#all of this is bad memories from before i even existed. from when we got hurt three years ago.

[astonmartinii]

forever and a day | oscar piastri social media au

pairing: oscar piastri x fem long distance reader

nothing can separate them, except maybe 9,000 miles and a couple of oceans.

MASTERLIST | TIP JAR

oscarpiastri

liked by logansargeant, landonorris and 893,209 others

tagged: yourusername

oscarpiastri: finally back in the homeland and reunited with my girl

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user1: oscary/n nation we are so back

user2: australia always does us so well

yourusername: can you convince mclaren that they should keep paying for our dates

oscarpiastri: i think we were technically working

yourusername: were we? it never feels like work being with you

oscarpiastri: you didn't notice all of the people around us and filming us?

yourusername: i only have eyes for you osc, we know this

oscarpiastri: hehehhehehehee

yourusername: also i have to completely commit you to memory before you fuck off for another couple of months

oscarpiastri: you could always just come with me

yourusername: let me get my degree first, one of us has to be educated osc

oscarpiastri: i have my a-levels? lando doesn't even have gcses

landonorris: why am i catching a stray?

yourusername: because my boyf is smart

landonorris: i've got street smarts 😩

oscarpiastri: you've been catfished like five times already and nearly had your bank details stole?

landonorris: well ... i like to see the best in people?

user3: thank you mclaren for giving us the oscar and y/n content

user4: and the proof that love still exists

user5: terminally lonely girls block mclaren, oscar and y/n.- it's for your mental health

user6: or if you have commitment issues this is some good exposure therapy

logansargeant: oh who did you force to be your photographer this time?

yourusername: you never learnt reading comprehension in school?

logansargeant: i can read i just choose not to read the soppy shit you and oscar say to each other

oscarpiastri: leave us alone

yourusername: you have a problem with us no matter what 🤨

logansargeant: do NOT make me the bad guy for complaining about hearing your guys' sexy time

oscarpiastri: we spend A LOT of time away from each other

yourusername: and by the sounds of it, you could learn a lot

logansargeant: you know what WHATEVER

user7: they terrorise logan so much from opposite sides of the world, pray for him when she can travel with oscar

yourusername

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris and 83,409 others

yourusername: i love any piece of you osc but the separation anxiety is kicking my ass

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user9: oscar gave y/n a plush of himself

user10: no cause he's literally such a black cat

yourusername: he blushes just like that as well

user11: oh really?

user12: want to share with the class

yourusername: that's for my eyes only

oscarpiastri: i'm glad he got to you safely

yourusername: i just about tackled the postman 😔

oscarpiastri: poor graham, we should get him a better christmas gift this year

yourusername: yeah sorry graham but you sprayed the kitty with your cologne and i can't be held responsible for my feral behaviour

user13: they get their postman christmas gifts?

user14: they have the same postman?

user15: yes, y/n lives with his family

user16: really?

yourusername: they can't get rid of me

oscarpiastri: they also love her as much as i do (literally, i have to fight my sisters to spend time with y/n)

landonorris: so this is why we were waiting so long for you at the airport

oscarpiastri: well, yes. it's very important i get y/n a souvenir

landonorris: i could've slept for like an hour longer?

yourusername: just because you don't understand true romance lando 🤨

landonorris: i know romance!

yourusername: maccies in a hotel room is not romance

landonorris: you guys are just freaks about each other that's not my fault

user17: y/n hanging out with oscar's sisters is so precious

user18: if they aren't married soon i will no longer believe in love

user19: they're 23?

user20: tbf i forget that because they've been together since they were like 15

logansargeant

liked by yourusername, oscarpiastri and 351,904 others

tagged: oscarpiastri

logansargeant: oscar forced me to post this so y/n could 'remember how hot he is while he's away at war'

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user21: oh wow... thank you logan!

user22: this is not exactly what i was expecting when i opened instagram but alas i'm not complaining

yourusername: WOOF WOOF WOOF

oscarpiastri: 🤭🤭🤭

logansargeant: someone please remind me why i'm friends with you two

yourusername: because we're your only friends?

yourusername: wait sorry that was mean

yourusername: i just get protective

logansargeant: you're telling me 🤨

oscarpiastri: i'm swooning 🥰🩷

logansargeant: i give up

alexalbon: why am i a part of this oscar thirst trap? why are you posting a thirst trap of oscar?

yourusername: HE'S A GOOD FRIEND

alexalbon: i didn't consent to be part of your weird long distance lust

yourusername: oh girl ain't no one looking at you when oscar is there

alexalbon: you know what you're mean :( i want you to stay in australia

yourusername: i promise i'm a lot nicer when i'm with osc, the distance makes me cranky

alexalbon: i see, remind me to never take oscar out in a race

logansargeant: i think that's wise - i heard her yelling down the phone about carlos

yourusername: i had to block him to stop myself

user23: i am honestly so confused

user24: i think we just let them do it, we'll never understand

landonorris: do NOT ask me to do this @oscarpiastri

yourusername: booooooo you're such a debbie downer

oscarpiastri: he's just s fuckboy he doesn't understand

landonorris: i don't think i'll ever understand you two

yourusername

liked by logansargeant, oscarpiastri and 119,056 others

yourusername: one degree hotter xx

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user26: fucking finally now we can get y/n in the paddock every weekend

liked by oscarpiastri

user27: mclaren social media team seen celebrating just as much

oscarpiastri: and i didn't think it was possible for you to get any hotter

yourusername: maybe a piastri jersey?

oscarpiastri: and a ring?

yourusername: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

yourusername: you know i'll never say no to that

yourusername: do nOT propose through an instagram comment oscar - nicole

oscarpiastri: noted 😔

yourusername: but name the time and the place and i'll be there baby

user28: so we could defo get a y/noscar proposal this season

user29: i would be so insufferable it's unbelievable

user30: the way i just know it was killing oscar not being able to go

user31: did you guys see the kicked dog eyes in the paddock yesterday 😭😭😭

oscarpiastri: they had to force me on the plane

landonorris: no they legit were about to call mick or pato

user32: did y/n convince you to not run away to australia?

oscarpiastri: maybe ....

charles_leclerc: ummmmm who is this oscar? why hasn't your father been introduced?

yourusername: HI

oscarpiastri: y/n is the love of my life and you SHOULD be able to meet her next race weekend

yourusername: so have i also got another father-in-law?

charles_leclerc: you seem to terrorise the other drivers a lot so - yeah!

yourusername: at your service (unless it's you hitting oscar, then there's no MERCY)

charles_leclerc: okay you are kinda scary wtf

oscarpiastri

liked by alexalbon, yourusername and 1,203,677 others

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oscarpiastri: unbelievably proud of you and everything you've done darling. i'm so sorry i couldn't be there to celebrate with you, but i'll make it up to you before you know it xx

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user33: oh to be loved like this

user34: they make me feel lonely like the world apart i can only imagine how insane it'll be when they're back together 24/7

yourusername: i love you so so so much osc. you've done more than you could know by supporting me through my education. we have the rest of our lives to be together, so don't beat yourself about it now

oscarpiastri: but i'm so proud of you and just wanted to be there to celebrate you :(

yourusername: osc i can feel you pouting through the screen baby

landonorris: he really is and it's kinda annoyingly cute

yourusername: of course it's cute it's oscar 🙄

landonorris: right so i'll take back my congratulations then

yourusername: FINE BY ME

user35: obsessed with how y/n and lando already have this weird sibling bond

user36: it's the weird relationship that you kind of love between your gf and friend

user37: it's all cute until they actually fight

yourusername: if he makes any wrong step against oscar i'll crush that loser

landonorris: ahhaaha funny joke

yourusername: you're a 5'5 twig, i could snap you in half

user38: i need them to recreate the last photo when oscar wins his first race

user39: i think pinterest would explode

yourusername: no but no joke, i love you so much osc and i can't wait to start the new chapter of our life

oscarpiastri: i love you too xx

oscarpiastri: sorry to my sisters but they're losing their live in stylist because you're never ever leaving me ever again

oscarpiastri: that makes me sound like a possessive asshole but i just have attachment issues

yourusername: no these years since you started in f3 have been actual hell without you and i never want to leave your side again

yourusername: i just love watching you do what you love

oscarpiastri: i'll always love you more

user40: who's chopping onions wtf

user41: i'm invoicing them for my therapy

mclarenf1

liked by fredvesti, arthurleclerc and 1,256,046 others

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mclarenf1: don't tell oscar but we've got a surprise guest for him 🤫

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user45: take me out back and shoot me please and thank you

user46: so real of you

landonorris: is this why his phone is currently hidden in my drivers room?

mclarenf1: maybe ...

landonorris: if he fights me for it that's on you guys

mclarenf1: wait admin has just realised you definitely shouldn't be on your phone

landonorris: LOL

user47: mclaren you better not fuck this race for oscar because i need my big rom com ending kiss in parc ferme

user48: omg romance writers do i have a plot for you

user49: the way this would seem so unrealistic if i read it in a book but these fools really have been together for like eight years and are unbelievably in love

yourusername: heheheheh thanks for flying me out on such late notice xx

mclarenf1: no worries queen

yourusername: you guys better be on top form, you can't hide from me in the garage

mclarenf1: hahahaha 😅😅😅

user50: is y/n the reincarnation of nicole scherzinger? like a wag that goes fucking mental

user51: and wears team merch with pride

yourusername: nicole is a queen (thank you for one direction queen) but you guys do not want me on the microphone

user52: you and oscar karaoke? please?

yourusername: we once did breaking free together but you'll have to bother logan for that video

user53: OSCAR PLEASE WIN AND DO DRUNK KARAOKE

oscarpiastri

liked by landonorris, yourusername and 1,556,308 others

tagged: yourusername

oscarpiastri: i told you she was my lucky charm. overjoyed to get my first win, it's a dream come true and to have the love of my life with me makes it even sweeter. y/n, i'll love you forever and a day x

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user54: CONGRATS OSCAR 🧡🧡🧡

user55: i'm having such a proud mum moment

user56: tears in my eyes

user57: not as much as y/n that girl was going THROUGH IT

user58: we need her mascara, cause that shit didn't budge

yourusername: I AM SO FUCKING PROUD OF YOU OSCAR

yourusername: I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

yourusername: AND THANK YOU FOR WAITING FOR ME TO BE AT A RACE TO WIN

oscarpiastri: i guess i just knew in my bones you were here and simply had to win

oscarpiastri: i just wanted to see you so bad that i drove the fastest to the finish line

yourusername: well tell them to hurry up and debrief so we can celebrate 👀

oscarpiastri: ON MY WAY

user59: maybe we will get that karaoke?

logansargeant: congrats bro! @landonorris i hope you brought some ear plugs, if not you might want to start drinking now

landonorris: SOMEONE GET ME A DRINK STAT

yourusername: i'll personally buy you a drink because i'm going to rock his world tonight

oscarpiastri: 😎😎😎

landonorris: and here i thought you were my little innocent teammate

yourusername: there's nothing little about him

landonorris: EWWWW GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE

yourusername: all celebrations aside, i'm so proud and i'll love you forever and always x

oscarpiastri: it's always been you and it will always be you

yourusername: i love you

oscarpiastri: i love you too

fin.

note: WOOOOOOOOOO OSCAR!!! (i'm ignoring everything else to do with the race, oscar is my king)

[gor3sigil]

I’m Trans and Insane and I’m doing fine.

[TW Psychosis, transphobia, psychophobia, medication, psych ward]

“Are you sure ?” she asked.

I remember looking back at her in disbelief, because that was certainly a question I never asked her when she came out.

“Why do you ask ?” I say.

“Dude, I’ve seen you go into depersonalization so hard you even thought you were a human soul in a robot vessel and now, you want me to trust you when you say that you, too, are trans ?”

That’s the memory that comes back to me as I fold and put in my bag my psychiatrist’s note attesting that I suffer from gender dysphoria, NOT LINKED to any psychotic symptoms. Here it goes in my folder with my prescription note, an increase - again - of my anti depressants and Xan, and my endocrinologist’s HRT prescription, increased too - finally.

I go to two separate pharmacies to pick up each prescription for two reasons:

There is only one in this godforsaken town that always had testosterone in stock.

I can’t explain to you with words the look you can get when you give back to back, to someone who, despite not being a doctor, works in healthcare, a note for trans HRT and then a note for psychiatric meds.

And I’m lucky, because I’m not taking antipsychotics anymore. Contrarily to what you could think, it doesn’t magically makes the voices and the shadowy people disappear, but it can make a mess of your head pretty bad and my doctor and I both agreed that I didn’t need more damage up here than what I already had. And no, it doesn’t make your delusions vanish magically too: in fact, I was still pretty certain that I was talking to my soul family out here in Argentine telepathically about my mission on Earth, the meds just made it more difficult to understand their voices, but the belief was still solid.

Anyways, I’m back home with the Hoy Grail I fought tooth and nails to get: a letter from the Sacred Council of Mental Sanity also known as Psychiatry that I was, indeed, a bit delulu, but also trans, and that both things didn’t play into each other. My transness wasn’t a delusion, my delusions didn’t have anything to do with being trans.

Or did it ?

Chicken or egg, you know the drill. Did I have my selves fractured before and one of the piece that shattered my brain happened to make me trans or was I just trans with a shitload of traumas in the back that made me insane ?

But don’t worry, at least, trans people when we’re together, we have each other’s back ! Right ?

“Transidentity ISN’T a mental illness !! We don’t DESERVE to be FORCIBLY LOCKED UP and MEDICATED and MADE TO CONFORM FOR OTHER’S SENSE OF SECURITY !!”

Neither do I, RIGHT ?

Oh

Or do I ?

Remember what she said, my girlfriend, right at the beginning ?

How I can’t be trusted about myself when sometimes I don’t even have a sense of self anymore or I have too much selves who fight against each other ?

And what do we say to that ?

Get treatment. Get in-patient. Take medication. And for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it, you’re giving us a bad name.

Because being trans and crazy can’t exist. It’s absurd. You have to fix one of these two things. Choose which jacket I’ll wear, and they call it a straitjacket for a reason it seems, so am I queer or am I insane ?

All I know today is there isn’t a universe in which I’m a trans without any mental illnesses, or mentally ill without being trans. And yet, I can’t tell you how many time I got asked “do you think you’d be trans if you never got through [x trauma] ?”. I. Don’t. Know. I’ll never know. And I deserve just as much agency as you get despite being mentally ill. If you don’t believe in that, don’t come yapping about “liberation for all of us”, but “if one of us is crazy they’ll all think I am too and that can’t happen”.

No LGBTQIAA+ person deserves to be told they need to be put away, to be cured, to be allowed out in the open only if they’re deemed “acceptable” by society’s standards. And no mentally ill people deserve to either.

No trans person should be going through years of counseling to have the access to HRT.

And I shouldn’t have had to threaten my own mother’s life to avoid being locked in an adult psych ward at 14.

If you ever think, for one second, that these two things have nothing to do with one another, you are far removed from history.

To hear queer people say “yeah but some mentally ill people are dangerous !” feels like you don’t even know where you come from.

And if I want to say, that me being trans is linked to me being mentally ill, or at least, that both are connected in a way, all hell breaks fucking loose.

So I’ll explain very carefully.

See, when I was young, my mind got shattered into a thousand of pieces I had to try to glue back on. All these pieces of myself broke further more down the line because I couldn’t catch a fucking break. And now, it happens that the final puzzle does not have the same face it had before. It happens that its shape changed over time, for reasons over the control of all of us who tried to build ourselves back. Now there’s a bigger picture, less pieces, a few other shadows, and me. Built from the shatters. With my own needs and afflictions.

And whoever you are, whatever your agenda might be, I will not let anyone take any agency away from me under the false pretext that I can’t know anything for myself. They say that about children, they say that about minorities, about physically disabled people, about the people they want OUT. And my trans siblings, you know that.

I came out for the first time 7 years ago, to my then girlfriend, who was the one asking the question that is the first sentence of this text. I came out a second time 3 years ago. Been on HRT, had top surgery, had psychotic breaks, got my meds changed, switch therapist.

Because I am trans and crazy. And yet, all these choices I made, I made myself. It didn’t have to be that hard to get the basic care I needed. It didn’t need to be. But it WAS. And I’m part of the lucky crowd of people who had access to out-patient treatment, who never have been locked up in ward, who managed to stay alive through meds withdrawals without medical assistance when I had no therapist.

Be very careful of when you start to put conditions on the rights you think you deserve. Be very, very careful about your definition of sanity and of how it warps the way you see people. When you start to say “I have access to that, but there’s people like X or Y who shouldn’t BECAUSE”, pause and ask yourself what led you to think this way. More often than not, you’ll find yourself playing the same mind games as the ones you swore to fight against, and when it gives them the upper hand, they won’t hesitate to come for you after that.

[delightfultheoristfox]

Never had a thing

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

I have no clue how this works the thought process was like: since I'm stuck in the worst writing block of my life why don't I start crossposting on Tumblr so it kind of feels like I've accomplished something while the truth is that I haven't been able to complete a WIP in two months? 🫠 I never posted on Tumblr. Is this okay? Anyways, Simon Riley brain rot. That's it. That's the post. Also, you can find this on AO3. 18+

Word count: 10k CW: smutty!!! jealous Simon Riley BECAUSE I honestly crave that. Soft Simon Riley because I crave that as well.

Masterlist 🦊

𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬

Simon had groaned like a battered dog when Price gave him the news that he needed to lie low. “Someone in Konni’s got your name” he’d said. “We don’t wanna take any risks. Just for a few weeks.”

He was sure those few weeks would turn into a few bloody months if he didn’t get a move on. For that, he’d hastily packed his things from the poor excuse of a flat the army had granted him, and started looking for a place to stay that wasn’t in Manchester.

Initially, Simon almost fantasized about buying his own flat. Maybe a piece of land and fulfill the wishes of the outcast that he was – living away from people, giving them the same treatment they’ve always given him.

Too bad he was legally dead. He had nothing to his name if not a grave that didn’t even exist, all his possessions were cursed memories and metaphorical things – a rank he didn’t hold, a flat that wasn’t his. Even his name barely pertained to him anymore.

The SAS wasn’t offering any accommodation, the tightwads. He couldn't buy a house, or rent one. He couldn't lean on any of his teammates, or he'd put them in danger – he wouldn't do it, not to them. Taint their lives with his name and the death it inevitably brings.

Price had helped him settle in a glorified motorway hotel. But he wasn’t picky – after all, he only had to stay for a few weeks.

A few days into his exile, he’d entered a Tesco with his head bowed and his hood on, a surgical mask on his face. A pack of Marlboro was all he wanted since the dodgy motel he was staying at (hiding) didn’t care if he smoked within the room. Plus, he reckoned that the smell of nicotine and combustion was a much better alternative to the rancid stench of mold.

However, as he plucked ten quid from his wallet, his eyes absently fell on a bulletin board behind the store clerk. There were tons of leaflets there: missing cats or dogs, people looking for a job or offering one. And then, a bright yellow paper caught his eye. Whoever printed it lacked taste but sure as hell knew how to catch one’s attention. He’d stopped in his tracks, a tenner between two fingers.

DESPERATE!!! PhD STUDENT LOOKING FOR A FLATMATE. NO SPECIFIC GENDER OR AGE AS LONG AS YOU CAN PAY RENT ON TIME. Two-bedroom flat, third floor, no elevator. If interested, please contact this number.

At the end of the flyer, the paper was cut into tear-off strips, so that interested individuals could rip the section with the phone number.

He liked that first word: desperate. He wondered if this person was as desperate as he was. Would they accept a man who wore a balaclava and looked proper sketchy? How desperate were they, really, if he asked to rent on verbal agreement – no contracts, no signatures whatsoever?

He decided he wanted to test that before he died of mold poisoning.

Nevertheless, when he dialed the number on his burner phone a few hours later, he wasn’t expecting the voice coming through the line. A shriek. A goddamn banshee. Chirpy and cheery, sounding like those damn advertisements on the telly for children’s toys. Whoever was on the other side of the phone was trying to sell.

The obnoxiously happy voice he’d heard through the receiver surely did match the person he found at the door of the flat a few days later - and the apartment itself.

It was a splash of colors Simon wasn’t even sure matched, from oranges and greens in the living room to yellows and blues in the kitchen. Walls of the same room were painted differently, and a brown leather couch lay on a round and fluffy turquoise carpet. A glass coffee table stood in the middle of it, hosting a clay vase with orange tulips.

You were a splash of colors yourself. Bright clothes, vibrant smile, and matching eyes.

Notwithstanding the loud energy that came with your presence, he could see you were tense as you guided him through the apartment. Simon didn’t blame you – he wasn’t the most trustworthy-looking lad. While he’d ditched the balaclava and had decided to go for a surgical mask, even hewould walk on eggshells around himself.

“Only a few weeks.” He’d said, deciding that he could withstand the eyesore that was the decor of that flat. “I’ll cover the rent while you find someone more permanent.”

And to his utter surprise, you’d accepted. He thought it was much too naïve of you, to let him rent without a lease. Without a document, without anything to prove that he'd pay as he'd promised in that listless fashion of his. Maybe you were as desperate as your tasteless leaflet said, in that dive of a Tesco.

He moved in in the span of a few days. You helped him with the boxes, although it was clear he didn't need a hand – especially not from a tiny thing like you. Not that you were small, he was just built like a brick house and you – well, you were made of wood, like in those cautionary tales mums tell their children. Pigs and wolves and shite.

You didn’t question why he wore the balaclava, nor why he never left his room, but sometimes you’d knock on his door to ask if he wanted pizza too, since you were ordering. He’d eat it (and any of his other meals really) in the cramped space he'd managed to rent, hosting only a bed, a poor excuse of a closet, and a desk.

Until one day he heard booming noises coming from the telly in the living room, so he peeked from the door he’d left ajar only to be greeted by Tom Cruise’s mug – Top Gun. 

Silently, he joined you on the sofa and he started correcting the way Maverick held the gun or grunting about how an aircraft couldn't make that maneuver. You never asked how he knew, but it had been a few weeks since he’d moved in and he’d already gathered how brilliant you were. You didn’t need to ask questions to connect the dots.

Simon wasn't keen on giving you his phone number, even the one on his burner phone. The paranoid that he was, and with a bit of experience to back it up, he didn't want to leave you with anything that could connect you to him.

So, you started leaving post-it notes on the fridge.

Dinner leftovers on the second rack. He’d tick off the sentence to let you know he’d read it, whether he ate them or not. Simon had this inborn ability to ghost people even without the use of phones.

Tried a new recipe. Tupperware with the blue lid. He’d write a score out of ten on the corner of the note.

I used your milk for breakfast!!! Sorry!!! He had huffed and grumbled when he’d headed out for groceries afterwards, but ever since that day, he started buying two cartons instead of one.

And he'd leave post-it notes for you, too.

Out for a few days. That’s how he would vaguely tell you he was being deployed. You would always draw a sad emoji next to it.

Watered your plants. Bloody things were more dead than alive. You’d mark down a very happy emoji, going as far as to add two poorly drawn thumbs up.

He barely noticed when his meals started happening on the kitchen table instead of his desk. Similarly, he couldn’t recall when he’d stopped taking pains to ensure your mealtimes wouldn’t coincide.

Friday night pizzas were always shared; it was a silent house rule you’d both agreed on. The both of you on the settee with the carton boxes on your thighs, two cold beers on the glass coffee table, and the telly playing a movie.

Your cheeky arse often chose a war film, and Simon had to refrain from rolling his eyes at how obvious you were being – trying to get to know him.

Zero Dark Thirty.

“Is it true you use callsigns?”

“Yes.”

“You have one?”

“Yes.”

“What is it, then?”

“Classified.”

“Oh, c’mon.”

“Negative.”

The hurt locker.

“You ever defused a bomb?”

“Yes.”

“No shit – oh my God. How was it?”

“Dangerous.”

“Why thank you for the chat.”

“No problem.”

“When did it happen? Like, what was the situa-”

“Classified.”

You made a face and mocked his accent. “Classified.”

Apocalypse now.

“You are a bit like Kurtz.”

He gave you a look. “Mental?”

You huffed. “No. I meant the things he says, not the whole insanity bit.”

Simon scoffed but otherwise stayed silent. The film rolled in the background.

He murmured, then. “The horror, the horror.”

And you laughed.

He found it inexplicably easy to strip down for you, until he stood metaphorically naked in front of your eyes. Until he told you his full name and gave you his personal phone number. Until he showed his face.

Until he noticed you'd stopped looking for a flatmate, and his weeks of rent turned into months like he’d initially foreseen, but for another reason entirely. Months turned into years, but he could’ve never predicted anything in his life to last this long.

Until two summers later, while sporting a mundane black surgical mask and casual clothing, he took a photo with you in your doctoral gown, in front of your Uni. The same picture that now hung next to the entryway of your flat.

Until two years became three, and then four.

Until he just kind of… stayed.

𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬 𓇬

Simon’s day has worn him to the bone. The only thing he wants now is to go home, down a beer in two gulps, and knock himself out on any flat surface available.

He’s risked his fair share of speeding fines on the motorway, parked the car in the building's garage, and trudged up the three flights of stairs that led to his apartment. When he unlocks the door, he finds a sight that melts his frustration into a puddle at his feet.

You’re lying on the sofa, absolutely unbothered, looking lovely and homely. A lousy romcom plays on the telly. One hand is hiding in the crinkling shell of a packet of Walkers, and your other one is curled around the neck of a Stella Artois. Simon gathers that your workday must've finished a little earlier than normal because you’re already in your loungewear: a pair of loose sleeping shorts and a t-shirt he knows all too well.

All too well, because it’s his. 

And he could give you the benefit of the doubt; after all, you often wear oversized clothes. It could’ve been a laundry mishap; you could’ve absently taken it out of the dryer without a second glance, thinking it was yours. But the blatant British Army patch on the sleeve and his surname written in white block letters on the back give him very little to work with to excuse you. He doesn’t even remember he still owned that tee, probably because, factually, he doesn’t anymore.

It's clearly yours, now.

He drops the house keys in the tray lying on the floating shelf next to the doorway, before closing the door behind him. The sound must’ve alerted you, because your head drops backwards, rolling against the armrest of the sofa.

"Evenin'." You beam, looking at his downward image. Your head lolls and your mouth looks busy chewing on a handful of crisps.

Ever the vigilant bastard, he wants to flick your forehead and remind you that chewing upside down could lead to choking, but you aren’t a child. Although, with the crumbs of what smells like salt and vinegar crisps littering the corners of your lips and the baffling, chaotic way your hair is tied in a bun, you sort of look like one.

You curl your legs to leave a free spot for him, patting your foot on the sofa’s cushions. "Wanna join me?"

Simon hums quietly; his eyes flicker over to the TV for just a glance. He isn’t in the mood for a romcom, not at all. But he does want company. He sighs and shrugs off his jacket before toeing off his boots. His balaclava is snatched off by a tired hand, and dropped somewhere he doesn’t care to check. Only two wide steps with his annoyingly long legs and he’s already by the sofa, flopping onto it like a wet rag slapped on the leather cushions.

He eyes the bag of crisps in your hand and raises a questioning eyebrow.

You’ve learned how silent communication works with him because most of the time (especially after particularly hellish days or long deployments) he wanders around the flat like a haunting specter more than a living being.

You mockingly raise your own questioning brow, but alas, you hand him the pack of crisps he’d wordlessly asked for. And just because you can, and because he’s never said anything when you did it, you stretch your legs to rest over his thighs.

That earns you a grumpy side-eye that softens just as quickly when he spots the checkered pink and green socks he gifted you for your graduation.

Simon doesn’t know much about things like that. He isn’t daft, he knows how big it is to earn a PhD. But presents aren’t his thing, nor are the pleasantries built around big achievements.

At the time, he was just tired of seeing you walk barefoot around the flat and thought you needed those more than anything since, apparently, slippers weren’t all the rage in your book. Surely, before his life-changing present, Simon was used to you asking if he’d seen your other slipper while you stumbled about the flat only wearing one on your feet. He’d find them everywhere: under the sofa when vacuuming the carpet, hidden in a groove between the floor and the kitchen counter, forgotten on the washing machine or in the washing machine.

He’d figured that the only way to ensure you’d avoid knocking your pinky toe on the corner of some furniture was to make sure you couldn’t simply drop the footwear. Socks were it, apparently.

He remembers how your eyes had shone like the bleeding sun when he’d given them to you, how you’d clutched them to your chest as if he’d just gifted you a pot of gold. It had been a lovely sight, one he carefully keeps tucked in the almost empty corner of his mind, the one reserved for happy memories.

Nevertheless, Simon has rarely minded your habit of lounging with your calves across his thighs. The opposite, actually. Your friendly sentiments make him feel like, for once, he isn’t about to get stabbed in the back. Moreover, the fact that he is letting you invade his personal space like that, when he never allows anyone else to so much as touch him, truly is a testament to the monumental trust he’s placed in you.

You take a sip from your beer. "Alright?"

“Peachy.” He grumbles dryly.

Your lips purse to conceal a smirk, but hell is it hard. His dry humor never fails to rob a halfhearted smile from you. He has subconsciously started using it more often than socially acceptable just because of that.

You wiggle your toes against his abdomen, trying to steal a smile of his own from him – even if those tend to appear once in a blue moon.

What you are given, however, is only a slap on the ankle.

Catching on his mood, you down one last sip from your Stella and then you wiggle the bottle at him.

"There," you offer. "Seems like you need it more than I do."

He tosses the bag of crisps on the coffee table and accepts the beer from you, taking a rather large gulp from it. He isn’t a light drinker by any means. In his defense, it takes a whole lot of alcohol to knock him out. He has the metabolism of a properly trained soldier and his liver has processed much worse things than a bloody Stella Artois.

“Why are you being particularly friendly today?” He asks with thinly veiled sarcasm.

He isn’t complaining, per se. But he is a pessimist, one who can’t seem to grasp the notion that people can act accommodating without asking anything in return. Even if that has been your only behavior for the past four years.

Therefore, Simon understands why you narrow your eyes at his question, all offended and a tiny bit sour, as if he’s just asked something outrageous. However, he also knows you’ll brush off his comment because it is true, what he said.

You are particularly cheery.

"I'm back in the game." You state, sounding as if you've achieved some great thing. "I have a date next Friday."

That.

That is what Simon needs to hear in order to give you a genuine reaction.

He raises a single blond eyebrow and glances away from the TV to look at you with that signature hooded gaze of his – the kind that could cut through steel.

“A date?” He grumbles. “Who’s the bloke?”

In response, you squirm a little on the couch to lazily reach for your phone on the coffee table. One of your legs swings to keep your balance, and if Simon didn’t have the reflexes of a sniper, you’d have heeled his face. He automatically grabs your ankle to both prevent your fall and save the integrity of his nose, releasing a sigh – bloody used to it.

You're absolutely unaffected by whatever's happening at the other end of you, awfully concentrated on your task at hand. Fingertips graze the phone enough to slide it closer until you finally manage to have it in your grasp. It’s painfully clear how you can’t be bothered to stand.

You lie back down on the sofa with a sigh, as if that has been an exhausting endeavor.

Simon scoffs.

Your legs return to his lap with apt nonchalance. Then, you swipe through your screen. Simon can only see the phone covering your face from that angle, how the screen light illuminates your features – brows furrowed and the tip of your tongue peeking between your teeth, all focused on finding something on it.

After painstakingly long seconds, you turn your phone to him. Simon squints at the screen and then focuses on the picture you’re showing.

The man is… somewhat handsome, he has to admit. Brown hair, blue eyes, charming smile with possibly fake teeth. Definitely older. Probably a boring, pretentious tosser. Probably wouldn’t appreciate your carefree nature. He wouldn’t return your lost slippers at your door. He wouldn’t buy you socks so you’d stop whining about being on the verge of breaking your toes. He definitely wouldn’t let you paint only one wall of the living room orange, because, in your opinion, having all four would be “too flashy” - as if one on its own isn’t obnoxious enough.

He has to admit, however, that you look beyond excited, and maybe a little enamored. It’s an adorable view, really, and he hates himself for being unable to rejoice about it with you.

"Adam." You tell him his name, even if he never asked. "Thirty-nine. Associate professor of Linguistics at the Uni where I graduated. Found him on Bumble.”

Simon has to physically stop himself from giving a scoff in response to that.

“Looks like a knob.” He takes yet another large gulp of beer, finishing the last drop. You frown, and before you can interject, he adds. “Looks old. Tory, probably.”

You roll your eyes and nudge his thigh with the tips of your toes.

"He ain't a Tory." You scoff. That little frown still lingers on your features, carving a small line between your brows, as if he'd personally offended you.

His comment prompts you to turn your phone to yourself and look at the picture of this Adam lad you found on Bumble of all places.

You look back at Simon and his deadpan stare. Then back at Adam and his million-dollar smile.

Your eyes swivel back to Simon again, and you tentatively ask, "You think he's a Tory?"

Simon places the empty beer bottle on the glass coffee table. The sound somehow makes you take a metaphorical step back. "Nah. He can't be."

You purse your lips, concentrated and slightly, just slightly amused.

Eyes back to Adam. Then to Simon. "Right?"

Simon looks that ounce of smug enough to be considered annoying once he notices how you’re about to go cross-eyed in changing your focus, all hesitant and that bit concerned. He already knows how you have zero faith in your own judgment of character even if you refuse to make peace with it.

A little too naïve for this world. A tad too innocent. When the topic would come up, you’d get all riled up and primitive in your frustration, muttering indiscernible words and expletives that sound like grunts. Brows all furrowed and pretty lips scowling. He'd remind you how you let him in your flat without a single proof that he wasn't a serial killing sociopath, and your mouth would lock in place.

His hand lands on the curve of your foot, smoothing down towards your ankle; the warmth of his palm bleeds through the fuzzy fabric of your socks. He sighs, a little overdramatic as if he were about to tell you some sad, sad news. "Definitely a Tory.”

You want to reprimand his lack of faith in your choice of men. But his hand on your ankle feels so nice and you’re a sucker for physical contact. Begrudgingly, you settle that your bruised ego and your wounded pride are worth the gentle giant’s warmth.

However, the lingering touch does nothing to discourage your fire, so you glower. The least believable thing he's ever seen.

It takes much more to upset a special forces operator with a series of achievements as long as Simon Riley’s. A doctor with a mop of hair lazily tied in a bun, checkered socks in his lap, and residues of crisps around her lips surely isn’t it.

"Well." You huff, crossing your arms over your chest. "I'll ask him on Friday when we’ll have dinner."

He scoffs.

“You’re gonna bring up politics at dinner on a first date, yeah?” A condescending pat on your ankle. “Sounds really romantic.”

His dry humor again. It wins in its intent to steal a chuckle from you.

The fight leaves as quickly as it entered your bloodstream, and you flop on the couch with a sigh, your phone falling somewhere on the turquoise carpet.

"Gotta make sure I ain't dating a conservative." You quip.

Simon watches you clasp your hands over your belly as it ripples with the first waves of a breathy laugh. You crane your neck forwards, eyes squinting in mirth clocking his own.

"He looks like he’d vote Tory." You concede with a laugh and pinch the air in front of your face. "A tiny bit - just a tiny bit."

“A tiny bit?” He snorts. “Lad probably has a framed photo of Margaret Thatcher in his bedroom.”

You laugh again, rubbing an idle hand over your eyes as you shake your head, utterly defeated. He can see in the way your shoulders sag that he’s shattered the careful castle of hopes and dreams you'd built brick by brick around the man.

"God no." Equally as exasperated as entertained, you sigh. "Can't imagine shagging him with the ol' Iron Lady staring at my tits."

He scoffs again at the mental image you have just provided him with. He doubts he’ll ever forget the picture, to his dismay. “Christ. Didn’t need that in my mind.”

In the afterglow of that belly laugh, you don’t notice how he’s somewhat tightened his grip around your ankle. Simon knows you aren’t one to pay attention to those subtleties. Too focused on other people's well-being to realize when yours is being put first. He can already imagine how your heart is unraveling with the knowledge that you’ve managed to make him quirk a smile, however small, even if his day had been a proper shitshow.

The selfless angel that you are.

You turn your eyes to the ceiling, looking for something that clearly isn’t written on the colorful paint of the walls.

"All jokes aside," you murmur. "I hope it goes well."

Your eyes touch his. There’s a melancholy in yours you only allowed him to see. Thinly veiled vulnerability, heart bare just for his eyes.

"Really need a confidence boost," you say with a wistful smile. "And some love on the side."

He mutters under his breath. “Right.”

Simon tries not to wince at your words and what they imply. He thinks you’re too good to rely on other people (men, above anything) to boost your confidence. As if what he thinks are mouthwatering looks, a striking sense of humor and a brilliant mind aren’t enough to make you feel a peg above everyone else.

He hates that you don’t seem to understand it. Hates that you require other people’s approval even when you have a brain that could put most to shame and a series of achievements to boot.

He hates that despite how sharp you are, you’re slow when it comes to emotional intelligence. And it’s Simon fucking Riley who’s saying it, the most emotionally unavailable man he himself knows. It isn’t that you can’t discern signs and tells, you aren’t stupid by any means, but it’s painfully obvious how you just can’t fathom why people would be attracted to you that way. Thus, you’d always dismiss compliments and advances with annoying levity.

In four years, Simon has witnessed all your relationships wither because your lack of self-confidence made you question everything.

Seemingly aware of the tense air your comment has caused, your cheeky grin makes a comeback just to lift his spirits. You wriggle your foot under his grip to get his attention. "You think he'll like my socks?"

Simon has to admit (finally, at least true to himself) that your tireless search for reassurance about your date isn’t exactly doing wonders for his heart or his sanity.

“He’ll love them, you muppet.” He deadpans.

You chuckle at the comment, and then you relax, thinking the conversation over. Comfortable with your eyes on the telly and your hands clasped over your stomach, that gentle feeling of home and familiarity lulls you into a soft rest.

Simon on the other hand, is anything but relaxed. His jaw clenches involuntarily as if he despises even the mere idea of another man getting to see you like this: lying down, all soft and sweet and sleepy in the fuzzy socks he’s bought you. With his surname plastered on your back, of all things.

His eyes flick to the hand on your ankle. He wants to keep holding on tighter and stop you from leaving altogether. Keep you tethered to that couch without ever needing to stand up.

He could tell you to drop it. He could.

But you’re a grown woman, in her prime, with her doctorate and her big girl job that gives her enough money to start a war of her own but for some reason has never decided to pick up her things and leave that shabby flat she shares with him.

And he is poor with words. Communication is a skill he’s never learned, unless it involves extracting precious intel from skin-trading bastards or bloodthirsty pricks. He surely isn’t going to communicate with you that way, even if it's the only one he knows. The realization makes his lips dip into a scowl of self-hatred for being seemingly unable to keep you.

Simon’s eyes rake over your body – your silhouette concealed by his shirt, softly draped over you like finely carved marble. With natural flow, his hand follows the path traced by his pupils, and very deliberately slides up your leg, towards your knee.

Initially, the movement only prompts you to steal a glance from him. But when your eyes land on that frown, as if he were deep in thought, it feels natural, instinctive, to give him your undivided attention again.

Softly, you ask for the second time that day, "Alright?"

He nearly lets out a huff of laughter. Such a simple question yet so goddamn loaded he’s on the verge of blowing a gasket – his patience wearing thin. 

He locks his eyes with yours, only to snark once more. “Peachy.”

His humor this time isn’t successful in the effort of stealing a smile. In Simon’s defense, he hasn’t used it to make you crack one at all.

You frown, a tiny fracture between your brows. A little confused, mostly concerned. He can see it in your doe eyes, how you’re already miles away – overthinking every minute detail you might have missed during the conversation. You always thought so much Simon had joked, once or twice, that your skull was too small to host all that.

Your eyes shift from his face to his hand. Simon dares to be bolder and slides his palm a little higher. His fingers curl around the plush of your thigh.

"Peachy, eh?" You inquire, clearly suspicious of his antics. "You look far from peachy.”

A low scoff slips past his lips.

He is anything but peachy, he’d give you that. He is anything but sweet, far from it. Bitter, would fit better. Jealous, would fit best. He is downright pissed, but not at you. Never at you. He wishes he were a gifted conversationalist, so he could put into words what the idea of you shoving your tits in the face of some twat is making his hackles rise. He barely entertains the thought of you talking and laughing with him, never mind brushing with the concept of you riding the life out of that bastard. God forbid you brought him over and did all that in your flat – his flat.

He swallows in a piss poor attempt at juggling his feelings. His eyes shift to the TV to further conceal them.

“Just thinkin’ about work is all.” He mutters. Simon can almost hear Soap’s Scottish lilt calling him a “pining sod.”

Oh, but you’re an insistent little thing, aren’t you? Simon can hear the sheer doubt in your tone when you hum in response. The slight changes in the vibration against your frowning lips, the curves in the intonation of that simple, but so very telling sound. He catches each and every one of those details like the guard dog that he is.

In his peripherals, he sees the shifting of your eyes, from his hand to his profile. He sees you take in the crook of his nose, broken a few times (a tough job and a harsh childhood did that to him).  His furrowing brows, light honey, like his hair – all ruffled and staticky from removing his balaclava when he got home.

"Work." You deadpan, but it comes out softer than intended.

His fingers aren’t as sneaky as before when they slide further up your thigh. Simon knows you feel that same electric spark because your quadriceps stiffen under his palm.

“Work,” he affirms, his jaw tight as his hand journeys farther to reach the hem of your shorts. His thumb rubs from side to side over the skin at the edge of the fabric, and Christ, he’s fighting the growing itch to just pull them down.

While the two of you have watched plenty of films on this same sofa, in this same position, Simon has never touched you.

As in, touched you, touched you.

He’s averse to that, to anything that isn’t a noncommittal gesture. This one, however, obviously isn’t.

His hand is so big against your thigh, that plush skin underneath his callouses almost makes him feel guilty. The hardened palm used to disperse death shouldn’t touch such soft things. He feels the peachy fuzz brush against the pads of his fingers, he sees how they leave divots in the meat.

It makes his heart beat a little faster, blood pumping in all the wrong places but his head.

His expression is blank, dull eyes staring straight at the television. However, his mind is not as quelled as he portrays. It’s leading him to a very unholy place, where he wonders if your skin is as soft on your belly as it is on your thigh. Whether you’d whimper or groan if he were to flick his tongue over your breasts. If your eyes would roll back, were he to plunge his fingers deep into your core.

So many ifs he wants to put to the test.

He gently skims where your thigh meets your hip, and Simon swears he hears you gulp. He can tell you’re absolutely blindsided. You've been living with him as your flatmate for four years. Four fucking years, and if he ever tried to give you anything more than his usual snark, he might have been a little too subtle about it.

Simon glances at you, before returning his focus to the telly. One look is all he needs to hear your thoughts as if they were his own – the self-deprecation, the anxiety, that tormenting feeling of not being enough.

How torn you look. Stiff fingers curl around air only to release it right afterwards, fighting an invisible enemy. Let him do what he wants, let his hand slide up your shorts, and find the cotton lace of your panties. Or, pull away and retreat into your safe bubble, where no one can hurt you.

As if he’d ever lay an ill hand on you. All you have to say is “Stop” and he’ll take back his arm – cut it off for good measure.

Your eyes are hooded as they turn to look back at the malleable flesh of your thigh in his hold. His fingers disappear under your shorts until the first knuckle. He brushes along the hem of nice lace undies, feeling the rough fabric under the pads of his fingers.

Your voice is deliciously breathy. "Wha' about work, then?"

Avoidance. Normally, he'd let you. If it were any other situation, he'd brush it off with you. He'd keep up with the chat, coddling you in that safe place you seem too keen on spending time in.

Not now.

His head turns back to you; hungry eyes fixed on the way your mouth parts to yield that soft whisper. It makes his eye twitch, a splinter in his veneer.

“Reckon work can wait,” he rasps.

Simon is hyper-aware of how close he is to your core – a knuckle away from the throbbing heat between your legs. He sees your bowed head, eyes lidded with that primal desire he is instilling in you.

You look as if your brain has turned into soup; the ingredients a mix of shared memories and touches – even the most indifferent, neutral ones. To his utter joy, for the first time in your life, it almost looks like you’ve finally turned off your thoughts.

Your jaw clenches in a desperate attempt to get a grip on yourself. He knows you’re confused; he is too. Because it’s wrong to indulge in intimacy when more than just a friendship is at stake. Money's involved, a roof over your heads, a bed to kip, and food in your bellies – four years of shared everything is involved.

But you agree. You nod your head a little dumbly, and suddenly work can wait. To Simon, the fucking world can.

Your voice is a mumble. "Yeah, guess it can."

“Mhm.”

His gaze flicks up to your eyes, depriving your lips of the attention they were given, and he is delighted to see that you’re just as affected as he is.

Simon's fingers get squished between your thighs when you clench them together. He squeezes, feeling how the flesh rolls between his fingers, how it folds where the stretch marks crinkle.

“Lift your leg up for me,” he rasps.

Breath is stuck in your throat in utter anticipation. Simon knows it's been a long time since you've been touched in any way, shape, or form. You could've gone out and found a man willing to have a shag, it wouldn't have been hard to find someone who needed it too – someone as desperate as you look right now.

After all, that single word is the one that led him to you in the first place.

Yet you never did it. Simon has never seen you bring a man, or a woman, back to the flat. Sometimes you’d disappear with a text, saying you’d be sleeping out, but you never brought anyone home. And he never asked why – mostly, because he thought it wasn’t his business. Another part of him, however, was afraid that if he did, you’d take it as an invitation to do so. Obviously, he wasn’t too keen on the idea.

After giving it little thought, you part your thighs for him. One still rests in his lap while the other dangles off the sofa.

There's very little resolve left in you, Simon can tell by the way your eyes are so focused on his disappearing hand, and by the way you shatter when he experimentally glides one finger over the damp line on your panties.

“Fuck.” You hiss, tilting your head back.

You must want him dead, he thinks, as he gawks at the way your throat curves.

“Christ.” He mutters under his breath. He pushes the pad of his thumb down the cotton, feeling how it sticks to your slit. “Barely touched you.”

He wants to take his sweet time. He does. Wants to take it slow, reduce you to a mess of please and more before he finally gives you what you want. But he’s just as desperate as you are, isn’t he? He’s craving, clawing at the walls, to feel you clamp around him. Feel you drip down his hand until his callouses are coated, slick flowing down the crevices of his palm.

He’s no better than you are, currently.

So, his fingers slip under your panties just enough to touch your folds.

You can't help but tilt your head forwards again, only to look down at the bulge under your shorts created by his hand.

But when your eyes flit back to his, he stops.

Maybe he’s gone too far, he thinks. Maybe you’re realizing this is one hell of a mistake that can only end with you going your separate ways, something he will never forgive himself for.

However, it’s then, that you nod. That worry line between your brows, ever-present, seems gone. Smooth skin between your beautiful, beautiful eyes. And Simon feels whole again, feels wanted. The battered hound dog that he is, only useful for one thing and one thing only – sowing the seeds of death, and reaping them afterwards – is wanted.

Not tolerated. Not required. Wanted. Needed.

He knows your brain is turning its cogs, fighting against the fog of a kind of hunger that can’t be extinguished, one that only wants to be sated – by him, and him only.

Why is he doing this. 

What does it mean.

Is it because of the date you should have the next Friday. 

Is it because he's frustrated at work and you’re simply there, lying on a silver platter.

So many fucking questions it irritates him that, somehow, while his middle finger is tracing lazy patterns to part your folds, you’re still thinking. 

He doesn’t allow a single one to leave your lips, because he plunges one finger inside your cunt.

His first if is answered, then. Your eyes don’t roll back like he’d expected.

Your brows flutter to your forehead, and your mouth parts to form a pretty oval. Your chest swells as if you've just taken the first breath in your entire life. Your eyes, hazy and blurred, hold his own. And somehow, that is the hottest thing he’s ever seen.

Your leg on his lap is taut and stiff, toes curling under those loud socks you’re wearing.

Simon takes in the sight of you – all flushed and panting. The only sound in the air is the quiet drone of the telly in the background and your sharp inhales.

He can only describe himself in that moment as wrecked. Maybe even more so than you are right now, all rigid in anticipation of his first movements.

“Keep your eyes on me," he growls out, and when you nod, he curls his pad inside of you.

Your fingers seem to mimic his own, but they grip the edge of the sofa’s cushions instead. Your nails scratch at the leather with such voracity they leave beige lines against the dark brown.

He struggles against the double layer of fabric entrapping his hand to your cunt – the lace scratches the knuckle on his thumb, the cotton of your shorts is a manacle on his wrist. But fuck if he cares about all that when your hips twitch to encourage his movements.

You look ruined. And he loves that – the effect he has on you, the fact that he’s the one to have you like this.

He moves his finger in slow, long strokes. He doesn’t do it to torture you, no. He observes, because for once his constant vigilance is not only useful to quell his paranoia, but also to feed your desires. He tests movements, tries different spots, looking for that one within your walls that will make you scream. 

And he finds it, then – to his utmost delight. Here you are: your breathy moans, soft and honeyed, turn into a stuttering and almost pained "Oh." And he knows he has you under his thumb, all perfect and yearning, unraveling with just one of his fingers. He’s looking straight at your face, not wanting to miss a single twitch of an eyebrow. Your pretty lips are all slick with your spit and they part to release the sweetest sounds he’s ever heard.

His strokes intensify, drawing back as much as he can with the limited movements he has, only to push in and hit ever so slightly that rougher patch of nerves he’s located. He doesn’t want to make you squirm, but he has something tickling his brain – questions. Or better, one question.

He places his thumb over your pearl, unsheathing it from the fleshy hood with a glide. He drinks the way it makes your breath hitch and stutter in sudden hypersensitivity. He rolls his pad tentatively, only to see you grit your teeth and groan – muscles and sinews all tensed up in your neck. It's like molten lava in your belly. It's syrupy hot and gushes out of you in long, sticky droplets that pool on his finger, down to the knuckle.

“D’you think you’ll need to go on that date on Friday?” he rasps and rolls his thumb again.

His question doesn't seem to make you falter; your hips are unrelenting in their chase for release, as you push against his hand, grinding like your life depends on it. However, he can tell that it irked you. That blissed-out look pinches in frustration.

You're breathless, on a feverish hunt for that taste of heaven his finger’s promising, and Simon has the gall to bring up another man? One he's been mocking for the past half hour? He's surprised by himself as well.

You whine. "Does this look like the bloody time?"

“No,” he concedes, sounding a little patronizing.

He has the upper hand, quite literally, and to give you a friendly reminder of the power he holds, he slides another finger in.

You're absolute putty in his hands now. Your fingers grip at the sofa, your cheeks all flushed and warm. Your back arches, and he knows he just gave you that fullness you've been chasing. The sensation that causes the right amount of pleasure and pain of the stretch. He’s knuckle deep inside of you, his fingers trapped by your velvety walls as he strokes harder, lingering a little longer where you like it, but not faster. He keeps that steady pace that takes your breath away, not forgetting to lavish your clit with attention, and leaves you with just enough air for you to free those clipped and breathless moans.

He’s shameless as his other hand clamps your shin on his lap and pushes it down onto the painful tent on his jeans. He shifts his hip upwards to grind against your calf and hisses when it causes the zipper to graze his cock.

“Gonna cancel it, then?”

It’s bliss. You look like an angel.

"Yeah," you breathe out, a little incoherent. "Cancel it, 'course."

Your voice is more of an unintelligible mumble than anything else – two fingers in and his thumb on your nub drawing idle circles. Perfect pressure. Perfect fit.

He’s never seen you look this beautiful, all abandoned and relaxed, with your big brain he loves so much shut off completely. Synapses only working to generate a wish for release, so sweet and simple, and nothing else. And who is he to deny such a plain request, you sweet thing.

Simon would give you the moon if you asked.

He’s powerless in your presence, undecided if to focus on your face, or to stare at your hardened nipples. They brush against the black training t-shirt he once owned – right below the two crossing swords painted under the royal crown. It should be blasphemous. Should be bloody illegal to sully the name of the monarchy that way.

That is, if he gave a fuck about it. And even if he did, he’d see no wrong in it – because what can you taint when you’re the purest thing he’s ever touched.

Your hips move in tandem with his fingers, your face scrunched in that desperate look of someone who has a piece of heaven just out of reach. He watches you as you fall apart under his fingers and keeps your leg down so he can grind against it. If the situation were different, he’d feel like a wild animal in that regard, but there isn’t a spot on you he doesn’t wish to worship.

Especially now, when you look like this. With your hair sticking to your forehead and loose locks escaping your low bun.

He can’t take his eyes away from you – you have him absolutely entranced.

“s too much.” He hears you whine amongst the mist in his brain

“It ain’t.” He manages to grunt as if it's an order.

And you’re a little insubordinate, because you try and squirm away. But your shorts are his shackles as much as they’re yours – they fasten his hand to your cunt, while locking you against his unwavering fingers.

“Simon,” your voice is so wrecked when you beg. “Please - fuck.”

And how he finds the strength to snark is beyond him. His voice is thick and heavy. “’m tryin’.”

He drags his fingers deep down where yours can’t reach, where he’s found that patch of nerves that reduces you into a puddle of yourself. His thumb on your clit is steadfast, rubbing just above the hood where you’re not as sensitive, only to drag down again and make you see stars.

And the way that string of “Yes” leaves your lips, in that euphoric wheeze that tugs at the corners of your lips, makes his cock ache to be anywhere but in the confines of his jeans.

Your eyes are all glossy when you prop yourself on your elbows to fuel his resolve. Petal lips red and shiny, catching your teeth in an attempt to muffle your moans – bone-deep ingrained insecurity you can’t seem to get rid of. He doesn’t force you, though – he wants to hear you, sure, but most of all he wants to see you crumble to shreds. And if hiding your voice is what you need, then feel free to be his bloody guest.

Your hips stutter and your belly ripples under his large tee draped over it, and he’d recognize those signs anywhere. 

“Cum f’ me,” he orders. “C’mon, love. Give it to me.”

It takes a few more pumps of his fingers, and Simon feels it before he sees it. You clench around his fingers in rippling waves, thrumming rhythmically. Your cunt deliciously threatens to cut them off just above the knuckle.

And fuck, aren’t you a goddamn sight. 

Simon thinks it's almost cathartic to simply watch you. How your head tilts back to hit the armrest of the sofa, the way your toes curl in his lap and your foot on the floor rigidly lifts. The sway of your hips as they undulate to meet his thrusts and the liberating groan that leaves your lips, touching the sky with your fingers.

He unconsciously guides you through it, but truthfully, he has absolutely no idea what to do with himself – not with you looking straight out of one of his most unhinged dreams. His fingers slow down but keep moving relentlessly.

However, it would be a lie for him to say he knows what he’s doing.

You come down from it and your eyes are blinky and unfocused, staring at the ceiling. Your body deflates on the couch, limp and sated. Syrupy and warm. With your chest free to move now that the heavy weight on it has finally been lifted. He allows you this moment of privacy as you recollect yourself, although he truly wants you to look back at him again. He doesn’t want to miss a beat of this, yet he sort of understands.

Your breath comes out in puffs. He’s not faring any better on that note.

"Simon," you breathe, his name exquisite from your lips. "Christ."

He’s gawking. Watching your face for a moment more, he meets your eyes as they flick back to him down the slope of your nose.

Thumb still on your clit, the movements are gentler and featherlight. His voice is hoarse and rough as he speaks. “Alrigh’?”

You chuckle, breathless and a little nervous now that the appetite has been sated – much more self-aware than before.

His fingers are still inside of you and you’re already overthinking this. He knows it. He just hopes, deep down, that you’re not regretting it – because he sure as hell isn’t.

"Peachy.” Is your reply.

Oh, how the tables have turned. Joke’s on him, he’s fed you enough sarcasm for you to start throwing it back at him. Simon feels too weak to even smirk. However, his eyes do narrow, in a similar manner to how yours would at his snarky comebacks.

He gently slides his fingers out of you, mindful of your current sensitivity. He brings the hand up, seeing the gleam of your slick shamelessly coating their lengths down to the knuckles.

“Fuckin’ look at that.” He murmurs, unable to discern whether he’s talking to you or to himself, “Messy girl.”

He thumbs his middle finger and rolls the juice between the pads, thinking; tongue out to lick his lips like the voracious beast he is.

Simon reaches over and brings his hand towards your mouth. A jerky nod of his jaw, “Open.”

He knows he’s already crossed a line the two of you never even dared to toe before. And if he’s going to lose you after this, if you’re going to turn your back on him and leave the flat (leave his life) then he’s going to make the most of it.

Your brows are pinched in sudden uncertainty. A contradicting spectacle, if mixed with the way your chest is still heaving and how your cunt is still wet.

But tonight, you seem eager to catch him off guard, because you oblige. Your lips part and you offer your tongue, never breaking eye contact.

Each time he thinks you can’t look more beautiful you prove him fucking wrong.

He hums lowly in approval, and there’s something dark in that sound. He gently runs his fingers across your tongue, coating it with your taste. Fingertips slide and follow its curve. He stares at you with such an intensity, like he could consume you if he had a mind to. You devour him first, wrapping your lips around his knuckles.

When your tongue delves around his fore and middle fingers, he has to close his eyes. He has to roll his head, releasing the tension in his jaw. He has to, or he’ll cum in his goddamn jeans. The sharp inhale he takes almost burns his nostrils; his sigh heavy and anguished when his lips surrender to it.

“How d’you taste, dove?” he asks, blinking his eyes open.

The way his voice rasps out that pet name, rough like sandpaper, makes a shiver run down your neck. He sees it, the tremor of your shoulders, the goosebumps on your arms.

Simon reluctantly pulls his fingers away only so you can answer. His wasn’t a rhetorical question, and by that blush on your cheeks and the embarrassed hint of a smile on your face, you’ve guessed it already.

"Not as sweet as I thought."

His lips twitch.

“No?” he asks, his voice much too broken for his liking. He brings those same fingers to his mouth and sucks, tasting your spit and your cum. A low rumble of a chuckle escapes him – must be a blue moon tonight. “I think you taste pretty sweet.”

This can go two ways: a fairy tale ending, like those romcoms you like to watch, or an absolutely dreadful one – in which you leave. And truly, Simon doesn’t believe in a higher power; God has abandoned him more times than he cares to count. However, he hopes that whoever’s up there realizes that he's owed big time for all the crap he’s been put through.

And he asks for nothing, but you.

His face is hot, and he gathers his cheeks might be a little pink. The rare sight must give you some comfort, the fact that he’s just as overwhelmed as you are, because he feels your leg relax in his lap.

You purse your lips to hide a bashful smile - as if you have any right to be coy right now. "Flatterer."

He hums, seemingly wanting to bite back at you but unable to find the spirit for it. His eyes rake over your body, from your flushed face to your chest covered by his tee, until they land on your quivering thighs, still splayed open for him.

For him.

His hand travels up your leg, following the same route that has led to this. When his palm finally cups your hip, his fingers curl at the waistband of your shorts and tug.

“C’mere.”

You do.

He sees you bend your knees and shift on the sofa so you can crawl to him on shaky legs. As the gentleman he never thought he’d be, he helps you swing your thigh over his own and deposits you in his lap with your knees on either side of his hips.

Afraid you might say something hinting at regret, he selfishly grabs your jaw and pulls you down, finally tasting you the way he’s always wanted. His lips mold with yours, and they’re so soft he has no business claiming them as his own. His fingers tilt your head so he can deepen the kiss, and only when he sees your eyes flutter closed through the slit of his eyelids, he allows himself to surrender to you.

Your lips peck the thin scar on his cupid’s bow, but before you can run away from him (as you should), he captures you once more. He never wants to let you go, so his tongue slides across the seam of your mouth, and you, so pliantly, oblige him.

Your hands are resting on his shoulders when the kiss starts tentatively, while his slender fingers follow the curve of your waist.

But then your nails dig at the fabric of his t-shirt, as if eager to rip it, and his palms journey to your rear. He grips at the flesh through your shorts, before shoving out of the way their distressed hem and directly groping the plump meat of your ass.

The two of you never part. If anything, everything gets more heated.

He doesn’t recall when it is exactly that you start grinding your hips, nor does he remember when his shirt was removed – whether you did it, or if he’s taken the matter into his own hands.

However, he does snap out of it when he feels your palms leave his shoulders to grasp at the hem of your tee. While he wants to feel his skin on yours as much as you do, what’s separating your chest from his is not a mere layer of cotton.

He pulls away and – to his pleasure – he sees you lean in to have more. His hand lands on yours, stopping you.

“No.”

He sees you blink, dazed. A myriad of emotions travel through that pinched expression you wear, thinking like usual that you’ve done something wrong.

He quells your fears in seconds, when his other palm skims over your arm. It journeys unhurriedly, leaving gooseflesh in its wake, until it lands at the base of your throat. His thumb brushes over its column, forcing your neck to tilt backwards and your back to arch, presenting your chest.

Simon models you like clay under his warm fingers, and he takes his time to drink you in and sculpt you as he wishes. Because you seem so docile now that his intents are less covert, clearer.

He brings his mouth to your throat, and his nose scrunches when he presses it against your neck, keeping you still with one thick arm around your waist. With sluggish movements, he tastes the salt of your skin and the tang left by your perfume.

Simon pulls back only to run his tongue from the hollow between your collarbones up to your jaw, feeling right under the muscle how your throat bobs when your breath lodges in between. He curves his head and digs his teeth into the plumper flesh on the side of your neck, enough to get a taste but not enough (never enough) to cause pain.

“Keep the shirt on.” He breathes against your skin, “I wanna fuck my name into you.”

And he does just that.

It’s effortless how he lifts you in his arms, guiding your ankles to lock at his tailbone. Clothes, both yours and his, freckle the floors in a trail that leads to his bedroom. He’s famished; there isn’t a single surface along the path he follows where he hasn’t placed you – if only to savor every piece of you for a little longer.

Until he has you on that bed, the one he should’ve gotten only for a few weeks and instead became his own alcove.

You look wonderful on it.

But you’re even more gorgeous when he sits at the edge of the mattress, facing the full-length mirror in his room, and places you on his thighs to straddle his lap – your back facing the reflection.

He runs his hands over your chest, riding up the t-shirt to your neck only so he can feast on your tits. Grabbing greedy handfuls of fat and muttering unintelligible praises when his mouth all but devours every inch – sucking on your puffy nipples and grazing his teeth around each peak.

Another if is answered by the whimper that escapes your kiss-bitten lips.

You look like an angel, when your soft hand goes to grab the base of his cock and, without much ceremony, you guide it inside of you – sinking on it easy and slow.

You feel like heaven, too, impaled on him. Perfect fit, always made for him, and him only.

Simon’s not sure what he did to deserve you, now riding his cock like you’d been deprived of it your whole life. Unbridled, free. You moan and groan without a care in the world, the hesitation he saw before vanished into thin air – and oh, he couldn’t be more grateful for it.

His hands curl at the hem of your (his, his, his) shirt, lifting it up slightly at your waist, only so he can see in the reflection how your ass slaps against his thighs each time you drop. Or, how your glutes clench when instead of trying to pleasure him, you please yourself – rolling your hips to grind your clit against his happy trail.

Simon’s hands leave the shirt only to grab more of you, kneading at your hips to guide your cunt down his cock until he has you filled to the brim. Your eyes roll back, breath stuck in that pretty throat of yours. He bites at it - laps at the skin like a starved dog.

Simon shattered his chains the moment you came undone on his fingers, and now he knows no restraint – not when he has you like this.

“Look at you,” he growls, slapping your ass only to watch how the fat ripples in recoil in your mirror image.

He grabs the back of your neck and tilts your head downwards. Your foreheads touch as he guides your eyes to look at where your bodies join. The foamy ring at the base of his cock, how the folds of your vulva hug around his shaft and tip at your unhooded clit, all puffy and red.

He tugs at your mound with his thumb, stretching the flesh to expose more. With a deliberate roll of his hips, he makes a show of how effortlessly his cock slides into you, how your cunt greedily stretches to welcome him whole. 

“Look at that.” His voice is equally as raspy as it’s enraptured. “Perfect.”

Using his hand on your nape, he angles your face to kiss you again. He thrusts into you only to have you part your lips in a stuttering moan, and he drinks it dry.

When you resume grinding your hips, he whispers in your open mouth, “Fuckin’ perfect.”

Simon sees how your thighs quiver under the strain of the effort, hamstrings taut and probably burning in the attempt to wrap around his hips. He won’t keep you like that for long, don’t worry. He’ll take good care of you, like he always has.

But now, he indulges in a selfish moment.

Spare seconds in which he watches your reflection bounce on him, and you’re too lost in the feeling to notice how his hooded eyes take in the view.

The profile of your face in the mirror (his little cherub), with your mouth parted and brushing against his temple as he nuzzles your shoulder through the fabric of the shirt. One hand ecloses his nape and your other palm is on his cheek, keeping his head close to your breathless lips. Your eyes are closed in bliss – lashes shy against your flushed cheekbones.

In the scantly lit room, the reflection in the mirror of you two is as dark as everything else, but the stark white writing on the back of your tee has never looked brighter. Your hair sways with your movements, and that RILEY that peeks through your locks has him impossibly enamored of you.

And you’re so smart, he thinks. So clever, because you know, even when your senses are clouded by euphoria and your eyes are closed. You know he’s never had a thing. You know that whatever he’s held, no matter for how long, has always slipped through his fingers before he could even get a taste of it.

“I’m yours,” you whisper in his ear.

And so, Simon surrenders. He’s at your mercy, you have his trust and whatever’s left of his heart – and he knows you won’t break either.

He helps you out of his t-shirt only to hold you bare against his chest. He brings you down with him, lavishes your skin with his palms and his lips. Nose buried in your hair, Simon breathes you in. The smell of sex and the smell of you and how it has him drunk when it whirlpools with his own – a new fragrance, one that burns itself into his brain with the threat (sweet promise) of never letting go.

Because he’s never had a thing, his name barely pertains to him anymore. But the moment he saw it on you, he finally realized where Simon Riley belongs.

[gojossocks]

We can't be friends

Gojo x Reader Summary: You decided to erase Gojo from your memory.

“Who is Gojo Satoru to you?”  

You shift uncomfortably in your seat, before giving the doctor a tight-lipped smile. “W-we were together for 6 years.” 

He’s no one important really, just the love of your life. 

There has been an on-going trend all over the world— technology has upgraded enough that you can erase someone entirely out of your memory, as if they’ve never existed. If they do, it wasn’t like how you knew them. 

You weren’t sure what dragged you in this clinic with all of the most important things that remind you of him. Maybe it was the way he ignored you like the plague, the way the familiarity in his eyes disappeared just earlier last week when he spoke to you so freely like you’ve never been together. It was clear that he got his memory of you erased after that incident. You were just another colleague. Perhaps, the pain in your heart is too much to handle. 

You don’t remember the way to the clinic that much. It was a surprise you even got there in one piece considering you were sobbing the whole way there. So even if you aren’t entirely sure whether you’re ready to let go of Satoru, you signed the consent form anyway. 

If he’s got you erased completely from your life, then what’s the point of living in hell remembering him? You didn’t want to mourn for someone alive and well. 

You never really understood why he left because everything was just working out between the two of you. Satoru provided you with no explanation and packed up his things to leave you behind to your own devices. You almost wanted to back out when you started reminiscing vividly of everything you once shared with him. 

You remembered falling in love with him, how it feels like the first day of spring, how his kisses taste like daylight. How he squeezes your hand three times before you part ways for a mission.  How he holds you like you’re the only thing that matters in his world. How it was always you and him against the world, him making you laugh while you tended to his wounds. He would tell you that everything would be okay because he has you and only you. 

The bad outweighed the good that you had forgotten that loving him and being loved with him is something that you never wanted to forget, even if your relationship with him crashed and burned. You don’t want him to be a stranger you can’t recognize anymore.

But it had already been done and everything faded into nothingness as you try to grasp with whatever you have left of him.

-.- 

You have been working with Gojo for quite some time now, maybe about six years. But you’ve never directly initiated conversations with him outside work. He’s the only one you don’t know much about in Jujutsu High. Today is no different as you’re waiting with him in the clinic for your mutual friend Shoko. 

“That’s a beautiful necklace you have there.” He acknowledges you for the first time since you got there. Even if you’re just a few meters away, he doesn’t talk to you. You find that a little bit weird because everyone tells you that he’s obnoxious and loud. Somehow with you, he’s always quiet. 

You didn’t remember much of how you got the necklace. You figured that the reason why Gojo’s asking about it is because it matches the color of his eyes. There was a hazy memory though— you were crying, telling a doctor to ‘let me keep it, please. Just this one.’ but you didn’t think much of it. Maybe it was all a dream. 

You responded with a laugh before toying with the pendant of the necklace. “Yeah, It was a gift to me.” 

“Oh?” He looked at you through his glasses, his intense gaze making you feel a little nervous. “Mind telling me who?” 

“I forgot.” You replied,  slowly relaxing in your seat while looking around at Shoko’s clinic. He nodded at you, a small smile adorning his lips and he didn’t say anything more. 

You missed the way his eyes linger on you for a moment before putting back his blindfold on or the apologetic look that Shoko gave him before he leaves. 

“So, who’s Gojo Satoru to you?” 

“He’s the strongest of course.” 

But to him, you’re still his everything—because he didn’t really remove you from his memory. Maybe if he was braver, you’d remember him. 

a/ n: part 2? :0

[thestarsarebrightertonight]

skinny dipping // theodore nott x fem reader

playlist: skinny dipping - sabrina carpenter

"itd be so nice right? if we could take it all off and just exist and skinny dip in water under the bridge"

summary: y/n and theo have known eachother their whole lives but when sorted into different houses and fears of unrequited feelings take over , they lose their bond- but not really.

no real skinny dipping just the song LMAO its metaphorical , ravenclaw reader , use of y/n , fluff , childhood friends wtih obvious feelings

masterlist

it was just any other weekend on the hogsmeade trip when you heard the barista of the small cafe you sat in call out his name.

"theo!" she said , placing down a black coffee and moving on to serve more people , but you left your eyes burning holes into the cup.

until his hand went to grab it , giving a quiet and dull thanks before moving over towards the tables , where you sat - not noticing you yet.

you quickly moved your eyes away and pretended to be busy when his body turned in your direction , your acting cut off by your name being called in a voice you could hardly recognise.

"y/n?" he said as you looked up to see him stood infront of your table.

you took your time to study his face , he looked so different it was terrifying , he wasnt the same eleven year old boy you were attached to. but you werent so suprised by how he looked , you always watched him from afar.

"hey.." you let out softly , smiling at him anxiously.

it seemed weird to be anxious around your best friend , except you werent really best friends anymore , just two stanger with memories. memories you can never forget.

"we go to the same school but ive not seen you in ages!" he said excited by your appearance.

"really cause i see you everyday" you chuckled as he laughed too , sitting in the chair in front of you.

"yeah well you know i have bad eyesight," he shrugged with a bright grin.

"how could i forget , having to read everything at a distance to you as kids was a daily occurance" you both laughed as you forget all of your past worries.

"no seriously , its really good to see you , i dont know why we stopped talking anyways!" theo smiled.

you sat in silence for a second , you knew exactly why. the second you gained feeling for theodore at the end of first year you immediatly ghosted him for the next 5 years- and here you are now , sitting opposite the boy you never really got over.

"yeah...well how are you theodore?" you gave him your best smile.

"merlin dont call me that , its theo or dory , remember the name you came up with when we were 5!" his eyes sparkled in the nostalgia.

"i still have no idea where i got that nickname from," you both laughed.

"anyways , im okay. i was having a bit of a shitty day but its better now ," he replied.

"oh really , what happened?"

"nothing just boring studying for exams and my friends were all busy, but i guess it was fate that i came in here," he grinned at you as you felt your heart melt. this was exactly why you stopped talking to him , he could make you go crazy and not even know.

"yeah , so you could run into your shy ravenclaw friend you havent talked to in 5 years," you laughed.

"5 years 1 month and 12 days," he said as your laughing ceased, "i counted the days , i....i really missed you."

your whole demanor softened as you watched him stare down at your coffees unable to hold eye contact , "theodore i wouldve talked to you sooner if you said you wanted to talk .i know i kinda iced you out but im always here."

"i know bella , i just guess something changed that day , you...changed," he said softly.

"yeah well you did too theo , not talking was best for us , we needed to grow and be our own people," you reached out to hold his hand , not realising your seperation had effected him.

"i kinda lied when i said i hadnt seen you , i...well i find you every day, to make sure youre okay," he admitted with a maroon blush across his cheeks, "i guess i hoped you looked out for me too."

"of course i did, i still do. just because we dont talk doesnt mean you arent important to me theo."

he stared into your eyes , seeing his sadness begin to fade and be replaced with a fond adoration as you gazed back in the same haze. looking at him in this way didnt help with your unrequited-

"i love you," he whispered never once breaking eye contact.

your jaw dropped in suprise , "t-theo do you mean..."

"i love you and i always have , the day you stopped talking to me i think a part of me died or something. do you not realise how my friends seem to bully everyone but you? how im at all of your quidditch pratices and games? do you not wonder why no guys approach you? they all fucking pity my unrequited pining," theodore dropped his head and let go of your hand , frustration building up.

"theo," you gained his attention as he hesitantly brought his eyes back up to meet yours , "i love you too, more than words could describe. i guess i just thought youd never like me that way so i left you alone. i couldnt deal with my own feeling and i let it out on you im sorry-"

"dont say sorry bella," he said softly as he held the side of your face , tracing his thumb across your cheek softly, "water under the bridge?"

you smiled at him , holding the hand that rested on your blushed cheek , "water under the bridge."

stream skinny dipping by sabrina carpenter

[miserycanary]

MISSION: LOVE KILL  ᡣ𐭩 [trailer]

pairings: Simon 'Ghost' Riley & fem!reader

synopsis: the trailer to my very first full-length series set in a soulmate AU. 

pairings: (applies to future parts) angst, smut, fluff, mutual pining, misunderstandings, rivals to lovers to rivals, featuring Ghost's inability to communicate, graphic mentions of violence, might hint to sexual violence, BARELY PUT TOGETHER, torture, one bed trope, i-will-wait-for-you trope, loving-you-is-like-breathing trope, slowburn (unless I get bored and rush this), poor poor attempt in crack, will add more as we go on

The subtle searing pain on the back of his neck is enough reason for Ghost to hate the idea of soulmates existing. It wasn’t just the fact that he has lived up to his 30s feeling like a fire wasp is buzzing under his skin, it was that the government fully developed their system with pairs in mind. You mean to tell him that he has to have found his partner—who’s probably cities or even continents away—just so that he could fucking own property? Utter fucking bullshit, he calls it. 

‘Nutjobs! The lot of them’

It was also the fact he had to watch his mum’s so-called soulmate almost beat them up to death each day. How could someone whose single purpose in life is to torment them be his mother’s soulmate? Fate either has a weird take on the concept of love and the whole shenanigan or it’s fucking wicked. Either way, the S-word has left a bad taste in his mouth—and memory. He would rather die, not having property—or anything really—to his name if it means that he wouldn’t comply to the fucking standards of pairs. 

Or so he thought because, once again, life is fucking wicked like that. 

When he first broke the news that he would be retiring from the army, he expected his future days ahead full of smooth-sailing lounging. Maybe a cup of tea in hand or even some biscuits if he was feeling fancy. Imagine his shocked face when he inquired with a real-estate agent to finally have something to call home, no longer needing to stay by some cheap hotel with what his little pay could afford, that he cannot fucking do that! 

“Yeah, this would be good. Really nice stuff here,” Ghost gruffs. “Yeah? Well, let’s get started then. Um, here are the paperworks that you need to fill out. Uhh, you just need to input your government code and your partner’s. It is policy that you bring your pair in with you when it comes to legal documents, but I’m sure that we could make an exception for our veteran here,” the agent smiles; one that Ghost did not reciprocate. “I ain���t got a missus with me. Haven’t found them yet.” 

It was a simple explanation, not wanting to dwell too much on his reasons. Before he could even take the papers in his hand, the man retracts. Confusion etched on Ghost’s face while pity is on the man’s. “Oh, I am really sorry but you are legally required to have a partner before you could own property—or anything for that matter.” Ghost looked this agent for a good few minutes, anticipating the ‘sike’ that he desperately wishes to hear but only dead silence echoes. “Surely you could, say, make an except for a veteran?” he nervously chuckles out, trying to weasel his way into a fucking home. Nothing. Dead fucking silence that’s heavy with pity. Ghost loathes it.

Without even saying a word, he turns his back and starts walking towards the car he rented today, because you can’t even own a car in this government! He should have flagged it as weird when the lady in the car shop insists that he should rent first before buying something. So, now he sits in the dingy bar that Soap has dragged him into after he informed the force that he would not be settling anytime soon. After explaining his circumstance, he expected them to react like he did before, but no. They all replied like they knew this. Even saying stuff like, “you didn’t know?” Of course he didn’t! It wasn’t like Ghost was invested in property or anything for that matter while he was serving. All he cared about was surviving each day, and that is it. 

“Aye, cheer up, lad. Life ain’ that bad. Ya’ just gotta get them lassie, and all yer problems would go away,” the Scot on his right drunkenly offers advice—a shit one at that. Did he really think Ghost hasn’t stepped foot on every land they got deployed with heavy hopes that he’ll find whoever he needs to find there? He fucking hates it here. He should have not retired this early if he knew this would happen. Now he needs to go around the world and search for the lassie whose presence—or her lack thereof—is the root of all his problems. 

If finding a needle in a haystack is hard, imagine finding a lady that’s probably moving countries as he speaks with Soap. “Yeah, like that’s fucking easy,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes before lifting his mask just enough to down his shot of whiskey. The fiery burn of the alcohol down his throat is nothing compared to the one on his neck. He would rather have it cut at this point than to go on about this miserable lifetime any longer.

“Should I just cut and peel it off?” he mumbles to no one in particular; probably to Fate if that shit is listening. Seeing that no one else in the rundown bar is really paying attention to him, Soap takes the honour in replying to him instead. “According tae what I’ve seen, jobby pain is hee haw compared tae th' pain ye will feel in yer heart. Doctors say that th' pain goes tae th' heart instead while tripling”. Unprompted, Ghost curses like a fucking sailor. Saying stuff that will probably get him on the government's watchlist if he wasn’t part of the military serving this goddamn country. He risks his life daily and this is what he gets? Ungrateful bastards.

With a slam of the glass on the mahogany table, he stands up with a new profound determination. “Fuck it, I’m finding that missus if it’s the last thing that I do”. “Eyy, that’s the spirit, matie,” Soap drunkenly encourages him, which should have been the first red flag on this idea. Any idea supported by Soap is an immediate botch.

Well, what could go wrong? He’s retired anyway. 

Turns out, many could go wrong. Well, here’s to the fucking shit-show of his life.

꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱: please give this love!!

dividers by @cafekitsune

Please reblog!! Ask is open!

⟢ taglist is open!! @hotvinimon

check out my other works in the masterlist: ୭!

[bafvkun]

I just feel like talking about how deep Mikayu’s bound runs don’t mind me (HEAVY spoilers ahead).

Lets get this straight : i don’t care if you ship them or not (even if you would be a fool not to) but no one can deny that they’re literal soulmates and I’m gonna show you exactly why.

Yu and Mika were ALWAYS bound to find each other and reunite. I’m not saying that because I’m delusional it’s literally canon. Their relationship is as old as dinosaurs and once again : this is canon.

Yu (or should I say Mika but like whatever if you didn’t read the scans it would take an eternity to explain) was literally created for Mika. The sole purpose of his existence was to look after Mika and be his only friend. Since day one they were ment for each other.

They swore on every stars and defied fate itself that they will always found each other again no matter how many times they die or get taken away from the other in a way or another, no matter their race, age or era.

There I was talking about the first versions of them, but let’s talk about the main one, the one we all know in the anime and throughout the whole manga, Yuichiro and Mikaela Hyakuya.

Mika was the first one in this life to get Yu to open his heart, to make him accept his fate and push him to make the best of it. Yu was just a traumatized child that almost got killed by his own parents yet Mika made him feel like he belonged somewhere, he showed him that family wasn’t always meant to be bound with blood.

When Yu lost Mika it was like he lost all hopes, for the longest time Yu was suicidal, already from young age and this loss just made him feel so much worse. Yes the loss of his whole new family, including Akane and the kids was bad for him, but deep down what truly broke them was the loss of one another.

Years later they reunited, Mika like Yu both changed deeply because of their own experiences and yet their relationship stayed unchanged. Just the dynamic between them switched, Yu was now the one to convince Mika that he could trust his new family (Glenn and his own squad).

One day my mom told me « if when you reunite with a long lost friend and it feels like not even a day has passed, then it’s real friendship » and it’s been proven to me that this is true, Mikayu being yet another exemple of this.

As a vampire Mika doesn’t feel much anymore, it’s said loud and clear that turning into a vampire takes away from you any vulnerability, any love or lust. Yet Mika feels so vividly for Yu, it runs so much deeper than his own nature. His loyalty towards him is beyond any words could ever describe.

And it’s also so damn obvious how Mika is just so grumpy with anyone but smiles whenever Yu is around. He didn’t smile for anyone else than him throughout the manga, Yu is his literal everything, he is the only one that brings him peace and joy.

Now we skip forward a bit, Yu and Mika are in a deadly situation and against everything Mika dies. First let’s get the obvious out of the way, his last words were « Yu, I love you. ». I mean. There’s nothing more straightforward than that.

But then, when a vampire dies he becomes a demon, so of course Yu had to take him as his cursed weapon. So that’s exactly what he did, after so much struggle that I will pass here he finally got to talk with Mika and have a contract with him.

But the thing is when a vampire dies and becomes a demon he loses all his memories from his previous life, so Mika didn’t remember Yu at all. Yet, despite everything their bound didn’t die, quite the contrary. Even before they did the contract, so before Mika had access to Yu’s memories, there was still something inside him that screamed « that guy is important to me », even if he didn’t understand where it came from.

All the memories Mika had of Yu after that was again : from Yu’s own memories.

And what Mika saw broke him, the desire to die was so overwhelming even in his demon form he found himself speechless and hurt. He didn’t remember Yu but he knew that he was important to him more than he could ever tell. And he didn’t only see their memories together, he saw Yu’s whole life, the moment with his parents, the years they spent apart, Yu and Glenn’s relationship and his new family, he saw everything.

He swore his loyalty to him yet again, ready to do anything for him and face the end of the world hand in hand with him. And of course, even when he lost his memories Yu never once doubted him and that he would still follow him.

Now. I’ve been talking a lot about Mika’s love for Yu but what about the other way around ? Moving forward in the story again Glenn revealed something to Yu, his squad and Mika that left a dilemma hanging in the air. Yu had to chose between humanity and Mika. And what did he do ? He chose Mika, betraying not only Glenn, the man that save him physically and psychologically and that he respected the most in the world, not only his squad with who he shared ups and downs like a family but humanity itself for the survival of Mika.

If this doesn’t speak volumes to you I don’t know what will. Yu sacrificed EVERYTHING down to his own survival just to spend one more day with Mika. Now not only vampires, demons and angels were against him, but humanity too all for the sake of one man.

Both of them constantly put their whole life and universe on the line for the other and they always do it in a heartbeat, like any other decision would just be unthinkable.

They had so many discussions that made clear how deeply their feelings for one another go, no matter if you interpret it as brotherly or romantic love. They confessed to each other so many times how they can’t live without the other, how life is meaningless if the other isn’t around. How there’s not even a point in trying to live if it isn’t to face tomorrow together and how each other’s happiness is more important than anything else in the world.

Both of them held on solely for the other, both of them are still breathing and living their truth thanks to nothing else than one another.

Their love is so fucking beautiful and pure, it stayed untouched through generations and generations of them.

Mikayu is an amazing ship and anyone would be a fool to not read Seraoh of the end just to witness such utter and raw love.

[gyllenhaalstories]

ALIBI — RUSTY SABICH

summary: rusty seeks comfort in someone from his past to hide from both the present and the future.

warnings: mentions of cheating & the murder, mostly angst, smut (pussy eating, penetration, marking & hickeys, accidental creampie, some elements of noncon). 18+ NO MINORS.

word count: 4075

gif credits: me @/gyllenhaalstories / divider credits: @/firefly-graphics

notes: i was going off the vibes from the trailers but there are spoilers from the first two episodes. this was supposed to be all smut but then i didn't feel like writing smut so it was all angst but then i remembered i'm bad at writing angst so now it's... a mess. sorry? 👓 thank you for reading & REMEMBER TO REBLOG!

The doorbell rang. The noise was so loud that it startled you.

You had been on the edge all day, ever since you received a mysterious letter in your mailbox. The enveloppe was bare, the paper did not look much better. It could have been a bad prank for all you knew, it was not addressed to anyone specifically nor did it have the information required to return it. If it had not been of the familiar penmanship that wrote the words I'll be here at midnight, you would have believed that the letter was completely anonymous.

Rusty stood on the other side of the door, his body completely frozen while his mind and his heart raced faster than ever before. It was a bad idea, one of the worst ideas. He tried to make sure that nobody had followed him, but how could he know? How could he completely be sure there was not a car parked in the darkness of the night?

You ripped the metaphorical bandaid off. "What are you doing here?" You gripped on the door knob tightly, fighting the urge to slam the door back in his face.

He looked down at his feet. "You got my letter."

You were not having any of his misplaced timidity. He reached out, he needed to face the consequences. He needed to face you. So, you stepped out of the way and let him make a decision. Whether he walked away before it was too late, or whether he...

Rusty's shoulder bumped against yours while he made his way into your home. Memories flooded his mind. Memories of the two of you talking, laughing, kissing and...

"What are you doing here?" You repeated, this time with more annoyance in your voice.

He stopped reminiscing the past you shared. "I had nowhere else to go. I have no one else, but..."

"You don't have me either. You made that very clear when you disappeared. It's been so long, I started to believe you forgot I even existed. When was the last time we talked?"

When Carolyn started working. "It's been a long time, I know."

"You know everything, don't you?" You stated and closed the door. Rusty stood there, almost as clueless as you about his presence. You eyed him from head to toes and scoffed.

He flinched, expecting you to go on with another lecture about how he was such a horrible man. You did not, you knew he would like that too much.

You walked towards the living room and crashed on couch, as far as you could be from him. The distance made you feel safer. Only this safety was ephemeral and fragile.

"I, huh... I just," he stuttered and clenched his jaw while trying to compose himself. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "I needed you."

You scoffed again at the use of past tense. Before you could talk back, he continued.

"I need you."

That confession weighted heavy in the air for several long, agonizing minutes. He came to you. He would have to work hard to get whatever he wanted from you.

Rusty fidgeted with his ring finger. Muscle memory.

You crossed your arms against your chest. You had showed this man more patience than he deserved. "Do you want a hug? Do you want me to tell you everything's gonna be okay?

He glanced in your direction, just long enough for you to notice the glimmer of hope in his eyes.

"I'm not the lawyer who's gonna defend your fake alibi, I'm not the detective who's gonna scrap pieces of evidence for you. I'm not the one who's going to get you out of trouble." You bombarded him with all of these options that he had once considered, crossing them off his list one after the other. "I'm not what you need."

"Yes, you are!" He raised his voice and you lifted a brow at his outburst. He hated being cornered, he hated being on the receiving hand of a tactic he had used one too many times in court. "I need you!" He shouted, he surprised himself.

You blinked and suddenly he was in front of you. He stood, tall but not strong. The louder he yelled, the weaker he felt.

"I need you to help me." You locked eyes with him, daring him to go on. "I need you to help me forget." He did not need to speak her name for you to figure out he was talking about Carolyn.

You laughed at him, as if you were hit with a sudden case of hysteria.

Your reaction made him walk away with his tail between his legs. He sat on the opposite side of the couch.

"You think you're so brave. Huh?" You smiled at him, in complete disbelief. "You were talking shit about how you wanted to leave your wife for me. The worst part is... I believed you." He seemed surprised once again. "Then you left me for another woman who died because of you. And now..." Your smile faded and your arms fell to your sides. "You're crawling back to me because you feel lonely?"

This was a mistake. He thought, he hoped, you would be different. He had enough of people berating him. He sprung to his feet and paced around your living room, planning his next move... His next words.

You chewed on the inside of your cheek while he behaved like an animal in cage. "Rusty..." You sighed, slowly giving in without your own consent. You opened the door of the cage.

"I know you feel lonely too." Rusty clenched his jaw. He stood firm in his word. Suddenly he remembered a conversation he had, not too long ago, about taking responsibility. "And I know I'm asking for a lot." His upper lip curled, his body reacting strangely to this rare case of acknowledgement and awareness. Perhaps it could have been... Guilt.

It was your turn to be surprised. This was uncommon, unnatural. You could not quite decipher if he was genuine or not. The longer you stared at him, studying and scrutinizing him, the harder it became to figure out what was going on inside his head. However, you noticed a shift.

Rusty knew he was getting to you. You no longer had the entire control over this conversation. He reentered your house and your life. While you told him you did not want him back, your body was saying something completely different. You expected him to visit, yet you dressed up so lightly in a shirt that hugged your curves and pants he could easily rip open. You never missed an occasion to drink him in, to appreciate the countless hours he spent at the pool to swim through his thoughts. The tough version of you that opened the door with an anger-filled soul softened up faster than he had imagined.

You eyed him up and down again. "This isn't going to end well." You spoke mostly to yourself. He heard you, but did not acknowledge the bad omen.

Rusty knelt before you. Not once did he break eye contact while he crawled, bringing your words into reality. He leaned back when he reached your legs and waited. He waited for you to tell him no, knowing it would only make him crave it more. Rusty rarely took no for an answer anyway.

You reached your hand to stroke his hair. You waited, too. You waited for him to realize he was taking the wrong decision. You waited to gather enough courage, although you were not too sure what to used that courage for.

He leaned into your hand that slid down to his cheek. You reminded him that the chase of thrills and butterflies could hardly compete with someone who had the magical power of calming him down, of making the whole world disappear.

You leaned forward and reached for his glasses that you gently removed. You took a moment to admire the sight of him: the muscles of his thighs almost bursting through his jeans, his chest heaving as if his hoodie made him so hot that he was melting, his eyes begging for your permission.

He watched you set his glasses away on the couch, safe and sound. He turned his head back to you while you lifted yourself off the couch to take off your sleeping pants. Rusty helped you pull them off, he threw them as far away as he could. He decided for you that there was no turning back. He then placed his hands on your knees, ready to part your legs open.

"I'm gonna regret this." You would, but Rusty would not. You locked eyes with him again and drowned into his darkened gaze. "You better make sure it's worth it."

Rusty faced a dilemma: he was unsure whether he wanted to take his time and savour the moment or dive into it head first. The throb of his cock, confined under his clothes, decided for him.

Your body showed no resistance to his touch, your legs opened easily with the light pressure he applied. His tongue licked a long stripe on your inner thigh while he made his way to your core.

You adjusted your position, sitting more lazily on the couch while he pulled you closer to the edge of the seat. He peppered kisses on your pussy before he used his thumbs to spread it open for him. At the first taste, he was addicted. More so, he was reminded of the addiction that had him sneaking out day and night just to eat you out.

Your back arched, pressing yourself against his mouth when he sucked on your clit. You fought back your moans, but, once again, your body betrayed you.

"Missed you so much," Rusty spoke against your skin. He spat on your pussy and caught the drops that dripped down with his tongue. He made a mess, not that he had to try very hard for it. You were already wet for him, he liked to think it was just a reflex you had failed to break since the day he left. "I missed you so fucking much."

You placed a hand on his head, pulling on his short hair. You refused to believe his words, but they sounded so nice. Almost honest.

Rusty began to lap at your folds, making his nose bump against your clit. He swallowed the juices that leaked from your entrance, but he was still left craving more.

You gasped loudly when his tongue teased your hole. You pressed his face against you, as if he could get even closer than he already was.

Rusty palmed at his rock hard cock, moaning into your pussy as he did that. He touched himself over his clothes while he finally focused on your aching clit, flicking his tongue on it to make you squirm. He tried to fight against the movements of your hips, making sure his mouth never left you.

Your legs started to close around Rusty's face, which did not bother him in the slightest. You struggled to keep your eyes open, to watch him while he brought you closer to the edge. He just looked so beautiful.

The vein on his temple was bulging, almost pulsating to match his heart beat. He let go of his crotch and helped you to put your thighs on his broad shoulders, encourage you to let go, to give in.

You were not ready to satisfy him just yet. You wanted this moment to last, you wanted it to be worth the guilt and regret you would experience the moment he would walk out the door.

That only made him hungrier. He devoured you like it was the last time, he shared the mutual feeling that it could very well be. He pulled away from you just long enough to catch his breath one last time. He was determined to get what he wanted from you.

In a matter of seconds, your vision got blurry and your toes started to curl.

Rusty's moans only made the sensations greater while his tongue worked you over and had your entire body shaking for him.

You did not need to speak, to tell him to keep going, he knew what to do. He knew how to make you feel better than anyone else ever could. That remained one of his biggest problems, he was a heartless cheater but he was just so fucking good at it.

He slowed down until your thighs relaxed around him and he helped to set them down, still wide open for him to admire the mess he made between your thighs. You were dripping of your own wetness and of his spit. He could have kept going all night, but he had a more urgent need to take care of. He scrambled back on his feet and, without a word, he took off the rest of his clothes.

You did the same, not without admiring his body and especially the throbbing and leaking cock that he stroked.

He admired you too: the way your clit throbbed for him, how your forehead was covered with a layer of sweat despite just sitting there and doing nothing besides screaming while you were cumming.

He surprised you with a rough kiss, all tongue and teeth. You did not want to reciprocate, you wanted to pull away and to protect yourself from falling harder for this man. It was simply pointless. You kissed him back with the same passion that left you both gasping for air.

Rusty helped you to change positions so that you turned around and you were kneeling on the couch and you leaned on the back of the furniture. He leaned forward to kiss your shoulder and all the way down your back. He wanted to print the memory of you in his mind.

Neither of you felt brave enough to speak. You let your bodies do the talking with moans and grunts that blended into a melody while Rusty pressed the tip of his cock to your entrance. His tongue failed to prepare you for the delicious stretch of his cock.

He squeezed your ass cheeks open, trying to catch a glimpse of your pussy gripping on him. That was the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He helped you arch your back, taking in the perfect position for him to use your pussy to get off. You felt so fucking good, so tight and wet around him. How could he have waited so long to feel you again? How did he manage to wait all this time?

You bit on your lip so hard that it tasted faintly of blood when he bottomed out. He stopped moving for a few moments, letting you adjust to him.

He pressed his toned chest against your back, cooing at you. When he felt your walls relax around his length, he started moving. The small but deep thrusts made tears pool into your eyes.

You held on the back of the couch for dear life when he fucked you harder, when he let you feel every inch of him nice and deep.

Rusty grunted louder and louder. The noises echoed in your apartment, filling the silence alongside the sound of your skin slapping against his. He was getting closer than he wanted to to admit it, so he stalled again.

You felt his hands on your skin, gliding down your arms. He held your hands in his, making the cushion of the couch cave in under the pressure. You looked down at his left hand, but your eyes closed blissfully before you could notice whether he was wearing his wedding ring or not. Your skin was so hot too, you could not even feel it the metal.

You could not feel anything else than Rusty's cock that was balls deep inside of you or his lips that sucked a few marks on your shoulder.

He kissed his way to your neck, where he nibbled and licked. He was buying time and you could feel it. You could hear it too, with the whimpers that came out of his mouth. He murmured at your ear while he marked you. "I’m gonna… I’m gonna cum."

"Pull out, just, fuck," your voice sounded hoarse from the moans. "Just pull out!"

Rusty cursed under his breath, his thrusts felt more like twitches than anything. His left hand moved down to squeeze on your hip, a rough and bruising grip. "I can’t," his body pressed down on yours. You could barely stay up on your knees. "You feel too fucking good on me."

"No! No, no…" You wanted to get him to move, or even to get off him. Anything really, but your pussy clenched on him with vice-like grip. It was already too late.

Rusty held your hip and your hand tight, giving you no room to escape. He grunted at your ear while he emptied himself in you. Multiple ropes of cum coated your walls and made both yours and his eyes roll to the back of your heads. It felt so good, so wrong yet so right. He should not have done it, he should have pulled out and avoid another situation. He never learned his lessons. This was forbidden. He loved it even more.

"Rusty! That was so fucking stupid." You shouted, there was more shock than anger in your voice. Your poor attempts at squirming out of his embrace failed. Your pussy milked him to his last drop.

The room went painfully silent. No moans, no skin slapping, no couch squeaking. Nothing. There was nothing but erratic breaths and the gears turning silently in your minds. What did he do? He did what he needed to do. He did what he knew you wanted him to do. Even if you told him otherwise, even if you tried to convince yourself of the opposite. "I'm sorry."

It was crystal clear that his apology was empty. As if the lack of conviction in his voice was not enough to prove it, the slow thrusts of his hips sealed the deal.

Languid strokes that made him appreciate the warmth he had craved for so long. "I know, this was wrong." He pressed his clean shaven cheek against yours. Slowly, he picked up the pace until he properly fucked you against the couch. "I'm so fucking sorry." He punctuated each word with a thrust that made you moan louder and louder. He was not going to stop anytime soon. He fucked his cum so deep inside of you until he was ready for a second load.

Only Rusty could fuck you this good. He made sure you learned that lesson, rewarding you with orgasms the more you surrendered to the pleasure he shamelessly gave you.

*~*~*

You felt Rusty's arm slide away from your body, goosebumps spreading on your skin from the sudden lack of warmth. You tried to stay immobile, although your eyes fluttered from struggling to stay closed. You knew he would leave. He always did.

He knew he would leave. He could not stay. He could not stay and drag you down with him once more. Rusty had hurt enough people for the time being, he needed to learn to be careful. To calculate the risks. The risks were too high when they involved you.

A part of you had hoped it would be different this time. Maybe he would stay for breakfast. Maybe he would offer to shower together and go at it again. Maybe he would make another promise he would inevitably break.

Rusty surprised you with a kiss to your cheek, one that lingered and communicated more than words could convey in the moment. He stood up on his tired legs and he stepped over your body to search for his clothes.

You opened your eyes a bit, squinting to catch a glimpse of his naked body roaming around your place. He looked so beautiful, so irresistible. His large back, his muscular legs, his toned ass that he quickly covered with his boxers. You could admire him for days on end. He would never grant you so much time in his presence.

He turned around, guilt and regret stabbed him in the stomach. Unfamiliar feelings. You looked so beautiful, so tempting. The delicate features of your face, the curves of your body, your steady breathing that he'd love to fall asleep to again. He wished he could stay with you and forget about the rest of the world.

You felt his eyes on you. You felt him stare and linger on the marks he left on your body, on the other places he'd love to bruise for his own pleasure.

Before he got riled up and, most importantly, before he failed once more to think with his brain, he finished dressing up in a hurry. If he made it back home before sunrise, no one would know about his escapade.

"Wait." Your mouth spoke despite your mind yelling at you to stay quiet and to pretend to sleep a little longer.

Rusty froze in place. He refused to turn around and look at you. Unless you asked him to.

You sat up, wrapping the blanket around your body that he had seen one too many times; your body that he could not even see in the moment. You used the blanket as a shield. An armour to brace for the upcoming impact. "Is she," you cut yourself off. "Was she special?"

You watched his torso rise and fall from the several deep breaths he took before answering. "Very." He did not need one more interrogation, one more trial.

You nodded slowly. "Am I special?"

You watched him experience a myriad of emotions, just by the change in his breathing and how his body tensed up while he searched for an honest answer. This question was a trap.

"Very." He repeated in a whisper. "The most special."

You snickered. His answer felt like just as much of a trap as the question you asked. If you had been the most special to him, why did he pursue Carolyn? Why did he have this grand affair with her and not with you? Why did he risk everything for her and not for you?

As if he could hear the questions running through your mind, he spoke again. "You're the only person I've tried my hardest to protect." He referred to his children that he hurt and sacrificed, to his wife that he lied to and cheated on... To his mistress who died because of his insatiable lust.

It was only then that you finally accepted to face the truth: nobody knew who you were, in relation to Rozat Sabich. He kept you in the shadows, he locked you in a cage. He protected you in this bubble of stolen kisses and broken promises.

If nobody knew that you two shared a long and complex history, he would never have to involve you in this situation more than he already did the night before. He would not need yet another alibi to cover up the messy trail he left behind.

You held your head in your hands. You hated to see him leave, each time felt like it got closer to being the last time he would walk out of your life for good.

Rusty put on his hoodie and fixed his glasses. He was now facing you, but it was his turn to need an armour so he maintained the distance between the two of you. He stared at you, time felt like it had stopped. His lips parted open to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth.

However, you turned to look at him just in time to catch him mouth the dangerous words I love you. You smiled sadly at him with a tear falling down the same cheek he kissed. It was your way to say I love you too.

And just like that, Rusty opened the door and left without another glance in your direction. The wall between the two of you built itself back up in an instant. That way, he protected you from the world. Most importantly, he protected you from himself. All the history between the two of you would remain a secret.

You were his best kept secret.

[poppy-metal]

augh grovelling loser married artashi.... i got really really carried away im so sorry

they want you back - they want you back so fucking bad. it haunts them every minute of every damn day. the memory of you hangs between them like a death sentence. art hates it. art's guilty over it. art remembers too well the feeling of fucking you, and he did fuck you, didn't "make love" to you the way he does with tashi. he fucked you, good and proper, like the whore you were. he dressed you in fancy clothes and pretended you didn't exist. he fucked you in hotel rooms and changed the sheets before tashi came back. every which way he wanted: rough, dirty, messy. bent over or on your knees or on your back. he spat on you, covered you in his cum, slapped you around, and the worst part of it all was you liked it. told him, "yeah, daddy, feels so good, daddy, more--"

tashi can close her eyes and conjure up that night she caught you two with painful ease. the night she made art "love" you, let you have that one nice thing before she turned you out. the night she reduced him to a crying, whimpering, begging mess, much to your shock, because that was what you looked like beneath him. and then that was it, it was over. you lost possibly the best fuck you'd ever had, and a few thousands you could have had in clothes, and you tried to move on.

they didn't. they lost the most passion and interest their bedroom life has had in ages. there was a sick connection there, between them, over you. through you, maybe. it felt good for tashi and art to have you, use you, own you. they liked it. they had been good together for you. what the fuck were they supposed to do now, when the ghost of you whispers through everything they do? a forgotten set of lingerie delivered to them, something tashi would never wear. a faint trace of cheap vanilla perfume, girlish and slightly floral, lingers on one of art's shirts. a photo resurfaces in an encrypted, secret camera folder of a dripping cunt squeezing around art's cock. you're everywhere, and you're gone.

art wants to go running back, but it takes a lot more effort for tashi duncan to grovel. to beg. but you were good for them. you might even be good for art's game, if he can have you with permission. so she relents. at first, it's gifts. with notes. expensive gifts - you know they could have only come from one place. shoes in your size. clothes to your measurements. a perfume, a lipstick, a giant arrangement of flowers. and you're trying to move on, really, you are, get a boyfriend your age who isn't married, but it's hard when you get to stare at the elegant, looping handwriting on all the expensive, cream-coloured stationary: come back. let us love you. let us take care of you. we love you. let us treat you like we should. a.d & t.d. and then you start to relent. coffee, at first. then brunches, dinners. a movie premiere, a concert for a band you like. you let them befriend you. you let art know you in a way he didn't before - your favourite foods and colours, the music you listen to, the nicknames your friends call you as inside jokes - and you let tashi meet you for the first time. how you take your coffee and how you like to dress. the car you drive and the way you eat your food.

god, and when they finally have you for the first time? well, they really, really want to show you how sorry they are. tashi eats you out with a meticulous precision - she's so good at it, and she hasn't gotten to eat a girl out in so fucking long. they spend ages with you, pressing kisses to every inch of your skin, telling you how beautiful you are, how well you behave for mommy and daddy. art mouths at your tits and your shoulders and your neck. they lavish you, worship you, revere you, because they're just so, so sorry. tashi preps you well for art's big cock. she plays with your clit while he fucks you - no, while he makes love to you.

you tell them you might need a few more apologies before you take them back.

KITTTTTTT

groveling artashi...... them buying you expensive gifts.... getting them to admit that you're the something missing from their marriage and they need you back to feed that spark - but they hurt you so bad. you felt used and discarded by them, always a second choice for art, just a toy for tashi to manipulate. it takes alot more than just pretty expensive gifts for you to consider falling back into their bed -

it's hard to keep your cool, though when art asks, with his expressive blue eyes and prince charming disposition - "be my girlfriend. please? i miss you." and it isn't lost on you that he doesn't include tashi in that statement, he's making it known he wants you on his own - and it's hard not to fold into his arms.

it's even harder when tashi asks. you didn't even know that was an option for her - that she desired you more than a sexual object. takes you on an expensive dinner date and slides close to you in the booth as she buys you wine. buys your whole meal, actually. "this could be all the time. if you let me take care of you - I know you want that. girls like you shouldn't be independent." stroking her finger down your arm. "you need a mommy." her hands on your knee now, sliding up the dress she'd had sent to your apartment specifically for tonight. the one you put on, despite everything. "and a daddy." you can't help but spread your thighs. you tell yourself it's fine because you haven't verbally given in yet, you haven't said the words. even if you let her slip a hand into your panties and stroke your cunt.

you don't say yes, even when she brings you to a hotel after and slips your dress off and lays you out and presses her slick pussy against yours - you don't say yes, but you do whine so pretty for her - you do spread your legs and let her fuck you, you do moan when she tells you she's going to ride art later and tell him about this - about your slick little pussy under hers - and how he's going to cum thinking about fucking you himself.

"he misses you so much. you're killing him - keeping this tight cunt to yourself. you know it belongs to daddy, baby. you know you're going to let us have you again and again and again, whenever we fucking want. keep making us work for it - it's just going to make it so much fucking better when you're back in our bed."

[ooctlt]

I think the etiquette of ask blogs is a forgotten art. what I'm saying is (imo) it's not that people don't want to play, it is they don't know HOW, and more importantly they don't understand that the game exists to begin with. obviously you do not have to teach people the rules because your time and energy is finite but idk. it feels like from some of your OOC responses that you assume people know the rules and are playing badly, but I genuinely think people (me) just don't know what you are wanting them (us) to do. and also they (i) don't know how to tell if they (i) are playing the game correctly.

An example I am genuinely confused about is, is inciting a "shut up" answer a signal that the game is being played correctly, because we are inciting a reaction from the character? or is a "shut up" answer a signal that we are playing wrong and need to do something different? I'm sorry. I really love your art and seeing the story unfold but I'm confused and I want to play and I don't understand how.

yeah ive had a couple people tell me this has been the first active askblog in a while and the concept of askblog etiquette has been forgotten- @thatneoncrisis and i made a diagram:

link to full-res image

a "shut up" reaction will hopefully show whether or not it's a closed path of exploration: if you have gideon sweating, going "pshhh its nothinggg" it means there is something worth exploring. if you have harrow slamming the door in your face, that is an advance that wont work on her

transcript under the readmore:

DEAD END QUESTION ANON: CAMILLA DO YOU THINK HARROW'S HOT?

"Please stop talking to me."

This question is BAD because it's BLUNT, INCREDIBLY PERSONAL and founded on INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE of their relationship.

NOTE that its not that shitty questions will NEVER be answered, its that 1) they have a LOWER chance of being answered and 2) they have a HIGHER chance of being made fun of in character

gideon: haha who thinks harrow is HOT

DECENT INCONSEQUENTIAL QUESTION ANON: CAMILLA DO YOU LIKE TO DO ANYTHING FUN WITH HARROW?

"Sure. We run a lot of errands together."

This kind of question may not advance the plot, as it is INCREDIBLY BROAD yet NONINVASIVE. They're good for quick 1-3 panel answers. May generally be met with a less EXCITING answer.

It might also be DIFFICULT TO ANSWER because a broad question could include MULTIPLE ANSWERS - asking "do you guys go out" could not be answered SUSTAINABLY, because i cannot draw all the places they visit

ANON: EVERYONE, WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CLOUD / WATER / MOLECULAR STRUCTURE / BONE / CAR / COFFEE BRAND/ BOOK CHARACTER?

me: "i have to do so much research"

NEAT QUESTION CAMILLA HAS HARROW EVER ASKED YOU TO DO SOMETHING WITH HER SHE WAS EXCITED ABOUT?

"Yes, actually. She once invited me to [REDACTED], I didn't know she liked that sort of thing."

This question is SICK AS FUCK because not only do you learn something SUBSTANTIAL about the characters, you have stumbled upon A NEW PLOT BRANCH, one that actively deepens character connections and their past within the world. It specifically remarks upon a MEMORY* rather than AN OPINION and will typically be LONGER.

Another good option is to PROMPT something following this:

ANON: CAMILLA, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY TAKING HARROW OUT TO DO [REDACTED] THAT SHE LIKES BEFORE XYZ?

and this can then spiral onward…

*DM, ONE TIME I ASKED ABOUT A MEMORY AND I GOT A RUDE ANSWER; WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

It's not that this topic can never be spoken about, it's about WHEN you asked it and HOW you said it, or even WHO you asked.

Some topics, like the nature of HARROW AND GIDEON'S UPBRINGING are too recent for them to talk about, it has only been TWO YEARS since they left and there are SPECIFICS about the situation that the AUDIENCE hasn't discovered yet. There are things like GIDEON'S PARENTS that she CANNOT answer because she DOESN'T KNOW and answering multiple asks with I DON'T KNOW becomes repetitive and dull for both the DM and PLAYER.

BUT! She can learn! Over time, when the time is appropriate and feels the most natural for STORY PROGESSION. Think of it like a BAD ENDING in a visual novel. You START OVER and ask a DIFFERENT QUESTION, or approach it from a DIFFERENT ANGLE. If Gideon reacts poorly to someone congratulating her leaving BAD CIRCUMSTANCES, consider talking to her about the FUTURE. Instead of trying to pry at Camilla to see if she had an INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP with Pyrrha, try to ask about other things in that period of her life, like how they met or what caused her to move out.

FINALLY, if you'd like an ask to be answered out of character, your best bet would be to goto @notedchampagne and send it there. If you'd like an ask to be answered SINCERELY or you don't want SNARK, you can specify this in the ask, but know this blog may not be your thing.

[moonxq]

Shin and Midori's friendship was for sure unhealthy but it's also much more complicated than "Midori is pure evil and exists only to cause Shin misery" and there's so much to analyze about it. I use both "Midori" and "Hiyori" for Seaweed-head and Shin is just Shin. There's a little bit of Kai analysis too for comparison. Be warned because there are a LOT of words beneath the cut as I ramble about these characters in a somewhat organized fashion!!

Yes, the Shin AI called Hiyori scary, and he recognized that his friend liked to see him anxious. Shin panicked when Sara accidentally imitated Midori, and he felt that his friend had some kind of darkness inside of him that he didn't want any part of. Their dynamic is absolutely concerning considering that when Shin took on the name Sou Hiyori, he adopted a cruel and manipulative personality—something he learned from experience. Shin freely admitted he feared Hiyori, and Sara said that Shin knew “how scary Midori can be" far before the Death Game occurred. Those feelings absolutely matter, but they are not the whole story.

What also matters is that alongside the bad parts, there were good parts, too. Shin is smiling in the lost memory and the photographs we see of him. He's comfortable enough to "playfully say good morning" and call Hiyori selfish and laugh with him. He's comfortable enough to tell him that he's like a big brother to him. He's distraught reading the test data because he learned that Midori got close to him just to hurt him. Because they were close!! Close enough for Shin to idolize his intelligence, to think of him as an anti-hero, to call him family, and to grieve his absence. The relationship was bad enough that Shin confessed he would've been relieved to learn that Hiyori died, but there was enough good there that Shin was desperate to see him again and did "all kinds of things" in an attempt to make that happen. Those feelings can coexist, and the war between them is a critical part of his character.

And Midori is a difficult character to figure out, but I think in his own messed up way, he genuinely did care about Shin. Midori, however, thinks that breaking people means loving them. He thinks killing Shin with his own hands is affection that no one else can understand. And it's horrible, but it's definitely a product of how he was raised. Kai's mini episode heavily implies this without mentioning Midori at all.

Also!! It's fascinating to compare and contrast Kai and Midori as children of Asunaro. Kai's computer files lovingly record everything Sara likes, which is similar in sentiment to Midori's book of test data on Shin filled with diary-like entries and poems. They both have an unusual dedication to a specific participant.

In Kai's mini story, when Sei asks Kai to kill him because he’s already dying, he can't follow through with it. Kai knew the pitiful love of a father, even if that love came to him in scraps wrapped up in so many layers of suffering. He knew the love of a brother unrelated by blood, even if that connection was fleeting. He later experienced the peace of cooking and cleaning and living a mundane life for the people he cared about, and he admitted he didn’t know what true affection was until then—that it was changing him, that it scared him. To him, even though he was raised as an assassin, killing someone was not loving or merciful. He got the chance to experience the world outside of the darkness he grew up in, and he slowly learned what it meant to take care of someone and be cared for in return (even if, in the end, he's betrayed by the same hand which gave him that peace).

What was different for Midori, similarly a child of Asunaro, that made him believe killing is a loving act? Or that hatred allows him to satisfy others? How can he say that he loves humans, but also call them toys, as though people are just possessions created for his own entertainment? The few lines we get from the woman who's likely his mother don't paint a great picture.

From the vague details we get in the lost memory scene, it seems like Shin lived in Midori's house for a while. Or, at the very least, he had access to it on a regular basis. Half the shelves contain Shin's items. He has a heater that he can only use at full blast when Midori isn't there, meaning that he stayed in his house even when the man was gone. The exact reason for why Midori was so disproportionately obsessed with Shin isn't defined, but I wonder if, similar to Kai, he was intrigued by what "normal" life felt like. The Shin AI says that you could find people like himself anywhere. Midori is destructively curious about people and their emotions, so I think that if he's given something he's never experienced before—like living a comparatively mundane life alongside Shin, who genuinely looked up to and admired him—then he's going to pick it apart until he understands. And he's going to love doing it, even if in the pursuit of that desire, the people around him suffer.

In spending so much time with him, Midori might have grown to care about Shin on a deeper level than most, like how Kai slowly grew to care about Sara. It's just that while Kai wanted to keep Sara out of the darkness, Midori seemed thrilled to drag Shin into it. Unlike Kai, who distances himself in fear of tainting other people's innocence and happiness, Midori "loves" people until they can't handle it anymore. He exhausts them, and they break down or die.

It seems like he was constantly in Shin's space or crossing acceptable boundaries. He had his hand on Shin's shoulder in the flashback, he always stared and shot glances at him, he excessively took photos and put them on display. While Kai's love is quiet, distant, and secretive, Midori's love is loud, obsessive, and intrusive. It's a fascinating contrast.

Shin was right to fear him. Even if Midori did actually care for him in his own distorted way, Shin didn't owe it to him to reciprocate something that hurt him—something that was always going to get him killed in the end. But Shin did care about him to some degree. He was lonely in Hiyori's absence, with nothing to remember him by but the confused emotions the man left in his wake and the memories of the abnormal adolescence he experienced alongside him.

Midori may have cared, but his affection definitely messed Shin up. That's what makes their interactions in the game so fascinating and painful. They're on completely different wavelengths, from completely different worlds. Shin grew up without the sibling he should have known, and he might have latched onto Midori as a substitute. However, Midori's twisted concept of love could never have done anything but hurt him in the end.

People can genuinely care for you and still hurt you so much, and YTTD depicts that concept so well.

[lotuseye]

and you look even more handsome...

satoru  gojo  and  his  special  grade  sorcerer  ex-wife  are  assigned  to  a  mission  together. part iii , trash magic.

word   count:   2779.

genre:   multi-chapter.

characters:   satoru gojo & special grade sorcerer ex wife.

trigger   warning:   none. kinda angst? as adele says: ' divorce babes, divorce! ' also kinda suggestive but lord help y'all with the next and the final chapter. a lot of yearning.

the car ride is uncomfortably silent.

it’s all familiar and all so different at the same time. the last time they had shared a car was three years ago, right after their last christmas together, before the court, before everything. she remembers him with his large hand on her thigh, soft knuckles kneading the plush flesh idly as he sang alongside to whatever that was going on the radio. his hair was shorter, and instead of the black blindfold that kept his six eyes at bay he wore the sunglasses she had stolen from time to time to try on, marvel every single time at how it was impossible to see anything at all. they were twenty-four, back then. it seemed like a lifetime ago, the memories feeling more of glimpses of a beautiful dream she once had, still craving the bittersweet taste that cursed her mouth eternally.

“ so… ” satoru, as restless as ever, taps his fingers on the steering wheel. he doesn’t drive often, rarely ever did - it was not stimulating enough for him, having grown tired of having to be glued to a seat and watch the same roads over and over again, he usually left that part to ijichi when the car was necessary. she knows why he jumped on the opportunity now, knows why he is driving at a speed that would put turtles to shame, using the slowest lane. frustrated, she sighs, keeping her gaze on the window, watching the orange rays & the setting sun. it is not the slowness that irritates her, it is how satoru simply never fucking learns, no better than a child who wants to roll on the greener side of the grass without the responsibility of tending to it whatsoever. “ what’s up? ”

the arch of her brow and the squint of her left eye is just as telling as any answer. “ what’s up? ” she repeats. “ dunno’, sweetheart. you tell me. you’re the one going on a 50 on an empty freeway. ”

“ is that a crime? ” satoru’s expression remains undecipherable, using the advantages of blindfold that covers near the good half of his face, but the subtle twitch of the corner of his mouth gives him away - he had never been good at concealment anyway, his heart on his sleeve, an outpour that would not be outdone by anything as humane as shame or embarrassment. he had not been shy a day in his life, and she often wishes that untrue, often wishes satoru would do her the grace of sparing her heart - his openness tore her open inside out, and she hated the sensation of being so naked. so bare. stripped to the core of her existence, something beyond the rare talents at the tips of her fingers. “ maybe i just missed you. ” he confesses, and it sounds like a death sentence. he glances over, and she feels the weight of the six eyes on her, suffocating. “ would that be so bad? ”

yes, yes it would be that bad. “ eyes on the road. ” she grunts, arms folded in her chest, so reserved it is difficult to remember that they had been sharing laughters like little children at tengen’s chambers an hour ago. thus was life with him, a whirlwind of emotions, a duality that dazzled her & made her nauseous with the rhythm at the same time. satoru sighs, obediently turning toward the empty freeway, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as one hand sat idle on the steering wheel. “ i just don’t understand why you’re being so dramatic, ” he confesses, more like complains, so seemingly oblivious to the reasoning of the woman that sits on his passenger seat. “ we got married, didn’t work out, we got divorced, fine, ” a mocking gesture is made, and he finds that sweet nerve in her artery. “ you don’t gotta be like that. aren’t you the one that said we could handle this like adults? ”

her left eye twitches. oh yes, now, now this whole thing feels familiar -

fighting in the car.

how nostalgic.

“ oh, you think you’re being an adult? ” here comes the poison, her voice laced with the regret of ever agreeing to get in the car and shame of thinking perhaps they could manage to be civil, perhaps even friendly - but she is proven wrong. “ is that what you’re thinking? because all i’m seeing is a child that only wants what he can’t fucking have. you don’t miss me, satoru - you miss chasing me. ” and he did, he did chase her, the way that sunflowers chased the sun, the way that the moon chased the sun, spinning in circles around her… until he had her. until the game was over. the lump in the back of her throat is truly just embarrassing at that point. it was truly sickening how the simple sight of him was enough to undo her, how he still pulled the strings of her like a puppet and its master. a twisted belonging she would never be rid of. “ you would be bored of me in a week. ”

satoru remains uncharacteristically silent. then, a sudden signal, and the four way flashers. the car is pulled into the side of the road, and she truly believes he could yank the handbreak clean off its box with the strength he pulled on it. “ wanna’ elaborate on that, baby? ” he asks, and the undercurrent of needles is simply agonizing, condescending out of rage. it’s unlike him to speak with such vigor, too contrasting to his aloof character that could not bring himself to care for anything for the love of god. at least when it came to her. “ if my memory isn’t failing me, i was the one that got served with the papers. ”

yes, yes, the poor satoru who was dumped so suddenly out of nowhere - out of nowhere except the fact that every single conversation she had ever attempted to make was brushed aside and disregarded, the nights she has slept alone, the loneliness of a household she thought she would never shed a single tear in. “ maybe if you’d get your head out of your ass, you’d understand why. ” she responds, and it is so funny that this conversation is happening nearly three years after - spilling their guts out in a car that didn’t belong to them, no longer bound by a ring or a vow. “ but you can’t. you’re incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself. and i’m only mad at myself for how it took me a near decade to see that. an entire decide i could have been loved in. happy in. all fucking gone. because i was an idiot. ”

anguish contorts his beautiful features, and she gets the terrible feeling that she has said something she should not have, but the cat was out of the bag - it was easy to forget how destructive grief could be, how nasty mourning could turn out to be. chewing on the inside of her cheek, she remains silent, trying to come up with something to dissolve the tension and make them get back on the road. all that needed to be said and done were already through, they were already done. “ you don’t mean that, ” it comes out as a hoarse pleading, searching for some truth in each crevice of her face. “ you’re just pissed off. tell me you don’t mean that. ”

satoru never really wants to look, but he has to look. reaching beyond them with the familiarity of a touch that was once a privilege she had been blessed with, she finds the knot of his blindfold, and tugs it free until the silk material bunches in her palms, satoru remaining as pliant as a loyal dog, with pure disbelief in the azure gaze. her knuckles white around the fabric she bunches in her palms. “ look at me. ” she tells him, drawing a deep breath that resonates in each bone in her body. “ i have never felt as lonely as the time i was married to you in my life, do you understand that? it was unbearable. when suguru left, when you came home one day with megumi - i was there for you and you just liked that, satoru. you just liked having a shoulder to cry on. you just liked being not alone. have you ever considered how i felt? ” one hand pressing over her bosom, her palm right on top of the heart that drums against her ribs, voice unstable like the rest of her. she’s never thought she’d be saying any of this to him. “ if i needed you? if i was upset, if i was happy? i have spent the last year of that marriage thinking you would have never married me if suguru hadn’t left. ” the big bad confession. the big bad revelation. “ and you’re sitting here like i was the one that failed. ” a shaky breath, and the way she withdraws from him, from everything, shows that she had said everything she could bring herself to say in that moment. “ i’m done being scolded for an end i did not bring. you doomed us the day you kissed me. start the car. ”

she pulls herself out of the clutches of agony, having too much time to think it over and over again, in sleepless & cold nights. it’s not that easy for satoru.

“ no, ” he says, and the whisper sounds like an afterthought, a horrid dawning and an enlightenment instead of something he intends her to hear. gaze unfocused, like he is revising every single second they had together to see if it made sense, somehow. “ no, no - that’s not true, none of this is true. ” all caution and the new rules of their new game abandoned as he reaches, her pointy jaw caught in his palm to tilt her head back towards him, eyes widened with something she had never seen in them before. “ wrong, all of this - i have spent my entire life loving you, ” he chokes on it, chokes in the weight of his own emotions. “ i get it, i was a shitty husband, i failed you, i get all of that - but i can’t let you think you were a second choice or a warm body in the sheets. i won’t. i loved you, i breathed you, i lived for you. you have to know that. ”

i loved you, i breathed you, i lived for you.

she’s never really hated anyone as much as she hated him, the three years that took to mend her heart all undone with the palm that cups her jaw and the pleading love me eyes of a man that had not loved her properly a day in his life. like he was supposed to, like she wanted. she wanted his bones, his sinews, his entire bloodline to start and end with her - it only felt fair, with how much of herself she was willing to lay at his feet with the mere promise of nothing. it takes her a few blinks to realize her gaze is blurry, lips drawn into a thin line. “ why are you doing this to me? ” she asks, teetering on the edge of something she doesn’t want satoru to witness, a whole new chamber in her heart that hadn’t been opened since she left him. a closed door she had no idea what resided beyond. “ what difference does it make, when we're over? ”

he stares at her endlessly, taking in the red-rimmed eyes & the chewed out lips & the flushed red cheeks. unable to gather her courage to withstand the vulnerability of it all and the desire to win the whose dick is bigger contest, she tries to pry his hold away from herself, her bony fingers wrapped around the sinewy wrist it yank it off her jaw in futile efforts. the infinity is gone, and with the new-found silence the only thing she can hear is the heavy breathing of the man next to her. “ let me go, ” she asks him, but despite the grunting it is a plea, a near damn begging. “ let me go, satoru. you have to let me go. ” she doesn’t know if she’s still talking about his palm on her chin.

“ you think there is scenario where i ever get to be over you? ” he asks and he sounds like a dying animal more than a person, the entire conversation taking a kind of effort they could have moved mountains within’. it’s what a decade old love did to people. his hold a one of steel, bringing her closer despite her pleas. satoru was not the only one that avoided things they did not want to look at. “ you think i wake to a day where i don’t think of you, where i don’t miss you, ache for you? ” it almost comes through gritted teeth, rattling like he is holding onto the restraints. “ you can tell yourself whatever makes you feel better about leaving me, but you don’t get to look me in the eye and tell me i didn’t love you - i will love you till my dying day and i have to live with knowing you’ll never see that because you’re too goddamn stubborn. is it better this way, honey? is it better to keep lying to yourself because the truth is too heavy? ”

he’s suffocating her and there is no escape, squirming in his hold with wet cheeks & beads of tears clinging to her lashes. “ i hate you, ” she gasps out, guttural and full of resignation, no longer attempting to pry his hand away from her, instead grasping his wrist, eyes squeezed shut just to spare herself some dignity and save herself the humiliation of looking him in the face when he still pulled the strings she tried so, so hard to break.

“ i hate you, ” she repeats, and he whispers with hushing her with a soft coo, thumb collecting the droplets before they ever get to travel down her soft cheeks. “ you wish, baby. ” he murmurs, wiping her tears away and the scent of his cologne burns the back of her throat with longing. “ it’d be so much easier, wouldn’t it? ” his forehead falls against hers, and the other hand of his comes to help, tucking an unruly strand behind her ear, trailing to cup the nape of her frail neck in his fingers, holding her close, and she melts on the spot, boneless as she lets him carry the weight of her head, too tired from the tension that had been pounding in her ears like a migraine.

“ i was a stupid, stupid man. ” he mumbles, nose indenting her cheek with an exhaustive sigh, warm breath mingling with hers. thumb brushes over the lip she kept biting at to tug it free from her cruel teeth, her heart skipping eight beats at once in her chest. “ to have ever sign those fucking papers, to have ever let you walk away. a moron for not treating you the way you deserved to be treated. ” and the brush of his mouth against her cheek is too subtle to be by mistake. neither is the sound that leaves her throat, half relieved and half agonized. her nails dig into his biceps through the fabric of his jacket, dizzy. “ but we all learn from our mistakes, ain’t that right, baby? ” this time, it is a blatant, outrageous kiss that he plants on her jugular. his voice is half muffled by her skin, half lost in the translation, her face easing into a dangerous kind of comfort, shedding every ounce of tension from her sharp features. “ ‘toru, ” she breathes, not being able to find the strength it would take to walk away from this, again. “ we know how this ends. ”

“ tell me you don’t want this, ” he whispers, close enough to devour her whole if he would wish so but still in the right mind enough to keep himself from indulging, to keep her begging & pleading, at the edge of something he is intentionally keeping from her. dangling the leash of her need, cruel & demanding in the same breath. “ tell me you’d walk away from me if i let you go, right now. ” he watches her, gaze heavy lidded, all his cards out on the table, a dangerous gamble. she thinks of walking out this second, pushing him away like she intended, teary eyed and hollow in the hallway.

but that’s not even an option, is it?

there is no options, there is only the proximity that unravels her and the mouth she has been forgetting the taste of. there is no decision to make: she leans forward, and kisses him the same way she hates him - with a vigor that would put animals to shame, and with devotion that could only be found in a religion.

[lurkingshan]

Things That Have My Attention in 4 Minutes Episode 5

If you watched this on iQIYI you missed a few scenes! A couple of which I think were actually important. Gaga has the full cut.

The show did a nice little montage summarizing the core theory (that is clearly correct): Great is in the midst of a NDE and is experiencing a mix of things during the 4 minute window: memories, perceptions, rewinds and do-overs, and a new start with Tyme who he purportedly had a relationship with in the original timeline.

Also as theorized, the NDE seems to have begun at 11:00, so Great has until 11:04 in this limbo space. We saw the clock advance to 11:03 in today's episode.

We still know very little about the original timeline, including how Great and Tyme got involved the first time around and what happened with their relationship there that might inspire the desire for a fresh start.

Re: the cold opens with Tonkla and the murders, I do not think we're being shown those events in chronological order given Title was still alive in today's open.

Speaking of, only a brief appearance in the open from Tonkla before he sat the rest of this episode out. Interesting after several weeks of him dominating the story.

I am still trying to make sense of the way this romance is advancing in the redo timeline, and it only works if both Great and Tyme are in this 4 minutes limbo together and coming with pre-existing knowledge of and inclination to trust each other. Otherwise, their instant closeness and partnership in this situation with Great's family really doesn't make sense. Why would Tyme tell Great everything and trust him to handle his family after just meeting him and having sex one time? That goes beyond straining credibility unless he is also reliving things.

The smartest thing Tyme could have done was to take that bribe money and run. If he wanted to be decent, he'd have given Nan a cut and helped her run, too. But he seems preoccupied with Great in a way that doesn't really track unless he also knows him already.

Speaking of Nan, that poor woman has been through it. I was yelling at Tyme when he told her nothing and expected her to just accept that he was not going to take action. As fucking if, dude.

The rewind/do over in this episode felt different than the others. When Great went back, he didn't actually relive the same scene, he and the shooter were just suddenly in different positions. And all he accomplished was getting himself shot along with his mom.

I liked the way the lady from the initial accident came back around this episode to cause that, BUT it also just opens up more questions about the timelines because if she died in the original timeline, she would not have been able to set up a hit on Great's family. So, did saving her cause new bad shit? Did Great's mom also die in the original timeline, but differently? And will anything that happens in the redo actually stick?

We saw in this episode that when Korn is actually in trouble he goes to Fasai, not Tonkla. I get the sense that he has been with Fasai for years and likely the entire time he's been messing around with Tonkla; I was not surprised that she's always known. They are not a love match but they need things from each other. He never intended to be with Tonkla for real.

By the way, I was dying at Korn's little motivational speech to Great. He has to help his father do evil shit so their family can "survive." Survive what? Not being filthy rich, I guess. Great's mom was similarly desperate to cling to the status and wealth she clawed and scraped for. Nobody in this family has any true morality.

And yet I find it weird that they are letting Great run around causing a ruckus and not putting a stop to it or even punishing him. He is remarkably spoiled and pampered compared to Korn. Is this their dad's feelings about his two wives being acted out on his sons? If so, why does Great hate his dad so much?

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE FINAL SCENE. As Tyme was running through the tunnel, lights flickering around him, there were bruises appearing and then disappearing on his face. Are we seeing his NDE??

This show is still so much fun to watch and think about even if I am scratching my head at some of what happens.

[sharksupermacy]

sweet love

sweet love-mina x 10th member! reader

synopsis: you love mina genre: fluff, cute little date, a 3DS????, making myself feel single

you love mina.

a statement you would stay by forever. even though the inventible might happen with her as such almost every such relationship hits you have come to exist to be happy with the now.

despite not being able to proudly claim that you were in a relationship with mina due to the stigma of two people in the same group. you were always able to show affection through gestures and hints when you were both together. linger touches far and definitely not few, giving random objects to each other, and missing items from each other closets???

safe to say miny/n stans were fed well almost 1000% of the time. even your members who supported you and mina relationship couldn't take the constant back hugging and hand-holding. all gagging (jokingly) at how much love you had for one another.

both yours and her favorite things to do with each other is to snuggle up and play a random game together. it didn't matter to either you or her that the game was well made or just really bad as long as you could both play it together.

this led to both of you agreeing to play the classic game Pokémon X and Y together on one 3DS in bed. It was nice mina back hugging you as you both booted up the screen together. you held the game in your hands as mina wraps her arms around your neck and kisses you on the cheek. both of you silently agreed you would trade anything in the world for another moment just like this.

you could hear the room almost in complete silence as a nice cozy feeling settled over the both of you in dim lighting. in the room over you could hear your members screaming playing mariokart on the switch you had just bought a month ago.

she silently watched as she saw you getting excited over the game letting the warm feeling take her over. with you playing a game as she felt just pure happiness in the moment.

"i love you," is what you said that broke the silence of the game and the quiet(ish) dorm. you tilted your head as you received no response back from the penguin. you were met with a passed-out mina from exhaustion from the schedule all of you had today.

you smiled as you got up from your place as silently as possible. saving the game progress so far, and turning off the lights in the room. smiling quietly at how much you loved her while putting the 3DS down on the drawer across the room. looking at the faint outlines of all the souvenirs, and memories you and her had made over the entire relationship.

"y/n where are you-" was slurred out from across the bedroom as you smiled to yourself more. (liking how mina called out for you.) "coming," was the word you replied back with as you made your way over bed. crashing into mina arms as both of you giggled at your antics. both of you laying in each other arms, as sleep washes over you.

"i love you," is the words that you had said to her as you felt yourself drifting off into dreamland.

a small fleeting response was said by the other, "i love you too." as both of you cuddled closer peacefully sleeping. realizing it didn't matter if you and mina had fights or even broke up in the future. you were content with just peacefully loving her in the present.

chaeyoung pov:

I was just entertaining chat where they brought up that they hadn’t seen mina and y/n in a while. I thought huh I haven’t either. “let’s go see them, shall we,” as I snatched the camera when the others were distracted by the rage-inducing game mariokart.

I made my way down the messy dorm hallway and stopped in front of the couple's door. knocked on the white door twice before calling out to the gamer couple if they were awake. no response. i knocked again and cracked open the door. where i was met a very snuggly penguin and y/n. “ew,’” I said while the camera faced me as. I turned the camera toward the love birds for a second as the comments went crazy.

twiceslaying: miny/n???? besties?????

hyofuturewife: MINY/N FTW!!! 

momodancemachine: MINY/N NATION WAKE UP! WE’VE BEEN FED AGAIN!!!!

I smiled at the comments of support as I closed the door behind me. making my way back down the hallway again lovingly complaining about how I have to put up with these two every day.

safe to say both you, mina, and miny/n was trending the next morning.

a/n: been a little bit a lot dead for the pass week or so but good news smau preps all finished! bro.. actually why is either way so good-(AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH)

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay you know what actually yeah. I was tired but I had a point.

Why. On earth. In zelda fics. Do people not shut up about everything being hylia's fault forever and ever.

Like, the one deity out of a dozen odd who got cursed into this right alongside Link. All the focus on one great all being power who then gets blamed or blessed for everything that ever happens. It's just... I don't know, it just seems like a culturally Christian thing. Not even that - American catholic.

Especially Legend omg when people write him he never shuts up about how everything bad that's ever happened to him is all hylia's fault and she's doing it on purpose with no thought to her poor beleagured hero. He sounds like someone who grew up in an American conservative household who turned out to be queer and never bothered to unpack any of it and acts like he's now atheist.

But even then you could do something interesting with that!! The common headcanon that Legend is hylian royalty - of course that family would put immense worth and worship on hylia as her descendants, she who founded their kingdom. And maybe legend could feel bitter about not inheriting the magic, or the throne, or whatever meant he grew up away from the castle. Give him some unexamined religious trauma! Heck, he could bond with Flora over disappointing your family's expectations or something! They could work on unpacking it together! If you must make it part of his character at least think about why!

Because that belief is wrong, because hylia is literally the one deity we can pretty safely understand is not all seeing, all knowing, all being.

Every time she has a voice, a role, we see her make mistakes or be tricked and have regrets.

Skyward sword, she's literally zelda. She's a young protective warrior goddess (she used a sword and lead armies to battle against demise) who was created by the Three to guard the triforce and keep watch over hyrules lands. By the time ss starts she's already made several tough calls, not limited to yoinking hylians into the sky. When she was zelda she hated every second of leading Link around and even then!! It all hinged on him being completely willing! He was never forced to do anything, she didn't even have her memories with the plan until after she'd fallen to the surface! Their relationship was entirely genuine and she very nearly overestimated her own willingness to go through with the plan! And even then she still managed to get kidnapped lmao. That's not what happens when you're in charge of fate.

And in botw and totk - she's in her full divine form, her full divine powers, she's ancient and magic and worshipped in every corner of the kingdom. And (spoilers!) she loses contact with one of her own mf statues. Not just any ten apples high chibi statue you see in the towns, no, it's The Big One. She's got no idea what happened to it, but she's (rightfully) worried, and asks Link to check it out. And in an entirely separate instance, her OTHER big statue in the ToT gets overridden!! By a triangle head! And ol creep in the deep is the one who releases the statue! It's been what 20k years of power and worship - if she's not all powerful then she never will be.

Hyrule - every hyrule - is very, very polytheistic. She's not even a goddess of time to be in charge of stuff like that! There's multiple of them: Naryu, Cia (and Lana), Farosh to an extent, and many artifacts that can cause time travel, like the harp of ages, the ocarina, the big portal in ss, those time shift stones in the same game, the statue in wind waker. Please stop treating her like the magic elf equivalent of Monotheistic American Christianity God.

She was introduced in skyward sword. The game that came out before botw. She did not exist in any of the games that came before that. There was a lake hylia! In the kingdom hyrule! That's it! Her name or even existence wasn't even hinted at before that. It's actually canonically pretty unlikely any of the chain (cough cough legend) have even heard of her! And her assigned job is protector of the triforce. That's it. And she can't even use the thing. She can very explicitly as a main driving force of the ss plot not use the triforce she protects. And the triforce, shockingly, is not even in every game.

Cases that hylia often gets the most flack for (links awakening and all the trauma from that, Link failing in botw, the events of totk) hylia has absolutely zero part in. Hilariously. And she has zero power over wishes made to the triforce or who makes those wishes or what the triforce does about it.

She even gets all the blame for the cycle of the hero, the reincarnation! Which? We know exactly how that happened. Blaming her for a curse she herself is a victim to?? Demise, in skyward sword, explicitly, on screen, doing it ON PURPOSE, cursing the spirit of the hero and the blood of the goddess.

Hylia, I don't know if you've noticed, also has her own blood. Whether or not she lost that blood upon return to her divine form, she still couldn't break the curse. Link, spirit now tied to whatever demise had cooking up, is basically to reincarnate in time for whenever the Interesting Times happen. And it's demise's fault, who, again, did it on screen, on purpose, explicitly, pointing at the camera with text bolded and everything.

So why do people even blame her? I think it comes down to this:

Her name matches the kingdom. Whatever her connection to the people with the same name, I don't know, but she did found the surface kingdom as a mortal. Being named zelda at the time I wonder who chose the name XD!

Her worship in botk as a high ranking deity. Again, not monotheistic, there's temples to the Three and there's Malanya and Satori and the great fairies and the yiga worship ganon, but hylia is the most widespread for all she's basically a side character working for the new heart piece situation. Again, this is only the case in ss/botk, she doesn't appear in even aoc.

A misguided belief spread in fanfiction that in linked universe, hylia is the one opening and controlling the portals. To my knowledge, lu canon is that the portals are opened by dark link, or at least that's the working theory. I think it's assumed that hylia is the one who gathered the heroes together to combat it? If that's true? Congratulations! We have one (very plot necessary) act of hers in a fan comic. That is not canon to The Legend Of Zelda series.

An american Christian (I hesitate to say evangelican?) cultural understanding of religion. The differences between polytheism and monotheism. How one might feel if the divine was proven real on earth. Zelda is a Japanese property, it is not a Christian country. Though it draws aesthetic inspiration from western medieval fantasy it is not and never will be culturally western. The majority of ao3/tumblr users are American or at least English speaking, and that will always affect interpretation. It's giving 'be thankful to God no matter what for he always has a plan. Trust in him and your suffering will be rewarded' which is not a universal religious belief.

Something I've noticed to be surprisingly common in fandom, is where a mentor or figure of authority who is anything less than perfect or all forgiving can very quickly have their reputation ripped to shreds by the fandom. And then newer authors come, read those works, internalise that about the characters and produce new works that assume that character's cruelty to be par for the course. I will not be listing those characters or fandoms for a variety of reasons lol. But it is amazingly common and very hard to untangle, especially in larger fandoms. It's character bashing in a way near identical to cancelling people irl. It's not 'giving them depth' or 'making it more realistic' (grittier equalling realism is an ice cold take proliferated by dudebro comic authors and wrong besides.) Have some critical thinking.

Lately, I've also been running into a great many fics (not so much comics) that make hylia do some fairly heinous stuff... And then unironically blame her for it. They do remember they're the ones deciding what the characters do, right? She's not an abusive master playing with her puppets until they break, she's quite the opposite! Use the right tags (dark hylia/ooc characters/character bashing/author made them do it, idk) or dial it back. This is a growing percentage of fics and I'll never restrict content but yanno, if you're going to make hylia evil or manipulative at least understand it's a canon deviation (and do something interesting with it, I once read an amazing botw fic with evil hylia and fierce deity!).

TLDR, To summarise, hylia is canonically incapable both emotionally and physically of doing the majority of things characters in fics blame her for. Stop using her as a scapegoat especially when demise is right there. Please give your whumpees deeper characterisation than hating on hylia. Please give legend deeper characterisation than hating on hylia every time he or someone else is sad. Please remember wild can talk to hylia if he wants. Please double check anything you're not sure about :D!

[chocmoon-latte]

"Hancock has no regrets about becoming a ghoul"??

It baffles me when some people think Hancock has zero regrets about becoming a ghoul. Absolutely none at all apparently. Like yeah, he plays it up when you first meet him before he's a companion, but let's be real he plays up pretty much everything in regards to the whole "sexy king of the zombies" image he projects.

It takes travelling with you away from Goodneighbor to give him some time to be introspective for him to finally realize that him becoming a ghoul was just another escape route from himself again. He's got several lines of dialogue that literally reiterate this. It's a key point of his character:

Hell, running from myself is what made me into… into a damn Ghoul.

Well, I mean, I didn't always look this good. The drug that did this to me, that made me a Ghoul, I knew what it was going to do.

I just couldn't stand looking at the bastard I saw in the mirror anymore.

The coward who'd let all those Ghouls from Diamond City die. Who was too scared to protect his fellow drifters from Vic and his boys.

If I took it, I'd never have to look at him again. I could put that all behind me. I'd be free. Didn't seem like a choice at all. Turns out it was just me running from somethin' else in my life.

I mean, after reaching max affinity with you, he realizes that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all (because he's finally got an honest friend he can be open with now). He now feels comfortable where he is - but to imply that he doesn't have at least the tiniest amount of regret? Heck, if you go onto romance him (or attempt to), he stops referring to himself as handsome and literally starts calling himself ugly, which naturally goes entirely against the image he projects:

Why don't we just agree to keep it friendly for now or till they find a cure for ugly? Heh.

You don't want to wake up to this mug every morning. Never wish that on anyone I cared for.

You sure you want to be stuck with this ugly mug?

(You could even say he implies it beforehand with another line of dialogue elsewhere in-game when he says "I'd be mad too if I was that ugly." But that's a stretch I guess.)

Combine that with the fact that 99% of ghouls don’t choose to become ghouls. Hancock did. But he didn't do it for a fun experience. He was already in a bad place when he became a ghoul. He didn't turn to be cool and edgy like he pretended he did when first getting to know him.

He lost his appearance, any connections to his old identity and old friends/people he might’ve been associated with (for better or worse), and in return gained hostility from bigots towards him for merely existing, from an overwhelming majority of the Commonwealth population that hates ghouls. There's the Institute and Brotherhood who want to kill anyone like him on top of that. Plenty of people out there who think he and other ghouls are monsters for just being alive.

Not only that, but something which adds onto this is the fact that he's a client of the Memory Den, and they're very selective with their customers. And what's the whole point of the Memory Den? Reliving past memories. Irma's terminal entry about Hancock, as well as the other two ghoul clients Kent and Daisy, all imply the memories they go back to relive are primarily from their human days. (The one on Hancock straight up says "if you thought he was handsome and dangerous now, you should've seen him before he turned ghoul.")

I genuinely refuse to believe that Hancock has never had any regret whatsoever about becoming a ghoul. The man who's spent a decent chunk of his life running from his own problems instead of confronting them, has NO regrets about taking a drug that alters his entire being and functionality on a biological level and will force him to outlive everyone he knows? This man is FULL of regrets!