#a lot of stuff about the sixties

[omg-hellgirl]

The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Cream, Spencer Davis and ‘Keep On Running,’ The Animals, The Byrds, The Troggs and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, emphasized the differences between us: Youth and Them, them were the tired and old warmongers.

— Angie Bowie on her new blog.

[listenupcupcakes]

What's your favorite song? You can't say the american anthem

Hmmm...

I DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING ELSE!

[violasmirabiles]

fucking Hate how i can never start anything on time ive a deadline tomorrow by which im . supposed to have written like 8k ish words. masters thesis theory section, THE part i hate writing the most. (i am not going to be able to turn in Anything tomorrow even if i work on it all day. luckily i know mr professor man probably wont be able to read it and Definitely wont be able to discuss it with me till like january. do want to be done with this by christmas though i hate that this alwaysssssss happens) like. i know What im going to write, i know all the things i need to include. i have pretty good sources. its like. the Finished Product is like this polished gem thats rotating in the center of my brain. but theres a ton of crap between me and the finished product and i have to pour all that crap into 28523804 draft files before i reach the stuff i REALLY want to say. a million tangents that go nowhere. soooo many instances of im totally blanking on one (1) word of this sentence so i cannot form it At All so i cannot continue working on this because no. fucking hell. i KNOW this is an issue. the PROFESSOR knows this is an issue. he also knows damn well i wasnt going to be able to do anything last week (thats why the deadline is tomorrow instead of last friday - i had choir stuff every day from monday to friday). fucking hell. mentally bonking myself on the head with a cardboard tube. repeatedly. also earlier this week at a peer support group (theres four of us and all have adhd and/or are autistic) we talked about this exact fucking thingggggg

today i somehow created six (6) separate draft files when i was trying to like. convey one (1) idea. every single one of those files looks like i just threw up over the keyboard. really truly fucking hope that when i wake up tomorrow i have a Thought in my brain that i can Word so i can. get this thing to work. cos i know its In there. theres just. so much fucking shit separating it from whatevers floating on the surface. 

also this posts just the equivalent of screaming into the void cos if i dont Let This Out i wont fucking sleep cos ill be Thinking about it. sighs for a thousand years

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

So I just updated Heroes and saw that they changed the characters on the downloading screen to match the new CYL

and once again

they still have Ike

good. for. them.

[inbabylontheywept]

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

she then told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and go to heaven, and be able to talk to the worms face to face. that i'd be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident, driven only by excessive Love, and that she was positive they would forgive me because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

[chaos--mode]

sixty is a fox - but not in the clever and wise and tricksy way foxes are so often used (though he is two of those things)

sixty is a fox in the sense that they're scrappy. he has sharp teeth and a sharper tongue. he is quiet, he watches and waits and stays on the sidelines until he's at a clear and malleable advantage. sixty is mean and quick and sometimes even cruel, and also they are small and playful and curious.

sixty is a lone, feral fox with scraggly fur and bared teeth. he walks around with his hackles raised, back bowed, ready to defend himself, to pull back at the slightest sign of disquiet

[raddishwrites]

First Sentences - Fic Author Tag Game

Rules: post the first sentence of your last ten fics. If you haven’t written ten fics, share as many first sentences as you have.

I’m tagging myself idgaf, nothing but the first is posted so no other links.

1. Moonlight and Roses: Even past the constant, painful din of the hospital, Connor recognizes the metronome of clacking down the hall.

I don’t mind it. I can’t remember why I wrote the first scene in present tense though.

2. I Like Dogs part two, TBD: When his new ‘partner’ came out of his house mercifully shortly, Gavin was staring, incredulous.

Lil sneak peek that may or may not change. ;3

3. Next time we’ll dance slow (working title): “Connor—” came a low hiss from behind, though it went ignored.

Eh it’s fine ig. Another teaser.

4. More Than One Emergency Exit: One minute Connor was scanning over the crowd, more comfortable feeling like a bodyguard than the fifth representative cast over a sea of his people.

This is worded a little awkwardly and it’ll likely change before I publish this oneshot.

5. Detroit’s Shitty Weather has Upsides, Too (working title): “I think he’s sort of like a cat,” Tina said as she and Gavin stood at a table in the break room, casually leaning on its surface and staring at the back of Nines’ head across the bullpen like teenagers in the food court at the mall.

I took this prompt and another one from someplace and smashed them together to do another oneshot I should do a final edit for and post :P

6. Why do Chihuahuas bite? : Nines was not one to waste words.

Hahaha amazing! This is for another oneshot that’s basically done I have posted nothing but I have a BACKLOG.

7. Revenge: [MISSION PARAMETERS: ISOLATE AND ELIMINATE DT. GAVIN REED] loading... loading... [MISSION PARAMETERS: ISOLATE AND ELIMINATE DT. GAVIN REED] accepted.

This is the longfic I was working on before ILD, I restarted this thing three times with different first chapters, I lost my mind. I have like 300k words of this story though in three structured parts. Almost entirely out of order. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

8. Replace: Strolling into CyberLife Tower like he owned the place (which hadn’t been even tangentially true for more than a decade now), Gavin Reed quickly caught sight of the small gathering of people across the vast lobby that was the open space of the ground floor.

This is the start of part two of that longfic, a scene I actually like. Yes this includes the halfbrothers headcanon.

9. Revenge (Connor POV, TBD): Connor was not one to be known as ‘unapologetic’ generally, but in this case it suited him fine.

So I did have a shorter parallel fic planned to run alongside Revenge. Same story but Revenge follows Nines and Gavin. This follows Connor, Hank, and Markus. I realise Connor as ‘apologetic’ could raise questions, especially since this is a post game fic. I maintain this opening line is actually totally based considering what comes after. (Heads up the third part ‘Reclaim’ doesn’t have an official first scene/chapter. Just rough drafted scenes and an outline. That’s why it’s not on here)

10. Hm well I could do an old fic I haven’t touched in years for a fandom I’m not in anymore and don’t want to be… or an NSFW fic drabble…

I’m doing neither you get nine that’s it.

Not tagging anyone else either, but please do if you write and you see this.

[drchucktingle]

devils moaning on detransitioning

wild that conservatives trot out stuff about detransitioning when many studies show numbers around 1 percent. then you look at how many people regret ANY cosmetic surgery and its 60 percent. so trans people are SIXTY TIMES more likely to understand body and NOT regret change

they will say things like ‘1000 people regret’ which SOUNDS big until you see that is out of 100,000 transitions and then realize the average of regret for ANY ccosmetic changes would be 60,000 people. they frame it how they want but honestly these numbers are EXTREMELY PRO TRANS

what the science says is ‘wow trans people really put a lot of care into this and know what they are doing SIXTY TIMES MORE OFTEN’. honestly even if it was twice as much it would be a big deal but SIXTY TIMES. anyway something to think on while the goofball devils moan and groan

here are some sources but you can look this up yourself: HERE and HERE

[ms-demeanor]

My MiL gave me cash for my birthday so I ordered one of those criss-cross chairs with it because my office chair has been nearing retirement age and so far my review is:

Essentially no cushion; this is not a problem for me, both because I own cushions and because of my generous ass, but could be a problem for some.

I am going to sit in this like a goblin until my hips dislocate and I am so fucking happy about it.

Pairs well with a footrest and a bluetooth keyboard that allows me to keep my hands in an incredibly comfortable neutral position in my lap while typing.

IS actually big enough for me to sit with my legs crossed and I am *not* a small person.

Tiny Bastard approved because of increased lap-sitting space.

My legs do not properly fit under my desk when crossed, which may become an issue if I'm doing things like art that require me to be closer to the monitor than normal.

Both this and my other desk chair that i've been using since 2020 were about sixty bucks on amazon and are about the quality you'd expect for that price but that means that I'm expecting about 3-4 years of life out of this chair and 20 bucks a year isn't that bad honestly.

I feel like this would be very fatiguing for a lot of people to sit in but if you've got weird back stuff going on and accessories that will allow you to have a less traditional desk setup it seems pretty cool.

[ddejavvu]

hi hi honestly love your work to death truly! it’s absolutely amazing. i was thinking about deadpool (he’s the loml, think about him daily) but imagine shutting him up by riding his face. feel like he’d still find a way to talk but yeah. no pressure! MWAH!

this post is 18+, minors dni.

cw for impact play (?), reader slaps him, lots of degradation towards wade

It's somewhere between Wade's sixtieth and sixty-first quip of the night, something inside of you snaps and your hand connects roughly to his masked face.

"Fuck, do you ever shut up?" You waste no time in bunching your hand into the fabric of his mask, nails scraping painfully against his nose though the mask doesn't budge. He yelps, either in pain, surprise, or some lustful mixture of the two, and you drag his face sideways so that you can shove him down onto the mattress.

"Woah, usually I have to pay extra for this treatment," Wade jokes, and your desire to shut him up has you straddling his face roughly- no warning, no mercy. Your sex presses hot and heavy against his mask, and you can already feel his tongue scraping desperately against the fabric that separates your skin from his.

"You're so fucking annoying," You seethe, keeping a hand on his head while you begin grinding your hips over his face, paying particular attention to his mouth and nose so that he can't speak, "If I have to hear one more of your stupid, shitty frat jokes, I'll spear myself with your sword."

"I was planning on-" Wade's voice chokes out as you squeeze your legs together, but he stutters out the remaining syllables, "Spearing you with my sword already, hot stuff."

"You're not." You grind roughly against his face, nearly smothering him, "Fucking." Another roll of your hips, more writhing as Wade attempts to access your warm, wet cunt, "Funny. You're a loser. You're fucking lucky you're getting this close to my pussy, and you're wasting the time reciting a dad joke book that kids get for Father's Day when they can't be bothered to find out what their dad actually likes."

"You're- right." Wade grits, greedy hands grabbing for your ass as you ride his face, "Never liked my dad. Got him three copies of those things over the years. He did not appreciate the one about the-"

"I'm gonna fucking kill you," You vow, rage in your voice as brutal as the way your hips smother his face, "I'm gonna choke you, and I'm gonna leave your useless body in a pig pen- they don't leave evidence. They'll tear you apart in seconds."

"Call that a- agh! Colla-boar-ation," Wade gasps, fighting for air as your thighs grip his head tightly, "Page 74 in the book!"

[lowkeyrobin]

UMBRELLA! BEN ; a million timelines

summary ; you'll always end up with one certain face in every universe and timeline

warnings ; language

disclaimers ; ben isn't dead, umbrella! ben in fact bc I love that dork sm, viktor is already transitioned the whole way through, random word vomit

track ; not a lot, just forever, adrianne lenker

word count ; 1.1k

masterlist

It seemed in every timeline, you'd be semy straight back to Ben's side.

You were intertwined, sewn together, in fact.

In 2019, you were reunited with him after Sir Reginald Hargreeves' death. You hadn't seen each other since you were kids, it'd been years.

You didn't have any special powers like the Hargreeves' did, you were just their normal friend who lived next door above the laundromat. You came back to town for other reasons, but when you heard the news, you had to go see them.

Your eyes first landed on Viktor, his short hair completely different from his old, long, luscious locks. You immediately smiled, wrapping him in a solemn hug, congratulating him yet showing remorse and compassion over his dad's timely demise.

You went through the rest of the siblings, other than Five, as he'd gone missing all those years ago.

Then up came Ben.

You could feel the soft look on his face as he looked at you, finally being reunited after all this time. He was by far your favorite of the academy, holding a special spot in your heart.

It wasn't just that his cool tentacle shit that drew you to him. He was a total dork, and you adored it. He always found a way to make you smile, he noticed the smallest of things, he was so sweet and compassionate. He could light up a room like a flashlight in the dark.

He wrapped you in a hug, spinning you around in joy.

"Oh my God, Y/n!"

"Ben!"

Your smiles were unmatched, the other siblings watching with little smiles, nostalgia crashing against their mental shores. They loved you too, but they also loved seeing their two favorite people together again.

"God, why are you here?"

"Came back for some stuff, but also for you guys. Sorry about your dad"

"It was coming-"

"He was murdered"

"Luther!"

You softly chuckle, hiding your face in his shoulder, enjoying the sweet dopamine rush infecting your brain.

You were stuck to Ben by the hip, almost literally, as you landed on cold, wet concrete on April 28th, 1960. You share a panicked look, calling for any of the other Hargreeves' before eventually giving in to failure.

At least you still had each other.

You spent the next three years thinking the others were dead and that you were permanently trapped in the sixties. You worked in a bar, and he worked right beside you. You both didn't understand that without degrees, you were hired, but it was much better than nothing.

Then you were reunited with Klaus, then Five, then the others.

But of course, some weird fuck up in the space time continuum forced the world to attempt to kill itself, again.

And once again, you stood behind Ben as he unleashed the tentacles from his internal organs to protect you and his family.

Good God, what did you do to get wrapped up in all this?

That lead you all astray again back in 2019, thankfully, but some other superpowered people had taken the Umbrella Academy's place. The Sparrow Academy.

But once again, you were right by Ben's side.

You were at his side during the first Kugelblitz, travelling with Five and Klaus to meet Klaus' already deceased mom, and at the end-of-the-world wedding between Luther and Sloane.

You now sit at the bar at the Hotel Obisidian, sipping on mocktails as you watch Luther and Sloane break it down on the dance floor. A tune calls your name, screaming for you and Ben to jump out there.

Just Like Heaven by The Cure.

"Oh my God, we loved The Cure when we were little!" You giggle, only a buzz directing the slight slur in your words.

Ben smiles, "We did"

"Come on" You quickly set your glass down on the counter, looking over at Ben, who hasn't moved, giving you a raised eyebrow. "C'mon, Ben"

He looks over at Five who rolls his eyes, sipping on some sort of champagne. Ben gives into your pleads, setting his glass down to go with you.

You join Luther and Sloane, and Klaus and Viktor, on the dance floor, allowing the song to consume you inside out. You jump about, singing along to the lyrics as you hold each other's hands.

Colorful lights splash upon your faces, blinding you for milliseconds as they pass you by.

Five, now accompanied by Diego and Lila, watches you two from afar. He lightly smiles, enjoying the smiles on your faces as you await to be disintegrated into dust as the world crumbles around you.

"Even in every jump across the space time continuum and in every alternate timeline that will somehow find a way to end, they're always at the end together" Five observes, glancing over at the couple, elbows rested against the bar behind him.

Lila gives him a cringed look, not understanding a word of the gibberish he'd just spoken. Diego sighs and shakes his head, taking a bite out of a bologna sandwich he made for himself.

"It's cute," Five clarifies.

"Why don't you get out there?" Diego asks Five, "The world is about to end. Enjoy it, Ebenezer Scrooge McDuck"

Five chuckles. "Yeah, let me go enjoy the world fading into dust at every touch." He sets his glass down on the bar, deciding to go join the enthusiastic group of mentally dead Hargreeves' plus you.

You and Ben, even as the song switches, continue to dance together, creating a little circle with Klaus and Viktor so Sloane and Luther could have their little alone time. Eventually, the whole family is on the dance floor, enjoying their final hours on Earth.

After a while, you crash on the floor beneath the couch, mindlessly listening to Luther, Five, Diego, Klaus, and Viktor drunkenly sing along to Seal's Kiss From A Rose. Allison, Sloane, and Lila enjoy the show, singing along from the couch.

Five, noticing you two were slumped over, half dead, calls out to you. "Hey, lovebirds! Get up here!"

You and Ben immediately look down toward each other, your feet touching one another's, giggling like little kids as you realize what Five had called you. You crawl up to your hands and knees, then rise to your feet, joining the brothers up on the little karaoke stage.

"Now that your rose is in bloom, a light hits the gloom on the grey!"

It was true, in the end of each timeline, in each version of the world ending, you and Ben would end up side by side. Nothing, not even theories and paradoxes, and jumps across the fabric of the universe could separate you.

[suzukiblu]

Day three of “obligatory sugar baby Kon” behind the cut. tw: implications of past grooming/abuse and the inherent problems in someone who was in that situation trying to flirt with someone actually age-appropriate. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“I–what?” Tim says like a useless idiot, attempting to shut his useless idiot brain up long enough for it to stop replaying Kon saying “you got me all this nice stuff” on a loop on literally every single possible level of his thought processes. It is, uh . . . not going well. At all. In no way whatsoever is it going well. 

Though “wear for you” is just a lost cause, considering. “Wear for you” is just the metaphorical elevator music of the rest of his life now, Tim guesses. That’s just a thing he’s gonna have to deal with for the rest of his life. When he’s sixty-five and faking being on his supervillain deathbed so he can retire in his alternate reality of choice, he’s gonna be thinking that instead of “Rosebud”. He’ll be thinking that on his actual deathbed, even.

“I mean–you like it when I wear the stuff you get me, don’t you?” Kon says and Tim probably wouldn’t notice the slight flash of self-consciousness that flickers across the other’s face if he weren’t literally on top of him and a Bat, but he is, in fact, literally on top of him and a Bat. “Makes for a way nicer wrap job than the comics page.” 

. . . Tim has a lot of thoughts about that phrasing. Just–a lot. A lot of very confused and tangled-up and all-over-the-place thoughts that he can’t even really narrow down to a specific emotion or genre of emotions or even “positive” or “negative”. 

Kon describing himself like he thinks he’s something to give him–something he’s willing to give him–that is just a very, very tangle-inducing thing to hear. 

“A ‘wrap job’,” Tim echoes slowly, because there are way, way too many ways to take that description, but not all that many good ones. He’s used to hearing Kon flirt like he thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced bread, all cocky and smug and preening, not talking up the girls but talking up himself, way too self-centered and self-obsessed and– 

. . . ah, Tim realizes very, very slowly. 

He’s used to hearing Kon sell himself when he’s flirting. He doesn’t talk up the girls; he talks up himself. 

He talks up–the product.

“What, you don’t like presents, daddy?” Kon asks as he gives him a flirty, teasing grin with that flicker of self-consciousness still in the back of his eyes. Tim thinks about those opaque sunglasses he likes to wear all the time and wonders if maybe Kon isn’t used to people seeing his eyes this much. “

Tim decides that salt-and-burning Cadmus is actually not enough, and he also needs to throw Rex Leech into an active volcano and maybe also literally every single girl Kon has ever dated for more than five minutes, whoever said girls are. Just–this doesn’t feel like making out on the ledge did, where Kon was all soft and eager and overwhelmed and Tim felt like they were on the same wavelength; this feels more like . . . 

Talking up the product, again. 

“I like you,” Tim says, and shifts his hand down to Kon’s shoulder, which feels like–less risky territory right now, maybe. “That’s not–I mean–” 

“You know I’ll be whatever you like,” Kon purrs, and shifts his posture just enough to make himself less of a bed and more of a lounger; curved and shifted to support Tim more than himself, and Tim feels–

Tim feels very weird, suddenly, and not in a good way at all.

[nikidontsurf]

GEORGE HARRISON and PATTIE BOYD leave Kinfauns to go to the Walton and Esher Magistrates Court, March 18, 1969.

  She was at Kinfauns, their bungalow home in Esher, Surrey, playing genial hostess to a group of visitors from Scotland Yard’s drug squad. She recalled the events in her memoir Wonderful Tonight: ‘Suddenly I heard a lot of cars on the gravel in the drive – far too many for it to be just George. My first thought was that maybe Paul and Linda wanted to party after the wedding. Then the bell rang. I opened the door to find a policewoman and a dog standing outside. At that moment the back-doorbell rang and I thought, Oh, my God, this is so scary! I’m surrounded by police.

The man in charge introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Pilcher, from Scotland Yard, and handed me a piece of paper. I knew why he was there: he thought we had drugs, and he said he was going to search the house. In they came, about eight policemen through the front, another five or six through the back and there were more in the greenhouse. The policewoman said she would follow me while the others searched and didn’t let me out of her sight. I said, ‘Why are you doing this? We don’t have any drugs. I’m going to phone my husband.’ I rang George at Apple. ‘George, it’s your worst nightmare. Come home.’

The officers clearly thought the Harrisons would be at Paul’s wedding. The timing was not a coincidence. (...) Pilcher had already busted Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Donovan, as well as Lennon and Yoko the previous year. National treasures or not, The Beatles were no longer protected from the law. - ‘And in the End: The Last Days of The Beatles’ Ken McNab

  I was with George in the office when that call came through. It was the end of a long day at Apple. Pattie rang and said, ‘They’re here – the law is here,’ and we knew what to do by then. We phoned Release’s lawyer, Martin Polden. We had a routine: he came round to Apple, and we all went down by limousine to Esher, where the police were well ensconced by then – and I stood bail for George and Pattie. They went off to the police station. We were all extremely indignant because it was the day of Paul’s wedding, a poor way to celebrate it. The police can be so nice.

George was calm about it. George is always calm – he sometimes gets a grump, but he’s always calm – and he was extremely calm that night, and very, very indignant. He went into the house and looked around at all these men and one woman, and said something like. ‘Birds have nests and animals have holes, but man has nowhere to lay his head.’ – ‘Oh, really, sir? Sorry to tell you we have to…’ and then into the police routine.

That’s how calm and how cross he was, because, as he said, he kept his dope in the box where dope went, and his joss sticks went in the joss stick box. He was a man who ran an orderly late-Sixties household, with beautiful things and some nice stuff to smoke.

 In my opinion he didn’t have to be busted because he was doing nobody any harm. I still believe what they did was an intrusion into personal life. - Derek Taylor in ‘The Beatles Anthology’

[procrastinatingsoicanreadfanfics]

snowfall

summary: when she’s young and in between foster families, she meets a scrawny kid named Simon. Simon sits to the side while the other kids play, and she gives him her sandwich. When he leaves, forced to go back to his dad, she feels bad for him.

Then, when she gets older, she realizes that Simon was the lucky one. He made it out.

notes: based on the song snowfall, bc I’ve been listening to it and thinking about this fic a lot lately

warnings: mentions of abuse, human trafficking and childhood trauma. Violence. Allusions to smut? Afab!reader

taglist: @majesticwren @obsessiveformiyatwins (hmu to be added to any taglist!)

masterlist | requests are OPEN!

You’re back to square one, where you always end up when a foster family lets you go. A big, grey house that was built in the sixties and not once painted afterwards, that’s square one. Makeshift beds and damp rooms, showers that smell of piss and food that has the consistency of cardboard.

The house is so terrible on the inside that everyone flees into the parking lot, a barely better place to be. In the dirt-poor areas of Manchester, it’s all anyone can ask for. The younger kids play with chalk or run around, chasing each other, while the ones your age pass cigarettes and other stuff to each other.

None of you know each other’s names, but you’ve all seen each other in passing. Kids that were left on their own, that don’t trust easy won’t talk to each other either. Not really.

It’s rare to see a new face, so the teen sitting off to the side while the others talk catches you by surprise.

He’s massively tall already, but scrawny as hell, his hair in the awkward stage between short and being grown out. His eyes flit around, meeting no one else’s.

“Haven’t seen you before.” You greet, and he barely looks up. You offer him your name, and he pauses before he responds.

“Simon.” He says finally. There’s a short silence, broken by his rumbling stomach, and you hand him your sandwich without thinking twice. You’re not a big fan of tomatoes. He hesitates, inspecting it before he takes a bite. He barely nods as you tell him you don’t like tomatoes, and you doubt he even heard you.

“What are you doing here? Never seen you before.” You attempt, trying to make conversation. He shrugs in response, and you don’t pry further.

Simon sticks to you like glue in the days afterwards, a silent shadow that towers over you. Timmy, a kid that joined a gang after feeling overly confident, tries to approach you twice, but apparently, Simon’s glower is more intimidating than his stature.

After a week and a half, a social worker interrupts a game of Uno between you and Simon, pulling him away for a conversation. That usually means one of two things: going home, or going to a family of strangers.

You never get to find out which one it is, because Simon doesn’t say goodbye. You tell yourself that he made it home, or at least made it out. He seems like the type.

***

Against your hopes, and in line with all odds, you don’t make it out. Bouncing between foster families leaves you frustrated, angry and alone. A recipe for disaster, and you know it. Two years after Simon left the grey house that smelled like a germaphobe’s nightmare, you did as well.

Barely eighteen, with no one to back you up and not a single penny on your name, that went to shit quicker than you might have thought, and you found yourself exactly where you did not want to end up: the crime scene of Manchester.

It started off with little favors. Timmy convinced you. He said it wasn’t hard to sell drugs. That you’d only have to do it a few times, and then you’d have enough money to start yourself off with a real job. Something honest.

Something that would finally get you some real security. A sense of permanence.

Over the years, little favors turned into bigger favors.

Timmy, of course, didn’t know batshit about anything, and he certainly did not care to look into things more than he had to for you. And by the time your idiot, barely not-adolescent brain realized that, you were in too deep.

You’d done everything wrong, because selling drugs for a few days ‘wouldn’t hurt anyone’.

That was how you ended up as the cliché character of anti-everything prevention movies they showed you, back in the grey house. Abused, beaten-up, trafficked, sold, and not even out of your twenties.

Each time you thought about it, you wanted to laugh at yourself, to try and stop yourself from missing the gray house and the exhausted social workers that weren’t paid enough to care for any of you.

Just this time, you couldn’t go back to the gray house. You weren’t a child anymore. This time, people came for you to make sure that you’d pay them back what you owed them. Technically, what Timmy owed them.

They, whoever they were, took you away from Manchester, the only semblance of home you’d ever known. You found yourself in an abandoned cargo hall, freezing cold. From what you could see, it was snowing outside, the chill creeping inside. The girl next to you was out like a light, either from drugs, exhaustion, the cold, or a combination of all three.

You could make peace with the fact that you would never get out. You could just accept it, like you’d accepted everything else in your life. A voice in your head screamed that it wasn’t fair, and it felt like that scream was becoming more and more real. There was a ridiculous notion in the back of your mind, telling you to get up.

It bled into the screech from the gates of the cargo hall, protesting as they were opened. Your captors pointed their guns, but thick, white smoke filled the building, and you felt yourself become suddenly sleepy.

The last thing you saw were shadowy figures storming the hall, gunfire ringing out, smoke filling your nose and mouth.

***

When you came to, the smoke had dissipated, but you were still in the cargo hall. A group of men in camouflage walked around the hall, checking the men that were lying on the floor. One of them approached you and the others.

Almost automatically, you slinked backwards, out of his reach, but he gave you a soft smile.

He was young, too young to be in a place like this, with a sweet expression on his face that felt too saccharine to belong in the midst of this violence.

“I’m Gaz.” He said. “I’m with the British army, and we’re here to take you home. Are you hurt?”

Varying reactions came from the people around you, and you felt yourself numbly nodding. Home. Had a God heard your prayer and then decided to turn it into a joke?

The doctors arrived a while later, taking a look at everyone that had been with you. Some of the girls around you were drug addicts, and going into withdrawal was never pretty. The cargo hall quickly filled with the stench of vomit and cold sweat, but it meant that you got the time to look at the men that had stormed the hall. A gruff man with sideburns, a Scot with a mohawk that was chattering away with Gaz and-

He was hulking, a mountain that wore a skull instead of a face. You’d never met someone like him in your life, but he paused when he saw you, and you knew that he’d seen you before, this behemoth of a man.

***

It takes two more days before you’re back in England, but it doesn’t feel like a homecoming. Some of the girls have people waiting for them, parents, children, boyfriends, girlfriends to run into their arms and hold. Some are like you. No one comes, and they leave on their own.

You want to follow them. You can’t go back to Manchester. You’ll only return for your papers, if those still exist, and then you’ll leave.

You’re about to finally lift your feet from the cold, concrete floor when you feel a pair of eyes burning into your back.

Turning around, you see it’s the one they call Ghost. He’s standing off to the side, and it reminds you of something. You can’t figure out what it is, even though you try so so hard to just remember.

“Thank you for getting us out of there.” You blurt out, and he looks like he wants to say something, his jaw almost cramping together as he makes a tiny movement. You think it’s towards you.

“I owed you for the sandwich.” He says. The shrug looks forced, and you know that he can’t bring himself to say something more honest. “No tomatoes, of course.”

The seconds it takes you to understand seem to tick by outside of your brain, like a clock hammering with each moment passed. Then, your jaw falls slack.

“Simon?” you ask, too loudly, and the Scot named Soap snaps his head around to stare at you.

He doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t have to. You recognize his height, his eyes, the awkward standing off to the side so suddenly that it hits you like a fucking train. How couldn’t you see it before?

This is Simon. The kid that-

“You left without saying fucking anything!” you accuse, and you’re sure the others think you’re exes.

He just nods, and that almost infuriates you. But he made it out. He made something of himself, and you have to respect that. It’s all you want, always slipping away from your grasp, and Simon got it. Carved it out for himself, by the looks of it.

And finally, after an eternity, Simon steps forward and holds out a bag with the yellow-and-green subway logo on it.

“Hope you like it.” He mumbles, and it’s an almost adorable gesture. There’s no tomatoes, as he promised. Someone remembered something from your childhood.

You take the bag, and then you take the step separating you and hug him tightly. Are you overstepping a boundary? Is he going to push you off roughly?

He doesn’t hug you back, but he does allow you to wrap your arms around him (or, as much as you can do that with his new size).

His teammates stare, but you don’t let go. Not for a while.

“You got a place to stay?” he asks, when the others have gotten over the shock of your interaction. There’s genuine concern in his eyes, and a part of you hopes that you’re special in this, because you helped him too. Somehow.

“McDonalds is always open, and I’ve got…” you reach into your pocket, finding a crumpled note. “Enough for a large drink.”

He shakes his head. He offers his apartment, his home up to you and you should say no because he could traffic you, or rape you, or hurt you just enough to make you drag yourself back to Timmy.

You get into the car with him, and your mind screams danger. Your gut’s feeling alright though, so you ignore it.

The first change beyond the obvious of his massive frame that you notice is that he’s gotten even quieter. While you drag yourself up the dark staircase with some effort, he stays true to his name, not a single scrape coming from his combat boots.

In the apartment, he switches on the light, and you take in the spartan interior. A small kitchen, a sofa, a TV, a coffeetable with a mug still on it. No dinnertable, but three pictures on the refrigerator.

A young boy, a woman that reminds you of the younger Simon (maybe his mother?) and his teammates. Gaz, Soap, the older guy, two men that you don’t recognize, standing in scenery that looks almost tropical.

He lets you stare, before he quietly shows you the bathroom. You let the lock click behind you, even though you know that wouldn’t make much of an obstacle for the person he’s become.

You shower as quickly as you can, slipping back into your underwear. You hesitate for a moment, and then you grab the big, fluffy bathrobe hanging over the towel rack. Someone had vomited on your shirt, and you refused to put it on again.

The robe was too big for you, black with white skulls on it, and you highly doubted that Simon had bought it for himself. Maybe the Scot that cracked jokes with, or rather at him, had bought it for him and he’d caved to using it.

When you walked out, Simon was pulling clean sheets over the bed in his bedroom. He lifted his head when he heard you, and even through the balaclava, you knew he was lifting a brow at you.

“You’re wearing Soap’s bathrobe.” He commented.

“Someone vomited on my shirt.”

Simon did not reply, but he did turn around to rummage in his closet, throwing you one of his old shirts. You went back into the bathroom to put it on, and decided to not comment on the fact that it looked like a midi dress on you.

He closed the door behind him when he went to sleep, and the click of the lock felt a little insulting to you. Yet, you couldn’t expect him to trust you.

Sleep did not come easy to you, and when it did, you only had nightmares.

After a particularly bad one, you woke up with a start, only to find yourself face-to-face with one of your captors, face hid behind a balaclava, and you screamed.

Only after a few moments did you realize that it was Simon.

Between your panicked apologizing, and his nervous tea-making, it took a while for either of you to speak.

“I’m sorry for not telling you I was leaving.” He said finally, sitting across from you on the sofa, and still managing to take up three fourths of it.

“You didn’t have to. You didn’t know me.” You replied.

“I clung to you.” He said under his breath, as if it was an admittance of weakness.

“I liked it. Made me feel less alone.”

Your hands found each other in the dark, his fingers curling around yours and you swore that you could feel his heart hammer in his wrist.

“I don’t want to go to Manchester alone.” You whispered. It was an admittance of defeat.

“I’ll go with you.” Simon replied. He had no incentive to.

In the dark, it didn’t feel as preposterous or dangerous to move closer to him. He stilled when your knee bumped against his leg, and you held your breath, waiting for his rejection.

It didn’t come, only a shaky breath from Simon that gave the smallest of hints about how he was feeling. His hand was still holding yours, warm and a little rough, but it felt real. It made you move closer, to try and lean into his touch.

His hand slipped from yours, and for a moment, you thought that you’d done something wrong, but then you felt it on your waist, and Simon pulled you onto his lap. Your hands flew to his chest to steady yourself, and you could feel his hammering heart beating under his shirt.

Simon was so massive that he engulfed you, drowned out everything around you, and you loved it. There was nothing but him, and that didn’t scare you. It made you feel unfathomably safe.

He hugged you suddenly, a mirror gesture to what you’d done at the airport, his thick arms wrapping around you, pulling you even closer, until your lips were almost on his and he looked up at you with something in his eyes that you couldn’t place, because no one had ever looked at you like that.

You couldn’t help kissing him. Slowly, asking, almost begging, you peeled up the lower half of his balaclava, waiting for him to tell you to stop. Instead, even in the darkness, you knew that the stubble on his jaw was blonde, because it was impossible to forget someone like him. Your lips found his and it felt so right that your hands snaked up to his jaw, cradling his face in the hope that he’d know you cared for him.

Simon returned your kiss equally as hungry, demanding the air you breathed from you, his embrace swallowing you, and you wanted to give it all to him. Your hands shook as you reached to slip them over the band of his sweats, still unsure if he’d reject you, or let you do it.

Cautiously, your hands slipped under his t-shirt first, his skin feeling like it was burning in comparison to your cold fingers, warm to the touch, and safe.

“I thought about you a lot.” You admitted between kisses. “Wanted to know what happened to you.”

Simon stilled at that, his gaze shifting, warping from one unreadable expression to another.

“Nothin’ good.” He replied finally. You felt like an idiot. Like you’d just ruined the moment.

“I’m sorry.” You said, because you had no idea what else to say. His hand found yours, and you felt like whatever was going to happen to you, it was going to be okay.

[artbyblastweave]

So I want to draw out some of the grousings I put in the tags of @phaeton-flier's recent post on Waller's characterization in My Adventures with Superman.

I think the problem you're gonna run into with adapting Waller in 2024 is that they basically nailed her completely twenty years ago in the DCAU Justice League continuity, they already captured the perfect balance of good intentions and ruthless utilitarian amorality. In the DCAU, Waller's arrival on the scene was contextualized by more than a decade of superheroic precedent- she lives in a world where Superman specifically got brainwashed into attacking earth, she lives in a world where Kryptonian war criminals took a shot at Earth, she lives in a world where an alternate-universe totalitarian Superman crossed dimensional boundaries to take a shot at earth. She lives in a world where Superman helped disarm the world's nuclear arsenal at the behest of a guy who turned out to be the fifth column for an extraterrestrial invasion. She lives in a world where the Justice League formed specifically to stop something similar happening again and then tripped over their own dicks when one of their founding members turned out to be a partisan mole for an extraterrestrial empire. She lives in a world where these city-leveling clowns have consolidated sixty or seventy other city-leveling clowns in an orbiting circus that's armed with a city-leveling orbital laser canon. This is just the stuff that would have made the in-universe news, there's even more I'm not mentioning here. In other words, she lives in a world where it's completely reasonable not to trust the superheroes and to want to have contingencies against them.

She does horrible things in pursuit of those contingencies, but they're targeted, goal oriented horrible things. Aside from her usual suicide squad routine she clones and basically enslaves dozens of super-soldiers, which is of course terrible on the face of it, but comparatively easy to justify from the realpolitik cold-equation way in which she approaches things. When her bullshit generates externalities for civilians, it's not because she sics those super soldiers on them. She doesn't declare martial law. That's not what she's after! She just keeps losing control of the bastards, and then she shrugs, and she signs off on additional bastards from scientists and magicians who've proven time and time again that they do not have their shit buttoned down- but what else is she going to do? Roll over? Let the capes treat the world like their playground?

Crucially, the DCAU version is also capable of realizing when she's prioritized the wrong threat- she's capable of re-evaluating and de-escalating. She's got a foil on that show, a guy who starts from the same place of concern as her but isn't capable of course-correcting because he's too much of a belligerent paranoid maniac. That guy is General Wade Eiling. And in a version of MAWS that doesn't need to set Sam Lane up for a redemption arc, I would have Waller as the one in Sam's position, as the well-meaning extremist who loses control of the monster she created and gets frozen out in favor of a significantly less principled hardliner in the form of Eiling. Alas.

The fundamental thing about Waller, at least to me, is that she's uninteresting as a ground-floor antagonist. While I've yet to get around to the original Suicide Squad run where Waller originated, I'm confident in my understanding that it was a postmodern project from the word go, exploiting years of ossified genre convention and rogue's gallery bloat to make the points that it was trying to make. This is part of why I think the first Suicide Squad film went over like a lead balloon- it tried to wish that built-up continuity into existence out of nowhere, whereas the second movie was simply a lot more naturalistic about faking that larger context. This show feels like it's doing something similar on a meta-level- exploiting decades of audience familiarity with Waller and how plots involving her tend to go, in a way that papers over how weirdly early in the progression of this continuity they've brought her into the fray. She usually isn't the joyless jackboot on the frontline trying to snuff out the incipient heroic age- she's the beleaguered repairmen brought in years after the novelty has worn off, after the superheroes have had their goddamn chance, with all the ups and downs and near-misses that entails, so that she can make entirely novel mistakes in reaction to that context. As it stands, she's kind of 0 to 100 in this, and something about it feels off.

[seresinhangmanjake]

The One I Want: Part 13

Jake "Hangman" Seresin x plus size!reader

Summary: You’re new in town and some guy named Jake is about to be your roommate. Being skeptical of new people keeps you lonely and uninterested in any entanglements, but Jake is desperate to change that.

Notes/Warnings: smut 18+ (but like, not a lot. I settled somewhere in the middle), cursing, emotional stuff and vulnerability, fluff, angst, typos

Words: 3298

The One I Want Masterlist

“I’m thinking cake,” Jake suddenly says as he halts in place. His hand in yours stops you from continuing further into the pastry section of the grocery store. 

You fall in line beside him and scan over the individually packaged slices of vanilla and chocolate and red velvet. 

“Cake?” you ask, running your eyes from his head to his toes and back. “I have to be honest, Jake, you look like you haven’t had a piece of cake in your life.”

He didn’t even have any on his birthday a couple weeks ago and, in your opinion, that says a lot. A birthday, and not one of his friends complained about the lack of dessert to celebrate. Even alone in your cheap as fuck apartment with no furniture and walls tinged yellow from previous tenants’ smoking addictions you had cake on your birthday. One cupcake, one candle, one wish that had an entire three hundred and sixty-five days to come true but never did. 

Actually, maybe the ‘no birthday cake’ thing is smart. Less chance for disappointment.

“I’ve had cake.” He playfully nudges his shoulder into yours. “Not in a while, granted, but it did happen,” he says. “Plus, out of everything here, this will be the least messy in bed.”

‘Just to sleep,’ he had quickly clarified earlier after suggesting you share the same bed. Your mouth was wide open, a forkful of spaghetti frozen in mid-air as he nervously smiled at you from across the restaurant’s table. “I just thought it might be nice, but if you hate the idea we don’t have to.”

You’d teased that if you were going to get in bed with a man you wanted dessert first, but Jake took it rather seriously. And after deciding the restaurant’s creme brulee or sorbet would not travel well, he said, “We’ll have to make a pit stop.”

“I’m good with cake,” you chuckle, picking up a slice. He does the same. 

“Want anything else?”

You snort. “Are you going for a dessert buffet in your bed?”

He smiles and shakes his head. He raises your hand and his lips brush over your knuckles. “I just want to make sure you’re happy.”

You stare at him long enough for his smile to fade and his brow to knit and his head to tilt in question, and it’s so annoyingly endearing you don’t understand how you woke every morning of your life without someone like Jake Seresin. Someone who crafts smiles only for you. Someone who pays attention to your expressions and moods and alters their own in response. Someone who makes your heart want to snap the prison that is your ribcage and break through the wall of your chest so it can go burrow into his. 

“I’m happy with you, Jake,” you say. “The cake is a bonus.”

His smile returns and your whole body swells with pride, because you did that. You salvaged the perfect curve of his lips that spread to reveal a row of perfect teeth. You brought back the delicate wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and the sparkle that glints in the green. 

Jake leans in and presses his lips to yours, gently so as to not embarrass you while the possibility of whispers and glares from fellow shoppers exists. But the kiss doesn’t match the rest of him. You can sense the tension in his body. 

The plastic container holding the cake makes a loud pop under the pressure of his fingers, and you know he’d drop it if he could; make a mess on the floor so that hand could be free to touch you however it wants. 

But Jake thinks about others, and it’s an ‘other’ that would have to clean up his moment of inconsiderate behavior, but thankfully, he is not that brand of asshole. You’ve been that ‘other’ in the past and you don’t care for a reminder of how rude people can be when they only care about themselves, especially not a reminder in the form of Jake. 

“Let’s go,” he whispers against your lips, “before you get me into trouble.”

—

“Well,” you begin as you swallow the last bite and lick the remainder of the frosting off the fork, “It definitely tastes better in bed.” 

Jake chuckles, accepting your empty container and fork so they can join his on his nightstand. “I’m glad there’s another reason for you to want to be in my bed.”

With an arch to your brow, you rest your head against his headboard. “Another reason?”

“Yes,” he says before he holds up three fingers. His left index finger taps his right. “Reason one: I’m pretty sure you like me, or, knowing you, you wouldn’t have agreed to the suggestion. That’s the best reason.” You grin and roll your eyes as he taps his middle finger. “Reason two: cake tastes better in my bed. My bed, not any other guy’s bed so don’t go trying that out.”

Jake’s face lights up with your laugh. “I won't,” you say. “Reason three?”

“Three is sleeping next to each other,” he replies, wiggling his ring finger. “I know we haven’t actually done that yet, but I promise I’ll be a damn good cuddler. You won’t ever want to leave.”

He didn’t have to say that for you to be well aware of it. Jake hasn’t even wrapped his arms around you yet and you’re already wishing to stave off morning so that once you're snuggled against the shape of his body you can stay there for as long as possible.

“Four?” you ask. 

Jake swallows, suddenly misplacing a bit of his confidence, and it doesn't take much for you to figure out why. Most additional, and frankly, obvious, reasons to want to be in his bed lie outside of tested territory. The next logical steps of your relationship have gone undiscussed. 

You know he’s waiting for you. Permitting his hands to touch more of your body recently is not enough for him to make his own moves. No matter how close his fingers come to the zippers of your clothes or your fingers get to the button of his jeans, it's not the flashing green light he needs to take things further. 

But you can’t blame him. His pause is your creation, and while he hasn’t pushed for more, you know he badly he wants it. You want it, too, despite how you’ve acted.

Before, you weren’t sure if being with Jake would take something away from you, some sense of self that you’ve just reclaimed after years of people stealing their portion of you. Because, unlikely as it may sound, nothing is impossible; you’ve been misled more than once, and you couldn’t shake the one-percent chance that Jake would steal his portion, too. 

But that was the invasion of your still damaged—but healing—mind. That was prior to him spilling his emotions so you could see for yourself how you make him feel. When you listen to your heart, the thought that Jake would leave you feeling hollow or lost or discarded after being with him becomes so unbelievable, so weightless and unformed, you couldn’t speak it aloud if you tried. In no life, world, universe, or alternate existence would Jake do that to you. Of that, you are positive.

“I’m still working on four,” he says. 

Reaching over, you uncurl his pinky so it’s extended alongside the other three. Your thumb rubs slowly up and down the inside of that finger. 

“Four is easy,” you tell him.

“Easy?” His eyes follow your body as you sit up and straddle him. 

Palms land on your thighs and slide up, over your cotton shorts and hips, and under your shirt. His thumbs stroke the soft flesh of your navel as you rest your hands on the curves where his neck meets his shoulders. Your lips seal to his, and you kiss each other like you always do. Like he’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. Like you’re a drug he can't get enough of. 

You start to shift your hips, grinding downward, and though you get the pleasure of hearing his grunt, you know it’s not enough for him to understand that you want more, so you do it again. And again. And again, until his fingers are digging into your skin and he’s pulling you down harder against him with each of your motions. 

But then, as if dunked in a bucket of ice water, he freezes. His lips are gone and he’s gripping you tight enough to stop you.

“Where are you going with this, beautiful?” he asks through heavy breaths, and you smile at how willing he is to sacrifice so much oxygen just to kiss you. 

Leaning back, you slip your hand through the space between your bodies. Your fingers lightly trace along the band of his sweatpants before dipping behind the soft material and wrapping around him. His whole body jerks. Any words he might have said next lose to the gasp that leaves his mouth. 

“Reason four,” you whisper, pulling him free. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, falling back and letting the headboard support his weight.

You pump your hand once, twice, then shimmy down the mattress until your breath is ghosting over the hardness in your hand. 

“H-Hey, whoa, wait, wait,” he rushes out, hand clasping your wrist. “Beautiful, this is not why I asked if you wanted to sleep in my bed. I don’t need anything like this to make being with you worth it for me, you know that, right?” 

“Do you want me to stop?”

Your thumb runs over his tip and his eyes screw shut. “Just tell me you know that.” When they open again, they’re full of desperation. “Please.”

“I know that,” you say with a nod and a reassuring smile. “But what if I want to do this? Even if I want it, do you want me to stop?”

“You can’t ask me that question when you’re looking at me like that.”

“Jake, do you want me to stop?” you ask once more, punctuating each word with a slight pause.

A bulge forms in his throat as he gulps. When he shakes his head, you close your mouth around him. 

The whimper you pull from him is immediately added to the list of things you love about Jake Seresin—a sound so unexpected that a rush of excitement shoots through you, straight to your core, and all you want is to hear it on repeat until it’s seared into your mind. You take him in deep, deeper with every bob of your head, and when he nudges the back of your throat, his thighs tense, his hand flies to the back of your head, and his hips involuntarily buck upwards. 

The resulting choking noise sobers him. 

“Oh my god,” he sputters, removing his hand as if burned. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—” He cuts himself off with a moan as you suck hard on his tip and flick your tongue along its underside before releasing him.

Guilt is splashed across his features when your eyes meet his, but it eases when you grin and grab his hand, pulling it to your face so he’s cupping your cheek. Leaning into his palm, Jake expels a held-in breath and his face softens at knowing he didn’t hurt you. His thumb slides over your cheekbone. He smiles.

“Can I be inside you?” he asks.

Jake’s touch doesn’t fall from your face as you crawl up his body. His stare doesn’t break. When you’re close, his fingers weave into your hair and he guides you into his kiss. 

“Is this a yes?” he whispers. 

You sit up in front of him, your knees on either side of his legs. 

“Yes” is a half-second off your tongue and Jake is tucking his thumbs into the waist of your sleep shorts, slowly pushing them over your ass and down your thighs. Those green eyes drink you in, and while your skin flushes under the intensity of his gaze, you feel him filling you with confidence. 

The fact that he bothers to look at you at all makes you want to give him everything. No other man took the time to really look at you—to appreciate you. It was whip-quick criticisms before dull, drunken, lazy, uninspired, over-before-it-even-started sex where they were closing their eyes from either an inability to keep them open or to imagine someone else in place of you. But Jake practically absorbs every inch of you that he can see.

Rough fingertips graze through your folds. His thumb rolls over the sensitive little bud and your body shudders, chasing after his hand even as he pulls it away to examine the slickness now coating his fingers. 

“Fuck,” is almost inaudible from his lips. “You’re gonna ruin me,” you think you hear him say, but it’s drowned out by the pounding pulse in your ears.

You don’t stop to dwell on what you think you might’ve heard and instead reach for the hem of your t-shirt to pull it over your head. Jake blinks, glances up at you, and then everything descends into a flurry of hurried movements as you discard your shorts and Jake yanks his shirt over his head, reaches into the bedside drawer for a condom, tears the packet open, and rolls it down his length. His sweatpants are pushed farther down his legs, then with his hands gripping your thighs just below your ass, he pulls you to him, spreads you open, and guides you down until you’re seated on top of him and his entire cock is fit snugly inside of you. 

The air is punched out of your lungs as your walls welcome and flutter around him. Your words are half-formed curses and mutterings of pleasure as Jake groans and wraps his arms around you, hugging you to his body. 

His forehead falls against your chest. “You have no idea…” he says through a weak breath, “no idea how much I've–”

“Yes, I do,” you whisper to him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “You're not the only one who has wanted this.”

Jake nods. He plants a gentle kiss on the smooth swell of each of your breasts. Then, at an agonizingly slow pace, you lift your hips and sink back down onto him. Supported by Jake’s strength, you lift and sink and lift and sink, feeling every ridge and every curve of every vein of his cock as he slides in and out of you. 

He’s so different and so good and you’re so satisfied to know that you were right. Jake Seresin will never leave you feeling lost. But he does allow you to lose yourself, to let go, to be free and safe in the company of his kisses and moans and touch. He allows you to be you—the you that is happy and cared for. The you that is loved.

—

It’s not often that you are a heavy sleeper, but Jake dragged you into a blissful peace so welcoming and comfortable that for the first night in a long time, you went undisturbed. That peace made it through the night, into the early hours of morning, and remained as sunlight trickled through the curtains to wake you.

Your eyelids flutter open and you glance to where Jake’s arm is draped over your waist. As you flip over, his brow pinches and that arm tucks you back into him so your chest is to his. You think he’s about to join you in waking, but when his unconscious is satisfied with the new positioning of your bodies, his barely-there snores resume. Chuckling, you press your lips to his in a quick kiss that smoothes the crease between his brows. 

He’s so beautiful like this. Mouth parted, hair touseled, muscles relaxed, with eyelashes resting on his cheeks. They’re much longer than you realized. The tips are blond and against his tanned skin, they’re almost luminescent. You want to run your finger over them, but that will force him awake, and he looks far from ready to rise for the day, so you don’t.

You consider getting out of bed; an idea quickly washed away when you weigh how cozy and warm Jake is compared to the rest of the room. Not to mention, you can’t say for sure exactly where your clothes are other than that they are definitely somewhere in Jake’s room. Those combined, you refuse to move, and not moving leads your eyes to close, which leads you back into that peaceful sleep. 

—

It’s hours later when you stir. You notice your clothes are folded by your feet and you look beside you to find Jake missing. But you hear his voice—his and another’s. 

Tossing the comforter off your legs, you dress and tiptoe your way to Jake’s door. The sliver of space between the door and its frame is not wide enough for you to see anything other than the framed pictures on the living room wall, but it doesn’t inhibit your ability to pick up the conversation you can tell is coming from the kitchen. 

“You haven’t told her?” you hear in Millie’s sweet, southern tone. “I can’t keep up with you two.”

“I was going to tell her at dinner,” Jake defends, “but things were good and she was happy. And I was going to try again once we got back here but I pictured the look on her face when she cries and it kills me, Millie.”

Your throat suddenly feels swollen and you struggle to swallow as you press yourself as close to the opening in the doorway as possible. 

“Honey, I know you don’t wanna hurt her, but there’s no way around this,” Millie says.

“I know.” He sighs heavily. “Can you do me a favor, though? Can you watch out for her?”

“Of course, but Jake, she can handle herself.”

“I know she can. She’s better at that than most people will ever be,” he tells her. “But you wouldn’t be doing this for her, you’d be doing it for me. I can’t stand the thought of her feeling alone,” he says. “I can’t take that with me.”

“She won’t be alone,” your friend says, but Jake doesn’t respond. “Jake, I promise.”

You can’t see what he does; if he nods, if he smiles, if he mouths a silent ‘thank you’. They’re both quiet, so you’re quieter. 

In their silence, you try to process the words you’ve heard, but Millie’s sweet voice interrupts your racing thoughts. 

“You boys need to be careful and bring each other home,” she tells Jake. “Your ladies are gonna be waitin’ on you.”

“Assuming mine won’t hate me for not telling her the minute I knew about it.”

“You only found out yesterday,” Millie says. “It’s not easy. Bradley hates tellin’ me, too…this time especially.”

You don’t if they say more because, once again, Jake has your pulse going so strong and fast that it’s pounding in your ears, but now for an entirely different reason than last night. Your heart plummets into your stomach and you inch away from the door until the back of your knees hit the mattress, forcing you to sit. As stiffness settles into your limbs, your spine goes limp as a noodle and you’re sure your posture shows it, but you don’t have it in you to stretch out your arms and legs or strengthen your back. You’re a dead weight on the bed. Dead and damp from the tear that leaked down your cheek onto your thigh. 

It’s the first tear of what you know will be many more to come. 

Because soon, Jake will be leaving.

---

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