#after their argument as well HELP
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i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you
#im reading that post that says artists are directors of audience reaction and not its dictator:#'you cannot guarantee that everyone viewing your work will react as you are trying t make them react. a good artist knows that this is what#allows work to breath. by definition you cannot have art where the viewer brings nothing to the table ... this is why you have to let go of#the urge to plainly state in text exactly how you think the work should be interpreted ... its better to be misinterpreted sometimes than#to talk down to your audience. you wont even gain any control that way; people will still develop their opinions no matter what you do#im thinking abt this again cuz i was thinking maybe the thing that lets adventure time work so well the way it does is cuz it doesnt#take itself too seriously that it gives the audience enough room to fuck with subtext and then fuck with them back yknow. i think it was#mentioned somewhere that they werent even planning to run with the postapocalyptic elements that are hinted in the show but changed their#mind after the one off with the frozen businessmen and dominoed into marcy and simons backstory. on the other side there are stories that#explain too much to let the story speak for itself and i think it ends up having to do more with the crew trying to lead ppl in a certain#direction than expand on what they have and i see a lot of this with miraculous. like when interviews and tweets are used as word of god in#arguments and it becomes a little stifling to play around with it knowing the creator can just interject. u can say its the crews effort to#engage with its audience but it feels more like micromanaging. and none of this is to say there ISNT room for stories that spell things out#theyre just suited for different things. if sesame street tried abstract approaches to themes and nuance itd be counterproductive#a lot of things fly over my head so i need help picking things apart to get it- but it doesnt have to be from the story itself. ive picked#picked up or built on my own interpretations listening to other ppl share their thoughts which creates conversation around the same thing#sometimes stories will spell things out for you without being so obvious abt it that it feels like its woven into the text. my fav example#for this might be ATLA using younger characters as its main cast but instead of feeling like its dumbed down for kids to understand why war#is bad its framed from a childs point of view so younger audiences can pick up on it by relating to the characters. maybe an 8 year old#wont get how geopolitics works but at least they get 'hey the world is a little more complicated than everyone vs. fire nation'. same for#steven universe bc its like theyre trying to describe and put feelings into words that kids might not have so they have smth to start with#especially with the metaphors around relationships bc even if it looks unfamiliar as a kid now maybe the hope is for it to be smth you can#look back to. thats why it feels like these shows grew up with me.. instead of saving difficult topics for 'when im ready for it'#as if its preparing me for high school it gave me smth to turn in my hands and revisit again and again as i grow. stories that never#treated u as dumb all along. just someone who could learn and come back to it as many times as u need to. i loved SU for the longest time#but i felt guilty for enjoying it hearing the way ppl bash it. bc i was a kid and thought other ppl understood it better than me and made#feel bad for leaning into the message of paying forward kindness and not questioning why steven didnt punish the diamonds or hold them#accountable. but im rewatching it now and going oh. i still love this show and what it was trying to teach me#yapping#diary
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as a jew, seeing what all of these israeli leaders have said is sickening. as a jew, anti-palestinian rhetoric is sickening. as a jew, zionism is sickening.
how dare my people -- a people who've been massacred, ethnically cleansed, dehumanized, forcibly removed, and discriminated on religious grounds for their entire existence -- do the same to another people? how dare we turn our backs on them, when they suffer like we have?
i understand that so much of us have been fed zionist propaganda our entire lives; the same happened to me. i understand the desire for a homeland where we don't have to fear antisemitism at every turn; i want that too. but it doesn't take much thought to understand that a homeland for us, which actively oppresses and kills another people, is antithetical to what we want.
if you, as a member of an oppressed group, believe that your freedom and safety can only exist when you oppress another group, you are acting no better than the people who oppressed you. such a belief is horrible, and cynical, and wrong.
as a jew, i want jewish people to be happy and safe and connected to our heritage; as a jew, i also want other peoples to be happy and safe and connected to their heritage.
don't call the palestinians "amalek". you are turning us into amalek.
doesn't the torah tell us to have empathy for those beaten down by the world? doesn't the torah tell us to make the world a better place? doesn't the torah tell us to free people of their shackles and help them escape oppression?
i have so many israeli aunts and uncles and cousins; i fear for their safety. of course, my parents do as well. i'm worried that this fear, in addition to anything they were led to believe earlier in life, is placing my parents even deeper in the zionist camp. but it doesn't have to be this way! my relatives' safety does not rely on the continued oppression of gaza!
it is easy to be uninformed, to be swayed by propaganda, to blindly hope that israel was founded in good faith -- but we can't lie to ourselves. a world steeped in senseless hatred (which we are now promoting!) could never be a home for us. none of us are free, liberated, equal, until all of us are.
as a jew, to other jews, i implore that we stand with our palestinian siblings. i want us all to be happy and safe. i want us all to live in harmony -- in the holy land and around the world. that is what we all deserve. <3
#melonposting#i apologize for not reblogging/posting much stuff about israel/palestine until now#i kept having this fear that my mom would see and get angry at me#but what do i care? i want both jews and palestinians to be happy#oh yeah. and i keep hearing the argument that 'jews living in the holy land before israel was established weren't treated well'#i don't know if that's true or not... but does it matter?#like of course antisemitism is horrible. but that can be dealt with#forcibly taking over their land is not the answer#like if israel were never a thing and people saw that jews living in the holy land didn't have rights#they'd do something about it!#and if you think they wouldn't (which is a fair thing to think)... well then you should do something about it!!!#don't solve oppression with more oppression you idiot!!!!!#no positive change will ever come to a world which doesn't think positive change can happen#and oppression is not positive change.#and it also pains me how so much of zionist rhetoric feeds off of post-holocaust fear#and i get it. i get that in the mid 20th century we were so scared and angry after the holocaust#and that we desperately wanted a safe haven#i will never not empathize with that fear and rage because it's justified#but that is no excuse to oppress another group of people. there are other ways to be safe and happy i promise#just stop hurting each other... please... you're not helping anyone...#palestine#israel#zionism
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i hate my mum so much
#every night she turns every little thing into an argument#i cant stop crying#i try to explain to her that im feeling tired and im not doing that well mentally right now#trying to ask her for help#and she goes#why should i care#and starts traumadumping to me#turning it into a competition#if i start crying again rn i wont be able to breath#ik its not that deep#but argument after argument i cant handle it
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Aaooughh razclem on the brain
#they’re sosososo interesting to me#I hc that Clem had a crush on Raz back at camp#also that he got attached to Raz since from what Raz says abt his dad before meat circus ( ie him being anti psychic )#Clem related super hard bc his own dad is very anti psychic ( also just an overall abusive person )#so when he actually meets Augustus in that short period of time before RoR/Pn2#and finds out that he’s actually a decent person#Clem is kinda crushed bc he thought he had someone who had a similar struggle to him#which festers into a bitter jealousy when he’s older#which isn’t helped by the fact when Clem joins the intern program Raz is kinda dead set on trying to help Clem with his issues#bc Raz feels really guilty for not realizing back at camp#( he doesn’t do the walking on eggshells thing like he did with Crystal though )#but due to Clems attitude he starts to get worn down#Crystal even warns Raz not to push himself to help Clem at the expense of his mental health/well being#bc she herself was in a very similar position before she and Clem had their falling out#but Raz doesn’t listen and eventually Clem goes too far and makes a really nasty remark about Razs family ( possibly maligua related )#and Raz loses it#he and Clem get into a huge fight and after that they avoid eachother or get into arguments with eachother#I have many more thoughts abt this but I’m gonna run out of tags lol#psychonauts#clem foote#razputin aquato
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737 words...hmmm.
#i have been having terrible writers block as of late#but if i can get it back...#well i think i'm going to do two 1528 scenes and two 1535?#(don't worry#it's one of the 1535 scenes i've written an actual threaded together scene of#everything else is snippets)#george/jane and then george's last conversation with mary before he leaves for richmond#and then the chapter after- h/a i've been struggling with as well ...#but i think (i had been thinking 1526 for a while)#but i have a better sense of where their 1535 argument is going to go now#which helps me figure out the corresponding resonant flashback scenes#so i thiiiink.....#i think. 1527. and then 1532. and then 1535 )
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shoutout to my girl eno’s nightmare bc. Hi! What and/or Who the fuck was that ! its gonna haunt her and i for awhile !
#my art#its a shitpost batman#Pirate Campaign#Enososin Folook#rea rambles in the tags#OK SO LIKE IT KINDA TOLD ME WHAT/WHO IT WAS BUT IT ALSO DIDNT? YKNOW? LIKE—#it started off with normal dream stuff and then devolving into fear/nightmare stuff and ‘wtf is this who are you why are you in my house’#but then the whole argument shifted when the thing posing as Rollo— bc it WAS an outside force— said “i am his rage i am his guilt’’ etc.#and i could FUCKING FEEL ENO IN MY HEAD RELAX SO GODDAMN FAST. STILL ANXIOUS BUT JUST. ‘Oh. Is that all?’#‘Well what i’m about to do is still incredibly stupid but i feel much better about how it will go now’#AND IT WORKED. WONDER OF WONDERS. AND THEN FUCKING AFTER THAT WHEN I WAS HUGGING THEM.#the ‘creature’ for lack of better terms EXPLICITLY said “of course you are one who can calm my rage— you who was raised by the one#whom i love the most’’ and HI. HELLO. THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS I COULD TAKE THIS SENTENCE ENTITY-OF-INDETERMINATE-EVERYTHING.#ROLLO. DAD MAN. BELOVED GOLIATH WHOM I TRUST WITH MY LIFE AND THAT SCARES ME.#I HAVE QUESTIONS. SEVERAL ACTUALLY. WILL WE EVER ASK THEM? PROBABLY NOT!!!!!!!!#BUT IM *SO* CURIOUS. WAIT A MINUTE. WHO *ARE* YOU??????????#final shoutout to the fact that both times I have tried/thought about casting a vaguely aggressive spell. to someone who was#threatening me/eno. it has not *worked!!* and I have had to use my THINK THONKING BRAIN AND DO A STUPID MOVE!!!!!#aka roleplay and use way too much compassion. *I WONDER WHY SHE'S SO INSISTENT THAT IT'LL WORK STRANGE ENTITY I CALMED BY HUGGING*#they were also INCREDIBLY insistent that I don’t die. Peacefully/trying to help someone that is. Full of rage like a supernova ?#only acceptable way to go apparently /lh /very aff (<- already attached to this strange person I DONT KNOW)#ok ok im done /jov#shut UP rea#rea's trash
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Problems with leather beyond ‘it kills animals’:
- the chemicals in the tanning process. They are nasty. And often just end up dumped in the water.
- air pollution due to the transformation process (hydrogen sulfide during dehairing and ammonia during deliming, solvent vapours).’
- worker conditions.
But that stuff doesn’t count, I guess.
‘But every part of the animal gets used!’ Nu-uh. That’s very much company specific. If you’re not looking into how *they* source their leather then you don’t get to make claims about how much of the rest of the animal is used. (Also, like ‘it’s okay to use this bit of an oil derived product because other parts of the oil also got used!’ is that a good argument?) and hey, don’t forget we need to factor shipping for both industries, too - where is it being made, where is it sent to be turned into the final product, where is that product being shipped?. And we need to factor in everything used in the entire lifecycle of the animals. Every problem with the meat industry has to be accounted for in this calculation, too. Every part - every single step of production - of both industries needs to be assessed.
Like whatever, have your silly arguments about why you hate vegan alternatives, but don’t pretend that leather production isn’t also profoundly bad for the environment and for the people who work in the industry. Honestly reading the notes half of it just seems like apologism for people who wanna pretending the only problem is big oil and if you’re not sitting there ranting about oil companies being bad then what are you even doing as activism?
This conversation requires nuance.
It is not a black and white issue.
Like, it’s just not ‘vegan alternatives always environmentally better!’ Or ‘leather always better!’ It’s complicated shit. The best anyone can do is research individual companies (and wow is that difficult and time consuming).
"Vegan Leather"
Plastic. just say plastic.
#I know someone who is genuinely spending his RETIREMENT writing an article defending big oil companies because he is a soulless man I guess#(I.e. spend his life working for an oil company and is now looking for ways to morally justify his complicity)#but seriously#this is stupid#leather production is bad#so is overuse of plastics!#and other fabrics derived from oil.#like… say polyester#and ‘I’m vegetarian but wear leather because it’s okay someone else will eat the meat’#cool just say that about different cuts of meat#it’s okay the animal got killed someone else will eat the trotters so I can eat this cutlet guilt free!#all of these arguments are stupid#everything here is stupid#‘I only have to account for the carbon footprint of the single animal that was killed for this bit of leather’#’but THOSE people have to account for the entire industry! HAH! checkmate!’#better solution than this bullshit: just consume less.#like Jfc where do you think the leather is made?#you think most of the people working in tanneries are well payed an well protected?#trying to figure out what is the best thing to do is HARD#^ this shit? absolutely not helpful#reductive bullshit#if you have leather than look the fuck after it so it can last as long as possible#pass it on or hand it down or whatever#like of course if you have it keep it throwing it away would be ludicrous#but… and hear me out here#neither of these products are actually essential to the lives of the vast majority of people
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I need to say something and I need y'all to be calm
if it isn't actively bad or harmful, no representation should be called "too simple" or "too surface level"
I have a whole argument for this about the barbie movie but today I wanna talk about a show called "the babysitters club" on Netflix
(obligatory disclaimer that I watched only two episodes of this show so if it's super problematic I'm sorry) (yes. I know it's based on a book, this is about the show)
this is a silly 8+ show that my 9 year old sister is watching and it manages to tackle so many complex topics in such an easy way. basic premise is these 13 year old girls have a babysitting agency.
in one episode, a girl babysits this transfem kid. the approach is super simple, with the kid saying stuff like "oh no, those are my old boy clothes, these are my girl clothes". they have to go to the doctor and everyone is calling the kid by her dead name and using he/him and this 13 year old snaps at like a group of doctors and they all listen to her. it's pure fantasy and any person versed in trans theory would point out a bunch of mistakes.
but after watching this episode, my little sister started switching to my name instead of my dead name and intercalating he/him pronouns when talking about me.
one of the 13 years old is a diabetic and sometimes her whole personality is taken over by that. but she has this episode where she pushes herself to her limit and passes out and talks about being in a coma for a while because of not recognizing the limits of her disability.
and this allowed my 9 year old sister to understand me better when I say "I really want to play with you but right now my body physically can't do that" (I'm disabled). she has even asked me why I'm pushing myself, why I'm not using my crutches when I complain about pain.
my mom is 50 years old and watching this show with my sister. she said the episode about the diabetic girl helped her understand me and my disability better. she grew up disabled as well, but she was taught to shut up and power through.
yes, silly simple representation can annoy you if you've read thousands of pages about queer liberation or disability radical thought, but sometimes things are not for you.
#long post#long text#disability#chronically ill#chronic pain#cripple punk#cripplepunk#chronic illness#disability activism#trans#transgender#queer theory#queer punk
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3 mental breakdowns later I think I have achieved temporary peace
#had an argument with my sister after a very bad mental health day so. not good for me!#but now i think weve come to an accord and she gets my points now#that being said i started learning how to read korean and cyrillic on duolingo to stave off the panic attack#and i think i will keep on doing so#maybe also adding arabic to the list as well#like i wont be able to speak (yet?) depending on if i would pursue the language but i would at least be able to read it ig#at least being able to kinda read it aloud which will help if i start to learn it#rea rambles
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Please do not send me asks for donations
Here's why (for if you find that statement impossible to understand):
I have NO money to give you.
I'm not popular enough that I will give you any reach.
I am a minor, and most of my followers/mutuals are too.
It makes me feel extremely guilty.
Seeing pictures of injuries or hospitals etc are triggering and/or upsetting for me. These pictures often have blood, gore, extreme medical situations, hospital environments, etc. I'm not saying I don't feel sympathy for them, I'm saying I do not want to see that.
They are always worded in a way that makes me feel like I am a murderer if I don't donate.
I said I don't want them, and my boundaries should be respected. They make me feel uncomfortable, and sometimes triggered or upset.
I can't tell what is a bot/scam and what isn't. Yes, I know most of them are not, or whatever it is you believe, but I don't have the time to do a full study of each asker.
I get a lot of spam from this. It is disappointing to see 10 new asks in my inbox just to be the same ask for donations over and over.
Please, just respect the fact that I have said this.
If you want this in your pinned post, please don't credit me. You can copy the words or take a screenshot with my username cropped out. You can reblog this but please don't go on about how awful your experiences have been. I get it, but also if you spiral two much you might end up accidentally saying something bad. This post has led to a lot of hate anons and harassment, so I would rather not have too much attention. Thanks...
I am pro Palestine and want to do everything I can to help but I'm not financially or mentally well enough to do much. I'm not in support of these people dying. Also, this post isn't just about Palestine. It's about ALL asks for donations. I'm not doing favouritism or racism. I just can't deal with it. Don't harass me for expressing boundaries. This post applies to people of all nationalities and backgrounds. Every situation- war, poverty, injury, anything. I'm not discriminating. I'm not being a zionist or a racist or an ableist. It's a boundary.
Yes, this post might seem controversial. But I did literally make this for my own personal experience and didn't expect it to get more than 12 notes or so. Don't add opposing views because quite frankly, it's none of your business. It's not my problem and I didn't mean for this post to get so many notes. Don't use the number of notes as an excuse to fight me. I just want a peaceful Tumblr experience. Also, if you are reblogging this, don't trauma dump. I keep notifications on for this post so that I can block people harassing me before shit escalates, so I can see every reblog. You can screenshot and repost if you want to talk about your problems, but honestly its no better seeing people saying "I'm bankrupt and I just got kicked out by my family. I also have a history of abuse and those images are so triggering that I want to die". That doesn't help me. Make your own post to say that. Please.
I am taking this post off private after slightly modifying it. Any conflicting arguments based on this post will result in my blocking and reporting of you. If you do not understand my point of view, make sure you fully read the post before saying this. I made this post for my blog. If you have any questions or don't understand this post, send me an ask that is composed, calm and polite, and I can talk it through with you.
Please note that by sharing this post, you are more likely to be targeted by bots and scams. You are also more likely to be harassed. Please be safe.
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nanami kento is the kind of man that makes people swoon without even realising it.
he's the kind of man to walk into a luxury store after work, suit jacket folded over one arm and a bouquet of flowers in the other -- his blonde hair still mostly perfect from the high-end pomade he uses. he scours the shelves, frowning to himself, while the attendants whisper and giggle amongst themselves near the tills -- an argument over who will be the one to talk to him, because he's intimidatingly pretty.
("just look at him," one whispers. "he's definitely buying something for a girlfriend."
"a wife," another disagrees. "c'mon. he's giving husband vibes."
someone hums. "but i can't see a wedding band."
"his mother, maybe?" says one other. "oh, i love when guys come in shopping for their mother."
"nobody's mother is getting a bouquet of a hundred red roses--")
eventually, one of them is volunteered as a sacrifice -- smiling and sweet as all attendants should be, she clears her throat. the others, crowded around the till, watch the exchange closely. "excuse me, sir. is there anything we could help you with today?"
her mouth is dry and her hands are clammy -- and when he fixes her with those narrow, burning eyes, her throat bobs.
"ah, yes." and his voice is deep and gravelly and drawling, and her stomach turns. she can only imagine what her coworkers are thinking -- hell, she can only imagine what she's thinking. her mind has stopped short. "my girlfriend likes this brand quite a bit. i thought i'd pick her up something..."
disappointment brews in her stomach -- and it's stupid, she knows it's stupid, because obviously a guy like that is taken. and -- she glances down at the roses -- obviously he treats her super fucking well. of course he does, because why wouldn't he? "oh, perfect! do you have anything in mind?"
"well, actually..."
he ends up buying one of the priciest gift boxes available -- fancy body care and perfume laid out in their signature boxes, decorated with ribbon and dried lavender -- no argument, no fight. he doesn't look for something cheaper, doesn't try to haggle or remove something to decrease the price. he adds, and adds, and adds -- and when she mentions a special offer at the till, a little add on for an extra 2000 yen, he accepts it readily. he inserts a black card into the card machine (of course, a black card), takes the beautifully wrapped bag, and thanks the girls for their services -- and just as he's leaving, his phone rings.
of course he answers the phone with hello, darling. of course he begins to ask his girlfriend about her day, the girls think with some amount of annoyance -- of course. maybe the curse of retail isn't entitled assholes expecting you to wait on hand and foot for them -- maybe it's the handsome men coming in to splurge on their girlfriends while you're painfully single and working for pennies.
#i.e. this is what i fantasize abt while working luxury retail#and of course reader is his gf likeeeeeeeeeeee#i could write about him forever#also hes not one of those men who doesnt know ANYTHING abt what u like#he knows what scents u like what textures u like your skin type your hair routine EVERYTHIGN#nanami x reader#kento x reader#jjk x reader#anime x reader#nanami x you#kento x you#jjk x you#anime x you#nanami au#kento au#jjk au
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𝐁𝐔𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆!𝐓𝐎𝐉𝐈 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒
𝒮𝒴𝒩𝒪𝒫𝒮𝐼𝒮: toji’s bulking and you’re ovulating! how can you keep your hands to yourself when all you want to do is touch? 𝒞𝒪𝒩𝒯𝐸𝒩𝒯 𝒲𝒜𝑅𝒩𝐼𝒩𝒢: any color can read<3 size difference (toji has a monster cock ૮ ․ ․ ྀིა), blowjob, female oral, choking, pussy slapping, unprotected sex, cream-pie, explicit language, mirror sex, 69, toji fucks you in a headlock ݁𖥔 ݁˖
BULKING!TOJI who always seems to be wearing the sluttiest clothing. muscle tees that grip his meaty arms enticingly, showing off every curve and bulge of his well-defined biceps. his sweats always seem to hang too low on his hips, revealing a dark happy trail that leads down to his waistband. the fabric clinging to his thick thighs.
BULKING!TOJI who religiously carries a protein shaker with him, even on date nights, because he's serious about his bulking diet. he’s got a variety of protein powders, from chocolate to vanilla, and he loves mixing them with different fruits and oats to keep things interesting.
BULKING!TOJI who loves trying out new high-calorie recipes and often ropes you into cooking massive meals with him. you two have fun experimenting in the kitchen, making everything from giant stacks of protein pancakes to hearty chicken and rice dishes, always ensuring they meet his caloric needs. he’s genuinely grateful. often, hugging you from behind while you cook, placing the sloppiest kisses behind your ears, his tattooed arms coiled around your frame. his gratitude is evident in the way he nuzzles into your neck, whispering sweet nothings about how much he appreciates your efforts. “i love you, y’know that. . .right?”
BULKING!TOJI who’s noticeably chubbier, you like it. really like it, often burying yourself into his pudgy side with a satisfied sigh. “i could die like this.”
BULKING!TOJI who despite his intense workouts, always makes time to cuddle and watch movies, using you as his favorite "recovery" time. he loves resting his head on your lap while you binge-watch your favorite series, feeling your fingers run through his hair as he relaxes. “i hate this scene.”
BULKING!TOJI who gets annoyed and sleeps on the couch when you won’t stop playing with his tits. “you’re so damn annoying.”
BULKING!TOJI who you make sure has a secret stash of snacks in his gym bag for when he needs extra calories on the go. protein bars, nuts, and dried fruits are his go-to, and he always has a little something to munch on between sets or during quick breaks.
have a good workout<3 - signed your amazing beautiful girlfriend
BULKING!TOJI who becomes an expert at meal prepping, and his mini fridge is always stocked with containers of chicken, rice, and veggies. each container meticulously measured to ensure he gets the right amount of protein, carbs, and fats, and he takes pride in his perfectly organized fridge.
BULKING!TOJI who likes wearing your crop tops, flexing in front of the mirror. “take it off! you’re stretching my shit toji.” “no.”
BULKING!TOJI who can’t resist squeezing your face in his bicep, laughing as your chubby cheeks push together. “haha!”
BULKING!TOJI who just throws you over his shoulder during arguments. “i’ll put you down when you’re done being a brat.”
BULKINGTOJI! who thinks it’s dumb as you tie a pink ribbon around his wrist, demanding he stay still. he thinks it’s even dumber when you record it, the video boasting one-million likes on tiktok. “they loveeeeee you!”
BULKING!TOJI who’s entire hand covers your face. jeez, your poor cunt, he thinks.
BULKING!TOJI who can’t help but admire the way your swollen sticky lips suckle at his thick cock, pulling him back in greedily. usually, it’d take some time for him to ease into your tiny hole. but, you were ovulating today and after seeing your boyfriend walking around shirtless with nothing but boxers on, you practically jumped his bones.
BULKING!TOJI who presses all his weight onto you as he fucks your soppy pussy, the pressure in your back dull as he prods into that sweet spot from behind. pale veiny hands pull your cheeks apart, spreading you, revealing your puckering hole. a glob of warm spit followed by his thumb lubricating your asshole has you arching your back in anticipation. “papaaaa,” glossy eyes squeeze shut as he gently sinks his thumb into your asshole, pelvis relentlessly slapping into your sore ass. the sight has his dick twitching, “humph, look so pretty with both holes filled.”
BULKING!TOJI who doesn’t care that you’re overstimulated, rocking his dick into your tight velvety walls at a mean pace. you don’t know how many orgasms the man has yanked from you. “i know baby, doing so good. takin’ all of me like a big girl, fuckkkk.” glazed eyes watching the way you glisten on him as he folds you against the wooden headboard, your legs flush to your chest. “tojiiii,” you whine, he could get drunk off the way you whimper his name. “am i deep baby?” he groans, thick cream building on his base. “mhm!”
BULKING!TOJI who has you in the nastiest headlock, one hand wrapped around your throat, the other forcing you to look into the mirror. you’re a mess, disheveled hair, tear-stained cheeks, swollen lips. the man’s so fucking huge he covers your entire body. “unt, unt. eyes open beautiful.” he sends a particularly deep thrust that has you shivering. slick, slick, slick, a repetitive noise that has him grunting deeply into your ear.
BULKING!TOJI who eats your pussy while you suck his dick. it’s a struggle taking him, drool seeping down your chin as you slurp at the veiny masterpiece. it’s also a struggle to concentrate as he eats you out like a starved man, spitting, slapping, fingering. god, you’re gonna cum again. “cummin!”
BULKING!TOJI who watches as his cum trickles out of your pulsing hole, pushing it back inside with a frown. “stay.”
#BIGPAPAAAA ฅ՞•ﻌ•՞ฅ#toji x black y/n#toji x black reader#toji x y/n#toji x you#toji x reader#toji fushiguro#jjk toji#jjk x black y/n#jjk x black reader#jjk x y/n#jjk x you#jjk x reader#jjk smut#toji zenin#jujutsu toji#jujutsu kaisen#jujustsu kaisen x reader
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#i need to be away from here#gott i just...#im autistic right just fyi#and my mum does not treat me as if i were#like she has neurotypical standards for me which i have to meet otherwise there will be Bad Consequences#and this is killing me bc im not neurotypical#the only way she'll treat me as autistic is if i get officially diagnosed#which i kinda want but also dont want#and its just. she's. gott my relationship with her is so complicated but shes caused me so much hurt and trauma and pain and#thats what im feeling right now. that.#i should get a diagnosis for me not for her#but i dont think i can survive in this environment for much longer#i told my dad i might try get diagnosed (havent talked to him about autism before) n he was like “okay”#pretty much verbatim#which is realistically the best response i couldve had#then he went on a rant about how autism “didnt exist” in the past and how its caused by vaccines#and this drug which apparently helps with autism and when i said No im not doing that i dont want to be “cured” this is a thing that#shouldnt be cured he was like ??? then whyd you want a diagnosis#hhhh but that i can deal with. after 4 years of being subjected to his and my mums conspiracy theory bullshit i can put up with it#at first it really stressed me out but i can cope with it now and come up with well thought out and factual grounded counter arguments#n i told my mum that dads fine with me getting a diagnosis n then i asked her if when i get one she'll treat me as if i were autistic#and she laughed and was like wait until you get one#like she doesn’t think i am which shows how Fucking Little she knows about me and how much i have to hide from her#because shes always shouted at me for Every Autistic Trait i display#im never fucking good enough for her#she treats me and percieves of me as if im neurotypical and Im Not#i remember once (after something happened) i heard her shout “WHY CANT I HAVE FUCKING NORMAL CHILDREN” or something like that#that sticks with you.#that shit hurts and sticks with you#who gave this woman two queer autistic mentally ill children to raise who's fucking plan was that
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In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.
Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?
Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.
More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.
But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.
A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.
Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.
So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.
Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.
It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.
There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:
The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”
A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.
It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.
And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.
Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.
Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.
So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.
Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.
So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.
And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.
And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.
And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.
Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.
Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).
It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.
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#my mom just came over to tell me#YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS?? your problem isnt autism your problem is that you cant adjust to everyday life and you're just too emotional#you just cant adjust and then you make it hard for yourself on purpose because you cant just get over it and forget it#you just let negativity fester inside of you#all because i told her that i wasnt chosen for an autism diagnosis via email lottery and she immediately answered with#STOP BEING SAD DONT CRY YOU JUST HAVE TO DO X Y AND Z and i explained to her for the 1000th time that she has to word it differnetly#because i didnt even tell her how i feel and she just assumed my emotions and then told me to STOP HAVING THEM#and i try to gently explain to her how she has to ask first and not assume because she makes me feel worse than i actually felt#and shes liks YEAH BUT I CANT CONTROLL MY EMOTIONS IM JUST A PASSIONATE MOTHER TRYING TO HELP HER KID#completely making it about her again and making me comfort her and her emotions and i told her that and she said#well then why dont you tell me to stop? you have to make me aware of it how else am i supposed to know#after several years of me telling her this and how she needs to think before she speaks#and after all this she came over to tell me ANYWAY YOUR PROBLEM ISNT AUTISM ANYWAY ITS JUST (DESCRIPTION OF AUTISM)#like???????? are you trying to win the other argument by telling me i didnt need the diagnosis anyway#anyway i said GOODBYE and shoved her out the door and locked it#im 30 and i still have to fight with her like im 13 and having to end arguments or physical abuse by shoving her out of my room#and pulling a bookshelf infront of the door and hiding in a corner where she cant see me through the window in the door
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HOUSE IN NEBRASKA — Logan "Worst Wolverine" Howlett x Mutant!Reader AO3 version Spotify Playlist
WORD COUNT — 15.4k SUMMARY — Reader gets roped into saving the timeline with ex-best friend Deadpool, coming face-to-face with a variant of Logan that uproots memories she'd long suppressed, only to find that this version of him lost her in his universe, too. TAGS/WARNINGS — she/her pronouns (minimal usage), female anatomy, flashbacks in italics, angst, enemies to lovers, alcoholism, smoking, arguments, canon typical violence, cursing/bad language, Deadpool breaks the fourth wall like twice, canon behaviour worst wolverine, religious trauma, honda odyssey scene self-insert, eventual smut, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, dirty nasty talk (logan has a filthy mouth), mentions of cocaine literally once. smut is marked after last divider if you want to skip plot but i'll kiss you if you don't!
You’re smoking a cigarette on your porch when the snowfall happens. It would be normal, you think, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s dead in the middle of July. A group of nanas, elbow-deep in the community garden soil, glance up to the sky and begin muttering prayers amongst themselves.
You’ve lived in this safe house for a while now, up in the mid-west of the Appalachian mountains, surrounded by thickets of pine and opposite a bubbling creek. You grew up somewhere near here and the locals welcomed you back with open arms and a plateful of hot food when the humans started the culling— when the X-men fell apart.
It has plenty of benefits. The smell of lavender, for one, and your cat, Kevin, loves chasing the pigeons, even if he’s not the most successful hunter. The locally sourced produce means you can avoid the poisoned food they’re distributing in supermarkets.
But, most importantly, the humans can’t find you out here. You’re lucky the gossip of your… genetics, so to speak, doesn’t leave Sunday morning church.
Things have been different, lately. The trees are shedding down to dust, people are disappearing at an exponential rate, and there was a time when you’d be on the front lines helping them. You’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the call — a learned habit — but it’s never coming. Charles is dead. Logan is dead. The X-men are dead.
The snow is warm when it lands on your skin. It feels like rot, and your solitude suddenly feels lonelier and more daunting than ever.
You reach to take a sip of your steaming coffee when you hear movement. A zipping strobe light crosses your vision and you flinch against the intrusion, but you’re not afraid. You’ve surely survived worse.
Stryker worse.
A comical and confused looking figure pops out from an orange portal, scratching the crown of his head over the red and black mask on his face. You sip your coffee as you observe him nonchalantly.
He notices you and approaches with a dainty point of his finger.
“Um, excuse me, ma’am.”
“Well, well well,” you suck on your cigarette with a frown. “Look what the cat dragged in. Got a new suit, Red?”
“What, aren’t you happy to see lil’ old me?”
“You’re on my property,” you say matter-of-factually. You had a shotgun stowed away inside for emergencies, but frankly, you never had to use it. You were enough of a weapon yourself. Consider it insurance, if the corn-syrup they’re poisoning ever finally makes it way to you.
You glance sidelong at the old ladies in their aprons, clutching one another with stern gazes in your direction. The deal was that you didn’t bring trouble their way — but it looks like trouble found you. You narrow your eyes and silently hope that this doesn’t turn messy, as it so usually does where he’s concerned.
He sighs heavily and continues approaching regardless. You analyse his stature and take notes of the weapons on his holsters and back. You reckon you could take him if it came down to it, but he didn’t seem threatening.
You and Wade used to be friends, but after isolating yourself from grief, you don’t necessarily consider yourselves to have a close relationship. More often than not he brought trouble; hence your defensive response.
“Listen, ants in your pants, I’ve done this about a hundred times,” he huffs and places a hand on his hip, waving the device around in his hand. You take another drag of your cigarette and perk your brows before rising to your feet.
“I’ve had my spleen shattered by the Hulk, about eighty stab wounds…”
He rambles on about his collection of injuries and you tilt your head with amusement. Must be another one of his famous mental breakdowns. This might be entertaining, at the very least.
“…You’ve even killed me a few times in different universes!” He claps his hands together. “And frankly, I was just going to let you die here. You’re not even canon, so you won’t be missed, but you appear to be of use to me. So I need you to come with me. Now. Please.”
What on Earth was he talking about? What on Earth was he ever talking about?
You bark a laugh. “I ain’t going anywhere with you, Red and Black.”
“Will it change your mind if I add a cherry on top?” He asks with a dry laugh before nodding enthusiastically. Manically. “You’re coming. Kevin’s life depends on it.”
“What are you talkin’ about? Are you threatenin’ my cat? That’s a new low, Wade.”
“Is it? Is it really? I am certain that I can go unfathomably lower.”
You roll your eyes, half-way through turning your back on him.
“You see this?” He holds out a gloved hand and catches some snowflakes. He rubs them between his fingers and they spark and fizzle before dusting away. “That’s not snow. That’s time death. Our universe is dying, womp womp. Stay here, sure! By all means, but—”
Your cat launches out of the door behind you, chirping and meowing to himself before promptly dashing through the portal and disappearing into the blurry void on the other side.
“Well. Looks like he made his choice.”
He sighs and lets you process. You take the final swig of your coffee and huff a breath.
“You literally have nothing left to lose. Trust me. I know. I’ve seen all kinds of you and, believe me when I say this, even though I love and cherish this version of you, this—” he points two fingers at you and gestures towards you judgmentally. “— isn’t the best look on you, honey.”
You want to dismiss him. You want to turn him away, to tell him to get lost. Grief swallowed your heroism whole, turning it into a barren wasteland of bitter indifference. You used to be bright, full of light, love, and hope.
Fucking hope. It’s the reason Logan left you to help Charles in the first place. You just wanted to settle down and disappear, to live a normal life. You lost an intrinsic part of your being when he died; you remember feeling it before you heard the news. Fucking hope.
Hope, hope, hope. Nana Rose chants on about it when she clasps your hands with her wrinkly ones, dragging you to church in spite of your atheism.
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts,” she chants, basket of flowers on her hip. “Romans 5:5. You’d do well to do your readin’, tulip.”
You didn’t and don’t ever usually believe a word she says, but you can feel her faith. It’s solid as steel, pouring out of her like blotting light through the gaps in the trees. Undying. And you’ll be damned if you let anything happen to her.
A flicker remains. You imagine what Charles would say to you now, how you’d hang onto his every word and he’d bring out the better of you. You truly do have nothing left to lose, except maybe your cat. Over your dead body.
“Come ooon,” he pokes his fingers together. “Fancy being a hero? One last time?”
You take the final drag before stubbing the cigarette out on your railing. “Alright, Red. I’ll bite.”
“Then suit up.”
Your friendship with Deadpool was a rocky one. There was a time you told him you’d be there for him through everything, and you technically owed him one for saving your life that one time even though your ego insists that, to this day, you could’ve taken the fight. That’s what heightened cellular control of your body is for, right? Accelerated healing? Empathetic abilities? Faster reactions, enhanced strength— you get the point.
Though you didn’t realise that returning the favour meant following him through space, time and alternate dimensions, you were a person who stayed true to their word, and you hated being indebted to someone.
So, here you were, waking up in the middle of a barren wasteland that was seconded as a cocktail soup of abandoned universal relics and heroes ripped from their worlds, accompanying your ex-best friend to restore your timeline.
But, one thing about paying someone back, it doesn’t technically count if they lie to you about the terms and conditions of the agreement. Only a few mere moments after you come to, dazed by the impact and the blaring wobbly heat of the sun, you rise to watch as Deadpool takes six blades of Wolverine to the chest.
You’re still a little dizzy when you stagger to your feet, head throbbing, as you’re trying to process if, yes, that’s exactly what you were witnessing.
“Let’s see you grow your fuckin’ head back!” Wolverine growls.
Deadpool holds his hands up in surrender. “Wait, wait, wait! I can fix it! I can fix it!”
The man in yellow hesitates. “Fix what?”
“Whatever it is that you did, whatever made you so bad—” Wade pants, catching his breath. “Those pricks at the TVA, you heard ‘em. They have the power to end my universe, but they also have the power to change yours. We get back there, and we can fix your world! Together. I promise.”
You stumble from around a pile of debris, clutching your side as a rib pops back into place. Wolverine sniffs the air, face blanching as he snaps to look in your direction.
When you first make eye contact with him, it feels as though you’re resurfacing from water after being on the precipice of drowning. Your heart leaps into your throat, adrenaline boils your veins and your lungs burst with relief of breathing.
“Troubles always gonna find you, baby,” Logan murmurs, kissing his way up from the pulse in your throat as he rocks against you. “But so am I.”
You’ve never loved him more, you think, than when he fucks you slow like this. A snowstorm rages outside the cabin, howling full of glass and needles and rattling the window frames. His skin against yours burns a fire within you, warming you to the bone. He sweeps hair away from your face before capturing your mouth in his, swallowing the sounds of your pants, threading his fingers between yours.
You could stay here forever, you think.
Your fingers shake from the whiplash of the memory. You instinctively reach towards him but you catch yourself. This was the husk of him, not your Logan. The realisation feels akin to ripping open a haphazardly sewn wound right down to the fatty yellow flesh, raw and needling and sore.
He’s broader than you remember. Hair a little darker, wrinkles a little deeper. He smells of alcohol and cigars — that much is familiar. That’s him, flesh and adamantium bone, living, breathing. Alive. The physical shell of him prods alive parts of your inner circuitry that you weren’t aware had fallen asleep, like intrinsic nerves untangling within you.
You can sense that he knows you, too, based on his emotional response. His noise is extremely loud, spilling out of the cracks of whatever wall he thought he’d successfully built up. This version of Logan certainly had a lot of secrets.
“You,” he whisper-growls. It’s almost intangible, leaving him like a breath. He pulls his blades promptly from Deadpool’s chest and kicks him backwards.
You’re starting to understand that faith thing that Nana Rose was knocking on about when he strides towards you, large and tall. You certainly weren’t a believer by any means but you’re sure you’d be the picture of unbridled worship for the way you’d fall to your knees for him.
Your empathetic power lurches for him, seeking him out as you used to — like a flower to the sun — but it physically recoils from the aura that it touches. It was all your Logan but not in a familiar way. It’s tainted, dark, and it tastes like copper and screams.
All colour melts from his face and his body shuffles in a way that indicates discomfort; a dry swallow, tense shoulders and flicking eyes that refuse to meet your gaze. He omits feelings of guilt and shame that linger on the tendrils of your empathetic powers where you connect with him.
You try to zone Wade out, squinting as you attempt to navigate through his cobweb of emotions (seriously, this guy’s aura could do with a cleanup) but it’s like wading through black-tar syrup, feelings negated by years of alcohol-abuse and avoidance. Eventually, you feel something that makes your guts twist and your legs shake: a version of romantic attraction and recognition so carnal and raw that you begin to blush, a warmth that creeps its way up from your belly. A breath escapes you like a punch.
“Well. This feels awkward.” Wade glances between you both and places his hands on his hips. “Why do you both look like you’ve seen a ghost? Do I need to call Egon Splegler and tell him to bring his ghost sucky-sucky vacuum? Oh my god—” He slaps his hands to his face and gasps sharply. “Cross-Universal lovers?”
As inappropriately timed and tone-deaf his one-liners could be, you’d never been more appreciative of an icebreaker. You think you could’ve stood there for an hour, frozen in silence, staring at a reanimated corpse, basking in the noise of his emotional frequency like an addict finally getting another hit.
But then the noise stops, swallowed up like a heaving black hole had split and atomised the tension whole with its unforgiving jaws. He closes himself off from you. Connection severed. You reach out and feel a cold nothingness similar to how, on particularly rough nights, you’d try to reach out to him after his passing. You’d clung onto his plaid shirts until the smell and emotional residue wore off of them.
“You with the mouth? To fix things?”
You nod tightly. You don’t think you can find your voice in front of him.
“Let’s just keep moving. And stay out of my head,” Logan grumbles, crossing you with a cold shoulder and mumbling something incoherent under his breath. When he’s made enough distance, you turn to your old friend with a cold glare.
“Ooh, brr. Anybody else feel a chill?”
“Wade.”
He twists towards you comically slow.
“You. Motherfucker.” You begin approaching him. He backs up slowly and holds his hands up.
“I knew if I told you the plan you wouldn’t have gone along with it!”
“Are you insane? You think multiversally grave-robbing my fucking dead ex-boyfriend is going to save our timelines?!” You yell.
“Technically he’s not dead—”
You push him. “He should be! He- he was— he is!”
“Well, this one isn’t!” He pushes back. “And I’m not sorry for finding a loophole in the plan to fry — not just mine, mind you — but both of our timelines! Did you happen to forget that? No multi-dimensional depressed Logan? Alright then! No more Kevin!”
He’s talking about your cat. Anger flares.
“Don’t you dare bring Kevin into this.”
“You forced my hand!” He yells, mouth moving alien-like behind the mask on his face. “Besides, I’m not doing this for me—”
You blink your eyes closed. You might reach the end of your tether if he said her name one more time. You’ve been in his company for approximately an hour, and he’s already drilled a hole into your brain with his incessant yapping about the “love of his life”.
“Wade, you need to move on. She clearly has.”
“I will not move on from the only people I love in this fucked up dimension. This isn’t just for Vanessa.” He shoves a glossy photograph in your face. “This is for you and blind Al and even that shit-head teenager and her pinkie-pie girlfriend! They deserve their timeline!”
“I literally don’t care about any of those people!”
Even yourself?
“Well, I do! I have people I care about! Aren’t you supposed to be a hero? God, all of you X-men are so depressing. Is it the suits they make you wear? Is that it? Can’t breathe in that thing?” He continues poking at you. “Loosen up a little!”
You straighten your posture and the black leather of your suit crackles. You swat his hands away as he continues poking. “Alright! Cut it out!”
“Think of Nana Rose.” He draws a heart with two fingers. “Little old ladies like her deserve a chance, don’t they?”
And even though humans had done nothing but wage war on your kind for simply existing, you still felt obliged to help them. Besides, the thought of other mutants — kid mutants — dying when you hold the chance to save them in the palm of your hand? You were hardly managing as you were now. You’re not sure you’d be able to live with yourself if you kept going like this.
“Alright, alright!” You huff, heart pounding in your chest. You look over at where Wolverine kicks at rocks in the distance. “Fucking hell, Red. Holy fuck.”
You say it again, only this time you scream it into your hands.
“You should’ve warned me.”
“Are we good?”
“Are we go—” You scoff. You kick his ankle, feel the bones shatter and crunch beneath your foot. He lets out a short, high-pitched yelp. “You deserved that.”
“Motherfuckermotherfucker… oh you’re lucky I feel bad about lying to you or I would’ve twisted your milk bags off for that I swear to God.” He sucks in a breath. “I’ll allow it. Just this once.”
“Mhm,” you murmur, walking forward. “That doesn’t sound like an apology.”
He limps after you, floppy ankle dragging a line in the sandy dirt. “I’ll be dead before you ever get one of those out of me! And too bad I can’t fucking die!”
The difference between this Logan and your Logan is stark, minus the uncanny resemblance. Your Logan was soft and gentle, but this version is sharper and blade-edged, and your fingers bleed when you try to touch him.
Staring at him feels like throwing up a mirror and analysing yourself, a picture of what happens to a person when they make all of the wrong choices. You’re embarrassed, almost. This isn’t a version of you that you ever want him to know, but at least you can say you’re trying.
Him, on the other hand…
“Are we going to keep up the awkward silence?” You snip, awkwardly adjusting the restraints on your wrist.
You’ve been in Logan’s company for all of an hour, and yet accompanying one another through literal time purgatory didn’t seem to irk any feelings of obligation from his end. He’d been cold-shouldering and ignoring you the entire time, even though you kept catching him staring.
“I have nothing to say to you,” he spits, wriggling uncomfortably against a very unconscious Deadpool. “You got us into this mess.”
You frown, small. You can feel hatred pouring out from him, leaving a sickly bile taste in the back of your throat. You’ve lived through enough hate for being a mutant in your lifetime, enough that you’d become accustomed to tuning it out of your radio channel, so to speak, but something about it coming from the man you loved makes it a little harder to swallow.
You’re quiet when you next speak. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”
He shoots you an indistinguishable look and grunts to himself. Such a Libra.
“So, what’s the story here?” Johnny asks with a sly grin. He turns to you with a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “You two know each other?”
You cringe. “Sort of. Last I remember, he wasn’t this much of a prick.”
“Oh, trouble in paradise, huh?” His grin grows. “That’s a shame. Not often we get girls like you in the void.”
“Seriously?” You say with a side-eye.
He shrugs, all blue-spandex biceps and charming smile. “No harm in trying.”
Your breath hitches as Cassandra approaches, wide eyes and tilted head aiming for you purposefully. Logan swiftly angles his body so that he’s standing in front of you and she halts as a delighted, implicating smile stretches across her face. Your chest constricts, tendrils of yearning coiling tighter. It appeared to be muscle memory: his instinctual, protective flinch. Just like your Logan used to, despite how capable he knew you were.
“Now, I’ve always wanted a Wolverine.” Her finger moves along the crowd. “Knew I’d get one eventually. But I never even dreamed of having you.”
Cassandra zips behind you and her slender fingers delve into the crevices and valleys of your brain, lips intimately close to your neck and ear. Wolverine snarls territoriality, but he’s unable to move. The urge to reach for him is overwhelming.
“Do you know that there are so few universes where you exist?” She whispers, caressing your deepest memories. “I even asked the TVA about you, in exchange for keeping the peace. I was disheartened when I found out one of you died. But you’re here! Now, I don’t believe in fate, but this almost feels like it was meant to be.”
You flinch when she uncovers a particularly fond memory, one you hadn’t been aware was so prominently in the forefront.
In the back of his truck, a cigar between his teeth, hands sliding under your shirt. In another world, he would’ve taken the time to do this properly, but living in a school didn’t exactly grant two consenting adults any privacy.
“Waited long enough for this.”
He kisses up from your bare foot to the sensitive skin of your inner knee, lips scorching against your skin.
“Logan…”
“Easy,” he murmurs, leaning away for a moment to remove his plaid overshirt, leaving himself in that white vest you could eat him alive in. “Still wanna take my time with you.”
You’re desperate, he can tell— can probably smell it, too, but you’re far too humiliated to ask him if he can.
Logan wasn’t your first by any means, but with the way you were near trembling for him truly felt like you’d be losing all of your innocence in the back seat. You’re shy and quiet, everything he isn’t. You’re infatuated with him — have been since he burst out of the lab in his grey hoodie — and have daydreamed about what it would be like to have him. You certainly didn’t let him know that right away, and with whatever shred of composure remained around his relentless flirting and teasing remarks, you tried to play hard to get.
Until you couldn’t. Because you weren’t. He had you, and with every fibre of your being, you wanted him to.
She pulls her hands from your brain with a shlick sound, rubbing her fingers together as if relishing in the produce of your memories. She grabs a rag from her pocket and smirks knowingly.
“You’re thinking of that at a time like this?” She laughs all witch-like. “Worry not; your secret’s safe with me, naughty girl.”
Wade lowers his voice and leans towards Logan. “She was thinking of me.”
“I can read between the lines, darling,” she potters on. “This isn’t about a sexual fantasy. Deep down, you just want to be wanted. To be loved.”
She steps back and extends her arms. “After all, you’ll never amount to anything in your world. It’s such a shame that your Logan left you so abruptly. Did he break your heart?” She giggles. “Why suppress your powers in his name? For a level-five mutant, you certainly don’t act like one. You can do that, here. Freely!”
Your worn thin tether creaks with exhaustion like a dilapidated bridge under pressure. There isn’t a singular fibre of your being that desires to be stuck here, but the small, angry teenage voice in your head would love nothing more than to just let go. You’d been containing your powers for as far as you can remember, and they'd always been as irresistible as the promise of Pandora's box.
But you know how that story ends.
You take a moment’s pause. “I have no interest in livin’ in a garbage dump.”
She tilts her head and neatly clasps her hands behind her back. “Do you forget where you come from? I think we both know who lives in a garbage dump.”
“You motherf—”
You’d just managed to escape Cassandra’s lair with Alioth’s foggy storm fangs nipping at your ankles when you ran across the abandoned diner.
You’re ravenous, wrist aching from how you dig at the freezer-burned ice cream. It’s your least favourite flavour but you’ve been running on fumes for the past day or so, so you’ll take what you can get, though you begin to lose your appetite when you remember Johnny, and how Cassandra had zipped the skin from him like popping a blood-filled water balloon.
Something is rumbling beneath your surface. A distinct, constant buzzing, like two atoms slowly building up radioactive energy. You’d asked for none of this, and would certainly give Wade a talking to when the time called for it, but, for now, you’re trying your hardest to make this as easy a process as possible.
Your male counterpart, however, was doing exactly what men generally do. He was making this fucking unbearable.
Logan sits across from you, brooding, fingers gripping the medicinal bottle as if it’s anywhere near appropriate to be drinking. He throws you a particularly lingering glare when he notices you staring, but refuses to maintain eye contact when you look back at him
You toss the tub and spoon across the table with a sharp clatter, your patience collapsing.
“What? Can’t even look at me?” You snap. His eyes look exhausted when they finally meet yours. Wade, being the characteristic little fucker he is, pulls a delighted, shit-stirring grin as he glances between the two of you as if watching a tennis match.
Logan gasps as he finishes taking a drink. “Not much to look at,” he says, wiping the back of his mouth.
The words twist like a fist in your gut. For a moment, you’re rendered too stunned to respond, like he’d tossed a flash-bang toward you. His casual cruelty digs deeper than you care to admit— but you’ve had far too much therapy, too much psychological training, to know he’s deflecting.
But you wouldn’t doubt for a second that there was a more beautiful version of you somewhere.
“What, you comparin’ me to someone?” You ask. You can tell you’ve struck a nerve by the way he goes for another sip. “That it?”
He grimaces.
“Do I make you feel sick? Am I making you feel sick?”
He stares at you hard, but silently. He takes a long swig of the rubbing alcohol and you cringe as his throat bobs. His silence and feigned indifference light a fire of indignation.
“You know, you’re not the only person who’s suffered. Who’s lost people.”
He laughs like what you’re saying is funny. “Yeah, right, bub, you have got no idea what loss is.”
“Oh, you are such a fucking cunt,” you spit, slamming your hands on the table as you rise to your feet. “You know what, Wade? You’re right. I can’t do this. So fuck you and fuck his timeline and fuck every timeline that had anything to do with it! I’m done.”
A wave of uncontrolled psionic energy born from your anger blasts from you upon your final words, slamming them back into their seats and sending the cutlery, nearby debris and weapons flying. The neighbouring windows smash, shattering explosively and sprinkling outside of the diner.
The simmering stops, replaced by a stifling emptiness.
“I wasn’t finished with that!” Wade cries, crouching down to scoop up what remains of the gelatinous spam.
You pause for a moment, glance at your hands, and then grab your jacket in an aggressive fit.
Wade whines your name, halfway through gagging down a forkful of cold spam off of the floor (one of which resonates with a particularly distinct crunch, but you don’t stay to find out whether or not he just truly ate glass), and he doesn’t attempt to get up and follow you as you storm off.
You take a heaving breath of hot desert air when you leave the diner. The sandy breeze tousles your hair, and with the prickly energy of an incoming nervous breakdown, your legs kick and you’re running.
“Stryker got you, too?” Logan asks, eyebrows flicking up.
You don’t look him in the eye when you nod. You cross your arms and slouch a little, caging your heart in. Stryker — the ex-militant with a fetish for experimenting on mutants — had held you captive for several years. He’d brainwashed you into using your empathetic abilities for nefarious purposes, like seducing other mutants, and sometimes important political and militant figures.
“You like me?” He questions, quieter this time.
“No… no, not like you,” you reply. “I don’t have the fancy bones. I heal fast, but I wouldn’t survive that kinda procedure.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t remember everything. Just bits and pieces. Feelings, mostly. Nightmares,” you explain. He nods understandingly. “I’m always on edge.”
���You always seem so calm,” he observes. “Nothing seems to phase you.”
“I have to be. It took a lot of pain and damage to get this level-headed,” you respond quickly. “If I don’t manage my emotions, all the emotions that I receive, touch— it all comes out. Explosively. It has to come out somehow. I could hurt people.”
“Funny. School therapist ‘n’ you’ve got the most issues,” he teases light-heartedly.
“You got no idea, lumberjack.”
You hated killing.
You’re on your knees, arms and hands and chest soaked crimson, sobbing. They’d come out of nowhere, the raiders, and they were hungry for something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. All you know is that you felt their need, their desperation, their willingness to do anything to get it.
The flash of harrowing horror someone feels before they die isn’t a unique experience. It simply varies in strength — sometimes it’s a feather-like touch that careens over you, a shuddering realisation that they’re taking their last breath, and sometimes it’s like a crack of lightning. Bloodied hands gripping your biceps with fear in a final attempt to survive. They’d rather cling to you than die alone.
You hate killing. Especially this up close.
You don’t cry for them. You don’t even cry for yourself. It’s a small emotional space where they cry vicariously through you.
You were black-out when it happened, you tell yourself, and suddenly regress to the student you used to be, sobbing on your knees in front of Charles as he tries to teach you serenity and control after an outburst had caused you to kill a nest of birds. He’d done it for Magneto, he said— so he could certainly do it for you.
You should have meditated more.
The sound of a car gurgles somewhere behind you, but you haven’t the energy to look or use your powers to seek out who’s approaching and what their intent is. You’re exhausted enough that whatever they wish to do with you — turn you to processed dog kibble, send you back into the jaws of Cassandra’s lair, kill you — whatever. Just let it happen.
A slamming car door and then the crunching of boots on gravel.
“You’re easy to track.” A pause. “You look pathetic. You done throwing your tantrum?”
Logan. Of course, it’s him.
“Leave me alone, prick.”
“As much as I’d like to, you and the Mouth still have to hold up your end of the bargain,” he quips, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Now get up.”
You glare up at him and his arms unfurl as he notices your tear-streaked face. His expression drops, softens, before it quickly ticks back up into an incredulous, irritated look.
“Are you crying?” He asks with a scoff. He pauses before dragging his hand down his face and rubbing his scruffy jaw. “Jesus Christ. Get up. Get in the car.”
“I ain’t fuckin’ around, Logan. Piss. Off.”
He mumbles a string of incoherent curses and turns on his heel. You think, for a moment and a breath of relief, that he’s truly going to give up on you and leave. He could finish this without you. It’s easier this way.
Instead, a thick bicep wraps around your middle and you’re flung over his shoulder with a yelp.
“Quit your squirmin’.”
“Then put me down!” You yell, thrashing in his grasp. He promptly ignores you, unphased by the jabs you strike at his back. You quickly unsheath the small knife from your jacket sleeve, winding up your arm before you drive it into the muscly pocket by his kidneys.
“Ow! Cheap shot, you little fucker!”
Wade sighs and clutches his hands in front of his chest romantically. “Oh, the newlyweds.”
Logan dumps you into the front seat of the car carelessly, grumbling something as he slams the door shut and applies the child locks. Petty motherfucker.
You rub the sore spot on your tailbone where you landed on a seat buckle funny. You want to bite your tongue but you’re flared up.
“We should switch places. I’m a better driver than you are.”
Logan doesn’t bother looking at you as he starts up the ignition. “Just shut up.”
“You can go on ahead and smoke a cat turd in hell, then.”
“So fuckin’ immature. Grow up.”
“Mom and Dad can you please stop fighting!” Deadpool cries out from the backseats.
You just roll your eyes, resigning into your chair and folding your arms.
At some point along the ride, Wade falls asleep, snoring soundly to himself. You’re silent in the front, drumming a beat on your knees, awkwardly thinking of something to say. You have the impulsive need to fill the silence, even if you were trapped in a crappy car with a man who had made it vehemently clear that he irrevocably hated you.
“So, if they can fix your world, what’s the first thing you’ll do?”
Logan rips his eyes towards you. “What did you say?”
“I said when you get back, what’s the first thing—”
“No, no, no— before that.”
You hesitate, wondering if you’d landed yourself in a trap based on the sharpness of his tone and the way that anger crackles off of him like static lightning.
“If… they can fix your world?”
He slams his foot on the brake and you just about catch yourself before your nose goes flying into the dashboard. Wade is thrust out of the front window, smashing through and promptly falling unconscious underneath a tree, neck broken at an awkward angle.
Your eyes widen.
“What do you mean: if?”
“That’s what Wade said—”
“I don’t give a fuck who said what. He promised me he would fix things—”
“Well, I didn’t promise you shit!”
He laughs, low and devoid of humour. “You don’t have a clue if they can fix things, do you?”
Well, no. You’ve been operating on a hunch the entire time and had half come to accept that you might be stuck in the TVA void forever. Who knows how much time has passed elsewhere?
Regardless of the fact you truly had nothing to do with whatever came out of Wade’s mouth, you weren’t about to let Mr. Worst Wolverine shit all over him and his plan to save his friends.
“Is it really that far-fetched? We made an educated wish!”
Something dark flashes across his face. You can feel hate pulsing off of him in dizzying waves, doubling with each passing moment.
“You made… an educated fucking wish?”
“What’s your problem with me, huh? Got a stick up your ass?” You reach for the car door handle, but he snaps up your wrist, holding it high. “You better let go of me right now, old man—”
“Or what, huh? Gonna run away again?” He threatens.
“You geriatric, alcoholic motherfucker. I’ve done nothin’ but try and be civil with you and you treat me like I’m the one who ruined your life! I don’t know what version of me you knew but you need to stop actin’ like I ain’t worthy of being here because of what you did!”
“Listen, I’ll tell you what my problem is with you—” he leans closer, eyes roving over you with a disgusted look on his face. “I mean, you are a ridiculous, emotional, immature crybaby. I have never met a sadder, more attention-seeking, foul-mouthed little bitch in my entire life and that says a lot because I’ve been alive for more than two hundred fuckin’ years.”
“And I’ll tell you, that bald chick was right about one thing: you will never amount to anything. You’ll never save the world. You couldn’t even save a relationship with me. I’d say you should’ve died alone but it’s one of God’s best jokes that in this universe you didn’t seem to fuckin’ die, except that ones on the rest of all of us!”
He breathes heavily when his rant finishes. You’re taken aback, jaw slack, eyes warm with the onset of tears born from shock.
“What, you got nothin’ to say, empath?”
You suck in a deep breath, blinking slowly as you flick the emotional switch off in your head.
“I’m going to hurt you now.”
He snorts. “Oh, are you?”
In a swift manoeuvre, you raise your slap him around the face. You knew better than to punch a metal skull, but you still wanted him to sting. His eyes slit, nostrils flaring in challenge.
“That all you got?”
“Not even close,” you snap back, knuckles whitening from the way you curl your fingers into your palm. “You want to play this game, Logan? Fine— but I’m not gonna sit here and keep on provin’ myself to you. I’ve had enough of your Christ-born-again superiority complex. Did you forget that you’re the worst Wolverine?”
“Oh, yeah? Well, at least I’m honest about who I am. Look at you— you’re a fuckin’ joke, pretending to be some hero in a suit made for a dead team,” he barks back, voice rising with each word. “I don’t need your bullshit “wishes”— you should know, I’ve buried people for less.”
“Yeah, because you’re so perfect, ain’t that right?” You yell, voice cracking from the power of your anger. “The almighty Wolverine— the unkillable bastard who can’t seem to hold onto anythin’ good in his life! You’ve had centuries to get your shit together, and look at you—” You look him up and down with disgust. “—still just a bitter, lonely, broken man, takin’ it out on everyone else and a goddamn bottle.”
His eyes narrow, muscles in his jaw twitching as he appears to fight and keep his temper in check, but there’s an obvious crack forming, the dam of his unbridled rage near overflowing.
“You think you know me, huh?” He murmurs, voice a deadly whisper, the calm before the storm. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about what I’ve been through. You’re nothing but a lost woman playing make-believe and hiding in the shadow of a fuckin’ merc. You’re pathetic.”
Something inside of you breaks. “I’m pathetic? Look at yourself! You’re so goddamn desperate to feel anythin’ that you’ll lash out at everyone around you for some semblance of warmth. There’s a fine line between hate and love, after all! You think you’re so strong because you can heal, because you’ve lived forever? Yeah, right— you’re the weakest, most cowardly man I’ve met in a loong time.”
The blades between his knuckles shoot out with a shink! For a moment, you think that he’s going to attack you. Hell— you even hope that he will, just to diminish some of the unbearable, stifling tension. Instead, the blades retract with a deep breath, and he grabs you forcefully by the collar of your suit, yanking you so close that you can feel the heat of his breath on your face.
His voice is low and rough, each word dripping with venom. “Go on, keep psychoanalysing me. You wanna talk about cowardice? How about leaving people who need you, just because it’s easier to run? Better yet, how about the fact that you abandoned the X-men to hide away in the mountains, huh?”
Your eyes widen with recognition.
“Yeah… Wade’s got a big mouth. Told me everythin’. You’re no hero. Hell, you’re just a selfish, reckless hillbilly who failed at pretending to be human.”
Your heart palpitates in your chest, each word coiling and slicing like blades in your intestines, but you refuse to let him see how much it hurts. Instead, your lips curl into a cold, bitter smile, one that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.
“And you’re just a sad, angry old man who can’t handle the fact that he’s lost everythin’. Go ahead: keep pushing people away! Keep hidin’ behind that anger o’ yours! It’s got you this far, ain’t it?! I’ve treated kids with trauma worth double yours and they were nothin’ but kind and selfless. I won’t let you project your failures onto me. I’m done with this.”
“Yeah, why don’t you walk away!”
The argument reaches a fever pitch, tension sizzling in the air between you. You’re so close, glaring at each other with so much anger, so much resonating heat, that it feels like something’s going to break. And then, suddenly, it does.
Before either of you can think, you close the gap between you, lips crashing against his. It’s not gentle, it’s not soft— the kiss is rough, violent, a clash of lips and fury. His grip on your collar tightens, and for a moment, you’re both frozen, caught in the shock of what’s happening.
But then something more fiery in nature than anger ignites, and he kisses you back just as fiercely, and maybe a little more desperate— like he’s trying to pour out all of his pain and resentment, into this one moment. Your tongues slide against each other and his teeth catch against yours as he groans into your mouth. Your hands thread through his hair, yanking him closer as if trying to hold onto something real and tangible in the chaos of the kiss, reeling from the sudden spinning in your head. It’s angry, raw, filled with all the things you’re not capable of verbalising: grief, love, yearning, reconciliation.
The result of a painful reunion.
The world falls away and all that’s left is the taste of him, the feel of his lips against yours, rough and demanding. You hate him right now— hate him so much that you can’t help but want him. The sheer intensity of it all overwhelms you and makes your fingers shake against the nape of his neck, but you can’t pull away— not now, not when you’ve tasted the wine. You’re too far gone, caught up in the storm of his intoxication, fantasising about ripping that yellow and blue suit off of him and riding him until there’s nothing left for him to regenerate.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, the bubble of the moment bursts with the sound of slow clapping coming from outside the car. You jerk back from Logan, breath coming in ragged gasps. Logan is equally as stunned, still tight-gripping your collar as if he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands.
You both see Wade sitting up, hands together, eyes wide as saucers as he takes in the scene.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did I just wake up in a telenovela?” His voice is laced with amusement. “I mean, I know you two clearly had some unresolved sexual tension— but this? Oh, this is gold. Please don’t stop on my account, just let me get the camcorder first!”
You’re too stun-locked to respond, lips parting and closing as your brain scrambles to formulate a response as you’re still reeling from what just happened. Logan (for once) seems equally as lost for words, his typical scowl replaced with a look of confusion.
“Shut up, Mouth,” Logan barks, but there’s no real heat behind it. There can’t be, really, not when you’ve both been caught red-handed. He releases your collar at once.
Wade, however, is having none of it. “Oh, no, no, no! You don’t just get to brush this off like it’s nothing! That was a full-on makeout session! I only interrupted because I thought you were about to rip each other’s clothes off.” He sighs wistfully and crosses his legs. “Here I was thinking that you two hated each other— but I guess all that anger was just foreplay, huh?”
Your face burns with a mixture of shame and something else you’re not quite ready to admit. “Wade— cut it out.”
He grins, not deterred in the least. “Oh, but I’m loving this. All that pent-up aggression finally coming to fruition. It’s beautiful, truly.”
Logan shoots him a look that could melt iron, but Wade just simply shrugs, unfazed. “Hey, I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking. Everyone being me.”
“Wade,” you warn through gritted teeth.
“Well, unless you want me to watch (which I am not opposed to, by the way) maybe next time the two of you should get a room,” he tilts his head. “Or, you know, a couples therapist.”
He then turns to address Logan directly.
“And I must’ve missed the AO3 tags because I did not peg you for the enemies-to-lovers type, Mister. Who knew all it took was a bit of hate-kissing to get the sparks flying? Don’t look so ashamed! I’m just jealous I didn’t get to you first.”
He stumbles towards the car and collapses into the back seat. “Next time you wanna bump uglies, just ask for some privacy! You can save me the broken neck!” He gets himself comfortable, man-spreading and laying his hands on both of your shoulders as you stare dead-forwards, unable to look at each other.
“Gosh, you’re both so tense.” He begins massaging. “Look— props to you both for not letting all that angst go to waste. This is a safe space, and there’s no shame in a little hormone-induced—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Logan interrupts, revving the car back to life and shoving his prodding hands away. “Just be quiet back there.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll keep the commentary to myself. But just so you know— got that bad boy playing on repeat, right here.” He says, tapping the side of his head.
You bury your face in your hands. This was going to be a long car ride.
As the car starts moving again, you muster the bravery to risk a glance at Logan. His expression is hard to read but his energy thrums with uncertainty. The boiling hatred seems to have dialled down to a gentle simmer, mostly redirected towards himself rather than you. There’s something else— something that wasn’t there before. You rip your eyes away quickly, mind racing.
For somebody so in tune with emotions and the literal ability to manipulate them if you so desired, you were horrendous at navigating your own. You don’t know what this kiss meant, or if it even meant anything at all.
If there’s anyone you didn’t expect to come across in the void, it’s X-23— Laura. She’s taller, now, with hair down her back, but she’s still got that stern, mean look on her face that intimidated you the first time you met her.
The weak front door squeaks when you open it a crack. A girl, maybe in her small teen years, blinks up at you.
“Can I help you?” You ask, wiping your flour-dusty hands down on the front of your cooking apron.
“Are you—” she says your name.
You attempt to swing the door shut, but she jams it with her boot. You flick your eyes up, glance around for any signs of threats, and then lower your gaze to her. You wrap your cardigan around your mid-section.
“I don’t go by that name anymore. Who the Hell are you, kid, and what do you want?”
“I’m here about Logan,” she says, matter-of-factly.
Logan. A name followed by your own, both of which you hadn’t heard in years.
“He’s not here, kid. He died years ago.”
“I know,” she answers, unwavering. “I was there when it happened. Your name was the last thing he said.”
You’d let her in for a glass of sugary sweet tea that day, but once stories were exchanged you told her not to come back. She respected your wishes— she said she simply wanted to put a name to the face, to get closure, but you’d felt her desperation. Perhaps she was seeking out respite, or family, but you were in no position to be sharing your space with someone who could put another target on your back.
After introductions were made with the others who had been ripped from their timelines (Elektra, Blade and oh my god a Gambit variant with muscles so huge he could pop your head between his biceps) you excused yourself to sit outside. The buzzing emotional energy made your collar feel a little tight around the neck, your head a little fuzzy with noise, so you decided to reignite the small campfire a few yards away from the safe-house and rest there, instead.
You hadn’t realised you were being followed.
“It’s not safe here.”
“It’s not safe anywhere, Logan.”
He looks defeated, raising and clasping his hands behind his head.
“I gotta leave, baby.”
“If you leave, I ain’t lettin’ you back,” you whisper. “You don’t heal the same anymore, Logan, and you promised me—”
“I know what I promised,” he rebuts, but not angrily. You can already see on his face that he’s made his choice. He’s not coming to you to discuss it. “But I owe it to him. To Charles. He gave me everything.”
“So then what did I give you?” You ask. “Not a home, not my love, not everything?” You slam the tea towel down and turn away from him as the tears form. He’s quiet, perhaps processing everything, but you’re too impatient.
“If you’re just gon’ get up and leave, do it now. I won’t beg you to stay, Jimmy.”
“I love you.”
You don’t say it back.
You wake up with a start, damp clinging to your forehead. You immediately sense another presence and glance over to see Logan watching you with a steady gaze. His expression is soft and almost reverent at first, but his facade hardens with a quick tick of his jaw.
“You talk in your sleep.” The bottle in his hand sloshes as he takes a drink. “Nightmare?”
You sigh frustratedly when you realise it’s him. Of course, it’s him — his energy reeks of whiskey and self-loathing. You prop yourself on your elbows, massaging the sore spots on your temples where sleep fog forms.
“I can’t even get some rest without you botherin’ me? You’re leakin’ self-hatred everywhere.”
“Quit hogging the fire then.”
“Fuck you,” you murmur, but it’s without bite.
A moment passes before he fills the silence again. “What are you even doing out here, alone? Trying to get yourself killed? Pretty stupid.”
“Do you know how hard it is to sleep when nobody shuts up?”
His brows knit. “They’re all dead asleep.”
His hand runs up and down your back.
“Can’t settle?” He asks after you sigh.
“No.” You turn so you’re lying on your back, shoulder touching his, staring up at the ceiling. “Everyone is feeling so loud. It’s like a frequency I can’t turn off.”
He hums. “They’re grieving, I s’pose.”
“Even you and you always said you hated the guy.” You shuffle to lie on your side, facing him. You place a hand on his bare chest. “I can feel it, you know.”
“I didn’t hate Scott. Just found him… obnoxiously irritating.”
“Tough guy.” You giggle and stroke his cheek. “You’re turnin’ soft, old man.”
He pulls you flush against him and presses a kiss to your hairline. You lay in verbal silence for a while, soaking up his presence (god, you were so in love), but you’re interrupted when he abruptly sits up and grabs the white vest he discarded somewhere near the bed.
You lean on your elbows. “Where you goin’?”
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“What?”
“You can’t sleep here. Let’s go somewhere quieter.”
“But Charles said—”
“Screw Charles. You comin’ or what?”
He hadn’t told you he loved you yet, but at that moment you felt it.
And so you do, clinging to his mid-section on his motorcycle, head stuffed into the helmet he affectionately forces you to wear. It’s a warm night in New York, soupy with heat, but the further you get away from the compound with him by your side the more you feel you can breathe.
“’Course, you don’t understand.”
You reach for the small pouch on your hip and retrieve a cigarette. You light it between your lips, taking a seat a few paces away from him, hands still shaking a little with the aftershocks of the night terror.
“Since when did you start smoking?”
You perk a brow. “I’ve always smoked.”
He seems to realise something and simply shakes his head before returning to the vice in his fist.
“Right.”
You stare at him for a long, passing moment, before pulling out your lighter again and offering it towards him. He perks a brow.
“I know you got a cigar in there somewhere,” you say. He pauses, sighs, and then retrieves a thick cigar from one of the pouches on his suit. You lean closer, flick the lighter, and cup your hand to protect it from the breeze, shamelessly glancing at the dancing glow that bathes his face amid the firelight. You feel the urge to kiss him again, and when his eyes flick up to yours, you think for the briefest second that he wants to kiss you, too.
Swallowing, you collapse your lighter and clear your throat. You sit quietly, smoking and drinking in a silence only negated by the distant sound of chittering bugs around you. Once you’re finished with your cigarette, you toss the butt into the fire.
“We’re infiltrating tomorrow morning.”
He laughs dryly. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Your lips tighten into a thin line. “We won’t make it without you.”
“Sure you will. I’m not him, you know,” Wolverine grumbles, slugging another shot of alcohol.
You scrutinise him from across the log. You wonder if he feels as pathetic as he looks.
“No— you got that right,” you answer. You pry the liquor from his hands but the grip he releases from the neck of the bottle must have been a mercy on his part because you knew he was extraordinarily stronger than you. “He was much braver than you.”
His eyes flicker from the flames to you as you take a long swig.
“Although probably just as stupid.”
A pause. Crackling and popping firewood fills the silence.
“But, he was a hero. And so are you.”
A beat before he spits a dry laugh, “what gave you that idea?”
You give him a once over and offer a half-smile. “That suit, for starters.”
He looks down at himself like he’d forgotten he was wearing it and wipes away a stray speck of blood from the bright material that you’re sure you might be responsible for.
“What, you like it?” He grunts.
You can’t help but smile. “Yellow suits you.”
“This is all I had left to remember you— them by,” he says, tone turning more sombre as he reminisces.
You decide it’s not the time to make another jab, so, instead, you play back and forth with the bottle for a while until the alcohol stops stinging your throat.
Something small shatters inside of you when you watch him muster the strength to look into your eyes, and his look a little glassy.
“Did you love him?”
Woof, that needed a healthy drink of courage to answer. When you hold his gaze, there’s a hollowness to his expression— an unasked question. Was there truly a version of him worth loving?
“Yeah.” You wipe the back of your hand across your mouth to cover the crack in your voice. “Yeah, I did.”
He’d insisted he hadn’t wanted you around yet he’d kissed you and now followed you to where you’d been sleeping. That had to count for something, so you extend your arm and gesture the bottle towards him— an olive branch in the form of shitty Jack Daniels. Your fingers touch when he accepts it and the brief glimmer of eye contact you share sends shivery energy zipping between you.
“I loved him,” you repeat, as if convincing yourself. A repeated balm to soothe the pain of letting him leave.
“He’s an idiot for leaving you.”
You bite back a sob-laugh, imagination caught somewhere between wondering who you’d rather beat up more: him, or yourself.
“Maybe I’m an idiot for not followin’ him.” You sniff deeply to push back the incoming sob-induced mess. “Not that he woulda let me.”
He hums resignedly.
Clearing your throat, you tuck your hands between your thighs. Swiftly moving on. “What was I— she like?”
He takes a long drink and sighs thickly when he comes up for air. He looks down at his hands when he talks as if choosing his words thoughtfully and carefully.
“Strong, smart. Stubborn. Far too fuckin’ stubborn.”
You force a smile over the flinch of pain in your chest. “Guess we got that in common.”
You reach up and twist the dog tag around your neck, feeling for the ring you’d slipped around the chain. You were never married legally but were in all the ways that mattered. Your heart aches for the brief moment of domesticity you shared with him. You expect him to be finished, but he once laughs, a smile cracking on his face.
“She loved kids— had a soft spot for the weird ones.” He squints and rubs at the flesh between his knuckles where the blades typically protrude. “Put me in my place. Stood up for what was right.”
His words strike a chord in your heart, playing the familiar tune of yearning and guilt and grief. A swelling sensation rises from your stomach and you’re not sure if you’re going to scream, cry or throw up.
“Were you—?”
“In love with her? What, like you can’t tell?” He interrupts, face hardening. Another drink. “It doesn’t matter. We argued one night and I refused to follow her back to the school, ‘bout the same time the humans went mutant hunting.”
Logan takes a moment to catch himself.
“When I came back, shit-faced from the bar, I realised I’d gotten my version of you murdered, along with the rest of them. Laid up like a fucking log pile. That’s what loving me got you.”
The gruesome imagery sours the liquor in your stomach. You push the nausea down with a hard swallow.
“I’m sorry.”
“Wh—” He jolts back, face pinched. “I got you killed, and you’re fuckin’ sorry?”
“There’s a world where you didn’t make that choice. You know, I’m not proud of who I am, either,” you answer, softly. “After you left and I lost you… I got bitter, stopped pulling my punches.”
“You never liked hurting people.”
“I didn’t.” You take a deep breath, willing away the warmth that pools behind your eyes. You quickly regain composure with a short cough. “Whatever woman you’re comparing me to, I stopped being her a long time ago. Like you told me— I’m no hero.”
He grunts, looking like he regrets saying that now. Checkmate. You’re not what either of you expected or yearned for in one another, but maybe you’re exactly what you both need.
“You know, your accents thicker.”
He says it as if to draw a line of separation, but you take it as an invitation. Your head swims from the alcohol, and against what probably is your better judgement, you inch closer to him until your knees bump against each other.
“That’s what I get for hidin’ in the mountains. Got adopted by a scary old lady and her church friends. I reckon she rubbed off on me. You’d like her, I think,” you tell him fondly. There’s something wistful about it, imagining a life with him. You grieve a life you never had but somehow, in his company, the melancholy loosens its grip.
“Maybe we got lucky,” you add flatly.
He lifts the bottle with a dry laugh. “You have a very funny idea of what lucky means, bub.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. Y’see, they didn’t get lucky. They died, ‘n’ we lost each other,” you explain, glancing up at the stars as if either version of you would ever be in heaven, as if it was as loving enough as a mother’s womb to stretch wide enough to allow space for mutants.
God probably hated you just as much as they did down here.
You lower your head onto his shoulder. “But, we’re still here. Maybe there was always space in my universe for you.”
“You’re drunk,” he observes flatly, but he doesn’t move.
“A little.” You get more comfortable against his tense bicep and close your eyes. “Humour me, why don’t you?”
He sighs, but it’s gentle. “Just for a while.”
“Good, because you’re not very good at keeping your feelings quiet. I know you like this.”
“Keep that to yourself.”
You sigh, eyes remaining closed. “We ain’t gonna talk about it, are we?” You ask, in reference to the kiss.
“Nope.”
A high-pitched whine resonates in your ears, vision blurring as if lying underneath a rippling river current. Paradox has just explained the stakes to you — to stop Cassandra, somebody would have to lay down on the wire and make the sacrifice play. This wasn’t a matter of regeneration anymore— it was being ripped apart from the seams, atomised.
It just so happens that your cat, Kevin, has been loving his little journey around the TVA. Cheater.
“You won’t survive it,” is what you say in response to Logan offering himself up for the job. What you really meant was: I don’t think I can survive losing you again.
“I know,” Logan answers. His eyes drip to where you palm at the slow-healing wound on your side, courtesy of the Lady Deadpool variant. You’re winded, running on fumes, and know you’re in no position to start throwing yourself out there as a suicide volunteer. You’d never make the journey, let alone succeed in your venture.
“That’s why it’s gotta be me,” Deadpool interrupts, peeling the mask from his face to address you both. “Neither of you asked for any of this. You were right. I lied. I lied right to both of your faces — just to get you to help me, and you did.”
“You didn’t lie,” Logan replies, throwing you a glance. “You made an educated wish.”
He reaches into his pocket and slaps the bloodied Polaroid of Deadpool’s friends against Wade’s chest. The gesture is a final, silent acknowledgement of why any of you are here in the first place, and everything that’s led to this moment.
“I got nothin’ back in my world,” he explains, the sharp arrow of his words striking a sting straight through your heart. “Let me do this. For you.”
You could see that this meant more to him, that he would only deem himself worthy and die a peaceful death if he could do it knowing he saved at least one variant of you. This is more than just a mission. This is his only chance to redeem himself, and you know you’re in no position to start trying to convince him that you’d have him either way. Fuck redemption.
You’re parallel from one another, standing just outside of touching distance. It was a cruel existence— reaching out and never quite being able to hold on. It’s inevitable, the pull you feel. You’re dictated by his gravity but cursed by the narrative.
Your chest rises and falls with shallow, laboured breaths as you attempt to process what’s happening, what he’s asking you to let him do. The pain in your side ebbs only from the comparative pain of watching another version of the man you love sacrifice himself for you.
His voice is a quiet whisper. “Give me this.”
But I love you. The words are there, hiding behind your clenched teeth, gnawing at the bars like a feral animal caged in the reminder that this isn’t — shouldn’t be — the man that you love.
Something shifts and as you’re running on the delirium of your battery running low, healing resources drained, you decide that you don’t actually care to make the distinction any more.
You’re in no condition to fight; you barely had the energy to argue with him, let alone stop him. But you can’t just let him go.
One wobbly step forward. You poke his chest, mustering whatever energy remains to express your feelings in the only true way you know how. “I…” you stammer, but you suddenly can’t find the words.
His hand reaches up and he splays yours flat against his chest. Faintly, buried deep behind the armoured layer of his suit, you feel the distinct thunk, thunk of his heart. He exhales deeply when your empathetic energy transmission reaches the other side. Your eyes connect, and even through the sharp whites of his mask, you can feel the psionic pulse resonating between you two— strong enough that the wound on your side begins to sew itself together.
“I know,” he whispers.
And you believe that he does.
He nods shortly, releases your hand, and turns on his heel. You collapse against the control centre, eyes needling through the camera footage, desperate to watch the final moments and know that his sacrifice was worth it.
It’s about the same time that Deadpool yanks his mask back on and barrels down the hallway after him.
“Wade!”
You glance back at the party as you creep towards the apartment door to leave. Your consciousness has only recently slipped back into place, having hovered somewhere above your body for the entire time you witnessed your friends atomically ripped apart, only for them to return mere moments later.
You think it might’ve been witnessing Wolverine sweaty and shirtless that was finally the last straw for you. You’re not sure you’ve recovered since.
You thought you were being sneaky about your departure, but a flat hand reaches from out of view, splays and then holds the door closed.
“You sure I can’t convince you to stay?” Logan asks, voice slow and tentative.
“I ain’t runnin’ this time, I promise,” you answer. He rests his arm on the beam above him, making him appear even taller and maybe even more imposing. Your pulse quickens as you look up at him, trying to find the right words, ones that you hope won’t give you away. You nearly squeak. “I um— just—”
He arches a brow, a hint of a micro-smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. He shifts, getting closer by just a fraction. “Yeah?”
Trying to keep your distance is proving to be immensely hard when he’s gotten himself this deliciously close. His energy tastes of confidence, a stark contrast to the self-loathing only a mere few days prior. It’s magnetic. If you make eye contact now, you’re not sure you’ll be able to control yourself.
The atmosphere crackles with tension, like the static energy right before lightning strikes. His gaze is intense when you look at him, and with the way his eyes glance purposefully down at your parted lips—
Jesus. Pull yourself together.
You gently pull away from him and feel the spell of the moment dissolve. “I just… need time.”
Recognition flashes on his face, as well as a tick of disappointment, but he seems to understand.
A beat, then he taps the door before stepping aside. “Alright. Don’t be a stranger.”
Wade bursts around the corner, arms wide and voice booming. Vanessa hangs off of his arm, white teeth gleaming with mischievous joy.
“Whoa, hey there, lovebirds! What’s going on here— a secret rendezvous? Looking for somewhere to sneak off? Should I cue the romantic music or just give you two some privacy?”
You jump in surprise at his sudden entrance, flinching away from Logan as if you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t. Logan’s expression shifts from whatever tender moment was brewing, spell broken, to a mix of exasperation and resignation, jaw tightening.
“Wade,” he grumbles, voice sharp, but you can acknowledge there’s a level of begrudging affection beneath the steely surface. “Timing, as usual, is impeccable.”
“Um, actually, I was just leavin’,” you answer, tugging on your bag.
“WHAT!” Wade exclaims, face dropping. “We haven’t even gotten to our favourite part yet!”
You tick a brow. “Our favourite part?”
“The cocaine part,” he says, matter-of-factually.
“Wade, that was one time,” you pinch the bridge of your nose. “I’m sorry. Thank you for inviting me. I just can’t miss my flight.”
Dogpool jumps at your ankles, whimpering and chewing on the hem of your jeans. You give her a gentle scratch on her head, deftly avoiding the lick of her impressive tongue. Wade scoops her up, holding her against his shoulder and kissing her affectionately on her wet nose.
“You, ah, need a ride?” Logan offers.
Your heart stutters at his chivalrous attempt. “Oh, um. That’s okay— I called a cab. So.”
That was a lie. You hadn’t— not yet. You just weren’t sure if you were going to make the right decisions if you were alone in his company for an hour. Probably wouldn’t make it to the airport without fighting or crying or making stupid choices.
He rubs his jaw. “Right.”
“I’ll… see you around?”
“I better!” Wade yells, using two fingers to gesture that he’s keeping his eye on you as Vanessa yanks him around the corner gleefully.
A magnetic tether — or red string, whatever you want to call it — seems to strain when you walk away from Logan. You feel the pull in your chest, a fluttering of electricity, but you swallow the urges and ignore the way they scratch like glass on the way down.
You call an Uber, squeezing your bag tightly for a source of comfort as you crowd yourself into the back seat. You spare one last glance at the apartment and think for a brief moment you see a silhouette of someone watching you from the balcony, but they slip away into the light before you can discern it.
You know, though. Of course, you know.
You expected relief when you arrived home, but, instead, the aching, gnawing black hole in your chest seems to grow exponentially. You go through the motions— feed your cat, tend to the garden, eat the food with no appetite, go to Church.
The fixture of Jesus pinned to the cross gives you pause for the first time. You wonder if he was a mutant.
You weren’t sure how much of this “time” thing you were going to need to heal or make a decision on where you and Logan stood after everything, but only after your second night, sleepless and alone, do you start to doubt that this will be an easy process. You communicate like you know what you’re doing, but you haven’t stopped shaking since he kissed you, like a newborn foal traversing ice.
You want to do things right. You’re not trying to replace any missing pieces or live up to any expectations he might have of you. The girl he knew seemed to be a softer, sweeter (less traumatised) version of you, and you worry that you’d be constantly comparing him to a ghost of himself.
The rain lulls you as it patters on the window by your bed, but sleep doesn’t take you.
You hear thunder, you think, and wonder if the chickens are frightened in their coops. However, the distant grumble continues to grow, reverberating through the floorboards of your rickety cabin. As it creeps closer you discern that it’s not a brewing storm— but the growling engine of a motorcycle.
Awash with a deep sense of knowing, you throw yourself out of bed and knot a silk robe around your middle. The sound of the engine dissipates, replaced only by the hammering rain and the rushing pulse in your ears when you tear your door open.
You see him— all leather jacket slick with rainwater and tight jeans, brows pinched against the onslaught of the weather as he dismounts his bike.
Logan.
When your eyes meet, there’s a palpable shift in the air, and the storm, angry as a howling spirit, mirrors the turbulent emotions within you. You don’t speak, you don’t think, you just act.
Barefoot, dressed in your slip of a robe, you race down the short path and meet him halfway.
“Logan? Logan?” You call out. “What are you doin’ here?!”
“Had to see you,” he calls out between strides, voice nonchalant as if what he’s said was obvious.
You’re closing the distance. “That’s a day’s ride, and the weather—”
Instead of letting you finish, he grasps your face, kissing you suddenly and with a reverence so sincere that your knees feel gelatinous and weak. His thumbs brush away the raindrops— tears? —that drip over your crystallised lashes. His touch is both grounding and electrifying; the warmth of him pressed against you is a stark contrast to the chilling downpour.
Your fingers curl against the front of his jacket, clinging with equal fervour as if it’s the only thing keeping you anchored from floating someplace else. The strength of his body crowds over you, arm sliding down to capture you by your waist as you lean into him, syrupy-decadent and entirely reliant on him to keep you upright.
The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding over yours tasting both bittersweet and intoxicating in equal measures, like cigar smoke and peppermint gum. There’s a distinct sharpness of liqour and you wonder if he had a shot (or bottle) of courage before coming here. You breathe deeply against his skin, smelling rainwater, musk and gunpowder; your senses are completely overwhelmed by him and you’re not sure that anything could pull you away.
The red string knots.
When you both eventually take pause, gasping for air as the rain continues to pelt, his eyes lock with yours. He radiates relief, desire, and a raw vulnerability that makes your heart ache.
“You’re freezin’,” he murmurs, peppering kisses against your lips, your cold nose, and pulling one of your hands to his face to peck along your palm. You feel dizzy in his embrace, drunk on his lips.
“You should come inside,” you whisper, “before the neighbours start askin’ questions.”
He quietly nods, kissing your fingers before following you inside and ducking away from the rain.
Once inside, he shakes the rain from his hair with a flick, eyes immediately roaming around the innards of your respectable (tiny) house, the size of him immediately proportionally shrinking the interior. He absorbs your surroundings, chivalrously pretending like he can’t see every curve of you in that wet material.
You lead him towards the heath, lighting a small fire to help dry you both off. You leave, pottering around to gather some towels for your hair, and arrive back to see he’s peeled off the top layer of his clothes, leaving him half-exposed, his back an impressive marvel of rippling muscle. He glances at you over his shoulder.
You’re lost for words, but can’t just stand there ogling him. “Um, I don’t think I have any spare clothes that’ll… fit…”
When he turns to face you, his rain-slick torso shines in the firelight, skin glistening on the taught muscles of his biceps as he accepts a towel from you. Your words lag, entirely distracted by the realisation of one thing when you glance down at his v-line and dark, coiling hair that creeps down into his jeans: you’re absolutely going to have sex with this man.
You might’ve decided that when you watched the way his jeans clung to him when he dismounted his motorcycle, but that’s beside the point.
“That’s alright,” he answers, towel slung over his shoulder, eyes roving shamelessly over the damp, silky robe that clings to your silhouette effortlessly. “Don’t need ‘em.”
Your mouth dries when he steps closer to you, head angled, lips centimetres apart.
“Logan…” you breathe, tone edging toward a warning.
He presses against you, tilting you back. “Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop. I’ll get back on that bike and I’ll leave.”
You creep further away, trying to catch your breath. “I—”
The words don’t manifest, simply because you don’t have it in you to lie— to deny yourself of this.
He cages you in against the wall, shrinking you underneath his frame, eyes narrowed and dark as they search for yours through lowered lashes. “Tell me you don’t feel somethin’, and I’ll walk away. You won’t see me again.”
His bare-chested proximity was overwhelming you. You’re acutely aware of every inch of his skin that touches yours, pebbled nipples hard against his warm flesh, stubbled jaw nuzzling against your neck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. You feel like a teenager again, anxious and hormonal, a ball of puppy fat and unrequited crushes. The space between your thighs positively aches with heat, throbbing like a second heartbeat.
“I can’t… I can’t tell you that I feel something.”
He leans back, lips quirked with a flash of disappointment.
You blink up at him. “Let me show you instead.”
He ticks an eyebrow.
You use your empathetic influence to decrease his heartbeat, relaxing him down to the bone. He sighs, nosing against your shoulder, arms flexing as he holds himself up against you.
“Just with a little influence…” you stroke your way up from the slow pulse in his neck to his jaw, capturing him swiftly. You use your mutation to increase his heart rate this time, hiking it up to an excitable level. His cheeks begin to flush, pupils dilated, lips parted with the anticipation of your kiss. His eyes darken with something intrinsically primal and hungry.
“Does it excite you?” You ask, innocently.
He shakes his head all dog-like as if to regain control, canine showing as his lips curl into a wolfish grin.
“You’re not the only one with… tricks. I can do that, too— in other ways,” he says, tone low and suggestive. He lifts a hand, tracing a knuckle over your exposed collarbone, shifting the soft material of your robe just an inch. Your breath hitches.
“You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?”
You blush. You hadn’t known that.
You challenge his eye contact, feigning self-control and authority. The stare-down has your pulse spiking, arousal ricocheting down your spine and sitting low and syrupy in your belly.
“Your heart’s beating pretty fast, too.”
Oh, Hell. He’s got you melted like butter in a pan.
You rest your head against the wall, breath quickening. “If we do this, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
“Good,” he growls. “I don’t like to stop.”
The teasing back-and-forth game of teetering towards nearly touching finally gets the better of you. You’re weak, as malleable as soft dough, so you invite him against your mouth with a sigh-wine and a tug on the nape of his neck.
He positively devours you, a hand palming at your breast as you kiss desperately and feverishly. The shoulder of your robe slips and you’re half-exposed, the slip barely holding itself together by the loose knot on your waist. He pulls you impossibly closer, the skin of his chest flush against yours as he reaches and digs fingers into the globe of your ass, hips twitching together.
You fumble between your bodies, yanking on his belt buckle and zipper impatiently. He pulls backwards, a wet string of spit snapping between your lips as you separate, helping you with steadier fingers to remove his jeans. With equal passion, he swiftly tugs on the waist-tie of your robe and discards it somewhere on the floor.
When you’re both bare, nude silhouettes sharp and soft in the firelight, he stumbles you over to the plush rug in the centre of the room. He nods to the couch.
“Legs up.”
You obey without hesitation, taking your seat and spreading decadently for him. He kneels below you of you, hips between your ankles, and gazes at you like a hungry, stalking animal. You feel impossibly sexy and dangerous.
He peppers kisses along the bone of your ankle first, foot hiked up onto his shoulder, only breaking eye contact to flutter his eyes closed. He moves along the inner length of your leg, pausing keenly against the sensitive parts— the thin stretch behind your knee, the soft plush of your thigh. He lowers himself, scruff tickling between your legs, and then licks a molten stroke between your folds, parting you with his tongue and burying his face deeper.
You clench around his skull, mindfulness of your heightened mutant abilities long forgotten. You can’t crush metal between your thighs. Or can you?
He groans into you, varying suckling and kissing you on your clit with long strokes on the blade of his tongue to your hole, lapping up the nectar of your arousal, fingers digging bruisingly into your hips. The sting of his grip and the relentless lave of his tongue entice moans from you, fingers raking into his hair for some semblance of reality grounding in your pleasure-lapsed consciousness.
Jesus. With as filthy as his mouth was, you should’ve known he would be this good at eating pussy.
You come quick, orgasm pulsing on his lips. The burn of overstimulation seizes your muscles, writhing against his onslaught, but he shoves your hips down.
“Not done with you yet,” he murmurs possessively, leaning back to wipe his chin. “On all fours.”
You bite your lower lip, suppressing the humiliation of the intimacy (vulgarity) of it. You turn, belly still clenching with the aftershocks, arching with the anticipation, whining moments later when his mouth reconnects with you. His hands palm at your ass, spreading you wider, tongue slipping dangerously close to the tight ring of muscle.
He slides a finger knuckle-deep, miming fucking you in a rhythmic pulse. His other hand massages you, thumb sliding down until you jerk sensitively against his nudging intrusion.
You feel impossibly full and tingly, clenching around the burn of his thumb and the velvet of his finger, second orgasm surging and bubbling over with your face pressed against the couch cushion, lips agape. You’re slick, drip-dropping onto his cupping palm, every nerve in your body burning raw as his wrist works you through the pulses.
You turn over, relishing in the sight of his scruff glistening with the aftermath of your orgasm, his eyes dark with lust— a hellish man, seraphic on his knees for you. Your insides clench at the sight as he quite literally shatters and redefines what worship means to you.
“Tired already?” He hums, massaging your hips.
You perk a challenging brow. “That was just the warm-up, old man.”
“Alright,” he seethes, sucking on his lower lip as he lifts himself up to your level. “Show me what you got then, baby.”
When you kiss, his mouth slides against yours, drenched with the taste of yourself. His cock steels against your belly when you pull him close, tip pearl-smooth with precum when you reach down and grasp him with a hollowed fist. The feel of him, heavy and warm in your grip, fans to life the flames of your briefly quenched arousal, and you hungrily pull him down onto the couch beside you.
Moisture pools on your tongue as you rub him. You spit on your hand before stroking him from the base to tip, lathering him silky with your drool. You tuck your hair behind your ears, narrowing your cheeks as you slide your mouth up and down his length, fisting the inches that remain.
“Christ.” He twitches in your mouth as you gently massage the warm weight of his sac, lewd sounds emanating from where your lips and tongue meet him. “Just like that. Good fuckin’ girl,” he snarls, gripping your hair in a fist at the crown of your head. Your engine purrs with his encouragement, revving with newfound enthusiasm.
You always gave as good as you got, after all, and you’re certainly not one to back away from a challenge.
His head lolls onto the back of the couch, thighs tense beneath you, cock hot and hard on your tongue. He growls when he comes, pulsing strongly in your mouth as you lap up the produce of his orgasm, salty and molten down your throat.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
“Put those regenerative powers to good use, why don’t you?” You ask, working him through the over-sensitivity with your wrist. His eyes don’t once leave yours, even as they glaze over and flinch from the pleasure burn. There’s a sharp look of challenging determination on his face— a grit of his teeth, the furrow in his brow. He remains hard in your hands and you perk an impressed brow. Not bad for an old man.
There’s a sweet moment of vulnerability when you crawl over him, a brief sobering in the cloud of lust, a clarity of two not-quite strangers and their shared grief and yearning.
You’re not sure where this moment will take you, but the love of somebody scraping together the shards of a shattered heart for a brief time, even as it cuts their hands, holds you with a semblance of human connection so sincere that you’ll carry it with you for a lifetime.
His thighs spread to accommodate you. You hold your fingers against the thick chords in his neck for support as you fumble between your bodies, slotting him against the catch in your cunt before lowering yourself entirely.
You hiss against the intrusion and he steadies you with a hand on your hip.
“Easy. Don’t hurt yourself.”
You laugh-moan, laying your palms against the coils of hair on his sweat-shimmering chest.
“I can take it.”
The fire, intended to help dry you off, creates a heated environment that beads sweat on his temple. The only brain cells that remain coherent bounce around on lust in your skull — so you lean forward, lick the salty droplet clean, and sigh-whine as you begin rocking against him.
You fall into sync quickly, a desperate rhythm of desperate bodies. The delicious ache of him inside you is a masochistic thrill, similar to the irresistible press on a day-old bruise. The squelching shlick between your bodies is an animalistic reminder of your flesh and blood as you chase the pleasure, bouncing with vigour.
“Christ— I can feel you…” his jaw clenches with resolve, fingers digging into the meat of your ass. “…dripping all over me. You wanted this bad, huh?”
“Wanted to ride you in that fuckin’ Honda,” you straighten your posture, leaning away from him to hold your breasts, panting words between bated breaths. “Thought it might shut you up.”
His hand snaps up and grabs you roughly by the chin. “Mm… mouthy, aren’t ya?”
You grin. “You got no idea, lumberjack.”
He pulls your face against him, meeting your mouth halfway in a sloppier, fever-driven kiss that shoots arousal to your core like a shot of his favourite whiskey. Something feral stirs within you: a primal, cellular-deep need to connect with him further. Your empathetic power roils off of you like steam on a hot spring, surging into and merging with him until there’s nothing but one feeling, a black hole of unquenchable desire.
You suddenly feel as though you are him: navel-deep, a throbbing muscle with an aching desire to dive further into the serpent-clutch of your cunt, gliding through tingly, honey-silk velvet, blades hanging onto a tether of self-control as they threaten to slide out of your knuckles in ecstasy.
Well. This was certainly new. Add “voodoo sex doll” to your list of mutations.
You gasp, ripping away from the kiss, your powers recoiling back into you at whip-lash speed, dizzying in its ferocity. His eyes meet yours with darkened curiosity.
“Did you—”
“I felt that,” he grunts, tongue darting out to roll over his lips. “It always like that for you? Feelin’ so fuckin’ full?”
You half-laugh blissfully. “Only the good times.”
“I’ll show you a good time, alright.”
He isn’t gentle when he manhandles you, forcing you into an arch as he repositions and aligns himself behind your thighs, one foot planted firmly on the floor, the other bent to accommodate the new angle. He reinserts himself inside of you with ease, hands palming your hips and ass.
You feel him nudging cervix-deep and you reach out, clawing at the couch to hold your jerking body steady against the relentless slap of his hips. There’s no need to tell him faster or harder when you feel the metal plate of his adamantium hips pressing against your ass, pounding and vulgar with the sound of sweat-damp skin-on-skin.
It’s involuntary, the way you pant and cry out, intoxicated by the relentless drag and pull of his cock. He says something to you but you either don’t hear him or have enough conscious space in your sex-drunk fog to process words and respond. He slides a hand down your spine and pulls on your hair until you’re upright, breath hot when it fans against your neck.
“Where’s that mouth gone?”
You lick the drool from your lip, throwing him a glance over your shoulder. “Fuck you.”
The half-lidded up-and-down look he gives you as satisfaction grows slowly on his lips turns your bones to jelly. “There she is,” he growls back, offering a sharp slap of encouragement on your ass as he drops you back onto your front. You involuntarily grip around him, puffy clit throbbing with the almost-but-not-quite-there anticipatory build. “You gonna come for me? Yeah? I can fuckin’ feel it.”
You slide a hand underneath yourself, reaching for the swollen nub with two fingers. You’re overwhelmed with kinetic energy akin to a fizzy champagne bottle— two more shakes until you’re ready to pop.
You hear a Snikt! behind you, accompanied by a throat-caught groan, and then the distinct ripping shred of blades impaling your couch. You finally come, hard, when you feel him throbbing inside of you, followed by the decadent syrupy flood of his orgasm filling you up. He ruts into you one, two three more final times, milking himself dry, before collapsing over your body in a sweaty heap, sparing you the weight of his metal bones with a forearm propped next to you.
Shared fluids drip to the couch when he eventually pulls out of you, blades retreating into his clenched fists. The fluffy innards of the chair spill out beside you, and, while you were in no financial position to afford another, the sight entices a humoured smile from you.
“Sorry,” he says with a wince, helping you sit up when your unreliable legs shake beneath you.
“That’s alright. It’ll make for an interestin’ story,” you retort, fanning yourself with a hand. You both let out a shared laugh, mostly from the relieved delirium of it all. After a beat, you lean into him, massaging a hand across his belly. “So. We really doin’ this?”
His face softens. “If you’ll have me.”
You cup his face and kiss his cheek. “I’d take any version of you I could get.”
divider credits: @/vysleix and @/cafekitsune tag list: @bearwithegg, @uhlunaro, @sseleniaa, @jxssimae, @autumnsymphony
#logan howlett x reader#wolverine x reader#james logan howlett#wolverine#x reader#deadpool and wolverine#honda odyssey#logan x reader
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