and it scares her and she invites him into the bed and they talk? Fluff or smut is up to you.

ぺ  word count ⋰ 1.8k

✰  tw ⋰ none :)

❍  cw ⋰ some mentions of violence

✐  masterlist

⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★⋆★

You opened your eyes to the moonlight illuminating your room, allowing you to see your furniture. You looked to your left to the chair in the corner that your bed was against, jumping when you saw a figure sitting in it, snoring softly. You recognized him as Isaac, and you groaned.

You grabbed the extra pillow and threw it at him, and he woke from his slumber with a flinch and a mumble.

“What are you doing here?” you whispered, even though you were home alone and there was no one to wake up.

“Guarding you.”

“Well, you were sleeping.”

He rubbed his eyes to wake up. “Ugh, yeah, sorry.”

You scooted backward, clearing up enough room on your full-size bed. “Come lay down,” you said, seeing a look of hesitation on his face. “Come on, it’s more comfortable than that chair.”

He stood up and took a few steps toward the bed, laying the pillow back in its place and kicking his shoes off. He awkwardly got comfortable next to you, immediately noticing how close you two were. Your knees were touching his, which you could see made him red in the face.

“You could’ve told me you were gonna be here,” you said to break the tension. “You scared me when I woke up.”

“I just figured you would’ve said you didn’t need protection like you always do.”

“I might’ve surprised you,” you defended. “Plus, when I’m, ya know, being hunted down by Allison’s grandfather, sitting in my room without me knowing probably isn’t the best idea.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be intrusive-”

“You’re not.” Your response made him smirk. “Just warn me next time.”

He nodded once. “Will do.”

It was silent for a few seconds. Changing the subject, you asked, “Do you ever wish you could go back?”

“Go back?”

“Yeah. To before you got bit? When you were human?”

“Oh. Uh... No, not really.”

“How come?”

“Because before all this, I was still living with my dad. I’d still be getting locked in a freezer as punishment and getting beat for small things.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a good reason.”

“What about you?”

“I’m still human,” you chuckled.

“No.” He returned the laugh. “I mean before you knew about all this. Before you had to be guarded because your life is in danger.”

You thought for a second. You hadn’t known about all of this very long, only a couple of months. But Deucalion and his alphas chose you of all people to take hostage and torture because you were friends with Scott.

Isaac was the one who found you and rushed you to the hospital, taking some of your pain on the drive and revealing that he was a werewolf. Since then, you two had become good friends, and he was keen on protecting you.

But you’d also become much closer to Scott, Allison, and Lydia, and you’d also become best friends with Stiles and Kira. It surprised you that Derek was so willing to be your friend, as you’d always heard he was a recluse.

“No,” you answered. “I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t have met you. And everyone else.”

“You also wouldn’t be covered in scars.”

“True. But these are my battle scars,” you said, making him laugh. “I’m a survivor, I should flaunt it. Plus, I wouldn’t really know how to defend myself if I never knew.”

“That’s also true.”

There was a moment of silence. “Can I ask you another question?”

“Anything.”

“Do you ever miss him? Your dad?”

He took in a deep breath and you could tell it wasn’t something he was eager to talk about.

“Sometimes. I mean, we had some good memories together. Not many, but some. Plus, there’s the whole orphan thing.”

You nodded. “I get that.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mhm.”

“I see you and Stiles together a lot and... Are you guys...”

“What?”

“Together?”

You raised your eyebrows. “What? No. I think he and Malia are a thing. I don’t have feelings for him like that.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Just wondering.”

You squinted, a smirk spreading across your face. You scooted your upper body slightly closer to him, surprising him a bit.

“Why were you wondering?”

He reeled his head back slightly. His eyes landed on your lips for a couple of seconds. “I just was.”

You and Isaac had chemistry. You didn’t even realize it until you were crammed in a janitor’s closet with him after school one day, trying to hide from Deucalion. Your face was only a couple of inches from his, and the look in his eyes was pure terror.

“Isaac,” you whispered. “I’m not even a werewolf and I can hear your heart pounding.”

“Sorry, just... I thought you were gonna die out there.”

“Me? What about you?”

He shrugged. “I’d rather it be me that gets hurt than you.”

That night, seeing him step up to protect you and his friends, was the night you fell for him. He’d taken a bad beating from Ethan and Aiden, and you took him back to your house to treat his wounds.

You sat him down on the toilet and crouched in front of him. “Why aren’t you healing?” you asked frantically as you wiped dried blood from his face.

“They’re from alphas. It’ll take longer to heal.” As you began stitches on his stomach, he asked with a wince, “How do you know how to do this?”

“I got hurt a lot as a kid, and one day my dad figured band-aids weren’t enough. He taught me basic first aid and stitches and stuff.”

Sitting on the edge of your bathtub across from him, you stared down at your hands that were covered in blood. A tear dripped onto your thumb and you sniffled, getting his attention.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, getting down onto his knees and crawling over to you. He looked down at your hands, then back at your face. He reached up and wiped your cheeks, drying them off as best as he could. “It’s alright.”

“You could’ve died tonight. I watched them beat you half to death-”

“Y/N, stop. It’s okay. I’m alive.”

“You didn’t have to do that for me.”

“Like I said, I’d rather get hurt than you get hurt. Plus I’ll heal. Really, I’m fine. I can already feel it healing.”

You wiped your nose with the back of your wrist. He cringed and you looked at him. “What?”

“Stand up,” he said as he also got to his feet. You looked in the mirror and saw you had blood smeared across your cheek and upper lip. It only made you cry more, and he led you to the sink. He washed your hands off for you before taking a washcloth to your face, wiping all the blood off.

“Thanks,” you said with a small smile.

“Yeah, no problem.”

Neither of you stopped looking at each other for a moment. You were the one who looked away first when you saw he had began to slowly get closer to you.

“I can drive you home,” you offered. And that’s exactly what you did. Neither of you had been alone together since that night two weeks ago, which brings you back to laying in your bed with him, your face inches from his.

“Mm.” You scooted back to your original place. “Relax, I’m just messing with you.”

“Can I... do something?” he asked out of the blue, propping himself up on his elbow.

“Like what?”

“Something I’ve wanted to do for a while.” He leaned down and connected your lips gently, almost like he was afraid of hurting you. One hand landed on the bed by your side, keeping you next to him, and the other held his weight up.

You pulled his face into yours, deepening the kiss and immediately causing him to do the same.

The passion with which he kissed you was like no one had ever kissed you before. You could tell he’d wanted to do that for God knows how long.

In a split second, he was on top of you, his thighs settling between yours. You wrapped your legs around his, using your feet to pull his body in close to you.

His kisses traveled to your jaw, making you let out a deep breath. Your hands reached up to tangle in the back of his short hair before he sat up on his knees to pull his shirt off.

Your hands dragged over his chest and down to his lower back, feeling a few moles scattered here and there.

Just then, the two of you heard a loud bang downstairs. He broke the kiss and you looked toward your door.

“We need to leave,” he said, immediately jumping off of you and slipping his shirt back on. He grabbed your hand once the two of you had your shoes on and dragged you over to the window, jumping out first and then pulling you out behind him.

You looked down to the ground, realizing how far it was from your feet. It made your heart pound and your head spin.

He leaped off the roof and landed on the grass below, holding his arms out to catch you when you jumped. You hesitated but when you heard your door open and hit the wall, you took a deep breath and hopped into the air, landing in his arms.

He set you down onto your feet and grabbed your hand once again, running with you to his car.

When you were about two miles from your house, he pulled into the Beacon Hills Preserve and parked at the entrance, allowing the two of you to take a deep breath.

Neither of you looked at each other for a moment.

“Isaac-” You were cut off by the feeling of lips hitting yours, and you kissed him back. When the kiss ended, he looked at you.

“Are you okay?”

You nodded. “I think so.”

“Good. If anything happened to you-”

“I’m okay, Isaac. Really. I’m just glad you were there.”

He smiled at you. “Well, I have no idea where we’re gonna go now.”

“We could just sit here,” you suggested. “Hopefully they didn’t follow us.”

“I doubt they did.”

You didn’t mean to fall asleep, but you did. You hadn’t even been there an hour before you closed your eyes, and you had no idea that he was staring at you, watching you snore.

[ravens-words]

Tarlos and the Vega Girls Day In.

AN: So, I wrote this before season 3, might have written it immediately after 2x13? Not really sure- and then I completely forgot about it lol. So I figured I might as well post it since it's been written.

"I'm sorry this is so last minute, TK."

TK smiled. "It's no problem, Cap," he assured Tommy, taking the girls' backpacks from her and putting them on the couch. She and the girls followed.

"If you need anything, please call me?"

"Cap, we're gonna ba fine."

She let out a breath, rubbing at her forehead like she's trying to fend off a headache. "Everything okay with you?"

Tommy sighed. "Yeah. I'm just- this new crew is something else."

"Aw, do you miss us?" He teased her, offering her a cup of coffee.

She took it, and huffed out a laugh. "Oh, absolutely."

"You, Nancy and Tim had a rough start, too, right? Maybe you just need some time," he said in an attempt to make her feel better.

"Maybe," she said with a small smile. "Thank you again for doing this."

He beamed. "Any time," he told her, "we love having the girls over."

"They love coming here, too. Carlos is very popular in our household," she told him dryly.

TK laughed.

.

After Tommy left, TK was left alone with the two girls. He wasn't exactly nervous, but this was the first time he would have to watch them alone for an extended period of time. Carlos was a lot better than him at it.

He sat on the far end of the couch, fiddling with his phone as they watched their morning cartoons. His phone rang, and he felt his lips stretch into a grin when he saw his boyfriend's name.

"Hey, you," he greeted him, and got two identical disapproving looks from the twins.

He lifted up a hand in surrender. "Hold on," he muttered quietly as he got up and went to the kitchen, "the girls take Abby Hatcher very seriously," he told Carlos, who huffed a laugh.

"Yeah, I know. Amphibia, too," Carlos exclaimed.

TK chuckled. "Yeah. How's your day been?" He asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Not much going on- just doing paperwork."

"Oh, I bet you're loving that."

Carlos groaned. "It's killing me, TK."

He laughed.

"Hey, do we need anything from the store?"

TK hummed and opened the fridge, scanning the shelves quickly. "Orange juice," he told him, "the girls love it- oh, and some toast, too."

"OJ and toast, got it. Alright, I'll see you in a couple of hours."

"Okay. I love you," he said with a smile, "stay safe."

"Love you, too, babe."

.

TK should have known suggesting a water balloon fight would not end well for him.

The girls ended up teaming up on him, and Evie in particular had a strong right arm and freakishly good aim. TK had planned to go easy on them, but if he was being honest, now he was wishing they would go easy on him.

He'd been trying, with very little success, to get them to stop the game and go inside, but they weren't done torturing him yet apparently because all his latest suggestion got him was a water balloon to the gut.

God, he couldn't wait for Carlos to get home.

.

When Carlos got home, he was surprised to find it empty.

"TK?"

That was when he heard the girls' shrieks.

"That's cheating!"

"All's fair in love and war, Iz," his boyfriend called out, and this was followed by some laughter mixed with some more screaming from the twins.

Carlos put the grocery bags on the counter and wandered outside.

He didn't alert the three to his presence, merely stood back and watched his boyfriend run after the girls, hose in hand and spraying them with water.

He took a few seconds to just watch TK. His grin was wide and his cheeks were flushed-

happiness was a good look on him.

His gaze wandered down, to the white shirt clinging to his torso, and Carlos felt an urgent need to touch him.

He did his best to ignore it, seeing as the girls were there and there was really nothing he could do about it.

"Having fun without me?"

Three heads snapped up to look at him, and seconds later, the girls were running towards him.

He was soaking wet by the time they let him go, and he saw TK stifling a laugh at his expense as Carlos' shirt clung to his sides uncomfortably.

Carlos, without taking his eyes off TK, who was slowly making his way towards him, addressed Evie and Izzy. "Girls, why don't you two go change? I'll start on lunch soon."

They both nodded immediately and TK huffed. "You didn't even have to repeat it once."

Carlos grinned smugly.

Once the girls disappeared inside, Carlos wasted no time in closing the distance between him and TK.

TK came willingly, a lazy smile on his face as he let Carlos drag him into his arms for those last two steps. His cold arms settled around Carlos' neck, and he shivered. Carlos' own arms wrapped around his waist, and he pulled him close, not even caring about how wet his own shirt was now.

He kissed him, slow and sweet, and responded with equal desire when TK deepened it. TK's nails scratched at the hairs at the base of his neck, and Carlos pulled him closer still, his hands moving down to rest on his sides now, under the shirt. "Missed you today," he muttered against his lips.

TK pulled away and smiled fondly, one hand on Carlos' cheek. "Missed you too," he said quietly, then shivered again.

Carlos pulled him in again, the kiss deeper, and got lost in it. It didn't matter that they were both soaking wet and shivering now, all that mattered was this- them.

"Carlos," TK muttered against his lips, "the girls."

"They're-"

"Right here," the twins said, and when they looked at them, they had the exact look of exasperation on their faces.

Carlos blushed, disentangling himself from TK. "I thought you girls were changing."

"We need towels," Evie informed them.

Carlos turned to look at TK, who looked to be struggling against the urge to laugh, and rolled his eyes as he grabbed his hand. "Let's go get the girls some towels."

"Yes, sir," his boyfriend drawled.

"And maybe make some spaghetti for lunch?"

The girls cheered.

[simplee-dreaming]

I Was Acting!

A/N: Okay so this was kinda rushed because stuff kept happening but I still hope it's good!

Word count: 1846

Summary: Tom Hiddleston discovers the reader is ticklish.

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

“Great acting today guys. Let’s all get home and rest before another fantastic day tomorrow!” said the director.

You, amongst everyone else, packed up your stuff and headed back to the hotel you were staying at during filming.

You were working on a new movie, about a single father and his teenage daughter conquering real life problems as a team of two. It was a really sweet film and so far you’d had a great couple of weeks on set with the cast and crew. Tom Hiddleston was playing your father and you still couldn’t get over the excitement whenever you saw him walking around the set. You almost fainted when you met him for the first time at the read through.

You decided to get an early night and rest well before another long, but exciting, day of filming tomorrow.

The morning finally arrived and you completed your morning routine before heading off to the set. Tom was already there when you arrived, unsurprisingly.

“Good morning darling, sleep well?” He asked.

“I did indeed. You?”

“Very much so. Would you like a tea?”

“Yeah sure! Only if you’re making it though,” you winked at him. He walked into the kitchen and appeared a few minutes later with a lovely hot cup of tea to give to you.

“There’s my favourite stars! How are we feeling today?” said the director, approaching you both.

“Ready to roll!” replied Tom, you nodded.

“Awesome! Now, one of the scenes we’re filming today, as you know, is the one of just you two at home where Martin - uh, yourself, Tom - is comforting Harriet - of course, you, Y/N - after she breaks down about being bullied at school. You’re both aware of this scene happening today I assume?”

You both nodded and murmured agreement.

“Okay good. Well, it’s the first scene we’re going to film today but I’ve been speaking with the producer and we both agreed that we could add something to the scene to really show the special connection between their father/daughter relationship,” he said.

“Go on..” Tom replied.

“Would you two be comfortable with filming a little tickle scene?”

You blushed.

“See, our thought process was that after Harriet confides in Martin about her bullying, he could cheer her up by tickling her a bit - really showing the bond between them. We’ve added a couple of lines to the script which are here. Don’t worry if you forget or improvise, we have plenty of shooting time today. Would you be okay with that?”

“Absolutely fine with me! Y/N?” Tom replied.

“Hm? Oh yeah, um, yeah that’s fine,” you said, trying to act cool.

“Perfect!” The director said, handing you both a piece of paper with the new lines on. He gave you both a smile and walked off.

“Well then, better get practising,” Tom said.

“It’s only one new line each, hardly needs to be practised,” you laughed.

“I wasn’t talking about the script,” Tom said. He turned to you and winked before walking off. Your heart jumped.

The time had come for you and Tom to film that scene. You both got into position as the lights and cameras were adjusted appropriately.

“And, action!” The director called.

“I was thinking of just making an omelette for dinner. Nothing special but might be nice,” said Tom.

“Mhm,” you murmured.

“Did you just want ham and cheese? Or something more adventurous?” he asked.

“Mhm,” you repeated.

“And what was that an answer to?” he asked.

“What?” you said, looking up from your prop phone.

“I asked if you just wanted a ham and cheese omelette or something more,” Tom said.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be fine,” you replied, looking back at your prop phone.

“What’s wrong? You don’t seem yourself tonight,” Tom said.

“I’m fine,” you replied, not looking up.

“No you’re not. What’s wrong?” He asked, taking a seat next to you.

“It’s just...just some girls at school. They’re not exactly the nicest,” you sighed, hanging your head.

“Is it the same girls as last term?” he asked. You nodded.

“Oh Harriet, why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I thought I could handle it,” you replied. He sighed and put an arm around you.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna contact the rest of the PTA tonight and see the headteacher tomorrow. These girls are on file from the last time they bullied you so it won’t take much to make sure they’re punished. I’m sure the other parents on the PTA will have something against them too. Does that sound good?” he said. You nodded again.

“Good. But right now I gotta make sure my little girl is happy,”

“I’m not little anymore, Dad,” you replied.

“You are to me. Now come on, where’s that smile?” he asked. You continued to hang your head. He moved his hand down and gave your side a squeeze. You yelped, not expecting him to tickle you at that moment. He looked at you, a mischievous look in his eye. He squeezed your side again, making you yelp louder and twist away from him.

“Nohoho!” You giggled.

“My little girl is still just as ticklish,” he teased. You fell backwards into the sofa when he started clawing at your tummy.

“AHAHAHA NO!” You cried. He laughed with you, clearly surprised at your reaction.

“I’m just cheering you up!” He said, squeezing your sides again. You latched your hands onto his wrists to try and pull him off you.

“NO PLEHEHEASE!” You yelled, trying so hard not to scream “Tom” and ruin the scene.

“And cut!” the director shouted. Tom instantly stopped and helped you sit up on the sofa.

“That was the perfect take guys! Alright, break for 30 then back for the next scene. Nice job Y/N and Tom,” the director said, applauding you both. The rest of the crew disbanded to go on break. You and Tom were still sat on the set sofa. He looked at you.

“So…” he said, smiling.

“So?” you asked.

“So, how long were you gonna hide this from me?” He asked.

“Hide what?...” you replied.

“You know what,” he said, grinning at you. He poked your side and you yelped.

“Tom...no…” you said, panicked.

“You’re really ticklish Y/N, I can’t just ignore that,” he said. The smirk on his face gave you butterflies.

“No I’m not, I was just acting,” you said, faking confidence. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t believe you. He slid across the sofa towards you and the sudden movement made you panic. You leapt up from the sofa and fled.

“Oh no you don’t!” He yelled, running after you. You looked back and screamed when you saw him chasing you.

You ran round the corner and headed towards the back of the set. You turned another corner and found yourself at a dead end. You slowly turned around and found Tom standing behind you, an evil grin on his face.

“No...Tom...please…” you begged, holding your hands up in front of you.

“Well, well, well. Look what you got yourself into. A very ticklish girl, trapped. No escape,” he teased, wiggling his fingers by his sides. You took a deep breath and let the adrenaline take over. You ran towards him and tried to dodge him, thinking you could get past and escape. He was too quick for you and grabbed you by the waist, spinning you round in the air before lying you on the floor. He knelt down and straddled your waist.

“TOM WAIT!” You screamed. He let out an evil laugh before squeezing your sides again.

“Acting eh?” He teased, smiling at you as you shrieked beneath him.

“I AHAHAM AHAHACTING!” You shrieked. He moved his hands up and scratched at your ribs.

“Who-oh-oa!” He said, giggling at your reaction when he started tickling your ribs. “Bad spot?” He asked.

“NOHOHOHO!” You screamed. You grabbed his biceps as he continued to scratch and squeeze your ribs. He finally stopped and grabbed your arms, pinning them above your head.

“Ah ah ah,” he mocked telling you off. “Now then, where else are you ticklish?” He asked.

“N-nowhere…” you blatantly lied. He looked at you, eyebrow raised.

“Tell me or I’ll have to find out for myself,” he said, a teasing tone in his voice.

You stayed silent.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he gave you a sly wink and let go of your arms to shove his hands in your armpits. You slammed your arms down to your sides and shrieked louder than ever.

“My, my. Is this a bad spot?” He asked.

“AHAHAHAHAHA NOHOHOHOHO!”

“No? Are you sure? It seems pretty ticklish to me,” he said with a puzzled look on his face. He picked up the pace of his wiggling fingers and you threw your head back in ticklish agony.

“Does this tickle?” He asked.

“NOHOHO!”

“Hm,” Tom bent down and nuzzled his beard into your neck. You twisted your head to the side but he had already buried his face into the crook of your neck. Without warning, he blew a big raspberry whilst still tickling under your arms. You screamed.

“FUHUHU-AHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Did that tickle?”

“NOHOHOHOHO!”

“Damn. Okay,” he said. He shuffled himself down a little bit, his hands leaving your armpits to scribble over your ribs again. He thought for a moment before lifting up your top with his nose.

“TOHOHOHOHOM DOHOHON’T YOHOHOU DAHAHARE!” You shrieked, knowing full well what he was planning.

He grinned at you and winked before lowering his head. Your screams turned desperate after he blew raspberry after raspberry up and down your tummy. The worst one was when he blew a raspberry just under your belly button and nuzzled his beard into your tummy. It was torture.

He kept blowing raspberries on your sensitive tummy, his beard tickling you as he did so. His hands switched between tickling your ribs and your sides. You finally gave in and fell into a silent laughter, weak from the tickles. He lifted his head after one more nuzzled raspberry and ceased his attack.

“Still acting?” He asked, chuckling.

“Shut….up... “ you panted.

“Answer the question,” he said, dragging one set of nails down your tummy.

“Ohohokay, I was acting!” You giggled, swiping at his hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were this ticklish?” He asked.

“Because I knew you’d do that,” you replied.

“You say that, yet not once did you actually ask me to stop,” he said. You went silent.

“Did you want me to stop?” He asked. You blushed. You brought your hands up to hide your face and he awed at you.

“Hm, 15 minutes till we’re due back. I think round two,” he declared. He quickly grabbed your arms, before you could protest, and pinned them to your chest before bending down and blowing more raspberries on your sensitive tummy.

You were both laughing so much that you lost track of time and were 10 minutes late back to set. But you made sure to get Tom back after filming...

[sallyf4ce]

wolves

chapter II

-> sally face x f!reader

-> enemies? to lovers

-> previous | next

cw: drugs, cigarettes, abuse, panic attack

*does not follow original plot of sally face*

summary: larry knocks (y/n) off her feet, literally. later, him and sal come to apologize, bearing a gift of homemade lasagna. sal and (y/n) bond over their similar bodies. his eyes look familiar.

The sound of your skateboard and the wind brushing past your ears practically deafened you, which allowed you to think in peace. Maybe you’d survive in Nockfell.

Maybe it wasnt as bad as you made it. You’d grow close to the old apartment, push through school, leave your mother as quickly as possible, and start fresh somewhere across the world. The only thing that you wouldn’t get close to is the forest surrounding Addison. It loomed over you, day and night, dewy pines poking out at you like a warning sign. Maybe mom moved here just so she could torture you with the forest. Remind you of what happened.

Loud footsteps joined the wheels of your skateboard. You looked back, and on your trail were those two kids from the apartment. The tall one’s face was almost right in yours. You let out a small yelp as your skateboard hit a rock and sent you tumbling to the ground, completely destroying your knees in the process.

“Shit!” larry yelled out in surprise as he dodged the skateboard that went right between his legs.

You quickly reached out to your head, trying to calm the searing pain pulsing through it. What the fuck just happened?

“What the fuck?” you groan. The blue haired boy, sal, grabbed your skateboard and came up close to you. pulling down his sleeves, he quickly grabbed your knees and covered them, soaking up the gushing blood.

“Larry!” sal turned around to face him. You winced as the fabric of his sweater clung to your knees. Your hands grabbed his to pull them off but you froze. They were soft and cold, almost like snow. How would it feel to hold them longer? Would you warm them up? or would they freeze you?

What the fuck?

You snapped out of your trance and moved them off your knees. You scowl at larry and pick your skateboard back up.

“Nice job, asshat.”

His face flushes at the insult and he moves back. Sally stands up and offers you his hand, but you dont need his help (obviously a lie, your entire body was aching like a scale 8 earthquake). You shove yourself up and wipe your burning palms on your jeans. With your feet back on the skateboard (it took a few tries to get up because your knees kept buckling), you flip them off and begin skating back to addison. You just wanted a nice fucking stroll alone, why were these fucks literally everywhere you went?

It’s around 12:45 now. You came home, took a bath, bandaged up your knees and took some tylenol. Mom was already in her bedroom and there were some leftover beer bottles on the coffee table, so she probably wouldnt wake up anytime soon. you quickly trashed the bottles and decided for a quick nap on the couch, since your room was… occupied. your pyjamas, for now anyway, consisted of an oversized grey ac/dc shirt and some soft-ass spandex shorts.

“finally, a fucking break from this shit.” a content sigh escaped your lips as you threw yourself onto the cold couch.

a few knocks sounded at your door.

“(y/n)? it’s uh, it’s sal. and larry.”

“fuck.”

THEY’RE LITERALLY EVERYWHERE WHAT THE FUCKKKK AGGHHH WHY CANT THEY LEAVE YOU ALONE THEY ALREADY BUSTED YOUR KNEES LIKE WHAT

“coming.” you mumbled angrily even though they couldn’t hear you.

the blinding fluorescent lights of the hallway hit you as you opened the door. along with them came the smell of freshly baked lasagna. your eyes widened for a second, before looking up at sal. he stared at you, taking in your appearance. your hair was ruffled, eyes blinking sleepily as they adjusted to the light. your shirt had ridden up and showed a bit of your stomach. he blushed as you pulled it down and glared at him, a slight tinge of red on your own cheeks.

“larry.” he nudged his friend. the brunette walked up in front of sal, holding a pan of lasagna.

“listen man, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to fuck up your knees n shit. jus’ got excited cause of your sanity falls shirt. can we, uh, can we come in?”

Slam.

larry quickly jumped back in surprise.

“i guess that means no.”

you yelled out a quick ‘wait!’ as you cleaned up your apartment and hid your mom’s weed and other things. god, for a grown woman, she didn’t know how to clean for shit.

opening the door back up, you waved them inside.

“god, you smoke a lot.” larry coughed a bit at the smell of your apartment, which earned him a shove.

“sorry! god, sal, so mean.” he mumbled.

“s’ my mom. i only smoke outside. uh, take a seat on the couch, i’ll warm up the lasagna.” you pulled it out of larry’s hands as they both took a seat on your makeshift bed.

sal shifted. “you sleep here?” he asked, confused. maybe your room was being used as storage.

“for now. there’s some weird ghost shit going on in my room. some fucking preppy ghost woman keeps squealing when i come in.”

ghosts? you believed in ghosts? maybe they’d be able to take you on their expeditions! sal perked up at the thought of you becoming friends.

“you believe in ghosts?”

“well, i saw one, so what else could it fucking be?” you chuckled as you shoveled the now warmed up lasagna onto three plates. sal noticed and his eyes widened.

“oh, no, i- i don’t want any-” he waves his hands.

“you’re having it, i don’t care.”

larry laughs as you shove it into their hands.

“feisty, aren’t ya?” he stabs some and shoves it into his mouth. you sigh and lean back into the couch.

“you guys go to the school here, right?”

larry nods. “yeah, there’s only one school in nockfell.”

“eww, larry face, don’t chew with food in your mouth.” sally laughs. in the corner of his eyes, he thinks he can see you smile.

“yeah, we go to nockfell high. i’m assuming you’re going there too.”

“mhm. starting monday. hurry up and eat, i’m not warming it up again.” you grumble. sal doesn’t move. “god, okay, i’ll look away. i have to go clean this thing anyway.” you wave your prosthetic’s fingers.

“oh, yeah, you also have a prosthetic!” his face shifts into a child-like curiosity. it’s a face that you’ve seen before, and it makes you giggle a bit every time. you place your hand on his lap. sal does a double take and his mask raises a bit.

“you wanna touch it, don’t you. go ahead.”

“damn, sal, you get all the ladies. leave some for me.” larry chimes in, hand on his forehead in mock sadness. he chuckles.

“you gonna touch it or what?”

“uh, yeah.” sal slowly lowers his hands onto it. he traces your fingers, flexing them every once in a while. he flips your palm and looks at the graffiti ‘s’ you drew on it.

“when was this?” he looks back up at you.

“grade 10, two years ago. got bored in class and accidentally took out my sharpie instead of a dry-erase marker. god, my mom was mad.” you chuckle at the memory. she didnt let you back in the house for two days. you had to camp out in the shed, where you stored your extra food so she wouldn’t steal it.

sal hummed. “what about this one?” it was a big ‘SF’. was it for his name? of course not, she didn’t know you back then, moron. still, it warmed him up a bit.

“not for you, that’s for sure.”

“damnnn, savage!” larry put his plate down. “mind if i get more?”

“larry, we brought it for (y/n).” sal scolded.

“nah, i don’t mind. knock yourself out.” you nodded, continuing your conversation with sal.

larry trotted towards the kitchen.

larry’s point of view:

sal and (y/n) seemed to be getting along quite well. good for him, really. we might be able to coax (y/n) into our friend group. i didn’t like her at first, but i think she’s just a little stand-offish. anyway, back to the lasagna. man, i wish mom would make it more often. she only makes it for guests. where is it? oh, there. (y/n)’s going to nockfell high, right? probably should tell her about travis.

your point of view:

sal was still tracing your arm, running his pale fingers over where the prosthetic connected to your skin. the doctors could have chopped your arm off completely, up to your elbow, but you wanted to salvage as much as you could, so it stops mid-forearm.

“do you take it off often?” sal hummed. it felt a little intimate, tracing your prosthetic. it was like soothing a part of your body that was already gone. what? what was he thinking?

“mmm, i take it off every night. if i leave it on, i could get rashes ‘n shit. rashes aren’t fun. ‘m assuming you take yours off every night too.” he nods.

“i don’t like taking it off during the day. phantom limb shit, you know? it hurts a lot.” you grumble.

“got the lasagna. since you’re going to nockfell, ‘should probably tell you about travis.” larry sits down. “he’s your typical stick-up-the-ass bully. doesn’t really like sally face ‘n our crew.”

“yeah. just ignore him and you should be fine.”

“we‘ll protect you.” larry swings an arm over your shoulder.

huh? you can protect yourself. does he think you can’t? is it because of your prosthetic?

“i can do it myself, you dimwit.” you push his arm off your shoulder.

“time for you to leave.”

“woah, dude, calm down-” larry’s eyes widen in panic. he didn’t mean to offend you.

“i’m sorry!”

“i’m not hurt, just need my sleep. it’s 1:30. go on now.”

sal sets down his cold, uneaten lasagna and larry takes a quick bite out of his.

“see ya!” he mumbled, words muffled by food. you click your teeth as he walks out of your apartment and towards the elevator.

“(y/n).”

you spin around to face sal. his hand lingers on your counter.

“your knees. how are they?”

you look at his eyes through his mask. they’re light blue. like the lake that you so dreaded. like the sky that morning. like your dad’s shirt. he blinks.

“uh, f-fine. they’re fine. they should heal in a few days. time for you to go.” you grab his shoulders and shove him through the door.

“see you tomorrow?” he stumbles.

“yeah.” the door shuts with a slam and you’re filled with an overwhelming sense of dread.

oh god, not this again. your vision blurs as you try to grasp onto your breath. you can hear the blood rushing in your ears. your heart thuds like it’s going to break through your rib cage. it feels like someone is strangling you, coaxing the last breath of air from your lungs. your nails scratch at your throat desperately, your salty tears only making the marks burn more. at least the cold metal of your prosthetic cools you down a bit.

shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. you can’t wake anyone. you bite down on your lip to suppress the strangled cries leaving your mouth. god, not the lake, please. not the forest. not the huge, dirty, rabid wolf-looking creature behind your father. not his cries. please, just make it shut up. SHUT UP.

you wake up the next morning to your alarm ringing.

taglist: @purelydarling @ghostfacefricker6969 @deadpoetsandhoney

[morganayenneferburnham]

Have I Known You 20 Seconds or 20 Years? – Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter 2: You Did a Number on Me A very short summary of the fic: Y/N has been working with the crows for a few years. Her life feels complete until she meets the insufferable Nikolai Lantsov. She finds herself forced to work with the King of Ravka on one of Kaz Brekker’s crazy schemes. Word count: 2.1k A/N: Here is the 2nd chapter! If anyone wants to be added to my taglist just send me an ask or a message 😊

Chapter 2: You Did a Number on Me

“I’m going to bed. I can’t work on the more difficult tailoring for either of us until I’ve had at least a few hours of sleep.” Everyone else had gone to bed about an hour ago, leaving her and Nikolai alone for the first time since they’d met. While he had been a lot more pleasant in the last hour all she could think of now was her bed.

She slowly got up and left the room. Her head felt like it was going to implode. She was already dreaming of crawling in bed under her soft blanket, letting her feet navigate the familiar hallways and stairs.

“Y/N! Wait.” Nikolai had followed her down the hallway and caught up to her before she had a chance to reach her room. So much for my well-deserved rest.

She whirled on her heels “What do you want, Sturmhond?” Her tone had been harsher than she’d meant but she was exhausted. The last thing she wanted was to spend one more moment in the privateer’s company.

“Please, call me Nikolai.” His easy-going flirty tone was gone. He sounded genuine now, almost pleading. “Listen, I know I haven’t made it easy on you. I need you to know that this job is important to me too. I am taking it seriously despite my natural devilishly charming demeanor. My country depends on our success.”

She took a moment to consider this new version of the man standing in front of her. He had almost slipped back behind his mask, but she could tell he was sincere. She understood the urge to hide all too well. “I’m sorry Sturm – Nikolai.” She amended. “I’ll try to sleep for a couple of hours. I should be better company when I wake up.” She genuinely smiled at him for the first time since they’d started working on Dirtyhand’s crazy scheme. “I’ll do all I can to make this job a success. If only so that Kaz won’t kill me.” She laughed softly “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Y/N.” he replied with a quick bow. He left her standing in front of her door and walked back towards the slat’s main floor.

She would have to consider the different personas Nikolai had shown her, at some point, if she hoped to understand him. However, that was a problem for another day. All thoughts of the privateer left her mind when she slipped into sweet unconsciousness. — She woke to loud knocking on her door. She groaned. She was going to kill them. Whoever the idiot was. It felt like she’d only just gotten to bed.

She opened the door with enough force to almost rip it off its hinges. “What the fuck do you – ?” She was standing face to face with Zoya Nazyalensky. Oh, she thought, guess I just shut my chances straight to hell.

Zoya smirked at her. “Good morning to you too. Everyone’s waiting for you downstairs.” She turned to walk away but shot a glance over her shoulder before disappearing down the stairs, her eyes trailing Y/N from head to toe and back up appreciatively. Raising an eyebrow, she added: “You might want to get changed before joining us.”

Y/N had forgotten she was only wearing her short lacy, somewhat see-through, nightgown and felt her cheeks heat up. “Yeah, sure, tell Kaz I’ll be there in a minute.” She stammered. She leaned back against the door as soon as it closed. Oh, well maybe not straight to hell? She quickly got dressed and tailored her cheeks back to normal before making her way to the others. The last thing she needed was to be teased by her friends for being so flustered over Zoya fucking Nazyalenski. She took a deep breath before entering the room.

“How long did I sleep for? Feels like I just went to bed.” She grumbled walking through the door.

Nikolai looked at her apologetically “Judging from when I last saw you, I’d say you probably slept for two hours?”

“Alright” She ran a hand through her tangled hair. “I guess that’s all I could really hope for.” She let herself fall on the couch next to Nikolai. Kaz raised an eyebrow at her. Interesting, he thought. There had been an empty armchair, but she’d chosen to sit next to the privateer. Maybe there is hope for the job yet. Torturing her is just a nice bonus.

She turned in her seat to face Nikolai. “I’m going to get started on the more advanced tailoring. It might get a bit uncomfortable. Changing bone structure always is. Let me know if you need a break.”

He’d only nodded at her in reply. She raised her hands to his face cupping his cheek with her left hand and running the fingers of her right hand down the line of his crooked nose. “Zoya, I’ll need you to tell me if the changes I’m making get too close to his actual features. Everyone else can piss off.” The crows took her dismissal seriously and scurried off to make other preparations.

Y/N settled into her work making corrections when needed following Zoya’s comments. She leaned back to admire her work after about three hours. She’d straightened Nikolai’s nose, made it slightly larger, raised his cheekbones and brow, and rounded his strong jaw to make him appear a bit younger. “Alright, I think this should work? The only major thing left is changing your eye colour. I’ll touch everything up once more after that.” Zoya had approached to examine Y/N’s work, staying quiet. “It’d probably be easier to make them hazel instead of green.”

“No,” interjected Zoya. “His eyes are usually hazel. You should make them blue. Nice work. I don’t think I’d recognize him in the street.”

Y/N beamed at Zoya. “Blue it is! That’ll take a while. Do you need a break, Nikolai?”

“I’m alright. Do you need a break? You’ve barely slept, and you still need to tailor yourself.” Well, she thought, that’s new. When did he become so considerate? He had let her work mostly in silence since she’d started that morning. He might not be so insufferable after all. Still a bit too full of himself to her taste but not insufferable.

“I’ll take a break after I’m done with you. I’ll need you to be very still for this.” She took a good look at him. “Zoya, can you make sure no one comes to bother me while I’m finishing up?” she called.

“Sure thing. I’ll get coffee. I have a feeling we could all use some.” As soon as Zoya left the room Nikolai’s shoulders bunched.

“I’m going to start now. You need to let me know if anything’s wrong alright?” Her voice was soft. She almost sounded worried.

He flashed her a bright smile. “I have full confidence in your talents, my dear.” He straightened his back once more. “Let’s do this.” She could tell he was tired and was only putting on a show. She wished he’d stopped hiding behind the self-assured ruler persona he’d mostly shown so far but she didn’t want to push him. She said nothing, opting to get back to work instead.

By the time Zoya got back with coffee Y/N was done tailoring Nikolai. Zoya let out a low whistle. She’d almost dropped the cups she was holding.

“He looks nothing like himself!” She exclaimed. “Once this job’s done you need to come with us to Os Alta. Genya would never forgive me if she didn’t get to meet you.”

Y/N smiled at Zoya and handed Nikolai a mirror. Genya Safin was the most talented tailor in recorded history, a member of the Grisha Triumvirate. Y/N couldn’t believe she’d ever take interest in a barrel rat like her. “Zoya’s right. You’ll have to come with us, or I fear our dear Genya will attempt regicide again.”

“She wouldn’t attempt it, moi tsar. Genya doesn’t fail. She would succeed in getting rid of you.” Zoya sounded amused at the idea.

He shrugged. “She’d probably murder you, my prized general, as well.”

The crows filed in after Zoya to take in Y/N’s work. Sturmhond’s strawberry blond curls were gone, replaced by chestnut brown ones with just a touch of red when exposed to direct sunlight. His green eyes were now a deep blue, slightly bigger than they had been. His shoulders were narrower, his skin tone lighter and his facial structure completely altered. He truly looked nothing like the privateer, or king, he truly was.

“Well done, Y/N.” Kaz’s raspy voice sounded from the back of the room. “Go rest and tailor yourself. Meet us back here in three hours. We’ll go over your covers again once that’s done.” The girl nodded and made her way back to her room on the second floor. — Nikolai couldn’t help but be impressed by the work Y/N had done on him. He was used to Genya’s skills, yet he never thought he’d meet another tailor as talented. He was pretty sure Y/N had even been faster than Genya ever was. She must have had years of practice to be able to perform such advanced tailoring this efficiently.

“How does it feel, Lantsov?” Nikolai jumped. He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed Kaz standing in front of him.

“How long has she been working for you, Brekker? I’m pretty sure you have one of the most talented tailors of all time on your crew. How did you manage it? Where did you even find her?” Nikolai just couldn’t wrap his head around Brekker’s luck. How does he always manage to have the best of every field on his crew?

Kaz chuckled. “While I appreciate your new-found interest in my tailor. I’m gonna need you to focus on the task at hand until we’ve pulled off this heist.”

Nikolai had been about to reply when Y/N’s voice cut him off. “I am not yours, Kaz Brekker.” She was standing in the doorway.

Nikolai was suddenly very glad he’d been sitting. The grisha had done just as good a job on herself as she had on him. Her usually dark auburn hair was now a vibrant shade of red. Her beautiful green eyes had been replaced by a darker brown. She hadn’t needed to change her complexion, but it looked like she had changed most of her bone structure. Her face was rounder, her lips narrower, her cheeks fuller. She’d even tailored her body, reducing her natural curves to make her seem slightly taller. Nikolai would have never recognized her. Her voice, still captivating, was the only thing that hadn’t changed. He found himself looking for any trace of the girl he had spent hours observing, and even grown to appreciate, in the last few days. Even though this tailored Y/N was beautiful, he had to admit he already missed her true features.

Jesper slung his arm around her shoulders. “You surpassed yourself, love.” He guided her towards the couch. “I have no doubt the job will be a success if everything goes as smoothly as your tailoring.” He only released her to push her down by Nikolai’s side.

Jesper’s attempt to calm things had been evident to everyone, nevertheless, it had seemed to work. Y/N leaned into Nikolai’s side and took his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. “Do we look like Kaelish newlyweds yet?”

They spent the next few hours going over every single detail of their new identities. Covering everything that could come up in conversation at the party. Y/N had comfortably settled on the couch never straining too far from Nikolai, playing the role of the perfect little wife. The smell of her hair was intoxicating, and Nikolai was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on the proceedings. All he wanted to do was wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer to his own body.

Eoin and Ainsley were 24 and 22 years old. They had met two years before getting married. They had had an unusually long engagement, lasting a full year, because Ainsley’s father had gotten sick, and she’d had to take care of her sisters. They had only been married for a few months but were looking into expanding the business to support Ainsley’s family. They wanted to get settled a bit before thinking of building their own family. That’s why Ainsley was working with her husband rather than stay behind at the mansion. How the engagement came to be had already been covered multiple times. Kaz made them rehearse telling the story over and over again.

Only once Kaz was satisfied did they get to take a break and sit down for a quick dinner, which had consisted of sausages, fried potatoes, and bread rolls.

“We’ll go over everything again tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure your clothes are ready by 3 bells. You’ll need to be at Van Verent’s house by 6 bells. Go get some sleep. All of you.” No one dared contradict Kaz, as they were all half-asleep on their feet by the time they were done. —- Tagged: @power-of-words23

[gojology]

Coffee With Extra Sugar.

𝑨𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝑵𝒐𝒕𝒆 | Whew! I finished this after 1 hour and holy crap this is by far the longest thing I’ve ever written, I hope you like it. I’m literally sweating. 𝑷𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 | Gojo Satoru x Teacher Fem! Reader 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝑪𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 | 2,314 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 | None! 𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 | Gojo Satoru, the man who didn’t ever get rejected, got rejected by you. Unknowingly having a teensy tiny (or maybe not) crush on him, Nobara gets you to go on a coffee date with Gojo. Through the jumble of mixed feelings, you accept, and find yourself in a position you never thought you’d be in. One-shot.     Often times, you found yourself enjoying a nice cup of coffee with extra sugar after teaching the exceptionally unusual teens that Gojo had forced onto you. One was unlike any other, Sukuna’s vessel. Even with the threat of death looming over his head, he was one of the happiest teens you knew. Bouncing around, reminiscent of Gojo in a way. The most remarkable thing about him though, were the eyelids below his very own. Marking Sukuna’s existence on the boy’s body.        The other boy, named Fushiguro, had a troubled backstory. His father was the only one to have a complete lack of cursed energy. Maybe that was why he was always brooding, he always seemed to be off in his own land.     As for the only female, she was your favorite student. Nobara was albeit, a bit cuckoo, but that’s what you loved her for. Outside of the educational setting, she made an amazing shopping buddy and had an endless bucket list of things to do in Tokyo. Headstrong, stubborn. Happily willing to give you any sort of advice in men, even though she didn’t seem to show a particular interest in them. You told her all about the weird stuff that Gojo would do around you, and she always said that he might have a thing for you, but you never believed it until now.     The latest event had been when you were lounging in one of the spare rooms at Tokyo Jujutsu High, drinking another cup of coffee after the extreme levels of stress and torture that was training the trio. Gojo had casually strolled in, loudly announcing himself as he slid the door roughly shut.          “Oh (Y/N)! I was looking all over for you!”         “Really? I wasn’t. Leave me alone, I’m not talking to someone who calls himself a teacher and then dumps a buttload of crazy teens onto me.” you calmly replied, sticking out a pinky whilst sipping your coffee. Although you found your eyes to be glued onto Satoru.        He dramatically stuck a hand onto his chest, leaning backward just a little as if he had been told he shouldn’t have ever been born. “Me?! Oh no, I wasn’t dumping the kids onto you sugar. I’m a busy guy, being the strongest sorcerer and all.” he gloated, grinning a little.     You grunted before pulling out your phone.     “Pay attention to me, why don’t you?” he muttered softly, digging his hands into his back pockets.     Did you hear that right?    Clearing his throat, he loudly sat down next to you, even though there was another chair on the other side of the table. Crossing his legs, he began to speak.     “So, (Y/N), I felt really bad for dumping the kids onto you, and I thought, hey! Why don’t I take you out for a meal or two? You know we don’t really know each other out of work and I’ve been meaning to talk to you more-”     “No.”     “Why not?” combing his hair with his hands, he almost looked sad, but you knew where it was going to go. You had seen Gojo date girls for 2 weeks and break up with them after. It’d be weird to date a co-worker for an astounding total of 2 weeks and then immediately get broken up with afterwards. Besides, he was probably horny and hadn’t found a girl willing enough to talk to him back, even despite a face and body that looked like it was sculpted by the Gods.     “I know what you do with girls, just fuck with them, not looking for that.” You scrolled through the article you were reading, something about some 11 year old child getting their cancer removed miraculously, probably a super nice jujutsu sorcerer.    The silence grew between you two, Gojo’s eye shifting to you when you weren’t looking, and your eyes shifting to him when he wasn’t looking. You almost wished you were a bit friendlier.     “Right.” he mumbled to himself, before getting up and walking to the door. You felt something bad growing inside of you.    Looking back at you one last time, he shut the door.     “I’m telling you, (Y/N), Gojo-Sensei was trying to ask you out, ARE YOU THAT DENSE?” snapped Nobara, who was busily lecturing you about how you had seriously fucked up.     “I didn’t know!” you whined, “I thought he was just being stupidly friendly! It didn’t cross my mind!”     “Gosh, woman, men aren’t hard to work. Gojo is 100 times easier, hand him a box of candies and he’ll probably whip out a ring. All you had to say was yes!”     “...What if I didn’t want to say yes?” you shot back.     “Hah, shut up, I’ve heard the way you’ve described that man, acted as if he descended down from heaven”    You definitely didn’t have a crush on him, but you did let your mind wander sometimes, in some indecent areas sure, but wasn’t that true for everyone?    “Okay, and what do you want me to do now? Want me to just.. Go talk to him and ask for the chance back? That’s embarrassing, and as I said, I don’t have a thing for him.”    “I’ll snag that chance back for you, but you seriously owe me one. I’ll even get Fushiguro and Yuuji on board, but they’re almost always doing stupid stuff and I have to convince them with the weirdest shit to get them to cooperate.”     “Nobara, no cursing first of all, there was no reason to, plus I don’t NEED the date, why are you even-”     “Oh shut up.”     The next day, you found yourself urgently rushed to a coffee shop by a poorly disguised Nobara, Yuuji, and a less then willing Fushiguro. You scanned the shop, the scent of coffee so strong it wafted out of the interior. Gleaming windows with, “Kento and Coffee Inc.” proudly painted on the window.     Wearing a white t-shirt and a long trench coat, with a long plaid skirt, you found yourself self-conscious. Were you too overdressed? Nobara had told you that you were supposed to dress in a cute “dark academia” (whatever the heck that is, she showed you a few pictures of it online though.) style of fashion.     “Don’t worry! Just follow whatever I said earlier, I’m an amazing Cupid and I just know there’s something between you two! I’ll be in the corner, watching you guys, just don’t mess up!” Nobara chirped, handing you a red scarf to borrow from her closet.     You hastily threw it on, taking a deep breath in and breathing out. Trying to casually stroll into the coffee shop.    There Gojo sat, casually dressed in a black t-shirt. A pair of circular black shades perched on his nose, lazily eating a cake pop.     Your heart skipped a beat, even though he probably didn’t even try with the outfit he wore, you still found him absurdly attractive.    He jumped up, “Oh fuck, I thought everyone ghosted me.” he looked at you, tilting his head slightly as if he was confused. “I thought Yuuji and the crew were gonna be here too. Didn’t ever show though, do you know what happened to them?”     “O-Oh, um, yeah, I think I heard that Yuuji and Nobara got distracted and was going to some newly opened sushi restaurant instead. Fushiguro didn’t wanna thirdwheel or something like that.”     You swore you saw him smile slightly.    “So it’s just you, and me?”    You looked around, hoping to God that Yuuji would pop up and tell the world about his love for Jennifer Lawrence.     “It would.. Appear so.”    He clasped his hands together, beckoning at the cashier at front. “I’ll go get some coffee for us, any idea what you want yet?”     “Uh, just coffee with extra sugar.”     “Gotcha.”     You found yourself staring at his hands, playing with the hem of his pocket as he walked up to the small line. His fingers were impossibly long, and you couldn’t help but realize how veiny and large his hands were.     Snapping yourself out of your daze, you grumbled, taking the trench coat off, it had suddenly gotten hot. Pulling out your phone, you pretended to read, but in actuality you found yourself ogling his impossibly tall body, and how undeniably hot his voice was.     It was alright to find him attractive right? Sure, you hated a lot about him, like, like... Well, you couldn’t think of anything off the top of your head right now. But you for sure knew you hated him.    Yuuji snickered, “Gojo’s girlfriend is getting flustered, look at her cheeks.” He giggled, pointing at you. Fushiguro slapped Yuuji’s pointed hand down, hissing at him, “You’re going to fuck over this operation. Didn’t your mom ever tell you to NOT point?”     “I don’t even have a-”     “SHHHHHHH!” Nobara shushed them, gesturing to Gojo now walking over to the table where you were sitting.    He slid the chair out and sat down, grunting as he did. He looked down at you. “So, anything new with the kids?”     You gulped, a warmth flooding to your cheeks, the way he looked at you made you feel weird, and you couldn’t find yourself to make a cheeky remark.     “U-Uh, um, no, uh, Fushi-, I meant Yuuji, he’s doing as good as usual... And uh, Nobara’s doing pretty good too! Fushiguro’s just... Uh, you know, haha” you giggled nervously, “acting as normal.”    He laughed, “That’s Fushiguro, guy doesn’t even crack a smile. Yuuji’s a special one isn’t he? No idea how he acts all cheerful even though he knows he’s gonna, you know.”     “Guy doesn’t deserve it.”     “I know.” you pursed your lips, not wanting to talk about such a serious topic.     Seemingly noticing your discomfort, he turned his head over to the cashier who was now loudly shouting, “Order 132! Order 132! Two regular coffees with extra sugar, 2 donuts, 4 cake pops, and a slice of cake!”     “That’s our order~, what good timing!” Gojo sang, immediately springing up to fetch the coffee and the absurd amount of sweets Gojo had ordered.     “Gojo-Sensei sure does have a sweet tooth.” Yuuji pointed out, looking at Gojo casually walking back and handing you your coffee.     “Yuuji, did you seriously just notice that?”     “Yes. Why? Do you look at Gojo-Sensei eat? You’re really weird Fushiguro.”     Fushiguro let out a sigh, and Nobara giggled, but now all their attention was focused at the pair, drinking their coffee.    “So, uh, any idea why the kids invited us here?” he said, playing with his strikingly white hair. Your stomach did backflips, it looked so soft. Wait, fuck, why were you even thinking these things?

   “Uh, yeah, something about.. Um,” FUCK. You were supposed to say you didn’t know.    “Something about... Putting us on a... Blind date?” You mumbled sheepishly, Nobara crumpled on the table, murmuring about how stupid you were.     Shit, fucking shit, you weren’t supposed to be honest. 

   “Really now?” Gojo inquired, lifting an eyebrow and putting his arm on the table, leaning his face onto his hand. He took a bite out of his donut.     Now your face was really burning, why were you acting so strange?     Could it be true?     You had a crush on Gojo Satoru?     At first, you wanted to reject it, but the feeling settled in. It made more sense to you then not having a crush on Satoru. The feeling of regret when he tried asking you out, the many times where you found yourself ogling when he was naked, the amount of dreams you had about him.    You really did have a crush on him, huh?    You stammered, a rush of self-confidence flooding into you, “Fuck it.” you breathily mumbled, “I like you, Satoru.”     The doubt settled in as soon as Gojo looked at you, wide eyed, mouth slightly agape. Nobara was even shocked herself, she had never seen you as headstrong as this.    Fushiguro and Yuuji were in an intense discussion about their preference in women, well, more like Yuuji, Fushiguro was ignoring him, looking at the wall instead of the surprising twist in the date.    “You like me, (Y/N)?”     “Fuck, yeah, yeah I do.” you looked at his shades, oh how you wish you could see his eyes right now.     A slow grin spread across his face.     “I like you too, (Y/N).”

   Nobara, now quietly cheering and shaking Itadori and Fushiguro gesturing to you two, chewed them out for not seeing the events building up to the climax. 

   “Really?”

   “Yes, really, sugar.”

   Everything felt unreal, you had never thought you would find yourself in this position ever, was this a dream? You tried pinching yourself.

  He snickered, “No (Y/N), this isn’t a dream. I really do like you.” he rubbed the back of his neck, readjusting his crooked shades. “I would even say I’ve liked you for a while.” 

   It had never dawned on you that he wasn’t being flirtatious just to be flirtatious, he was actually actively trying to

get you.

“I can’t wait to tell the kids this.” he grinned to you, smiling widely. “Fuck, this feels like a dream to me too. I didn’t think you actually showed any interest in me.” 

   You couldn’t even be cheeky back, you were in a state of euphoria. 

   “Actually sensei.” you turned to look who was talking, Yuuji was excitingly bouncing up and down. Fushiguro looked like he wanted to be launched off a roof.     “We set up the blind date.” Nobara smiled, looking at the pair. “You know, I’ve always seen the romance and chemistry between you two, and you guys finally worked it out like adults!”   

    Why did you get the feeling that she was mocking you too?       Regardless, you had walked into the coffee shop single, and you walked out with the guy who had stolen your heart for years now, without you even realizing.     All thanks to Nobara.