#and like he initiated friendship with me straight away like he wanted to do better and can do better and has been doing better

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Lotta good points!

1) My issue with 'Bucky does everything' is... why the fuck would he want to be friends with Steve, in that case? And why would Steve go to such lengths for someone he couldn't be bothered to support properly before?

It makes being Steve's friend a quite-literally-thankless job, and Steve's 'friendship' amounts to the chance to serve him in return for nothing - no gratitude, no apology, no happiness to see him, no emotional, financial, physical support in return. It makes Steve selfish and self-absorbed, which are antithetical to his defining traits of selflessness and thinking of the little guy.

He can't vaunt those traits in everyone except Bucky, but then turn around and act as if he valued them all along by, eg. saving Bucky, avenging him, etc!

Plus it makes Steve's claims of independence a joke too, which in turn makes it annoying when he turns up in Basic Training and suddenly is able to do things, so that Token Love Interest can look like the first person to recognise his capabilities, when... no, those traits just weren't there, before, on purpose.

CATFA deliberately avoided showing us anything by the way of Steve's abilities, for Bucky to believe in, just to make it look like Bucky is unfairly undervaluing him (nonsense, since he's known Steve his whole life) and that someone else is a better judge. How the fuck is Bucky supposed to know Steve is capable of throwing himself on a grenade?! It's not like they have those lying around in Brooklyn!

5) Bucky using women to disguise his closet is true to the spirit of Arnie Roth, on whom he was partly based. But I still think it's a step too far to suggest he'd chose strangers over friends and family for his last night; even a lesbian couple.

(Or that Steve wouldn't likewise insist on having Bucky's last night in America for just them, even if they weren't a couple).

Unless Bucky's relationship with his family was bad... But we've never seen/heard any suggestion of that? 🤔

Again my thought process is 'why would A be friends with B if B was like this??' (ie. if A was selfish enough to spend their last night with strangers rather than with B).

8) Re: Steve the incel.

You could also play it as Steve having benevolent misogyny values without realising it, putting women up on a pedestal (explaining why he doesn't clock when he has been molested, or assaulted; is shocked when a woman lies to him; maybe thinks the reason he isn't being sexually attracted to women is because they are Too Perfect to sully with sex, etc.)

The only problem with idealising women is that it surely could not survive contact with a troop of foul-mouthed show girls, unless Steve absolutely went out of his way to avoid them??

But if he did have benevolent misogyny, this could maybe manifest in pre-serum Steve delivering long mopey monologues about how whoever he's been set up with is probably too good for him, probably isn't even interested, he's so poor, and sick all the time *cough cough*, unlike her, she would be embarrassed to be seen with him, probably, he's sorry Bucky set her up with him of all people, etc etc ...delivered during the date.

So that by the time Bucky circles back around to their table, no matter how attracted to Steve the girl was initially, she'd be like '🙂 please get me away from here.'

I could also see a queer Steve self-sabotaging by doing this, as a kind of inverse of ladykiller!Bucky.

Either so deeply in the closet that he doesn't even realise he's doing it, is unaware he's not helping his 'passing for straight' problem, thinks he's just looking out for the poor perfect woman, etc. (perhaps even kinda likes that guilt makes Bucky be extra-nice to him for a while after?)

Or, not closeted Steve having a bloody-minded determination not to date because he thinks it's dishonest to the lady; determined to publically crash and burn, so no one ever questions why he hasn't got married yet. And maybe seething and annoyed about having to do this, because he feels bad for wasting the girl's time.

And, yeah, open-book baby gay Steve absolutely glaring at whoever Bucky's dancing with and his own date either clocking him or being like 'woah he really seems obsessed with his friend's girlfriend?'

(I could also see a closeted himbo Steve being like 'yeah Bucky took me to this secret gay bar he knows about for some reason, but it's just because he knows I always fail with women and wanted to give me a night off from that, that's all!' Poor Bucky dropping absolute anvil hints and Steve's not getting it. 😂)

I ended up doing a long old rant on this other post, about the problems with the Steve/Bucky characterisation in CATFA, how it fails to make them mutual in their support / fails to properly show Steve's struggles and independence, before serum.

And I was thinking...

what would you have to do, if you wanted to write a CATFA or pre-war Stucky fic and wanted to fix all those problems?

So I figured I'd make a list!

Pardon me while I rip CATFA a new one...

.

Problem 1) Pre-serum Steve acts as if he's independent and self-reliant without Bucky... when the opposite is shown.

A) He doesn't have a job.

(He isn't shown working, doesn't mention working, or taking time off to do the things we see him doing etc. Bucky is framed as paying for things.)

If the fic is set during CATFA you could fix that by mentioning Steve does have a job but has been given time off to go enlist. Or has just been fired from his job. Basically anything to show that Steve has had a job, has been working. Perhaps even had multiple simultaneous jobs!

Probably cut out the part where Steve scoffs at working in a factory or collecting scrap metal (more likely he'd admire and/or understand why both of those are viable options; maybe they're jobs he has done in the past and is biased against now, for some experiential-related reason.)

Or, if he still does not want to work in a factory... well, at the time, with most men being overseas, factory work would've been women's work. So perhaps Steve was reluctant because it feels emasculating. Or maybe even dysphoric, to be relegated to otherwise female-only spaces, instead of welcomed into (then) male-only spaces like the Army? 🤔

(This would especially ring true if you were doing a trans!Steve story, or emphasising the disability aspect of his life. And it would cycle back when he gets stuck in the USO, doing women's work again.)

B) It would also be better characterisation if pre-serum Steve was already good at fighting, but just happened to be outclassed by heavier weight opponents, and/or hindered sudden disability flare ups mid-fight. (In the tie-in comic, Bucky taught him how to box. Why not keep this?)

And also if his health was in a lifetime high point, then it would be less nonsensical to be trying to lie his way into the Army. There has to be some actual common sense and logic behind his choice, so that he's not essentially snapping 'Bucky why won't you support me committing suicide, gdi?'

Steve shouldn't be getting his first real win by knocking down a flagpole; he should've been showing this capability in his pre-war / pre-Army time, too.

You could emphasise the idea of Steve entering a fight he knows he's going to lose, in order to accomplish a secondary goal that the enemy doesn't recognise. IE. Steve fighting the bully in the alleyway -- he loses the fight, but succeeds in stopping the bully from making a scene in the cinema, which was his original goal. So mention it!

(Steve could be like 'winning this fight wasn't the point.' And Bucky could be like 'ah, so what were you distracting him from?')

.

Problem 2) The support is imbalanced; Bucky's doing all the emotional, financial, and physical labour in the relationship.

You could fix that by showing how pre-serum Steve was not only mutually financially supportive (in the sense of having a job), but was also supporting Bucky emotionally and physically, just as much as Bucky supported him. He could be doing at least 2 of the 3!

Possible Examples:

Bucky going through an emotionally hard time that pre-serum Steve pulls him through (just as Bucky did with Steve's Ma).

Steve treating Bucky's wounds after a fight, just as Bucky treats his. (If Bucky's a boxer, like the tie-in comic, then Steve could be his cut man when he's in the ring!)

Steve paying for some of their expenses, or finding places to take Bucky that are free when it's his turn to plan a day out, etc.

.

Problem 3: Sarah & problem 2.

If this is CATFA / post-death setting, show flashbacks or make references to Steve visiting her in hospital, or doing the work of nursing her himself / sitting by her bedside if she died at home, paying for her medicine, etc.

So that it's not just another example of Bucky wholly carrying Steve; show the balance. Maybe Bucky was temporarily footing the bill so that Steve could afford to quit his job and do the nursing at home. Both putting the work in, in different ways.

(This would be a perfect example of one way Bucky's experience of looking after sick Steve would pay off, and make him able to teach Steve how to do it when the roles are reversed.)

Better yet, a show-don't-tell of Sarah instilling Steve's moral compass and tenacity; maybe even some Bucky POV to show her impact isn't just relegated to Steve.

Her absence could also be shown in present day with Steve, eg. packing up his things to go to basic and having to leave behind some keepsake of hers.

.

Problem 4: The relationship is framed as transactional.

Less 'I'll do X for Bucky now because he did Y for me back then' and more 'helping Bucky is the right thing to do because he's innocent so I'm going to do it regardless of outside whining, and he would still do the same thing for me, or anyone else, because he's a good person.'

There has to be more to it than just convenience, needing each other around to help; there has to be an actual desire to be together for pure enjoyment, too.

IMO you'd need at least one scene where Steve and Bucky aren't benefiting in some way from spending energy on eachother. They're just... happy being together.

And perhaps Bucky isn't the only friend pre-serum Steve could have had, just the one Steve most wanted to stick with. (His options should amount to more than 'Bucky or no one.') Perhaps Steve's health absences and strong principles drove other friendship prospects away?

.

Problem 5: A's problems are framed as B's.

No more 'Steve getting attacked' being framed as a problem for Bucky.

No more 'Bucky being drafted to die' framed as a problem for Steve.

Better characterisation would show these bad things affect the victim first and foremost, and only/also the other one, secondarily.

Steve shouldn't be seeing Bucky's shipping-out uniform (skipping right over thank yous and congratulations) and talking about how that's sad for... himself.

Steve shouldn't be sabotaging Bucky's last night of freedom in NYC to spend it on... his own goals.

Sidenote: Bucky wanting to spend his last night of freedom with strangers is such idiotic writing anyway, when he has both Steve and a living family with whom he could be spending those last precious moments! And dragging Steve on a double blind date he clearly doesn't want to go on is counter-productive. It undermines the mutually-supportive / mutually communicative relationship Steve and Bucky should logically have, as lifelong inseparable best friends, and shifts the blame for Steve's singlehood off of him and onto Bucky and women generally.

Steve shouldn't be detailing why he's so keen to fight, and focusing on random men he doesn't know, not directly/unequivocally mentioning Bucky at all (indirectly, he wants to be like the men laying down their lives -- so... like Bucky? But this is still nonsense. He should want to be there to support Bucky, not to copy!)

It's likewise nonsense for Bucky, who has known Steve since he was a child, to ask Steve why he's keen to fight. Bucky doesn't need to ask. Bucky already knows. Lazy clumsy exposition.

And the narrative should be showing us why, rather than having Steve infodump it without anything to back it up.

Speaking of which...

.

Problem 6: Lack of explicit politics.

Like in the comics, Steve's reasons for fighting Nazis should be explicitly left wing and political, as well as personal.

(Wanting to be like able-bodied men who get girlfriends is complete cringe incel bullshit as a motivation and not true to the comics, or CEvans's performance!)

Proper Steve characterisation should have him behaving in a way that shows he's a man ahead of his time in terms of Antifa politics, and that's why he wants to fight.

IE. happily sharing housing and schooling with people of other races, ethnicities, and religions. (Especially so when he has been in the same SEC as them / been in multiple different schools and lived in various neighbourhoods as a poor kid.)

Not judging and mistreating disabled people the way he is.

Not judging unmarried mothers, belittling working women, expecting his mother to do all the housework, etc.

Not freaking out about the existence of queer people in public (even in an AU where he isn't one) defending gay men from attack as he does in the comics,

protesting and/or sabotaging public Nazi meetings in NYC, fighting with homegrown Nazi bullies especially, ditto corrupt business owners / mafia union-runners as he does in the comics, etc.

The Hydra saboteur should not be the first Nazi Steve ever got his hands on!

And Bucky should be an addendum when it comes to his reasoning. The heart of Steve's motive, where politics are the guts.

.

Problem 7: No disability rep.

A) Steve should not be saying that he, a disabled man, shouldn't have the 'right' to do less than able-bodied men, even though it is literally physically impossible...

...UNLESS, this internalized ableism is addressed in-story, rather than treated as if it's normal and even noble.

Other characters can be ableist; Steve should not (not only is he disabled himself, but he's supposed to know better!) unless it's part of an arc that shows that this trait is weird in him, and he learns the error of his ways.

Instead it could be shown that his health has recently become good enough for him to survive and succeed in the Army. Without Steve arguing that he should throw his disabled life away, just because able-bodied men are taking a significantly lesser risk of dying than him.

B) There should be actual details of Steve's disabilities, what they are and how they affect him. (Him - not Bucky.) In a way that has concrete negative consequences, beyond just not getting into the Army.

Possible Examples:

Steve being held back a year at school because of missing days due to sickness. Kids can be cruel and parents can be ignorant; he might've been bullied and ostracised for being sick and believed contagious.

Kid Steve having to move around a lot (which would also affect which school he'd have to attend) because losing money to medicine affects what his mother can afford, affects her work schedule when she has to look after him. Living in a worse place would then exacerbate his pre-existing symptoms, and so on.

Adult!Steve losing a job because of sick days, losing savings to pay for medicine, getting sick again because he either chose heating and groceries over medicine or vice versa, etc.

(This / the moving-around might be mitigated if he and Bucky are living together, meaning Bucky could make up the shortfall.)

Steve could lose friendships or romantic partners due to sickness taking him out of social circulation.

You could also play into the Nazi eugenics then endemic to the USA and have medical professionals telling Steve he shouldn't be alive; 'well-meaning' people offering to pray for him, saying they'd have 'given up' if they were born like him, etc.

And Steve should, maybe, mention once or twice that he feels better after serum and truly couldn't be doing what he's doing in Europe, if superserum hadn't also cured all his ailments?

If he's much more peppy afterwards, it should be because for the first time in his life he can actually breathe and spring out of bed!

.

Problem 8) The Incelery.

Pre-serum Steve should not be framed as undateable because he's short and disabled.

If Steve hasn't had a girlfriend, it should be because he didn't want one, not because evil women are repulsed by invisible health issues or Bucky is too dreamy for a disabled man to possibly compete with, be so fr. 🙄

You could fix this by making Steve: gay,

ace,

demi,

coincidentally surrounded by lesbians,

by women who have horrible unattractive politics,

too sick or busy with work to date,

getting attention but it's the wrong kind (ie. women who want to fetishize or nanny him),

and/or being very attractive to women even before serum but oblivious and/or simply not interested. 😂

/more than one of the above.

.

[spaghett-onaplate]

kinda wish this one guy was gay

[leilakisakabiri]

Jealousy, Jealousy (Gavi)

Summary: You realize that Gavi never gets jealous when other guys are around you and it makes you question if he still likes you. 

Warning(s): None

A/N: Hey! I had some inspiration to write so here I am! I’m trying to release shorter fics while I work on my longer ones. Requests are open!

Word Count: 2.5k+

Masterlist

The first time it happened, you felt relieved that Gavi had decided not to make a scene and instead chose to calmly defuse the situation.

The two of you had been at a club late one night, the high from Barcelona winning hours before pumping through your veins. He had his arms wrapped around you as you both danced to whatever Spanish song the DJ was mixing.

You laughed as he spun you around before pulling you closer, leaning down to whisper in your ear as he moved a strand of hair out of your face. 

"I'm going to grab another drink. Want to come?"

His breath was hot against your ear, and even though it felt like a million degrees in the club, and you were sweating through your dress, you still shivered, his voice sending shockwaves through your system no matter how many times you heard it.

You looked up, locking eyes, "I'm good, I'll save our spot."

He kissed the top of your head before letting go, "Ok I'll be back in a second. Try and find the others if you can."

You gave him an awkward thumbs up as he walked away and he chuckled before disappearing into the crowd.

The two of you had been dating for just shy of three weeks.

You had been friends for months before dating, with you initially being introduced to him through his hometown friends. Then there was a three-month period where you both liked each other but were too scared to admit it and ruin the friendship. Finally, Gavi caved after spending two weeks away from you without contact while he playing in the U.S.

Since he admitted his feelings for you that night on the steps of your shitty college house, he had jumped straight into the relationship, inviting you to his games, to hang out with his friends, and private dinners. You on the other hand still felt like an awkward pre-teen girl every time you were with him, he just made you feel giddy inside, and you reacted to things he said so intensely that the only way to cover it up was with strange humor and stupid jokes.

That led you to now. Sometimes being around him was so overwhelming because you were always scared you would say something to embarrass yourself, and although he never made you feel any less worthy you couldn't help but feel like he could be with someone much better than you.

As you stood there contemplating, you felt a body collide with yours, effectively pulling you out of your thoughts.

You stumbled, feeling hands come up to grip your elbows, stabilizing you.

"Shit- my bad."

You looked up seeing the guy holding you sporting a white button-down and an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, those guys just pushed me. Some friends." He said referring to the group of five or so extremely drunk boys behind you.

You shook your head, "No worries, I wasn't paying attention either."

He smiled, leaning a bit closer, hands still on your elbows, "Hey do I know you? You look really familiar.”

You squinted your eyes as you gazed at him, trying to figure out if you knew him.

"Eh I go to Universitat de Barcelona if that helps."

His eyes lit up at your words, and he nodded, "Yeah, that's totally how I know you. I think you're in my biology class."

You groaned, "No way the one at 8 a.m.?", he nodded, "I'm barely awake for that lecture." you muttered.

"Mean either but it's hard not to notice you."

You only heard half his sentence and looked at him confused, "Sorry what?"

His lips tugged up in a smile as he bent down, shifting closer to you, "I said it's hard not to notice you."

You felt your breath stop as you realized what you had gotten yourself into. You made a move to shy away when you heard Gavi call your name.

You lifted your head seeing him approaching as he carried your drink, "Hey who's this?"

You went to interject and tell him it was no one but the guy next to you interrupted, "Hey man, I got to school with her.”

Gavi nodded, accepting his answer as he handed you your drink, "Oh class friend?"

You went to speak but were again cut off by the guy next to you, who had still to let go of your elbow.

"Something like that."

You saw Gavi's posture slightly straighten at his words but he relaxed a second later, "Alright."

The guy turned to you saying something about seeing you in class and then proceeded to give you a hug, his arms wrapping around your lower back.

You noticed Gavi watching the exchange but he made no comment.

You approached him timidly, unsure of if he was going to say anything about the situation, but he paid it no mind, going back to casual conversation with you.

At the time you let out a breath, thankful that he seemed intent on letting you handle your own situation.

That thankfulness soon turned to annoyance and then confusion when similar situations happened time and time again and he made no effort to speak up.

You supposed it was good he never got jealous because you knew it could get very overbearing very fast, and yet, you couldn't help the twinge of defeat you felt every time someone tried to make a move on you and he did nothing to stop them or even show a ounce of emotion.

Slowly it was making you start to question your relationship with Gavi.

Why did he not get jealous? Was it because he didn't see others as a threat? Or didn't feel the need to because you weren't as pretty as the other girls he was seen with? Maybe he simply didn't care? Or perhaps he wasn't the type?

You knew the last one couldn't possibly be true because he was absolutely the type. His entire career was based on his passion, determination, and aggression to get where he wanted. His aggression is what made him so competitive and a loyal player. So if he was so driven and passionate on the field, why was that not carrying over into your relationship?

It wasn't until almost two months later that things came to a boiling point.

It was the last game of the pre-season for Barcelona and spirits were high, everyone hoping they could seal off a great season, and enter a new one, with a win.

The stadium was filled to the brim with fans and reporters. The family section was also full with player's partners and families coming to support them in the final game of the summer.

You were sitting next to Anna, the two of you talking about school, work, and life.

Eventually, the game started and you went into full-on fan mode - cheering along when Barca made impressive plays and booing when they were tackled.

The stadium was abuzz with energy, and you basked in everyone's excitement.

You gripped Anna's hand as you saw Gavi running up the sidelines towards the other team's defense, Joao running parallel to him.

You saw him sidestep, dodging the defender, and suddenly the ball was soaring, perfectly landing at Joao's feet as he placed it into the back of the net.

The two of you jumped up, cheering along with the rest of the crowd. It seemed like Barcelona would have its victory after all.

After the game, you stayed in the family section for a while chatting with Pedri's parents as you waited for the players to make a re-emerge.

You bid goodbye to them when you got a text from Gavi telling you to come down.

You made your way down to the field, waiting behind the barricades for him to appear.

The other team's players appeared first, signing fans t-shirts and taking photos.

"Need something signed?"

You saw a player from the other team approach you, waving a sharpie in his hand.

You pointed at your jersey playfully, "No thanks. I'm a Barca girl if you couldn't tell."

He grinned, "Ahh c'mon what will it take for me to convince you?"

You shrugged your shoulders, "Ride or die sorry."

He clutched his hand to his heart in mock offense, "Ouch. I'm hurt, but I'm not giving up."

You gave him a smile, remaining polite, as you looked over his shoulder for Gavi.

"Oh I know!" he exclaimed, directing your attention back to him.

He wiggled his eyebrows before taking off his shirt, "Here, new jersey for you."

He held it out to you, and you gave him an unimpressed look.

He rolled his eyes playfully, "Alright fine. I'll sign it, but only cause you asked so nicely."

You watched amused as he signed the jersey before offering it to you.

You squinted your eyes at him.

He dangled the jersey in his hands, "C'mon take it. You know a lot of people would pay good money for this."

You reached out to grab it, "Fine, but only because I'm going to sell it later."

He held up his hands in surrender, "It's yours now. Do whatever."

You thought the conversation would end there but he made no effort to leave, "Who are you here with anyway? Someone in Barca?"

You opened your mouth to respond but were cut off.

"Me."

You whipped your head to see that Gavi had silently approached the two of you.

Besides yourself, you felt a tiny part of you waiting with bated breath for him to do something, to finally dig his boots in the ground and say something, but he remained impassive.

"Hey."

"Hey, you ready to go?" Gavi asked.

You nodded your head, unsure of how to leave the situation.

"I can lift you over the barricade if you need." The other player spoke up, and your eyes immediately flitted over to Gavi's to gauge his reaction.

His eyebrows furrowed but he didn't say anything.

You debated for a second, just to get Gavi to react, but quickly decided against it, opting to just walk around the barricade.

You approached the two of them quickly and with a hasty goodbye followed Gavi as he left the pitch. You heard the other player shout a 'see you around', and you waved in response.

You broke the silence first as you walked the empty tunnel, "Great game baby. You did amazing."

"Thanks."

His reply was clipped.

He went to hold your hand and you shifted the jersey last second to your other hand, catching his attention.

"What's that?"

"Oh, that guy gave me his jersey. I'm going to sell it." You explained, telling him how you were expecting to make hundreds.

He listened along till you finished.

"Can I see the jersey?"

You nodded handing it to him.

You swung your joint hands as you walked, talking to him about the game as he examined the jersey.

Abruptly he dropped your hand, mouth set in a firm line.

Your eyebrows stitched together, "What's wrong?"

He cleared his throat before handing you the jersey.

"I think there's something for you on it."

"I forgot something in the locker room, I'll be right back." He continued.

You looked down confused, eyes scanning the text before it clicked.

The jersey had the player's phone number on it.

You lifted your head seeing him already walking away, "Gavi wait. Can you stop for a minute?"

He turned around but continued moving, "Yeah what?"

"Stop moving!” You exclaimed, your frustration building as he continued to not express any interest in the situation.

He finally halted and you closed the distance between the two of you.

"Is there something wrong with me? Do you not like me anymore or something?"

He seemed taken aback by your words and several emotions flitted across his face, "What are you talking about?"

You took a breath, it was now or never.

"I'm not trying to sound conceited, but I'm pretty sure that guy was hitting on me-"

"He was." Gavi confirmed.

You continued, "So then why don't you care? I'm your girlfriend, so why aren't you getting jealous when other guys hit on me?"

"You want me to get jealous?" He asked incredulously.

"I mean I don't want you to become super overprotective or anything, but it would be nice if you at least acknowledged when someone is trying to get with me right in front of you. I know I would get jealous if someone was saying that to you."

"You don't think I get jealous?" His voice had a hard edge to it, and suddenly you felt like you might have read between the lines wrong.

You shrugged your shoulders, unsure, "I mean you don't show it."

"Of course I'm going to notice when some guy is eye fucking my girl one foot away from me, I'm not fucking blind."

"Then why don't you say anything?" You pressed.

“Shit y/n that's cause I don't want to scare you away!"

His admission only confused you further, and you lowered your voice acutely aware that your shouts were probably carrying far in the quiet tunnel,

"Scare me away? Why would that scare me?"

He shook his head, "The press is always making me out to be this bad guy. This kid that doesn't know how to get his temper in check and - mierda y/n - I don't want to get into this right now."

You relented, unwilling to give in, biting the bullet, "Alright so next time someone asks to lift me up, their just being friendly right? Trying to be helpful?"

His eyes blazed, "That's not what I meant and you know it."

You lifted your hands in frustration, "No Gavi actually I don't know that. You act like you don't even care."

"I care! Trust me y/n I care!" He argued.

"Then show me."

His lips were on yours before you had even finished processing what you were saying. His skin felt hot against yours as his fingers sank into your hipbone, crowding you against the wall.

You lost your train of thought as you got lost in the sensation he provided you. One hand went to tangle in his hair, as the other draped around his neck bringing him impossibly closer.

One of his hands slipped under your shirt, as he kissed you senseless. You finally pulled away for a breath but he didn't stop, moving to lay a trail of kisses from the sweet spot behind your ear, down your neck, and onto your collarbone.

You left out a soft moan underneath him, the feeling causing tingles in your spine, and a fluttery feeling in your stomach.

"We should really sto- fuck gavi - so-someone could walk in any moment." You reminded him.

"Just gotta leave a mark." He replied.

You nodded before his words caught up to you and you pushed him off, "What? No marks! I have to meet your parents tonight." You whined.

He grinned, not looking the least bit apologetic, "At least people will know you're mine now."

[cashmakozume]

deeper meaning

⟡ oikawa tōru x reader

⟡ word count: 1,792

⟡ song: deeper meaning - ally salort

⟡ prequel to: too late [read deeper meaning first]

oikawa tōru was revered in high school.

everyone knew his name. he couldn’t walk five meters without a group of fangirls approaching him, just to get a mere three second interaction.

but despite his popularity, he was polite. he would try to give everyone attention. be it a smile, a wave or a rare conversation. he would get into trouble with coach, which would then lead to iwaizumi’s wrath but he didn’t care. he would complain all the time that iwaizumi was too harsh, but he would repeat the cycle again and again.

everyone loved oikawa tōru, and you wanted to know why.

it started as curiosity. you heard his name being thrown around when you started high school.

“oikawa tōru joined our school’s volleyball club!”

“i’m in the same class as oikawa tōru! he’s so dreamy!”

“let’s go watch the volleyball club’s practice! i heard oikawa tōru is on the starting team!”

then it morphed into annoyance.

how can this guy be so talented and good looking at the same time? even social skills were commendable. who could even stand the shrill screams and cheers at every practice and match?

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

oikawa tōru caught you scowling at him from afar, whilst entertaining girls who were giving him baked treats. he felt confused. it was the first time a girl stared at him the way iwaizumi does. he shuddered and started making his way to iwaizumi, giving a pointed look in your direction.

“iwa-chan, do we even know her?” he asked.

“she’s in our year, shittykawa.” iwaizumi explained and smirked. “apparently, she doesn’t get the hype around you.”

oikawa’s jaw dropped, being appalled. he knew he was nice and he always made sure he was respectful. how could someone think of him that way?

“don’t act so shocked.” iwaizumi continued. “i sit next to her in class and we talk about you.”

“she’s your classmate?!” oikawa screamed back while iwaizumi walked away. “and you talk about me?!”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

oikawa tōru was so interested in you that your annoyance towards him turned into friendship.

he bothered iwaizumi everyday, visiting your classroom. iwaizumi does apologize for his friend’s behavior but you told him it wasn’t his fault for having a pain-in-the-ass friend.

“how can you say that?” oikawa pouted. “i’m pretty and nice.” oikawa emphasized.

“just because everyone likes you, doesn’t mean that i should.” you stated, making iwaizumi laugh.

oikawa’s face was etched in shock again as iwaizumi slapped his back. he snapped out of it and looked you straight in the eyes, his lips lifted with a smirk.

“well then, i’ll make you like me.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

oikawa tōru always made sure he would do everything he put his mind to and your annoyance transformed into infatuation.

it wasn’t like you meant for it to happen. due to oikawa’s constant visits to your classroom, you grew closer. you spent most of your time in school with the famed seijoh four. matsukawa and hanamaki easily becoming your closest friends, bonding over your initial disdain towards oikawa. 

you would hear stories from iwaizumi on how much of an idiot oikawa was with volleyball, never wanting to rest because of his constant need to be better.

and all those stories made you rethink. it seemed as though oikawa tōru always put his entire heart and soul into the things he loved doing and that genuinely impressed you. which led to your rekindled interest in him, because it made you observe him in a new perspective.

you started attending their volleyball practices, finding yourself to look for oikawa constantly. whenever you did, you couldn’t bring yourself to turn away.

every move he made was well thought out and calculated. he would match every player he was working with, adjusting himself to make sure they could be at their best.

and despite his childish behavior, he was still respected by the team. you could see the juniors looking up to him, taking in any advice oikawa had to offer. even the people who would hate on him the most, they respected him in his craft.

volleyball centered him, and made oikawa tōru who he was.

“you did well today.” you mentioned to him at the end of their practice.

“hmm, do you like me now?” oikawa teased, not expecting to see your cheeks turning red before you turned away.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

it turns out, you were no different than everyone else. your infatuation turned into love after oikawa tōru asked you out.

your bickering with oikawa never stopped though, the only change was that there was love behind the words. you helped iwaizumi keep oikawa in check. whenever oikawa practiced for too long or was being stubborn, all iwaizumi had to do was call you down so that you could talk oikawa out of his self-destructive state.

“tooru, it’s time to rest.” you said softly, not wanting to push his buttons.

“just go home first.” oikawa replied, not even turning to look at you. “i’ll text you when i’m back home.”

you walked towards him and patted his back. he instantly looked at you and you saw how determined he was to keep practicing.

“you can’t do well if you’re injured again.” your gaze softened. “resting is as important as training, tooru.”

oikawa opened his mouth to answer but he stopped himself, knowing what you said was right. he threw the ball towards the cart and apologized to iwaizumi for keeping him in school for so long.

the walk back home was silent. oikawa’s head was still noisy with his insecurities about his favorite sport.

“you’ll do well, i know you will.” your voice cut through his thoughts.

“t-thank you.” he smiled, letting out a heavy breath that he didn’t know he was holding. “i don’t know what i would do without you.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

oikawa tōru was your person.

he would surprise you at your front door and ask you if he could bring you out for a date. and that led you to have dates everywhere.

the random grass patch next to the bus stop? oikawa made you sit with him and watch the cars zoom by as you discuss conspiracy theories about aliens.

the stream at the back of town where no one goes? oikawa surprised you with a picnic there, not thinking about the mosquitoes that quickly attacked both of your legs.

the store at the corner of your block? oikawa made sure to stop there every single time he sends you home so he can buy you a sweet treat. 

the entire neighborhood had memories of you and oikawa and it wasn’t easy walking through it when the relationship ended.

“tooru, what do you mean?” you whispered, not wanting to speak any louder as you tried to hold back your tears.

“i’m leaving japan.” oikawa repeated, staring back at you. “and i don’t want you to wait for me.”

it felt as though the world was playing a cruel joke on you. you worked hard at supporting him throughout his high school volleyball days and he hits you with this the day after graduation?

“i-i thought you wanted us to last?” your voice cracked, making you look at the ground.

“i guess you thought wrong.” oikawa’s voice had no indication of pain. it rolled off his tongue as if it was easy for him to throw the three years you had together.

“if that’s what you want.” you managed to choke out as you started walking away as fast as you can so that he couldn’t see the tears falling.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

“now you’re in every corner of this town

even when you’re not around

and anytime i hear about you now

i can’t drown it out”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

it’s been four years and you worked hard to forget oikawa tōru.

you went to college, got an absolutely life changing offer for your dream job and it felt like everything was finally falling into place.

with your parents still residing in your childhood home, you visited your hometown. the moment you drove into town, memories of your high school romance flood your mind.

the grass patch next to the bus stop. the stream at the back of town where no one goes. the well maintained store at the corner of your street.

you spent the last four years desperately trying to forget him.

it was tough enough when he joined a volleyball club in argentina, not long after graduating. his name was plastered everywhere and you acted as if you didn’t know anything about him.

“didn’t you go to aoba johsai?”

“did you know oikawa tōru?”

“was oikawa tōru that good during school?”

and coming back to your hometown made your desperate attempts futile. the pride that they had the oikawa tōru growing up in this very town was blinding.

his posters plastered all around the storefronts, the front cover sports magazines with his face being framed in some stores he used to frequent.

and as much as you tried to keep him out of your mind, he was in every corner.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

“that you might mean a little more than i intended for

oh, can we take it back to before?

when your name was just a name

your face was just a face without a deeper meaning”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

if you could time travel, you would’ve told your younger self to run far away from oikawa tōru.

you would’ve forced yourself to choose a seat far away from iwaizumi. 

you would’ve stopped yourself from interacting with anyone on the volleyball team.

you wished that you didn’t have that curiosity.

which turned into annoyance, then infatuation, then love.

you wished that you turned away from every mention of his name.

you wished that you just looked at him from afar.

and you wished that you didn’t care for him the way that you did.

did you mean as much to him? did he suffer as much as you did? did he even love you the way you loved him?

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

“if i try to forget

and wash off your energy,

it don’t make a difference, it won’t 'til i live with it

'til i erase all the memories”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

you wanted to hate him.

you wanted to pretend like he didn’t exist.

you wanted to forget.

but that would be denial.

he crafted the best and worst parts of your life. he inspired you to chase your dreams. and he was still a part of you, no matter how much you’ve grown.

oikawa tōru shaped you into who you are. and that’s just something you have to live with, whether you like it or not.

note from miyako

not proof-read i honestly churned this out and wanted it out of my brain ASAP i hope u like oikawa angst ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

✗⚬ﾒ𝟶, m ♡

[rottenpumpkin13]

Ello!!! Hope it’s been a lovely day, my friendo! 💕 I can say mine has been made 10x better after reading your “Sephiroth turns invisible” prank 😂❤️ Another golden post by the Pumpkin master! (´∩｡^ᵕ^｡∩`) ♡ Anywho, in light of how much I adored that post, I’ve been inspired to pose a similar ask!! *deep breath* Here goes:

For another prank, as the last one didn’t work out so well (or it can be disconnected all together), Zack decides to pretend that Sephiroth is very much visible, very much there, except everyone pretends that they don’t know who he is. Angeal pretends like he’s meeting Seph for the first time, as do Genesis and Zack; even Cloud wants to join in on the fun/pretends he doesn’t recognize his hero. What they think is a harmless joke to give Seph a break from his fame turns into something rather distressing for the poor man, until he ultimately just breaks down under the crushing illusion that he lost his treasured friends forever. Only then do the gang break the act <33

Really craving some Pumpkin-flavored angst/fuff!! There ain’t anyone who can deliver it quite like you can!!!

Ughhh I owe you Cloud content ˙◠˙ I forgot to include him in this one fhfhfhfh forgive me Pichu 😭💛🖤 But at the same time you owe me tissues for both the brilliant one-shot you write with the prompt I asked you about and the emotional damage this insanely good prompt caused me (seriously, I had to hold back tears because I was in public and didn't want to seem like a lunatic asdfghjk). Enjoy the angst!

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Jokes were supposed to be funny, that much he knew. Sephiroth recalled a time when he was utterly floored by Glenn’s claim of “getting his nose” after pinching his lightly between two fingers. After he had been confused, the older SOLDIER explained that it was a joke—although Sephiroth was not amused by the concept of stealing one’s nose.

Another instance, during the initial stages of their friendship, involved Angeal's determined endeavor to coax more smiles out of Sephiroth. This pursuit took the form of a barrage of jokes, some of which sailed right over Sephiroth's head at first. "What do you call a fake noodle?" Angeal asked him one day, the inquiry that left the younger SOLDIER utterly flummoxed.

"I'm not certain there's a designated term for—"

"An im-pasta," Angeal interjected, flashing a wide grin.

Angeal then found himself investing the next two minutes in a patient explanation of the joke to Sephiroth, who had mistakenly interpreted the term "im-pasta" as the actual designation for fake noodles. Though he did understand one thing straight away: jokes weren’t meant to hurt you.

It all began one morning when Sephiroth went looking for them. Angeal was nowhere to be seen around the training room or his office, a fact that piqued Sephiroth's curiosity since he knew Angeal didn't have any missions scheduled for that morning. Likewise, Genesis was conspicuously absent from the public archives, his office, and even the break room, his usual spots. Just as Sephiroth was contemplating checking for Genesis at his apartment, he finally caught sight of the duo.

They were near the data room, engaged in lively conversation and laughs.. It was a scene that never failed to warm Sephiroth's heart, for his friendships were the only true source of joy in his otherwise mundane days. He approached eagerly, ready to share the news of beating his personal record in the training simulator.

But then the laughter stopped, and the air immediately soured with a hint of awkwardness as they both looked at him, confused, before turning back to each.. “Do we know you?” Genesis asked, followed by Angeal’s “I don’t think we do.”

Sephiroth paused, confused. “What do you mean?”

His friends provided no answers as they merely looked at each other, laughed, and walked away.

Sephiroth stood there, alone and confused, as a thread of understanding began to weave its way into his mind. He realized why Genesis and Angeal had seemingly disregarded him: he must have done something to upset them.

The remainder of the day was spent pondering over the possible words or actions that could have soured their view toward him. Had he been too harsh on Angeal while correcting his footwork? Perhaps he had been too exhausted from his latest mission to give Genesis the attention he deserved when discussing the new Loveless play he had been invited to critique.

Eventually, after a day filled with distraction and a multitude of potential scenarios swirling in his mind, Sephiroth decided to confront the issue head-on. He found them in the mess hall that evening, seated at their usual table, the aroma of food wafting through the air stirring his neglected appetite and reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

Approaching them, Sephiroth didn't even attempt to take a seat, uncertain if his presence would be welcomed. "What have I done to upset you?"

The response felt like a punch to the gut. They exchanged a glance before fixing their gazes back on Sephiroth. "Sorry," Genesis shrugged, his expression showing a hint of a smile. "We don’t know you."

Sephiroth walked away, his heart heavy. Not only had he upset them, but he had seemingly committed an unforgivable act, risking the loss of his closest friends. He couldn't bear the thought of losing them; his friendships were the very essence that kept him going each morning, the reason that infused life into every waking moment. What had he done to squander it?

That night, sleep eluded him, and the gnawing hunger in his stomach went unnoticed as he lay awake in bed, tossing and turning, replaying every single interaction he'd had with them over the past week. As the clock struck 5 AM, he hurried down to the mess hall once more, determined to seek answers.

Spotting Zack heading in for breakfast, Sephiroth swiftly intercepted him, pulling the younger SOLDIER aside with urgency. "Has Angeal mentioned anything to you about what I've done to upset him and Genesis?" he inquired, his tone clearly displaying the desperation he felt.

Zack's eyes widened, and for a brief moment, Sephiroth thought he detected a hint of amusement.. "I'm sorry," Zack replied, "Who are you again?"

Sephiroth refrained from attempting to approach them again that day, whether it was Angeal, Genesis, or Zack. He had committed some unfathomable wrongdoing, and the guilt gnawed at him like teeth biting down deeper and deeper into his skin. It was exacerbated by his inability to recall what he had done. He had squandered the one good thing in his life.

Then, at once, the reason for why they were upset with him came to mind. And it made so much sense. He hastily gathered his thoughts and made his way towards Angeal's office that evening, the usual meeting place for the four of them at the end of the day.

He didn't bother with the formality of knocking—after all, could he possibly worsen their anger towards him? Sephiroth pushed open the door, coming face-to-face with the startled expressions that greeted him. Genesis dropped the book he had been reading into his lap, his mouth agape.

Zack, who had been perched on Angeal's desk, leaped to his feet, his expression a mixture of concern and alarm. Angeal nearly choked on the water he had been drinking. "Seph, have you been crying!?"

"I understand why you're upset with me," Sephiroth began, his voice trembling. "It's because I declined the offer to go see a movie with you all last weekend, isn't it?" His words caught in his throat as tears threatened to overwhelm him. "I'm sorry," he choked out, gasping for air. "I didn't mean to show disinterest in spending time with you, but I was completely depleted after enduring an exhaustive examination session with Professor Hojo throughout the day."

Pausing briefly to compose himself, Sephiroth was oblivious to the tears streaming down his face as he continued, his voice cracking. "I couldn't focus on anything, and I was feeling utterly drained, but I should have made the effort to be there with you all. I understand how you might feel that I didn't care for our friendship," He sniffed, "but I assure you, I do. I understand if you never wish to speak to me again—”

Angeal enveloped him in a hug before Sephiroth could utter another word, the warmth of the embrace causing him to surrender to his emotions completely. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he buried his face in Angeal's neck, his sobs muffled but very much audible to the other two people in the room, who looked at each other, stunned.

"Sephiroth, it was just a joke," Angeal exclaimed, his tone tinged with exasperation. "We thought you knew."

"We never imagined it would upset you like this," Genesis interjected, joining the embrace from behind and wrapping his arms around Sephiroth. "Sure, we expected you to be a bit annoyed, but we never anticipated this level reaction!"

Feeling Zack's hand rest gently on his shoulder, Sephiroth looked up, meeting his friend's gaze. "We're not angry with you,” Zack’s voice shook, his eyes wide. “We never were, and I don't think I could ever be!" Zack gripped his shoulder tighter. "We–we had no idea this joke was hurting you. If we had known, we never would have gone through with it!"

“Never,” Angeal added.

“But,” Sephiroth sniffed, blinking the tears from his eyes, “You Weren't speaking to me, so I thought—”

"Seph, look at me," Genesis gently turned Sephiroth to face him, tenderly wiping away the tears that stained his cheeks, his own eyes glistening with tears of his own. "We were just playing a prank on you, we thought it would be a harmless joke, something we'd all laugh about. We were never angry with you, and I'm truly sorry for how much this has distressed you."

Sephiroth glanced away, his voice small. "You're not angry?"

"No, Sephiroth, no!" Zack's voice cut in, his own tears mirroring Sephiroth's. "I'm so sorry," he sniffled, enveloping them all in a tight embrace.

"Me too," Angeal added, his arms pulling Zack into the hug. "We promise we won't ever pull a prank like this again. We should have realized it could hurt you."

"Can you forgive us?" Genesis asked.

Sephiroth felt himself deflate, his tension dissipating as he melted into the embrace. "But I'm not angry," he murmured. "I just wanted to understand."

Lazard was on his way to deliver some papers to Angeal when he paused outside his office door, his attention drawn by a commotion sounding from the other side. Concerned, he hesitated for a moment before pushing the door open.

What was on the other side made him do a double-take. Sephiroth sat on the floor, flanked by Zack, Angeal, and Genesis, all four of them huddled together on the ground, sobbing as they clung to one another. Lazard was almost tempted to ask if someone had died, almost.

“What a strange bunch,” Lazard muttered, shaking his head and closing the door.

[skepsiss]

Long road ahead - pt 5

I might make this the second to last chapter actually because this ended very softly but without a firm direction. I like that tender things like this don't have to be definitive. Anyway, here is part 5 and the payoff for all the previous chapters. This part is not without its heartaches, so apologies, but if you like confessions I hope you'll like this. Also, surprise! A wild Dustin appears

TW: Miscommunication, swearing, and some self-hatred.

4,300+ words, Steve’s POV. 1 week and a half or so after their fight.

Pt1  Pt1.2  Pt2   Pt3 Pt4

--

He had fucked up. He had fucked up so badly.

Steve had been beside himself with sorrow and frustration for days as he went over and over the events of last week. He had been so unbelievably stupid and let his drunk brain take control. He hadn’t been able to help it–but that was just an excuse. It was all just excuses actually. But the way Eddie had been positively shining that night had made Steve feel irrational. It had made him irrational. It was so easy to get swept up into a party with someone like Eddie there who laughed freely and touched everyone he was familiar with. He had partially hung off of Steve’s shoulders and every time he came close enough to ‘rib’ Steve in one way or another–boast about him and charm the crowd–Steve had felt a bit more of his conviction waver.

It had been weeks, weeks, since Steve and Eddie had hung out and it had started Steve off on the back foot. Time apart sounded like a good idea, but the fleeting moments he had shared with Eddie in a group setting over the last month had only made him pine harder. It broke him up inside and it hurt every time Eddie turned him down when he asked to hang out. It hurt so fucking much, but each time he convinced himself it was the better, so of course he hadn’t been able to say no when Eddie asked him if he wanted to come to an end-of-the-summer rager.

God, he had been so weak and Eddie had been so fucking brilliant all night. It was like he had been apart for years and finally, Steve’s heart couldn't be contained anymore. He had let himself be reckless and he had gone and fucked up the whole night.

Steve was miserable at home by himself for days as he self-soothed the hurt away. Not only had he gone and ruined their friendship he had made Eddie straight up hate him. He had never taken rejection this badly before, but it couldn’t be helped with how long he had let this crush go. No amount of stamping his interests out had worked and then he had set fire to their foundation in one night. Less than one night… and now Eddie absolutely hated him.

He had been sworn at and crushed out, called terrible and cruel and Steve couldn’t deny that it was true. What had he been hoping would happen? Had he gone into it thinking they would kiss and then he could walk away from it all? He hadn’t been thinking at all, but something Eddie had said made him pause and it was dwelling heavily on his mind now.

Do you know how fucking badly I wanted you to kiss me all fucking summer?

He had said that--he had yelled it in his face--and after the initial shock, Steve had turned that phrasing over in his mind again and again.

It was to no avail though; what was he supposed to do with that piece of knowledge? How was he supposed to handle that and do anything with it? Was he supposed to feel regret for not acting soon or regret for acting at all? Just because Eddie had said it didn’t mean he wanted it–and it especially didn’t mean he wanted it now after all of that. He had been right to be mad, and he had been right to accuse Steve of leading him on.

Steve still didn’t think he could face genuinely pursuing Eddie, because what was worse than it not working out was the idea of Eddie accepting and risking his heart further. If he accepted that would mean… Steve couldn’t deny the fact that he was a freak too.

The doorbell rang and Steve had to muster all of his energy to pull himself up from bed. The doorbell had actually rung four more times as he slumped out of his room and down the stairs, trying to hush it with a ’yeah, yeah, I hear you’ to no avail.

Steve pulled the door open and Dustin stood there with his finger on the buzzer, making deliberate eye contact as he pressed the button twice more, giving Steve an incredulous look.

“Stop it–” Steve scolded, reaching out to swat Dustin’s hand away. He pulled back before Steve could make contact, frustration evident.

“Just making sure it works–what took you so long, huh?”

He was being a brat, acting like he owned the place like he always did and Steve didn’t have the energy to do anything else other than roll his eyes and sigh.

“What is with you, man?” Dustin asked, pushing past Steve and into his house.

“Henderson–” Steve half tried, his hand slapping lamely against his own leg as he turned to look at Dustin, “at least your shoes–”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dustin complained, wiping his feet on the mat and then toeing his shoes off, barely stopping his stride toward the living room.

“No one else home?” Dustin asked, surveying the two closest rooms to them–the kitchen and the living room–before turning to look at Steve who was still standing with the door open.

“No,” Steve answered, exasperated as he shut the door a bit dramatically, pinching his lips and looking back at Dustin.

“Good, so what the hell happened?” Dustin asked, crossing his arms and behaving as if he was the older one here.

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked, picking up Dustin’s shoes and putting them properly by the front door before walking past him and into the kitchen.

“You know what I mean!” Dustin declared, following and then leaning with his chest against the kitchen island as Steve opened the fridge to get something to drink. He kept soda and juice in the fridge for if and when one of the kids dropped by–even though most of the refreshments were regularly used up by Robin when she visited.

“No, I don’t,” Steve answered, frustrated, as he poured the soda into two glasses and put one of them within arm’s reach of Dustin. He didn’t go for it right away and instead gave Steve an unimpressed look, one that could have put Robin to shame.

“Yeah, well, why is Eddie saying you guys aren’t talking?” Dustin asked, finger quoting before settling back down with his chest on the counter.

Steve visibly cringed as Dustin spoke, the glass halfway to his lips before he was forced to break eye contact with Dustin and look away. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to hear what Eddie had been saying.

“What the hell happened? Cause from the way Eddie tells it something happened, it’s your fault, and now you guys aren’t talking. That’s bullshit, man. Just apologize!”

Steve grimaced and turned his back to Dustin, not sure if he was going to yell or cry. He wasn’t looking to sort this out and he sure as hell didn’t want to explain all of this to Dustin.

“Come on, man!” Dustin grumbled, finally standing up in order to walk a dramatic circle over towards Steve.

“If I mess up, I apologize. It happens! Ask Lucas and Mike!” He exclaimed, pointing towards the front door as if his friends were in that direction.

Steve wasn’t interested in hearing this, he didn’t want to be scolded and treated like a kid when Dustin was four years younger than him.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Steve tried, attempting to drink his soda again as he took a tentative sip, still avoiding eye contact.

“Bullshit!” Dustin hollered, his hands shooting up into the air and then letting them fall again with a loud slap against his thighs.

“Come on, man. We’re helping him pack the van today.”

Steve’s stomach flopped hearing that and he hunched forward a bit as if closing in on himself would help the uneasy feeling growing in his belly. He already felt terrible and he didn’t want to be put on a time limit to sort out his own feelings. It was so much more complicated than that.

“Come on, man…” Dustin said again, his tone much quieter and edging into desperation. The sound of his voice tore at Steve’s heart a bit, the obvious hurt and confusion that was there because he just couldn’t understand why Eddie and Steve had fought.

Do you know how fucking badly I wanted you to kiss me all fucking summer?

“He’s not going to forgive me,” Steve said finally, placing his glass down on the counter.

“Yeah, he will,” Dustin insisted, that edge of annoyance back in his tone.

“No. He won't,” Steve sneered back, holding his tongue.

His tone seemed to surprise Dustin a bit because he went quiet for a moment which allowed the eerie silence of the Harrington home to make Steve uneasy.

“Well, say it anyways,” Dustin finally said, the words simple and somehow piercing through Steve’s heart.

Say it anyways?

“Just say it anyways and mean it… and then there’s nothing else you can do.”

Steve felt his throat getting tight at the sentiment behind those words. They weren’t wise because Dustin didn’t know what he was talking about, but they weren’t untrue either. Just say it anyways. Just say it anyways.

And then there’s nothing else you can do.

Steve pinched his nose and sniffed, covering up any emotions that could have slipped through. He had been leaning with his palms on the counter and he straightened up now, looking across the kitchen at nothing in particular.

“Yeah… alright,” Steve swallowed, feeling a bit foolish for having to have Dustin give him a pep talk. Maybe he was a bit wiser than Steve gave him credit for.

“Alright?” Dustin asked as if he needed to confirm that he had heard Steve correctly.

“Yeah, I said alright,” Steve repeated, putting on an annoyed attitude to cover up the fear and relief that mingled in his gut.

“Alright then,” Dustin replied, almost shocked that what he had said worked, “we going?”

Steve was hesitantly walking towards the garage door, a bowl of keys sitting at the far end of the kitchen counter.

“Yeah, we’re going,” Steve grouched, looking back over his shoulder as he picked up his car keys and rolled them between his fingers.

“Dump that, won’t you?” He asked, gesturing towards the cups of soda that had been left on the counter.

“Dump it? Dustin repeated back, offended.

“Yeah, dump it,” Steve mocked, holding the door to the garage open.

“No way!”

As if to prove him wrong Dustin hurried back over to the glass and made hard eye contact as he tipped the drink back and started to chug. Steve rolled his eyes with annoyance, obviously becoming irritated as he waved his hand in a ‘hurry up’ motion. Why was Dustin always such a brat?

Dustin finished the glass and put it down a bit too hard before belching loudly and putting his hand to his chest.

“Oh, uh, I think I drank that too–fast,” he burped, making a bit of a sour face as he walked towards Steve anyway.

“You think?” Steve replied exasperated, pushing Dustin through the door and into the garage.

—- –

Focusing on the road had been hard as they drove the short distance from Steve’s place to the Trailer Park. Dustin hadn’t stopped talking and Steve wasn’t sure if that was to cover up the awkward silence or because he genuinely wanted to try and liven the mood. Either way, he appreciated it in part, even though he couldn’t focus on all of that right now.

No, he needed to pay attention to the road and not get so far into his own head that he turned around and went home. He just had to resign himself to being chewed out and left for dead. Dramatic, but that was how it felt. At the very least that would mean he could properly bury this crush and maybe he’d be able to cruise through life not thinking about another man ever again. It was wishful thinking and it had taken him a long time to even admit that was what was happening to him–he still thought of it as this foreign thing instead of a part of himself. That was only half true though, because the worst thing that could happen was that Eddie forgave him. Maybe it wouldn’t happen right away, maybe it would be three years down the line or even twenty, but Steve wasn’t sure how he’d feel if Eddie forgave him.

But that was all he could do. He didn’t need to theorize and implement a fail-safe for something that was out of his control.

Just apologize and mean it.

Steve slowed the car as they drove down the gravel road and into the Trailer Park. Most of the homes here were new but still unimpressive. Many of the trailers had been replaced by the government program that came to do the ‘clean up’ and the real site of the ‘incident’ was roped off farther to the south. You could still see some of the rusting, metal homes through the treeline if you went looking for it. Steve didn’t go looking for it and he didn’t know of anyone in the party that would.

Steve had trouble pulling up because there were people all over the place. Gareth and Lucas, Mike, Nancy–everyone was here and totting boxes or struggling to move a heavy, wooden dresser. Fleetingly, Steve had seen Eddie standing by Wayne’s trailer talking with Benson before he had excused himself. No doubt he had seen Steve’s car, it was unmistakable; no one else with a BMW would drive down this way.

Dustin hopped out as Steve pulled to a stop. He took a moment to breathe as he turned the ignition off, the din of voices outside making his nerves flare until he finally mustered the courage to get out of his car.

No one drew much attention to him and Steve said some quick hellos before helping load a few things into Eddie’s van. He didn’t come back outside and Steve stood awkwardly with his hands on his hips, looking at the trailer. Someone elbowed him and Steve glanced down to see Dustin giving him another one of his frustrated looks.

Steve rolled his eyes and with the motion noticed that a few other people were watching him subtly. They probably all knew to some degree that Steve and Eddie had fought and that made him uneasy, but from the looks of it Eddie wasn’t going to come back outside unless he was forced. They were getting close to finishing the packing too, so it really only left one option.

Steve cocked his hip a bit and hung his head, breathing through the anxiety quietly before counting down in his mind and just walking into the trailer. No one stopped him, and the door had been left open for moving purposes. Everyone probably knew what this was about, or at least they knew Dustin had gone to get him for this exact reason.

Steve swallowed thickly as he stepped into the trailer and looked down the dark little hallway to Eddie’s room. The door was ajar, but he couldn’t see in and he was uncertain if Eddie was in there or not. Probably. If he had to place his bets.

Steve knocked quietly on the door, pushing it open just enough to see inside and spot Eddie sitting on the end of his bed. The room was mostly empty except for his unmade box spring and a few larger pieces of furniture. It felt weird to see it like this since the room had almost always been bursting at the seams with junk that Eddie had squirreled away.

“Yeah?” Eddie asked to the knock, only glancing up before looking away again.

Steve’s stomach flopped and his grip on the doorframe tightened slightly. Eddie wasn’t a ball of rage any longer, but he still looked distressed and he was pointedly not looking at him.

Steve swallowed and stepped the rest of the way into the room, half closing the door again before taking a seat on the end of the bed with Eddie. He didn’t want to give him any reason to refuse him, but it felt rude to sit down without asking. Eddie didn’t move away though–actually, he didn’t move at all.

Steve glanced at Eddie, unable to see his expression as his hair fell in his face, but his shoulders were hunched forward and his hands were limp on his own thighs. He looked listless.

“Hey…” Steve started, his tone gentle but not pandering. This felt so awkward, he didn’t know what he wanted to say.

“Can we talk?” He asked as he clasped his hands between his knees and looked ahead. He hadn’t wanted to ask that, but he didn’t know how else to start the conversation.

Eddie just shrugged in an indifferent manner, uncharacteristically quiet.

“So...” Steve breathed, tapping his thumbs together softly, “I’ve been thinking about what you said and… I’m sorry.”

Eddie tensed and Steve noticed right away. His shoulders rose up to his ears and his once limp hands were now fisted on top of his thighs. He still wasn’t looking at Steve so he couldn’t read his expression, but from his body language alone he didn’t seem happy.

“That it?” Eddie asked as the silence drew out between them. It hurt to be spoken to that way and Steve felt his airway tightening a bit.

“Y-yeah,” Steve answered, having to clear his throat halfway through because of how strained his voice sounded. He didn’t get up though and Eddie still wasn’t looking at him as he let the silence draw out between them.

“If you need any more help… moving stuff, don’t hesitate to ask,” Steve offered weakly, pressing his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth. Eddie didn’t move and Steve swallowed again, trying to remind himself he just needed to apologize and mean it… that was it. What else could he say?

With a heavy breath, Steve finally stood up, his head almost feeling light as the tension settled over him. That was it then, that was all he could do. Eddie would just hate him for the rest of their lives.

Steve stepped towards the door, intent on leaving Eddie to his peace and just wallowing in his own emotions for the next few days. He had lived through heartbreak before, he could live through it again.

“You’re unbelievable.”

Steve stopped as he stood at the door, his palm already pressed against the cool metal of the handle. He glanced back at Eddie who still had his head turned, but he watched as his shoulder shook a bit and quiet, bitter laughter filled the room.

“You came all the way here to say that?” Eddie asked, his voice accusatory but not as punchy as it usually was.

Steve pressed his lips into a thin line, not wanting to linger if he was just going to get yelled at.

“Yeah…” Steve replied, sounding sorry as he tried to steady himself, “I’m really sorry that I hurt you.”

Eddie barked a laugh and it startled Steve a bit, his throat closing up.

“You’re sorry that you hurt me?” He repeated back, acting as if Steve had just said the most unbelievable thing in the world.

The words made Steve’s heartache though, the sentiment behind the language so drenched in distrust and pain. All he could really think about was the insecurity that he had heard in every single one of Eddie’s words when he had tried to hide his scars or ask for a ride. How secretly fragile he was and how desperately he tried to hide that part of himself until he trusted you. How Steve had broken that trust completely.

“Yeah, Eddie,” Steve replied genuinely, his voice soft as he tried to speak to that heartache instead of his own feelings.

“I didn’t–I shouldn’t have done that to you,” Steve replied, his own insecurities threatening to come through as he felt his fingers twitch against the door handle.

“Why?” Eddie asked, sounding like a child all of a sudden as he curled up into himself. He pulled his legs up, wedging his heels under himself so he was sitting in a squat on the end of the bed.

“Regret it?” He asked, laughing a little bit as if the bitter remark had instead been an attempt at levity.

Steve felt himself frown and he let go of the door finally, trying to push past the stress that threatened to steal his voice.

Just say it and mean it, and then there is nothing else you can do.

“Of course I do,” Steve replied, watching as Eddie slowly started to shake his head, obviously starting to get frustrated again.

“That was a terrible way to tell you… that I like you.”

Eddie stopped moving at Steve’s words, his shoulders slowly hunching in more as he hugged his legs to his chest. He went quiet again and Steve resigned himself to admitting that this was probably as good as it was going to get. He regretted a lot of things, but nothing more than this–

“Since when?” Eddie asked quietly, his voice almost lost to the room.

It was Steve’s turn to freeze and go silent, as he stared at Eddie. He gaped at him, unsure of what to say to that before Eddie repeated himself.

“Since when?” He asked again, his voice a bit firmer this time, but he was still closed off to Steve.

“Since when…” Steve said back to him, understanding what he was being asked but unsure of how to reply.

“Since–” Steve tried, his chest flooding with butterflies as he tried to grasp at his thoughts, “since–I don’t know–since—since you came back.”

That wasn’t much of an answer but it was as close to the truth as Steve could get. He had been pining since March, but he hadn’t admitted it to himself for months. He hadn’t even wanted to admit it to himself today.

“All summer?” Eddie asked quietly after another pause.

Steve pinched his lips together again, fighting back the torrent of emotions threatening to swallow him whole.

“All…” Steve sighed, putting his hands on his hips, “all summer.”

Eddie finally moved as he tightened his grip on his legs and turned his head so he could press his face into his knees. Steve still couldn’t see his expression past his curtain of hair, but it was obvious that he was crying.

“You’re such an—asshole,” Eddie blubbered and the sound went straight through Steve’s heart.

“I know…” he swallowed, thinking back to how many times that had been said to him over the years, “I’m sorry.”

Eddie shook his head and sniffled, not looking up as he sat there curled in on himself. Steve didn’t know what to do, so he lingered for a moment before eventually sitting back down on the edge of the bed beside Eddie.

“Not like that,” Eddie muttered, shaking his head again and vaguely peering up from under his bangs.

“Sorry?” Steve asked, confused about what was being said to him. Did Eddie want him to leave after all?

“Not like that,” Eddie repeated, lifting his face marginally so his nose was pressed between his knees. “You’re a good guy… I’m sorry… I said that.”

Steve felt his heart lurch at those words, his breath shuttering a bit at Eddie’s correction. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it felt something like that. Mercy maybe. Mercy not only for what he had done at the party but somehow it felt like mercy for the past 10 years of his life.

“I’m moving,” Eddie mumbled quietly, his eyes red, but his cheeks freshly dry.

“I know…” Steve replied, sighing quietly and glancing away from Eddie.

“So…” Eddie swallowed, actually turning to look at him properly, his nose red and eyes a bit swollen, “so, what?”

Steve looked at him with confusion again, his voice sticking in his throat as he tried to puzzle out what this question meant. Surprisingly, his confusion actually elicited a laugh from Eddie who turned away again and pressed his eyes onto the top of his knees. He sounded half-charmed, and Steve let the note shutter his eyebrows up.

“So, what does this mean?” Eddie explained further, sounding shy.

Steve sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly. He hadn’t thought about getting this far. What did this mean? He didn’t know where to go from here.

“Do we…” he waffled, his expression pinched, “do we need to have a plan?”

Eddie seemed to consider the offer before eventually answering no and then looked back at Steve.

“We can figure it out as we go… if you want,” he offered and Steve felt his entire being quake at the prospect.

Figure it out as they went? They could just… figure it out as they went.

“Okay,” Steve swallowed, feeling a smile break onto his face for the first time in what felt like months.

“Okay, okay, yeah…”

Eddie let his legs drop as he slowly put his feet back down on the ground, his head hung a bit but his expression was much softer than it had been. He looked shy and perhaps a bit uncertain, but the emotions mingled nicely into the room as they both seemed to imagine the tender possibilities of what this meant for them.

[shrinkthisviolet]

talk shop tuesday - you once mentioned the 'Robby Lawrence' AU and I would love love love to know more about that, and how Johnny having been present in Robby's life would change things in this 'verse (beyond Robby getting some decent parental figures in his life for once).

Oooh there’s a deep cut 😅 last time I talked about that was a couple years back! Here’s the initial post about it if anyone’s curious.

This is also a bit longer than I expected (even tho I only hit some of the highlights 😅) so the rest is below the cut:

So Johnny being more present in Robby's life would also probably improve things with Shannon, because really, I think a lot of Robby's issues with Shannon had to do with the fact that she was trying her level best but she wasn't prepared to be a single mom. She was relying on Johnny to help parent Robby, and of course that never happened in canon—Johnny kept letting her down. But with Johnny more present, I think the two of them would be on better terms with each other and with Robby! They wouldn't be together as a couple, but they're co-parents and friends, and they love Robby, and Robby loves them. So from the jump, there's a more stable relationship.

Also, I mentioned he meets Sam in elementary school* and they strike up a friendship. A one-sided, Shirbert-esque academic rivalry at first (serious from Sam's end, not so much from Robby's end), but then it becomes more playful over time. As a result, Robby also has Daniel and Amanda as...maybe or maybe not parental figures, but definitely trusted adults. Especially Amanda—I love how much those two just get each other, and of course I gotta keep it in this AU idea.

Robby gets pulled into the Miyagi-Do stuff much earlier—Johnny's wary about it, but he and Daniel have resolved their differences by now (especially since Shannon and Amanda are best friends and keep glaring at them whenever they start fighting, so they've been lovingly bullied into reconciling), so Johnny trusts Daniel with Robby. And he sees Robby flourish—he was always a fairly happy kid since meeting Sam, but with karate in particular, it's like a sort of calmness follows him everywhere. Johnny even sits in on a few of Robby's classes, claiming it's to "keep an eye on them", but everyone knows it's because Johnny's kinda warming up to the idea of this more meditative style of karate. (It helps him too. He and Robby practice sparring, and they develop an in-between style of CK and MD together.)

Obviously Robby would be friends with Sam's friends too...well, at least Aisha, Demetri, and Eli**. Yasmine and Moon would rub him the wrong way, and he and Sam would argue a lot about it. Aisha, Demetri, and Eli cut ties with her, and Robby does too, telling Sam, "the girl I knew, who kept trying to befriend the loner new kid and didn't stop until it worked, would never side with the girl bullying her best friend. Come talk to me when you've gotten your head on straight." (Though of course, Robby jumps to her defense when the Kyler rumors pop up, frowning at Aisha when she says something snide. Miguel attacks Kyler before Robby can, and for that, Robby can admit the new kid is pretty cool.)

And he and Anthony would have kind of a...not a brotherly relationship at first, but a tentative respect relationship, that sort of evolves into a brotherly one over the years (when Anthony starts bullying Kenny, Robby's the one who drags him away by the ear and demands to know "what the hell do you think you're doing, Anthony LaRusso" and nips that rivalry in the bud, thank you very much)

Hmm what else...oh! Johnny opens Cobra Kai at the start of canon, Daniel gets pissed about it, but not as pissed as canon—remember, he knows Johnny here. So instead of doing something underhanded, he calls Johnny and demands to know what he thinks he's doing. Reminds him what Kreese did. Johnny snaps back that he doesn't need a reminder, and that it's a free country, he can do what he wants. Daniel has never spoken about KK3, but Johnny's always suspected there was something else, something about '85 that Daniel's not mentioning. He pries a little, but Daniel gets defensive. Tells him to be careful and hangs up. So that part's just slightly changed—it just means no underhanded tricks, more communication for them.

Oh and ofc regarding the romances, there wouldn't be any love triangle nonsense. Miguel would be jealous of Robby from way earlier (because remember, Robby jumped to Sam's verbal defense first), but Robby would say "no, dude, she's like a sister/best friend to me. Ask her out if you want. But...if my dad tries to give you advice, maybe take it with a grain of salt." (Miguel takes her to golf 'n stuff anyway, and Robby figures that's for the best. Casual is better for a first date). And of course with no jealousy nonsense, Miguel and Sam don't break up, so there's no Sam/Robby and Miguel/Tory in s2.

And, actually, Robby and Aisha are both the first to befriend Tory. Now, of course, Robby and Aisha both feel similarly about Sam—they both cut ties with her at the same time and both made amends with her at the same time. But also, Robby's always been the type to defuse the tension (this is a canon trait of his, which would likely carry over more here due to Daniel, Amanda, and Shannon's collective influences). So when Sam starts making accusations and Tory starts getting heated, Robby steps between them, tells them both to calm down, and tells Sam to explain what's going on. So she does, and Robby ropes Tory and Aisha into helping Sam (doesn't take too much convincing for the latter—remember, Aisha forgave Sam in 1x10). They find Amanda's wallet, all is well...and Sam apologizes for making assumptions. Tory's not sure what to make of her, so she just nods (as a result of this, they become friends much earlier).

There's probably more that would change, but these are the big things I can think of 😅 I...did not expect to get hooked on this idea again, but I so am. Thanks for the ask!

*Sam's an Encino kid, but she goes to public school, as Robby probably would too. So that's where they meet.

**Demetri, Eli, Aisha, and Sam all being childhood best friends is a long-standing headcanon of mine, so ofc it would be present here

talk shop tuesday!

[imagine-knb]

hello! firstly, i wanted to say how happy i am that you all picked up this blog again! i remember how much i enjoyed your writing back in 2017!! i’d like to request a valentine’s match up <3

my name is nin (female + she/her)! my personality type is entj… but i also tend to be more introverted or by myself at times. i enjoy dumb humor, drinking boba tea and watching movies! my dislikes are bugs 👹, asking for help, and cooking (i’d rather clean up lmao). my hobbies include taking short walks throughout the day with my dog, trying out new restaurants & playing the sims :)

i have a soft spot for kaijou, touou, kirisaki daichi (lmao), gom & vorpral swords!!

Type of Romance

Childhood Friends to Lovers

How You Two Met

You've known Sakurai from a young age. He'd always been the more quiet and reserved type, so it was often that you had to be the one taking initiative out of the two of you. As younger children, you were often the instigator, the one calling the shots, the one making the plans. It honestly took a lot out of you.

It wasn't until Sakurai decided to join basketball did he start to gain a little bit more of an opinion on what the two of you should do together. The friendship seemed to balance out even more after he joined a sport.

And it was like meeting someone new all over again. He was still the same Sakurai, but the changes about him were different and exciting.

"Hey, Nin?" Sakurai's interruption caught you off guard.

You had been going over with him your proposed plans for the weekend, knowing he had basketball practice to attend. You had wanted to include him in any way possible, carving out time to spend with him after he was done, but the way he was looking at you told you he had other thoughts in mind.

"Sorry, would you just want to go with me?" he asks, a certain hopeful look in his eyes. "I'm sure the coach wouldn't mind if you sat on the side. I want to spend more time with you, too."

How He Fell For You

Sakurai knows that being the one to take the lead, make sure he was included, and overall take care of him was a lot for you. He knows you would have rather been doing your own thing (at least, that's what he's believed all this time). So he really appreciated you helping him come out of his shell as the two of you aged.

Somewhere along the years, that appreciation turned into infatuation.

It took him a lot of courage, a lot of push from his teammates and friends, to work up the courage to confess to you. And when he did, he surprised you with the confidence he seemed to show.

"Please let me take care of you from now on!" He was bowing, bent at the waist and face toward the ground. You couldn't see his expression, but you were sure that if Sakurai had just looked up at you, he would be blushing red.

After a moment, realizing his outburst, he straightened up and said, "I'm sorry, I just... You've been taking care of me our whole lives, Nin. It's my turn. Please."

He was tense. God was he tense. But the second you began smiling at him, accepting his offer and by proxy his confession, all that tension seemed to melt away. His own relieved smile graced his face. He tried to ignore the excited cheers and squeals of his friends close behind him.

What a Relationship with Him is Like

Sakurai can be an attentive and understanding partner, so he doesn't mind at all that you don't ask for help often because he seems to already know when you need it. He's not going to just jump straight into helping you however, and will always ask if he can first.

One of his favorite things to do for you is actually to cook and we already know he's pretty good at it. Whenever the two of you have gone out to a restaurant, he'll always ask your opinion on the food and then try to make a better version for you. He might get a little pouty if you say you like the restaurant's version better though, so watch out!

Overall, a relationship with Sakurai is a sweet one full of balance. You both bring out the best in each other and temper each other's worsts.

"What do you mean the cafe did it better?" There was a pout on Sakurai's lips as he gave you a half glare. The little baked confectionary he had tried to mimic was left half eaten on the plate. Before you could take another bite, he pulled it away. "No, you said it didn't taste right. I have to try again, Nin."

"Ryo, really, I was teasing!" you exclaimed, laughing as you tried to snatch the treat back, but he was holding it out of reach.

The pout on his face deepened for a second before melting away. Sakurai sighed. "Don't be so bratty or I won't bake for you anymore," he tutted. Both of you knew that was definitely a lie.

Match Up Requests are Closed

[wit-and-worry]

There’s this slightly younger acquaintance I have(had?) who seems to enjoy my company, and with whom I’ve only had seemingly mutually enjoyable and lengthy conversations, but who doesn’t usually initiate contact. He doesn’t seem very online, and has a strong and tight circle of friends he likes. He’s interesting. He’s bright and respectful. He’s almost too polite, in person. But is it so hard to communicate with him over text. Mostly because he doesn’t text back, for whatever reason.

Before we got to talking on the last day of my senior year(he was a Junior at the time), I was frankly intimidated by him. He was the brightest kid in my Hnrs Physics class. He seemed to pick up the material like a pile of feathers. He seemed friendly and confident and put together. He was starkly unlike me. I was and still am struggling not to be a miserable slob with no concept of time or personal responsibility every day. What drew my interest in pursuing a friendship was his evident interest in the kind of literature I was interested in. I saw many Asimov books on his desk and in his hand throughout the year, but also some classics like Heart of Darkness(which I figured was for class but I’m not sure of now), and the Slaughterhouse Five(maybe Cat’s Cradle? I saw him carrying a Vonnegut novel for sure), and some others I can’t remember the names of now, and an anthology of Camus’ short stories. When I saw him with those books I felt like a dog seeing another dog for the first time. My brain went: oh shit! Dog dog dog dog! (gonna go on a tangent now) I’ve historically gravitated towards classic lit, primarily because I had the idea that reading influential works of literature and studying them would help make me a better writer. Not that I didn’t and don’t earnestly enjoy them. Much of classic literature carries me way out of the modern world without alienating me from humanity. I can usually rely on it to be somewhat deftly written and it’s fun to geek out over. It’s fun but lonely. It is also very intimate and rewarding.

When I meet people who share that passion, it implies to me that they have the patience and curiosity and courage it takes to appreciate it.

I admit that, initially, there was also a glamor to the idea of being a young person, having all of that high brow literature under my belt, and as a result being praised by teachers for being articulate and mature and all of that. It’s embarrassing to admit, even to myself, that my interest in classic literature is in part a consequence of my being given, as Savannah Brown once put it “well-timed praise”, but it is what it is.

I still do think that it is beneficial for those who are serious about writing to visit or revisit the work of influential writers. It’s just that now I feel a restless craving for transgressive art. I want to read the kind of fucked up and intimate fiction I want to write.

Anyway I started writing this post to bitch into the void to be honest, because I suspect that this acquaintance of mine isn’t interested in befriending me, and I’m bummed. I’ve reached out a few times either to start a conversation or schedule a hangout, but it’s getting to be a hassle. He has little reason to pursue my friendship, because he’s pretty content with his social life as it is. He’s pretty elusive. He’s apparently very busy. I’m not, which is why I’m pursuing. But I’m tired of making an ass of myself pursuing people. I’ve been the pursuer for most of my life. I might have to let this one go. Or just let him come to me, if he ever does. It’s weird. I’m overthinking this for sure. I just don’t want to drive him away. I think he’s cool, despite being a year younger than me lol. It may seem like I have a crush on this guy, but I promise that is not the case. I don’t want it to ever go there. He seems straight, besides. I’m just so lonely that it’s pathetic. It’s not gotten to the point that I will settle for anyone, but I hit it off with this guy in a way I haven’t with anyone in years. Hard not to want to relive that initial rush. I can’t help but wonder if I said something that creeped him out the last time we hung out. I can think of a few things that he may have misread, which keep me up at night. Well I don’t know what else to say so I’m going to stop here.

-some guy

[jacksonthelizardking]

For those who have seen Teen Wolf, my version of Jackson is initially based off the show for his beginnings. He was arrogant, a bit cocky, always with a chip on his shoulder and a mouth vomiting out sarcasm. He has come to learn he is adopted and keeps most at arm's length. When his lacrosse teammate begins to best him at a sport that gave him his one accolade from others, he wanted to know how he got better. In time, he learns it was a wolf's bite that made his teammate, Scott better than he was. Jackson needed the title back so badly that he begged for the bite. Eventually, he got it but not with the results he hoped for.

Spoiler alert: He becomes something else first. A kanima.(A lizard like creature who is ruled by a master and made to kill.) In time, the wolf surfaces but this is almost the last we see of him again till season 6. I figured he needed development beyond this point. That is what you will find in writing with me here.

As a side note, I can leave the wolf part out of our story if you wish to write only human aspects. I am also open to adaptation. Let me know what you'd enjoy.

So, for starters, Jackson can be played in one of the three verses below:

One, high school student, probably before the werewolf bite.

Two, a college student who is very ambitious.

Three (and likely the most common) current day, post grad, living life.

Jackson is an adventurous fun-loving soul in the modern day and not as brash as in high school days. He has an alpha he loves, a best friend who shares his love of iced coffee, a dragon who has shown him true friendship, and a wolf brother who has guided him to be his best and to survive as a wolf. Along the way, he has sired pups of his own, whom he adores, and a kitten who wrapped around his heart. He loves a superhero, a fellow alpha, his wolf brothers (pack-mates) and others. His life is rich and exciting and he wants for nothing.

As a disclaimer, I suppose I should add that I am a multi-story writer. This does not mean I am intimate with everyone I write with, nor would I want to be. Hence why I say multi-story and not multi-lover. Also, I have both straight and gay friends, male and female and while Jackson knows he is gay now, not all his storylines will involve any aspect of his sexuality. Most won't in fact.

I abhor rule pages and having people sign and such so I will not bring that to you, but my one rule is that you are over 18 in real life. While I know that you may be talented, I do not feel it's appropriate for me. As for anything else ooc, I reserve that for story discussions and do not care to get personal. I do not care who plays what or try to connect with you other than in character.

Lastly, I have a very busy life away from here and ask for your patience when writing with me. I may love our story deeply, but sometimes I just cannot find enough hours in a day to get here for more than a quick status comment before passing out. It honestly never reflects on you, I swear.

Let the fun begin and message me to get something going.

[hvneymelons]

You shouldn’t call me that.

To consider Leandro surprised at the mention of Terry knowing Annie - and therefore her father seeing as they’ve had dinners - would be a bit of an understatement. His eyes found Terry in the short distance, curiosity sitting at the tip of his tongue but he knew better than to ask stupid questions. At the very least, he was aware of how it could potentially seem to Ketziya if he randomly started asking what other single father they enjoyed spending their free time with. Instead, Leandro focused on their brief walk and reacted only to his son’s question. “But of course, Papi, Anything for you.” he replied, ruffling his son’s head with his flower free hand. He would do anything for them. Be anything for them. All they ever had to do was ask. 

Since Terry had offered on their own, without any initial prompting from his children, Lea felt it was only right to accept the invitation. Later on, when they had a moment away from the children, he’d assure that it’s what they actually wanted. He was fairly curious to see what Terry surrounded themself with daily, also. What their home looked and felt like, if it differed from his own. The expectation was that yes, it should. The two, despite their fruiting friendship, were completely different human beings. What linked them was their gentle nature, he thought, although even that was a little far fetched. Terry was a person beyond his understanding and yet the two had formed a friendship that both thrilled and pained him.

Even if it does entertain your children.

Lea almost gasped as Terry closed the distance between them - their hand on his shirt possessively bringing him closer. Their scent immediately overtook his senses despite the light breeze in the air but he was rendered motionless. His eyes closing before their face came into contact, the smile on his features frozen in place not only from the excitement coursing through his veins, but the shock of what they were about to do. In front of his children, of all things. Lupita’s voice filled his ears, but he was far too interested in what Terry would do next. Lea knew if he tried to move, Terry - much like a bird, might retrieve from their interaction and so he stayed rooted, awaiting further actions.

Just as he thought things would come to an end, he’d been pulled once more, but this time he didn’t hold back too much. Placing a hand on the small of her back, Leandro added onto the closeness they now shared. His mind and body were unequivocally involved in her very being for the duration of their kiss. Almost lost in her touch to the point that he hadn’t noticed he stopped breathing all together. By the time they grew apart, he was almost lightheaded and lost. Confused for certain, as he watched Terry with more longing than curiosity.

They might expect too much.

It took a moment more for him to realize where the flowers had ended up - even as Terry reached for it. As she returned back to her chosen place, to finish the food Lea had already forgotten about, he reached up to feel the petals in his ear. What is happening? He thought to himself, but couldn’t ask them straight out. Not just yet, that was a conversation for when the two were alone. For when his children were not eavesdropping and adding layers to their already complicated relationship? Friendship? Situation? Whatever the case was. Leandro shot his eyes towards his children, not too far. Lupita caught his glance between the slits of her fingers as she covered her eyes but continued to giggle.

I’m not going to abandon them just because I don’t know how to be around you.

“Do you not think I’m pretty, Lu?” he asked, surprising even himself with the nickname his late wife used to love. He could see it surprised her too, all of the little home videos Sol had made addressing her as such she had seen. Lea wondered if it bothered her to hear him say it. His daughter was still sensitive about her mother, even as the years went by and the image of her disappeared. Leandro tried his best to keep talking and bringing her up, but even he had grown tired of it all. Diego didn’t feel it as much. He had never known his mother like his sister had. 

“Boys can’t be pretty, Papi.”

“You’re handsome!”

“Right. Good job, Diego.”

"I'm handsome, you see?" Lea corrected Terry clearly amused.

As his children fell into conversations of their own, Lupita leading the way as usual, Leandro took a seat beside Terry once more. Gravitating towards their presence with curious intent, only to be rewarded with yet another touch on their part. Leandro was utterly confused with Terry’s sudden change of pace and tune, but he was slow, not stupid. He reached a hand out, instinctively welcoming her touch with his own, and cupped her thighs in his hand. His children were far too distracted wrestling with their second burrito to pay them any mind. So he took advantage of it.

Leandro’s pants seemed to grow tighter at Terry’s next suggestion, but unlike before he didn’t stare back in shock. Giving her leg a squeeze, Lea raised his hand to caress the side of her cheek before guiding her face to his children. To keep a look out as he leaned towards and trailed his nose along her neck and shoulders. “Maybe I should come over this time.” he said, remembering the little mishap the last time they entertained this lust. Leandro was playing with fire, he knew it, Terry was still such a mystery to him but it only took a few words for him to ignore all of her previous warnings and caution. The choke hold she had on him seemed only to grow alongside his curiosity. “I’ll get them situated, and come by after.” 

Just as Ketziya had done before, Leandro returned to his position at a moment's notice. A kiss left on her skin to coat the words he had spoken. He could still feel her on his lips, but he knew it was the anticipation of the coming night. His children had gone to their grandparents the weekend before, but Lea was sure he could score them a sleepover with Daniel or Jia without too many questions. The burrito he had yet to uncover now gained his full attention as Lea attempted to fill a hungry beyond its limits while his children gushed about their lunch.

What ruckus. A pleasant ruckus, at least—all cacophony of voices and childish laughter, Lea so at ease with his son and daughter. They couldn’t imagine how this would have gone without his presence—warm, solid, so attuned to his children—that it almost left them green with envy. This had never come easy, parenthood. How could it? Their father was patient but silent, and Terry had learned to be silent in kind. No pattern to emulate but quietude, precision. Even their family trips were marked by quiet: the lush Catskills greenery, woodlands enveloped in fog, birds gliding past, slopes bathed in golden light. 

Micah could have benefited from someone like Lea for a father, they mused. But Terry had never seen the point of bringing any man home, not when people often lost interest at the mention of their son. The shift was often visible in their faces, and those that surpassed that initial barrier were often such a shame—too much fumbling in the dark, slurred speech, and inexpert tongues—that they, too, had found the appeal receding as soon as it came.  

Far easier to go at their own pace. And, anyway, no one quite understood them, how their brain had always demanded everything to be retranslated before it could be understood, how they’d then recalibrate their response, their own way of living, in kind. Too exhausting to explain. Too lonely it had made their existence. 

Yet here, in this town, it felt different. Different, too, in how people treated them—their differences as no longer something to be smoothed over or shaken out, but something to be tended to, and even respected. With talk of Annie came the other figures—of Rory, Jack, of this social circle they’d made for themselves in Forest Lake. Certainly colored by complication, the lot of them, each with their own ghosts that were as of now unearthed.

“I have met Annie, Diego,” they began, catching the boy’s eye and watching his face promptly light up at her mention, “Annie and her father have been over to my house for dinner. Would you like that sometime?” Invitations upon invitations. In the absence of Micah, they couldn’t quite stop.

“Papi, can we go over to Terry’s, please? I said please!”

They already knew Lea’s answer. When it came to children, it was difficult to say no. 

“Does Terry get a kiss too?” 

Diego’s question pulled them from their drifting thoughts. Their instinct was to say no, but—oh, it was so difficult to say no.

So, no, Terry doesn’t get a kiss, if only by technicality. Not when it was Terry who’d closed that gap first, to accept Lea’s wildflowers with one hand and to spool the fabric of his shirt just above his navel with the other, pulling him in. They pressed a hard kiss to the edge of Lea’s far too-bright smile, just to the left where the muscles of his lips ended, and the rough line of his jaw began. 

Behind them, an exaggerated ugh! came from Leandro’s daughter. “Oh, gross, Papi!” Lupita squealed, covering her eyes—though it was for naught. 

Funny, Terry thought, couldn’t remember the last time they’d kissed a man. Months, maybe. Years. More than a decade since it had actually mattered or had been this deliberate. Flings with men, after Severine, had been minimal and painful and best left for dead. They’d almost forgotten what it felt like, how the sensation of stubble overpowered everything else. Almost—and their desire, however, displaced against the vast expanse of the forest, began to wane. Only, they did not have the full picture yet, did they? Barely anything. Only jaw and stubble against the soft contours of their mouth, like rough-hewn wood against soft skin, the sensation of tree bark against their back. 

Another attempt. A ghost of a smile, here, as they pulled him closer for another time: motion deliberate, studied. The hand that held the wildflowers rose to tuck the flowers above his ear, then back down to his cheek. The textured grit of stubble again: better now that they’d acclimated to it.  

The other hand, still spooled around his shirt, pulled him closer to Terry still.

They closed the gap again. Another testing of the waters—no. Not quite like sinking. Recalled the sensation of a cigarette, how they’d put the stick between their lips and take a long drag, letting the controlled burn take over. They stroked his face beneath their fingers, the delicate contours of his cheekbones. The soft ridge above his eyelids, fluttering, as he finally registered what was happening. The sensations of mouths moving. The curve of his upper lips, warm against their own. A swipe of the tongue. They couldn’t tell who gasped first. It might have been Leandro, and they’d swallowed his exhale, almost gravelly, in their mouth. The kiss was over before Lea could move his lips to keep up. Any second more would border on obscene, especially with other people as witnesses. 

But, mostly, it was over because Terry Lowenstein had decided it was over. They might be cautious, or tentative, but never not the one in control. 

“Your father gets a kiss,” they corrected, releasing their hold over him and adjusting themselves back towards the tree stump. Space but not distance. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he?” Terry raised their hand to the great white trilliums, tucked now behind his ear, Leandro himself the undergrowth from which the flowers were plucked. “Papi, Terry just called you pretty!” The forest air was punctured again by hearty giggles. 

Terry waited until he’d settled back on the stump. Closer now, they thought. Head tilting to his side, almost accommodating, stray curls clinging to his bare shoulder, like edges of spider silk. A hand moved to meet the small of his back, away from view, stroking the fabric there, his muscles taut beneath their fingers. 

Is it so wrong, to have missed it? They don’t remember the last time a man’s kiss had ever felt comforting, if at all, or have such an encouraging band of witnesses in these displays of affection. Men had never kept their interest long enough. No one had kept their interest long enough—until Severine who broke through the stillness of the surface that concealed the enormity of their desire, the pulse points still hammering, crude but welcome, beneath their skin. Ten years, underwater. Alive again.

Nothing like it with Lea. Nothing like it with anyone but Sev, for that matter. Terry had not expected there to be, and yet—what had he said? Would that satisfy you? Lea had seemed malleable enough for the taking. Hard, but pliant, and not too easy to break.

“I can think of other things that would satisfy me, if you want,” they raised their lips to his ear, voice just above a murmur, not unlike the trills of birdsong, “Tell me when I should come over tonight.” 

The sun was strong today. Too strong. Leandro’s features too clear and punctuated in the light. Brown hair and brown eyes and brown everything. The dark was another thing. They stilled their hand before turning their back to the children. “So? How was everyone’s food?”

[mischiefmaven]

3 ways Elle encourages Tao to become a better person

Tao might be the most controversial character in the fandom. We have our baddies (Ben, Harry, David), our icons (Tori, Sarah Nelson, Aled/Isaac), and our romantic heroes (Narlie forever), but Tao is not that simple to categorize. On paper, Tao is everything you want from a friend: fiercely loyal, committed to friendship, and dedicated to protecting those he cares about. On the other hand, Tao is stubborn, opinionated, resistant to change, and makes lots of assumptions or jumps to conclusions, often to the detriment of his relationships. Every time I recommend Heartstopper, I get reaction texts from first-timers that read something like this: “I would die for Nick and Charlie…but ugh what’s Tao’s problem?” 

I appreciate the expanded role that Tao got in the Netflix adaptation compared with the comic. The more I rewatched the show, the more I started to really love Tao. I also noticed something else: Elle is to Tao what Charlie is to Nick. Throughout the show, there are 3 main ways that Elle helps our favorite beanie-wearing film snob start to become a better version of himself, perhaps even his true self. 

1. She calls out his bad behavior. 

If Tao is being loud and obnoxious, Elle is the first to call it out. From the very first scene where we see them together in the same room, for the “emergency Charlie situation” in episode 2, Elle is not entertaining his nonsense: 

T: Charlie literally won’t give up on this *straight* boy until we know for sure!

E: Oh my god, be quiet! Ok, slowly, what do you want?

When Tao is being a drama queen or catastrophizing a situation, Elle doesn’t let him get away with it. She tells him he’s being dramatic when he declares that Nick has “stolen” Charlie and initially when he makes her promise to always prioritize their friendship. She pushes him to think of others when he’s reacting badly, too, like when she urges him not to confront Charlie about Nick on his birthday, or when he’s a little too self-involved on the sidelines of the rugby match: 

T: Charlie’s befriending bullies and our friendship group is falling apart, Elle. Take this seriously.

E: Hey! I didn’t come here and risk seeing all the Truham boys who used to pick on me just for you to tell me our friendship group is falling apart.

She teasingly calls him the “king of getting involved” and tries to get him to stop dwelling on his near-constant desire to talk about all the reasons he doesn’t like Nick. Elle also pokes fun at his tendency to be jealous in episode 3 when she tells him that her friends are going to Harry’s party and in episode 4 after he meets Tara and Darcy:

T: It was nice meeting your friends though. 

E: Yeah?

T: Yeah. They seem cool.

E: They are.

T: Have they replaced us?

E: As if anyone could replace your incredibly annoying, loud presence in my life.

T: How dare you!

Elle is really the only one who calls Tao out, and she’s probably the only one he would listen to anyway, and I love her for it.

2. She helps him process his complicated emotions around change.

Tao really hates change, and his stress about it informs a lot of his motivations and actions throughout the show. Elle is the only person to whom Tao seems to confide about this in any serious way, and her reactions are so perfectly accepting and therapeutic. She sometimes prods him to reframe his perception about change, like during episode 3’s movie night:

E: Yeah. But sometimes change is a good thing…I was really scared no one would like me, so I didn’t even try talking to people at first. But then I realized I actually needed to put myself out there or I’d just be alone. So I think I’m going to be ok there, at Higgs. That’s a good change, right?

T: Yeah, that’s a good change.

In episode 7, she uses a combination of humor and empathy to try to show him that he will be ok. She doesn’t really try to solve everything for him; she’s just there for him when he needs it.

T: Sorry about earlier. I know it’s not your fault he hasn’t told me.

E: Charlie does want to tell you. 

T: I think I know why he hasn’t. He thinks that I’ll accidentally say something stupid and out Nick to all of Nick’s mates. And obviously he cares more about Nick’s feelings than mine. Once you get into a relationship, friendships don’t matter anymore. 

E: Or maybe he just thinks you’ll force Nick to watch Donnie Darko like you did with us.

T: Shut up! It’s a good movie! It’s just complicated! I don’t know why I’m so afraid of being alone. 

E: That’s how I felt, my first term. I got scared. But everything turned out ok.

Elle seems to understand when to push Tao and when to give him a little room to process. That’s a hard balance for some people, but she’s such an observant and kind person that it seems to come naturally to her.

3. She makes Tao feel safe and gives him space to be silly. 

In many scenes with his friends and classmates, Tao is at times brooding, competitive, sarcastic, and bossy. Yet every time we get a glimpse of Tao getting out of his own head long enough to joke around or have some light-hearted fun, Elle is at the center of it. At the sleepover at Charlie’s, he drops their serious discussion about Nick in the face of Elle’s criticism that he’s being annoying by performing his “interpretive dance.” He’s playful with her in the arcade and when they meet up at the milkshake café (their truly adorable fishing reel greeting is such an underrated gem of a moment). In episode 8, their run through the halls of Truham to the intro of “Close to You” is a moment of unburdened young joy that moves me every time. He has shown her his worst side and shared his deepest, darkest fears, and she still loves and accepts him. Indeed, Tao has never been happier and freer than he is in those episode 8 moments with Elle, and it leaves him emotionally open to realize his feelings for her are changing. 

We don’t know a lot about Tao’s back story and why he is the way he is. I have a headcanon theory that his dad left the family when he was young, leading to abandonment issues. In the show, his self-awareness takes 2 steps forward and 1 step back several times, which I think is honestly a realistic portrayal of teen emotional growth. Elle is there to love and guide him, sometimes by challenging him and sometimes by giving him the space to figure things out on his own. 

Love him or hate him, Tao is a fascinating and complex character. Sometimes it seems like his emotional intelligence is abysmal, but he's smart enough to know that everything is awful without Elle. So there’s hope for him yet.

[transformhim]

The Devil Next Door

Here’s one to kick off spooky szn 👹

———

My name’s Cade, and I’m a recent university drop-out. At the time I moved back home, I felt like a total failure. My prospects were cut back significantly, I didn’t have any steady employment waiting for me on the other side, and worst of all it meant moving back in with my folks at 21. Honestly, it felt like I was destined for nothing but a life of total banality and disappointment.

Dropping out of college is rough, but it definitely helps having good friends around. Friends like Mr. Campbell. Well, I guess I should just call him Wes at this point. He always calls me Cade, so I should just call him Wes, right? Regardless, we’re well past being on a first name basis. Wes moved into our neighborhood shortly after I moved away for college, but I’ve gotten to know him a lot better than some of my friends since I came home.

He’s in his mid 40s or early 50s—I could never remember—working at some demanding job, so he used to pay me to mow his lawn once a week. Not that he was frail or anything; in fact he’s fitter than most people I know, including people my own age. I guess he just felt like more hands makes less work and he would save a lot of time if he had someone helping out. That’s how we got to know each other initially, and he seemed like a pretty cool, pretty chill guy upon my first impression of him. After a few months of mowing his lawn and doing other yard maintenance work, we started hanging out just for the hell of it. We’d hang out on his porch, drink, smoke some j’s, shoot the shit, whatever. After a few months of that, I started coming over to play poker with some of his work friends, who of course all happened to be the same brand of burly, buff, mature dude as Wes. By this point in our friendship, I had already moved out of my parent’s house, but I kept going over for some reason, call it loyalty. I noticed that pretty much all of his friends—all except for the women he brought around—were gay, and I soon figured out that he was too, thanks to some snooping in his bathroom while I was using it. I mean, straight guys don’t just keep an assortment of dildos, vibrators, anal beads, and more in a drawer in their bathroom, right?

That was totally fine by me, too. In the year I spent at college, I came to discover that I wasn’t 100% hetero myself, thanks to several drunken late nights with my pledge brothers in the frat I was rushing. In fact, I didn’t realize it at first but I was finding myself more and more attracted to Wes. I guess it started when I started mowing his lawn. He would come out to do some of his own garden work—pulling weeds, laying mulch, trimming hedges and shit—but, like me, would work without a shirt on. His wide, hairy chest and strong, hairy arms always made me swoon, and I know he’d caught me staring several times, only to smile it off.

It escalated during our porch sessions. Whenever he’d joke about something while we’d been drinking or smoking, we’d burst with laughter, but he slowly started to pat and rub my thighs as we laughed. I’d say nothing because… well, Hell, I wanted it to continue, and I made my own passes as well. I’d share similar seemingly innocuous touches with him, each time seeing how far I could rub up and into his thigh without him reacting. Several times, I swear I brushed the tip of his stiff cock head, but without any noticeable reaction from him; so, naturally, I let him do the same with me, and what should I care if he felt that I had a hard on (which he did, because I so often did around him).

Things really escalated during our poker nights. Since the closest guy my age in his friend group was 33—12 years my senior at this point—I was the resident cutie and was treated as such. When we all got drunk enough, we’d lose our shirts and start comparing muscles and size, and of course I always had the sharpest and tightest form out of all of us. We’d take our shirts off and show off for each other, but everyone couldn’t wait until it was my turn. I’d slowly remove my button down in a poorly done strip tease while the gang cheered and laughed, and pop a few poses, showing off my former swim team captain bod. I’d gotten much more fit since I started working for Wes, and I think he liked that, watching what he saw as his creation behaving with such confident sexuality. Everyone would touch and feel my bulging arms and broad chest as I flexed them, but I always felt like it was a 75% joking, 25% horny interaction. Except with Wes… no, his touches always felt like those of a lover; gentle every time but always lingering longer in eagerness on my skin. I loved it, even more so because it gave me an opportunity to feel up his muscle tits while he felt me up. I’ve always been a pecs & boob guy, and Wes had simply mouthwatering, hairy, juicy pecs, blossomed from his time on his university’s wrestling team and maintained by his years on his job, whatever that was. I could never see them from my vantage during these impromptu lap dances, but Wes told me that his friends would always smirk and roll their eyes at us—I could only guess that it was because of the clearly mutual but mysteriously unaddressed attraction between the two of us.

Unaddressed, that is, until last night. When I was fondling Wes’s pecs for the dozenth time, he actually bounced them for me for the first time, alternating under my touch between the left and right, and gave me a sultry wink. He then wrapped his hand around my upper thighs near my ass and squeezed. It was almost enough for me to cream my shorts right then. The night continued as it always did—more casual lusting, more drinks, more games of poker, more jokes—until midnight rolled around, which was usually our cue to head back to our respective homes.

As we all head to the door, Wes ushering us out, standing just behind me. Then I felt it. Wes’s large but soft hands suddenly started rubbing my lower back. He continued leading us out, saying his goodbyes and cracking more jokes, as I felt his hand reach up under the back of my shirt and down into the waistband of my shorts and briefs. We were basically the same height but he felt larger to me in that moment, call it the submissive side of me. Now at the door, the first of his friends were walking out and stumbling their cars while everyone continued to say their goodbyes, as Wes hungrily rubbed, squeezed, and groped my round, firm, bare ass. I swooned and leaned against his touch, trying my hardest to maintain the secret and keep my composure, as the last of his friends trickled out.

He playfully smacked my ass when it was my turn to exit, quickly pulling his hand out ushering me forward by my bottom, slyly pinching my right cheek as he did. Now in the late night air, I turned around with a fully obvious hard on and grinned drunkenly at him. I could hear everyone’s cars turning over and pulling out of the driveway behind us, and he just returned the grin.

“I’ll catch you later, Cade.” He said simply with a wink, stepped back in, and closed the door.

I held my breath so as not to jizz buckets on Wes’s front porch and made my way to my car, somewhat dejected. So what, after all of that, he couldn’t simply invite me back in? What the Hell! I got into my car, but I didn’t plan on heading anywhere until I took care of business. I sat in the driver’s seat, pulled off my shirt, whipped out my throbbing dick and spanked my meat as I watched him clean up for the night from his living room window, tugging my balls and pinching my nipples until I came like a hydrant all over my chest and torso. I drove home in silence with the windows down, my shirt still off, my drying seed crusting against my faint red chest and ab hair, and my mind racing.

———

I woke up this morning with a fucking thunderstorm of a headache. I rolled out of bed, stumbling to my feet and stubbing my toe on one of my bed’s cold metal legs, cursing between groans and cursing myself for dipping into my personal booze supply when I returned home late last night. This was going to be a bitch of a day if I didn’t get some relief soon. Nothing like some hair of the dog.

I shuffled to my kitchen in my briefs, wincing at the light that poured out of the refrigerator, and pulling out a bottle of brew. I looked at the stove and saw 10:37 AM on its clock, groaning and rubbing my eyes, shocked that I allowed myself to sleep in so late. I took my first pull of the beer, it’s foamy coolness rushing down my throat and feeling like the much needed medicine that it was. Thank god for Saturdays. I figured I would just stay in, recover, do some exercises, do some cleaning, maybe watch my former university’s football game on TV, game a little maybe…

I took another pull and scratched my itching ass cheek, stopping suddenly as I felt the sensation of a hand on my ass, remembering the events of last night. The phantom feeling of Wes’s hand against my bare ass sent waves of exhilaration through me, and I exhaled a heavy, ecstatic breath. Last night was the pinnacle of the mountain of signals Wes and I had been sending each other, but I still couldn’t believe it actually happened. I would’ve doubted it too if I didn’t remember the exact feeling of Wes’s hand against me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had gone full mast in my briefs remembering the moment.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

The sounds of knocking against my door sounded like cannon fire to my ears. I thought to myself, ‘Who the fuck would be knocking at this time on a Saturday,’ but quickly corrected myself noting that it was nearly 11. My head was pounding and the noise was like an ice pick against my ear drums.

*KNOCK KNOCK*

I had spent so much time in misery that realized I hadn’t answered the door. The knocks were still just as piercing.

“Coming! Coming,” I groaned in a monotone, shuffling to the door. I undid the latches and opened the door, immediately regretting my decision. The light poured into my TV room and damn near blinded me. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t so bright, thanks to my awning and my west-facing entry, but I was absolutely decimated by its brilliance, throwing thumb tacks into my head that already felt like it was swimming with shattered glass. But then I made out a shape as my eyes adjusted. A tall, broad shape.

“Speak of the devil,” I groaned, forcing a smile at Wes, upset that he was seeing me so hungover.

“.. and he shall appear!” Wes chirped, putting his hands in his pockets and smiling. He was wearing a crisp, short sleeved, pink button down, some olive slacks that had been rolled up in cuffs, and white dock shoes. He always dressed very well, even in a casual setting, one of the things I loved about him. I looked at him with furrowed brows, unsure of what he meant.

“It-It’s the rest of the saying. Y’know… ‘Speak of th-‘… Aahh, it’s not important.” He huffed a small laugh. He took a second and looked me over. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No! No, I’ve been up for a minute, I just-…” My heart dropped, realizing that I was still only in my briefs. It dropped even further when I realized that I was still fully erect from my time in the kitchen, reminiscing on last night’s antics. I tried my best to cover myself without implying too much panic, but it was difficult considering my above-average size and how much it pulled forward the rest of the fabric in my briefs. “Shit, man, I’m so sorry, I think it’s still a bit of morning wood…”

He cocked his head back with a knowing smirk, “Dude, I think you know I don’t mind.” He was right. We’d almost gotten there last night, but I guess his love language was anticipation. I just smiled back, still covering myself out of pure instinct, but slowly letting my hands fall away. My meat still pulled away at the fabric, giving Wes a bit more of a glimpse of my red pubes nestled in the front of my waist where my cum gutters met in a defined V. He looked me up and down, sizing me up and drinking in all I had to offer. I wanted to tell him that fair is fair and he should strip down too—but again, anticipation. He took in a slow heavy inhale and then met my eyes again, “You mind if I come in?”

I smiled stepped aside and spread my arm inwards, gesturing him in. As he walked in, he spent a few seconds just wandering around. He scanned my living room, tilted his torso a bit to look at my kitchen, took a few steps down a hallway that couldn’t have been 4 feet deep and leaned against the door frame outside my bedroom to peer inside and pivoted, turning to look at me through the mirror hanging in the tiny hallway, and nodding approvingly with his lips pursed. I felt a little sting of embarrassment that Wes could see every corner of my entire residence in what had to have been at most 10 footsteps. His home was so dazzlingly decorated, littered with artifacts from all over the world that looked to be older than European colonialism in the Americas—some way older. I was also feeling extremely horny, on account of the fact that my number 1 crush was touring my apartment, and the fact that his clothes were looking way tighter than I thought they were when I opened the door…

“Cozy place…” he said sweetly.

“Cozy is just a polite way to say shitty,” I chuckled and he did too, shrugging at the accuracy of the statement. Sensing a lull in the conversation, I crossed my arms. I always liked the way my arms looked crossed, it always accentuated my musculature well. He seemed to like it too, chewing the inside of his bottom lip as he looked me over again.

“Can we talk about us?” Wes’s question took me off guard.

“Us?”

“Yeah, man, us. Who we could be.”

I guess my boner wasn’t going to go down. I can’t say I haven’t thought of this before, I was just surprised that it was being brought up at all. I sighed, “Yeah, I think I’d like that. Where do you want to start?”

“Well, if we were to start anywhere, I would want to start by grabbing two handfuls of that ass again. Maybe put my face between your cheeks,” Wes grinned as he nodded his head back and forth. My mouth dropped in a surprised gaping smile, my cock dully pulsing harder in my briefs. “But I want to start where I said: us… about who we could be.”

“I can’t say I haven’t thought of it before. I mean, we do have a slight age gap between the two o—what, what’s so funny?!”

Wes had started chuckling in the middle of my statement, and I also noticed him pulling at his collar like it was tightening on him. What’s more, he looked to be blushing deep red from embarrassment, but embarrassment wasn’t really Wes’s thing. He spat a few more laughs, holding up a hand, “Oh, we have a significant age gap, Cade.”

I smiled and furrowed my brow, “By what?! 20 years, give or take? That’s nothing.”

Wes kept chuckling, “More. Way more. More than you could possibly comprehend.” Some unseen, unknowable thing felt as though it spun in the air in my small apartment, like a shift in atmosphere or something. I would’ve said it was a draft, but there wasn’t a chill at all. In fact, I could swear it was getting warmer.

“What are you saying, dude?”

Wes took a few steps towards me, biting his lower lip. His teeth looked pearly white, but somehow sharper? He looked flush, too—either that or he had a wicked sunburn that I hadn’t seen before. Additionally, his shirt again looked tighter… but like, noticeably, absurdly tighter. The fabric was now stretching across his chest and abs, making narrow holes between the buttons where I could catch a peek at his hairy, firm, strangely reddening skin. The hem of his shirt had rode up his lower abdominals, exposing his midriff. I heard a small tear and I looked down to see the seams on the inside thighs of his pants had split, the rest of his pants were literally holding on by threads as his pants grew tighter and tighter around his legs. I was getting rock fucking hard at the sight of this. His ass seemed rounder and larger, even from my front-facing vantage of him, and his package was a huge, lumpy mass on his waist. The reddening of his skin kept progressing deeper and richer in color.

“What I’m saying, Cade, babe,” he began in a deeper, grumbling voice, reaching down and taking my hand into his, which I felt was almost too hot to the touch. He brought my hand down and placed it over his bulging package, and I could feel his impossibly huge and hot shaft twitching and snaking larger and longer, along with a definite feeling of something churning, under my touch. His buttons began to fail, popping off his shirt and softly colliding into my chest and face. “Is that I’m fucking eternal.”

I saw the irises in his eyes suddenly become a glowing, golden hue and he took in a quick, intense breath with an exhilarated, open-mouthed grin painted across his face, his sharp, pearly whites on full display. Then he grew.

As if a dam had just broken inside of him, Wes leaned his head back and let out a prolonged, animalistic, thundering moan as his body lurched, bubbled, and bursted huge and tall right in front of me. His moaning was laced with slight laughter as his neck and limbs stretched longer and twisted and pumped larger. His shirt and pants exploded off of him like tissue paper. His cock sprung loose from his pants and my hand, and slapped against my lower abs, gushing some warm, pink syrup against them and leaving a wide, sticky trail behind as it continued to swell larger and drag up into my upper abdominals. His muscles twisted and swelled larger and larger, stretching his red skin and making him look like a bodybuilder model beefcake. The hair on his head and body grew denser, darker, and sleeker as his body excreted a sweet, musky oil. As his hands and feet swelled larger, I saw that his nails darkened to a shiny black and extended from his digits in sharp, pointed claws. I heard a dull thump and looked down to see that a thick, red tail had dropped from behind him and started to coil, it’s barbed end coming to life under his control. I looked up to see his grinning, ecstatic face pointed towards the ceiling—to which he was becoming dangerously close—and swooned as I watched his lower jaw sprout upwards a thin, small set of tusks out from bottom row of teeth, as well as two dark horns growing up and out of his hairline and curving back with the curvature of his head. His face appeared to stretch and broaden, becoming almost cartoonishly square and sculpted. I almost fainted when I heard a windy rustling sound behind us and watched two massive, bat-like, red wings unfurl behind him, stretching from wall to wall in my living room and then some. He was easily 4 feet taller and broader than he was before, and definitely hundreds of pounds heavier (thank goodness for bottom floor apartments).

He stood there for a moment, taking deep, husky breaths, his shining, red, nude body glistening with oil and moisture in my shockingly warm apartment, more and more heat radiating from his body. He looked down at me with his following golden eyes, grinning widely and staring at me hungrily.

“So..” he grumbled deeply, the first word he’d spoken since he hulked out in the middle of my living room.

“So…” I answered back, stepping away from him so his heavy cock wasn’t resting uncomfortably against my chest. It dropped and drooled more of the pink whatever-it-was that coming out of it onto my carpet. I wasn’t in the least scared, but rather more turned on than I’d ever been in my life.

“Do you know who I am? What.. I am?” His wings twitched a little behind him and his long, barbed tail beat the carpet and furniture behind him dully.

“Yeah, I think I could come up with a few ideas… but you know I don’t buy into labels. You’re Wes, babe.” I brought a hand up and rubbed his side, what would’ve been where his forearms were under normal circumstances, but now about where his lower torso met his hips and thighs. “Wait, so… are you Wes or are you… y’know, Him.”

“Ah, clearly we *do* care about labels, then,” he teased, winking down at me.

“Just a little,” I laughed, drinking in the impossibly tight and powerful man—if he was at all a man—in front of me.

He smiled, “Both. Both Wes.. and ‘Him,’ as you call me… and so, so much more.”

“Wow,” I touched his hands and claws, bringing my other hand up to feel his firm lower torso.

He looked down at me with a glimmer in his eye, his grin widening, “Are demonstrations in order?”

“Was that not demonstration enough?”

He let out a deep, almost monstrous chuckle, “You’re not easily turned away. I’ve always loved that about you. I’ve always loved *a lot* about you.”

“Always?”

“I’ve been with you longer than you may realize. With all of humanity, really, but especially you. You’ve always radiated an aura that promises extreme potential. And I must admit that I love the way you look at me.”

I got chills, actually flattered that someone as ancient and as cosmic as him could see something—anything at all—in me. It almost made me emotional.

“The feelings are mutual, man. I mean, certainly not in the ‘been with you for years, seeing your aura’ sort of way, but I could tell that we’ve been falling in love for a while now, Wes. I’ve started to see myself ending up with you somewhere along the line. Still do, really.”

He let out a grumbling, prolonged, and satisfied sigh, “It gives me tremendous pleasure to hear you say that, Cade. It makes my next offer so much easier to ask.”

“Oh, I’m on pins and needles. Which is?”

He took a step towards me and held out a massive hand, his claws shining black and threatening but I didn’t feel even a hint of fear. I took his hand in my own, only really being able to grab a few long, red fingers.

“It’s about Us, Cade. I want there to be an Us. I want there to be a unified You.. and Me.”

“Yes. The answer’s obviously yes. I’m totally willing to date you, marry you even.”

“I’m touched, and while, again, the feeling is mutual, this arrangement would be much more… intimate.”

“Okay… Uhm.. Wait, I’m lost, what do you mean?”

“I mean, Cade, that we would walk this earth, together and for eternity, as one. One man. One vessel. One body.”

I was floored by the wording. I was totally and speechlessly confused.

“W-what d’you mean—I, who, uhm.. h-how,” I wanted to answer another emphatic ‘Yes!’ but my mind was racing over the meaning and the possibilities.

Before I could stammer out the rest of the nothing I was saying, Wes let go of my hand and reached up to cup my head in his massive hand. I felt his long, black claws touch and sink slightly into the back of my head—not in the least painfully, not even drawing blood—while his enormous wings wrapped around me, and then my mind was launched into infinity.

———

“You… and me,” his voice thundered in my head as I felt my consciousness catapult through the cosmos, passing star formations and galaxies no human eye has ever seen. “The infinite realm of existence… right at our fingertips,” I could see myself now approaching Earth, launching into its atmosphere, seeing the formation of mountains and landforms and exploding volcanos. “Your consciousness, your wisdom, your experience, mingling with my own,” I saw the evolution of Man within seconds, from the microorganisms in the sea, to the sea creatures, to our first walks on land, to the trees, to building fires and making weapons, to the establishment of civilization. “As well as the consciousness, wisdom, and experience of all of my many lives and lovers before you… and including you,” I could see the many faces of men he had worn in the past flash before me in a matter of seconds. Thousands of men, of all races and ethnicities, each of them remarkable specimens of male beauty, each of them having lived unnaturally long and rich lives, all of them throughout time and eventually up to Wes’s likeness. I could still see and hear them within the limitless consciousness of the entity himself, still soaking up the pleasures of the world, still living through the one that goes by many names but whom I came to know as Wes. “You will live long, live well, and see and experience things your mind would never think was possible,” I then saw all of the culture and ability of humankind stretch before me; art, literature, music, history, science, philosophy, mathematics, politics, athleticism… All of the abilities of man were at my fingertips. I just had to reach out, and… “All of it and infinitely more can be yours, as well as mine.”

———

My consciousness was launched back into my apartment and back into my body at breakneck speed, causing me to stumble back into the protection of his wings as his hand disconnected from my head. He smiled down at me as he watched my eyes spin around the room, still trying to gather myself from the billions of years I had just traveled through in the span of seconds. However, even as I took several panting breaths trying to gather my thoughts, I could immediately tell that my killer hangover was finally over. My hard-on, on the other hand, was raging harder than it ever had before. Before I even knew that his massive frame had approached me with catlike swiftness, he reached down and scooped my package out of its confines.

“I can take you the deepest, most secret possibilities of human pleasure,” he grumbled into my ear, his hot breath mingling with the heat radiating off his body and sending shivers of excitement through my body as I felt my cock in his hand for the first time. His touch felt incredible and right—feeling unnaturally warm but also uncannily soft and oily—but what he did next set me off. He stroked his hand up and down a little, making sure I was at the optimal length and hardness, and curved his thumb down to sink one of his black claws into my slit. I didn’t feel any pain whatsoever, but instead I felt the most intense, mind-shattering orgasm of my life. Immediately, I began to fire ropes and ropes and ropes of spunk, seemingly unending and soaking his claw, hand, and the floor below me. “No man or woman would be able to resist you. You would become the walking embodiment of lust and desire,” I continued bucking into his hand, still unloading my seemingly endless squirting, gasping and groaning in ecstasy, and he smiled down at me and rolled out his tongue. It snaked out longer and I could feel it begin to lick in and around my ears, until finally it plunged into my ear canal. I expected loads of discomfort but I encountered none as his mouth connected to the side of my head and his tongue slipped deeper into my head and seemed to wrap itself around my brain, licking and sliding over each and every fold of its anatomy. As he frenched my ears, I felt sensations all over my body that I’d never felt before. It felt like a simultaneous licking, sucking, massaging, and worshiping of every square inch of my body, and it also felt like what must’ve been the largest and most intense vibrator had slipped into my rectum and was stimulating me from the inside. “Do you feel it, Cade? Sensations beyond your comprehension? This is merely a taste of what you can experience every day.” When it seemed like my head would explode from the sheer and overwhelming flood of sensations of stimulations, he dislodged his claw from my slit, immediately causing my unloading to cease, and pulled away from my ear, his tongue unwrapping from my brain and sliding out. I could hear it’s wet meatiness sliding through my head as he pulled out of me until he finally was loose. I opened my eyes looked up, watching the rest of his long, wet tongue slurp back into his mouth as he smacked his lips with a grin.

“Holy…. Holy fucking SHIT, Wes,” I panted, my hands falling to my knees as I caught my breath from the most intense rush of pleasure I’d ever experienced in my life. He grinned sweetly as he brought his hand to his lips and slowly licked his fingers and palms clean of my seed. I looked down to see a carpet that was positively soaked with jizz below me, certainly more than I think I’ve ever expelled in my life combined, way out of the norm of human possibility. He had done this to me. And I could have it all.

“Yes, you *could* have it all, Cade,” he smiled down at me, licking his lips and wiping his saliva-wet hand off on his rippling side muscles, having clearly just read my mind. “My abilities and immortality,” he stretched out his red, left arm down with his palms open. “My knowledge and divinity,” he stretched out his right arm in a similar fashion. “My power,” he closed his open palms into clenched fists and flexed. While he flexed, the ground seemed to rumble beneath us and the room inexplicably grew darker as his body glowed red and radiated an almost unbearably intense heat. As he did, his stature seemed to rise and widen even further, his body taking on even more size and muscle. He would soon burst through the ceiling and into the floor above his if he wasn’t careful. His body relaxed, but he stood about a foot taller but several feet wider and maybe 100 lbs. heavier than he was before. He looked down at me again and smiled sweetly and widely.

“All it takes,” he spoke now in a soft tone, “Is for you to say yes.”

“Yes.” The suddenness of my response surprised even me. It was as though my mind had already done all of the thinking it needed to, which was sort of right. Wes was offering me the chance—right here, right now—to live an eternity of unlimited experiences, impossible pleasure, and immeasurable power. All at a time where I thought my life was going nowhere, that my best chance was to ride the coattails of someone more accomplished. Someone like Wes. Yes! Of course the answer is yes, how could it not be?!

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes, a million times yes.”

Wes looked down at me and beamed, his pearly white, sharp teeth meeting neatly against each other and his small tusks pointing upwards. He quickly leaned down and planted a wet kiss on my mouth, leaving it there and inhaling my breath for a while, bringing a massive hand up to stroke my cheek and hair. Wes always loved my red hair, I was only now just getting the irony of that. I allowed my tongue to explore his infernal mouth and tangle with his own. He reached down and squeezed my ass roughly with both hands as I caressed his rippling back. He disconnected suddenly and held my head between both of his hands.

“Thank you, Cade,” he began, his voice full of excitement but also love. “Thank you. You will not regret this. In fact, forget about the very concept of regret. Forget about regret, forget about shame, forget about limitations. We’re about to create something new, something powerful.”

I was ridiculously excited for what was to come. How were we going to merge together? What would be the first thing we did together? As I pondered the possibilities, his long, thick tail came around to the front of him and coiled itself around his mammoth shaft. It appeared to writhe and squeeze a little, gently stimulating it.

“So what do I do? How are we gonna… I don’t know, do this?”

He smirked and looked down at himself as the barbed end of his tail snaked forward and back, angling itself towards his gaping slit, still seeping that weird pink syrupy stuff. It swiftly entered and began to slither around inside of him for a second as he threw his head back and groaned with a smile. It came out coated in the stuff, dripping with it slightly, and his tail uncoiled itself, allowing the tip to travel upwards towards my face.

“This is step one.” He stated simply, his dripping tail hovering in front of my face.

I looked at the substance dripping and tried to stop my mouth from watering, “What, uhh.. What does it do?”

“It readies your body,” he said with a grin. He reached a hand up and began rubbing my arms and shoulders pensively, “The human body is simply not equipped for the transformative process that occurs during the fusing of our essences. This.. let’s call it an elixir, makes your physical form more adjustable, malleable, inhabitable. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.”

“Oh… Sooooo just drink this.. and then?”

“And then, I enter you. Simple.”

I swallowed, nodding my head, “And will it hurt?”

“Yes, my love,” he answered with a grin, lifting my chin up to face him with a long, red finger. “In ways you would want to experience over and over and over again.”

I smiled back at him and he slowly lifted a clawed hand up to my lips. One long, black claw snaked its way past my lips and between my teeth, gently prying my mouth open. I eagerly obeyed and watched as the barbed end of his tail approached my mouth. It slid inside and slathered a thick helping of it on my tongue, rolling over and over and making sure I drank every last drop. It felt smooth and creamy in my mouth and I immediately swallowed it. You know that sensation you get when you swallow pop rocks in your stomach? It felt like that mixed with a kind of icy-hot wave radiating through me. I felt myself… I guess the word would be loosen. I didn’t feel like my body was falling apart, but I definitely felt as if I weren’t held together as tightly as before. It felt liberating, and incredibly sexy.

“Damnnnn, you weren’t kidding about that stufffff,” I slurred, suddenly feeling like I was weightless and floating, like an intense high.

“Indeed,” he said, dropping his hands lower and hooking his claws under the waistband of my briefs. He hooked the sides of the garment with his black claws and lightly pulled upwards, causing it to tear cleanly on both sides, splitting it in half and making my briefs to fall to the floor, my fat cock springing up and slapping my abs. He chuckled and leaned in to whisper into my ear. “And so it begins.”

Wes stepped back from me, still smiling. All sounds appeared to leave the room, not even the machinery from the apartment’s landscaping workers outside made a sound. The light around us dimmed much darker, as though heavy clouds descended over us outside, but I couldn’t see any sign of such. In the fainter light, his golden eyes glowed brighter and his white teeth shown more dazzling as his grin widened. The ground, hell even the air seemed to rumble and shake as he suddenly rose off the ground, appearing to levitate. He could only go so high since he was basically scraping the ceiling with his head already, but he began to change again.

His body appeared to be disintegrating into thick, red smoke that began to circle around him as a fierce, hot wind kicked up in my apartment. His lower half was basically gone and viciously spinning around him in a thick cloud as his cock, ass, hips, and arms began to disintegrate too. He appeared to be thoroughly enjoying this transition, his head had rocked back and a contorted look of ecstasy spread across his face. His breathing quickened and his pecs heaved and jiggled—and from my point of view, even began to swell bigger—before disintegrating with the rest of his body. He opened his eyes one last time to me and winked with one of his sexy grins. “To new beginnings,” he offered his final toast in a moan as the rest of his head was consumed by the swirling, thick, red vortex.

He was essentially a column of churning smoke now, still in the same position where he was but in a completely different form. I could still hear him somehow, his deep, ecstatic moans—sounding more spectral and disembodied—filling my apartment, with a slight hint of laughter or humor in his voice. He really must be enjoying this. The air continued to rumble as the speed of the churning kicked up and began to look more violent. Dark flashes emanated from within the column as the speed kicked up even more, and thin, black lightning cracks popped out of the sides and struck parts of my apartment leaving tiny scorched marks. The spinning mass of smoke before me whipped up even quicker in pace and now resembled a miniaturized cyclone standing in the middle of my living room, throwing black lightning throughout the room and moaning in fits of arousal.

The cyclone then moved towards me, but I didn’t feel the need to retreat at all. This was my lover approaching, coming to merge with me and invade my senses. No, I felt zero fear and I was rock hard. The viciously swirling column of smoke moved past me, through me, and now enveloped me into the center of its mass. I could feel Wes all around me, Wes and so many more souls, feeling both his and their essences in the churning fog that whipped past me, and was ready for whatever he needed to do.

I felt something large yet soft and painless plunge into my exposed hole behind me, and looked back to see a thick tendril of the smoke had plunged itself into me and was filling me up. I groaned and leaned against the force as it continuously moved over and stimulated my prostate, feeling better than any sensation I’ve ever experienced up there. Then I felt a similar soft and painless pressure arising in my cock and I looked down to see a thinner yet still thick tendril had plunged into my slit and was feeding into my body from my cock. I couldn’t help but wheeze in laughter as I watched my meat seem to drink it in, pulsating larger and feeling like it was sucking in as much as it could and as quickly as it could. I decided to play along and grinned widely, opening my mouth and slicking my long tongue out onto my chin, willingly opening myself to Wes so he could fill me up. The dark clouds swirling around me seemed to hum with laughter as a final tendril, this one thicker and somehow more eager, extended itself from the swirling mass and plunged into my mouth and down my throat. My lips closed around it and I began sucking it in and drinking it down as quickly as I could, and I could taste Wes’s powerful musk—the one he always wore but amplified 10 times in his transformed form as he stood in my living room—as the mass passed over my tongue. I looked around, shocked that I was now levitating, held up by some unseen force as my holes were filled by Wes, Him, and the many many bodies He’d inhabited throughout humanity entering me. I noticed the light beginning to return to the room as the cyclone had nearly completely disappeared, it’s contents now swirling throughout my body. The sensations on my front and back quickly dissipated as the last of it slipped inside me, and my lips finally closed after sucking in the tail end of the red smoke.

Only then did I realize that I was still levitating, but the unseen force dropped me gently down from my hovering position in my living room. I landed on my feet and looked down at myself. He was here, he was in me, that much I knew, but I could also feel a flooding of senses, or memories, of knowledge collected throughout his many lives. I now existed as a Legion, one body consisting of thousands of lives. I knew their loves, their stories, their experiences, and their pleasures, and I could feel their souls envelope my own, feeling unspeakably reassuring and enriching.

My body, however—from what I could tell—was still the same, my cock was still stiff, and there were torn papers still lazily floating down from the recent sudden whirlwind, but… nothing really changed.

Suddenly, I heard an echoing voice coming from my head, not speaking through me but speaking to me, chuckling, “I see you were expecting some change. That’s up to you, Cade. You need only will it to happen…” I heard ‘will it to happen’ echoing through my head in a chorus of different voices.

Confusion pierced through me; I only needed to will it? That’s the exact kind of cryptic non-advice that I expected to come from someone as ancient and all-knowing as Him… er, Wes… or I guess me now. ‘Will it,’ okay then I guess I’m gonna ‘will’ my body into shape, whatever that means.

I tightened my hands into fists and looked down at my arms…. and waited.. and waited…. nothing was coming, but I could see myself picturing it in my mind, my arms bigger than they already were, my strength increased, my—… and that’s when it happened.

“OOOooohhh,” I moaned suddenly, shocked by the intensely pleasurable pressure buildup in my arms as they stretched longer and swelled, new muscles writhing and bulging out under my skin like twisting pythons. They looked totally unlike the rest of my body, toned and sinewy like a body builder. I let out a breathy laugh, feeling the weight of my arms pulling at my shoulders and stretching my skin. I could barely hold it up with my comparably weak shoulder strength, but when I did I popped it into a firm flex. I could feel the strength of them, it wasn’t some false or phantom sensation, no, these were fully my arms, and I had just grown them bigger than I probably ever could…

My cock pulsated eagerly in the air, drooling a thick drop of pre onto my carpet in anticipation. The possibilities… were endless.

“See? You’re a natural,” his voice returned. “Now…. Flex for me, Cade. I want you to enjoy this. I want you to become your own fantasy. I want you, Cade, to GROW.”

That was enough encouragement for me. I rolled my head back and groaned loudly to the ceiling with a drunken smile plastered across my face and twisted my arms back in a flex that would target my chest, back, and shoulders.

“RRNNNGGGggoooooooo FUCK YEEEAAHH!” I bellowed, feeling the sensuous pleasure mounting all over my body as I quickly swelled large and powerful. For my chest and shoulders, in my head I was picturing Dane de Bruin but triple the size, and my body definitely delivered. Thick, juicy slabs of muscle exploded onto my chest, so large that they immediately came into my line of vision, as my shoulders rolled and rounded into powerful balls with much of its musculature curving and spinning up to my expanding, thickening neck. As my back widened and burst into twisting coils of muscle, I focused my intention on my abs, flexing them hard until I saw them begin to audibly pop out individually, larger and thicker, adding several more rows of abs as it did and forming into an impenetrable muscle gut.

“HOOOOOOOOLY SSSSSHHHHHHiiiiittttt,” I groaned as the growth naturally progressed down my legs, which had lengthened considerably to accommodate my transformation. My thighs inflated so quickly and so thickly that they almost crushed my balls in the process and I could feel my calves hardening into athletic, curving stacks of muscle, hard as diamonds. I looked down at my feet, underwhelmed with their current size. I’ve always resented having tiny feet, and today I aimed to change that. I lifted my right foot up, rolled my foot around, curled my toes and stretched them, chuckling madly as I watched them thicken, broaden, and lengthen larger, dropping my right foot and then doing the same on the left. I didn’t realize I could get so hard or derive so much pleasure from watching my feet burst to the size of a giant’s. I laughed as I looked down at my shoes by the door, realizing that they likely wouldn’t even fit my new big toes.

I pivoted to look back at my ass, surprised at how flexible I still was, considering my now-impossibly larger and harder frame. What I was missing now was a big, round, and tight stripper’s ass. I remembered that one of my pledge brothers in college had the biggest, juiciest, most fuckable ass I’d ever laid eyes on or slipped my dick into, and I focused next on that. I was aiming to rival or even surpass him. I put my hands on my knees and looked back as I clenched my ass. I smiled as I watched it immediately begin to swell huge and sculpted behind me, but I needed it to be more round, more to hold onto. I smiled wider, still looking back at it, and began to force my pelvic muscles downwards, as though I was taking a massive shit. Instead, I let out more breathy chuckles as I watched it contort and jiggle as it inflated larger. It’s musculature and roundness connected perfectly with my lower back and upper thighs and I stood up to admire my work, stepping over to the mirror in the “hallway” approaching my bedroom. I put my middle fingers underneath both cheeks and pumped them up and down, watching with intense satisfaction as my huge ass bounced enticingly yet still stiffly behind me. I shook my hips and felt it move and pivoted again to get a head-on look at it in the mirror. I spread my cheeks apart and looked through the mirror, getting a look at my hairless rosebud, seemingly puckering at me and wishing for me to fill it. ‘Oh yeah,’ I thought with a chuckle, ‘I’d fuck me.’

I couldn’t help but laugh throughout what was happening to me and noticed my voice was still in its regular pitch. I looked at my new body in the mirror, knowing someone as huge and stacked as me needed something deeper.

“Hey.” I said, nothing different.

I cleared my throat, “Hey.” A little better, a little deeper, but still not all the way there.

I rubbed my throat, clearing it again, and felt my adam’s apple jut out further and the inside of my throat opened up, seeming making it larger and cavernous.

“Hey,” There it was, that’s the depth I was looking for. I’ll admit, startled myself a bit at first, noticing it was still unmistakably my voice but deeper and goddamn sexier than ever before. It was perhaps the sexiest voice I’ve heard. It made my own cock twitch and my hole tingle. I wanted to hear more of it.

“You’re one sexy fuckin’ beast, aren’t you?” I said to my reflection, putting my hand against the wall and leaning in. “You’re as big as a barn, bigger than any body builder, huh?” I put my other hand against the wall, supporting my full weight against the mirror and checking out the underside of my arms. “You could be as big as a mountain, couldn’t you? If you wanted to, you’d—..” I caught a whiff of my musk wafting up from my pits. Something then snapped in me. I went completely feral at that point, my senses had taken over.

“OOOoooohhhh, you smelly hunk of man,” A low grumble emanated from deep within me and I lost control of how I would choose to change my body. Any changes from now on were purely libido-driven. “You dirty, smelly boy.. Check out how fuckin’ rank you are.” I tilted my head down and inhaled deeply, taking in more of my musk, and stuck out my suddenly lengthened tongue and licked up and down my own hair pits. My balls drooped lower and swelled heavier and larger within their sack. “GGUUUUUUHHHH, YOU’RE A SEX MACHINE, YOURE A LIVING, BREATHING GOD OF FUCKIN’,” My voice dropped even lower and deeper, sounding more animal than human, as my right hand traveled lower to my cock. It lurched and pulsed intensely upon my touch, as though it was jealous it hadn’t had the chance to grow huge like the rest of me. As if to play catch-up, it started surging unspeakably huger and longer with each slow, lengthy pump. In what felt like couldn’t have been more than 10 pumps, it had already risen to my chest and was thicker than a two liter, making me glisten with the pre it spat against me as it surged bigger and bigger. “HELL YEEEAAAAHH BABE, I’M FUCKIN’ ETERNAL, I’M A FUCKIN’ GOD NOW!!” I could feel the ground trembling below me and voices laughing and moaning within me as I watched myself rise higher, steadily gaining more height and weight as my musculature grew proportionally. The hair on my head, face, and body began to deepen into a richer, darker shade of red, and my beard thickened considerably to a perfectly sculpted form. I had a slack, grinning, drunken expression on my face as I watched my jaw and cheek bones crack, restructure, sharpen, and become more angular, giving me an almost cartoonishly square face and head and making me feel and look like Superman. “GET A LOAD OF YOU, SUPERSTUD! I COULD DRINK YOU UP, I COULD SUCK YOU DOWN LIKE A FUCKIN’ MILKSHAKE,” I leaned into the mirror by my reflection and gave it and open mouth kiss, my longer tongue swirling all around the glass. I could’ve been mistaken, or it could’ve been more of my power that I just wasn’t familiar with yet, but I could swear that I could feel my reflection kissing back and making out with me through the glass. We swapped spit, worshipped each other’s ballooning bodies, and sucked each other’s faces and necks. I disconnected and looked back at me reflection, my cock spitting a sizable dollop of pre onto the glass as I saw that I actually had a hickey on my neck. The arousal from that moment led to yet another surge in my transformation, that I welcomed gladly.

My big toes curled into the carpet as I leaned my head back and moaned, allowing myself to continue to grow bigger, bigger, bigger. I felt something clonk against my head and looked up to see that I had reached the ceiling and bumped my head on a light fixture. Giggling, I crouched so I could find my way back to the center of my living room and sat down. I pumped my cock as I sat on the floor and grew bigger and bigger, my cock growing with me too and perhaps at times even surpassing my body’s growth, and could feel the carpet burning beneath me as I stretched across it. I couldn’t stop laughing as all of my furniture was being shoved against the walls as my body expanded, and I eventually had to lay down because I was hitting the ceiling even from my seated position. I felt myself stretch more and more and more and more, feeling the walls and ceilings of my apartment pressing against my enormous size—once again, thank you for bottom floor apartments—and I could start to feel an earth-shattering climax beginning to ready itself as I tugged faster on my mammoth meat and massaged my beach ball nuts.

Suddenly, I heard him again. Wes, speaking to me from inside, coaxing me further, echoed by our thousands of other souls, clearly also enjoying this experience by the sound of his and their voices. “Do it, Cade! Fuck, man, you’re huge! You’re powerful! This is the new you! Seal it, Cade, seal our bond! Fire your load and we will be tethered for eternity!”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I focused my efforts on my massive mushroom head and could feel it seize, firm, vibrate, and inflame.

“FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCK!!” I bellowed in my animal voice as I felt thick, hot jizz fire out of my dick, splattering against my face, my torso, my chest, my legs, the walls around me, the ceiling above me, the carpet below me. It sprayed thickly and heavily, everywhere—made worse by how prolonged the ejaculation was and how many times I changed hands and positions. Seemingly not an inch of my apartment was spared as I saturated the place with my cum.

The constant spurting finally began to dissipate after about a minute and a half, a few lingering spits of it firing out onto me, and I could finally catch my breath. I remained laid down on my soaked floor, unable to sit up or move at all really because of my size, my hot, heavy, panting breath billowing up towards the ceiling and making dust particles that had been stuck up there for who knows how long swirl throughout my apartment. I attempted to lift my head up to look down at myself and assess any damage I had done, but my head bonked the ceiling.

Realizing that my size wasn’t sustainable in this tiny apartment, I focused my will—as Wes would say—on my body and made it shrink down to a still drastically improved but much more manageable size. I stood up, wiping sticky globs of myself off, and looked around. Ruined, was the first word that came to mind, unequivocally and totally fucked, no way I was getting my security deposit back now. I laughed, realizing that security deposits were something I didn’t need to worry about anymore. The world and all of its experiences and wonders, combined with my new immeasurable power, laid bare before me—security deposits were a thing of the past. But speaking of immeasurable power…

I took some steps back out of the mess and surveyed the room, wondering what I could do to fix everything, when Wes’s words came to my mind again. Will, that was the key to all of it, his power. Just think of what you want to happen and casually bend the laws of physics and nature to make it happen. Easy!

I looked around and could think of only one thing: vacuum. This place needed a vacuum, a wet vac specifically, or just suction in general to lift everything up and out of plaster, cloth, furniture, what have you. Suction… I shrugged and planted my feet firmly on the ground, rolling my shoulders back. I formed my lips into a small “o,” as if drinking from a straw, and started to inhale deeply.

As I did, a vicious wind kicked up in the apartment, immediately moving things around and sliding furniture across the floor, only for me to realize that it was actually moving things back into place. At the same time, my sticky white seed began to lift out of fabric, off of walls, off the ceiling, and converged in the air into a twisting, whipping spout of jizz, quickly being pulled in towards my mouth by the powerful suction I was creating. I suppressed and urge to laugh or gape in awe as it passed between my lips and I started slurping up the huge mess I had made, at the same time getting a taste of myself since my transformation. Obviously, it was divine, tasting sweet, salty, and musky—I couldn’t get enough of it, which was good because I had essentially a large puddle of it left to clean. I drank it eagerly and drunkenly, just trying to get as much into me as I could, not noticing that my stomach was starting to bulge with the amount that was flowing into me. I had cleared the walls and the ceilings of it and was finishing off the share of it that was lifting off furniture and the carpet when I noticed my stomach was distending hugely, swimming thickly with my seed and making my abs and skin stretch away from me obscenely. I rubbed my growing belly and felt it jiggle with its contents as the last of it swirled and whipped into my mouth and I sealed it with one big swallow, taking huge panting breaths and licking my lips clean.

I continued panting as I rubbed my absurdly swollen gut. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t help but chuckle. It looked like if you put a pin in me that I would burst like a tick. But knowing this wasn’t sustainable, I cleared my throat and prepared to will it all away from within me. Suddenly, I doubled over in pain as my gut churned and bubbled. I could see watery movements against my skin from inside and knew something was about to happen. At the point where I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, my stomach gave a deep, churning grumble as I felt something travel up my from gut and then—

“*BUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRPP*”

I shook myself off after that. It even took me as a surprise, fully not expecting the belch itself much less the duration and the volume of it. But, gone! I felt my cobblestone abs again with my skin tightened back against me and there wasn’t a drop of me to be seen anywhere in my apartment. I patted my belly and smacked my lips, still appreciating my intoxicating flavor brought up from the belch.

I turned toward the mirror again—shattered during the final surge of my growth but now somehow fixed just like everything else—and finally got a good look at myself in my post-nut glow.

I was breathtaking.

I looked like the perfect mix between Wes and my former self, still young and vibrant but slightly older—maybe my late 20s—with deeper, richer red hair and the sexy, rugged matureness of my crush. Well, he’s obviously more than a crush now. He’s me, I’m Him, and we are Legion. And my physique was exquisite; carrying the burly built curvature of an in-season body builder yet with the lithe, athletic appearance of an Olympic gymnast. Not to mention my big donkey dick and heavy, swinging nutsack hanging perfectly off my shaved crotch.

I extended my hand and watched as some unseen force flung my phone off the kitchen counter, through the air, and into my hand. I needed to update my Grindr profile, stat. I didn’t want to violate their puritanical terms of service, so I brushed my hand over my crotch with a giggle and watched a sleek, tight pair of gym shorts stretch across my waist. I lifted the phone, popped a flex, and snapped a picture, instantly making it my new profile pic.

A part of me also told me to text my older poker friends… er, Wes’s friends… no, our friends and show them the final product. In my infinite knowledge, I was clued into the fact that the guys that Wes used to bring around for poker nights weren’t technically his work friends. They were the several princes of Hell, here on Earth living through the lives of mortals, just like Wes. In my store of new memories, I also discovered that there was even some conflict over who would get to inhabit me, but that Wes—the proverbial Big Man, as they call it—was always going to get first draw.

I opened my messages and began a group chat including all of them, attaching my pic and sending it to them.

•Guess who, boys ;), I typed with a smile

The responses immediately came in.

•YEEEEESSSSSS

•UGH, jealous!

•Welcome to the family, Cade!

•literally come pipe me down whenever

I grinned down at the last message and felt a stirring in my crotch again. FUCK was I horny… I needed men… I needed lovers. I needed worshipers. A huge part of me wanted to go out into the world and explore, meet people, gather new experiences, influence the lives of many… but I also wanted to just have my brains fucked out… and for that matter, to fuck other people’s brains out.

I mean, come on, you’re telling me that if you came into possession of unlimited, earth-bending power, you wouldn’t immediately use it for sexy kinky shit? Yeah right. I wanted to turn more men into insatiable sex gods like me. I wanted to test my power and make other men experience pleasure their minds could barely comprehend. To turn down-and-out homebodies into the life-of-the-party kings, nerds into super stud jocks, weaklings into gladiators. I was horny to share my power. And I knew just where to start…

———

Shawn’s someone who lives in my building that I’ve had eyes on for a while. I’ve always caught him coming back from his early runs around the neighborhood, panting and dripping with sweat, just as I’ve been coming back from the apartment complex gym, pretty drenched myself with sweat. We’d give each other friendly nods and smiles, but I’d always imagined wrapping my arms around him, taking him to my apartment, and having sweaty, rough, early morning sex with him.

We’ve given each other small clues here and there that we might be into each other. In the mailroom, my lockbox is near the floor and his is at the top row, so I’d bend over to get my mail and on days that our schedules aligned, I could feel him slyly try to scoot past me, his front to my back. In those moments, I swore that he lingered behind me for a while and I could also swear that he’s been rock hard on more than one occasion. Other times, after those morning workout sessions, I’d act like I didn’t see him in the parking lot and I’d peel off my shirt, wiping my sweat off with it, sometimes looking down at myself and bounce my blossoming muscle tits—checking myself out, yes, but putting on a little performance for him too. I could always feel his eyes laying on me for a long time during those moments and tamed my impulses as best as I could to not give him more of a show.

Now, he would get a hell of a show. Shit, he’d even be part of the show. He was one of the cutest, sweetest guys I’ve ever met, but I bet he would turn even more heads stacked with solid meat, dripping with confidence, and oozing sexuality.

It was the early afternoon on a Saturday, and I reasoned—having known perhaps too much about his schedule—that if he wasn’t out with friends then he would be in the apartment complex gym. In theory, I could go there to check out the scene now. I started to think more about how I needed to get to the gym so I could catch him there, and just as I did, a swirling column of bright fire rose up from the ground and enveloped me. I was shocked beyond words, fully not expecting anything like that to happen and worried for my safety, but the flames didn’t burn me at all. What’s more, when the flaming column quickly dissipated, I noticed that I was standing now at the entrance to the gym.

I couldn’t help but smirk to myself. Man, I could already tell that I would be discovering new things about myself every day, all the time. I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck, ready to head inside and change a life.

I stepped inside and my approximation of Shawn’s schedule was correct. He was seated at one of the rowing machines, facing away from the door and pulling the cord back and forth, back and forth, clearly having set it on a high resistance level considering the way he was sweating and grunting. He didn’t notice me, so I strutted to the pull down bars near the rowers, passing by him as I went. I turned my head to look at him as I passed and made eye contact. I grinned and threw my head back in a greeting and he did the same but with a slightly puzzled look on his face. It seemed like he recognized me, but he couldn’t think of how.

I went to the machine and I set it at my usual weight. I pulled the bar down but it felt like a feather, so I let the cord pull the bar all the way back up and leaned over to set the weight at the highest level it would go. I gripped the wide ends of the bar and sat back down, pulling the bar down towards me. Now it had some resistance—mind you, it was still way easier than it should’ve been, but getting a solid workout in was not the reason I came here.

I puffed tight breaths through my teeth as I pulled the bar down to my chest, and up again, down, then up, down, up. As I got into a rhythm, I could see in my periphery that Shawn was staring at me (score), not only trying to pin how he recognized me, but also totally enthralled by the display of strength I was showing. As I felt my massive arms bulge as I pulled down the bar and watched the bar land near my heaving barrel chest, I could feel myself getting aroused and felt my body trying to beast out like I did in my apartment, but I had to contain myself—at least for now.

I did allow myself a little fun, letting my body puff up with an unnaturally tight pump from the small amount of weightlifting I’d done, but nothing beyond that… yet. I let the weights drop down to their stand and stood up from the seat, crossing my arms and stretching, feeling myself fully boned against the fabric of my shorts, and seeing that Shawn was fully staring now. I stood next to the machine and moved onto squats, spreading my legs slightly apart, holding my hands in a fist against my chest, and dipped down as low as I could go, feeling the tightness of my shorts pull against my ass and bulging crotch, undoubtedly giving Shawn a lot to look at. I lifted back up, feeling the satisfying burn of my hamstrings, calves, and glutes activating, taking deep breaths as I did.

Something finally clicked in Shawn’s mind, “Cade??”

I looked up at Shawn and beamed, flashing my gorgeous white smile, “Hey, what’s up Shawn!”

He huffed a disbelieving laugh with a grin, “Not much, man! You’re, uhh… you’re looking good.”

“Thanks!” I answered, still doing squats next to the machine. “Trying something different with the hair, y’know?”

“Yeah, but I mean… you look more distinguished, I guess..”

“Thanks again! I got a new job pretty recently, maybe that’s it?”

“Maybe… but like, damn, you must be 100, 120 lbs. heavier than the last time I saw you. That was… that was what, Wednesday?”

I stopped squatting and began to alternatingly hold my knees up to my torso in a stretch. “Yeah! I’ve started this new regimen. I guess it’s working!” I took a few steps towards Shawn, panting with my hands on my hips. My erection was jutting out obscenely from my shorts, just the way I wanted it.

He nodded his head with his eyebrows raised, “Yeah, man.. It’s definitely fucking working.” He licked his lips, watching my pecs heave up and down as I panted and checking out the bulging curvature of my arms.

“I could teach you, if you want. Would you like that?”

He met my eyes again, shining with excitement, “Would you, man? Aww, that would be awesome! I’m down.”

“Awesome! I bet you’re gonna be a hell of a muscle stud.”

He seemed to blush adorably, and I could somehow smell his cock begin to leak, “Aww, thanks man.”

“Great! We can start now, if you want?” I watched him nod excitedly but also noticed his eyes darting down to my crotch, unable to take his gaze away from my dick for too long.

“Oooh, sorry about that!” I reached down and gripped my shaft, giving it a good, firm shake and feeling it wobble around in my shorts. “That’s something I’ve noticed about this new regimen. I can’t help but be hard all the time.”

“Uh-uhm, n-no, sorry, it’s, I just—…” He stood up from the rowing machine and stammered through an excuse.

“No, no, no, it’s cool, Shawn, I don’t mind!” I responded, taking a step towards him and squeezing my shaft again. “I like what it’s done to me. Hard body, hard muscles… hard cock,” He let out a shuddering breath. “You’re pretty hard, too, Shawn.” I reached down and cupped his tenting shorts.

Shawn let out an exhilarated gasp and I felt his cock lurch in my hand. “Yeah, man.”

“I think you’d look good hard all over, don’t you, Shawn?”

He swallowed, looking deep into my eyes, “Yeah, absolutely.”

“I think you’d be a hell of a beefed up sex machine, what do you think?”

“I think you’re right, dude!” He smiled at me with shaking breaths.

“Do you want me to make you a fucking stud, Shawn?”

“Hell yeah, I do,” he whispered, leaning into kiss me.

“Ask me to make you the hardest muscled, biggest dicked, most confident stud in town, Shawn.” I reached down and wiped a helping of my pre that was seeping through my shorts onto my finger, getting ready to prepare him just like Wes had done with me.

His hot breath blew against my cheek and neck, “Please, Cade. Please make me the hardest muscled, biggest dicked, most confident stud in the fucking state, bro.”

I leaned in and met his lips, letting my long tongue explore his mouth. I felt his heartbeat pulsing in his cock within my hand and then disconnected from his mouth, quickly passing my pre-soaked finger into his mouth and felt him suck it down and swallow it.

He shivered and smacked his lips, savoring my taste, and I patted his cheek with my hand. His smile faltered slightly as he felt his stomach churn and groan intensely, even being heard throughout the gym. I could feel his cock beginning to swell even larger under my grasp and let go of it, taking a few steps away from him. He looked back up at me with confusion and growing concern in his face.

I grinned widely at him, “As you wish, Shawn.”

“Wh—..”

He couldn’t finish his words as his body instantly whipped backwards and began spinning unnaturally fast, appearing more like a twister. An identical column of fire from the one that enveloped me earlier rose up from the ground around him and was caught up in the vicious spinning intensity of his body. I could hear his shocked, worried, distorted groans emanating out from within the flaming cyclone and felt myself growing more excited, more aroused as I watched the cyclone begin to bulge and swell larger, stretching and churning taller. My breath quickened and my eyes rolled back into my head, and I could feel myself involuntarily becoming something else. My fingernails sharpened and extended into curved black claws, my body bulged and heaved and grew obscenely huge with quickly reddening skin as my shorts ripped, I could feel tusks pointing up out of my bottom jaw, I felt the pressure of something jutting out of my head and knew my horns were coming in, my height rising to an impossible 8.5 feet. The flaming twister continued to whip and churn in front of me, but my transformation paused as I heard a change from within the column of fire. His worried, distorted groans from within quickly turned into ones of surprise and intrigue, and as the cyclone grew larger and larger, they turned into groans of excitement and pleasure. Confident grunting could soon be heard coming from it as well as maniacal laughing as it twisted and bulged even larger. Shawn was without a doubt thoroughly enjoying what was happening to him within the cyclone, as it began to slow. It sounded like he was lifting weights and grunting inside, his vocalizations becoming increasingly more horny and sexualized. I waited with anticipation as the flaming cyclone steadied and eventually became still in front of me.

Only the column of fire remained, but with something undoubtedly much larger standing within. I watched with excitement as a huge, muscled leg took a step out, it’s thighs and calves bulging ridiculously huge. Then an inhumanly massive arm and bulging shoulder emerged above it, as the new and improved Shawn side-stepped out of the dissipating column of fire.

He stood at 6’8”, his head lolled back with a confident smirk on his face, and every inch of him bulging almost cartoonishly huge. His arms and legs looked like they could each independently stop a truck, his pecs were jutting, rounded mounds extending off his chest considerably, his abs were cut like diamonds and surrounded by rippling side and back muscles. His smile was wide and gorgeous, and he pursed them at me in a kissing gesture, showing off how pillowy and soft they were. His ass was sculpted and firm, making his shorts stretch away from his back and his cock and balls looked like he stuffed half a baguette and some oranges in his shorts.

I smirked and swallowed, impressing even myself with the work I had done, “Go on, give us a pose.”

He smiled widely and struck a pose that accentuated his massive arms and chest. He twisted another direction and popped another pose, giving me a show of his back and thighs. He turned again and showed off his calves and ass, enticingly bouncing each cheek individually.

“Fuck,” I groaned, feeling my cock drool pre, dripping down to the floor.

“Was that an offer?” He asked slyly, wrapping his huge arms around my waist and lifting me up above him, making me giggle. I was almost 2 whole feet taller than him at easily hundreds of pounds heavier, but his new strength could make him lift me up without much effort. He kissed my lower abs down to my public shelf and I could feel my cock press against his neck and chin.

He adjusted my position in the air and I felt myself falling to the ground, but he caught me in his arms before I did, one of his hands cradling my lower back and the other cradling my upper thigh. I couldn’t help but laugh at the manhandling and roller coaster ride he was giving me and he looked down at me with a big smile.

He leaned in and kissed me deeply, “Thank you for this.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” I answered, bringing a hand up to his cheek and stroking it, seeing my black claws for the first time. “But, uhh… you know who I am, right?… What I am?”

He just shrugged, “Doesn’t matter. You still look like Cade to me,” he grinned and lifted a hand up to my abs where my cock was drooling a puddle of pre. “Besides,” he scooped several fingers full of my excretions and brought them back under me, sliding his hand between my asscheeks and rimming my hole with his pre-soaked finger. I groaned as I felt my hole kiss and suck against his hand, and then he stuffed two, three, four, and finally his whole hand into my ass, lubing it up. “Who can say in their lives that they butt-fucked the Devil with their footlong cock?”

He laid me down on the floor and I willed away his shorts, letting his cock spring up and wetly slap his abs. He held my legs up and let them rest against his shoulders as he positioned himself above me. He grinned down at me sweetly as I gasped, feeling his cock press against my hole. I grinned back and pushed against it, feeling it shove inside me as he began rocking back for forth into me.

I felt my pecs begin to leak thick, white liquid and reached to behind his head, pulling his panting and grinning face down to my muscle tits while he continued to grind against me, and began to feel him sucking and drinking from my chest.

As my juices made him swell larger and larger, his bucking becoming more passionate and feral as he grew even bigger in size, coming close to surpassing me in size, I began to make plans. Maybe I could introduce Shawn to one my friends—one of the princess of Hell—and we could convince him to let one of them inhabit him like I let Wes inhabit me? We could live our eternal, infernal lives together and see how far we could test each other’s power, growing in mind, physique, pleasure, knowledge, and experience, side-by-side for the rest of time?

Possibilities and visions of the infinite future swam through my mind. Shawn’s life had changed, yes, but it was about to change even more.

I wrapped my giant legs around him as he bucked harder into me and grunted deeper as he drank from me, almost fully covering me with the size of his expanding body.

[folkloreguk]

💌🧸 Brother's Best Friend

A/N: Got this request a while ago and now I'm wondering why I've never written this trope before bc this was so fun??? Lmk how you liked it! x

genre: optional bias (m) x reader (f), smut, size/strength kink??, choking, dom!bias (it’s kinda playful tho), brother's best friend!au, sneaking around, play fighting, lowkey getting caught but not directly?

words: ~ 4.1 k

disclaimer: I don’t mean for the age gap to be gigantic…I’m talking about anything from 1-2 years maximum tbh!!! Anything else would be weird and I’m not about that! They’re also both obviously consenting adults!

[H/N means 'his (bias) name']

In youreyes, your first meeting had been a disaster. The new spider man movie had been released only days ago, and you were adamant on seeing it. And to your luck, your older brother and his best friend had already made plans to watch it together. As a little sister, you were treated like the baby of the family, and it didn’t matter that you were far from being an infant anymore. So naturally, your brother had been condemned by your parents to bring you along. He declared his distaste in your presence by attempting to ignore you, but you were used to that. Just like you were aware of his bad moods, you knew he could change within minutes and magically turn into the sweetest, most caring big brother you could wish for.

Whatever. You didn’t need his approval to enjoy the trip to the movie theater, you told yourself. Had it not been for his best friend, who you hadn’t seen in ages. H/N and you had never properly spoken before, and the last time you saw him he had been an awkward, prepubescent boy who had appeared at your door to pick up your brother for a playdate. There was no trace of immaturity now. Instead, it was you who had morphed into an awkward, shy mess at the sight of him.

His ‘hello’ had a warm and deep melody to it which swooped you up in his aura so suddenly, you had no time to prepare. Had his smile always been this stupidly charming? Hell, it was so bright, you had to meticulously inspect the ground every time he sent a grin your way. When before you hadn’t felt guilty for being a bother, you now sure did. What impression would you leave, trailing behind the older boys like a lost puppy? What would he take you for? The annoying little sister who didn’t have friends of her own? The mood-killer, who wouldn’t understand any of the boys’ inside jokes? The anti-social, weird girl who was obsessed with fictional men, like people loved to belittle teenage girls with normal interests?

As things turned out, his initial opinion of you was quite the opposite. If only you could have spied into his brain, it would have saved you a landslide of worry. Although your brother took up all of H/N’s attention before the movie started, he noticed you a good amount. To be precise, you blew him away at first sight. Your cute laugh won him over in a matter of seconds and he liked that your merch sweater could have been stolen straight out of his own closet. He didn’t want to feel too smug, but the way you diverted your eyes away from him whenever he looked in your direction only boosted his confidence further.

Your brother might have warned him. Stay away from her. She’s off limits for you. But not a thousand vicious, older brothers could have kept him from trying to get to you. It was up to you, after all, whether you wanted him around or not, and not to your brother. From that day on, H/N didn’t skip out on a chance to see you, even if it meant merely an exchange of a few words, or a simple greeting. And to his luck, you turned out to be equally as enraptured by him.

There was something about the untouchable, the forbidden, that attracted him to you even more. Plus, you were simply too precious to forget about. One morning, you dropped off a beanie at his place, which he had left at your house after meeting with your big brother the previous day. When he had asked if he could drive you to school as a thank you, you happily accepted. You had marked that day as the first day of your new life. First, it was harmless flirting. To be honest, you were under the impression he was merely messing with you. Because you were the cute little sister of his best friend. Because you would turn into an awkward shell of a person who had lost all ability to articulate, and your cheeks would burn as if they were on fire, whenever he charmed you.

But the flirting slowly reached newer levels, and before you knew it you were discussing your sexual fantasies over text messages and giving him bedroom eyes as you opened the front door for him. “H/N’s here!” you would then shout to your big brother. Then you would watch the two boys walk off to your brother’s room, pondering why life had to be this way for you. It wasn’t fair. Siblings were supposed to share, right? Why did you have to wait your turn until after midnight, when no one would notice, to spend time with H/N?

But to H/N, the sneaking around in the middle of the night and the secret messages you sent to each other, it all added to the excitement. Surely, there were days on which he wished he could just break the truth to your brother. The impact it could have on their friendship was enough intimidation for him to refrain, though. Things were better off this way, for now.

Today was no exception to your usual lies. When your brother asked if you would go out with him to do some shopping, you had played the victim and feigned a stomachache. Your parents wouldn’t be home all weekend. You’d have been stupid to waste a perfect opportunity like that. Who knew when you could have H/N in your bed the next time? Normally, you were restricted to his car, or to his bed in the dark of night. Yes, those places had something enticing at first glance. But the backseat of a car was only enjoyable for so many clandestine meetings. So today you notified him of your golden opportunity before your brother had even walked out the door.

The moment H/N texted you that he was outside your home, you opened the front door and dragged him to your room.

“Are you in control today, little one?” he asked, closing the bedroom door after you.

“Why are you asking that?” you replied, not wanting to talk at all but rather do so much more productive things.

“I don’t know…perhaps because you haven’t let me say a word since I came through the door,” he said.

“Right. Maybe I’m planning on tying you up, blindfolding you, and torturing you with ice and wax,” you joked in a casual tone, despite not usually requesting such graphic ideas.

“I don’t know if I’d let you do that,” he grinned with raised eyebrows. “Besides, I know you’d rather be at the receiving end of that. It’s a sweet idea, though. If we had some more time…”

“Think you could get away from me if I tied you up?” you said, but he was towering over you with the calmness of a king who knew he reigned over the situation.

“We both know I’m stronger than you, doll,” he said. You didn’t like it when boys called you weak. But you’d let it slide, knowing he was only joking and would never underestimate you outside of the bedroom. He put his lips right up to yours, so you felt his breath on them. His fingers came up to cup your face, but then slowly inched to your neck. When they closed around your neck, putting the slightest amount of pressure on your skin, you whimpered quietly.

“Need reminding?” he asked. As much pent-up frustration you had, and as much as your stomach was flipping upside down from how badly you needed him, you just had to play with him. You knew it would make for more fun.

“I think- “ you started, with a grin. Then you grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pushed him backwards, until he was stumbling. Although caught off guard, he was quick to pull you along with him as he fell onto your bed. You landed on top of him with a small squeal.

“Go on, let’s see who can throw the other off the bed first,” he teased with a superiority that only spurred you on. Then again, you would always be in the mood for the oldest childhood game you had ever known. Only now it wasn’t your brother, but his best friend you were playing against. It added a layer of excitement, and after only seconds, giggles had overtaken you as you struggled in his grip.

“No tickling is allowed,” you said. He nodded obediently with a smirk that told you he might not abide by your rules.

At first, you had attempted to hold him down by his arms. But your legs tangled, and he pushed his chest up against yours, like he was about to flip you over. Your plan seemed to be working only momentarily. You groaned a little as he grabbed your wrists swiftly and held his stance against your attempt to pull his upper body to the side.

“Cute,” he said. That’s when you realized, he was barely struggling, barely trying, even. While you were giving your most, he smirked like he was watching a kitten trying to fight a lion. It was child’s play to him, keeping you in check. Literally. With an annoying expression of amusement on his face, he let you have the upper hand for a while. Then, as if you had never had an ounce of advantage, he turned it around and pulled you into him. His eyes suggested he might just send you tumbling down onto the floor any moment now. Nonetheless, you weren’t going to give up so easily. Taking your chances, you let go of his arms and moved sideways, so you could have your go at pushing him towards the edge of the mattress.

“I don’t think so,” he said. Suddenly, he bear-hugged your body and rolled you both over. Before you could protest or defend yourself, your arm was dangling off the side of your bed and if you had moved a tiny bit further, you would have slid off the bedsheets and right onto your carpet. It was his turn to straddle you now. As if his actions hadn’t been enough declarations of his strength, he pinned your wrists to the bed above your head and gave you a challenging smirk.

“I was going to let you win, doll. But you weren’t trying hard enough,” he said. “What are you going to do about it?”

What were you going to do? He had you completely immobilized. “Just let it go, then. We get it, you’re super strong and super big and the coolest,” you said.

He seemed to take an instant liking to your declaration. “Say it again. This time minus the eye-rolling, sugar.”

“You’re stronger than me,” you said, trying to avoid the laughter that was threatening to come out. Could he read in your gaze how badly you wanted him to kiss you already? If he could, he wasn’t acting on it. Instead, he bent to the crook of your neck and spoke.

“Does it turn you on that I can overpower you?” his breath fanned your ear and you had to close your eyes to control yourself.

“Yes. Because I trust you,” you answered truthfully. The corner of his lips curled into a cocky grin.

“You know what? I think I’d rather you stay in bed with me instead of throwing you on the floor. There’s so many things we can do up here, isn’t that right, little one?” His lips brushed over your cheek and then over your lips as he spoke. The nickname had always made you weak in the knees and he knew it. When he finally enveloped your lips in a kiss, you swore you could feel an electric spark jump between the two of you. The mellowness of it turned into hunger rapidly, and as soon as his tongue flicked over your bottom lip, you whimpered like you hadn’t seen him in a year.

“Needy, are we?” he asked, running his hand up your sides and underneath your shirt. He could say that again. “Let’s get these off, then.”

The seconds in which you pulled off your clothes and couldn’t hang on his lips and feel his skin on your body should have been considered a form of torture in itself. Then, time always went by so much slower than usually.

When you had both shed off your clothes, he climbed back on top of you. Instead of straddling your hips he was now resting between your legs. There was nothing separating you from him, and it was apparent not only through the body heat that radiated off him. He reached down and whilst peppering kisses on your chest, slid his fingers through your slick arousal that was pooling in your core.

“You’re so wet,” he said in surprise, but couldn’t hide his approval and self-confidence in his voice.

“I know,” you said, rolling your eyes but simultaneously fighting the urge to moan at the smallest of touches he was teasing your with. “I’m so horny. Can’t we skip foreplay?”

“Poor doll,” he said. “I should’ve come over earlier, huh?”

“You know that wasn’t possible,” you said. With a desperate look, you pleaded him silently.

“I wanna taste you,” he said, but your put your hand on his cheek softly.

“Maybe later?” you said. “Please, I need to have you inside of me. Now.”

“You’re extra cute when you’re this needy,” he smiled. “Are there still condoms in your nightstand?”

You nodded and had never moved so fast to open a drawer in your life. Pretending to have any patience left, you waited for him to roll on the rubber.

“I love the way you look at me,” he said. “When you’re waiting for me. Could watch you for hours.”

“God, I hope you won’t. Come here, please?” you replied, making him chuckle. He lined himself up with your core, but then made no inclination to move ahead. His dark eyes and little head tilt told you everything.

“Don’t mess with me anymore,” you whined, reaching for the back of his neck to pull him closer. “Do it. H/N.”

“Beg for it.” His words twisted something in the pit of your stomach. Although you were burning with hunger, you could never say no to him. Then again, you were curious to see what would happen if you did.

“What if I don’t? Don’t you want to fuck me as much as I want it?” you challenged him. Something glinted in his eyes, and you knew you shouldn’t have even brought it up.

“I can always do this,” he said, and you followed his eyes down his body and to where he had wrapped his hand around his cock. Slowly, he jerked himself off, and you weren’t sure he was biting his lip because of the feeling or to discompose you. His small sigh should’ve been caused by you. This wasn’t what you had wanted. His tip was right by your slit. He could’ve pushed his length in so easily, and yet he wasn’t. Debating what to say, you kept your eyes trained on his hard member that looked so delicious in his hands. His deep groans rang in your ears. It didn’t take long for you to cave.

“Fuck. That should be me around you,” you said. “That should be my pussy you’re fucking and not your hands. Please.”

“Isn’t that right?” he said.

“Yes. Please, fuck me. I would feel so much better than your hands, and you know it. Please,” you whined. “I need you right now H/N. Please.”

You added another ‘please’ – for good measure – because the way his tongue darted out and licked his smirking lips could make you say anything if it would get him to fuck you.

“It’s okay, I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Think you can take me?”

“Yes, yes-, I can! Please, fuck me,” you said in a waterfall of words, and he chuckled handsomely.

“Good girl,” he said, running a gentle hand over your head. “If it’s too much you let me know.”

“As always.”

The tip of his cock gently pushed into your core, making you hold your breath as he entered you slowly. It caused you to feel every inch with every second. Your brain felt fuzzy, and you sighed gratefully at the relief.

“Fuck, you’re so perfect,” he moaned. The carefulness in his thrusts paired with his moon eyes at you only remained that way for a few seconds. Then, he straightened up and grabbed your hips to drag you in closer. You moaned helplessly when he almost pulled out completely, so slowly it almost made you crazy, only to slam his length into you until his tip brushed against the deepest spot inside of you. It was an action he repeated over and over, until you were reduced to a puddle of desperate whimpers, and you clasped the bedsheets in your hands tightly.

“You like it this way, little one?” he asked. He was apparently finding enjoyment in your reaction. How you could barely keep your eyes open, and when you did, your eyeballs threatened to roll to the back of your head. How your fingers clenched around the closest plushie, and you cradled it against your chest in bliss.

“Yes- fuck,” you said. “Feels so good.”

Of course, right as you said this, he had to change things up. His thrusts turned lazy and messy as he leaned backwards slightly. With an equally lazy demeanor, his thumb flicked over your clit, rubbing circles on it.

“Let me hear you. Say my name,” he said, and you quietly moaned his name. You adored the way it sounded, voiced like this, with barely more than a breath underneath your soft tone. Now and then, his cock slipped out of you, making you clench around nothing and furthermore had you going completely out of your mind. When he would push himself into your opening again, it felt as if it was the first time he was entering you today. Except you felt it repeatedly, each time as incredible as the previous. Your mouth hung open, rendered speechless except for the little moans and whimpers sounding from your throat. There was a familiar knot beginning to form in your stomach, tying firmer with each passing minute.

As if he could read your mind, he decided then he was done with his sweet torture of teasing you to an orgasm. You couldn’t be mad at him, though, because what he had planned was just as perfect, if not better. His hands wandered to their original place on your sides, and he began to snap his hips into yours at a faster pace. A small cry of surprise left your lips, while he only smirked at you through heavy-lidded eyes. Impulsively, you lifted your legs a little, intensifying the feeling of his member roughly dragging through your velvet walls.

“H/N, I’m so close,” you whimpered.

“Me too,” he replied, not slowing down for a second.

His broad frame towering over your body was a sight you would never get enough of and his gazes at you were hot enough that they could have stopped your heart in its tracks. A few strands of hair stuck to his forehead and there was a thin sheet of sweat on his neck. It all just made him more breathtaking to you. The slight pain from his nails digging into the skin on your waist was staggering, and you could barely wait to see the masterpiece of marks he would leave tonight.

You were a moaning mess, flying on cloud nine and simultaneously overwhelmed by his treatment of you. It clouded your mind at took over your whole body like you were made for him to fuck you. His length filled up your tight hole and he did it with such force that your whole body rocked into your mattress in a steady, fast-paced rhythm. He let go of your waist then and supported himself on his arm by the side of your head. When his other hand went to your neck you shuddered in anticipation.

“You should see yourself with my hand around your throat,” he said. “So pretty, little one.”

“We can do it in front of a mirror sometime- ,” you suggested, but were cut off at the end of the sentence as his fingers tightened on your neck. Instantly, the effect of it hit you. The lack of oxygen made your head swim in a sea of pleasure and the unrelenting desire to come. Through fluttering eyelids, you peeked up at him. The way he licked his lips and then clenched his jaw, the gorgeous shape of his collarbones and shoulders – you sometimes wondered if he was even real. Every so often he loosened his grip on you. When he did, you took gulps of air and then instantly whined for him to choke you again.

“Let go for me,” he said. “Show me your pretty face when I make you come. I’m fucking you well, aren’t I?”

You nodded as well as you could when he was gripping your throat and you couldn’t breathe properly at the moment. It didn’t matter you couldn’t talk. He was probably not expecting you to answer, either way. In a pleasure-induced trance, you closed your eyes and let it happen, like he had asked it from you. Your hazy consciousness barely registered that he was reaching his high with you. Too overcome were you, with your thighs trembling uncontrollably and your back arching off the mattress. He had let go of your neck and was riding out his own orgasm with sloppy thrusts that only sent you into another frenzy and had you whimpering his name softly. When he had finished too, he slowed down and pulled you into a gentle kiss, rubbing his nose against yours sweetly.

“That was amazing,” he said, and with a blissful hum you nodded. Your lips changed into a pout when he rolled off you and got up. You were tired of sending him back home so quickly. As he discarded the condom in the bin, you put on your most enchanting eyes, so he would have no other choice.

“Stay a little longer, please,” you asked. You knew he wanted to, as well. So although he was aware that your brother could return at any moment, he tumbled back into bed with you.

“Just for a little while,” he said. “Mhm…you’re so perfect to cuddle, baby.” His embrace was warm and his scent comforting, as he hummed a lovely melody. The soft touch of his fingers running through your hair lulled you right into a light sleep. You were awoken rather abruptly, and with half a heart attack.

“Hey Y/N, have you seen my charger- “ your brother’s voice suddenly broke through the silence and you wondered if you would have to pack up and leave the country after this sort of embarrassment.

“It’s not what it looks like,” you said, knowing well enough it was the dumbest thing you could have said. But who could blame you? You had only woken up two seconds ago.

“Really?” your brother asked. “Because I hear H/N sneak into our house so often lately, I’m starting to wonder if his parents threw him out.”

His tone was surprisingly calm.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve told you,” H/N said to your brother. “I thought you’d hate me and that we’d be over as friends.”

“I know I told you once to leave Y/N alone. But now…I guess it’s cool. She’s been in a great mood lately, and if that’s thanks to you, I think I can approve of you two. Although I’m not looking forward to being a third wheel, I think I can get used to it if I try hard enough,” your brother said. You couldn’t believe your ears, and involuntarily smiled like a fool. No more hiding. No more secrets.

“I stole your charger. I’m sorry,” you said then, making your brother roll his eyes. “It’s by the sofa in the living room.”

“Great. I needed a reason to leave anyway,” your brother said. “I might approve of you, but this situation is still too awkward. I’ll see you tomorrow, then, H/N?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” the boy in your bed said.

“You’ll see me too!” you added as a joke, as your brother already walked away from the door.

“Unfortunately I will!” your brother shouted, with the unnerving tone only a big brother could possibly muster.

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

Oh. My. God!!!

More under the cut

Where do I begin with this one?! How about the fact that the title is a double entendre that made me giggle?! Or how about the fact they went camping together (albeit for training)?! Or that you're looking at the consequences of Toshiro being too protective (which I rarely see in fic)? I can't choose, so let's start from the actual beginning of the fic:

I love the idea behind all of this, that everyone is training for Hell's impending invasion, but some individuals need to up their skills. And they have to go camping to train, I'm down for this already!

However, the day before the mission, her name was taken off the list with a curt note saying that her kido services would no longer be required. During the prior lieutenant’s meeting Renjii looked at her with a regretful glance, squeezing her shoulder sympathetically and she later received an apology Hell Butterfly from the Thirteen Captain before the expedition team left.

Loving the little bit of friendship there between Renji and Momo! I can't help but wonder how they would've gone on this mission together with the others. Can totally imagine a scene where they have to be back to back and think about on the struggles they went through, like in their Academy days. Also, I remember reading this and going 'No...No don't tell me he did this!'. I had this gut feeling Toshiro was behind this from the start but didn't want to believe it.

The shock must have been evident on her face as her captain immediately took one look at her before bringing her to the couch and placing a warm cup of tea in her hands.

T_T That's my man! So nice to read this moment!!

She had been reviewing the list of volunteers who wanted to train with her and was surprised at the number of people. If she were to spend time with each one, she would have to remain in the World of the Living for at least a month.

Why am I not surprised?! Aside from being who she is, I can totally see a lot officers wanting to learn how better their kido from her.

However, she had not seen Toushiro’s name on her initial list—much less expected him to volunteer.

My immediate reaction reading this: Oh no...it he DID do it, didn't he?! And now he's feeling bad or wants to explain himself!

He sighed in quiet exasperation. “I heard from Abarai that Hitsugaya-taicho requested you off the mission,” he said reluctantly. “And when there was no other candidate to go, he volunteered himself.” “And why would he do that?” she asked quietly, still processing what she had heard. Hirako shook his head, his bangs falling away from his eyes. “He never brought it up at the captain’s meeting. He went directly to the Soutaicho & the expedition team.”

This is something I would absolutely HATE to see Toshiro do (see my reactions above), and it's somethign I can see some thinking is out fo character for him. Yet, given the right circumstances, I can absolutely see him doing it. He knows Momo is a capable Shinigami, but his feelings can get in the way, and then his protective instincts come out. To see this in fic, where the reason he did it makes sense but also made me go 'No, why?! Why would you do that?! You failed my guy! You failed!' it a rarity, and I loved it! It make me want to explore this too, though I haven't got a fic idea for it yet.

I'd also be curious about Shinji's reaction to this. He must have been fine with Momo going on the expedition, otherwise he would've had her pulled, but when he found out Toshiro stepped in and went over him and straight to Kyoraku, how did he feel I wonder?

The tension is thick now though, as Momo clearly agreed to train with Toshiro. She's going to confront him!

It had been the first time they had seen each other in a long while, and Momo was still feeling unsettled—so introductions were short, and she immediately led him to the training area where she was now beginning a demonstration.

“We’ll start off with one of my prior combination spells in battle: from during the Winter War era when Rangiku-san and I had to fight the three arrancars.” She avoided looking at Toushiro for she knew much after the fact that he hadn’t approved of her coming onto the battlefield—which apparently, things still hadn’t changed between them. “Let me show you first.”

Momo had to stop herself from reacting openly to that. She hadn’t remembered telling him that it was her first attempt, a decision crossed in between luck and adrenaline. However, she had a lot to prove—and evidently, there were still people that doubted her.

Momo could only watch as Toushiro immediately called a cool wind forth to snuff out the embers, leaving just a sizzling trail of smoke as the remains of the misspell. “I think we better call it for the night,” he said with a measured tone, evaluating the scene. The slip back into their gigai was so quiet and routine that even the shift of corporeal bodies couldn’t cut the thick tension between the two.

These are gut punching moments T_T A totally understandable reaction from Momo -- she has every right to be anxious, upset, and angry here -- but still very sad to see. I can't imagine how it'd feel to have someone so close to you do something like what Toshiro did.

Her student nodded along, with a furrow in his eyebrows that Momo knew he was mentally taking notes.

“You can follow me for now and then we can try separately on our own, Hitsugaya-taicho.”

This hits different. Out of context, I'd likely think 'Aw, she knows him so well that she knows when he's really trying to absorb somethign someone is teaching him.' With the context of this fic though, it's makes me sad because she does know him well enough, but it's an endearing thing she knows and notices in him. Then there's the fact she refers to him by title! Momo has done this before of course, but more times than not, she doesn't use his title. Another sign of her trying to distance herself from him.

Also, side note: MOMO TEACHING KIDO SCENES! WE LOVE TO SEE THEM!

“Hirako-taicho and I went on camping trips as a way to get to know each other when we first started working together. The other Vizards would also join us as well.”

#LetShinjigofishing2k24!!

Toushiro rolled his eyes. “It still amazes me how he can circumvent rules to do it.” It was an offhand comment, nothing out of the ordinary for the young captain. However, at that moment it deeply grated at her nerves, and it struck raw. Momo snapped a branch in her hand. “Hirako-taicho completes his work as necessary. He also doesn’t cross the line—unlike you Hitsugaya-taicho.” He raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about, Hinamori?” “You pulled rank and took me off the Hell expedition,” she said curtly, yanking out the matchstick box from her pocket and snapping the match strong against the box. There was a pause where Momo could only hear the friction of the match

I audibly went "Whoooooooooooa!' Let's go!! That last lien is an absolute burner (pun not intended)!! Later when the match lights, it's at the perfect moment!

She looked up to see the fire reflecting in his turquoise eyes, resolute. “If I had to do it again, I would,” he said solemnly, holding his ground across the fire from her. “Well that’s the difference between us, Hitsugaya-taicho—I would be honest with someone if I didn’t think they were good enough.” “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he sighed. Momo straightened her shoulders back and stared firmly back at him through the flames. “I am a lieutenant of the Fifth Division, I have earned my way to serve the Gotei 13—whether you like it or not.”  

I can't put into words how much I love this scene. I can see it so clearly in my mind. Neither side backing down, with Momo not fully knowing Toshiro intentions but still making a 100% valid point about her abilities and right to fight as a Shinigami; and Toshiro's determination and over-protectiveness making him stubborn, now seeing the consequences his actions had.

“Did you read the information pack that Hisagi-san had sent? Apparently, this used to be a habitat for bears.”

“Yes, and I read the amended version Ise-fuukutaicho sent—the local bear population has become endangered. The only thing we’re in danger of is losing our sleep,” he grumbled.

I found ti more amusing than I should that 1) Hisagi compiled a info pack/guide about the area (did he go on location and find out about the area? If so, what did he do? Did he ask locals? Camp out in the middle of woods to get the full experience? Does this technically fall under his duties?) and 2) Nanao made a revised guide XD (see, I can see her doing the equivalent of Googling about the area and reading books about it, with annoations and references and footnotes everywhere to back up her info).

Toushiro stepped in front of her sleeping bag, his stance defensive as he mimicked Momo’s earlier pose from the training session. “I’ll handle it. I’ll use the kido weaving to stop whatever it is in its tracks.” That got Momo to pause. “Wait, Hitsugaya-kun—I’m not sure if you’re ready.” He started to chant, slow and steady as the noise picked up. Momo could only focus on her heart racing that she almost missed the slip of incantation: Toushiro had skipped a line—a very crucial line. “Hitsugaya-kun—you forgot—” The threads burned amber, casting a bright glow against the surrounding boundary of trees before they began to constrict against themselves. The woven net grew and expanded, closing in around the two of them instead of pushing outward. Toushiro realizing his error, quickly turned around and crouched over Momo as the net imploded into great sparks, rivaling a fireworks show.

Again with that protectiveness! But also, I couldn't help but grin throughout all of this >w<

A bubble of laughter escaped from Momo’s mouth which earned her an exasperated look from her friend above her. Toushiro’s hair was mussed with grey soot streaking the spiky edges; he looked like the human confection of a burnt marshmallow—which made Momo laugh even harder.

I had a flashback to the explosive results of Renji's Academy training XD

“I’m sorry for yelling at you today.” There was a long pause and she had wondered if he had heard her. “I deserved it. I apologize for not being transparent with you.”

Well at least he recognised that! I'm glad they're making up though!

“I can take care of myself, Hitsugaya-kun.” He sighed. “I know you can—I don’t doubt it at all.” “Then what makes this different?” Momo whispered. Toushiro was silent for a while before turning to her. “It’s what we don’t know—everything we’ve been taught feels…upended.” He grimaced & even in the dark she could see the storm brewing in his eyes. “Ukitake-taicho, the Soutaicho…they’re all there now. It feels like the rules have changed and things are out of control.” Momo smiled sympathetically before reaching a hand across, and gently placing it on his shoulder. “I know. I’m scared too. I’m scared for everyone at the Fifth, for Hirako-taicho, Rangiku-san.” She paused and stared into his eyes. “I’m also scared for you.” His eyes widened slowly. “Hinamori…” “But I won’t let that stop me from wanting to protect everyone—to protect you.” She squeezed his shoulder. “That’s why I became a shinigami, right?” Momo could sense his inner storm abating and smiled in relief. “So—trust me, okay? Like I trust you to stay safe.” He sighed deeply and stared back at her. “Okay—I will try.”

TwT I can't!! This was a goo resolution. Toshiro can't change magically overnight, and he's always going to be protective, but he'll try to not let it be his immediate response to Momo going into battle. He bleives in her, of course he does, but he loves her too.

And Momo showing she's protective of him too, worried about him in the upcoming battle T_T

Thank you sharing this with us, it's a beautiful read!!

For your reblogs milestone requests (congratulations!!) If this pings you, I'd love to see Hitsugaya + Hinamori + CAMPING. Good trip, bad trip, planned, unplanned, business, pleasure... Any kind of camping and any kind of tone!

how to start a fire

Rating: K+

“Hinamori, you’re imagining things—go to sleep.”

“I am not,” she hissed, with a little more bite than intended. She was still bitter about their squabble. “I know there’s something out there.” She turned to her backpack, fumbling around in the dark as she searched for the flashlight. “Did you read the information pack that Hisagi-san had sent? Apparently, this used to be a habitat for bears.”

“Yes, and I read the amended version Ise-fuukutaicho sent—the local bear population has become endangered. The only thing we’re in danger of is losing our sleep,” he grumbled.

…

Momo is sent to train Toushiro in the World of the Living in combination kido.

Word Count: 3670 words

Setting: after the Bleach Anniversary Hell Chapter

Prompt: @hitsuhina-week Gift Exchange 2023 for @whipplefilter

"maybe we didn't argue, but we don't agree"/ "Hitsugaya asks Hinamori to teach him her kidou-weaving"/"HitsuHina from unexpected/outside POVs"

Authour’s Note: This is SO LATE IN ALL THE SENSES. Firstly, because Whipple sent this request in like, summer. And then I was matched with them for the Gift Exchange which I thought I could make! but holidays! & falling sick! (are we really ever as productive as we would like over the holidays??)

(Thank you @rays-of-fire-and-ice for being understanding!)

When I saw the prompts that Whipple sent, I immediately thought of their initial fic request & thought it was such a perfect thing to combine! Unfortunately, I couldn't get in the Hitsuhina from an outside POV but maybe one day in the future!

I had a lot of fun trying to flesh this out and was really happy to go back to writing after so long! However, I believe much like the rest of the fandom, life is going to get busy in the coming months for me and I won't be as active in writing as I would like to :( I hope to still participate in events but it does really inspire me reading everyone's work when I come back to try to write on my own!!

Happy New Year everyone! Here's hoping 2024 is one with happiness and laughter and fun for everyone!!

I hope you all enjoy this!

---

Momo dropped her duffel bag and began to rummage around it, pushing overnight clothes and toiletries aside. “Here’s a clearing: we can proceed here.”

Toushiro looked around skeptically, noting the abandoned fire pits and wooden pavilions in the distance. “Won’t we be disturbing the humans?”

“Soutaicho had reserved the whole camping ground area while the Twelfth Division set up a barrier that would send any human that would walk towards the training facilities, confused but turned around.” She swallowed the gikon pill, feeling her human body leave her as if she were shedding a coat off.

The tenth captain raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t the Kido Corps have facilitated that?”

Momo shrugged, though she admitted she wondered about the ethics of the research division sometimes. “All the training leaders were assured that they wouldn’t be harmed. Nanao-san also reiterated that each cell would be allocated a parcel of the forest—so we don’t have to worry about anyone else while we train.”

With the new frontier of Hell on the line, the Gotei 13 were implementing new training tactics to prepare for the unknown battle. Each division had received a list of candidates for leaders of the cell groups—specific internal training groups to provide targeted instruction on skills soldiers may find lacking. Momo had been selected from the Fifth Division to lead high level kido proficiency, specifically on combination spells. The leaders ranged in rank, from captains to lieutenants and even high ranked seated officers. She had heard later from Matsumoto, Ikkaku had been selected to lead swordsmanship skills, Isane for healing during combat, a fourth seat in the eighth division for defensive spells among many. The cell groups would then be volunteers from across the Gotei 13 that would train with the leaders in World of the Living on a reserved human camping site.

Momo had been flattered (even when her captain had bemoaned jokingly why he hadn’t been picked) but was also left feeling disconcerted at the letter.

A few weeks ago, there was an expedition team sent out earlier to understand the spells and mechanisms that opened Hell’s Doors as well as scope its initial terrain. The list was short and concise with only a few captains and lieutenants selected. Renjii & Rukia were on the list as they had already prior experience in the hellscape. Momo had been keen to go, as she heard her name was nominated by Rukia to help with kido to break down the entrance. However, the day before the mission, her name was taken off the list with a curt note saying that her kido services would no longer be required. During the prior lieutenant’s meeting Renjii looked at her with a regretful glance, squeezing her shoulder sympathetically and she later received an apology Hell Butterfly from the Thirteen Captain before the expedition team left.

Momo had walked back to the Fifth Division in a daze, feeling a bit bereft at the sudden change in plans. The shock must have been evident on her face as her captain immediately took one look at her before bringing her to the couch and placing a warm cup of tea in her hands.

“Hitsugaya-taicho seems to have requested you for your first training session.”

“Why?” Momo asked. She had been reviewing the list of volunteers who wanted to train with her and was surprised at the number of people. If she were to spend time with each one, she would have to remain in the World of the Living for at least a month.

However, she had not seen Toushiro’s name on her initial list—much less expected him to volunteer. The tenth captain was quick on his feet in battle and she never assumed his skills were lacking.

Hirako-taicho shrugged. “Maybe he wants a brush up as well? I know he had gone on the Hell Expedition Team & him and the little Kuchiki realized there was some reworking off spells to be done.”

That got Momo to pause as she was sorting through the files. It had been a couple of weeks since the team had returned from Hell. “Hitsugaya-taicho had joined the expedition?” As far as she knew, he was never a candidate for the expedition, and he hadn’t mentioned anything like that to her.

Her captain stilled, his eyes avoiding her questioning look. “I believe he was the last-minute change…”

“Hirako-taicho—why did Hitsugaya-kun go on the expedition?”

He sighed in quiet exasperation. “I heard from Abarai that Hitsugaya-taicho requested you off the mission,” he said reluctantly. “And when there was no other candidate to go, he volunteered himself.”

“And why would he do that?” she asked quietly, still processing what she had heard.

Hirako shook his head, his bangs falling away from his eyes. “He never brought it up at the captain’s meeting. He went directly to the Soutaicho & the expedition team.”

The news sat with Momo as she prepared her training plan and packed her bags to go the World of the Living. The unease festered inside of her, leaving her with feelings of self-doubt and anxiety. She found herself unable to sleep well and only when she stepped onto the campgrounds and breathed in the fresh air, could she feel the tension loosening in her shoulder.

Momo had an earlier departure time and was preparing the grounds when the Tenth Captain dropped in, much later in the evening when the sky was hedging into dusk. It had been the first time they had seen each other in a long while, and Momo was still feeling unsettled—so introductions were short, and she immediately led him to the training area where she was now beginning a demonstration. If the boy noticed anything unusual, he made no comment and followed suit.

Momo slipped into teaching mode, something she had learned while part-timing at the academy to help compartmentalize her life as a lecturer separate from a lieutenant.

“We’ll start off with one of my prior combination spells in battle: from during the Winter War era when Rangiku-san and I had to fight the three arrancars.” She avoided looking at Toushiro for she knew much after the fact that he hadn’t approved of her coming onto the battlefield—which apparently, things still hadn’t changed between them. “Let me show you first.”

The girl lifted her hands in front of her, demonstrating as she spoke. “The strength of the spell also comes from the foundation of the pose. I know after we graduate and go into battle, it’s very easy to skip this step as we’ve become comfortable with the incantations.” She moved her hands as if they were framing a triangle. “However, as we introduce combination spells, I find that there’s strength in using combative stances with defensive spells and vice versa.”

Her student nodded along, with a furrow in his eyebrows that Momo knew he was mentally taking notes.

“It started off with Hadou 12 Fuishibi: I had used it as a defensive base before obscuring it with a concealment spell.”

“That was Kyokou, right?” Toushiro piped in.

She nodded in affirmation. “Yes—that was the key to catching the arrancar off. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to blindside them in the initial attack.”

Toushiro’s eyebrow raised slowly, almost as if he were impressed if Momo had to guess. “That’s quite commendable that you were able to weave that many kidou together—especially for your first time.”

Momo had to stop herself from reacting openly to that. She hadn’t remembered telling him that it was her first attempt, a decision crossed in between luck and adrenaline. However, she had a lot to prove—and evidently, there were still people that doubted her.

“However, the key is finding the right igniting spell: Shakaho is a common one and it doesn’t matter how proficient you are in kidou—it’ll still give you the right amount of power you need.”

She beckoned with her head, her arms still held in front of her in stance. “You can follow me for now and then we can try separately on our own, Hitsugaya-taicho.”

When he mirrored suit, she started reciting the incantations—pausing in between lines to explain the steps.

“You start trying to imagine a series of lines, crossing each other. Imagine the intersection and focus on that. Personally, for me, it helps to visualize the centers becoming brighter to build a stronger net.”

“Like Bakudo #4, Hainawa?”

Momo winced, sensing the kidou web pull away from her. “Not really. It’s the foundation—it’s not the main goal. You’re setting up trajectory for the blast to follow.”

“Is it necessary to recite the full spell?”

“Sort of—I find it helpful to not focus fully on the incantation but instead what it represents. Breaks down the rigidity of the tradition and make it more malleable in combining different spells.”

“How do you control the scale of the net?”

“It’s all in the visualization—you need to imagine it,” she responded quickly as she felt herself faltering. The net grew dimmer and wilted, like a flower causing Momo to repeat the previous line again. She wasn’t used to being interrupted so often.

“When do you switch hand positions?”

“Hold on Hitsugaya—”, Momo could feel the net pull away from her like a storm wind catching hold of a kite. She proceeded forward and, in her haste, she skipped two lines ahead in the incantation.   

The effects were immediate with the strings of the net burning brighter and brighter. Momo faltered, immediately stopping the incantation but it was too late. The net hummed in power before it exploded, sending sparks back at the shinigami & the wooden structures.

Momo could only watch as Toushiro immediately called a cool wind forth to snuff out the embers, leaving just a sizzling trail of smoke as the remains of the misspell.

“I think we better call it for the night,” he said with a measured tone, evaluating the scene.

The slip back into their gigai was so quiet and routine that even the shift of corporeal bodies couldn’t cut the thick tension between the two. The moon was hanging high & alone by the time they had returned silently back to their campsite.

Momo immediately started collecting broken branches and twigs to start the fire. She kept her head down, repeating the recent events in her head over and over. Even though Toushiro had been peppering her with questions, she knew she was accustomed to that from teaching new recruits—and inwardly Momo knew that it was her earlier feelings towards the young captain that made her mess up the incantation. There was a strong part of her that was ashamed for getting her emotions get in the way of teaching—something she had promised herself she would learn to keep professional and private matters separate.

Momo sighed deeply, walking back to their clearing, and dumping the wood into the firepit. As she rearranged the pieces into a tented position, she could feel Toushiro’s eyes on her—much like earlier, observing quietly and learning.

“It’s to help structure the flame,” she explained quietly. Momo pulled some newspapers she had brought with her and began shredding them over the pit.

“How do you know how to do this?”

“Hirako-taicho and I went on camping trips as a way to get to know each other when we first started working together. The other Vizards would also join us as well.”

Toushiro rolled his eyes. “It still amazes me how he can circumvent rules to do it.” It was an offhand comment, nothing out of the ordinary for the young captain. However, at that moment it deeply grated at her nerves, and it struck raw.

Momo snapped a branch in her hand. “Hirako-taicho completes his work as necessary. He also doesn’t cross the line—unlike you Hitsugaya-taicho.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about, Hinamori?”

“You pulled rank and took me off the Hell expedition,” she said curtly, yanking out the matchstick box from her pocket and snapping the match strong against the box.

There was a pause where Momo could only hear the friction of the match. “You’re not ready,” Toushiro said carefully, as if he were approaching a skittish creature. “There are far too many unknowns, and the risk is too great.”

“You had no business deciding to do so.” The match didn’t catch, and Momo cursed under her breath as she flicked it to the ground. She pulled another one out and began again.

“Other lieutenants were pulled off as well, it came down to essential personnel only.”

“No, Hitsugaya-taicho, you are a captain of the Tenth Division and were overstepping your bounds. Kuchiki-san had requested me on that mission for my skills and you decided to pull me off.”

The match ignited brightly in her hands. Momo dropped it into the pile of wood where it immediately spurred into large flames. She looked up to see the fire reflecting in his turquoise eyes, resolute.

“If I had to do it again, I would,” he said solemnly, holding his ground across the fire from her.

“Well that’s the difference between us, Hitsugaya-taicho—I would be honest with someone if I didn’t think they were good enough.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he sighed.

Momo straightened her shoulders back and stared firmly back at him through the flames. “I am a lieutenant of the Fifth Division, I have earned my way to serve the Gotei 13—whether you like it or not.”  

--

Dinner was a quiet tense affair with the two of them eating their packed meals quite far and separated from each other. Momo had already started to feel awful from such negative feelings, but on principle she held her ground, quickly scarfing down her onigiri.

They had changed in silence to their sleeping clothes, each taking turns to watch shift before tucking into their respective sleeping bags across the fire pit. In the absence of a “good night,” Momo felt remorse, and found herself consciously holding back from asking if Toushiro was awake.

When they were younger, they’d climb up onto the thatched roofs to stargaze during the night. The hay would itch at bare skin and it would always take the two of them a while to get settled, but when they had found their spots, it was like the world quieted again and they lost themselves in counting the constellations. Sometimes she would speak and Toushiro would respond, in either one sentence responses or noises of affirmation—but always honest. And when it became too quiet to speak, the two would just lie in silence. It was those peaceful moments that would ground Momo whenever she was away studying in the academy; where it felt like possibilities were endless, but home was right behind her, keeping her grounded and safe.

But that felt like a different lifetime with too much death in between to tie them to the same life.

A loud rustle startled Momo from her stupor.

She pushed herself up off the ground. “Did you hear that?”

There was another sound, a creak.

“Hitsugaya-kun,” Momo called out, a twinge of fear creeping into her voice.

“I’m trying to sleep,” he groused.

She persisted, sitting up and listening carefully. The fire crackled and hissed, and Momo strained to hear through the crackle of the fire. Internally she felt at lost without being able to detect the rieatsu of whatever was out there.

“Hinamori, you’re imagining things—go to sleep.”

“I am not,” she hissed, with a little more bite than intended. She was still bitter about their squabble. “I know there’s something out there.” She turned to her backpack, fumbling around in the dark as she searched for the flashlight. “Did you read the information pack that Hisagi-san had sent? Apparently, this used to be a habitat for bears.”

“Yes, and I read the amended version Ise-fuukutaicho sent—the local bear population has become endangered. The only thing we’re in danger of is losing our sleep,” he grumbled.

“I forgot how grumpy you get when you don’t get your sleep,” Momo murmured.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

A rustle was heard and Toushiro shot up, his eyes much alert. “I think there’s something approaching.”

Momo fought the urge to roll her eyes as she fished out the flashlight. “That’s what I was saying.”

A twig broke and immediately Toushiro slipped a gikon pill in, his human body falling back onto the sleeping bag.

“I’m not going to use Hyourinmaru—the weather changes will alert the humans nearby.”

Momo rustled through her duffle bag, pulling things out rapidly. “I can’t find my gikon pills—I must have left them at the training site.”

Toushiro stepped in front of her sleeping bag, his stance defensive as he mimicked Momo’s earlier pose from the training session. “I’ll handle it. I’ll use the kido weaving to stop whatever it is in its tracks.”

That got Momo to pause. “Wait, Hitsugaya-kun—I’m not sure if you’re ready.”

He started to chant, slow and steady as the noise picked up. Momo could only focus on her heart racing that she almost missed the slip of incantation: Toushiro had skipped a line—a very crucial line.

“Hitsugaya-kun—you forgot—”

The threads burned amber, casting a bright glow against the surrounding boundary of trees before they began to constrict against themselves. The woven net grew and expanded, closing in around the two of them instead of pushing outward. Toushiro realizing his error, quickly turned around and crouched over Momo as the net imploded into great sparks, rivaling a fireworks show.

The rustling noise got louder and two of them could only look up as the bush rumbled and rustled—before a bunny slipped out. It stared comically at the two of them, cocking its head to the side before hoping through the campgrounds as the two childhood friends watched.

A bubble of laughter escaped from Momo’s mouth which earned her an exasperated look from her friend above her. Toushiro’s hair was mussed with grey soot streaking the spiky edges; he looked like the human confection of a burnt marshmallow—which made Momo laugh even harder.

“This isn’t funny,” he grumbled, swiping away at his face with soot coming off.

“It kind of is,” she continued to laugh. “I’m sure when you get back into your gigai, it’ll go away.”

Whatever previous tension that was there before, disappeared and now there was a lightness as the two young shinigami cleaned up the area. The campfire that had been blazing strong before had calmed down to a dying ember, its small spark still burning bright against the night.

Momo cleared her throat, sheepishly looking down. “Would you mind if we pull these closer?” she gestured towards the distanced sleeping bags.

Toushiro shook his head. “No, not at all.”

After rearranging the bags, the two settled in quietly, lying on their backs and looking up at the stars. Momo sighed in content, feeling a lot more at peace than before but still wanted to clear the air about one more thing.

“Hitsugaya-kun,” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you today.”

There was a long pause and she had wondered if he had heard her. “I deserved it. I apologize for not being transparent with you.”

Momo raised an eyebrow. “The great Hitsugaya-taicho is apologizing to me?”

“Oh, shut it.” Even though it was dark, she could hear the eyeroll in his voice. “And I’ve done it before,” he added softly.

“I know.” Momo remembered it well, especially after the Winter War. “But those for things that were out of your control. This is for something you deliberately did.”

The young girl heard him sigh deeply. “It’s something I’m working on,” he conceded.

“Rangiku-san put you up to it?”

“Something like that…” he drifted off.

“Well…” Momo tucked the blanket around her tighter her shoulders. “Thank you.”

When he didn’t say anything back, she continued on, speaking softly. “You need to trust me—I understand you’re worried, but you can’t go around making decisions on my behalf without talking to me.” She turned onto her side and faced him. “I can take care of myself, Hitsugaya-kun.”

He sighed. “I know you can—I don’t doubt it at all.”

“Then what makes this different?” Momo whispered.

Toushiro was silent for a while before turning to her. “It’s what we don’t know—everything we’ve been taught feels…upended.” He grimaced & even in the dark she could see the storm brewing in his eyes. “Ukitake-taicho, the Soutaicho…they’re all there now. It feels like the rules have changed and things are out of control.”

Momo smiled sympathetically before reaching a hand across, and gently placing it on his shoulder. “I know. I’m scared too. I’m scared for everyone at the Fifth, for Hirako-taicho, Rangiku-san.” She paused and stared into his eyes. “I’m also scared for you.”

His eyes widened slowly. “Hinamori…”

“But I won’t let that stop me from wanting to protect everyone—to protect you.” She squeezed his shoulder. “That’s why I became a shinigami, right?”

Momo could sense his inner storm abating and smiled in relief. “So—trust me, okay? Like I trust you to stay safe.”

He sighed deeply and stared back at her. “Okay—I will try.”

She chuckled quietly. “That’s all I ask.”

Momo let her hand fall in the space between them. “Now let’s go to sleep. We still have to finish training tomorrow. I can’t send you back not knowing how to do one combination spell.”

“This will definitely be an experience I will never forget,” he said softly.

She smiled, her eyes already closing shut. “Good night, Hitsugaya-kun.”

Sometime during the night, Momo felt her hand being pulled, and held tight. That even if they drifted in dreams under the stars, she was grounded and safe, held tight to home.

---

Authour's Note: Again, this happens late at night because I am a sucker for late night conversations. I had a lot of fun trying to write Momo's teaching methods for the kido (as if I know anything lol) I also just love that something doesn't go splendidly well for Toushiro (though I wish there were more people to witness it hahahaha)

Until next time everyone :)

[tatsuo-k]

Out of the Friendzone

a/n: I'm so in love with Levi and I wanted to write smth really cheesy bc I'm a silly hopeless romantic

pairing: leviathan x gn!reader

summary: best friends to lovers trope but when Levi tells you how he feels, he messes up his words and panics

---

Levi was clingy with you, it was obvious. What was more obvious though, was his continuously growing feelings for you and he was getting anxious about it.

He's never been in a relationship before, he's had crushes, some were serious crushes but he never tried to pursue them because of his crippling self-esteem and anxiety. He was too anxious to even try and make a move with you but he had all these little cheesy fantasies he wanted to be real.

He's had so many opportunities to tell you three simple words, 'I love you'. So many opportunities where the two of you would be having a heart felt moment and the urge to just spurt out the words yet he never had the confidence to do it. He would always back out last minute or someone would interrupt and take you away.

His fear of you rejecting him or even having a bad reaction to him telling you these things, will be something that will always haunt him. What if you reject him? He won't he able to get over it and avoid you like you're the plague. What if you get disgusted with him when he tells you?

"You're my best friend, don't you ever deny that!"

"I would never, Levi. You're my best friend too!" Ah, the friendzone. He's worried, what if things don't go well when he finally confesses his feelings to you? He's going to lose his Henry, his best friend. The frienzone was a safe place to be in but he desperately wanted more than just a friendship.

The two of you were binge watching another anime that had caught his interest. Blanket wrapped around both of your shoulders, snacks and drinks piled on his bed as the two were both hooked on to the screen like ipad kids. Frequent comments and shocked or excited gasps filled up the room as episodes rolled by.

"Can you pass me the water bottle?"

"Ugh, I guess." He loved the little playful banter he has with you. What's even better is that he knew that you were joking and not straight up insulting him! He handed the bottle to you, almost flinching away when he felt your hand skim over his.

Man, he's cuddled with you before, why was he acting like this.

Who is he kidding, he gets incredibly nervous and shy when you guys cuddle.

He stared at your unoccupied which was placed on his bedsheets. He switched his gaze from the anime to his hand, could he hold your hand? His hand shook as they edged closer to yours. Does he have the confidence to do this?

He didn't, he left his hands next to yours, a blush quickly creeping on to his pale skin. You noticed his hand next to yours. A small smile appeared on your face before you linked you pinky with his. You could practically feel the heat coming off him now. His face felt like it was burning, his heart was surely going to pop out of his chest soon. The anime being the only noise in the room, the two sat with a smile on their face, not daring to look at each other in case eye contact was made.

He was hyping himself up inside his head, trying to get the courage to actually hold your hand. As much as holding pinkies made him ecstatic, he wanted to do the real thing. He's got this, he can do this. You initiated the pinky holding, that surely means that you want to hold his hand right? Right??

He took in a deep breath and unlinked his pinky from yours, sliding his hand underneath your to hold it properly. Not intertwined like he wanted to, but holding your hand like this was good enough.

Is it getting hot in here or was it just him?? He can feel himself getting sweaty, he wanted to take off his jacket but this was such a precious moment. Wait, can you feel his hand getting sweaty? Oh no, what if you think that's gross?!?

As if you could read his mind, you squeezed his hand, a squeeze that broke his panic of thoughts. He gave a weak squeeze back, feeling his panic quickly diappearing.

Oh man, he really needs to tell you soon. He can't keep these feelings to himself much longer.

A couple of days went by, nothing much had changed apart from the two of you, ever so slowly, becoming more physically intimate. Hand were intertwined, pinky fingers were held by another, hugs lingered a little longer, cuddles were a little tighter, small touches here and there became more frequent.

The avatar of envy was in his room, rehearsing how he would tell you his feelings. He looked at the mirror, trying different phrases and poses he's seen in anime. He sat in front of Henry 2.0 and tried saying different things to express his emotions to you, hoping the goldfish would tell him whether or not it was good or a no go of a confession. All of the mental preparation in the past couple of days, hours of rehearsing, he feels a spike of confidence and he wanted to take advantage of it before it disappears.

He texted you to come into his room, he was really going to do it. You knocked on his door, saying the secret password before he let you in. You shut the door behind yourself before making yourself comfortable in his bed. He took a couple of deep breaths, feeling his anxiety starting to kick in. He's gonna do it tonight or else he'll be upset with himself for the next several days.

"How come you asked me to--"

"I want to stop being friends."

"... What?" Oh no why did he say that, he wasn't supposed to say that. He said it with such confidence which made it worse. All that rehearsing for him just to say THAT??? Not even an impulsive 'I love you' or a 'I really like you', he said THAT instead? "Did... Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry if I did, Levi."

"No no no, w-wait, that's n-not what I was supposed to say! L-Let me try that again!" He was trying to stutter his way back to what he was supposed to say. He's only making things worse for himself and you were confused with what was happening. The silence got incredibly awkward, enough for someone to feel it when they walk in the room and immediately leave because of it.

"Take your time Levi, it's okay." You softly said to him, hoping that it would calm him down before he has a full blown meltdown. He felt so pathetic, even at a time like this, you were being so patient and kind to him. You really do deserve better.

He grabbed your shoulders, staring at you dead in the eyes with determination. A wide blush on his face, he took in another deep breath.

"I-I was supposed to say that I-I love you, MC! A-And I'm scared of getting into a r-relationship with you because I've n-never been in one before! What if I mess up?!" He pushed through his stutter but he felt so out of breath. His heart pounding, fast and hot in anticipation for whatever you might say next. His hands still on your shoulders, he moved his gaze down, too scared to loom at your reaction.

"Levi-"

"I-I really want to try for y-you though! I want to become s-someone you can proudly call your b-boyfriend!"

"Levi, let me--"

"If you don't f-feel the same back t-then that's okay too! I want to keep being best friends with you-- AH!" You cupped his face and made him look at you. He wasn't expecting your face so be so close to his.

"Let me talk!" You huffed, finally being able to stop his rant before it went into him insulting himself. "I feel the same way, Levi. I've always had. I don't care if this will be your first relationship or not, I want to be with you. I want to call you my boyfriend, I've been wanting to tell you for so long, I always just missed my chance to do so." Oh no, is he crying? He felt so much lighter now, feeling so much weight come off his shoulders, a wave of relief and joy washing over him. So many emotions all at once. "We can figure things out along the way, okay? If you feel like you're messing things up, we can talk about it." And with that, you pressed your lips against his.

Oh boy, not only did you feel the same way back, you're kissing him! He felt like he just went back to the celestial realm, this was heaven. Adrenaline was still pumping through him, making him shake. You pulled back, feeling a tad bit embarrassed yourself.

It was silent. Not an uncomfortable or a tense one. It was strangely comfortable and comforting.

Letting his impulsiveness take over him, he wrapped his arms around you, holding you tightly. He swore you could feel how hard his heart was beating. You wrapped your arms around him, sitting there in a peaceful silence.

"Thank you for giving me a chance, you really are the best anyone could ask for. I don't have to feel overly jealous seeing you hang out with other people now, knowing that you love me. I really do love you, MC."