#also half of them aren’t tagging their shit properly

[methylphenidate-already-taken]

Adults on this site are a bunch of fucking babies. non-sexual vore tags and communities have existed for a lot longer than most of them have been on the site. Most people put an NSFW DNI banner on every post if they care about it that much and you’re a big baby if that pisses you off. If they’re using the tags properly great. If they’re not. Block them! Or if you give a shit about their safety send a polite ask to remind them then BLOCK THEM. Y’all waste so much energy when the block button exists.

Also, tag blocking exists for a reason on Tumblr. Just block #minors dni or #nsfw dni respectively. Not that hard, dipshits. EVERYONE TAG THEIR SHIT PROPERLY.

And anyone under 13 should not be under this site. period.

[lifetimeoftired]

How to Adopt a Dead Kid in Three Weeks or Less (Part 2)

Part 1 || Part 2

As promised; part 2! I would like to apologize to Dick for the trauma I put him through, but honestly it was really fun for me. Also I love the idea of Danny actually trying to leave, but he keeps getting pulled back into family shenanigans because they decided 'mine now'.

Tag list: @tkiesai @sir-ghost-the-green @dreamingaboutsakuratrees @atinygracie @wolfeyedwitch Enjoy<3

Duke squints at the mop of black hair, just peeking out of the blanket. When did Tim get in last night? And really? A couch? He usually at least makes it to the batcave and sometimes even his actual room if he’s going to pass out. And what happened to his sneakers? They look weirdly worn and they’re tucked up under the couch instead of being put away properly. Alfred’s going to be really annoyed when he comes down and finds Tim like this. Duke considers walking away and leaving Dick and Tim to whatever the heck is going on here- it would serve Tim right for being so terrifying about his unhealthy sleep schedule. 

Yet, just as he’s going to walk away again, he notices that Dick’s not moving. He’s crouched there, staring at the sleeping Tim with an unreadable expression on his face. It’s… Unnerving.

“Dick? What’s wrong?”

“Tim’s not breathing.”

Is… Dick okay? The bags under his eyes aren’t as bad at Tim’s but he looks like he hasn’t slept. Duke can only stare blankly at him. Then at the has-to-be-sleeping Tim. Of course he’s just sleeping- it’s Tim! He consumes his weight in poison on a daily basis; there's no way he’s just gone. But the longer he looks at the should be sleeping form, the more Duke realizes the same thing Dick did. There’s no rise in the blanket. No accompanying fall to indicate that the body is breathing and alive. 

Panic wells up where his heart should be- having dug its way somewhere down near his stomach and was now useless beyond a frantic beating. Oh god oh god oh god- Bruce and Jason flash through his mind. Stephanie- Shit. 

“Tim- Tim wake up!” Unthinkingly, Duke grabs for him, unhearing of the noise Dick makes and- It’s only his bat training saves Duke from being flung head first into the wall. 

He twists, feet skidding along the floor and recovers in time to see Tim try to spring up from the couch. Dick snatches their brother mid-jump, and gets wrenched to the side so hard they flip over the back of the couch. Dick bends, ducks and rolls, ends up the other side with Tim in his lap getting the biggest cuddle of his life so easily in a feat that Duke would find impressive later when they all calmed down. 

“It’s us Timmy! Everything’s okay, you're safe.” Thankfully, Tim calms down pretty quickly and waits for his brother to get done with his bear hug.

It’s odd though. Tim doesn’t usually sleep if he’s in a bad enough way to freak out like that. Sure there’s a long list of cases that are ongoing right now, but that usually means so much caffeine Duke can feel his liver cringe in horror. Oh well, the only way to get answers is for their resident caffeine addict to talk, Duke knows he can only wait until their certified Older Brother™ gets it all out of his system.

Duke plunks down with a sigh, and grunts when he lands on something lumpy. Something that turns out to be a ratty old backpack that looked spiritually connected to those cranky old war veterans you see on sitcoms. Was it for a case? Tim’s not exactly a stereotypical rich guy (none of the Waynes were thank god), but any of them would have replaced this thing long before needing to duck tape the corners and shoulder straps like this. He looks over the couch to ask, maybe offer to help and hope Tim actually takes him up on it. But when he makes eye contact, the words die in his throat. Those are blue eyes (icy blue, wide, frozen in fear), and jet black hair (longer than Dick’s, stick up where he’d been nuzzled half to death, scruffy where he hadn’t, bangs styled forward in a way none of them had), but that’s most certainly /not/ Tim.

“Dick? That’s not Tim.” 

“What?”

Dick pulls away from the boy in his arms to get a better look at the wrong boy- Duke himself. Who quickly gestures back at the freaked out, curled up kid. This time, when Dick looks, it’s a much more proper look and notices all the reasons that’s not Tim.

“You’re not Tim.” Dick said stupidly. 

“I am not Tim!” The boy jazz hands awkwardly, his arms tucked close, and adds an even more awkward grin to puncture the statement. “You wouldn’t be the first person to think I’m him if that makes you feel any better.”

There’s a beat where none of them move, then Dick leans back with a long drawn-out groan. Before any questions can be asked, Dick ‘completely unnecessary acrobatics at any given time’ Greyson rocks them both back, laughing at the boy’s squeak, flips forward, and lands on his feet. Only then does he set not-Tim back on his feet with a friendly hair ruffle.

“What makes me feel better is that you’re okay. You gave us a bit of a scare there- I thought you weren’t breathing.” 

“I uh, y’know. Got a deep R.E.M. sleep?”

It’s a really dumb answer. Like, really dumb. It’s clear he never expected to be asked about whatever’s up with him and he doesn’t want to give a real answer. Moreover, it’s clear the backpack really is his because those clothes he’s wearing? Every bit as ratty. The shirt he’s wearing is less ‘white and orange’ and more ‘off white, suspiciously stained, and the logo is cracked to hell and back with very little indication of what it’s supposed to be’. Same with how many tears and faded stains are in the jeans. Also clear, from the way he angles himself, keeping both of them in view, that whoever he is, Duke knows better than he should about all the signs of a street kid.

“You guys weren’t kidding about Bruce’s adoption tendencies.” Duke quickly says. Distracting Dick so he won’t press too fast too soon and scare him off. The others (Jason excluded) are every bit as nosy as said serial adopter is paranoid and it can be a lot. Better to let the new kid acclimate to the manor so he’s not crawling out the window and disappearing into the night. Something Duke thought about doing every time things got to be too much. Which was no less than five times a day.

“I’m not being adopted!” When both Duke and Dick blink in surprise, not expecting the sheer amount of vitriol from Bruce’s latest, he winces and curls back in on himself. “I’m not staying, I mean. I didn’t even mean to wind up here- it just sorta, happened? In fact, I should probably get out of here. If you could just-” He makes a grab for the backpack, and Duke lets it go easily. “Thanks.”

“Hold on hold on-” Dick holds up his hands placatingly. “You haven’t even had breakfast yet! Alfred’s gonna be sad if you don’t join everyone.”

Dick gets a stare that says the kid thinks he’s insane- and Duke kinda can’t blame him. He also thought the Wayne’s were crazy. Because they were. For literally anyone else, random street kids they found pretty much dead on their couch weren’t usually invited to breakfast… At least their particular kind of crazy was nice.

“I know that that sounds, but Alfred really does love it when people appreciate his cooking. I’m Duke by the way.” Duke stands back up, holding out his hand with a smile. Seeing as not-Tim automatically shakes, he guesses the guy did have parents for the better part of his life. “Sorry for not introducing myself sooner.”

“... Danny.” 

Oh yes, a name really does make everything easier. Duke shakes Danny’s hand, and he even gives him a little smile.

“And everybody calls me Dick!”

“Well, people can be cruel.” 

Duke’s laugh desperately wants out both at Dick’s little puppy pout and Danny’s mortified expression, but he chokes it back very elegantly.

“You know, I’ve heard a lot of versions of that joke but somehow it always surprises me.” Dick says with a laugh, and another hair ruffle when Danny grumbles. “C’mon Danny. Let’s get some food in you, you can tell us how you met the old man. Then we get you some new clothes.”

“I like these just fine, thanks.”

“Sorry Danny,” Duke says apologetically. He’s been here long enough to know that stubborn glint in Dick’s eyes. He might insist he’s different than Bruce, and in many ways he is, but Dick’s mother henning is every bit as bad. “He’s going to pout and whine until you let him buy you something. Can we settle on a new backpack for now?”

It’s enough of a compromise for Danny to agree to be herded to breakfast. Bruce isn’t there, but Tim and Cass are. The real Tim is half asleep into his cereal (and grumbles about the bear hug he gets), and though Cass gives the new kid a curious look, she only stays long enough to grab an egg sandwich. Alfred is more than happy to put a big plate of the best food Duke knows he’ll ever eat in his life in front of Danny too- Much to his surprise. Did he really think Bruce would let him stay and not feed him? Hopefully he’d learn that Bruce was a pretty good guy after all and that he was safe here.

-

Over the course of the entire day, Duke learns a few more things about their new brother. 

For starters, Danny could eat. He was surprisingly good at hiding it too. Nibbling here and there and pretending he was eating slow and listening, but the second they pretended they weren’t paying attention, he’d stuff a good portion down his throat and refill his plate. Meaning he was able to eat almost four times the amount they would have reasonably expected out of a starving street kid while making it look like he wasn’t. It could only mean one thing; Duke knew he had to be a meta. No normal person could pull off either the speed or volume. 

The two other things he learned concurrently; That Danny was as accident-prone as he was kind.

Despite originally not really wanting to even go to the mall, with Dick’s good natured pestering and Duke mediating, they managed to convince Danny into not just the new backpack, but several new sets of clothes as well. In that time they saw him run into two separate doors- one of which broke his nose. His response? Crack it back into place and worry far more about the blood smear. Not even a few moments later, he was somehow roped into helping some little old lady carry her bags back to the front (they almost lost him there). Next, in the cafeteria, some unruly children knocked their tray and a good portion of it slapped Danny in the face. All he did was smile, clean himself off, and entertain the siblings with Dick’s help so their mom could take a small break and know nobody was in trouble. On the way out, Danny nearly got hit by an actual car helping some other shop-lifting street kids escape from the mall cop by pretending to trip in front of him. When the guy went tumbling into the street, Danny threw himself forward to push him out of the way of an oncoming car.

Getting back to the manor where Danny was moderately safer was a relief. It meant they could hand him off to a much more capable-of-dealing-with-this-crap Alfred and give Duke a moment alone to discuss things with Dick. The conversation went a little like;

“We need to make sure Danny is never on his own or he’s going to get himself killed. Meta or no meta. Agreed?”

“Agreed. I'll call the others.”

[spacerhapsody]

It has recently come to light that my deepest, darkest (Digimon) fandom secret is that I didn’t always ship Taito, and @hazelestelle was kind/curious enough to ask the following question in that shipping ask game:

18. A ship you never thought you would ship but do.

Buckle up, kids, because it’s time for a (long) trip down memory lane.

The year is 2002, and after about a year of exploring the internet via small guestbooks and messaging boards, someone finally pointed me towards the central German anime site. And while I think I had seen a couple of people publishing their own stories online and had written one or two myself, I hadn’t realized before that the concept of fanfic was a whole thing, let alone how much of it there was out there.

I also didn’t know yet that you could properly ship things that aren’t canon. Back then, I thought Yamto and Sora were really cute together (probably I mostly thought Yamato was the coolest person ever and was using Sora to heavily project onto), and apparently so did other people, because I easily found and read quite a few stories about them.

Now what you have to remember is that tags or any kind of useful sorting system just wasn’t a thing back then, which is how I ended up with a sliiightly different story, but I didn’t know that yet.

The fic was labeled with all kinds of warning – but I had absolutely no idea what any of those words meant. I’d only just discovered that Taichi and Yamato were Tai and Matt’s Japanese/actual names and just figured “Taito” and “Yamachi” were other (nick)names for them, and since it was popular to just throw random Japanese words into your fic at the time, and half of the time people didn't even use them right, I didn’t bother to look up what “Shounen-Ai” and “Yaoi” meant.

So I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading, and after a couple of chapters I might have found it a bit weird that Sora was so little in it, but apparently I’ve also always enjoyed a good slow-burn, so I kept on reading. I don’t even remember when I realized that there was something going on between Yamato and Taichi, but I do remember that I was fascinated, and that I couldn’t stop reading, especially once it became obvious/something actually happened between them.  

(Why do I care so much about queer people, says queer person years before she figures out she’s queer herself, etc.)

Anyways, the story was long (and my internet time limited), so it took days, if not weeks of surreal summer evenings until I was done, but I read the whole thing.

And for whatever reason… I took this as my sign to start shipping Daisuke and Ken (and a variety of DBZ characters). XD

I’ve absolutely no idea why that was what I took away from the whole thing, it’s not even that I disliked the ship (yet), I always kind of understood why people were shipping them, maybe it was simply because Digimon 02 was much more present in my mind than the first season at the time?

But then I started looking for Daisuke/Ken stories (again, without a lot of help from the websites themselves), and it was an absolute nightmare.

You simply couldn’t find anything that didn’t have Yamato/Taichi as the main ship instead, that didn’t feature them as the reason Daisuke and Ken were figuring themselves out, or didn’t have them as the “older, wiser” couple at least one of them went to for advice, and I was steadily growing more and more annoyed by them.

And it was like this for years. I think it got even worse (Adventure, and thus Yamato/Taichi, has always been more popular than any of the 02 characters, and even more so after they lost their momentum).

They just were everywhere, in every goddamn fic, no matter what other pairing you were actually looking for. I was once reading some football RPS, and when the guys in that story were listening to the radio, the host mentioned someone had called in and asked to play the previous song, from Yamato to Taichi (or the other way round) – you can’t even make that shit up.

At this point they just annoyed me so much that I made a point of not shipping them, and I think I’d also reached a point where I was a bit tired of the whole “they’re rivals/always beating each other up, so they obviously are in love” trope.

I also discovered Taichi/Koushiro (which I still think is an amazing ship that at least the German fandom has always been completely sleeping on), so I had even more reason to not ship Yamato/Taichi.

And I honestly think it would always have been this way, but then tri. happened. And hit me with full force. Because they were older, and somewhat calmer/less aggressive around each other, but still very much themselves, and most of all so blatantly obvious.

I was still in denial during most of part 1, but I already knew when Mimi shoved them into a Ferris wheel cabin and declared the group had brought them together that I was fighting a losing battle, and by part 2 with the entire onsen visit and the bickering afterwards, it was over.

Look. I get it. They’re really it. They work so well together, there’s so much there, they’re the blueprint for so many anime ships, they give me way too many feelings. (Help.)

I still don’t really ship them pre!tri., though. Partly probably because of my history with the ship, but also because I like their dynamic so much better now, and because I simply like the idea of people getting together later in life, or at the very least after they’ve at least finished high school.

TL;DR: I never, ever thought I’d fall into Taito hell, and yet here I am, in the year 2k24, absolutely obsessed with them once again. Thank you, Digimon, you’re the gift that keeps on giving.

[indigosunsetao3]

Keeping Lines Blurry

Chapter 18- Steadfast

Masterlist of Chapters

Warnings: 18+ - No minors Please read the tags on AO3 for any of your triggers

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick X Original FMC 12.3k words - AO3 Link

“If they aren’t with us, you assume they are hostiles,” Price said as he tossed Nik an extra magazine realizing all of his vest pockets were stuffed. “That includes anyone who shows up here,” he peered at Nik who just nodded once. Nik was supposed to be gone by now, headed back home to prepare for the shitshow that would happen once everything came to light. But he offered to stay, to keep watch on the house and women inside.

“Any idea how many we are expecting?” Gaz asked as he strapped his dagger on the right shoulder strap of his vest.

“No,” Price answered as he checked his clip before shoving it back in the rifle. “Informant said he was surrounded by five men when he entered the warehouse, but there were multiple cars.”

“Sounds like someone is afraid,” Soap answered smugly as he snatched up an extra throwing knife and tucked it carefully into his boot. “Why risk coming back here anyway?”

“He doesn’t know what we may or may not have,” Ghost answered simply. He was finished prepping, sitting on the couch watching the rest of them finish up. “Probably aims to get ahead of any backlash. Show up alive, beaten up a bit,” he shrugged, “let his paid MI6 agents take the glory for saving him. Then start laying out his story about Olivia’s family, probably has a lie cooked up about us as well to be safe.”

“He’s relying on the old rule, whoever strikes first wins,” Alex chimed in as he stuffed a laptop in his bag. This was a covert mission, off the books because there were too many rats in the intelligence agency. They would have to hack the cameras and security themselves to get in without being spotted. “He’s hoping to get to the press first before Olivia can discredit him. Get his side of the story out first so Olivia is left scrambling. He’s the bigger face, bigger name, thinks it’ll help him.”

“He’s not going to get that far,” Gaz said as he pulled the velcro on his gloves tight and flexed and stretched his fingers to make sure they felt right. He liked to wear them tight, the pressure a strange comfort and also assurance they wouldn’t slip. “What’s the play?” Gaz asked, knowing they all knew what his actual question was. Were they taking Henry alive or not.

“Take out the guards and get to Henry before he can figure out what is going on and try to run,” Price answered as he looked pointedly at Gaz. “See if we can get him to talk. The more information we can get out of him, directly from him, the better.” He swiped the car keys off the table, “but should he give us any problems we’ll deal with it.” The unsaid implication hung in the air and the rest of the team looked at one another for a moment before Ghost rose from his spot and followed Price out the back door.

Gaz didn’t have time to run up to Olivia and tell her they were leaving, properly anyway. Even if he did, he had no idea what he would say to her. He was on his way to capture her husband? To potentially kill him? Gaz knew there was no love lost between Olivia and Henry but he was sure there would still be an odd feeling to sit and wait for news on if your lover killed your husband. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment as he shifted his rifle in his hands, his thumb idly sliding over the safety as he thought. A clap on his shoulder pulled Gaz from his thoughts to find Soap standing there.

“Better to leave her be,” Soap said, guessing correctly at what Gaz was pondering over as he stood there. “Being in the dark on this one may be a bit of a mercy,” he reasoned. “No need for her to worry more, let her sleep some of this shit off. Nik will fill her in when she gets up.” He glanced over at Nik who gave a curt nod, having heard the whole conversation from where he was positioned at the front window.

“Let’s go get the bastard then,” Gaz answered with a half-cocked grin, glancing at the ceiling one more time before walking toward the door behind Soap.

The warehouse was one of the ones Ghost had found in all of his digging. It was a nondescript building far outside of the London city limits. They were in a small manufacturing town that, in its heyday, boasted multiple factories exporting a multitude of different goods and a booming population. These days the smokestacks sat dormant, loading docks empty, and shattered windows allowed birds to flit in and out.

They had parked a ways away, pulling into the back of a closed grocery store, and walked the rest of the way through the woods. There was no sound, no other people around, as they all moved quietly through the underbrush. When they made it to the chain link fence that surrounded the whole property Ghost made quick work of it with bolt cutters. As they crept along the border looking for a good place for Alex to set up they didn’t spot any movement. Price risked a small hand drone flyover to make sure no one was outside, Ghost piloting. All quiet, not a soul outside, which was a plus but also a bit unsettling that there wasn’t even security waiting.

The sun was starting to set as Alex tapped into the security, having found an old guard shack that still had power running to it. He ripped wires from the wall jack and after some finagling, he was into the camera feeds. He was rotating between all the different cameras, different angles of the outside areas, before he finally came upon the cameras inside the main building. They found the security team. There was a solid dozen out on the main floor milling about, armed to the teeth. As Alex clicked through, they found more in an upstairs area but still no Henry. Gaz rolled his neck a bit, an anxious tick, as Alex got back to the beginning of all the camera feeds.

“He couldn’t have left,” Soap mused as he stood behind Alex with his arms crossed over his chest. “Our informant would have seen,” he glanced at Price for confirmation and the Captain nodded.

“He’s here,” Ghost answered. “Too much security, too many cars. He wouldn’t leave without a detail on him.” He continued as Alex clicked through cameras to see if they had just missed him. There were so many cameras on the grounds they could have accidentally missed a feed.

“We need to figure out which room isn’t on the cameras,” Gaz piped up, the idea coming to him in an instant. Henry was a creature of habit. “Henry kept control of the cameras in his home office and bedroom. He was fine with on spying everyone else but no one could watch him. Where are the blueprints for this warehouse?” He smirked as Alex clicked away from the cameras to pull up the files upon files they had on Henry.  “He probably just doesn’t have a camera in his office here,” he reasoned and Price nodded.

“Find the missing room, we find him,” Alex answered as Soap pulled up a chair and made a crude sketch of the blueprints in the last clean pages of his sketchbook. Together they worked through the cameras, Soap marking them on his hand-drawn map; Ghost looming over their shoulders to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

“How’s Olivia holding up?” Price asked Gaz quietly as they stood watch over the door to the guard shack while the others worked. His hand was gripping his rifle casually, his finger resting on the trigger guard as he peered around the empty parking lot. “Her mother was a mess. Nik said he was afraid she was going to hyperventilate and pass out on the way to the safe house. Practically had to carry her upstairs.”

“She’s,” Gaz paused as he leaned his shoulder on the door jam opposite Price. “Well, she seems surprisingly alright,” he said as he racked his brain over everything. “She’s been in a living hell for years so she’s learned how to cope with chaos.” Gaz sighed as he rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “Olivia is stronger than anyone gives her credit for than I ever did.”

Price stood quietly for a few seconds as if debating his next words carefully. Gaz gave him the space to figure it out. The two of them had argued more in the past few weeks than they had the past few years combined. Gaz always fell in step with his Captain, and barely ever disagreed enough to even voice it. But bringing Olivia back in the picture seemed to have upset the status quo, and gave something Gaz to argue about.

“I’m not going pretend with you that I am exactly happy about you and Olivia again,” Price finally mused. He chuckled a bit at Gaz’s face, “you aren’t as sneaky as you’d like to think. We all know you too well,” he peered over at the other three men as they mapped things out for a second before turning his attention back to Gaz. “She destroyed you. It was brutal and putting you back together is not something I ever want to do again. The utter devastation almost got you killed a few times. You were so wrapped up in the anger, the pain, it ripped your senses right out of you.” He sighed and paused again trying to find the proper words. “Just, don’t get so deep again until you know for sure. She’s got a long fucking road to come back from. It’s going to be rough for anyone involved.”

“Understood Captain,” Gaz said with a small smile as he shifted his feet a bit. “I’m not going to let her do it alone,” he tacked on as Price watched him. “But I’m also not going to let it come between the team either. I can’t go through it again myself; I don’t think you can come back from that twice.” Those days had been dark enough that some of them were just fuzzy memories as if his brain tried to block them out for his preservation. “Though, I’d like to hope she doesn’t manage to find another Henry,” he chuckled a bit and Price returned the gesture.

“She finds another one of them I’m hanging up the hat,” Soap answered as he leaned back in his chair, holding his notebook up. “We’ve got it,” he shook the notebook a bit, and Price and Gaz walked over to take a look. The five of them crowded around the laptop as they mapped out their plan, Soap scribbling and erasing on his drawing as they worked through it.

The sun was almost completely down by the time they finalized everything and Alex had managed to clone and overwrite the cameras. Gaz had watched the man’s fingers flying over the keyboard with unmasked aw. Alex merely acted like he was writing up a report and kept up with the conversation happening around him as he clicked away. The man barely batted an eye as he ran code and slipped between security walls like a phantom, laying down false images and turning off virtual tripwires. When he announced he was done he snapped the laptop shut and stuffed it back into his pack, but not before unplugging the hard drive and pocketing it. If he lost his pack the laptop would be useless without the drive.

“Let’s go then,” Price said as the lights inside the warehouse across the way started to come on inside. “We’ve all got our marks,” he looked around at the team and all of them nodded. “Let’s make it quick and clean then. Fucker has dragged this out long enough.” He grinned and led the way out the door, crossing the parking lot in a low jog as they all fanned out.

Gaz climbed up the straight-shot ladder on the side of the building as fast as he could, careful to avoid the rotted-out rungs as he went. He saw Ghost disappear around the left side of the building as he hoisted himself over the lip of the flat roof, Alex going around the other side. Once he was situated up top he peered over the edge as Soap slipped between the line of vehicles planting C4, his hands moving quickly to run the wire and set the trips. Price was set up at the loading docks prepared for people to come out that way.

“In position,” Gaz said quietly into his comms as he stared down the large vent on the roof. The grate had long since rusted out and he had to pull out the remnants of an old bird's nest to get a clear shot. He could hear the muffled voices of people inside the building coming up through the funnel and he smirked. He pulled out a smoke bomb and hooked a finger in the pin as he waited for confirmation from the rest of the team.

“Cars and the front door are all set,” Soap said, his voice a bit jostled as he ran. He was to wait across the way and blow the front door while the rest of the distractions happened. Then he would wait for people to come out, pick them off, and blow the cars if they attempted an escape before coming in to aid.

“Ready to cut the lights,” came Ghost. There was a chance they had a backup generator but it would take a bit to get that online, Alex had confirmed there was nothing wired for an automatic trip. So that would be a few minutes of chaos in the dark for them.

“Flashbangs are a go,” Alex answered.

“Hit it,” Price’s voice came across.

Gaz tossed his smoke bomb down the vent before stepping back and heading to the rooftop access door to get inside. He pulled his scarf up over his face, not overly concerned about the smoke being too thick from where he was going to be. There were catwalks at the top of the warehouse that he could move along and pick off people with his heat vision. The paths were like spiderwebs, spread out all along the top of the building and Gaz did his best to memorize them. He was also silently praying that they would still hold up after all these years and he didn’t come crashing down from a loose bolt or two.

It took about ten seconds before anyone realized what was happening inside. The moment raised voices came from the exploded smoke bomb the lights cut and Gaz prepared himself for the flashbangs that were next. Alex had slipped in a side door and tossed them at pockets of people which sent them scrambling as they exploded. He was running the inside perimeter of the building throwing as he went which forced people to gather more toward the center of the building to try and get away. In the pandemonium, they had raised their guns up and were firing at what they thought the origin of the attack was. None of their shots hit their mark though, Alex long gone from where they were aiming.

“Hold Soap,” Gaz said into his microphone as he rested his rifle on the catwalk railing. He didn’t want to give away his position just yet. While it was a good vantage point, he would be too easy to pick off if the men below rallied against him. “They’re going for the doors,” he added as he spotted Alex dart up to the second level and get into firing position. “Now!” He called as a group of men pushed at the doors and realized that it was blocked from the outside.

The explosion rocked the building and Gaz felt the catwalk swing ominously at the blowback, his hand holding tight to steady himself. The flare of the fire lit up the inside, sending things into sharp relief for a moment as a few bodies flew back. Gaz shut his eyes at the burst of light in his heat vision before he opened them and readjusted his rifle from where it had slipped. He fired his first shot, taking out a man who was headed for a side door before twisting and taking out his friend who was looking around for the origin.

The din inside increased ten-fold as the men they were firing upon started yelling orders to one another and began returning rapid fire as a group. Gaz dropped another one before having to scramble down the walkway, the return fire whizzing by as it clipped the metal, sending sparks. He took a sharp left turn and dropped down to his knees, aiming directly through the slats in the floor of the path to take another man out as he attempted to radio out for help. Bullets were flying all over the place, glass shattering and Gaz was back up on his feet in an instant running in the direction of the loading dock doors. Price was a good shot but he wouldn’t be able to take them all out if they tried that exit. Gaz picked off two more men before a shot embedded itself in the ceiling right by his head.

“Ghost!” Alex yelled through his comms and Gaz whipped around to see if he could see what had happened. It was nothing but flashes of muzzle fire and he jumped back as the railing he was supporting himself on gave way and the pipe fell into the darkness below.

“What happened?” Soap’s voice cut across, he was still outside a ways away from the fighting, waiting for the best time to set off the next round of explosions.

“”m fine,” came Ghost’s voice, though it sounded a bit strained. “Keep your focus on the objective,” he added before cutting out.

“The fuck you are,” Alex snapped, his words a pant as he returned fire and bolted through the second story below Gaz. “I saw the hit,” he added before jumping down the last few steps down. “And I saw you go down,” he tacked on before Ghost could argue again that he was fine.

Gaz followed Alex from the walkway, careful to keep him covered as he weaved around everything on the floor. There were a few men that had regrouped and Gaz groaned as he spotted them heaving what looked like a heavy gun. Courtesy of Henry’s illegal arms manufacturing. Gaz fired upon them but they ducked away and he had to move around another way to get a better angle, avoiding the return fire.

“Lucky shot,” Ghost answered. Gaz finally saw him as he knelt and steadied his breathing to aim at the men who were hiding. Ghost was pressed up against an old machine holding his leg as he continued to return fire, working in tandem with Gaz without them even discussing it. Ghost drew them to return fire at him then Gaz took them out from above with a headshot when they poked their heads up. “Pretty sure it was a through and through,” he added after a second.

“I’ve got him,” Alex cut back as Gaz saw him slide in next to Ghost and wrench him around the back of the machine to keep him covered. “He’ll live,” he tacked on after a second, “outside of the thigh, going leave a nasty scar.”

“Just another for the collection,” Ghost answered with a dark laugh. There was a reason he kept his face and the rest of his skin completely covered.

“I’m coming in, we need to wrap this up.” Price interjected, “I’m going to push them out the front, Soap.”

“Rog,” Soap answered, his voice a bit strained. He hated not being in the thick of it and Gaz knew he was agitated that Ghost had taken a hit. “Still no sign of Henry?”

“Hasn’t left his hidey hole” Gaz answered as he continued his trek through the maze of catwalks, laying down fire then darting away before anyone could get a lock on him. “Steel door hasn’t opened,” he added as he glanced back at the room that Henry had picked as his safe spot. It was the only area in the warehouse that didn’t have a camera and was probably the most well-enforced. It was an old freezer back from when this warehouse was in food production.

“Keep an eye on it, make sure he doesn’t make a run for it,” Price answered as one of the loading dock rolling doors flew up. The sound was a loud clatter and it instantly drew fire from the enemy. Then the next one went up, and a third. They had no idea which one someone was coming in, or how many had come in, and the flashbangs that Price tossed in disoriented everyone even more.

Gaz continued to drop the men from his vantage point, careful to make it a one-and-done shot so they couldn’t pinpoint him. Alex and Ghost laid down cover fire as well from their tucked away spot and Price drove the rest toward the front door. Gaz could hear what was left of the security team yelling about a retreat, to get to the cars and evacuate the boss. He took down another with a headshot as he went to the freezer door to pull it open, the blood splattering on the metal. He wasn’t letting Henry get out and he certainly wasn’t going to let him get blown up; that was too easy of a death.

“All yours Soap,” Gaz called over his comms as he watched the last few dart out the door to the cars. He heard the vehicle doors slam shut and hesitated in his walk waiting for the explosion. It didn’t take long. There were four in quick succession and the fireball was impressive as it rose up past the high ruined windows and blew out some of the weaker panes that were left. They had created enough chaos that the lights never came back on and Gaz quickly assessed the warehouse from what he could see to make sure no one else was lingering.

“Clear from my spot,” Gaz announced as he stomped down another section of the catwalk to glance over the edge. It was quiet enough inside now that the sound of the metal rattling could be heard echoing around.

“Nothing on the heartbeat sensor,” Alex answered as he carefully walked the lower level, monitor in one hand, gun in the other. He had left Ghost sitting after wrapping his leg tight with a bandage, cutting his pant leg off near the hip to be able to get the bandage on.

“Regroup and we clear the final room,” Price said as he positioned himself outside the freezer door, gun poised on the door.

Gaz didn’t need to be told twice. He jogged toward the ladder that would take him off the catwalk and then jogged to the stairs from the second floor to the first. Just as he shouldered open the stairwell door, gun raised to be safe since there still wasn’t a full all-clear, he saw Soap lean up against the wall nearest to the freezer door handle. Alex returned to Ghost’s side and helped him stand, nodding that they would remain out in the warehouse to keep cover.

“We don’t know what is on the other side of this,” Price said as he stared down his sights. “Just blueprints. Doesn’t mean it hasn’t been altered and we don’t know how many people are inside.”

“Good thing we have someone that can clean house,” Gaz said with a smirk as he looked at Soap who returned the grin.

“On three,” Price said as he stepped closer, and Soap’s hand latched onto the handle. Gaz was ready, gun aimed right where the gap in the door would appear when Soap opened it. Price started the countdown, his voice low but clear as he inched closer. Gaz let out a calming breath and his eyes darted to Soap for a second, catching the subtle head nod he gave him before his gaze returned to the target. When Price reached one, Soap yanked the door open in one swift movement, quickly dropping back from the gap to avoid any potential defensive fire from within.

With guns raised, the three men stepped into the pitch-black room, ready for whatever awaited them.

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Olivia didn’t know how long she had slept for. When she awoke, she stretched out with a pleasant groan, rolling over to find the room was almost completely dark and Kyle was nowhere to be found. There was no clock in the room and her phone had long been lost and probably destroyed so she had nothing to refer to. Sliding her legs out of bed she fished around for the bedside lamp switch before gathering her clothes off the floor and getting dressed. The house seemed strangely quiet as she pulled her hair up and when she opened the bedroom door to see the whole upstairs was still dark, she raised her eyebrows a bit.

She walked down to the room her mother was in and quietly opened the door to check on her. Her mother was still curled under the blankets and Olivia watched her for a moment, noticing the slow rise and fall of her breathing before she slipped back out again. Her mother needed the rest and there was plenty of time to talk later, much later. Olivia wasn’t sure when she would be ready for another talking session with her. She still had so many things to process and her mother was already in shock enough, having known none of what had been happening for years. Olivia at least had a semblance of the disaster their family’s lives had been.

“Kyle?” Olivia called out as she walked down the stairs. The living room light was on and she could hear the quiet mumblings of the evening news on the television. When she cleared the bottom step, she didn’t see anyone and the sudden feeling of unease settled over her as she looked around. “Hello?” She questioned a bit unsure as she poked her head in the dining room before she heard movement coming from the kitchen.

“Oh,” Nik paused in his cooking as Olivia appeared in the doorway, his hand freezing in its movement to grab his pistol off the counter. “Startled me,” he said with a chuckle before going back to the frying pan. “Hungry?” He asked lifting the pan up and tilting it to show the mix of rice and meat in there.

“Ah,” Olivia said as she stared at the man. She knew who he was, he had brought her mother here and she had seen him when they arrived hours ago. But knowing his name, what he looked like, and that he could be trusted that was the extent of her knowledge. “I mean, yes,” she said after a second, her stomach growling at the scent of the food. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. “But where is everyone?”

Nik was shifting around the kitchen cabinets for plates and he pulled down two mismatched ones to the counter, gently pushing his pistol out of the way with his elbow. He peered at her over his shoulder before finding forks and two glasses of water, which had to be from the tap because there was nothing bottled. He didn’t answer her right away as he plated the food, dropping the pan in the sink and carrying the plates over to the small kitchen table. As Olivia stared at him, he gestured for her to sit before grabbing the glasses of water and taking a seat himself.

Olivia stared at Nik expectantly and the longer he took to answer the more nervous she became. She debated on refusing to sit until he told her something but relented and took a seat, watching him as he sat across from her. It suddenly felt like there was a great secret or painful thing, he was about to tell her and her heart rate jumped in her chest. Surely they would have woken her if something major had happened. If Kyle had been hurt or another attack happened, they wouldn’t have just left her to slumber.

“They’ve gone to collect Henry,” Nik said as he dug into the food and took a bite. He saw the look of surprise on her face and he took another bite before setting down his fork. “It was fast, they couldn’t wait to move on the intel. I offered to stay behind to keep an eye on you and your mother,” he explained and he pointed at her fork to indicate she needed to eat. He waited for her to raise the utensil and take a few bites before continuing. “They left a few hours ago,” he paused and looked at his watch, “almost four hours. Henry was spotted back in England on the outskirts of London.”

“Four hours?” Olivia asked shocked as she looked around the kitchen for a clock. She had slept a long while; her sense of time was completely thrown. “Have you heard anything? Did they get him? Should they be gone this long?” She asked, fork hovering in the air as she waited for an answer. The food was delicious but she couldn’t stomach another bite yet, not with the nervous butterflies in her stomach at all the unknown.

“I haven’t heard anything yet,” Nik answered, “turned on the news to be safe. They had to do it strictly off the books, no outside communication. MI6 is compromised, couldn’t risk them tipping off Henry. Anything major happens it’ll be on,” he continued to eat before taking a sip of his water. He watched Olivia over his glass as she started to pick at the food again. “Four hours isn’t that long, not with having to travel, get a lay of the land, and get a plan. No need to worry…not yet.”

Olivia nodded a bit mechanically as she ate the food in front of her, not really tasting it but needing to eat something. Her mind was swimming with questions, with unease, fear. What if the last time she saw Kyle was when he tucked her into sleep and curled her against him? She felt nausea rise and she gently pushed the plate away after eating about half of it. She wished he had come up to say goodbye, but she also knew she would have been agonizing over this for that much longer. She downed the glass of water in a few gulps and wished she had something stronger, eyes glancing around the kitchen.

“Here,” Nik said, knowing what she wanted without having to say. He produced a flask from the inside of his vest before rising and cleaning up the dishes.

Olivia took it and took a swig, wincing at the straight Vodka inside. It burned and she made a face before taking another sip and setting the flask down on the table. It felt odd to be sitting in a kitchen somewhere in London, not sure where so close to home yet so far away. With a man who was a protector but she knew nothing about, waiting to hear news about if her husband was taken into custody thanks to the evidence her father had dug up on him. Evidence that Olivia had stolen right under the Russian’s nose then watched her lover murder one in front of her eyes to keep her safe. Her life felt like one big giant fog of a thing as of late and today all of it came to a head. She took one more swig of Vodka to see if the sting could clear some of the blur away, it didn’t, she sighed and rose from the table.

“Thank you for the meal it was-“ she started but Nik held his hand up to silence her. She saw him cock his head and she froze, turning slowly on her heel afraid she was going to see an enemy creeping up on them. Her eyes darted around the kitchen for a weapon, or a way out, but she saw Nik hadn’t raised his gun. She blinked as Nik whipped the dishtowel off his shoulder, shoved his pistol in his thigh holster, and walked toward the living room.

“What’s going on?” Olivia asked as she followed him. He was standing directly in front of the television, hands on his hips, as he watched the broadcast. Olivia turned to face the screen and she could see helicopter footage of a warehouse. The remains of something smoldering in the drive area sent up large plumes of black acrid smoke into the air. Nik turned the volume up a bit more and they could hear the newscaster better. They stated they weren’t sure what caused the explosion, just that it was reported by residents. They were speculating that it was an old generator that finally exploded, old chemicals, or even kids messing about in the abandoned area.

“Not kids,” Nik said simply as he dug out his phone. “Soap,” he said as he looked over at Olivia for a second before whoever he called picked up on the other end and he started talking to them. Olivia wasn’t listening to Nik as she stared at the screen, waiting for any sign of something happening but the helicopter shot didn’t show anything else. There was no movement outside the warehouse and the feed cut back to the newsroom. The newscaster said that they were sending a ground crew to meet with the police and would have updates later.

“Laswell is going to keep the police at bay for a little longer,” Nik said after he hung up the phone. “We just continue the waiting game,” he said as he looked at Olivia who was glancing between him and the television. “Everyone thinks the fighting is the worst part of a war, but it’s the waiting,” he gestured to the coffee table where he had a half-finished game of solitaire up. “Know how to play Durak?” When Olivia gave him a small headshake he grinned, “I’ll show you, then you can beat Garrick. Little shit learned from me and kicks all of our asses now.”

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Gaz had his night vision on and when he stepped into the room he spotted two men hidden behind a desk. Between him, Price, and Soap they were dropped in a matter of moments, Gaz had no idea whose shots took them out. They weren’t the only ones though. Bullets came from the right and Gaz dropped down to a knee and took aim at a couch, littering the upholstery with bullets until a figure fell on the floor behind it with a thump. Soap dropped another man who had taken up a hiding spot behind some metal cabinets, the bullets echoing as they made contact before that assailant fell.

“Visual?” Price asked as he swept behind Gaz and Soap, checking behind a safe large enough for a grown man to hide next to. There was no one there.

“Nothing yet,” Soap answered as he walked around the desk and kicked the bodies over to look at their faces. None of them were Henry. He looked up as Gaz zeroed in on a portable closet, his hand raising to yank the door open. When Gaz looked back, Soap and Price both nodded, their guns trained on the door, and Gaz pulled it open.

It was a quick blur as he got the door open. There was a pistol aimed right at his face but Gaz reacted fast enough to avoid the shot. The muzzle of Gaz’s gun connected hard with the hand that was holding the pistol. Henry’s hand. The gun clattered away on the cement floor and Gaz reached in his left hand to bodily yank the man out of his hiding place by the back of his neck. Sliding his rifle over his back in one swift motion, Gaz threw Henry to the floor and was on his back, knee digging between his shoulder blades. Henry scrambled and cursed as Gaz pressed down and got on his comms to let the rest of the team know that they had him.

“Lights coming,” Alex answered before the power was flipped back on a moment later and Gaz blinked a few times in the sudden brightness. “We’ve got company, we can hear a helicopter circling, just a matter of time before we deal with the local police,” Alex added. Gaz couldn’t hear the helicopter himself but that was probably because they were inside the well-insulated freezer.

“Surprise Henry,” Gaz snarled, as he kept the man pinned under his knee. He looked rough, even from the back. His normally well-pressed shirt was wrinkled and stained in places. The greying hair was a greasy disheveled mess and Gaz couldn’t help but be smug at the patchy facial hair on his jaw that was stark white.

“What? Gone silent now? You could never keep your mouth shut before,” Gaz snapped as the man squirmed and Gaz pressed his knee down harder. How many times had Gaz thought about this? Thought about tearing this man apart piece by piece. Drawing out his pain as he made him pay for everything he had done. Done to him, Olivia, Olivia’s family, and all the innocent people he had killed in his scheming.

“Nowhere to go now,” he taunted as he grabbed the side of Henry’s face and shoved it hard into the concrete, wondering how much pressure he could put on before it cracked his cheek or eye socket. “How’s it feel?” Gaz asked as he pushed more and Henry spluttered for air, or maybe that was in pain.  “How’s it feel to be fucking trapped?” Gaz hissed, his fingers moving to curl in the man’s hair and rear his head back before smashing it into the floor hard. Bone crunched and blood splattered on the grey floor as Henry’s nose exploded. “To be helpless under someone stronger, bigger?” He was going to destroy him, make him feel an ounce of what Olivia felt when he pinned her under him. Gaz was seeing red as his breathing picked up and he pulled his head back again to smash it back down when a voice cut in.

“Sergeant,” came Price’s voice; even and calm. It wasn’t admonishing, nor telling him to stop. It was just a small reminder of who Gaz was; what he was. Giving him a chance to see through the seething anger for just a moment.

Gaz hesitated before recalling what Price said, that they wanted to try and get Henry to talk. Shifting off his back Gaz yanked him up and dog-walked him to the desk chair. He paused long enough to kick the bodies away before throwing Henry down in the office chair The man reared back, almost upending the seat before settling back in a normal position. His nose was steadily dripping blood and it was running down his chin to drip on his expensive shirt. The glare Henry gave Gaz was a delicious one and Gaz laughed as he waited for Henry to try and talk himself out of this one.

“Surprised to see me?” Gaz asked, cocking his head to the side a bit. “You had to know I was going to find you one way or another, right? You put a mark on my life, on Olivia’s, that shit wasn’t going to just slide.” Gaz’s hand shot out to take the gun he saw Soap pick up from the ground. The same pistol Henry had aimed at Gaz’s head when he wrenched him from the closet. “None of your shit worked. You may have killed Olivia’s father, your best friend,” he scoffed as he leaned closer and got into Henry’s face. “But unfortunately for you, he got the last laugh in all this.” Gaz slid the gun between their bodies, bringing the muzzle of the pistol up to dig into Henry’s jaw right where it met his neck. “For a man of many words, you sure are fucking quiet Henry,” Gaz said as he pressed the pistol harder into the skin, making Henry’s head tilt back.

“You won’t do it,” Henry said as his eyes attempted to flick down to look at the gun, but it was too close for him to actually see it. “You need me alive,” he prompted as Gaz pushed him further back in the chair, the material groaning under the pressure. “Me dead will do nothing. And your Captain won’t let you just murder me,” he looked at Price who was standing there watching quietly.

“Don’t underestimate what I will and won’t do,” Gaz said as his eyes flicked over to the side where Price was. His Captain looked at him for a moment before giving a small nod. Gloves were off. “And my Captain doesn’t truly care if you’re alive or not,” he gave a small humorless laugh as his finger passed over the trigger. “I could end you right now, with your own gun,” he twisted the pistol and slid it so it was pressing into the soft spot under Henry’s jaw, right under his tongue. Gaz smirked as his eyes flicked down to the pistol before back to Henry's eyes which were a tad bit wider. “Murderous, lying, abuser commits suicide, seems like a fitting headline.”

“What do you want?” Henry finally said after a moment. His self-preservation stronger than the need to win at the moment. “Money?” His eyes shot over to Soap who laughed as he stared at Henry in disbelief. “Weapons? Contacts?” He reached a hand out to his desk drawer and hesitated as Gaz dug the pistol in harder, silently warning him to not try anything. “I can give you whatever you want. Work with me and you’ll never want for anything ever again. No more shit jobs, working for the government.” His hand yanked a draw open and Gaz saw tons of overstuffed hanging files.

“We can’t be bought that easily,” Gaz answered as Price walked around to pull some files out and flipped through them. “All this work to get you, almost dying too many times to count…you will have to try harder than that,” he continued as Price handed some paper to Soap for him to look at.

“I’ll leave you be. Tell me how much it would cost to pay you off and disappear into the fucking sunset,” Henry said as he swallowed hard. “You can see how much money I have,” he explained to Price even though he couldn’t see him at the angle Gaz held him at. “My resources. You could be set for life, never hear from me again. I’ll even let you take my bitch wife with you,” he said and he smirked at how Gaz’s eyes flared at the insult. “Not worth my time anymore, think of it as a free perk.” He groaned in pain as Gaz’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat pushing down on the prominent Adam’s apple.

“Try harder,” Gaz said before letting his throat go so he could talk. “And leave Olivia out of it. You don’t get to talk about her, look at her or even fucking touch her ever again,” he tacked on, the venom dripping in his voice.

“I’ll give you my connections,” Henry tried as he pointed to the safe across the way. “Co-collaborators. I work with many powerful people, here and in other countries. If you spin it that I was manipulated I’ll give you everything. Let me walk and I’ll disappear, I promise,” he locked eyes with Gaz who barely looked up at Price.

“What’s the combo?” Gaz asked, playing into it like he was going to go for it. “Lie and it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” he tacked on as Soap walked over to the safe ready to take the numbers. He saw Henry debating, wondering if he could trust Gaz at his word but he didn’t have a choice now. He rattled off six numbers and Soap spun the dial this way and that before the lock popped and he pulled it open. He had his gun raised cautiously because the safe was large enough to hold someone inside if they wanted. It was empty of a human but was packed full of cash, guns, paperwork, multiple laptops, and cell phones. It was a literal jackpot of information.

“All there,” Henry prompted after a second of silence as the three men stared at the prize before them. “We can say that I was trying to keep everyone alive by working with them but they out-maneuvered me,” Henry stated, as if he already had this story up his sleeve as one of his many backup plans. “Let you all come out as the heroes. I’ll disappear from the public eye to recover from the trauma,” he watched as Soap yanked a laptop out and flipped it open to power it up. “We all win here,” he added into the silence.

“Seems promising,” Gaz relented, his face moving to a contemplative gaze as he looked over his shoulder for a second. He felt Henry relax a bit under his hold. “But I don’t think so,” he smirked as Price flipped the switch off on his recorder on his vest, one that had been on since they walked into the room. “We got what we wanted out of you. You’re useless to me now.” Gaz slid his finger over the trigger and stared right into Henry’s eyes, inches from his face, and pulled it.

Henry cried out at the click and clenched his eyes shut preparing for the shot that would end him. But it didn’t come. Soap had emptied the clip quietly before handing Gaz the gun. They wanted to scare Henry, get him to talk, but not kill him. That was too easy of a way out; too simple. Gaz wanted to draw out his pain, let him get dragged through the coals, and suffer as the world turned on him. But Gaz couldn’t resist pulling the trigger. Just once. Just to see the sheer panic and fear on the man’s face. It had been worth it and Gaz was pretty sure the asshole wet himself as he opened his eyes, realizing he was in fact not dead.

“Police are here,” Alex said from the door as he peered into the scene in the room. “They know we’re in here and have been told to stand down…but they’ll get antsy if we take too long.”

“Handcuffs,” Gaz said as Soap handed him the plastic zip ties before he yanked Henry up out of the chair. He had wet himself and Gaz pulled a face as he turned him around yanked his arms hard behind his back and zipped his wrists together. It was tight enough he knew his fingers would go numb in a matter of seconds. “Walk,” Gaz instructed as Henry resisted, still muttering and trying to talk his way out of this.

Gaz walked Henry out of the building, followed by Price and Soap. The camera lights were bright as Gaz walked over to the police sergeant and passed off the prisoner. Ghost had opted to stay inside for a bit, not wanting to broadcast his injury for everyone to see. Alex had gone to seek out medical help from one of the ambulances, using the side door so it was away from the news vans.

Henry’s face was a livid red as he screamed at Gaz, at the cameras that couldn’t decide who to focus on, that he was innocent. That this was a mistake, that Gaz and the rest of the team would be stripped of their titles and awards for the atrocities they did that they were trying to pin on him. The lies flew from his mouth as easy as breathing and Gaz smirked as an officer put him in the backseat of their cruiser. The news reporters seemed uneasy as they tried to figure out what to do but Price walked over to give a very brief comment, before walking away. Press and briefings were Laswell’s specialty and she already had a statement written out to send the moment Henry had been taken into custody.

“Better man than me,” Soap said as they watched the police cruiser with Henry inside, still screaming, pull away. “I would have shot him, maybe stabbed him a bit,” he smirked knocking his shoulder into Gaz’s.

“I thought about it,” Gaz answered as his eyes flicked over to Ghost who was limping to the ambulance waving off the frantic medics who were pleading with him to get on the stretcher. Alex lugging his gear behind him. “But I figured less paperwork for Price,” he laughed, “he’ll get what’s coming to him. Playing the long game was the better option this time…I think.”

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Nine Months Later

Gaz rolled out of bed as quietly as possible, untangling himself from Olivia’s legs and arms as he slipped to the kitchen to start the coffee. Today was a big day and he knew Olivia had been up most of the night tossing and turning with the weight of what was to come. She had woken him up at two in the morning from her nightmare and had practically pulled him on top of her, kissing him frantically as if he would disappear. Gaz gently eased her down from her panic with soft touches and kisses, his hands sliding over her flushed sweaty skin until she was moaning from pleasure and not fear as he slid into her. She had begged him not to stop until she couldn’t talk anymore and when they finished, she fell into an actual restful sleep.

Leaning his hip on the counter Gaz stared out the small kitchen window at the sleepy streets of London. The flat they had rented wasn’t the best one out there, but it was decent enough for them, in a not-too-bad part of the city. Olivia had the money her father had left for her and her mother and she was careful how she spent it. She set her mother up in a townhouse not too far from them, put a lawyer on retainer, and bought a cheap beat-up car to get around then hid what was left. Gaz supplemented the rest of their needs with his pay, knowing the lawyer was going to eat up most of the money between supporting Olivia and her mother during all of this. Who knew how long it would take for the government to work through the debts and her parents’ estate, and if there would even be any money left by the time they were done.

When the coffee machine stopped gurgling Gaz poured himself a cup of black coffee before padding to the living room. He glanced at the clock on the bare wall before kicking his feet up on the coffee table, leaning down to rub at his knee. He had two new scars on it from the surgery he had a couple of months back to repair the damage, the skin still raised and dark from the incisions. The pain wasn’t as bad as it had been before he finally relented to the surgery, but it still ached. Especially in the morning or if it was going to rain, which in London it was more common to rain than not.

Gaz turned on the television, lowered the volume a few degrees, and flipped to the news channel. They were already talking about the trail, even if it wasn’t going to resume until ten that morning. It was all the news talked about these days, treating it like a football match with play-by-play, analysis, predictions, and even conspiracies. Soap had called Gaz after he testified for three days and made him look at a gossip rag about him. Soap then proceeded to laugh himself silly as Gaz read about how he supposedly was sending subliminal messages as he shifted in the witness chair.

“My fucking knee hurt,” Gaz argued back to Soap who was still laughing, “I had to adjust because I was sitting there for hours. What sort of messages what I supposedly sending?” He scrolled as he read through some of them. “For fuck’s sake,” he groaned as he found the pictures where images had been circled as if pointing out the proof. “They really will latch onto anything for a stupid story.” “Quit tellin’ the lizard people our secrets,” Soap said, cracking himself up again before hanging up.

That was two weeks ago. Gaz had to testify because he had been attacked and was also the person to execute the arrest of Henry. They had grilled him, had tried to get him to trip up, saying he was a jealous ex-lover trying to make Henry be the bad guy. Had tried to discredit everything he said but it hadn’t worked. Gaz had stuck to the truth through all of it and unfortunately for Henry, the truth didn’t unravel.

Now everyone was fixated on the star witness, the person who was closest to Henry and had all the inside information; Olivia. Gaz knew this was going to be hard for her. He had sat in on the mock questioning by the government lawyers and her own lawyer and had seen what it did to her. She had come home in tears a few times and had panic attacks and Gaz had found her on more than one occasion sitting in the dark of the bedroom just staring at the wall thinking. Sometimes he debated if keeping Henry alive was the best idea after all. It put Olivia through all of this, drawing out her torture unable to fully close the book on that chapter of her life until this was done. The divorce from Henry had been sped through the courts in a matter of a few short weeks after his arrest, but he was still tied to her because of the trial.

Olivia had said she understood why Gaz kept him alive and had agreed it was the smarter and better way. Make him live through everything he did, and in his attempts to weasel his way out of punishment, he gave over more and more information on his counterparts. It led to many arrests, and a total upheaval of MI6 and a few other government officials, something they wouldn’t have gotten as fast without him. But Gaz knew she was suffering despite the brave face she put on for the media as she attended the trial. She only went on the days Gaz testified or when she was needed, she didn’t want to be around the circus or even see Henry if she didn’t need to.

Gaz sipped on his coffee as he watched the news when he heard the bedroom door click open and he twisted to see Olivia standing there. Her hair was a mess of a halo around her head and she rubbed one eye as she looked at him in nothing but his t-shirt. She still looked exhausted and Gaz dropped his feet from the table and stood up, setting his coffee down on the table, and walked over.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Gaz asked quietly as he enveloped her in his arms, feeling her rest her ear against his chest. “You had at least another thirty minutes of sleep before I got you up,” he explained as he rubbed her back gently.

“No, I just…woke up,” Olivia said with a soft sigh as she listened to Kyle’s heartbeat for a moment. “And when I realized you were already up, I just decided to get out of bed,” she tilted her head up and smiled at him a bit, though Gaz could see the nerves behind her eyes. “Bit nauseated this morning,” she explained. The nerves were not helping her already uneasy stomach and she felt Kyle pull away from her to head to the kitchen. Toast was the only thing that settled her these days, only thing she could really stomach, along with some herbal tea.

“Go shower,” he said leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “I’ll make you something to eat,” he pulled out of her embrace completely before giving her a small pat on the bottom to make her go. He smirked as she swatted at him before she disappeared back into their bedroom to the only bathroom in the flat to shower. He heard the squealing pipes as she started the water before they finally quieted down after the water ran for a few seconds.

By the time Olivia emerged with a towel wrapped around her body, and another tying up her hair, Gaz had her toast with butter and a little jam and mint tea ready. She smiled gratefully and sat down on the couch, eyes flicking to the television which had conveniently been changed to a sitcom rerun. Olivia avoided the news as much as she could, barely even using social media on her phone because the trial was everywhere. She didn’t even like going out in public because people recognized her from all the old photos and constant news reels. Especially in the lead-up to her start of testifying against Henry. Her mother came by and a few old friends stopped by but for the most part, Olivia spent her days alone while Gaz continued to work.

Gaz was doing desk work for the time being, staying on assignment in London as her personal bodyguard because of the threats from crazies and Henry’s associates. It was under the guise of recovering from his surgery but his real assignment was keeping Olivia safe, and probably sane because if she had been left completely alone, she would have lost it. When Gaz told her he was going back to work she had a meltdown before he could explain it was at a local office running intelligence, he wasn’t leaving her for weeks on end.

“Sorry for keeping you up last night,” Olivia muttered around her toast as Gaz sat back down next to her and sipped on his coffee. Sleep had been alluding her for a while but it was getting worse as of late.

“I’m fine,” Gaz answered, “I can go a few days without much sleep, this is nothing,” he smiled as Olivia held out her toast to him to take a bite before taking it back to finish it off. He chewed for a moment before looking pointedly at her, “you still feel up to going? I’m sure if you feel ill,” he started but Olivia shook her head.

“I’m not going to prolong it,” she said, “the waiting is the worst part as Nik once told me.” She sighed a bit glancing at the clock. “I’d rather just get it over with. I know they are going to have me up there for days,” she set her empty cup and plate down on the coffee table, knocking the remnants of their card game from the night before askew, then curled her legs up under her on the couch. “It’s not too long, I mean,” she paused, “it’s only a few hours altogether. I can do it.”

“Just a few hours,” Gaz agreed with a small nod as he looked at her. It was a few hours at a time, but he knew she’d be worn down for much longer than he had. “I’ll be there the whole time, front row,” he smiled a bit before grabbing her to pull her closer. “You won’t be alone,” his hand slipped gently under her towel, his fingers splaying over the still-damp skin of her stomach, over the barely-there swell in her lower abdomen.

It had been a pure accident. The stress of their life had caused Olivia to lose track of her medication and Gaz wasn’t always the best at fishing for condoms in the heat of the moment. The birth control was supposed to be preventing the risk of pregnancy anyway. But one thing led to another and Olivia missed a period. They chalked it up to stress and moved on with their lives. Then the next one didn’t come and the morning sickness started. It had been a short moment of panic followed by overjoy and frantic doctor appointments to make sure everything was alright. Not worried about pregnancy Olivia hadn’t been careful with what she ate or drank and Gaz had continued to smoke around her.

All was well thankfully, and now she was four months along. Gaz had been taking care of Olivia, doing everything and anything she needed. The morning sickness had abided for the most part but he knew the nerves had brought it all back up again. The doctors warned Olivia to not let the stress get to her because it would affect the baby and she was doing everything in her power to remain calm. Such as staying away from the news, drinking tea, light exercising, and getting back into her old favorite hobby of reading.

“Remember, he can’t touch you anymore,” Gaz said gently as he tilted her head up to look at him with his other hand. “Never again. There is nothing he can do to you, you’re safe and I’ll make sure it stays that way,” he smiled as she leaned up to kiss him, her head nodding lightly as she grabbed at his thigh. “You should probably go get ready,” he said quietly after a few minutes of holding her.

“So should you,” Olivia answered as she pulled the towel off her head and dropped it behind the couch. “Come on,” she said as she rose from the couch, not bothering to grab at the towel that unraveled from the tucked knot at her chest and let it fall to the floor. “If we hurry you can help get out some of this nervous energy,” she taunted as Kyle looked up at her from the couch, his eyebrows raised high as his eyes raked over her body.

“Last night not enough?” He asked though it was just a tease because he was already standing and clicking off the television. He followed her into the bedroom, his hands sliding over her hips from behind as she paused at the bed. Olivia reached up behind her to snake her hand behind Kyle’s neck to pull him down to kiss her shoulder.

“Never enough,” Olivia answered with a satisfied sigh as he kissed at that soft spot where her shoulder met her neck. She grabbed one of his hands and guided it to her center and groaned as his fingers found exactly what she wanted, arching her back against him.

“Should have said something earlier,” Gaz growled against her neck feeling just how ready she was for him. “Could have taken my time,” he said as he gently rubbed at her clit, smirking as she ground her hips back against him, using the movement to give herself more pressure. “Really drawn this out,” he nipped at her ear before she pulled away from him and bent forward, propping her hands on the edge of the bed, before turning to look back at him.

“You can draw it out later,” she breathed out as she watched him peel off his boxers and the undershirt he was wearing. These days she was always ready for him, the desire to climb him as soon as he walked in the door from work was almost its own form of torture. She knew it was probably the hormones coursing through her body but she also knew it was the love for him, and the love she knew he had for her. “Please,” she whined as Kyle bent over and kissed the middle of her spine, working his way up between her shoulders.

“Patience love,” he answered as he brushed the still-wet hair off her back before sliding his hands around her front to grab her breasts. They were already pleasantly swollen and he grinned when she groaned as he rolled her nipples between his fingers, biting down on her shoulder blade. There was an older hickey there that had begun to fade and Kyle sucked at the abused spot gently.

It had taken Olivia a long while to be comfortable like this, her trauma from what Henry did to her made this position nearly impossible for her in the beginning. Kyle had taken his time, letting her guide him as she worked to take back her own body. He had kissed every inch of skin on her back, let his hands gently rub over the skin as she laid on her stomach in bed, and pulled her hips up back toward him. She had panicked a few times and he quickly switched tactics but then one day she asked him to take her like this. Had arched up to him and practically begged him and Kyle had, his hands holding her hips as she set the pace. When he managed to get her to come twice on her hands and knees, praising and lovingly holding her through it, she had let go of that final hold Henry had over her body.

“Kyle,” Olivia breathed out as Kyle finally pushed into her, his hand gently pushing her shoulder blades down so her face was pressed into the mattress. Her hands gripped hard at the edge of the bed as he set a quick pace and she whined, closing her eyes to enjoy the rapid slapping sounds their bodies made. He kept one hand on her hip as the other found her clit again and she began to pant, doing her best to not be too loud for the poor neighbors. The flat was old and the walls were thin but he kept hitting that spot that made her cry out with each thrust.

“Oli,” Kyle groaned as he felt her clamping around him. “Fuck love,” he grabbed at her shoulder to keep her pressed back against him, his movements had pushed her too far away from his liking. She keened at the pressure and he bent over her back to roughly kiss at the side of her face as he rolled his hips. He ground into her as she rolled back into him and he felt her release as she gasped into the sheets, one of her hands stretching far out in front of her on the bed as she slumped further into the sheets. “There you go,” he grinned as her body became lucid coming down from the high he had just given her. “One more for me, give me one more before we go,” he goaded and Olivia nodded before she pressed up on her hands fully, extending her arms.

At this angle he could rock her against him, her hands able to give her leverage to push back. He wasn’t going to last in this position, her body was still fluttering around him and he could feel her cum on the tops of his thighs as he pushed even deeper. She was moaning with abandon now as he thrust hard, almost pulling out fully before pushing back in to the hilt. She helped him move her body, rolling her hips and arching her back up a bit to let him get that little bit further in until he couldn’t go anymore. He was afraid he was going to leave bruises on her hips as he bullied her body but he couldn’t help it, and the way Olivia was begging him to keep going he knew she couldn't care less.

“Fuck, fucking hell,” Kyle groaned out as he felt his release coming, “fuck yes…just keep moving,” he instructed, begged, as she rocked her body back against him on her own volition. “Just like that,” he looked down watching as she fucked herself on him. He heard her cry out with another release and her movements became frantic and that was the final thing he needed as she slid over him. He came hard, his hands sliding down to her thighs to hold her fast against him to fill her with his spend as deeply as he could so it would remain there.

When she stilled and caught her breath Gaz gently pulled out, pressing kisses down her back before standing up and tugging her to the bathroom to get ready. They readied in relative silence, smiling at one another in the mirror as Kyle shaved and she curled her hair up into a French knot. When she picked out a simple black dress Gaz zipped up the back for her and smoothed his hand around her front. He rested his hand over her belly as he looked at her in the mirror while she put on a soft dusting of pink lipstick. Then when she finished, she straightened his tie, dark purple, to go with the lilac button-down he had selected just for her.

“Let’s go put that final nail in his coffin,” Gaz said as he picked up her hand and kissed the back of it before they got out of the car at the courthouse. Olivia let out a steadying breath before hooking her arm in Kyle’s elbow as he led her up the steps, her head held high ignoring the cameras and questions as she walked. Her lawyer had advised her not to speak to any media, not until it was over, and Olivia had no problem with that. The cameras inside the courthouse were much quieter, the reporters were not allowed to talk as the trial commenced.

When Henry was led in, Olivia stiffened in her seat. Kyle placed a comforting hand on her thigh, his thumb rubbing over the skin above her knee that had begun to shake. Henry stared at her when he walked in, his eyes narrowing in that threatening way he always did when he was going to make her pay for some indiscretion. Olivia swallowed but, unlike before, she didn’t look away. She held his gaze defiantly, using Kyle’s silent strength and support next to her to not back down. She knew Kyle was also staring right at Henry and for the first time, Henry was the one to look away from Olivia first.

“You’ve got this. I’m so proud of you,” Kyle said quietly into Olivia’s ear as the government lawyers came to get her and led her to the stand. She did her best not to shake as she took her seat and when the questions began, she held her ground. She didn’t waver from her story, didn’t let the tears that burned behind her eyes fall, and in moments of nearly breaking she glanced at Kyle. He was positioned right in her view, angled so she could easily see his supportive smile, and she found herself swelling with pride and love for him all over again.

Kyle had always been there. Always. Even when she pushed him away, wounded him, tried to break him so he wouldn’t come back to her for his own safety, he remained resolute. When she didn’t deserve his help, he still gave it. When she thought she would completely fall off the edge, he was there holding her hand and pulling her back. Whatever she needed from him, he gave freely and without question. Her hand slid unconsciously over her stomach as she watched Kyle, who grinned wider at her movement. A child was not something they had even remotely discussed, but the moment it came into their lives, Kyle dove headfirst into preparing, with zero hesitation. That was him though—no fear, no holding back. Her steadfast soldier.

Henry was sentenced to the highest extent of the law after being found guilty on all charges. The trial had taken months but Olivia’s weeks-long testimony washed away any questions of his guilt. He was locked away in a high-security prison, his family money liquidated to pay all his debts and the civil suits that were mounted against him. More and more people were arrested and tried as evidence kept mounting but Olivia and Kyle weren’t needed for those trials. They had done their duty and put the ringleader away, putting an end to his attempt to run the world.

It took years, but Olivia and Kyle were finally free from Henry and could start the life they had wanted before he interfered. It was a hard-fought victory that had almost killed them both, but in the end, Henry had finally lost at his own game. He was left to rot in a cell for all the atrocities he committed, while the world moved on without him, slowly wiping him from their memories.

And as Kyle held Olivia on the couch in their run-down apartment two months after Henry's sentence, laughing as he spoon-fed her yet another scoop of his ice cream because she whined that it tasted better, he knew this was exactly where they were supposed to be.

[glade-constellation]

Horrors Beyond the Bayou AU Infodump (Q & A Style)

Edit : This AU has been renamed "Dirty Paws, Little Talks"!

First off, any triggering topics?

• Yes, there are several triggering topics that are gone over in this AU. There is a lot of bad and messed up shit happening here, the fic will be rated M on Ao3 when I start posting. Please be advised that there is going to be a lot of very upsetting topics being mentioned or discussed! This includes but is not limited to: viewing a person as property, graphic depictions of violence/torture, talk of death/suicide, suicidal ideation, self harm, graphic depictions of gore, use of weapons such as knives, etc. There will be a lot of heavy stuff in this AU. You have been warned. (All posts for this AU will be properly tagged.)

What’s the main plot of the story?

• Fazbear Entertainment basically has an underground system for black market sales because they never can pass up a few extra bucks. One of the few things they sell are tiny little creatures called Borrowers, a species thought only to exist in children’s story books (for those who don’t know what borrowers are, here’s a wiki link). Y/N is a borrower who escapes their containment before being sold, but now must learn to survive in the Pizzaplex and all the dangers it brings.

Who’s the main cast?

• Y/N is our protagonist, but Sun & Moon and Monty are also main characters in this AU. A lot of the first half of this AU is simply just for setting up Y/N’s relationship with them (romantic for DCA, queerplatonic for Monty). A lot of the other canon characters come in on the second half of the plot, which will tackle the canon plot of Security Breach. Freddy, Gregory, and another surprise character will become friends with Y/N during this time as they work together to figure out what’s happening at the Pizzaplex. Some familiar faces that are canon to FNAF but aren’t seen in SB will also be showing up!

What relationships can we expect to see?

• Sun x Y/N is a definite, but I’m on the fence whether to make Moon and Y/N romantic or queerplatonic. I’m still working on Moon’s personality in the AU, so I’m not quite sure what his sexuality is yet (they are genderfluid though). There is queerplatonic Monty & Y/N, something I wasn’t actually planning on from the start but that showed up and didn’t want to leave. They both rely heavily on each other throughout certain things that happen in the first half of the plot, and form a very tight bond. There’s also some background Roxy/Chica because those two are literally so in love and you can’t tell me otherwise. (I would like to add that all interactions are SFW, and Y/N is portrayed as being asexual. Lots of cuddles and kisses but that’s about it.)

What’s the setting of the story?

A large majority of the first half of the plot takes place in Monty Golf, and Y/N’s home is there for a very large majority of the whole plot. That’s actually how I came up with the AU name. The Theater/Daycare are the second most used setting in this AU. We will eventually be seeing the whole Pizzaplex, but for the first half of the plot Y/N is stuck to the ground floor. The Daycare has a very different set up during the very beginning of the AU since it’s technically still a theater then. The canonical theater part of the daycare was all concessions/storage back then, and the main stage was the ball pit area. The glass walls used to be bleacher-type sitting areas, separated by what is still currently being used as the daycare doorway. The line that Moon uses to get around in the air was something kept from the theater, and used to be used to better entertain and immerse the audience.

What’s the borrower world building?

• The first and most obvious thing, borrowers are a real thing in this AU. While they inspired fictional works like the Borrowers book series and the Littles, they are real beings. They look mostly human and have human intelligence, but have a few differences. They tend to have mouse-like ears, a padded nose, fangs, digigrade legs/feet, claws, tails, and fur in some areas. Their heart and respiratory rate are also considerably faster, much more in tune with that of small rodents. Borrowers tend to actually live in colonies in large abandoned buildings or old houses. Yes, there are still plenty who live in human households, but borrowers find it infinitely more safer to stay clear of human populated areas. Borrower culture can change dramatically depending on if they live in colonies or not and what location they live in, but most borrowers tend to view the sun and moon as almost gods. It’s not the same way humans typically view gods, probably better to be compared to good omens and horoscopes. While the brightness of the day isn’t safe for borrowers, the sun helps grow their food and provides them with shadow, as darkness cannot exist without light. Children born during the day are often viewed to be gifted with some sort of ability to nurture and provide. The moon is a symbol of protection, and new moons are seems as blessings. Children born at night are viewed to have different abilities based on the moon phases. Babes of the New Moon are viewed to have have the potential to create great change and are seen as lucky to have around. It’s unknown why, but sun babies and new moon babies are actually quite rare. Most borrowers tend to have their babies during or near the full moon. (This cultural view on the sun and moon does affect how Y/N views Sun & Moon in the beginning, but it’s simply a push to trust them more than the other Pizzaplex inhabitants. More of a subconscious push.)

[peachycheol]

| reliable |

© banner credit: thank you to the love of my life @suhdreams​ for making this banner for me 🥺💘 ➸ summary: when people say ‘not all men’, they’re actually right. kim mingyu, your best friend, would never disappoint you. especially not in the bedroom.  ➸ genre: pwp 😌 ➸ pairing: best friend!mingyu x reader  ➸ warning: dirty talk, slight dumbification, heavy petting, unprotected sex (pls use protection irl), cream pie, oral (fem. receiving), cum eating, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, yn is really horny? ➸ w.c: 3.2k ➸ tags: you can all thank @risquewonu​ for this <333  

➸ author’s note: ahh, i’m sorry this took me so long! i didn’t mean to write this much, but what the smuth wants, the smuth gets. also, i want to thank you all for 100 followers! i’ll make a separate post to properly thank you all, but i am!!! baffled!!! i really appreciate the support ;u; love you guys! 

If there are two things in this world that you are absolutely certain of, they are: 1) Men ain’t shit, and 2) with the exception of Kim Mingyu. Knowing this information doesn’t really benefit you in any way. You still go out on Tinder dates that leave you high and dry 15 minutes after taking you home. And Kim Mingyu is still your very platonic best friend, who seems to be reliable in every single way except perhaps in the one way you need most desperately. 

But for all you know, he could be just like every other male in bed. He couldn’t be unbelievably handsome, the most thoughtful, caring person you know, and a sex god; it just wouldn’t be fair! No, it is much easier to convince yourself that Mingyu’s perfection only extended to being a best friend, if only for your peace of mind. Otherwise, you’d have to live with the possibility that the only person who can give you sweet release is the only one you’re technically not supposed to fuck. 

For reasons that seem to become annoyingly hazy every time you lie down next to him on his bed, just as you are at this moment. 

The two of you often end nights out like this, scrolling through one another’s TikTok’s until the wee hours of the morning, laughing loudly until his neighbors threaten to file a noise complaint. As someone who has claimed him as your best friend for three years, you know you’re supposed to be used to the smell of the musky cologne that clings onto his sheets and the feeling of his warm body as he leans closer to show you his For You Page. But lately, it seems harder and harder to fight off the warmth that pulses straight to your core whenever he does anything as simple as laugh, making you shiver when his breath tickles the side of your neck. 

God, you just really need to get laid properly. You lick your dry lips and try to remind yourself that you have no idea if Mingyu would even be able to satisfy you. Though you do have to admit you couldn’t imagine any situation where the boy isn’t overly generous and eager to please-- No! Just watch the damn TikToks! 

“Hey, you good?” Mingyu suddenly asks, nudging your side. “Why aren’t you laughing? ‘His package needs to come in the fe-mail’! That one’s gold!”

You let out a snort. Leave it to Mingyu to bring you back to reality with one line. Even when you don’t say a word, he knows exactly what you need in a moment, which in this case is a reminder that he’s your very dorky friend. “Shut up, that’s so stupid,” you say, but you can’t help but laugh along with him when it replays.

“Aha, you laughed though.” Satisfied with your response he scrolls down to a video of a girl smiling suggestively into the camera. She points to the caption that says ‘If all the boys that made me cum were in my room with me right now, I would…’ Suddenly, the camera pans and she looks at the screen tiredly. The caption now read as ‘Be alone. Men are trash’.

At this, you bust out with a howl of laughter, clutching at your stomach. It was kind of sad, but it was good to know you weren’t alone in this world. All the while, Mingyu stares at you with an eyebrow raised. Once you calm down, you meet his amused gaze. “What are you looking at?”

“You thought it was that funny, huh? It’s not even that accurate,” he says teasingly. 

You roll your eyes. “Um, yeah it is. I’ve never met a man who could make me cum, and clearly many other people can relate. This video has 1.4k likes!”

Mingyu quickly puts his phone down and pouts. “Nu uh! Not all guys are that incompetent!” 

“Men are such babies,” you sigh. “They are that incompetent! You know how many dates I went to last semester, right? Not one of them made me cum!”

“Okay, I told you before you even went on those dates that those guys weren’t worth your time.” Mingyu waves his hand dismissively. “For your information, I have made sure that all the ladies that I’ve taken to the bedroom had at least one orgasm. At least!”

“Mingyu, sweetie,” you coo, patting his cheek as if to comfort him. “They were all faking it, because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”  Right? They all had to have faked it. You try to tell yourself this, try to reign in the last bit of sanity you have before your mind wanders off to anywhere inappropriate.

Your best friend now props himself up so that you could properly see the smirk plastered across his annoyingly chiseled features. “You’re so sure, huh? I bet I could make you cum multiple times. Easily.” 

Your mouth falls open in shock. It isn’t uncommon for the two of you to taunt each other like this, but you have also never been in such a vulnerable mood. It’s the type of mood that has your heart racing impossibly fast, the type of mood that has your panties pathetically damp from just one sentence. You blink, trying to regain as much composure as you can. You know it’s too late, though; your imagination is already flashing through scenes of your deepest desires, all being fulfilled by the man in front of you. But Mingyu is only joking, so you do what you can to continue playing along and pretend like you don’t want him to just fuck you into the mattress until you were drooling into his sheets. 

“I-I seriously doubt that!” you say, but there is no conviction in your voice. Clearing your throat, you try adding, “Dude, I’ve literally seen you fall down a flight of stairs when you were sober. And we were going up. Kinda hard to imagine that you’ll know how to fuck me to an orgasm when you can’t even walk right.” 

Now you’re just lying through your teeth, but you want to hold off the inevitable moment that Mingyu discovers your apparent arousal for as long as possible. The last thing you need right now is for him to laugh in your face.

Mingyu chuckles, then suddenly shifts so that his arms are placed on either side of your head, trapping you underneath him. To his surprise, you do nothing to push him off like you usually do at this point. Still, he doesn’t plan on being the first to back off, so he continues his little game, intent on winning. “See, this is why you can’t find a guy who can satisfy you. You clearly don’t know what to look for.” He leans down until the tip of his nose grazes yours. For good measure, he drops his voice an octave and says, “You’ll be the one who can’t walk right when I’m done with you.” 

Perplexingly, his shameless flirting doesn’t make you move as he predicted. Nor does it make you look annoyed. Instead, you look up at him with eyes that are unmistakably glazed over with something he didn’t quite expect to see: pure lust. It immediately sends a rush of blood down to his cock. He blinks. Oh. So this is where the night is going. He only falters for a moment, but he soon flashes a breathtaking smile down at you, his eyes glinting mischievously. 

 It isn’t like he’s never thought about it before; he had just assumed that once you started calling him your best friend, you were also lowkey telling him that sex was off the table. And it wasn’t like he minded, because he definitely liked being by your side knowing it was fully okay to be himself since you were obligated to love him regardless. Plus there was just something about you that made him want to take care of you and if being your best friend was the only way he could do it, then that had been fine by him. But now that he knows that he can take care of you in another way, in the way that he sometimes found himself yearning for on lonely nights, he is all too eager to break free of the unspoken boundaries between the two of you. 

“And what am I looking for?” you whisper. 

“It seems like you’re looking for me, baby,” he responds softly, before pressing a kiss where your jaw meets your neck. He slowly drags his lips down the side of your neck, and revels in how it already has you pressing your legs together. “Damn, you weren’t kidding when you said those guys didn’t make you cum, huh? Is that why you’re already so fucking worked up? You want to cum that badly?”

You nod wordlessly, not quite ready for Mingyu to hear the desperate whine that would surely leave your lips as he continues pressing wet kisses along your skin. You opt to simply thread your fingers in his hair and tug hard enough to show your impatience. It seems to trigger something in him; all in an instant, your best friend’s soft lips clash against your own, his tongue easily sliding into your mouth, all the while while his hand reaches down to grab one of your thighs. He squeezes it teasingly before pushing it outwards, which causes the mini skirt you’re wearing to bunch up around your waist, revealing your panties and how they cling to your pussy like a second skin. 

“M-mingyu!” you squeak into his lips when you feel his fingers tentatively rub small circles into the wet spot. He nips at your lip harshly as he starts to rub more deliberately, the flimsy fabric of your underwear creating a delicious friction against your clit. “H-hah! Yes, o-oh my god!” 

“Fuck, you’re already so wet for me, baby girl,” he chuckles, but he knows he isn’t one to talk while his cock is half hard just from hearing the way you moan his name. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you. You’re not leaving this room until your little pussy cums nice and hard on my cock.” 

“Ngh!-- yes p-please! Please, Mingyu,” you beg mindlessly. Your eyebrows are scrunched together in concentration. Despite your best friend’s promises, you are still hesitant to hold out any hope for anything more than what you’re accustomed to, so you try to take as much as you can while it lasts. However, in your lustful daze, you had forgotten that if Kim Mingyu is anything, he is a man of his word. 

 You let out a high-pitched moan when his fingers suddenly grind harsh circles into your clit, more surprised than anything else that he even knew where to find it. “But first,” he says, licking his lips, “you’re going to be a good girl and cum just like this. Right into your filthy little panties. Can you do that for me, baby?” 

He takes your drawn out whine as a response, and continues to rub relentlessly over your hardened clit until your legs begin to shake. That’s when he shoves the soaked material of your underwear to the side and pinches the bud. Hard. 

He rolls your clit between the pads of his fingertips over and over, sending jolts of electric pleasure all the way to your toes. It causes them to curl, all the while you feel the heat simmering in your lower abdomen finally coil tighter and tighter. “Fuckfuckfuck,” you chant, the words coming out slurred like you’re a teenager who’s gotten drunk from one sip of champagne. “M-mingyu-- mmh! I t-think I’m going to--!” 

A loud cry leaves your lips the moment the coil snaps, and you nearly tear up from how much better it feels to finally cum on someone else’s fingers, especially Mingyu’s long, thick digits.  He soothingly slides them through your drenched folds, mesmerized by how much wetness now covered his hand. “That’s it, baby,” he encourages. Once your body slumps back into the mattress, he brings his fingers up to see how they glisten in the light. “We’ve barely even started and look at what the mess you’ve already made. You must have been waiting so long for me to fuck you, huh?” 

Not even your post-orgasm buzz can keep you from getting irked by Mingyu’s cockiness, which is why you reach your own hand down to squeeze his cock through his jeans. “Seems like I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for this,” you say with a sly grin of your own. He watches you, jaw clenched, as you swiftly pop the button of his pants open and slip your fingers past the waistband of his underwear to take hold of his fully hardened member. 

It feels warm and heavy in your palm, which can barely wrap around the girth. You bite your lip, your pussy greedily clenching around nothing at the thought of how good it would stretch you out.

“I should have known you’d be a fucking tease,” Mingyu rasps. His hips buck into your hand involuntarily, and his smile returns when he notices how the movement makes you whimper in anticipation. 

There is a beat of silence when you and Mingyu meet eyes before the both of you begin undressing each other as fast as you can, haphazardly tugging off both your shirts, his pants, and your pesky undergarments. Once he’s tossed aside your soiled panties, he immediately presses your thighs apart to get a full view of your sopping cunt. “So pretty,” he mumbles to himself, spreading the lips apart with his fingers. His member throbs at the sight, the tip leaking precum when he sees how your pussy clenches in anticipation. “I bet it’s going to look even prettier when it’s taking my fat cock, don’t you think?”

The two of you watch in awe as Mingyu starts to sink into your entrance, a garbled moan leaving your lips when the tip alone already has you feeling so full. “Mingyu, h-how is-- ooh!-- your d-dick soo-- f-fucking big? A-Ah!” It takes a good while for you to finish your sentence as each of Mingyu’s shallow thrusts leave you gasping for air. By the time he bottoms out, the both of you are panting hard, both engrossed by how snugly his cock fits in your walls. 

“Shit, if I had known you’d be this tight, I would have fucked you sooner,” Mingyu groans. He slowly drags his member out of you, letting you feel every inch of him before he surges forward into a feverish pace that already has his bed frame creaking loudly. He is definitely getting a noise complaint from his grumpy neighbors tonight. But seeing you underneath him like this, lips parted and legs spread, definitely makes it difficult to care about anything other than the desire to hear more of your needy cries. “Does it feel good, baby girl? Do you like how my cock fills your little pussy?”

“It fuh--!--ngh, feels s-soo good,” Having already came once, your sensitivity is on overload, and each rough thrust of Mingyu’s hips, each crude slap of his skin against yours, is enough to drive you closer and closer to delirium. “Mmh-- please, Mingyu! F-fuck me so deep!”

“Anything for my little cockslut.” He moves quickly to kneel between your legs, hooking his arms underneath your knees to keep them open as he continues to pound into you. The new position instantly makes you keen loudly, eyes rolling to the back of your head when you feel his member brush against your cervix. 

“Fuuuuck,” you sob and clutch at the sheets. His grip on your legs tightens and he angles his hips so that he hits that spot every time, rendering you completely incoherent. You want to beg him to fuck you like this forever, to tell him you’d do anything to feel his cock fuck you open every night, but you can only babble, unable to comprehend anything that isn’t the insatiable thirst burning within you.

“Damn baby, did I fuck you stupid?” Seeing you so drunk on his cock, he wonders how anyone could ever fuck you without wanting to see you cum over and over again. His hair falls over his eyes as he fucks up into you with renewed vigor, his hot skin covered in a light sheen of sweat. He grits his teeth when he feels how tightly your walls grip onto him.“Shit-- you must want me to make you cum again, baby girl. Your little pussy just keeps sucking me in.”

“H-hah, y-yes! Yes, please god, Mingyu, I want to c-cum again. P-please let me cum,” you beg, practically writhing as you pathetically attempt to meet his thrusts. Without any hesitation, Mingyu brings down his thumb and presses it into your swollen clit, causing your body to seize up suddenly. “A-Aah Mingyu! I’m--!” The intensity of your orgasm has your back arching off the mattress, head thrown back in a silent scream. Wave after wave of pleasure continuously washes over you, seemingly unending, unlike any orgasm you ever thought possible. 

“That’s right baby girl, get my cock nice and wet,” Mingyu growls. He fucks you through your release as he sloppily chases his own, not too far behind with how your walls are pulsing around him. He makes sure his cock is deep inside you and stills his hips when fills you with his hot cum. “Fuck, this pussy was fucking made for me.”

Just as you think you’ve finally come down from your high, he pulls out of you and he shifts to lower himself to place his mouth on your spent pussy. “M-mingyu!” 

You squirm and half-heartedly try to shove his head away, far too sensitive to have his tongue licking into your leaking entrance, but Mingyu is persistent. He pushes your legs to your chest to keep you from squeezing them close, and hums when he tastes the hot mixture of your and his own cum on his lips. The way he slurps and sucks at your folds is absolutely sinful as he eats you out like you’re the most delectable treat. It almost hurts to feel so much ecstasy at once, but it still leaves you mewling for more, unable to get enough of the boy.

Your third orgasm ripples over you when he suddenly scrapes his teeth over your abused clit, and you feel a tear slide down your cheek as you weakly shake against his mouth. 

Mingyu is smiling when he pulls away, looking slightly ridiculous with how his lips still glisten with cum. You tiredly slump back into his pillows, eyes already drooping close. “What is it?”

“I told you I could do it~” he says proudly. He goes to grab some tissues from the bedside table so that he could start cleaning you up, giggling all the while. It really is unfair how he could look so cute moments after railing you into another dimension. 

You groan. You’re never going to hear the end of this.

[popculturebuffet]

The Punisher (2001) #16 and 17 Review: The One Where Frank Castle Does Violence to Wolverine’s Testicles (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people. And for those just scrolling by the punisher, wolverine or x-men tags and wondering “wait did this actually happen” Yes, yes it did. This story not only happened but somehow Frank Castle taking a bat to Wolverine’s junk after making him look like a partially unfinished terminator is NOT the weirdest thing in this story. So if that’s got you hooked welcome, i’m jake, I review comics and animation and today we got a weird one and just in time too. 

See over the last week i’ve dealt with a lot. Last friday Bobbi, a woman who was like a third mother ot me, always there for me and mom, always nice, always taking us out to dinner.. passed away from cancer. It has been a hard week, harder still since I was SUPPOSED to have cut my schedule back by a day.. but the grief over the situation hit me so hard last week I had to push the watchmen review back to this week. So ending it by having a laugh at a so bad it’s good comic by a guy who actively hates superhero comics to an absurd degree, it helps honestly. I needed to review some garbage that dosen’t offend me on a deep level and is instead just fun to point and laugh at, and these issues delivered. 

So some backstory for those just joining us: Late last year I covered the fourth volume of The Boys Comic Book. It was a work I had avoided for years due to being an overly cynical, overly edgelord, and overly half assed deconstruction of superheroes by a man who openly did not grow up with them, does not like them and does not want to get how they work. As such I had to deal with panels.. like this. 

(Not from the arc but I read all four volumes up to it so it goes in there) 

I had to put up with this for THIRTY ISSUES to have proper context. This comic was worse than I could’ve imagined. 

So the reason I bring this up besides to let you feel my pain is that to properly research for this tire fire, I read this very arc i’m reviewing today for research, as I had heard ennis hated wolverine so much he had an arc where he gets his face shot off, gets hit in the junk, gets his dong shot, and then gets run over by a steamroller. And yes.. all that happens. This arc is a petty, spiteful take that at a character garth dosen’t like to glorify a character he idolizes. It is also incredibly stupid, mildly offensive, and insane in a way that really puts his “comics aren’t realistic but punisher is” brand of nonsense in perspective. And i’ll show you why under the cut as we point and laugh at Garth Ennis to show people why his hero is better than yours. 

So before we dive in, I should give my thoughts on what I think of the Punisher and Wolverine himself. 

For the Punisher.. i’m not a fan. He CAN be used well as seen when he intersects with daredevil, and i’ve LIKED some punisher runs. I still want to read war journal as what I have is really good, Ennis MAX run ironically enough is a brilliant decounstruction of the character , paticuarlly the bonechilling vietnam set “born” mini series that kicks it off, and while his other works are mostly questionable, I loved Matthew Rosenbergs run. The character can be well written and engaging... but he’s just not for me.. as for why it’s mostly a prefrence thing. I’m just not into taxi driver style dives into a bad man on the edge shooting people. I CAN enjoy psychlogical character pieces, I absolutely love american psycho for that, and darker subject matter.. but the punisher just never clicks for me. It’s all mostly just a cycle of examining a bad man doing thigns to worse men with no real change or upheavel. While given his recent work i’m not sure he can pull it off, at least jason aaron is trying something new making him head of the hand. Outside of some dallances with being a franketein or a war machine, Frnak’s really just stuck in a never ending feedback loop of misery. And while granted most heroes are prone to resetting, it’s a sad fate of comic books, frank is the most frustrating; He will NEVEr answer for the shit he’s done and given he could easily be replaced by someone else with a hard past in a gun, I don’t get why. If you like Punisher, tha’ts fine, good for you. But he’s not for me. With that said I did judge this comic fairly, as I said I liked ennis other punisher work and the character can be written well. This is just not one of his better stories.. and he’s been an angel once so that threshold is vast.  Next up is

Who I do like quite a bit. Given i’m a fan of the x-men this shoudln’t be a huge suprise but while he’s not one of my personal faviorite mutants like say Cypher, Sunspot, Multiple Man, Strong Guy, Wolfsbane, Scarlet Witch (She’s still one to me dammit), Warlock or everyone’s faviorite sexy murder gilf Magneto, but I still like Logan quite a bit. He’s a character with a lot of intresting angels to approach from: he can be a man struggling with the beast within, a man whose lived a thousand lives and either has to recover them, reckon with them, or LIVE with those memories in the past few decades. On a team he’s invaluable, often serving as the suprising blunt voice of reason, willing to say shit people won’t or confront them and keep them honest, while also being a man so willing to stand up for his convictions he’ll split the x-men in half if that’s what it takes. I will concede though he’s very much a character whose tolerablility varies on thew riter: the good ones do the things I said above.. the bad ones will either reduce him to grumbly snikit man with no limits to who he won’t skewer instead of gneinely limiting it to what’s ABSOLUTELY necessary, or in worst cases have him try to murder a 15 year old time displaced cyclops because the future one, WHILE POSSED BY THE PHOENIX FORCE MIND YOU, killed Charles. Despite being a TEACHER. I.. I do not look forward to the inventible day I have to unpack the shit show that is All-New X-Men. But on the whole he’s a strong character and as we’ll get to in just a sec, Ennis REALLY dosen’t understand that nor did he care to. 

Before we get to that though we have our setup: The Punisher has, as he helpfully puts it himself so I don’t have to read the 15 issues prior, recently thrown the east coast mob into chaos: After taking down the head, Tony Casino, the body is left fighting amongst themselves in chaos.. which naturally benfits frank as it makes him easier to wipe out his preferred prey when their confused and makes things safer when they can’t function properly.  One of the remaning sub-bosses though, Big Tony Grigorio, is making some actual headway to getting everyone together so Frank plans to make his brains come apart.. only to find the place already massacred with all the legs sawed off. Ain’t that just the way? You break into a mob hangout to shoot them all up and someone’s taken all the fun out of it. And if you think there’s a mop in the punisher’s battle van.. well there is but it’s sure as hell not for this. It’s for keeping that van impaculate and choking info out of people, like all mops. 

The next scene we enter the wolverine..and if you’ve never read this issue before.. you aren’t prepared for the delightfully stupid clusterfuck that is Garth Ennis’ Wolverine

OKay so as you might of noticed Wolverine sounds like the lovechild of The Ultimate Warrior and Scott Stieiner and is half as coherent. Ennis’ Wolvie is a rambly weirdo who won’t shut up, kills people over minor disputes, and calls himself the canucklehead for some reason, a phrase I don’t belivie has EVER been used for the character and if it has it’s not enough to warrant use this much in a parody. Seriously he calls himself that. 

Ennis’ wolvie TRIES to be a parody, Ennis trying to show how Wolvie just isn’t a good character and here’s why Punisher is better. And you CAN have your characters show why their better: one of the most famous superman stories “Whatever Happened To Truth, Justice and the American Way” is like that, having Superman fight a pastiche of the authority while showing why he still matters. But this isn’t a discussion on why a type of hero still works despite some audeinces finding him tiresome, or WHY wolverine might not work.  This is a  man getting paid actual dollary doos to write n edgelord fanfic about why wovlerine sucks. 

These issues try to sell it as frank is better.. but to even attempt so they essentially reset Wolverine to what he was like when he first joined the x-men. And make no mistake Early Wolverine is a massive walking erection who will kill anyone friend or foe and is barely kept in check by cyclops> Case in point here’ shim nearly murdering what would become one of his best friends over the dumbest reasons imaginable. 

Yes that REALLY happened. and yes wolverine was a swaggering, chatty jackass who tried to murder a friend. The thing is.. he GREW from there. He slowly grew to care for his teamates, with again the guy he just tried to carve up like an mmmm turkey being one of his best pals to this day. He tried to reign himself in, slowly making it clear he hated being a savage beast of a man but had resigned himself to it. But it was also clear there was more to him: he had a snarky side, was loyal, and when backed against the wall in the dark phoenix saga, helped turn the tide against the hellfire club. This all cumilated in the classic Wolverine mini by Claremont and Miller, where Wolverine was driven to his lowest and forced to accept he truly was a man, defining his character forever after. Wolverine is a man who both struggles not to kill.. but accepts sometimes he must so the others don’t have to. While Frank Castle kills because he has a driven obession he needs health with and won’t stop till he’s dad, Logan does it so his friends will never have to become what he’s been forced ot be his whole life, and sometimes questions if he should even go that far. It’s who he is. 

And just to make sure Garth hadn’t just been commenting on a recent trend I peeked at a few issues of his solo, both form the time and a few years before that, just to see if this parody had any weight based on comics I hadn’t reader, and they are as follows for transparency purposes:

150, 158 (A Raptor), 189, 145, 131, 145, 147, 176, 181

And not only was Logan’s characterization consistent despite four or five diffrent writers, but the one time he was unstable.. was when he had been going feral for several months anyway, and was so laid low he was willing to work with apocalypse, itself not the best metric. And I checked some late 90′s x-men comics too just to be sure and while they aren’t the comics finest hour, still not rambling snikit bub. X-Men (Adjetivless to make sure logan was in it) 65, 74, 106, and 108. And as for the main title at the time of this book.. that waas New X-men.. which i’ve not only covered the three arcs of but was one of my faviorite comics... so yeah Garth isn’t even parodying some new phnemonion he stumbled acrossed. He made a judgey assumption instead of actually picking up a single issue of x-men or wolverine. And look it was the early 2000′s, i’m aware trades were in their infancy if they existed at all, and getting back issues probably wasn’t INCREDIBLY easy.. but Ennis has said himself on the boys that working at the big two he got to see plenty of comics, and given this was post comic bust it wouldn’t be THAT hard to say, go into a comic shop, check out the bargin bin and swipe a few issues of wolverine to check to see if your justified, especially since this is a CANON story starring this character. I’m mildly suprised he even got away with this, with the x-office not even bothering ot check what he was doing. I get punisher was overseen by marvel knights.. but marvel knights was canon. Karen Paige’s death has stuck with daredevil ever since and Black Panther still once beat Mephisto after he tricked a guy into selling his soul for some pants. 

So there is NO excuse for not telling the x-office “hey is it cool of Garth fucks with your bread and butter? Kay thanks” The only reason the suprise is mild .. is that comic books have done this shit since time began. Simply allowed a character be poorly portrayed by a book or creator because of artstic lisence, the creator being a big deal or simply not giving a flying Liefield what someone does as long as the book makes money. No one CARED Logan would be portrayed like this because he still had his books and they still had their money and that’s sad. You should take more pride in your work than what money it makes you. I’m getting 10 bucks for this, but i’m doing this because I wanted to and i’m proud of what i’ve written thus far. I took the time and effort to again pick some issues at random and make sure wolverine really DIDN’T talk like this and that garth REALLY didn’t have a point. And it’s more time than garth, any of the editors on this, or anyone who worked on this artists, inkers down took to actually think about how terribly half assed this version of wolverine is and how it’s not some clever deconstruction but just stupid. It’s just dumb. Just a raging fanboy pointing out how much a character he dosen’t like blows and it shoudln’t of gone to print that way. Garth Ennis, Marvel, and The Punisher all can and have done better. 

Anyways now we’ve got the analysis squared away I can have fun with just how gloriously, stupidly insane this story and the old canucklehead are. So for the crime of some asshole at a bar calling him short, seriously that’s what kicked things off.. he darth vader’s the guy’s hand, then procedes to massacre the bar. Because when I think beserker rage I don’t think fighting goons for an evil clandestine orginzation, nazis or sentinels.. no I think a bunch of drunks in a bar Logan wouldn’t bother to actaully use his claws on if this comic didn’t come off like it was written with the magic of cocaine. 

So while this fracas goes on someone kidnaps the guy Frank was after later.. and chainsaws his legs off, as Wolverine can hear the chainsaw.. granted he does have hightned hearing, so that is possible it’s just.. weird these guys you know.. DID THIS IN THE BACK OF A CROWDED BAR. They clearly have sound baffling but like.... we see right after this they have a hidden tourture lair, with a LOT of kidnapped men literally cut down to the knees. So there’s NO reason to do it on site except the script said so and Garth was too busy focusing on ways to make wolverine sound like someone put ants in his brain to actually make the plot.. you know.. make sense. Oh also Pete, the guy that was kidnapped, plans to wait on his brother paulie.. only for him to show up .. like this

And trust me folks.. you aren’t ready for the expination. Anyways Frank talks to his informant Soap, a former fbi man turned second rate Barbra Gordon who tells our protaganist that 8 other mobsters have been captured.. and might still be alive. 

So Frank naturally goes to a strip club for his next move

And after casing the joint finds everyone knocked out via gas, and the music having been used to cover up the chainsawing leaving a bunch of legs and a  blood trail. Canucklehead follows the same trail... and also makes an intresting comment

Yes but single amputatoin is fine.. I think Frank is trying to make him a hypocrite but again had to write Logan so out of character as to massacre a bunch of guys over a bar brawl that it looses the point. Not only that he’s TRYING to paint the punisher as better but...

Garth also has FRANK do something out of character. And given Garth is good at writing him this sticks out. Frank killing a guy this way if he did something extra henious or Frank needed info I could buy. He has almost no limits when it comes to his work. The only solid one is “No killing innocents”. But doing it “just for variety” isn’t him. Frank has issues sure, and is a serial killer, clearly. But his methodlogy is doing this for a warped sense of justice and vengance, and doing it as efficently, quickly and brutally as possible. He’s not going to get bored, tired, or anything, he’s going to keep going until he dies. Nothing will slow him down and even if you took his legs and arms and left him blind and deaf, he’d find SOME way to still keep going the second he was able. Frank Castle is many things and most of them are bad.. but he is DRIVEN in the most horrifying way possible and thus woudln’t waste time doing this. 

So we naturally get to the fight.. and Wolverine is pitted as the bad guy.. despite the fact Frank is not only worse, but Logan has EVERY REASON to think Frank did this. He as far as I know dosen’t know frank well and to him he’s juts a serial killer no one’s been able to put down. 

Now to Garth’s credit the fight does go as it should.. Frank gets his ass handed to him. He blows wolverine’s face off, sure

But Logan DOES have the upperhand the whole fight. The issue besides writing wolverine like he did all the cocaine in the NYC arc, is that Ennis treats Logan like some idiot who gets by purely on his powers and unbreakable claws. And that again.. is not the character. Part of why Logan’s deadly is that the unbreakable skeleton, the healing factor.. those are nice and defintley useful.. .but his main asset is he REALLY is the best at what he does. He’s been trained in ninjutsu, black ops, and all sorts of nasty stuff, and thus can kill like no one else. When up against an alien empire while fighting off one trying to make him into one of them, he still fought his way to the other x-men and freed them, single handed. If it was just raw power the brood would’ve killed his ass.. its his skill at what he does that makes him truly the best at what he does. Sure he loves a good scrap and diving into one.. but he can kick ass in 80 diffrent ways and taught Kitty Pryde how to do so, skills that have been invaulable since, and Jubilee got he same lessons. Logan is as skilled if not more than frank and were he not written like his brain was in beast’s lab for study that week and he was somehow still up and about despite that, Frank would be dead. 

I will say though that as infamous as this next moment is.. it is clever and does feel warranted. Since his junk apparently isn’t adamantium, I don’t know the mechanics of that honetstly maybe they just didn’t have enough for his dong but given it’s b een implied he’s had sex with MANY women since getting his skeltington, it clearly isn’t so he did his research on one thing at least?, Frank targets it

As pety as this is.. I can’t help but laugh. it’s just fucking gloriously ludcrious yet unlike some things that are about to happen, fully in line with both characters and this universe. Before Frank can set him on fire, as you do, their interupted as the mysterious power behind these chainsawings announces itself over the pa and invites both to join.. .and says the mob will see the real power in this city “just as soon as we cut them down to size” and wellllll

And the answers are somehow evne more insane than an army of gangster dwarfs surronding a faceless wolverine and the punisher. 

So after the two end up overwhelmed as Frank lacks a gun and Wolverine is coming down, we meet the boss , Tony Casnio, dwarf brother of the guy who frank killed and whose HAPPY his brother died. Besides the obvious power vacum Tony .. didn’t have the happiest last 35 years. See at fist Tony and his brother TOmmy were happy, loyal to each other.. but with Tony having dwarfisim, he was constantly tormented by his brother to make Tommy look better as time went on, with Tony slowly seething and plotting revenge. And once Frank left a power vacum because you know, he just kills people he dosen’t actually think of how to take them down and make them stay down, with his solution as we’ve seen being just kill the pieces, Tommy stepped in.. and see this would be fine. A dwarf mob boss is neat and him making his own mafia out of the disinfranchised from the various famillies and other bits of crime would be neat.. but then. .he outlines the rest of his plan...

Okay.. so Garth. You mock superheroes, you hate the concept and have not been shy about it tha’ts fine.. but don’t tell me THIS is any less insane. Don’t tell me using people with dwarfisim as a fucking stupid punchline and having them create a slave race by cutting peoples legs off is any LESS rediculolus than any superhero comic. I have seen things like a chruch try to use nightcrawler as pope, scrooge mcduck buy a whole island ot teach his nephew a lesson and hammer head cause a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION in aunt may’s inhereted breeder reactior that blows up an entire canadian island.. and this is still easily one of the dumbest things i’ve seen. Not only is reducting a disablity to basically a punchline after trying to treat it with some respect incredibly dumb, the issue is called “aim low” for fucks sake, but the fact Gartht hought he had any amoutn of high ground after this arc in mocking superhero comics, to the point his final arc is mocking superheroes, is just..the funneist thing i’ve ever heard

SO naturally Frank says NOPE to that and to Ennis credit, and as we’ve seen he has about as good a credit as  Peter Parker, it’s why he has to web up bill collectors after all, he DOES give Frank good reasons to oppose them: to him killing these guys is just something that has to be done. Dosen’t make him right, god no, but it’s done out of duty. Tony.. is butchering people for revenge instead of simply rising above it. So frank pisses off wolverine into acting, which gets them away from them because he.. forgot he could overpower a bunch of normal people? ANd then when wolverine is clearly willing ot team up frank’s response is..

Yeah as I said the first nut shot, while clearly in part ennis trying to humiate a character he dosen’t like.. is actually funny and clever. It’s frank simply finding a bat and using it, and an funny yet still awesome way to distpatch someone FAR above frank’s weight class. This one though? This is just ennis being petty and Frank being stupid. Ennis coudln’t stop at ONE nut shot, he had to go for two and make the second one even worse, while Frank.. throws away a useful ally for no reason. I get in this story WOlvie is basically a giant mallet but like.. your outgunned and outmanned frank, it pays to take what help you can get and save the nut shot for if he gets out of hand. 

So they try to cut WOlverine’s legs off with a chainsaw because this story has tgone so far off the rails it’s plowed into xavier’s school for gifted youngsters, but Frank frees wolvine, who gives Tommy some revenge by slicing his limbs off while his slave shoots himself. Frank mows everyone else down because punisher wins, and then rolls Logan over with a steamroller because Garth CLEARLY just had to get in one last petty shot. I mean i’d write it off as another quick gag if it wasn’t for the fact they spend TWO pages on this. So we end on frank killing all the amputees. YAY, one killer .. wins I guess

Final Thoughts; As you can tell this story is fucked.. but in the best way: from the edgelord humor to how cartoonishly over the top it is to how TRANSPARENT Ennis hate of logan is, this story while not good and certainly offensive, is fun to point and laugh at. I certainly did. If like me you coudl use a laugh.. this story isn’t bad. it was clealry itnended to be a comedy and it is.. just not how garth intended. The attmept at character assaination is so bad it just winds up being memorably funny instead. Maybe sometime i’ll review wolverine’s other apperance but until then follow for more, and thanks for reading. 

[littleoddwriter]

Issues with Reader Fics

Okay, I'm probably going to be a bit controversial here. Yet, I'm asking you to hear us out, please. Fanfic writers, specifically those who write "x Reader" fics, please read this. My dear friend Jack has already made a post, where I and others have contributed our experiences and feelings towards certain issues with these fics. Those issues still prevail and therefore I've decided to make my own post, which is more of a PSA, I think. Anyway. You can and should read Jack's (@mlmxreader) post here, please. It is long, yes, but it is extremely important and will say a lot of things we will not talk about here again. Now, what this is mostly about is the tagging of those fics. Every single time, we (men and non-binary people) come across Reader fics and they're tagged with just "Reader", so, naturally we assume they'll be gender neutral then. Well, they basically never fucking are. Every time, in the first few sentences or in later paragraphs something like "baby girl, girlfriend, wife, she/her" will come up and it is frustrating, can be triggering (for trans people, like myself, especially because it can cause dysphoria), and is honestly just very excluding and rude. By doing that, you show us that you do not consider anyone but women to read those fics. Even though that isn't the case. Men who like men exist and we read fics. And we want to be able to read some that don't make us feel bad or excluded. We're not asking you to suddenly write Male!Reader fics. We're asking you to tag properly. If your reader is female, tag it as "Female!Reader" or "Fem!Reader". It doesn't take more than two seconds to do that. So, please for the love of everything good, take those two seconds and type in that one word, even the abbreviation is enough. But tag it! Please! Also, please, stop tagging "male reader" or "gender neutral reader" when it's a female reader. You won't get more notes from it. All it does is clog the tags and push down fics that are actually targeted towards those groups. So, don't do that, please, thank you. One thing I personally wanted to ask actually. Why do women read "Male!Reader" fics? This is a genuine question. Why do you, if you're a woman, read those fics? They aren't targeted at you, and frankly, I don't understand it. If I were cis and not dysphoric, I still wouldn't read "Fem!Reader" fics. They aren't for me, and I wouldn't be interested in it, even if those were the only fics for a certain character. So, if anyone could answer me this, genuinely, then I'd actually appreciate that a lot, I'm truly just curious, as I have noticed women reading my "Male!Reader" fics, too. Which is cool, as we've said, you may interact, as long as you're not creepy or fetishistic, but I still don't understand why you would read that in the first place. Now, onto what my two wonderful friends have said, when I asked them if they had anything to add to this issue, or perhaps overall, still: @iscariot-rising said, "It's just disrespectful for writers and readers alike to assume that everyone reading their fanfics is inherently female, to the point where for some it has become the standard that any fic has female reader - leading to writers not tagging their fics as female readers or mentioning in their descriptions that reader is female, instead only titeling it as "character x reader", before then three sentences in referring to reader as some sort of female term. This isn't just rude, it can also be triggering for people or make them dysphoric, if not just plain uncomfortable. Fandom spaces are something that is shared across all genders and sexualities and it is only courteous to respect this and tag your fics accordingly, since it doesn't take a long time and saves a lot of trouble for readers." And you know what? He is absolutely right and he should say it. You need to listen to us, please. @mlmxreader said a lot, too. For example, he's mentioned that there is a reluctance to even write Gender Neutral Reader fics, which is true. Even though it would be much easier, to be perfectly honest. Yet, people seem not to do it. Do y'all not want people of different genders to enjoy your fics without feeling excluded? He also said, "oh! yeah! there's also the whole thing about lingerie, too, like putting men in women's lingerie and talkin about panties and stuff, which comes off as extremely fetishising (when it's not written by mlm) as well as just... really gross bc like that stuff can trigger dysphoria and half the time it's not even tagged? Like it wouldn't be so bad if y'all tagged it; on top of that, there's also the whole fact that they assume that all mlm relationships revolve around sex and that that's all that matters. But then also using (m/n) standing for "male name" instead of (y/n), like, what the FUCK is up with that?? /gen" Again, he is absolutely right. Tag your shit, please. I know it can be tiring to pick out everything relevant, but trust me; you'll do a lot of people a big fucking favour when you tag your stuff properly. And frankly, I agree with him. I don't understand the whole '(m/n)' thing because if we're men, our names are automatically male because, well, we're male. It doesn't really make sense. That might just be a thing that personally bugs us, though, I honestly don't know. TLDR; Tag your fics properly, be respectful, don't assume everyone is female and therefore exclude everyone who isn't, just say (y/n)???, and yeah, that's basically it. Just be more considerate, please! That was it. I don't mean to personally attack anybody, but if you do feel attacked, that probably means that you're guilty of doing something I've listed here, and perhaps should consider changing that. I also wanna note that if you consider sending me threats or hate of any kind, I will delete it and not engage with it. If your first response to this post is something rude and hateful, you should take a step back and reconsider why you're about to do something so senseless. Does it help you in any way? No, it doesn't. So, what's the point, other than acting like a complete dick? Anyway, have a lovely morning/day/night; cheers!

[rosiehunterwolf]

There's Sand Everywhere!

(quick shoutout to @fires-of-ninjago for the title idea and inspiration for this- you remember that ask game where people suggested titles for fics and you had to come up with a story to go along with it? Well, he sent in this title, and I came up with this, and liked it so much that I screenshotted it and- here we are!)

Prompts: Summer and Heist

Word Count: 7,922

Characters: The whole gang (including Pixal) :)

Timeline: Between seasons 12 and 13

Trigger Warnings: none (holy shit that's never happened before-)

Summary: It was just supposed to be a day off. A simple beach day. But when your family consists of six ninja and a samurai, including a nindroid convinced he’s a detective, his reluctant sidekick, an aquaphobe, a girl who can command the sea, an unassuming teen who seems to attract every animal he crosses paths with, and a bunch of argumentative idiots, nothing is ever that easy.

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Tumblr work under the cut

“We,” Kai proclaimed, surveying the room, “Need a day off.”

Lloyd shrieked at the fire ninja’s sudden outburst, falling out of his chair. Jay broke into snickers, and Lloyd shot him a glare.

“Kai,” Zane sighed, “get off the table.”

Kai stuck his tongue out at the nindroid, but hopped down, anyway. “Look at you guys!” Kai waved his hands at the group for emphasis. Papers fluttered to the ground where Lloyd had knocked them in his fall, Jay and Nya were sitting on the ground, surrounded by stacks of books tall enough to be mistaken for some kind of fort, Pixal was gathering some of the papers that had gone everywhere, while Cole and Zane had only just paused in their task of boxing up and carrying crates to the far side of the room. “Filing documents and organizing? Boooring.”

“Tasks which you’ve been a big help with, by the way,” Lloyd grumbled, as Cole offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. He turned back to the desk, shuffling papers off of the keyboard of his laptop, the screen filled with lines of script and dozens of files that made Kai's brain hurt just to look at.

Nya pushed her reading glasses up her nose. “Jay and I technically aren’t working. We chose to do this of our own free will.”

Kai rolled his eyes at her. “What kind of psychopaths read for fun?”

Jay kicked his leg out, aiming for Kai’s ankle, but Cole quickly stepped between them, stopping the conflict before it could escalate into anything worse.

“We’re not reading them, we’re sorting them in order from most potentially useful to least so. They’re mechanics and engineering books. You never know when they might come in handy in a pinch.”

“Oh, because that’s so much more interesting. If you guys wanna spend all your free time geeking out, fine, what do I care. But what about the rest of you? C’mon, Lloydster. You don’t really wanna spend your entire day doing this,” he gestured at the laptop and paper-strewn desk- “do you?”

“It’s not about whether or not I want to. This stuff is important, Kai.”

“Lloyd’s right,” Zane agreed. “With all the crazy missions we’ve been on lately, we’ve neglected all our paperwork, and taking care of the Monastery.”

“It’s because we’ve been gone so long that we need a break!” Kai argued. “We just got done saving the entire city from an evil video game AI! If that’s not worth celebrating, I don’t know what is.”

“Technically,” Nya remarked, not even glancing up from the book she was skimming, “That was Jay who did that.”

Kai spluttered, ignoring the smug look on Jay’s face. “Okay, yeah, but we helped! And what about Aspheera? Or the Never Realm? That was all of us. And we didn’t have time to properly recuperate from that before we got launched right into Prime Empire!”

Pixal’s brow furrowed. “Y’know, he has a point…”

A frown flitted across Zane’s face. “I suppose we have been working for a long time…”

“That’s what I’ve been saying! Come on, let’s do something fun.”

“Not video games,” Cole groaned. “Jay and I spent the last three days playing a Lava Zombies tournament, and I’m all gamed-out.”

“No, let’s actually go somewhere. Like the-”

“The library!” Jay pitched.

“Or the museum!” Zane suggested.

“No!” Kai snapped. “Man, you guys are so lame. I meant somewhere fun. We should go to-”

“The beach!” Nya cried suddenly, standing up so quickly that she sent a pile of books toppling over. “Brilliant idea, Kai!”

“Wait, no,” he yelped. “That’s not what I was going to-”

But no one heard him. They were already scrambling to their feet, murmuring excitedly to one another.

“Guys, wait!” he cried. “Why would you want to go to the beach? It’s all sandy, and wet, and-”

“Don’t worry, Kai,” Nya giggled, “we won’t let the ocean hurt you.”

“That’s not-” he felt himself turning red as the others laughed. “That’s not what I meant! I just thought… wouldn’t laser tag or something be a lot more fun?”

The others glanced at each other, uncertain. Zane stepped forward. “Let’s take a vote. All in favor of laser tag, raise your hands.”

Kai lifted his hand, but no one else did. He scowled at them.

“And all in favor of the beach?”

Six hands went up.

“Seems like we have a clear winner. Let’s get going, shall we?”

---

“Do you have the towels?”

“All here!”

“What about the sunscreen?”

“Hold on- Jay, did you grab the sunscreen?”

“What?”

Lloyd cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling louder. “Did you grab the sunscreen?”

“Oh yeah, it’s here! Wait, do you have my-”

“Your what?” Lloyd called, walking over to him, passing Pixal and Zane as they came out of the kitchen. The female nindroid sighed.

“Can’t anything get done around here without everyone making such a racket?”

“Nope,” Nya elbowed her playfully. “When you’ve been with these idiots as long as I have, you get used to it.”

Pixal’s eyes widened. “I can’t imagine ever being used to all this.”

Nya smiled. “Did I mention I’m slightly deaf?”

“We finished making the picnic,” Zane told her, holding out the basket he was carrying. “Is everyone ready to go?”

Nya eyed the guys, who were running around the Monastery, barely avoiding tripping over one another. “‘Ready’ is an overstatement.”

“Hold your horses, we’re almost done,” Cole grunted, heaving the large beach bag over to them. “Have a little faith in us, Nya.”

Nya put her hand on her hip, waiting- and a second later, there was a crashing sound followed by an angry chorus of yells from Kai, Lloyd, and Jay.

Cole grimaced, rubbing the back of his head. “Okay, maybe you’re right to not have any faith in us.”

---

After an intense, fifteen-minute argument about what mode of transportation they would take, they ended up deciding on the city bus, and finally, finally got out the door. The bus ride went off without a hitch, for once, (except for a brief panic about not having the proper change for the bus fare, but luckily Zane had a few extra dollars on him), and before Nya knew it, they were staking out an area on Ninjago City beach. She was beginning to think this could actually work out.

Maybe.

“Check out my abs, dude.”

“They’re the same as last time.”

“Are not! I’m way more shredded than last time we went swimming.”

“Okay, that’s just a straight-up lie. I saw you sneak that extra piece of pie last night.”

“You better not be disrespecting my muscles, Flat Stanley.”

“Hey! I’m way more muscly than I used to be.”

“Are you kidding? We call you ‘green bean’ for a reason, and it’s not just because you’re the green ninja. You’re a twig!”

“I’m a twig? Have you seen Jay?”

“Hey, don’t rope me into this, green machine, and, for your information, I weigh a whole fifteen pounds more than you!”

“Yeah, well, you’re also two years older than me!”

“I think the lesson we need to learn here is that neither of you have abs anywhere near as pronounced as mine-”

Zane sighed, rolling his eyes. “Here, guys,” he held out a pouch to the group, “this is a waterproof pouch, you can store all your valuables in here.”

They quickly filled the pouch with phones, watches, and wallets. However, as Lloyd pulled back, he tripped over Jay’s foot, and half the guys collapsed into a pile, groaning.

“Jay! Get your foot out of my face!”

“Right after you get your elbow out of my ribs!”

Nya turned away from them, shaking her head. Glancing at Pixal, she asked, “Wanna help me get set up?”

The nindroid nodded, and they pulled the large picnic blanket out of the bag, unfolding it to lay it across the sand.

“Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon,” Kai cried, “You get back here right this instant!”

Nya looked up from the blanket to see Kai running through the sand after Lloyd, his feet sinking into the sand with each step, making it difficult for him to retain his balance. He waved a bottle of sunscreen at the green ninja. “It’s sunny out today! And you know how easily you burn!”

“No way!” Lloyd whined. “You always make me stay out of the water for at least twenty minutes to let it set, and it’s way too hot for me to wait that long! I wanna go swimming now.”

Kai lunged for him, and Lloyd yelped, barely dodging out of the way.

“Over here, Lloyd!” Jay cried, already wading into the shallows of the ocean. “He won’t follow you into the water!”

Lloyd hurried after him, splashing up water as he went, accidentally splattering Kai and causing the red ninja to flinch back with a yelp. Sure enough, he froze at the water’s edge, glaring at Jay and Lloyd, where they stood, only about ten feet away, laughing at him.

Zane rubbed a hand over his face, sighing. “They’re both going to get skin cancer, aren’t they?”

“At the very least, they’re going to be bright red tomatoes,” Cole laughed. “Oh, it’s going to be a blast when they take showers.”

Zane stared at him, horrified. “Please don’t let Jay do that again. He had the worst blisters, last time-”

Cole held up his hands. “It was a joke, Zane! A joke!”

Zane narrowed his eyes and didn’t reply.

Nya laughed, grabbing Pixal’s hand. “Come on. Wanna go bodyboarding with me?”

Pixal glanced at her. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s fine.” Nya stepped on the board, flipping it up into her hand and handing it to Pixal, before grabbing a second one for herself. “I can teach you!”

“Thanks, Nya.”

As they walked down towards the shore, they passed Kai and Cole, who had finally managed to get Jay and Lloyd out of the water. Cole had his arms locked around Jay, preventing him from running away as Kai slathered sunscreen across his face. Lloyd was sitting in the sand beside him, pouting, his face already smeared in white.

Nya grinned at him. “Can you guys handle yourselves for twenty minutes if Pix and I go out bodyboarding?”

Lloyd stuck his tongue out at her, and Kai rolled his eyes. “We’ll be fine, Nya. I think you’re forgetting we save the city on a regular basis? We’re perfectly capable.”

Nya put a hand near Pixal’s ear, whispering loudly into it. “Betcha anything the beach will be on fire by the time we get back.”

The two ran off, giggling at the sight of Kai’s smoldering glare, before he could set them on fire.

---

To Kai’s credit, he did not set the beach on fire, or anything, for that matter, but when Nya and Pixal returned, they found him and Cole shoveling sand onto Zane, who was chest-deep by this point.

“Zane!” Pixal exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

“When Kai told me he had something fun to show me, this wasn’t quite what I had imagined.”

“Aww, come on Zane!” Kai grinned. “I’m having a great time.”

Pixal shook her head, and stepped forward, grabbing Zane’s hand and pulling him up, sending sand cascading down everywhere. Cole and Kai groaned.

“Aww, come on, Pix, that took forever!” Cole muttered.

“Yeah, we were gonna shape it into a mermaid tail. Don’t you know how funny that would’ve been?”

“Humor is subjective.” Zane rubbed at his wrists. “Augh, now I’m going to have sand in my gears for weeks.” Shooting a glare at Kai, he added, “I’ll remember this the next time you ditch your swimming lessons.”

“Hey!” Kai yelped. “That’s totally different! Sand is warm, and solid, and most importantly, not dangerous!”

“You could suffocate,” Zane pointed out.

Kai scowled. “You’re a nindroid, you wouldn’t have suffocated.”

“You’re related to an elemental master of water. You won’t drown.”

“Being related to a master of water and being a master of water are two very different things! I control fire, not water, I can’t do anything to protect myself.”

Cole rolled his eyes. “You’re so lame. Remind me again why we brought our friend with aquaphobia to the beach?”

“Technically,” Zane said, raising a finger, “the word you’re looking for is thalassophobia. Kai doesn’t fear water in general, only large bodies, such as-”

“It was his idea,” Nya interrupted. “If it weren’t for him, we’d still be at the Monastery, filing papers.”

“I never suggested the beach!” Kai snapped. “That was your idea!”

“Yeah, well, your suggestions were lame. The beach was the obvious choice.”

“Hey,” Pixal interjected, suddenly realizing they were missing a couple of people. “Where are Jay and Lloyd?”

Cole sighed, pointing up towards their stuff, where Jay and Lloyd were struggling with a large, yellow duck inflatable that was very much not inflated at the moment. Jay had his lips around the mouthpiece, his face red.

“Blow harder, Jay,” Lloyd insisted, hovering by his side. “You’re hardly doing anything!”

Jay pulled his head back, breathing out heavily as the redness faded from his cheeks. “I’d like to see you do better! You’d probably pass out after a minute.”

“Would not!” Lloyd snatched the floaty away from him, blowing hard into the mouthpiece, putting even less air into the floaty than Jay had. His face reddened as he huffed desperately, although he still wasn’t making much progress. After a few moments, Jay pulled it away from him.

“Okay, that’s enough. I don’t want you to actually pass out.”

Lloyd glared at him, panting. “I wasn’t… going to… pass out.”

Jay sighed, grabbing the inflatable and staring at what looked to be the eyes and a very flat, crumpled-looking beak. “At this rate, we’re never going to get Mr. Quackington blown up.”

Lloyd’s nose wrinkled. “Mr. Quackington?”

Jay blinked at him. “Yeah, that’s his name.”

“No, it’s not! His name is Mr. Waddles!”

“Mr. Waddles? What kind of juvenile name is that?”

“Oh, like Mr. Quackington is any better!”

“It is! It’s loads better!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Is so!”

“It’s not!” Lloyd snapped, green energy sparking between his fingers. Jay glanced down at them thoughtfully. “Hey, what if…”

Lloyd was evidently catching on to Jay’s train of thought, his eyes lighting up. “We can use my powers to inflate Mr. Waddles!”

Jay narrowed his eyes. “Quackington.”

Lloyd bared his teeth, the small fangs glinting. “Waddles.”

Jay sighed. “Okay, whatever. We can use your powers to inflate Mr. Waddles.”

Lloyd grinned widely, whether about the promise of getting his inflated duck or having won the name debate with Jay, Pixal couldn’t tell. He held up a hand and formed a basketball-sized sphere of green energy. Jay’s eyes widened, and he held the mouthpiece up to the energy. Lloyd channeled it inside, watching with glee as the duck puffed up, the yellow plastic slowly tinging green, making the duck look like he was about to be sick.

Zane took a step forward, holding his hand out. “Lloyd, wait-”

There was a sharp snapping noise as the floaty popped, and Lloyd and Jay cried out in horror as the yellow pieces of plastic fluttered to the ground. Lloyd fell to his knees, gripping the busted plastic and wailing, and Jay landed next to him, crying, “No! Mr. Waddles, you were so young!”

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Lloyd sniffed. “He was my best friend in the whole world.”

Kai threw up his hands. “Great. You spend the last several years of your life looking out for him only to get replaced by his inflatable plastic duck.”

“Oookay,” Nya said, walking over to Jay and Lloyd and ushering them towards the picnic blanket. “Someone’s obviously been out in the sun too long. Go sit under the umbrella and let’s have something to eat.”

“Good idea,” Zane agreed. “I’m sure we’re all getting hungry. Jay, could you grab the picnic basket? It’s right behind you.”

The lightning ninja grabbed the basket, peering inside briefly as he carried it towards them. “I hope you brought the Pringles. I could really go for some of those right now- augh!”

Before anyone could stop him, Jay was falling to the ground, the basket flying out of his hands and landing sideways in the sand.

“Jay!” Kai cried. “Look what you’ve done to our picnic!”

“Hey! That was totally your fault! Why did you leave your shoes right in the middle of the sand, perfectly positioned for someone to trip over?”

“Why were you clumsy enough to get in the way of my shoes?”

“Guys, guys, it’s okay,” Zane assured. Walking over, he carefully lifted the basket out of the sand. “I’m sure it’s still salvageable.”

“Yeah, but now all our food is going to taste like sand,” Lloyd moaned.

“Lloyd, the food barely touched the sand,” Nya pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter. Every time you go to the beach, if the food gets even remotely close to the sand, it always gets sand in it. Every time. It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe.”

“Well, I think you’ll survive,” she said, passing Lloyd a sandwich and a bag of pretzels. Lloyd took them, but narrowed his eyes.

“Brings a whole new meaning to the word ‘sandwich.’”

“Just eat your food, mister.”

Lloyd shot her a glare, but grudgingly obliged. As Pixal bit into her own sandwich, she realized Lloyd was right, she could feel granules of sand between her teeth as she chewed.

“Hey… at least it adds a little crunch, right?” Cole grinned.

Kai grimaced. “Next time, I elect we don’t let Jay anywhere near the picnic basket.”

Jay chucked a grape at him, but Kai turned at the last second, catching it in his mouth. “Ha!” His gleeful expression faded as he caught sight of something behind Jay. “Um, Lloyd, you have someone you wanna introduce us to?”

The group turned to see a seagull had approached them, tilting its head where it stood only a couple feet away from Lloyd. The green ninja was staring at the bird with wide eyes, an awed expression on his face.

“Lloyd,” Nya sighed, “please don’t tell me you fed it.”

“He’s not an it,” Lloyd snapped. “His name is Scully.”

“Great.” Nya rubbed her hands over her face. “We’re already into name territory.”

“Scully?” Kai’s nose wrinkled. “Isn’t that the name of the seagull from The Little Mermaid?”

“No, that’s Scuttle,” Lloyd sniffed. “They’re completely different.”

“Lloyd,” Pixal scolded, reaching for Lloyd’s wrist just as he tossed another chunk of his sandwich at the seagull, “Feeding wildlife is not a good idea, it can be dangerous-”

Lloyd shrieked suddenly as the bird launched itself at Lloyd’s face. He scrambled to his feet, screaming, and Kai lunged forward, pushing the others out of the way. “Move, move!”

“Get it off me, get it off me!” Lloyd shrieked as the bird’s wings flapped in his face, sending feathers everywhere.

“Blast it with your powers!” Kai called, looking worried but keeping a respectable distance.

“I can’t! He’s on my face!”

“Well, I can’t do it, I’ll set you on fire! Nya, you do it!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” the water ninja spat through gritted teeth, globes of water already forming in her hands. “I just need to get a clear shot! For the love of… Lloyd, stop moving so much!”

Lloyd hardly seemed to hear her. “He’s going to claw my eyes out,” he wailed, batting weakly at the creature.

“Nya!”

Nya quickly thrust her hands forward, sending a large ball of water at Lloyd’s head, drenching him and the seagull. The bird squawked angrily, falling to the ground.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Nya and Kai darted over to him, Nya taking his face in her hands as Kai peered over her shoulder. A small red scratch stretched across his left cheek, but apart from that, he appeared unharmed, just frazzled.

“Dude!” Kai cried. “You just got attacked. By a seagull!”

“It owned you!”

Lloyd shot Jay a glare. “Did not.”

“You should have seen your face!” Jay laughed. “Oh wait, you couldn’t- there was a bird in the way!”

Lloyd crossed his arms. “I’d like to remind you how you reacted that time when my uncle set that berserk chicken on us.”

“The chicken had lightning powers. Hardly comparable to a simple seafowl, bud.”

“Ugh, I hope this doesn’t get infected,” Nya muttered, running her finger along the scratch. “We should probably get you checked for rabies when we get home.”

“Nya, I’m fine,” Lloyd groaned, pushing her off. “A seagull isn’t going to give me rabies.”

Nya shrugged. “With your luck, I can never be sure.”

“This is why you don’t give food to wild animals, Lloyd, it makes them bolder-”

“Watch out, Lloyd!” Jay shrieked suddenly, and they whipped around to see the seagull had caught its second wind, squawking as it charged at Lloyd.

Lloyd shrieked, taking off down the beach with the seagull in pursuit. Nya sighed, putting a hand on her head. Kai grinned, walking over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Do you think he’ll learn his lesson?”

“No,” Nya said without hesitation. “Absolutely not. That’s the sad part.”

“Hey,” Cole said, pointing a finger down the beach. “The volleyball court’s just opened up. You guys wanna play?”

“Sure. Tell Lloyd he can join us when he gets that seagull taken care of.”

Nya glanced towards the green ninja, who was currently lobbing balls of energy at the bird and missing by an embarrassingly wide berth. “Looks like it could be a while.”

---

“Great job, team!” Nya cheered, high-fiving Pixal and shooting a grin at Cole. “Although, if I’m being honest, the rest of you didn’t put up much of a competition.”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Kai snapped. “I was carrying the team! Jay, Lloyd, were you planning on helping me anytime soon?”

“I was trying!” Jay insisted. “But you kept getting in my way!”

“Because every time I let you get the ball, you dropped it!”

“Hey! I never said I was good at volleyball, okay? Why are you attacking me, Lloyd sucked too!”

“It’s not like I ever had time to fit in volleyball practice between all my green ninja training! It wasn’t exactly a top priority!” “Are you telling me you’ve never played before?” Kai spluttered.

“I’ve played!” Lloyd insisted. “Uh… once or twice.”

Kai facepalmed. “Why did I let you come on my team?”

Lloyd grinned widely. “‘Cause you love me.”

Cole elbowed him. “It’s because he lost the coin toss and Nya got to pick first.”

“Hey!” Jay yelped. “Are you telling me you would have picked me last?”

“After I saw you play, yeah,” Cole snorted.

“I’m still not convinced on some of those calls, Zane,” Kai said, walking over to the nindriod. “I don’t think that one play near the third point was a foul.”

“Hey, the ref’s call is law,” Nya smirked. “Stop trying to cheat your way to victory, Kai.”

“I’m not cheating! Zane’s girlfriend is on your team! He’s obviously biased!”

“I’m a nindriod, Kai. I cannot be biased.”

“Stop being a sore loser, Kai.” Behind her, a wave swelled up. She raised her hand- then pointed it forward at Kai.

Her brother shrieked as the seawater drenched him.

“Nya! What’d you do that for?”

“You deserved it, with all the whining you were doing. Besides, you looked hot. I was just doing you a favor.”

“It’s alright,” Lloyd laughed. “You can share my towel, don’t worry.” As he handed Kai the towel, the fire ninja eyed it shrewdly.

“It’s got ducks on it. Of course it does.”

“Hey, you want the towel or not?”

“No, I’m taking the towel.” Kai wrapped the towel around himself, shivering, unfurling the ducks for all to see. Cole snickered, and Kai shot him a glare.

“Should we pack up, then?”

Zane nodded. “If we want to be back in time for dinner, probably.”

The team trudged back to their blanket, wet and sandy, but chatting amiably. They had nearly packed up all their things when Lloyd cried out suddenly.

“Where’s my wallet?”

Zane frowned. “Didn’t you put it in the valuables pouch?”

“I thought I did, but…” he paused. “Oh, wait. I tripped over Jay. I must’ve forgotten to put it in after that.”

“Well, then, it’s gotta be around here somewhere. What color is it, Lloyd?”

“What do you think? Green.”

They spent a good ten minutes searching through their entire bag and the surrounding sand, to no avail. It quickly became clear that if Lloyd’s wallet had ever fallen around here in the first place, it wasn’t here now.

Kai shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not that big of a deal. You don’t have any cards, and I don’t think you were carrying any of the cash. We can get you a new one.”

“No, but I had the things in there!”

Cole frowned. “The things?”

“You know.” Lloyd lowered his voice. “The things. That the mayor gave us?”

“What?!” Jay yelped. “Those were in there?” “You lost them?” Kai cried. “Lloyd, how could you?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” Kai groaned, rubbing his face. “We should’ve never trusted you with them. Or at least split them up, so they weren’t all together.”

“I still do not understand.” Pixal frowned. “What are these things that are so important?”

“They’re a top-secret gift from the mayor,” Jay whispered. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone we have them. Not that telling anyone now would matter anyway, because we don’t have them anymore.”

“It’s not my fault!” Lloyd insisted. “It’s that stupid seagull’s, he’s the one who distracted me-” Lloyd paused, his eyes widening. “That’s it! The seagull must’ve swiped my wallet when it was chasing me!”

“Looks like we have a lead,” Kai growled.

“Wait a minute, does anyone else hear that mysterious music-”

“Oh no,” Pixal muttered, putting a hand on her forehead. “Zane, please don’t tell me you’re going to do this again.”

“It seemed that, after only a few weeks, it was time for me to crack yet another case.” The odd, deep voice rang out, and they turned to see Zane slipping on a fedora.

“Where did that even come from,” Pixal despaired. “I’m positive you didn’t bring that with you. Positive.”

“Again, I was to be accompanied by my trusty assistant, but this time, my highly trained ninja associates would also be coming along, all determined to reclaim what someone had stolen in the heist.”

Jay glanced between Pixal and Zane. “What is happening right now? Am I supposed to know what’s happening?”

Pixal shook her head. “It’s a long story. Just go with it.”

Zane tipped his hat down. “Already, we were off with a very promising lead. I suspected the culprit to be the feathered fiend that had been spotted lurking around at the scene of the crime only an hour prior.”

Kai snorted, placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Oh, this is gold! Did you mess with his voice again, Jay?”

“No, I didn’t touch him! Pixal, you didn’t…”

She shook her head. “Believe me, I wouldn’t do this if you paid me. It was all him.”

Jay grinned. “What do we do next… detective Zane?” He and Kai simultaneously burst into laughter, leaning against each other for support.

Zane side-eyed them. “The primary suspect was as clear as a black bear in a snowstorm, yet the whereabouts of the creature were still unknown. It had vanished into thin air, without leaving so much as a trace in its stead.”

“Hey,” Lloyd said suddenly, leaning down to pick something up off of the sand, “What about this?”

“It appeared to be part of the plumage of a species of avian native to these shores. Could it belong to the specimen we were looking for?”

Kai plucked the feather from Lloyd’s fingers, examining it. “The feather was white with a dark tip, definitely having originated from a seagull- although the spiked, disturbed edges implied that this was from no ordinary gull- it was from one who had recently been in a fight.”

Jay grinned. “It seemed like we had hit the jackpot. Already, we were one step closer to tracking down this culprit.”

Pixal groaned. “Don’t you two start, too. It was bad enough with just Zane.”

Nya grimaced. “Yeah, this is already getting annoying.”

“How is a feather going to tell us where the seagull is now?” Cole asked.

“I could sense the wind was blowing in from the northwest,” Zane narrated. “If we wanted to find the culprit of the caper, we would have to walk upwind, hopefully leading us to the source of the feather.”

“Alright,” Pixal sighed, “let’s get this over with.”

“And so,” Zane grinned, “The Great Gull Caper began.”

The team trudged up the beach for about twenty minutes, to no avail. They passed many other beachgoers, pointing and staring as the ninja passed, but no seagulls were in sight.

“Are you sure about this, Zane?” Pixal asked.

“The feathered suspect had gained an hour’s head start in its escape from the scene, meaning we would have to hasten our pace if we ever hoped to catch up.”

“Oh, I am not walking an hour just to find this thing. Are we sure it’s that important?”

“Yes!” the guys yelped in unison.

“It’s a very important gift from the mayor! It would be rude to lose it,” Jay said. “We have to get it back!”

“Couldn’t you just ask for another… whatever they are?”

“No! They’re one of a kind!” “Well, can we at least hurry this up? Frankly, I’m getting quite tired of Zane’s shenanigans.”

Zane grinned at her. “Although she voiced her disapproval, my assistant knew the efficiency of my methods, as they had gotten us out of a pinch the last time things had been amok.”

“First of all, I was the one who successfully found Dyer last time. You just ended up getting caught.”

“Perhaps, but you used my techniques.”

Pixal huffed. “Second, I don’t appreciate that you keep calling me your assistant. If anything, we’re partners!”

Zane adjusted his fedora. “So it was a promotion she was after, eh? Well, if my assistant could prove her worth by properly complying with my techniques in this case, she may find herself with a loftier position in the future.”

Pixal sighed. “Whatever. Let’s just find the stupid bird, and go.”

The group trekked after Zane again, and Pixal wondered how long they would be here, when Zane suddenly stopped, causing half of the gang to crash into him.

“What?” Jay yelped. “What’s wrong? Why’d we stop?”

Zane pointed near his feet. “It seemed like the culprit had been careless enough to leave behind tracks in the sand.”

Pixal peered over his shoulder. Sure enough, the tracks of some avian species left a trail in the sand- and after consulting her database, it appeared to match the foot of a seagull.

“We’re getting closer!” Cole said. “It has to be around here somewhere.”

Nya’s eyes went wide, and she pointed towards something in the distance. “Look!”

Down the beach, a large group of seagulls was flocking around a half-eaten pretzel, flapping their wings and squawking as they tried to push past each other.

“It could be any of them,” Lloyd despaired. “How are we going to know which one was the one who stole my wallet?”

Jay smirked. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Lloyd eyed him nervously. “How?”

“One seagull, in particular, has come to associate you with food. One seagull has been known to chase you down.”

“Oh,” Lloyd paled, taking a step back and waving his hands. “Oh, no, I do not like where this is heading…”

“Come on, Lloyd, do it for the team,” Cole pleaded.

“You are the one who lost them in the first place,” Kai agreed. “It’s only fair.”

Lloyd groaned. “Why do I let you bully me into these things?”

“Go on,” Nya gave him a gentle shove. “We don’t have all day!”

Sticking his tongue out at her, Lloyd stepped forward, towards the seagulls. Several of them looked his way, a few flapping their wings anxiously and squawking in warning. Lloyd stopped, swallowing.

“Um. Hey. I don’t suppose any of you have seen a green wallet around here?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “They can’t understand you. Get closer!”

“Okay! I’m going, jeez-” he broke off with a yelp as a seagull darted in front of him, nearly tripping him as he stepped on its tail.

The seagull shrieked, and, in a flurry of feathers, the flock broke into a frenzied panic. Lloyd’s eyes widened, and he cried out, running away and frantically ducking swooping seagulls.

He darted behind Kai as a last nervy seagull hopped after him. Kai held up a fist, which burst into flame, scaring the bird off. Kai glanced back at Lloyd, amusement sparkling in his dark eyes. “You okay, bud?”

Lloyd glared. “Don’t look at me like that. These birds are vicious!”

“Look!” Pixal pointed at a gull that had remained behind. With the others out of the way, she could see the small, green wallet between its beak.

“That’s the one!” Cole cried. “After it!”

For ninja, the group was embarrassingly unstealthy as they clamored after the bird, shooting elemental powers at it and screaming as they narrowly avoided each other’s blasts, so that by the time the seagull reached the water, the beach was a mess of crystalized sand, crevices in the ground, and various burn marks from fire, lightning, and energy.

“It’s a seagull!” Nya cried. “We’ve faced giant snakes, lords of darkness, elemental masters, Oni, more criminals and gangsters than I can count, and an evil video game AI, yet we can’t catch one measly seagull? It shouldn’t be this hard, you guys!”

“It’s getting away,” Jay cried, pointing at the bird, who had finally taken flight and was heading out over the ocean.

“No!” Lloyd moaned. “Now we’re never going to get it back!”

“Not on my watch,” Nya growled, racing past them towards the docks. “Come on!” “Oh no,” Kai groaned. “Nya Smith, whatever you are thinking, stop it right now, because I’m not doing it.” “Come on, Kai,” Lloyd insisted, grabbing his wrist and yanking him along. “We have to hurry!”

They raced after Nya, who was running down the dock towards a man who was examining the boats. Kai followed them more slowly, taking careful steps.

“Sir, we need to use a boat, right away! We’ll pay for it, we promise!”

The man shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but these are all private boats. The only one we have is that one,” he pointed to a small, worn-looking fishing boat, “and the motor’s broken, so it’s of no use to anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter, I can take care of that. Everyone, get in!”

“W-wait,” the man stuttered, looking flustered.

“We’ll bring it right back, I promise! Now, come on, we don’t have much time!”

“No!” Kai insisted, as everyone else piled in. “Nuh-uh. No way. Not in a million years. You are not bringing me out into the middle of the ocean in a tiny, crowded boat with a busted engine!”

“You don’t need an engine when you’ve got me!” Nya raised her hand, and the water swirled under the boat, rocking it slightly. “Now, come on, we don’t have time for this!” “Y’know what.” Kai took a couple of steps back from the boat. “I’m good. I’ll stay here. You guys have fun finding the wallet. I’ll cheer you on from the beach. The dry, dry beach.”

“Nope.” Cole reached forward, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him in. “This is your gift we’re saving, too. If you want to get part of it, you’re coming with.”

“Finally!” Nya huffed. The water rippled beneath them, and suddenly, it was propelling their boat, and they were off.

“Where’s the bird?” Nya asked. “Does anyone see it?” “Over there!” Cole pointed slightly towards their left, where the seagull was gliding away with surprising speed. Getting into the boat had slowed them down, and it had gotten a large head start.

Nya gritted her teeth. “Hold on.”

“Don’t go faster!” Kai yelped from where he huddled near the middle of the boat, protectively sandwiched between Lloyd and Cole. “If you tip this boat, I will never forgive you.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Nya growled, although the boat slowed slightly as they continued.

“Our team continued to chase the thief, determined to put an end to the Great Gull Caper and put the culprit to justice. Even when our path took us across the raging waters of the ocean, with nothing but a rusty, broken old boat, and deep, swirling waters around us, filled with the dark abyss and the creatures that lurked there…”

“You mean like sharks?” Lloyd perked, peering over the edge. “Did you see any? I wanna see one!”

“Nope,” Kai yelped, pulling himself into a ball as he sat down on the floor of the boat. “Nopety nope nope nope. I’m done. I’m outta here.”

“The prospect of sharks was a dire one, but one we were willing to take. We would get that wallet back, no matter the cost- even if it meant competition from this fierce predator of the sea.”

Kai screamed into his hands. “Just end me now!”

“What Zane means to say,” Pixal said, elbowing Zane sharply, “is that sharks are actually very off-put by the taste of human flesh, and do not go after humans on purpose.”

Kai stared at her. “Oh joy, now a shark can devour my flesh by accident, what a relief.”

“Do not worry, Kai,” she told him. “There is only one estimated death by shark per year in the greater Ninjago City area.”

“Knowing my luck,” Kai grumbled, “I’ll be that one.”

“Did anyone bring their phone with?” Lloyd asked. “I wanna get a good picture when the sharks come for Kai.”

“I call dibs on his katana,” Jay exclaimed. “Y’know, the super flashy one with the flaming dragon carved into the handle?”

Lloyd wrinkled his nose at him. “Why would you want a fire dragon on your katana? You’re the lightning ninja!”

“Hey, just because my element is lightning, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a super dope fire design when I see one-”

“Guys,” Cole sighed, pushing his way between the two arguing boys. “No one is getting eaten. We’re perfectly safe here, on this boat.”

“Cole’s right,” Pixal agreed. “The sharks around this area are smaller, reef dwellers, and won’t come after us. They may, however, come after our seagull friend if he gets too close to the water.”

Kai made a noise in the back of his throat, and Cole scowled at her. “Thanks for the help, Pix.”

“Nya,” Jay whined, “the seagull’s getting further away! We have to go faster!”

“Don’t!” Pixal cried. “This boat has not been manufactured to withstand a lot of weight. With seven people, especially when two of them are titanium, going too fast would be sure to capsize us.”

“I told you I should’ve stayed behind on the shore,” Kai wailed.

Lloyd leaned further over the edge, raising a hand to his forehead to keep the glare off of his face as he peered intently into the water. “Is… is that a shark?”

Kai stared at him. “Shut up. You’re just baiting.”

Lloyd shook his head, his eyes lighting up in a way that was not reassuring in the slightest. “I’m not! It’s a shark! It’s a real, live shark! I’ve never seen one this close before! Except at like, an aquarium!”

Kai closed his eyes, rocking himself gently. “You’re lying. You stupid liar, I hate you.”

Cole peered over, following Lloyd’s gaze, and promptly bit his lip. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“This is a dumb prank, you guys!” Kai was half-yelling by this point.

“Stop being so loud,” Lloyd hissed. “You’ll scare it!”

Kai blinked at him. “I’ll scare it?”

Lloyd crossed his arms. “A scared shark is an aggressive shark.”

Kai’s mouth snapped shut.

“I can’t believe this,” Cole muttered. “Did we really not bring any weapons?”

“No!” Lloyd yelped. “Cole, you wouldn’t!”

“I would if it kept us from being eaten.”

“For the last time, sharks don’t eat humans!”

Cole ignored him. “Well? Did we?”

Nya snorted. “Why would we bring weapons to the beach?”

“Hey, with how often this city gets attacked, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Nya rolled her eyes. “It was supposed to be our day off.”

“It’s fine,” Pixal reported, keeping a careful eye on the shark. “It’s swimming away now. As long as we leave it alone, we’re safe.”

Kai frowned. “Looks like the gull isn’t so convinced, though.”

Pixal glanced up. Sure enough, the seagull was eyeing the shark nervously, pumping its wings as it flew higher and higher above the surface of the water.

“Do something!” Jay shrieked. “If we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get away for good!”

“Lloyd!” Nya cried. “Is your wallet waterproof?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question!” “Yes! Yes, it is!”

Nya gritted her teeth. “Hold on, everyone!”

Suddenly, a vast wave rose out of the water, looming over the seagull.

Kai’s eyes widened. “Nya, be careful, you’ll hit us too-”

But it was already too late, the wave crashing down, downing the seagull, and soaking them in saltwater. The team cried out, and Kai screamed, throwing his arms over his head in a futile attempt to protect himself. As they all tried to lurch away from the spray, the boat rocked precariously, and, for a horrifying moment, they were suspended there, on the point between balance and capsize.

And then that moment was over, and they were all falling into the ocean.

Pixal’s world immediately dimmed as she plunged into the water, quietness enveloping her like a blanket. For a moment, she was too shocked to do anything, until a foot thrashed past her face, snapping her out of her trance as she swam towards the surface.

A couple of feet before she reached it, a metal hand snatched her wrist and pulled her the rest of the way up.

“Pixal!” Zane cried, his detective voice dropped. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. What about everyone else? Are we all here?”

Zane nodded his head behind her, and she turned to see the others all within a couple of feet. Cole had his hands on the now upside-down boat, trying to use his strength to push it over, but it was hard for him to get a good grip and stay afloat at the same time. Just behind him, Jay was spitting out a mouthful of seawater, sending ripples across the surface of the ocean as he treaded water. Lloyd was doing the same a couple of feet away, only the green ninja was struggling a lot more because of the arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Don’t let me go, Lloyd!” Kai yelped, although the feat would’ve been impossible even if Lloyd had wanted to- the fire ninja was clinging to him like a barnacle. “I can’t swim!”

Lloyd sighed. “I know that, Kai. It’s the only reason I’m letting you hold on to me like this.”

“I can’t believe this happened,” Kai cried. “We’re going to die out here. This is the worst day off ever.”

“Hey!” Lloyd snapped. “It’s not my fault this happened!”

Nya shot them all a sharp glare from where she was drifting alongside the boat. She didn’t even bother to tread water like the rest of them, instead using her powers to keep herself afloat. “It was going to work until you guys made such a big fuss about getting a little wet and tipped the boat.”

Cole sighed. “We’re not going to die. As soon as I get this right side up again, we’ll climb up and get out of here. Can you give me a hand, Zane?”

As the nindriod moved to help him, Kai suddenly went rigid.

“Lloyd,” he whispered.

“What, Kai?”

“Something just bumped my foot.”

“It’s probably just seaweed, Kai,” Lloyd sighed, looking down- and promptly froze.

“No one. Move.”

Jay squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh no, oh gosh, don’t tell me that’s what I think it is, this is not happening-”

“Jay, shut up,” Nya whispered, her face pale as she watched the dark shape lurking below them in the water.

“Everyone, stay calm,” Pixal murmured. “Don’t make any sudden movements and try to look it in the eyes.”

“Please, the last thing I’m gonna do is look at it,” Kai breathed, burying his face in Lloyd’s hair.

After a moment, the shark slowly swam past, losing interest.

“It doesn’t care about us,” Zane realized. “It wants the seagull.”

Several yards away, the gull was floating on the water, still trying to shake off the moisture from Nya’s wave. Suddenly realizing the danger it was in, the bird raised its wings- and launched itself into the air, just as fierce jaws snapped against empty air where the seagull had been less than a second ago.

Kai’s fingers dug tighter into Lloyd’s shoulders, and Pixal caught Jay biting his lip as he swallowed back a scream, but, its prey lost, the shark was already swimming away.

“Gotcha,” Nya murmured, reaching a hand out and snatching up the wallet, which the seagull had dropped in all the commotion, before it could sink to the bottom of the ocean.

“Okay. That’s great. We got it. Now can we get out of here?” Kai pleaded.

After a minute, they finally got the boat flipped over, and Cole hauled himself aboard before helping to lift the others. Ten minutes later, they were all safely out of the water and on their way back to the dock, and Pixal had never felt more relieved by the fact.

“So,” Jay asked, as the boat glided through the water, leaning closer to Nya. “Did they survive all that?”

“Let’s see,” Nya murmured, opening up Lloyd’s wallet. Pixal leaned forward, anxious to see what all the fuss had been about.

“Yes!” Jay cried, pulling out seven slips of paper. “They’re all here!”

“Wait.” Pixal snatched one from his hand, quickly scanning it. “A summer pass for free all-you-can-eat ice cream from the Dairy Dragon?”

“Yup,” Jay smiled, passing them out to the others. “The mayor gave them to us as a gift after we saved the city from Prime Empire. That’s what we were going to do today, after the beach, actually.”

“You’re telling me,” Pixal deadpanned. “That we just risked our lives. For free ice cream.”

“Free ice cream is free ice cream, Pix.”

“You’ll understand once you’ve tried their butter pecan,” Nya told her. “It’s to die for.”

“Butter pecan?” Jay spluttered. “No way, the Ninjapolitan is best.”

“You heathen, chocolate fudge is obviously the best flavor-”

“What are you guys talking about, mint chocolate chip is superior!”

“You just like it because it’s green.”

“Do not!”

“Do so!” Nya sighed, putting her head in her hands. “Here we go again.”

“Calm down, all of you,” Pixal said. “You can get whatever flavor of ice cream you want. Just do me a favor and try not to end up capsizing us in the middle of the ocean this time.”

Jay hummed. “No promises.”

[sweetkingdomstarlight-blog]

truth hurts

Pairings - Ransom Drysdale x Reader

Words - 1704

Warnings - oral sex (m receiving), shitty families

A/N - My first ever Ransom fic, massive thanks to @thicccsimp​ and @mollygetssherlockcoffee​ for reading this over, helping me fix a few things and hyping me up enough to post! This is for @eurynome827​ 2K Challenge, well done on your milestone my love, it won’t be long until you’re at 3K I'm sure. Thanks as always to @buckyownsmylife​ for helping me with the idea too! As always this is not for minors so if you’re under 18 then please shoo.

I was given the lyrics to a Six The Musical song - You can build me up, you can tear me down You can try but I'm unbreakable You can do your best, but I'll stand the test You'll find that I'm unshakeable

Tagging because I think they might like this - @bestofbucky​ @mashep23​

You handed your father the brown paper lunch bag, the one he had left sitting forgotten on the counter this morning. Quickly planting a kiss on his cheek, you turn and make your way into the grand house, leaving him to continue tending to the rose bushes.

You heard them before you saw them, arguing about whatever one of them undoubtedly saw on Fox News that morning. Grabbing a glass of red wine before you sit in the corner of the room and watch them tear into one another, you smirk at the petty insults they often hurled at each other when they didn’t have an actual counter argument.

Sipping on the wine you check your phone for the third time in five minutes, he was meant to be here before you and you need him to be the buffer between you and his family. They weren't your biggest fans and you quite enjoyed riling them up, waiting to see who'd snap at you first. You and Ransom often wagered about who would be the first to burst out into a screaming fit.

They all had such short fuses, so all you had to do was mention something ‘snowflakes’ were concerned with and they all absolutely lose it, at this point you considered it your own private theatre. Normally you like to keep a distance since they weren’t shy in reminding Ransom why you weren’t the right match for him, today however you were needed.

The family lawyer has requested that both you and your father be present for Harlan’s will reading. Both you and Ransom thought he would be getting something substantial from his grandfather and the family wouldn’t be happy, so he would need you and your father there for support.

You sit for twenty more minutes, laughing at the nonsensical crap Joni was pushing as usual, something about jade eggs and where Gwyneth Paltrow decided they should be inserted this week. You hear the front door close and jump up as he finally arrives, running and jumping into his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist, another fun way to annoy his family, kissing him deeply and moaning as he gripped you. Whispering into his ear “where the fuck have you been? I’ve had to annoy them all on my own today” he smirks and kisses the tip of your nose before putting you back down and walking hand in hand in the room greeting his family.

It was fair to say he was the black sheep of the family, he hadn’t accepted handouts as easily as the rest of them since the two of you got together, deciding instead to try and make it on his own. He moved into your apartment and gave up the house his grandad was paying for, living off his savings ever since. He had been writing his own novel for the last six months and he was getting so close to finishing, he didn’t want to tell the family and have them shit all over his idea, especially Walt who thought he was the literary one now that Harlan had passed.

You grab two glasses of whiskey and sit in Ransom's lap, kissing his cheek and handing him one of the tumblers. Asking him what kept him so long he tells you he thinks he’s finished and wanted to re-read some of it before he told you. Pride flashes over your face at how thrilled he is and you both do a mini squeal at his news. “I can think of the perfect way to celebrate” you whisper in his ear before licking the shell and telling him to come and find you in a few minutes.

You hear him looking for you a few minutes later and pull him into the cloakroom, kissing him urgently and grabbing his ass “you want to have some fun?” you say kissing down his neck and biting his shoulder. He breathes out a ‘yes’ as you get on your knees, pulling his hardening cock out and licking the tip while he leans against the wall behind you.

“We don’t have time for teasing kitten” he says gripping your hair and pushing deep into your mouth, you lightly gag on his length and hollow your cheeks, sucking and licking at what you can. It doesn’t take long for him to spill down your throat, you smile up at him licking your lips and place a gentle kiss on the tip before tucking him away. He gently pushes you against the wall, gripping your hips and whispering what he plans to do to you later when you get home.

You’re interrupted by a sharp knock on the door and someone clearing their throat, straightening yourselves out you open the door and see his father, Richard, staring down at you both. “Can I help you, Dickie” you ask, smirking at the frustrated expression on his face. He tells you there’s 20 minutes until the reading and the family wanted to discuss what they were expecting, you tell Ransom you’re going to see your father out back and blow him a kiss, sneaking away before anyone can moan at you.

You help out in the greenhouse with some of the planters he’s prepping, talking to him about work and the trip you’re planning with Ransom to New York, when you both hear it, screaming and shouting, your father goes to the house with you, always ready to protect you from those vile people.

You walk in together and Linda snarls at you but tries to hide it as a grin, instinctively you stand next to Ransom ready to jump in and defend him, your father next to you throws an arm around you and places his hand on Ransom’s shoulder in support. Ransom smiles at you both and leans down whispering in your ear “down girl” when he sees how tense you are “they aren’t worth it, I promise you” he winks at your father and turns back to them all.

They were arguing about you, apparently you weren’t worthy of a Drysdale, an argument you’ve overheard on more than one occasion, usually he shuts them down but they don’t listen and just wait until you aren’t around before picking at him again. Linda realising that her son isn’t listening decides to take a more tactful approach “look we just want what's best for you darling, we’re obviously about to come into a lot of money today and you don’t want to be tied to her, she only wants what we have”.

Your father clears his throat in warning, he hasn’t ever raised his voice to these people out of respect for Harlan but now that he’s gone and he will most likely be sacked once they inherit the home he sees no reason to stop. Ransom looks to him and pleads with him not to do this right now and your father nods his head in understanding, before pulling you into a hug and whispering in your ear that they are the problem and not Ransom, he's a good man and he always looks after you. You nod your head and turn to face Linda, about ready to give her a little reality check when the family lawyer requests you all join him in the library, your father is about to walk away when he is asked to stay and join the family also.

You take a seat next to your father, Ransom standing behind you both waiting. Both you and Ransom suspected Harlan would look after him, maybe give him some sort of payout on publication of his first novel, he was always so supportive of the idea that he could write a book too. He’d already helped you pay for college, something the rest of the family could never find out about. Harlan was always so kind to his loyal employees and your father had worked for him for more than twenty years. He was offered help with setting up his own business or even help paying his bills but your father refused, instead requesting that your college be paid for. You weren’t allowed to refuse, you were just asked that you find something that you were passionate about.

The lawyer started talking and everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath collectively, he took care of the smaller items first, most of it going to staff and friends. Then came the bigger stuff, half of his fortune was to be divided between his children equally. The family didn’t even let the lawyer finish what he was saying before they were jumping up and demanding to see the paperwork, appalled that they would only be getting half. He sat calmly and asked them to listen until he was finished, next on the list the other half of his fortune would go to you and his home would go to your father.

You stared at each other completely dumbfounded, the shouts and accusations of the family around you buzz like static in your ears. Ransom stood at full height, acting as a blockade between his family and yours as you both absorbed the news. The lawyer handed out copies of the will for their records and asked that you make appointments to see him and have the necessary arrangements tied up properly. He left swiftly after, obviously recognising that this was about to get ugly.

Ransom swept you up in an embrace telling you to ignore the family and focus on him, your father in the meantime sat reading over what he had been given, speechless for the first time in his life about what had just happened. The family were practically feral, screaming abuse and name calling at the two of you. Ransom stood at full height and told them all to “eat shit” one by one calling them out and advising them to speak to a lawyer, if they could afford one, he laughs at his own joke before pulling you both into a big hug and suggesting you all go out for drinks. “You’re paying” he winks at you and grabs your hand leading you past the angry mob waiting at the door for you.

[dibbiedabbiedoobie]

Mint

Another one based on a voretober prompt -- 2021 this time, Mint. Set in the same ‘verse as Caught Red-Handed, but like... nebulously after that fic. So not a direct sequel, more just placed vaguely in that world. I’ll probably work on a proper sequel at some point, but rn I’m just off loading a bunch of stuff lol. This is also based on a real dream I had! It was wild but very comfy and nice. I think I woke up before the actual vore, sadly, but I do remember waking up feeling very comfy and loved so I suppose it wasn’t all bad.

Word Count: 891 Fandom: In/cep/tion Tags: safe vore, willing prey, willing pred, small bit of foodplay, fluff, pred!arthur Summary: Arthur wakes you up for a midnight snack.

You're still not quite sure how you ended up here. Arthur woke you up at some ungodly hour in the morning, asking something about mint that you don't remember. You'd been barely awake and had just nodded so he'd let you go back to sleep. In hindsight, that was probably intentional. You shift, just a bit. There's no comfortable way to lay on the jello you've found yourself on. It's a bright blue, translucent. You suppose the fact that it's broke up into cubes beneath you don't help with comfort. You aren't sure of the flavor, but you're half-tempted to try. You're considering it until Arthur walks back into the room, catching your attention. He has a spoon in hand and a shit-eating smirk on his face. You glare at him, but it's half-hearted at best. You generally can't bring yourself to care that much about these things anymore. It's far too early, and you want to sleep. His stomach seems softer and comfier than laying on blocks of jello. "Are you alright?" he asks, in the way he always does. It's a genuine question, making sure you're okay. He always makes sure to ask regularly, especially before he swallows you. It's the polite part of "polite little shit" shining through, and you really do appreciate it. "'m fine," you interrupt yourself with a yawn. You'd thought you were a little more awake now, but maybe not. "Just... hurry up. Sleepy." Arthur snorts. "Well then. I was going to try the jello, but if you're so insistent..." He sets the spoon aside, then gently picks you up by your sides with his index finger and thumb. "Wait!" you shout, and he pauses, concern written all over his face. "I'm fine," you assure him. "Just... lemme taste it." His expression eases, going from worry to amusement. He carefully turns you over, holds you close enough to grab a small piece from a corner. As you put it in your mouth, he turns you back over. "Any good?" "It tastes like shit." You stick your tongue out, nose wrinkled. "Mint? Really?" "I didn't chose it," chuckles Arthur. "Dom bought the wrong one. I figured I might as well get some use from it." "If you'd wanted a taste tester, there were easier ways to get them." "Maybe, but very few can be a stand-in treat." He lifts you closer to his face, then pauses; waiting for confirmation. Biting back another yawn, you just nod. Arthur opens his mouth, tipping his head a bit, before he carefully begins to lower you inside. Hot and muggy rises up your legs, and his tongue rises up to cushion you. It's firm, but slimy, and wraps around your body as he pushes you further inside. It's all a familiar song and dance, and you relax into it. His lips close gently around your chest, his fingers carefully supporting your back as he gets a good taste of you. He hums, contented, but doesn't dwaddle. Flicking his head back properly, he loosens his jaw and swallows thickly. It drags you down quickly, sends you squishing into his throat up to your hips. Scrunching his face, he gulps again, pulling you properly into his gullet. You're a little bigger than he expects sometimes. He brushes his fingers against his neck, feeling the bulge you make as you trudge deeper into his core. He always did like that, being able to track you through his body. Knowing where you were, even inside him, makes him feel more comfortable about your safety; granted, there weren't very many places for you to be in his body, but he likes it anyways. Once you're beneath his collarbone, he wipes his mouth of drool. He'd liked your flavor, but the hint of mint had been a delectable improvement. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd try to do it a bit more often. There's a pressure in his chest, and then you squeeze down into his stomach. It gurgles a greeting, churning at you eagerly. You suppose it has been a bit since dinner. "Are you okay?" Arthur's voice rumbles around you, low but clear. "Fine, Arthur," you reply. You squirm, settling into the gentle curve of his belly. "Good. Let me know if that changes, okay?" "Mhm." You don't expect him to hear you, but that's okay. This is part of the song and dance, too: making sure that you're okay, that you know you can leave any time. It's familiar and appreciated, but common enough that you both know that there's no real problem. Arthur's stomach churns at you more, soaking you in even more spit and fluid. You don't mind, though. It's warm in his tummy, and soft. A better bed than the one outside. You're used to it trying to process you by now, and you know it won't hurt you. You can feel Arthur stroking at you gently outside. He probably isn't trying to coax you to sleep, but that's the effect. With everything so soothing, your body is quite aware that it's Too Damn Early in the morning, and there's a lot of sleep to be had. You settle, then give a soft pet to the nearest wall. "G'night," you murmur, far too quiet to hear. You let your eyes close, and then you're asleep.

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Stalker X Stalker, Part 4

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Perma tag: @nathleigh

Stalker x Stalker taglist: @aespades @jayjayspixiepop @blueslushgueen @fan-written @seraphichana @nerd-nowandforever

Marinette almost missed Hawkmoth. Sure, she ended up extremely emotionally repressed, but hey! At least her opponent was stupid, at least she never had to fear losing.

But, yeah, that was why she didn’t notice the fact that chloroform was on the floor. That was way too smart for a villain, in her opinion. Wasn’t Joker supposed to be insane or something? Why wasn’t he completely stupid like Hawkmoth had been?

Those were her last thoughts before her vision blacked out.

She blinked her eyes open one time while she was being transported, but… it wasn’t enough. Her head pounded, her limbs felt like lead. She tried to pull one of her arms away from the five goons carrying her around -- she giggled at how much effort they were going through to keep a half-conscious person down -- but it was too weak to even break their grip. She wasn’t going to be getting out of the situation anytime soon.

She rested her head back against the chest of whoever was carrying her head.

Her eyes fluttered shut without her permission.

It took a while for her to be able to open her eyes again, and when she did she was almost tempted to close them. She was tied up with Red Robin, hanging upside down over a vat of acid. Decidedly not a good situation to be in. Maybe she could ignore it for a little longer…?

She buried her face in the neck of Red Robin’s suit, using the cool material as a kind of cold pack to try and soothe her pounding headache.

… wait... Red Robin!

She had a bit of protection because of her mask covering her mouth and nose and miraculous immune system, but he was a human and both his mouth and nose were uncovered! Shit!

Marinette pulled back as much as she could to check his face and see if he was okay and then cursed the domino mask blocking his eyes from her view. What she could see wasn’t good, though: the skin of his face had broken out into hives where he had come into contact with the chloroform. Ouch.

She tried just poking the good parts of his face with her nose to get him to wake up, but clearly that wasn’t working. Alright, new plan.

“Red Robin?” She whispered.

Nothing.

“Red Robin Red Robin Red Red Red Red Red…”

She was pretty sure she was doing this annoying thing right. She didn’t have siblings, how could she know?

Wait wait wait, what was that one thing that his siblings always said to him?

“Reeeeed Robin, yum~.”

Not even that got a response? Damn, he must really be out of it.

Time for drastic measures, then.

She tipped her head back as far back as it could go and then slammed her forehead against his. This evoked a lot of swearing from both parties. Apparently, headbutting people doesn’t help headaches.

When her head stopped ringing as loudly, she peeked her eyes open. “Sorry, checking to see if you were alive.”

He gave about as much of a nod as he could. “It’s… I understand why you had to do it.”

She gave a tentative smile. “Right. Still, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured her, then glanced down to see what they were working with. He bit his lip anxiously. “Ah, that’s not good,” he said after a few moments of consideration.

She rolled her eyes because, yeah, obviously. She didn’t say that aloud, it wasn’t productive, so she said: “I’m going to squirm. See if you can free your arms a little?”

“Do you think I have some kind of gadget in my gloves for every situation?”

“Don’t you?”

He hesitated. “I mean… yes, I do have something that could help us out of the ropes, but we are kinda over acid right now. How fast is your reaction time?”

She tipped her head from side to side with an awkward smile. “Not great.”

“Then maybe we should just wait for backup --.”

“Do you think they’ll get here before Joker does?”

“... you’re right. Start squirming --.”

“Wow, you two hate me that much? I’m hurt,” a voice cooed.

Marinette jumped out of her skin. She craned her neck to glare at Joker for scaring her…

And immediately regretted it. Why was his face not attached to his skull properly? Did he cut his own face off? Who even does that? Ew.

Red Robin scowled at him. “I can’t say we were all glad to hear you were out.”

“Red Robin...” she warned.

“Wow, not even old Batsy was happy to hear the news?”

“Nope. Didn’t say anything, actually.”

Joker’s smile wavered. “He didn’t?”

“Um, Red,” she tried again.

“Nothing,” he confirmed. “Not. A. Word.”

Joker didn’t seem to know what to do about this information. Batman wasn’t even paying attention to him? What was the point, then?

Marinette was also concerned about what was going on, but for a completely different reason. She leaned close to his ear and whispered: “Why are we trying to anger the psychopath?”

He gave as much of a shrug as he could while tied up. “If he’s talking he’s not trying to kill us.”

“And what if he gets angry enough to kill us?”

“He probably won’t.”

She winced. “Okay, I really don’t like your use of ‘probably’ there --.”

With both of their hands forced behind their backs, the only comfort he could really give was pressing his good cheek to hers. It shouldn’t have worked, but apparently life or death situations mess with your emotions.

“Just… trust me?” He pleaded quietly.

She sucked in a deep breath before turning to glare at Joker, who was still having a crisis over the fact that Batman didn’t care as much as he did. Well, she guessed that she had to take out her headache on someone. Might as well be the bitch in ugly clown makeup.

“You know, I don’t even understand why people are scared of you.”

Joker frowned and turned to look at her. “What?”

“I mean, I get why Poison Ivy is feared, I get why Mr. Freeze is feared… I even get Penguin and Riddler since they both have a high enough intellect to make up for their lack of powers… but you’re just… some guy.”

Joker gave her a cold look. “I could kill you.”

“So could a particularly determined cow, you’re not special.”

Red Robin snickered. She smiled, a little proud of herself for making him laugh.

Their grins were wiped off their faces when the rope holding them up dropped.

It caught them again dangerously close to the acid. Red Robin was a few centimeters from getting a new haircut. Marinette wondered, morbidly, whether her suit would go with her if she disintegrated.

“Not going to kill us, huh?”

“... well, I did say probably,” he mumbled, his face a little red.

She swallowed thickly. “If we live, I’m going to kill you.”

“Fair. Want to mess with him if he’s going to kill us anyways?”

“... yes.” She whipped around to glare at Joker again. “I mean, honestly, why aren’t you dead yet?”

“We don’t kill,” supplied Red Robin.

She grinned. “Sure, and I get that. I’m also not fond of murder... but is every citizen in Gotham just agreeing to not kill him? Does Batman spend all his time making sure that civilians don’t do it? Why hasn’t anyone seen him on the street and just tried to run him over?”

“... I mean, Robin hit him with the Batmobile once.”

“See?” She grinned. “And don’t even get me started on Punchline and your goons, Joker. How did you find so many people loyal to you?”

“I love him!” Said Punchline defensively.

“... sweetie, if you want a pasty white guy with green hair just watch 2016 Jacksepticeye.”

Red Robin nodded. “At least he’s kind of funny sometimes.”

“If you need the guy to be evil, how about the evil alter ego he made… what was he called?”

“Antisepticeye.”

“Ha, you’re a fucking nerd,” Marinette teased.

Red Robin blushed (or maybe that was just the blood slowly rushing to their heads from being upside down for so long) and pointedly ignored her: “Look up Antisepticeye. It’ll probably be healthier for you.”

Punchline didn’t have a retort for that. Marinette was deciding that was because she was considering it, not because she probably didn’t know who Jack/Antisepticeye was.

She pushed on: “And, hey, you goons don’t have to give Punchline over there the glory. Stab your boss. C’mon, it’ll be cool. Doubt he’s paying you more than whatever bounty is on his head, anyways.”

“If you’re going to rally henchmen maybe you shouldn’t call them ‘goons’,” suggested Red Robin.

She pouted. “But ‘goons’ sounds cuter.”

He opened his mouth to retort but she’d never know what he was going to say because, at that moment, Signal and Robin came busting in through the skylight.

~

Tim relaxed when he heard the glass shatter. Whether Marientte’s henchmen rallying had somehow worked or their backup had come, it at least meant that Joker and Punchline were distracted from wanting to murder them.

He struggled to crane his neck to see what was going on.

Oh. Damn. Damian was back from his angsting on the weird murder island? And he was here? Nevermind, he’d prefer Joker and Punchline. Damian was never going to let him live this down.

Speaking of Damian, a weight jumped onto their ropes and the three vigilantes became a pendulum. Tim grit his teeth tightly and Marinette let loose a long string of swears as their headaches worsened.

But, apparently, the world wasn’t done with them. Damian sliced the line at the highest point and they went flying across the room. Tim was the unlucky one on the bottom when they hit the ground, which he doubted was an accident.

Damian left them to deal with things on their own from there. Least he could have done was cut them free with his katana, but Tim supposed that was too much to wish for from the youngest brother.

He rested his head back against the cool floor for a second. He could feel Marinette stretch across his shoulder to do the same. They sighed in relief. This was the closest they had come to treating their headaches and wow was it nice.

But, frankly, resting in the middle of a fight isn’t a great idea. So, they wriggled around on the floor until he was able to flick open the tiny knife in the index finger of his gloves and cut the rope binding them without, y’know, cutting one of them instead.

Freedom! What did they do with this newfound freedom, you may ask? Scratch their heads. Turns out chloroform sucks for many reasons and one of those is that it’s a major skin irritant.

He also vomited. Thank god they’d been freed. He’d been only a few seconds away from throwing up on Marinette. He felt especially bad about that when she peeled a hand from her itching to hold his hair away from his face.

The fight was over soon enough. Duke and Damian came over to watch the two of them attempting to peel their skin off layer by layer.

“Pathetic,” chided Damian.

“Don’t be a dick --.” Marinette cut herself off, her hand flying to her mouth. “I swore in front of a baby.”

“I’m twelve!”

“Exactly: a baby.” She reached out and cupped a very affronted Damian’s face in her hands. “Look, you still have baby fat! You shouldn’t be fighting crime!”

Tim couldn’t tell if she was messing with Damian for being rude to them or if she genuinely saw him as a little kid. He wasn’t going to correct her. She’d remember he was a gremlin soon enough.

Damian wrenched his face from her grip. “If I hadn’t come you two would have been burned in acid.”

“Please, we all know Signal probably could have dealt with this entirely on his own,” Marinette waved him off.

Duke rested a hand over his heart like he was touched.

Tim rolled his eyes and pulled Marinette to him, resting his head on top of hers lazily. “We should get a checkup at the cave. Chloroform has… not nice effects and we both rolled around in it a little while fighting.”

Duke and Damian both winced, but Marinette didn’t seem all that concerned.

“I’ll be fine. My immune system is enhanced by --.”

Duke clapped his hands by her ears as loudly as he could. Neither Marinette nor Tim were particularly happy about it.

“Behold: a headache, one of the main symptoms of chloroform. Your face also has some red streaks, so don’t even try to deny that the chloroform is affecting you.”

“I take back my praise, I’ve decided I hate you,” she murmured, massaging her temples.

“I just remembered that I need the siren on my bike on to tell all the other bats we’ll need them at the cave...”

“Wait, no --.”

~

Marinette glared at Black Bat and Spoiler. The batboys had left the infirmary area for her own comfort and that was nice of them but she would really prefer if she hadn’t had to come at all.

Now she sat in some of Black Bat’s pajamas and one of Spoiler’s spare masks as they inspected her.

Her nose scrunched as Black Bat drew blood from her arm.

“This is dumb. I don’t need this.”

“We’ve been told. Humor us?” Spoiler said and, though Marinette couldn’t see her face from where she was, she knew she was rolling her eyes.

“I would if you were actually funny.”

“I think we can definitely put her down for irritability,” commented Spoiler.

Black Bat nodded and dutifully wrote it down. Traitor.

The cool metal of a stethoscope was pressed to her back and she cringed.

“Deep breaths.”

Marinette complied, however reluctantly. Might as well get all this bullshit over with as soon as possible.

… she was regretting that decision, now, though.

She gave Batman a cold look. “You can’t keep me here.”

“You need to stay so we can monitor your state overnight. You could have asphyxiated.”

“But we didn’t,” complained Red Robin, who looked just as annoyed about this as she was.

“We have lives, B,” she said.

“You weren’t going to do anything other than patrols tonight, don’t act like I’m tearing you away from something important.”

“The protection of the city is important,” Red argued.

“Neither of you would be much help tonight in the state you’re in, anyways.”

Red Robin stuck his lower lip out in a pout. Marinette gave her best puppy-dog eyes.

Batman wasn’t moved. “If you need something, Agent A will provide it.”

She blinked, eyes returning to normal in her confusion. “Who --?”

He disappeared into the shadows before she could finish the conversation, something she was, unfortunately, getting used to.

Marinette scowled at where he had last been.

Maybe she should have expected this, maybe if she had been less out of it she would have. They had given her pajamas when she’d had clothes and insisted on cleaning her old ones ‘for chloroform’. The checkup might have been a genuine checkup on her state, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered what the results were. She was always going to end up staying the night in the cold, dingy cave filled with bats.

She sighed and laid back against the stone floors. She heard Red Robin groan and looked up to see he had been locked out of the Batcomputer for the night. He leaned back in his chair and mumbled curses.

She giggled at his distress and, despite himself, a tiny grin poked at his lips.

“Want to race to see who can hack into it first?” She suggested.

He raised an eyebrow at her under his domino. “Think you can win?”

“Considering I don’t know that much about hacking, I’m going to say probably not.”

A wide smile spread across his face, now, and he waved her over. She took a seat on the desk beside the keyboard and he started teaching her everything.

Most of what he said, while technically heard, wasn’t exactly understood. She couldn’t concentrate. It was the first time she had seen him in anything but his vigilante suit and she decided that that was a crime because he looked so cute in the Batman-themed pajamas. Furthermore, the way his long hair was pushed back by a headband to keep it out of the green paste spread over his face to alleviate the chloroform’s rash reminded her of a spa day in all those movies.

And then there was the smile. It made her heart flutter in her chest because she was so used to his grins but this was just a genuine smile. He looked so passionate about the intricacies of cyber crime. She was almost sad about the domino hiding his eyes because she wanted to see the way they lit up while he explained different ways viruses could be accidentally downloaded to devices.

Basically, she was a mess for this random cute guy she worked with. She had never seen him so casual and at ease and it felt far more intimate than it maybe should.

She rested her head on her hand, nodding along as he talked about data encryption versus decoding.

Well, maybe a forced sleepover in the Batcave wouldn’t be so bad...

~

Tim was suffering a lot more than he would ever admit, and only a small part of it was due to chloroform.

He was going to be having a sleepover with one of his idols and he was going to be spending a large amount of the time trying not to throw up. And she could totally tell, too, why else would she be watching him so intensely? Someone kill him, please. He was so glad he had a secret identity because he didn’t know how he would manage if she thought Tim Drake-Wayne was a loser.

Granted, she was going to think Red Robin was a loser... but at least he had a second chance as Tim.

He rested his chin on the back of his chair. He had hacked into the Batcomputer already but it was a relatively dull night out on patrols and he wasn’t eager to be yelled at for showing Marinette some files on top of already hacking into them when he wasn’t supposed to.

“Wanna do something?”

She grinned. “Is there anything to do here other than train?”

“... nothing approved.”

She tipped her head to the side. “And of the things that aren’t approved?”

He matched her grin. “Well…”

And that was how he ended up setting up a movie projector in the cave so they could watch Groundhog Day. Marinette had taken to making them a pillow fort.

Duke stumbled down the steps, half awake, and raised his eyebrows at them from behind his domino. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that they had made and took a long sip before sending the two of them a wary look. “Do I want to know?”

Marinette didn’t look up from her and Tikki’s base construction. “Dunno. Do you want to watch Groundhog Day with us?”

He frowned. “Isn’t that the one where that guy in a time loop stalks his co-worker until he knows enough to make her fall in love with him?”

“Just say you don’t like romcoms and go,” Marinette irritably.

“I’m fine with romcoms, it’s just… a little messed up that he uses the knowledge he gets from being in a time loop to ensure she falls for him?”

“It’s a story about self-improvement,” Tim said, sending his brother a glare. “He grows as a person until he is worthy of her love.”

“Him learning about her is part of his arc. He starts off selfish and he ends it with a deeper appreciation for other people,” agreed Marinette.

Duke held his free hand up in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. Enjoy your stalker movie.”

“It’s not a --,” Tim tried to argue, but Duke was already heading back upstairs.

He huffed a little and finished setting up the computer and projector, then took a seat in the pillow fort. She poured each of them a cup of coffee, put a straw in hers to maintain her identity, and then took a seat beside him.

He took it from her with a bright smile and turned on the movie.

She rested her head on his shoulder as the happy-go-lucky music started up.

Unfortunately for them, they didn’t manage to stay awake for all that long. Duke had drugged the coffee pot.

~

Marinette shifted awake a while later and promptly decided that being awake sucked.

Nothing about her current situation sucked, of course. At some point during the night they had fallen asleep and now she was laying half on top of Red Robin, clinging to him like a koala. He didn’t seem all that upset about it, though, with his arm wrapped around her and his face buried in her hair.

Unfortunately, the time on the bottom right of the Batcomputer’s screen told her she didn’t have much time to enjoy it.

She started the slow process of extracting herself from him. Getting the arm off of herself was easy, getting his face away from her head was much harder (this wasn’t helped by the fact that the paste on his face had stuck to her hair).

There was one scare where she thought he was going to wake up. She pushed herself off of his chest and he took a long breath in. Marinette froze, watching his lips tighten… and then he turned over in his sleep.

Oops, apparently she’d been suffocating him a little in her sleep. Sorry, Red.

Well, at least she was free now.

She slipped out of the pillow fort and glanced at the time again.

Even less time to do what she needed. Because that’s how time works.

She sighed and called Tikki over with a tiny wave of her hand, walking over the edge of the railing. She looked down at the abyss that stretched many feet below.

Tikki couldn’t have looked more disapproving if she tried.

“It’s just a little insurance,” Marinette signed.

This didn’t make Tikki any less upset with her, but she hadn’t really expected it to. She signed for her transformation. She tied herself to the railing with her yoyo as a precaution and then hooked her legs around the railing.

And down she went.

She flexed at an awkward angle, flashlight in her mouth, and stuck a tracker to the bottom of the platform.

And, really, she wasn’t intending on using it. Like she said, it was just insurance. They had drawn blood from her earlier and she knew for a fact that it wasn’t necessary for chloroform inhalation. The only reason that made sense for that was that they wanted to check and see if she had inhaled some but they already knew that so… what did they want with her blood?

She was willing to bet it had something to do with her secret identity. And, hey, she didn’t particularly care if they knew her identity, she trusted them, but if it ever got out because of them revealing then who the bats were would be 1) revenge and 2) a good distraction.

“Hey --?”

Thank the kwamis she had tied herself to the railing because she’d been surprised enough to let go of the platform.

“Shit, sorry!” Said Red Robin.

She pulled herself back up onto the platform with his help and then collapsed on the cool stone. She spat the flashlight from her mouth. “Fuuuuuuck, don’t do that again, please.”

“Sorry,” he said again. Then he glanced back at where she had been and, momentarily, his lips pulled into a frown. “I gotta ask: what were you doing?”

“Hm?”

Shitshitshit.

“Oh, I wanted to see if there was anything down there or if it was just for The Aesthetic.”

“Why not just use your yoyo to go down?”

She shuddered. “The flashlight barely did anything. Would you want to go down into that darkness with no clue even how far down it goes?”

He seemed to accept the answer. “It’s an old iron mine. No one uses it anymore, though.”

She nodded her understanding.

She pushed herself back up to a sitting position and looked at him.

“The bats don’t get back for a while and we’re still on lockdown, so… want to do something?”

~

Damian was the first one to get home. Apparently he had broken a leg on patrol. This was fine (well, maybe he shouldn’t have been driving himself, but whatever).

What was not fine was that he had promptly decided to be an asshole.

Tim and Marinette had been playing Minecraft on the Batcomputer and, like all younger brothers, Damian asked to play.

And, like all older brothers, Tim barely looked up from his controller to tell him: “No.”

Damian looked to be on the verge of a meltdown.

Marinette sighed and sent Tim a tired look. “Red, don’t be mean. He’s just a kid. There’s more controllers, we can just give him one.”

“But…” He started. Damian was a terrible partner to play Minecraft with because he never helped out with anything except for the farm.

However, Marinette was looking at him expectantly. Tim bit his lip, considering.

Damian looked between the two of them and a wicked grin spread across his face and oh no.

Damian took a seat next to Marinette and gave her puppy-dog eyes (a real feat, considering the fact that he was wearing a domino and therefore his eyes were invisible). “Miss Ladybug, can’t you please make him let me play?”

Marinette gave Tim a tired look. “Red, c’mon, just for a bit.”

Damian smirked a little but, by the time Marinette turned back around, he had schooled his face back into a pout.

She handed him her controller. “You can have mine. I’ll find another for myself.”

The two watched her leave and Tim sent his younger brother a glare. “I can’t believe you would embarrass yourself this much just to play a game.”

“Anything to annoy you, ‘big bro’.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but then Marinette came back and all he could do was send him a glare behind her back.

Damian retaliated by sitting himself on Marinette’s lap. She looked down, amusement making her eyes crinkle, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge it. Damian smirked and stuck his tongue out at Tim.

That little shit.

And it continued on for hours while the three of them waited for the rest of the bats to come back. Damian would cling to Marinette in some way and he would become the bad guy for glaring at a child. He was seriously considering breaking the No Killing Rule for this kid.

Finally, though, people started coming back and apparently Damian thought it too embarrassing to do such a thing in front of more than just the person he was trying to annoy because he clambered off her lap to play just a little bit away.

Bruce was the last one to come in and he looked at his kids with the patented Batdad Glare because they had managed to drag Steph into playing with them (without much effort) and Cass into watching (with much more effort). Which meant that there were currently five family disappointments. Yay them.

Tim smiled innocently. “What? We got bored. Maybe you should let us out so this doesn’t happen again.”

“I’m keeping you here for your own safety.”

Marinette and Tim both groaned.

“I have work to do.”

“Me, too.”

Bruce didn’t relent because he was a stubborn asshole.

But that was fine. They really hadn’t expected them to. Tim glanced at Marinette and she twirled her index finger against her flat palm, the sign for ‘start’.

One flash and smoke bomb later, the two of them were running as fast as they could to his bike. He grinned as he helped his giggling friend get on and hopped up himself. Arms wrapped around him tightly and her face buried in his back. They tore out of the cave, giggling all the while.

[elvenmother]

AO3 Tags

I know this has been said time and again but AO3 tags are not like Tumblr tags. 

They are for archiving. They are to help people find what fics they are looking for. They are so people can filter out the shit they don’t like or filter for the shit they do like.

They are not for rambling in. They are not for a message to your readers. 

Put that shit in author notes.

I’m so sick of seeing things like “I wrote this at 3am”, “I hope people like this”, “Don’t judge me” etc etc.

No. Stop it.

If you want to let your readers know your state of mind when you wrote something put that in the author notes. If you aren’t sure how a chapter is going to hit them and are nervous about its reception. Put that in the chapter notes.

Stop for the love of Andraste putting bullshit in the tags. 

Some fandoms have a higher proportion of writers that do this than others. But I feel this needs to be a general message to all Tumblr authors who also post on AO3.

Another thing is when authors don’t tag anything. I read a great fic the other day with no tags to speak of. Just character tags, but nothing else. No clue as to the plot or content. Ok... But about half way through one chapter there was a super detailed sex scene. Now, I’m cool with that. But not everyone is going to be. The scene in question had a specific kink in it. Again, some people are going to be cool with that, some won’t be. Nothing will make me drop a fic faster than an untagged kink popping up out the blue. I get not wanting to tag some stuff to keep plot things a surprise but sex scenes/acts/kinks should be tagged.

Ok, I’m rambling on with myself now. Just really f-ing annoys me when people don’t use an archive’s tagging system properly. 

[cowboy-canoodler]

Paying back what you owe (Adachi Koichi x GN! Reader) 18+ SMUT

Tags: Giving Oral, Giving Blowjob, Age difference, Walk into a bar, Alcohol, Reader, Reader-Insert, Gender Neutral Reader, Chance Meetings, Reunion, Praise Kink, Dominant Reader

—

Walking the streets of Ijincho at night was always a toss of the coin. One night it’ll be quiet, no thugs, perverts, or any distractions, but other nights? All of the above. You were walking home from work, a regular day job of typing in numbers that somehow made a difference to how the company operated. Not like you cared about your job as long as you got paid right and on time but today you were in a good mood, Fridays were always your favourite day of the week as you always walked to a bar to cap off your week of working with a pricey drink.

Perhaps a whiskey today.

You realised you had been walking around deep in thought for a while and had ended up by Fukutoku park, a spot known for perverts who exposed themselves to passers by with nary a bashful look in their eye. A chill ran down your spine and you looked around, expecting to see a man in a big brown coat run up to you but there was nothing there, just the far off noise of cars driving by mixed in with the nearby river.

“Sheesh-“ you sighed and began walking towards the Bar district, “I need to calm down.” Your usual haunt, Bar Rodriguez, was still standing but had become stale and small, meagre ambient music and even worse company so, without even thinking about it, you walked past and came up to Survive Bar, one you hadn’t drank at recently but you remember they had the most divine drinks.

“I think I’m sold” you whispered to yourself as a spring jumped into your step along with the excitement of trying out a new drink.

The bar was empty, a piano against the wall by the door, a couple of seats by the bar and low seats by another wall, and a karaoke stage in the corner of the room. The bartender raised his gaze from the glass he was polishing as you walked over and sat down at the far side of the bar, placing your belongings on the floor beside you.

“Whiskey please” you replied to the bartender's silent question, he nodded and turned to grab a bottle, “not that one, the ¥4000 one please” he placed the bottle down and reached for the one you had requested, still silent which was actually rather comforting as it gave you the opportunity to take in the ambience. The music was soft and inviting, perfect to accompany the soothing atmosphere you were about to create around yourself. Maybe this would be your new go to bar.

As he placed the drink in front of you the door opened and a ragtag team of four walked in laughing and joking, shattering what you were hoping to accomplish. You slyly looked over and was greeted with, what seemed like, a familiar sight. A man with fuzzy brown hair, a bright red suit, and a smile to rival the sun. A classy woman who held herself in high regard while also staying loose and carefree with her friends. Another man with fuzzy hair except he had glasses and a large, green overcoat. Then finally another man, tall and built well, you were pretty sure nothing could knock him down should it try, he had greying hair and lines on his forehead from years of frowning, but also a gutterly laugh that seemed to be infectious.

And what did you have?

Jealousy.

You had never had friends with whom you could act this way around, and a pit of envy formed within your stomach as you turned back and sipped your liquid gold. You heard them talk and laugh as they walked past the bartender waving and collecting a few bentos on the way, the only one of them that stayed was the older gentleman who sat down at the bar, an audible groan escaping him which caused your pit of envy to turn to a breathless thought of arousal. It had been a while since you had gotten any but hearing a man groan because his back aches shouldn’t have been the thing to let you know about it. He glanced over at you and caught you staring, but you didn’t shy away and look back at your drink like others would, instead you chose to look him up and down with half lidded eyes and a small smirk before gracefully returning your gaze to your own drink.

That was sure to catch his attention.

A gravelly voice coughed to clear his throat and then rang out as he ordered a drink of “somethin’ cheap” a stark contrast to the slightly expensive whiskey you were sipping. Once more the bartender silently agreed and turned around to pour out a cheap sake but you interrupted that with a request.

“Order something with a little kick and I’ll pay for it, my treat” you glanced over at his reaction as you took another sip of your drink. He who had taken your interest pointed at himself accompanied with a smile and a half-hearted chuckle.

“Guess I’m having what they’re having then” he stood up and walked over to you, gesturing to the seat next to yours which you agreed to let him take. The bartender agreed and placed the drink down, a soft “here” as your newfound interest smiled and took it.

“Thanks for that, real nice of you” he raised his glass and you raised yours, clinking them together and smiling. “I’m Adachi”

“Y/N, it’s nice to meet you Adachi-san”

“Likewise, say” he took a sip of his drink and turned towards you, “you buy people drinks at bars often?”

You chuckled and looked over at your drink, “no, I actually don’t, I prefer buying my own drinks” you raised the glass to your lips and took another sip.

“So, why me?” Adachi did the same and you smiled down at the glass as you set it down on the bar.

“You and your- uhh- friends?” You pointed upstairs and Adachi chuckled knowing whom you were talking about, “you guys saved me one time, y’know, on part time hero?.” Adachi’s eyes widened as he slightly choked on his sip.

“Shit- really?” He lightly banged his chest and coughed.

You chuckled with a slight heat coming to your face, “I know right? I was actually getting mugged on my way home from work, it all happened so fast I couldn’t thank you guys properly” you turned and gave Adachi a sincere, perhaps slightly drunk, smile, “but now I can”

Adachi laughed and raised his glass, “then I’m glad we could help someone as gorgeous as you then, means we could meet again”

“Gorgeous, huh?” You raised an eyebrow and smirked, lightly biting down on the tip of your tongue between your teeth.

He smiled back at you with an equally playful stare, “I’m not one to lie, especially when I’m bought a drink”

You both took a sip and a soft silence fell over you, the sound of laughs echoing from upstairs. “Say, why aren’t you with them?” You nodded upwards and Adachi followed, looking toward the ceiling and the source of noise.

“I wasn’t feeling it, plus there’s only one futon up there-“ Adachi gestured with his free hand and chuckled, “-you do the math”

“Four to one futon doesn’t sound comfortable at all,” you drank the last of your drink and placed the glass down, the previous light warmth of alcohol now replaced with a deepening heat of bad decisions and arousal, “how would you like to have just two in a futon tonight?” You stood up and smoothed down your clothes before grabbing your belongings and turning to Adachi who looked lost. “I live nearby, if you wanna join me that is?”

“Oh y-yeah!” Adachi perked up and drank the rest of his drink before standing up and walking over to the door, a small spring in his step. You smiled and reached for your money, sliding ¥20,000 towards the bartender who looked puzzled.

“That’s for our drinks, and use what’s left for their tab” you nodded to the upstairs once more and turned to leave, walking through the door Adachi was holding open for you.

Both of you walked along the river towards your apartment, the cool night air keeping you company as the silence became awkward. You coughed and playfully bumped your shoulder into your company, “I know I just did it but I- uhh- I don’t usually do this”

“Do what?”

“Pick people up in bars, buying them drinks and sweet talking them. This is actually my first time meeting someone in a while” you shyly itched the back of your neck and looked up at your companion, who had a genuine look of surprise on his face.

“If it’s any consolation, it’s been a while for me too” a noise mimicking a ‘huh?’ came from you and Adachi smiled, “probably around three years? Sheesh could even be more-“

“Three years?!” You stopped in your tracks as Adachi laughed.

“Yeah, haha, all clogged up and a guy can only do so much, y’know? Uhh- wait I probably shouldn’t say things like that-“

You giggled and started walking again, linking your arm through his and pulling him, “it’s fine, to be honest with you,” you stopped and turned him towards you, leaning onto your tiptoes and putting your lips against his ear, “I’m kind of hoping you’ll let me unclog you, if you get what I mean” you heard a light gasp escape Adachi as he struggled for words, you leaned back and spotted his cheeks heating up with a hot blush. “Hmm? Would you be interested in that, Adachi-san? It’s not like I wasn’t hinting at it before, at the bar?”

“Yeah no I- I did get it then, but I kind of assumed maybe you just wanted me to walk you home or something and then we’d get there and you’d say somethin’ like ‘well thanks for walking me home!’ and I’d be left in the col-” Adachi realised he was rambling and coughed nervously, you smiled at him as he noticed your faces were mere inches apart, whiskey soaked breath intermingling as you admired his handsome features.

“Of course I wanted you to walk me home,” you kissed his cheek and slid your hand around Adachi’s waist, pulling him closer, “so you could join me tonight, would you like to?”

Adachi cleared his throat and nodded with an affirmative hum, you smiled and leaned in to kiss him. His lips were soft within the scratching of his beard, your bodies pressed together as you pushed him towards a nearby wall, of which Adachi willingly complied. He allowed you to push him back as his hands rested on your hips, his own rolling into you and you both kissed within the moonlight. Gentle gasps and sloppy sighs resonated between the both of you as your hands explored each other, Adachi’s fuller frame a welcome feeling amongst the cool night air.

His hands manoeuvred you just the same, worn out leather sliding under your untucked work shirt, his other hand cupping the back of your head, keeping your lips locked against his as you both tongued and bit at each other. Breathless gasps interrupted the Ijincho sounds, the far off talk of passers by mixed with cars and the rolling of the river as you and Adachi ravaged each other, months and years of pent up sexual energy bursting out in the dingy alley.

“Wait-“ you pulled away but Adachi followed, his lips kissing your neck as you stood back, attempting to regain your composure within his grip was futile. Just having his beard scratch up your neck was driving you wild, not to mention the exploring hands and soft moans that threatened to put you onto your knees and worship him right now. “Adachi-san, wait-”

His voice was a hoarse whisper against your ear, “Hm? What is it?”

You breathed for a few seconds so you could at least try to sound composed, “I live nearby- hah- we should at least try to get to my apartment before- y’know.” Adachi agreed but not before planting another deep kiss on your lips and smirking, keeping that sexual energy brimming within you both.

While the walk was short, it was arduous. Your hand played around with his, kisses on the cheek were snuck in as well as playful pokes and jabs. Both of you desperately trying to ignore what was ignited within you, with no success, more than a few times you’d snuck in a look to Adachi’s half-chubbed tent within his trousers in the passing lights, each time reminding you, and your body, what you had to look forward to. A couple of minutes passed and you came up to your apartment complex, casually opening the door for Adachi, who thanked you, before following, taking the both of you to your living space.

Usually your apartment was cold and empty, but not tonight. Adachi complimented your clean living space and looked around happily taking it all in, the things you had thought as simple were stars within his eyes. “This is a real nice place, Y/N-kun!” Adachi turned to face you with a smile on his lips as you placed your things down and took off your shoes, a little more sober than you had been before.

“Is it?” You looked around confused as to what was standing out, “it’s a pretty normal place to my standards”

“I sleep in a room with 3 other people ninety percent of the time, this is some good shit” you laughed along with his wry chuckle and walked over to him offering a seat on your couch, which he gladly took.

You sat next to him, crossing your legs and placing your head on your hand, your other hand came to his jacket, fingers lightly playing around with his zipper “I suppose next to those standards I live in a palace” you chuckled and met his soft gaze, “kind of a lonely one though”

“Oh?” Adachi’s gloved hand came to your thigh, fingers resting lightly upon the fabric of your trousers, “is there something you’d like to do about that, Y/N-kun?” Adachi’s tone was playful, his hand caressed along your thigh which sent shocks through your legs into your spine, your body heating up at the physical contact and the promise of a sexual endeavour.

“Trust the ex-cop to read me like a book.”

He raised a curious eyebrow, “I didn’t tell you I was a cop.”

A small smirk tugged at the corner of your mouth as a hushed tone left you, “you didn’t need to.” In one swift move you lifted your leg over him and straddled his thighs, wrapping your arms around Adachi’s neck and kissing his startled lips through his heavy grunt of surprise. Your hands clasped and gripped at his hair, tugging and pulling as your hips rolled along his pelvis. You could feel him getting hard underneath you and it only served to make you want him more, your own body heating up the cold confines of your lonely living space.

Both of you moaned against each other’s lips, gasps and sighs filling the air as Adachi’s hands, once again, roamed your body. Sliding within your shirt like you hadn’t even left the dank alleyway, leather caressing along your back as his bitten to the bone nails attempted a light scratch. Your hands continued to tug at his hair, dominating the man below you and controlling just how he was allowed to kiss you, yanking on his scalp to drag his head back, with a horny gasp, so you could bite his neck, pulling him to the side just to kiss down on his jawline, but Adachi didn’t resist. In fact, he willingly let himself be controlled by you and he was enjoying every moment.

“I think,” you mumbled into Adachi’s neck before pecking kisses along his jaw, “-It’s time I cleared those pipes, hmm?”

“I think so too” Adachi pushed his dick against your ass and you got a slight feel for how big he was underneath those trousers of his. Just at the feeling of his dick on you your mouth was salivating, this newfound desire to have his flesh fill it to the brim before cumming down your throat. You wanted him moaning your name like a dog whining while waiting outside of the store for their owner to come back, you wanted his knees to twitch and his toes to curl, you wanted sweat to pool on his brow as he let go of the last 3 years.

One last deep kiss on his lips before you slid down his legs, getting onto your knees in front of him. He was out of breath already, face red and lips parted with sheen of saliva dripping into his scruff. You revelled in it, watching the burly man unhinged and shivering with anticipation of your mouth around his dick was a beautiful sight to behold, and the desperate feeling for you to satisfy him was only growing. Your hands worked quickly to unbutton his trousers and shuffle them down along with his underwear. Adachi lifted his hips to help and his cock sprang free, hitting the base of his jacket with a soft tap.

He was big. Bigger than you had anticipated, not long but god he had girth. At least 7 inches with a wide base and thick veins pulsating with his heartbeat. Your jaw was aching just looking at it but the saliva pooling under your tongue was telling a different story. You bit your bottom lip before licking them for lubrication and kissing the tip. Adachi let out a soft sigh and let his head roll back as you began to massage his dick, your hand gripping tightly as you licked and kissed at the tip, tasting the salty pre-cum on your tongue, a small appetiser before the main meal.

With innocent eyes you looked up, making eye contact with a bashful Adachi, before wrapping your mouth around his dick and taking him in as far as you could go. By the shriek of his gasp you had taken him by surprise, his hand gripped a fistful of your hair before he realised and let go, instead choosing to rest his hand on the crook of your neck, ready to push you down at a moment's notice should he feel the need to. You hoped he would feel the need to.

Each bob of your head threatened your gag reflex, his tip lightly grazing your gullet as a choke rose within your throat. His girth stretched your lips as wide as they could go as your hand massaged that which you weren’t able to reach. Saliva dripped down your chin as yours and Adachi’s grunts filled the room, yours being sloppy and wet, and Adachi’s full of pleasure and relief. You lifted your mouth with a satisfying ‘pop’ of your lips off of his tip and proceeded to lick up the shaft, your hand continuing to massage what your mouth had abandoned.

Adachi was already twitching, his heavy sighs and restless grip a clear indicator that he wasn’t going to last long. “You look so cute, Adachi-san,” you commented before returning to licking his dick, a surprised ‘huh?’ escaped him but not before it was replaced by a low moan, his hand slowly entwining into your hair ready to push you down when you returned to wrapping your lips around his sweet sweet dick, “-if I were a nastier person I’d tease your orgasm for hours just to see you squirm like this some more but-“ you licked up his shaft, tongue pressed firmly against his cock, and smiled “I’m a very nice person who wants to see you lose your fucking mind as you cum down my throat.”

“Hah- it’s gonna be real soon Y/N-kun” his voice was wavering with each word, sweat clearly beading along his brow as the heat radiated off of his body and the dick within your grip twitched, getting quicker and quicker as his heartbeat rose with the incoming orgasm. By now you had stars in your eyes, living vicariously through Adachi’s pleasure to relieve some of your own pent up horniness. He looked down at you once more and you met his desperate stare before pushing your mouth and throat to their breaking points by taking all of his cock in at once, gag reflex coming up slightly as you choked but you couldn’t leave. Adachi’s grip was keeping you thoroughly pressed against him and his hips began to roll into you, fuckinf your throat as he climbed and climbed to his climax.

No longer was he holding back moans, swears were mixed in with gasps, sighs, and whimpers of your name. You were almost choking, tears built up within your eyes but you held strong knowing that he was going to cum at any time now.

And he did.

Semen painted your throat as Adachi howled in relief, your neighbours surely hearing his rapturous sighs of pleasure, knowing it was you giving it to this mystery man by the tell tale sign of him almost screaming your fucking name. It was salty and unpleasant but you weren’t one to refuse a meal, he was cumming so hard you barely even had to swallow, instead choosing to let it drip down as you attempted to encourage it with his dick still inside of you. Adachi’s hand fell down and you were free to lift yourself off, a wistful sigh leaving you as you pulled your aching lips from around his milked dick.

You sat back on your ass, resting your knees for a moment, and wiped the mixture of cum and saliva from your chin. Adachi, on the other hand, was tucking himself away, a shy look of embarrassment on his face which worried you.

“Is something wrong Adachi-san?”

He looked sheepish, “I- uhm- I came really quickly and…” he sighed and leaned forward, placing his elbows onto his knees, “I don’t think I can go again, at least not tonight and-“

“I know” Adachi raised his eyebrows in surprise and you chuckled, “I came into this knowing that Adachi-san and, to be honest, just getting to blow you and see you cum has done wonders for me.”

“Oh… but now I feel bad cause-“ he gestured up and down with his hand, “-Y’know”

Another wry chuckle before you leaned forward and placed a kiss on his cheek, “I’ll be alright, consider this paying you back for saving me. Just you though, I’m not about to blow your entire friend group”

“After that display I wouldn’t let you, I’d prefer to keep you to myself”

“Well… maybe you can.”

[anjuschiffer]

Another One?

Feel in love with this idea and want to thank @chocolate1721 for letting me write it :D

Hope you enjoy it <3

------

P.Taglist: @theatreandcomicfreak @damianette-is-life

Tags: @thestressmademedoit @purplejade24 @dreamykitty25 @mer-mel @maribat-is-lifeblood

------

Heads up: Lian makes an appearance :D

-----

AO3

-----

“I’m being serious Bruce.” Tim said, rubbing his temples. “There’s a five-year old girl in the Batcave, right now, and I need to know where the hell you grabbed her from.”

“Tim,” Bruce softly said, placing his hands onto Tim’s shoulders. “When was the last time you took a break?” 

He sure didn’t take another child in. After all, he would’ve remembered signing adoption papers.

With a scoff, Tim pushed Bruce’s hands away from him.

“I’m not hallucinating.”

Tim knew he wasn’t. He literally spent a whole half hour speaking to this child, finding out that she had magically teleported specifically to the Batcave, landing on his lap. He learned that her name was Marinette and that she was from Paris. Pa-ris!

“Sure you weren’t.” Jason said with a roll of his eyes. “So the coffee fairy from last week was totally real, wasn’t it?” Tim groaned, pulling his hands down his face.

“Why don’t you take a nap, Tim.” Dick suggested, guiding Tim to the library. “I’ll take-”

Small heavy footsteps caused the four men to turn towards the direction they heard them, seeing a fuming Damian sport a scowl, something being held away from him in disgust.

“Why is this small child in the Batcave and why is she playing with Batcow?” Damian roared, stomping a bit as he made his way to Bruce, a five year old girl hanging from his hand.

“Damian! That’s no way to hold her!” Dick scolded, taking the small child from Damian, cradling her in his arms, realizing that Tim was right.

There was another child in the manor. 

“Father,” Damian snarled, Bruce taking a step back. “Did you take in another lion minion?” 

Did he? He never remembered bringing in another child, nonetheless this beautiful tiny child that could easily pass for another one of his- was this becoming a problem?

“Damian, there has to be-”

“What made you believe that you needed another one?” Jabbing a finger to himself, Damian continued. “I am better than all of your other minions combined. I am enough. You. Do. Not. Need. Another.” Damian emphasized, letting out a growl.

“Seems like someone feels threatened.” Jason grinned, watching Damian point his katana towards him.

“Am. Not.”

“Sure you aren’t.”

“Damian, katana down. Now.” Bruce said sternly, waiting for him to put the weapon down.

“Not until he puts that sentence back into his mouth.”

Bruce sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, watching as Jason kept taunting Damian, noticing that Tim was nowhere to be found and Dick was busy talking to the child, watching as her smile caused something to blossom inside of him.

He really hopes he did indeed adopt his ray of sunshine.

Walking past his bickering boys, who now are at each other’s throats, Bruce crouched down to the girl’s level, observing her features. He knew he said it once, but upon seeing her up close, Bruce really felt like he could easily pass this child as his newest addition to his family.

“Mari, this is Bruce. He’s my father, along with the other guys’ as well.” Dick introduced, Bruce noticing that Dick was speaking in French. 

“Hello Mari. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Bruce spoke, hoping his French was understandable. “Like my son Richard said, my name is Bruce. Bruce Wayne. What is yours?”

“Hello Monsieur.” Marinette spoke, fidgeting with the ends of her pigtail braids. “I’m Marinette.” Bruce watched as she frowned, lowering her head a bit. “I’m sorry about playing with your cow. I won’t do it again. It’s just that-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Bruce said, patting her head, feeling his mouth curve even more when she giggled. “You can play with her any time.” Bruce assured, ignoring Damian’s protest.

“So when did you adopt another child? Usually I would be the first one to know.” Alfred spoke up, Bruce wondering why everyone thought he actually adopted another child.

“She’s not,” a sigh. “I didn’t bring her. I didn’t know she was even in the manor. Tim had found her -not sure how- but he di-”

A growl interrupted Bruce’s explanation, the three adults turning to see a flushed Marinette.

“Why don’t we get something for Miss Marinette while we discuss how you-”

“I didn’t adopt another child Alfred.”

------

After munching on cookies and happily sipping milk, Marinette looked at everyone with sad eyes, pursing her lips.

“What’s wrong, Nettie?” Dick asked, Bruce thanking him for being the one to ask.

“I need to head home. Monsieur Fu is probably worried about me.”

“If that’s the case, allow me to take you-” Bruce started, stopping when Marinette shook her head. 

Did she not want him to drop her off? Did she prefer Dick or Alfred? Did she not like him? What did he do wrong?

“No thank you. I can go by myself.” With a grin and hopping off the kitchen counter, Marinette bowed. “Thank you very much for the cookies Grandpere Alfred.”

“Glad you enjoyed it.”

With that, Marinette walked out the kitchen, a bright light seeping through the cracks of the door before it disappeared, everyone blinking at her disappearance before returning to eating the leftover cookies.

“Wonder if she got home safely.” Dick murmured, wondering how a child of her age got hold of a magical item that allowed her to teleport herself back home.

Bruce could only ponder, knowing that if he tried to search for answers, he wouldn’t rest until he found one. Although, something told him that he shouldn’t, allowing him to push the magical factors of this encounter to the back of his mind.

He only hoped to see the child again…

-----

And they all did, exactly a week later.

The boys were busy teasing Dick as he prepared for his date with Starfire, leaving Bruce and Alfred in the library. Bruce was finishing up his latest paperwork when shrieks and screams came from down the hall.

Forgetting his papers, Bruce marched down to find out what was going on, his eyes widening at the scene before him.

Damian was hiding behind Tim, Tim holding a clothing hanger as a weapon while Jason was fumbling to put his gun away. Meanwhile, Dick was on the floor, his suit wrinkled and his hair was out of its desired style. There, in front of him was Mari, her tongue sticking out as she adjusted Dick’s tie. She placed her hands on her waist once she finished adjusting the tie.

“See? Told you your tie was crooked.” Marinette grinned, finally realizing that Bruce and Alfred were at the doorway. “Grandpere Alfred! M. Bruce!” Marinette made her way to the older men, hugging the two of them.

“Marinette. What are you doing here?” Bruce asked, picking up the child. She was as light as a feather and was thin as one as well… did she not eat properly?

“I came to visit!” Marinette proclaimed, throwing her hands into the air, the Waynes knowing that this was the first to many visits of the tiny fairy.

-----

“Did you have to bring Lian with you?” Jason asked, eyeing the five year old girl who was currently running around the shop, Roy not moving a muscle as he finished up some final touches on the passenger seat he was working on.

“Her nanny needed the day off and I didn’t feel like looking for another one so I brought her with me.” Roy reasoned. “Also, I did promise her that we would go get some ice cream after this.”

Jason shook his head, smiling that Roy would forever have a soft spot for his daughter.

Taking the finished seat, Jason screwed it on, Roy hopping onto the finished bike to test it out.

As Jason put away some of the tools, he heard a crash, turning to see Roy and the bike on its side, Lian standing in front of Roy.

“Roy! We just-”

“Did Richard have a child around the same time I found out about Lian?”

“What? No! No, he didn’t.” Jason provided. “Isn’t that Lian that’s-”

“Lian doesn’t have blue eyes, nor navy hair.”

“Jay-Jay, who’s that?” The child asked, pointing to Roy. Roy looked at the mysterious child and then at Jason.

“Pixie?” Jason ran up to Marinette, kneeling to her level. “What are you doing here?”

“I got bored at home so I came here!” Marinette said with a chirp, her pigtails bouncing in unison with her voice. “Let’s play!”

“Pixie, I can’t right now.” Jason looked at Roy, frowning when he saw him recording him and sporting a grin.

“Why not?” Oh shit. There were the magical eyes and tears that Jason couldn’t afford to say no to.

“I-” Jason watched as Lian came into view, the girl blinked when their eyes locked.. “Why don’t you play with Lian? Lian, come meet Marinette.”

As soon as the two saw each other, smiles blossomed onto the two girls, quickly chasing each other around the workshop before disappearing into the manor, their giggles echoing through the halls.

“So she’s your kid?” Roy asked, laughing when Jason elbowed him. 

“She’s my sister, you idiot.”

-----

Tim dragged his hands down his face, tilting his head back before facing forward again. 

Just a few more minutes and then it’s off to doing the next thing.

He needed to hurry up and finish this stupid workload before the deadline.

After this, maybe he can do a quick patrol around the city before dawn… or at least hoping before dawn… when was the last time he checked the clock?

Fishing for his phone, Tim struggled to make out the large numbers in front of him. Was it a 3 or was it a 4? He couldn’t tell, nor did he care. It was still early. He can make the deadline and the patrol… right?

Become the new CEO, Bruce said. It’s going to be worth it, he said.

Tim doesn’t even remember the last time he stepped out of WE or the manor that wasn’t work related.

Tim reached out for his mug of coffee, taking a sip. But instead of being welcomed by the aroma of freshly made instant coffee, he was hit by the smell of cinnamon, Tim looking down at his mug, realizing that it wasn’t the one he had a few minutes ago.

A tug was soon felt at the sleeve of his sweater, Tim looking to see if it was Titus, knowing that the dog would come to him for late night pats. However, he was met with doe blue eyes.

“Come.” She spoke, pulling at his sweater. 

“I need to finish this.” 

“Come.” With a sigh, Tim followed her, trying to grab his things, but she didn’t let him.

She continued to drag him until they got to her room, Tim wondering how long they even had this room in the manor. He didn’t remember them having another sibling, nonetheless a girl.

He was guided into the small bed, having to curl himself a bit to fit. A mistake he would greatly regret. 

He was now curled into a comfortable position, still feeling warm from the cinnamon tea and having a heavy blanket on top of him wasn’t helping. He didn’t know how -nor did he want to know how- but he soon drifted into sleep, vaguely remembering seeing the child also climb into bed, making sure Tim went to sleep.

Tim stirred, quickly sitting up when he felt pairs of eyes on him, grabbing a nearby book to throw, only to find everyone in the room, either grinning like madmen or sporting a smile.

“What?”

“You’re finally away Master Tim.”

“Finally?”

“It’s three in the afternoon.” Jason said, patting someone’s head, Tim noticing that it was the small child from last night. “Why are you looking at Pixie like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You can see her?”

“What?”

Tim looked at everyone before placing a hand at his head.

“I thought she was just a hallucination.” Tim admitted.

“Tim, where have you been for the last two months?”

------

Everyone tried to catch up with each other as they made their way to their seats, Diana and Clark attempting to discuss their latest missions, Barry and Cyborg trying to talk about their latest interest, but everyone knew it was futile.

Rumors spread fast and everyone wanted to know the truth.

Did Batman really adopt another child? Did he have another ward?

Yes, they’ve seen the video that Roy sent everyone, but showing Jason softly speak to a girl that looked identical to Lian wasn’t going to cut it.

They wanted proof. Solid. Evidence.

Everyone went quiet when they saw Batman already seated, awaiting for everyone to join him.

“I thank you all for coming here.” Batman started, getting up from his seat, seeing that Aquaman and even Zatanna were able to make it. “I want to start with asking everyone to- what’s going on?”

Only two minutes into the meeting and he already lost everyone. As subtle as they tried to be, Batman could see various phones peeking over the meeting table.

“Say Batman,” Hal decided to start, using himself as tribute. “Already introducing your new ward to the business?”

Everyone watched as Batman stiffened, watching as he began to slightly panic, looking to his sides until he saw the person everyone else had seen, but him.

There stood Marinette, using his cape to try and hide herself. 

He quickly got up and took the child, guiding her to the farthest corner of the room, away from prying ears (all but Clark’s that is).

“Marinette, what are you doing here?” Bruce asked, taking her hands into his, being reminded how small she was.

“I went to the manor, but no one was home, not even Grandpere Alfred so I decided to join you.” Marinette said, rubbing her eyes as she let out a yawn.

“What time is it in Paris?”

“Last time I checked it was 19:00.” Marinette said, another yawn being let out.

“Past your bedtime.” Bruce stated, scooping up the child. “Go ahead and take a nap. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.” Marinette modded, resting her head against his shoulder. 

Batman continued the meeting without batting an eye, everyone wondering how he wasn’t getting tired from holding the little girl and where he even managed to find her. 

They couldn’t focus on the meeting, their eyes on the small child that drooled on Batman, her sudden smiles distracting them.

Where did he even find her?

Then again, this was Batman. If he wanted something, he made it his goal to get it. Even if it meant having a new ward that was the epitome of pureness. 

——-

Daiman frowned as he threw another stick for Titus to fetch, trying to push down his anger.

“Marinette this, Marinette that. Pixie Pop did this and Nettie did that!” Damian yelled, grabbing the stick Titus had brought back.

“Why are they so enthralled by that little lion minion?” Damian huffed, watching as Titus happily chased after the stick.

“She can’t do anything but lighten up the manor with her stupid giggles.” 

Ever since Dupain-Cheng barged into the manor, everyone has been baby-proofing the manor, Bruce and Jason making sure to tightly secure the locks to the weaponry and vehicles. Alfred always had cookies at the ready (though Damian didn’t mind) while Richard made sure to have more toys and coloring books stocked up whenever Marinette would drop in.

It didn’t help that whenever Damian would join his father to the Watch Tower that people deflated to see him there, hearing the whispers that asked when Marinette was coming back.

Attempting to forget about it all, and focus on Titus, Damian frowned upon seeing his beloved dog holding the one behind his annoyance.

Holding her by the collar of her shirt, Titus had brought his owner Marinette. She was in the garden by herself, so Titus thought he should bring her to Damian.

After all, two humans means more hands that would pet him and shower him for being a ‘good boy.’

“What are you doing here Dupain-Cheng?” Damian asked, telling Titus to drop her.

“I made a flower crown for you.” Marinette said, offering him the object, ignoring Damian’s question which caused him to snarl. 

“I don’t want your stupid crown.” Damian said through gritted teeth, throwing the crown to the floor, freezing when he saw tears slip down her face. 

“Why don’t you like me?” Marinette asked, looking at Damian with glazed eyes. 

Why didn’t he like her? 

No, he didn’t like her, but he also didn’t hate her.

He just found her annoying, a pest, just like the rest of his siblings.

Siblings…

Damian looked at the tiny girl, crouching to help her wipe her tears.

“It’s not that I don’t like you.” Damian admitted, grabbing her hand as he rose. “I’m just getting used to having another sibling.”

Another sibling. 

That’s why Damian was annoyed. 

He was no longer the new addition, she was.

She was the center of attention, just like he was when he had first come to the manor.

Now it was his turn to help her get adjusted to the manor, although it seems like she was already adjusted to their lifestyle. It was him who needed to change,

“So you don’t hate me?” Damian shook his head, watching Mari give him a small smile. “Then… are we friends?”

“No.” He said, quickly regretting it as he saw her smile drop. “We’re family.” Her smile returned, twice as big, a giggle even escaping her.

They were family now, whether he liked it or not. Whether she was directly adopted or not.

She was another Wayne, whether everyone liked it or not.

Damian, for one, didn’t mind. 

He had a sister now, someone to teach. Possibly his own student.

“Come now Mari, I think Alfred had made some cookies earlier.”

Another one who he can happily say was his family.

[sly-merlin]

Killing Me - 4 | n.y

pairing : law student!reader + yuta

genre :    angst , mafia au/ arranged marriage au , smut

warnings : curse words, mention of murder, guns, knives, smut!

words : 5.4k

summary : “life’s never fair y/n. realise it as soon as you can . it is the only secret for living a regretless life.”

                                         or

                  “  curiousity got the cat hitched”

taglist :: (not tagging the old ones because they have read it already bt if u want , lemme know! )  @yiyi4657​​​ @sorrywonwoo​​​ @sillywinnergladiator​​​  @suhweo​​​ @exfolitae​​ @minejungwoo​​

K.M masterlist

k.m 3    k.m 5 

Previous morning in Taeyong’s office

“What was that for!” taeyong questioned jaehyun, clearly annoyed by his previous hostile mannerisms towards you. Jaehyun was on the receiving end of taeyong’s infuriation immediately after you departed from his office with doyoung.

“What!?” jaehyun tried to act oblivious at taeyong’s accusations.

“Why were you trying to scare her? Escort ring! For fucks sake Jae, I expected better from you.”

“But it wasn’t a dead loss. And even you went along in the same wagon, so don’t put everything on me alone.” jaehyun justified himself shrugging his shoulders lightly. “And admit it! She was giving you a hard time. That bitch was not buying anything!

Taeyong knew jaehyun was right. Your unsatisfied replies and never ending enquiries were exasperating him, but he would rather preserve his precious ego than admitting that to jaehyun.

He ruffled his well-made hair before replying to jaehyun, who was expecting some gratitude with a smug face.

“I-- just be careful and refrain from doing and saying anything that might put a dent in my plan. It’s a chance neo would never get again. So be patient and don’t go around opening your mouth about this to anyone.” jaehyun reluctantly nodded,not hearing what he wanted but his affirmation calmed taeyong’s nerves. He couldn’t trust jaehyun entirely but his options were limited.

All the pieces were in right place, for now. Nothing could go south right!

But jaehyun couldn’t completely understand the rationale behind Taeyong’s design.

and nor could the figure standing outside, completely hidden from the insiders.

The dread of the forthcoming finals substantiated the shortage of vacant seats in the kwanjeong library. You tried your best to arrive as expeditiously as possible for a person who partied, got abducted, arranged her own marriage, and again partied in grief, all in spam of about 34 hours. Finding no available seat, you decided to settle down on the floor. You gulped your cup of Americano in one go and began with the donut. As per a wise saying, Caffeine and sugar were the best combination as a breakfast for someone trying to get through their day with only 4 hours of sleep, the intellect being none other than your own self!

Yesterday was pretty long day. Though you were worn out from the adventures with wonwoo last night, your brain wasn’t exhausted enough to shut down properly when you tried to close your eyes.The flashes of the events had shrouded you with mixture of regrets and worries. What was the guarantee that you won’t end up dead tomorrow! What if taeyong was lying! But the fact regarding moon industries was absolutely legible. Maybe you should get a restraining order or something! But the existence of a person is necessary for that and yuta was a fucking corporate in the public eye and you were sure taeyong held some powerful position in the rich hierarchy as well, otherwise, covering the shits without revealing their true identities was not the job of some measly gang leader. There was more to taeyong than what someone could perceive just by looking. Will you be considered one of them now! After the little stunt that landed you straight into yuta’s life, you weren’t sure that he’d not strangle you in sleep. And What were you going to say to them? Chelin, yeom, guk, yeong.

and your thoughts spiralled from taeyong,yuta towards chelin and your friends and didn’t rest anytime before 4a.m. Waking up at 8 sharp , you took a shower and made your way towards the library.

And now you were here. 2 students passed your figure indicating that there were 2 vacant seats. Finally, after 15 minutes. They might have been the overnight students, you thought and walked inside before anyone else could claim the treasure. You had to find a new topic of thesis and do some research for international paper your professor was writing, and you being his designated so-called subordinate had to help him, involuntarily of course. But in this world, the student who could refuse their professor’s demands was yet to be born! Marking the place by placing your bag, you started the search for last month’ law journals and digests. One and a half hour passed, but you couldn’t find anything on international court of justice i.e. what your professor hadn’t already included. The urge to go out was profusely weighed down by your own sentiment of avoiding your friends. So you decided in favour of swallowing the bitter pill.

5 hours passed. The vibration of the timer in your phone prompted you to run off and get some food. It was already 2:30 and the lack of real food was making the tasks harder than they already were. Stepping outside into fresh air, instant regret of not bringing an umbrella washed over you. The sun was too bright unlike your mood and walking all the way to your favourite canteen would end up in you getting another headache. But you silently wished that every being from yesterday’s party was suffering from the same treatment of the over-the-top optimistic planet. why to suffer alone!

“Shortie” you lifted your head, spotting the combo of buy 1 get 1 free, heading your way.

“Where were you whole day? And if you aren’t going to pick calls then please do that poor thing a favour and sell it!” yugyeom barked while running his hand through his hair.

You shrugged jungkook’s elbow from your shoulder and replied “I was busy with prof. Joong’s work. And I have to be somewhere after 4 so I was a bit-

“Joong should adopt you already man!” Jungkook interrupted, nudging your sides with his fingers.

“ but I thought he wanted to be her sugar daddy!”  at that gyeom gave a serious and stern look to kook, pretending to ponder over his statement for a second and then suddenly they both starting laughing, hands hitting you everywhere to support their doubling figures.

“Get away from me, idiots!” you shouted, trying to get away from them. Once they were done with showing their exaggerated emotions, you all giggled together in unison. they were wearing their fundraiser t-shirts, you noticed.

“When is the fundraiser?”

“At 5. But you won’t be there to support us cause you are busy with your daddy!” kook exclaimed while bumping your shoulder with his arm.

“I didn’t say I’m going for Joong’s work and no, he’s not my sugar daddy, doofus. I’m busy with tutoring. I missed someone’s Saturday class so—

“Okay, chill tiger. You need to breathe. It’s a boring event anyway.” gyeom said in a comforting tone, interjecting your rapid fire speech.

“I’m gonna have lunch, are you two going?” you suggested.

“Yeah, it’s our break and yeong and minjun have eaten already, so that left you!” kook pouted when gyeom mentioned his boyfriend’s name.

“Let’s go! I want my sugar” your dramatic pout made yugyeom pet your hair lovingly and the three of you started walking on stone pathway on the way to the canteen.

“Where’s your umbrella?” jungkook asked you. He knew how much you hated walking under sun after the drinking escapades.

“I forgot but let’s not talk about it. it’s making me grumpy.”

“Okay! but why don’t you cover your head with that scarf instead.” he said pointing towards the silky material around your neck.

“Naahh, it ruins my fashion” they gave each other a puzzled look, shrugging their shoulders for they both couldn’t gather the reason of your weird behaviour.

At lunch, you talked to them about the fundraiser and gave your own contribution for the noble cause. The conversation with them progressed too easily and for about an hour you forgot about the turmoil in your life, which was still unknown to them.

After parting away, you went straight to your professor to show him your progress. He took note of the materials you found on recent cases and dismissed you without showing any gratitude. Not even a word of appreciation.

A ping!

Jaemin: noona, doyoung hyung is picking you up at 4 but he won’t enter the campus. Be out at 4!

You let out a frustrated groan at his text. You had only met him once, when he conferred upon you the honour of connecting your phone to his server but that was not the only favour you received! He also saved his contact number with various hearts that you obviously removed after reaching home. you could only pray to heavens that he won’t be there today as well!

You made your way to the library again, this time to work on your thesis. The time passed quickly than you thought. The alarm you placed earlier vibrated, indicating it was 4 already! You hastily made your bag and ran out of the library. It took 10 minutes to reach the gates of the campus. When you passed your dorms building, the idea of ditching doyoung and going to bed sounded tempting but as usual, nothing was going your way these days. You felt like the old catch 22 was in action.

You passed through the gates and looked around the road to find doyoung’s car but he was nowhere to be seen. While you were scanning the whole area, a low voice called your attention.

“What are you finding, I’m right here under your nose” a voice said through gritted teeth.

Yes, he was indeed sitting in the car right in front of you and the only one you missed apparently. You walked around the car to sit on the passenger seat, the tinted windows hiding you from the outside funfair.

“What took you so long? Its 4:15 already.”

“I don’t have a car like you so I walked myself here and it’s not like I did it purposely anyway.” You contended, the annoyance in your voice matching his own.

“Whatever, we are already late so turn around. Taeyong would be mad.”

“No I’m not turning around. First that cloth bag, then the handkerchief you tied on my eyes yesterday, its painful man. I’ll lose my eyesight this way. And I can navigate whole city from this place, you can’t hide your dungeon from me now” you reasoned. He didn’t tie your hands yesterday but your eyes were still covered.

“Then give me your scarf. I’ll cover your eyes with your own choice of article. It’s not painful or else you won’t be wearing it right! he said mockingly, pointing towards your neck.

“Umm, this scarf is act-

“Give me that already. I have some other things to handle as well.” assessing your options, you hesitantly removed the scarf, turning around to face the window immediately. Doyoung tied it across your eyes, checking the knot twice and tapped your shoulder. As you turned around, doyoung’s doe eyes widened, if that was even possible. Your collarbone and neck, which was visible through your v neck top, was covered with pretty purplish bruises. You fidgeted with your hands, flustered, feeling his eyes on you. But he remained quiet, focusing on the task at hand.

The whole drive was quiet and though your hands were not tied, you kept them on your backpack, hesitant to start any conversation. The car stopped finally, the mixed feelings coming back. The same process followed. He guided you inside but this time you passed only one door and the walk was quite shorter as well.

As doyoung was about to remove your scarf, a hand stopped him, or that was what you understood from the movements at that time.

“Silky scarf, blindfold and hickies hmm! Being kinky doyoungie. She’s your sister-in-law. Show some respect boy!” a voice remarked, the air around your face suddenly filled with chocolate and coffee. You hiccupped all of a sudden, earning a chuckle from the unknown presence.

You tried to reach for the blindfold, but your hands were caught mid-air, the said hands removing it. You blinked your eyes a few times to make out the figure’s face. He was standing, mostly bending to match your stature, face smiling to show all of his teeth.

Yuta.

You, surprised, took a step back but instead bumped into the one behind you.

“I’ll take over from here, doyoung.” but fortunately, he didn’t budge, fortunately. Your hold on backpack tightened, your eyes lowered to avoid his gaze. The only thing in your view were his baggy pants and white sports shoes.

But yuta could see only you and nothing else. Taeyong wasn’t the only one awaiting your arrival. Yuta was equally anticipating you.  His night was just as sleepless and anxious as you. He was afterall at the other end of the rope.

He raised your head, fingertips lightly grazing your chin. His hooded eyes roamed around your face like he was expecting you show some contempt , hatred,nervousness! He straightened up abruptly and started tying the silk around your neck. You flinched at his touch but he remained void of any reaction. His half denim jacket and white t-shirt hid you from the surroundings, his arms almost engulfing you. He repositioned himself to match you height again, arms crossing against his chest.

“Looks like someone had a fun night.” and in a second, his honey smile changed into a smirk, letting go of any trace of earlier softer expressions. And the look on his face was enough to scare the shit out of anyone.

“Stop yuta” a taller man you recognised from yesterday as Johnny, pushed yuta aside from your view. It was then you saw that everyone was there. Including the one you were yet to encounter.

Your eyes wandered from one side to other of the room. Johnny let you inspect.

“Doyoung, what was the need to cover her eyes?” Johnny whispered to doyoung, breaking your trance.

“Why is everyone nagging me so much” he whined in a screeching voice.

“Karma bitch” Johnny pointed his forefinger towards him before giving his attention to you.

“Hey, how are you y/n.” he asked, his cheerful voice totally in contrast with the weather of the room.

“I’m- ummm.” you cleared your throat before continuing. “I’m fine Johnny. As fine I can be.” you mumbled the last part but he surely heard you.

“You remembered my name!” he clapped, his eyes turning into crescents. You gave him a tight lipped smile in return, waiting for some instructions. As if on cue, taeyong’s loud voice graced your ears.

“Come y/n. make yourself comfortable” he indicated towards the couches that were almost already occupied. Johnny gestured you to proceed, walking with you. You passed yuta who was still smirking and sat on the single seat available next to taeyong. You placed your backpack on the large table in the middle of the room. It looked like a normal living room for guests, just with too many couches to accommodate the gang. You felt like an uninvited because apparently everybody was watching you like a hawk. Their stares changed sight only when yuta came to take a seat on one of the couch, exactly opposite to yours. You met his eyes briefly before turning your face towards your bag again.

Who knew the rusty zips of your bag were so interesting!

“So y/n I thought you should meet everyone. You are going to be part of this family soon. Better get acquainted with all.” taeyong addressed you while he sat on his couch majestically like a king. You heard a dry laugh and if you had to guess it had to be from jaehyun or yuta.

You didn’t understand why he wanted that. You were just a risk till yesterday and now means to discipline yuta.

And why all the formalities if you were gonna leave anyway.

“I’m going to leave anyway, taeyong. So I don’t see a need to do it!”

You were too consumed to notice how your sentence turned all the heads around you. Some started giving side eyes to each other. There was something they were all missing.

“I said you could leave. But not without my permission. So, you’d be stuck for now, maybe till months or years.”

You gulped at his words. Taeyong turned your only hope into a distant dream. Maybe you were too foolish to gauge the situation.

“You want something to eat or drink before we continue” he asked in a sincere voice. Shaking your head, you rubbed your eyes with the palms of your hands to stop them from moistening. There was nothing more embarrassing than to cry in front of a bunch of strangers who didn’t give a shit about you.

“No, please continue.” you emphasised again to not draw any more attention to yourself than already was. And you internally thanked to taeyong who continued as if you weren’t just gonna cry!

“You will move in with yuta on Saturday,” it was Monday. “The wedding ceremony would be held in the morning. So you have few days to prepare, everything from your dress to every other thing you need shall be arranged. Just name it and you’ll have it!”

Wedding ceremony! That was not on the plate!

“I don’t want a cerem-

“Leave the bullshit ta-

You and yuta both cut off each other simultaneously. You glanced at his side, finding him already piercing his gaze into yours.

“There’s no need for it. The paper signing is enough. It’s not like we are in-

You knew taeyong understood what you were trying to say, so you didn’t continue. But you were already having a feeling of superiority over yuta for being the first to offer your opinion. It felt like a payback for flustering you earlier. You refrained from facing him again, your body turned towards taeyong only, but you felt satisfied with the thought of him being riled up.

“Oh, but I want a ceremony taeyong and mark is going to be the best man. He’s so excited. You can’t do that to him!” yuta emphasised through the variation in his voice. You knew he changed his argument purposely , but you maintained your cool, opting to ignore him . bear and forbear.

Taeyong raised his eyebrow at you but you shook your head again.

“I don’t think it’d be a good idea. It’s not a normal one anyway so why pretend!” you held your ground.

“You aren’t getting married to a mannequin.” yuta retracted. “I’m getting married as well and don’t anyone dare say that I made a mistake and blah blah. At last I’ll be hitching so I want a ceremony and Japanese at that!”

Oh yeah, he was Japanese. You has missed that as well.

All the other men in the room, 9 to be exact, were nodding at everything that was being said. They were unable to decide whose argument was worth taking side for. Finally Johnny spoke-

“I think y/n is right” looking at nowhere particular, he continued. “What’s with pomp and show when it’s nothing more than an agreement”

“But if yuta hyung wants it, then why not. They are going to live together, he should have his say as well.” it was mark who took yuta’s side. He didn’t know why but watching yuta losing ground urged him to support his brother.

You looked briefly at the boy who just argued with Johnny.

“He’s mark y/n.” taeyong said the answer you were looking for. “And he’s Jungwoo, jeno, doyoung, you have already met him, then jaehyun, johnny, renjunie, hendery. Others are busy so you’ll meet them some other day probably.”

A few waved towards you, including mark, who shyly withdrew his hand quickly. They all probably hated you as there was no other reaction towards a person who almost put your life in danger!

“Can we get to a middle ground now? I’m already getting tired of this” jaehyun grumbled, leaning into the couch.

“Ok so, he wants a celebration of a lie! What about me then. You are all here but I have no one. I’m alone and probably will be. Because taeyong, you haven’t told me how am I going to reveal this to my friends? I may not have a family, but still there are people close to me. they are my best friends, roommate, and many others who need to know! How am I going to explain them that their friend who didn’t even have a boyfriend, is getting married suddenly? I don’t even have parents to cover it with an arranged marriage. How to convince them? give me a way and I’ll agree” you pointed out the very important detail that they were missing. But they needed to know that there was other side of the paper as well and your reasons were not just a cry in the wilderness.

Nobody made a sound. Everything went quite like a dark night until-

“I hope this is not the calm before a storm!” you looked over to see the person who broke the silence. It was another young man coming with a food trolley, probably from the kitchen.

“I thought we have a guest so I prepared some coffee and donuts. I hope you like sweets y/n” the man was smiling ear to ear, seeming too happy with your visit.

“I-

“I’m kun.” he introduced himself and you shook his hand. He seemed too polite for a criminal. “Have this and tell me how it is” he forcibly handed you a dessert plate with a chocolate glanced donut. You took it out of politeness but felt a bit weird to be the only one eating it. You watched him with quizzical eyes as he took one for himself and sat on the arm of your couch. Everyone was now staring at your movements.

“Eat it, eat it. These are for you and me only.” he cajoled.

You decided to take a bite and then place it back just to stop the awkwardness.

As you bit it from one side, your brain short circuited. “Holy shit, bro. what is this sorcery.” your genuine and innocent reaction made Kun laugh loudly, some of the others joined in as well.

“Thank god, you like it! I’m so glad you aren’t one of weight conscious ones, otherwise it’d have been weird.” he starting munching on his own piece.

“I’m a sugar bear. I can’t live without sugar. I just had a donut in the morning but it was bleh comparing to this. You are a master chef bro.” and for a minute you forgot the previous tense environment. Everyone was glad that Kun came to save the situation and except to you, it was known that obviously he heard everything from the kitchen.

“You ate one in the morning! Then it’s the last one you’re getting. Everyone help yourself. She’s not having anymore!” as if they were waiting, everyone except mark and yuta picked them up.

“Mark” Kun motioned towards the tray and he grabbed one as well.

“What if I was allergic to chocolate, kun” you asked him while finishing your treat.

“Oh please! Even ten eats it.” he laughed to himself at his reference, which went over your head.

“Now coming to the point.” Everyone looked at taeyong who was already done with eating. “Y/n doesn’t want anything special so it’ll happen like that. No!yuta, lemma speak. And you y/n, it’s upon you to make your friends believe. Make up a story or do whatever you want. You don’t want to tell them about the wedding. Fine with me but do let them know at least that you have a boyfriend that you are moving in with! It’s on you both to make this arrangement believable.

“okay , sho now I shuggenly hab a voyfiend” you started speaking without even finishing the bite in your mouth. you continued once you chewed it.

“wont they be suspicious. They know exactly what I do and what I don’t. It’s almost impossible to put a façade in front of them.”

“Oh please, don’t tell me they even know from where you got those hickies” jaehyun’s curt statement was a hit below the belt. Kun was about to scold him when you elaborated his statement further to prove that he was doing nothing but burning his own fingers.

“Yes, actually they happen to know. When, where and from whom I got these. Anything else you want to ask?.” he rolled his eyes on your reply, busing himself with the delicacy instead.

“They don’t know yuta. So if you want you can introduce him to your people. He won’t be posing any problem, take my word for it.”

“I’ll go with you if you also accompany me,that I guess would be a problem for you. You don’t want to be seen with a criminal, or do you!” yuta jabbered. He was trying to push your buttons to measure your limit. But little did he know that you were far from being that easy.

“I just said I don’t want a wedding. I’ll agree to anything that is reasonable and is not degrading to me.”

“Ok then, nobody would force you to do what you don’t want.” taeyong decided to took matter in his own hands now. “And we’ll organise a small, very intimate gathering at taeil’s office to celebrate as yuta wants. And you’ll be introduced as Mrs. Nakamoto to our corporate world.” taeyong finished gauging both of your reactions. The surname was foreign and cringing to you. But it was going to be yours, so there was nothing you could do, for now.

“What do you mean ‘our’ corporate world.” you got puzzled at his choice of words.

“You’ll find out soon and its nothing scary, don’t worry.” Kun responded on behalf of taeyong this time, handing you your cup of coffee. “Tell me if it’s cold, I’ll-

“No it’s totally fine.” you assured him, without even taking a sip. He was being nice enough already.

“If my opinion has no value, then what am I even doing here!” yuta shouted, getting up from the seat.

“yut-

Before Kun could say anything, he stormed off. Mark tried to follow but taeyong stopped him from doing that.

“Don’t mind him. He’s a hot head.” Johnny laughed in between his bites.

You only nodded, sipping your coffee. You were glad he was gone. Sugar has always done wonders for you and it was having same effects now as well. You were able to think more rationally now.

“One more thing” you furrowed your brows at taeyong. What was left now!  “Do you want any specifications in the house? It’s my responsibility. A wedding gift you can say. If you need anything like extra closet, a more spacious kitchen-

“Kitchen?” you let out a brief chuckle at that. Everyone’s eyes were on you now. “It’ll be totally fine if I don’t even get a kitchen. I can’t cook anything besides ramyeon and salads. So I won’t even need that.”

“You are a student. Don’t you know anything basic.” it was Jungwoo who spoke in the voice sweeter than even Kun’s.

“No. I grew up in an orphanage and they provided us everything. I left when I started law. So all in all, I never had anyone to teach me. That’s why if you want to know best food trucks and restaurants in the city, I’m your best option.but, if that yuta knows how to cook, ask him about the kitchen.” you spoke non chalantly .But you didn’t realise how uncomfortable the air had become. a heavy silence took over the light atmosphere.

“I’m sorry noona” Jungwoo apologised sheepishly.

“It’s fine. After all there are some things that your hacker can’t find out. only I can tell you those.” saying that, you faced taeyong again. “But if you insist, I can always use a study room.” you tried to enlighten the mood again.

“Ok. I’ll find something suitable for you both.” you hummed, not knowing what to say anymore.

“Can I go back now?”

“Yes, doyoung will drop you.”

“No, I’ll go with her.” Johnny said, grabbing your attention. He didn’t look sulky like doyoung so, it’d be fine, you guess.

They said you goodbyes. Mark seemed hesitant to even look at you, but you couldn’t care less. He was just a stranger after all.

Yuta couldn’t realise why everyone was trying to be so nice to you. Till yesterday, he was allowed to put a gun on her head but now every being was against him. He didn’t know why he was so furious at taeyong, to forcing him to marry you or from dragging mark into this mess. Taeyong knew how to play dirty, but yuta never thought he’d use his own brother. There was no option for him as well, as taeyong has said. He showed interest in a fucking celebration to contradict you, but you were not backing down and that felt like a punch to his gut.

He drove towards his stress reliever. The infamous Japanese club. Only place where he could drown his sorrows.

The club was packed despite it being Monday. That was one thing he liked about it, you’ll never be disappointed in this place.

“ゆた!” The hostess chimed seeing yuta. “久しぶり” [ long time, no see!]

He signed her to give him 2 shots. She did as told but her gaze was following yuta’s, which rested on her cleavage. He came here only for 2 things after all.

He gulped the drink in a second without blinking an eye.

“バックルーム” [ back room]

She wasn’t someone to be told twice. She handed her hand towel to her co-worker and followed the path. Who was she to reject him after all?

As she opened the door, yuta pressed her against the door, shutting it with a thud, His tongue directly fighting with hers. Sinful sounds escaped her throat as yuta’s hand started working on the skimpy fabric she wore to cover herself. She moaned loudly as yuta pinched her nipples hard, his groans matching her loud ones. His eagerness always started a fire in her body, with intensity too much to handle. Her hands undid his pants, dropping them on the floor. They have done it so many times that the whole process imprinted in their minds by now.

without breaking the kiss,she changed their positions making yuta’s back hitting  the door . With a loud smooch, his lips parted hers, to let her function pn her own.

She got to her knees while he got rid of his shoes to remove the boxers. She gave a few pumps before giving kitten licks to the tip while her gaze was fixed on his face.

“Hisoka, I’m in a hurry” he warned her. Smirking, she took him in her mouth, going up and down as head bobbed with the motion. Yuta fisted her hair, roughly stroking himself inside of her. She whimpered on the action and hit his balls with her other hand, earning a chuckle from him. Yuta knew how much she hated when he took charge. Yuta’s head hit the door as she sped up, the grip on her hair tightening and with a few deep throats, he was done. Yuta looked at her fucked up eyes, chin dripping with his seed. He picked her up with her elbow, his mouth latching towards her breast as soon as her back hit the same spot again. she moaned in pleasure as her shorts were removed hastily by him. Yuta merely smirked at her lack of panties.

“You knew I was coming hmm!” he growled sensually in her ear. Her body almost crumbled on the floor at his voice. “Let’s do it then!” he exclaimed, slipping himself into her. Her one leg that was wrapped around his waist provided him a perfect angle to stroke while his hand perfectly trapped her against the door. his mindless thrusts made her breasts to bounce with the same pace. “Faster”  her  moans were muffled from the outside world due to the high bass music that was playing in the club , providing them the coverage from any 

“もっと”[ more!] Yuta asked her while giving a final hit to her insides, her body losing all the strength as she released her love juices. She slumped towards his chest as yuta let himself undone. As they rode their highs, yuta kissed her neck from behind, leaving her body in shivers for the next few minutes.

He drove back silently again. The relieve he felt was all dissipated now. Instead his mind was already wandering towards you. Your headstrong attitude was troubling him more than he anticipated! his plans were all down and out. He hated you , from the moment he laid his eyes on you. You acted like you were invincible but he knew it was just a mask to protect yourself.

He had noticed how you had rubbed your eyes to hide your disappointment for you didn’t want to appear weak. All he had to do now was to find a vulnerable part of you, to hit you where it’d hurt the most. It’d be last time he lost to you. from now on, you won’t be able to keep up with him.

Afterall, beginning is always easy, it is continuing that’s hard!