#and listened to his frustrations about wanting to take the show's concept new places but being unsure if the audience wants to see it
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just checked on scott's website and he's doing three buddy cole shows in LA this week!! and next week bruce, scott, and kevin are going to be at san francisco sketchfest with "the music of kids in the hall"!
neither of these are technically part of scott's 2025 tour (that won't be until spring) and as a result i'm not involved in these shows and i know next to nothing about them (i literally only found out about the buddy cole shows from instagram, and not even my own instagram since i'm still not back on the app. i found out about it from my dad showing me on his instagram. thanks dad.) but i'm very intrigued by the concepts and excited to learn more!! unfortunately it doesn't look like there's a livestream option for either show but definitely check them out if you're in the area!
#haven't heard from scott this month which definitely makes me miss him but it's also understandable#tho i'm definitely texting him once the shows are done to ask how they went#especially bc i'm SO intrigued by ''the last gloryhole'' bc unlike ''KING'' which was already mostly written by the time our paths crossed#(like with any standup-ish tour the material gets revised during the tour but most of the show was already written before me)#i've read at least 5 different drafts of ''the last gloryhole'' with like 3 different show names lmao#and helped scott rehearse it several times#and listened to his frustrations about wanting to take the show's concept new places but being unsure if the audience wants to see it#(if you look at the eventbrite description it mentions it features buddy realizing he's a fictional character and that's what that's about)#so i'm SO curious how he ultimately decided to bring in the buddy/scott dichotomy that he was interested in#obviously i'll know when i see the show like 20 times on tour but i wanna know now lmao#as for the music of kids in the hall apparently even bellini has no idea what the hell that means (or at least he didn't last time we spoke#so it's a total mystery. i will say iirc last sketchfest they had digital tickets available#so maybe the livestream will be announced the day of the show
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I know I’m a rando so apologies if this is over familiar but your work situation sounds a lot like what my friend was going through in grad school. She had been doing really well the first year, then the second year her advisor suddenly started finding all sorts of “fundamental issues” with her research project. He discouraged her from applying for grants and said her submissions were too poor to even consider. All sorts of really harsh criticisms that often contradicted each other and were hard to follow. She felt like she was going crazy. Then she learned he found a different student that he would basically be able to pay much less to do all his lab work for him, and he was clearly trying to force her out to make room for the newer cheaper student. Trust your gut, I don’t think this situation is your fault at all. Something fishy is happening with your company for sure. I’m sorry for all this trouble.
Yikes that's harsh.
Part of the reason that my crits have been so numerous and harsh is that this year I was expected to learn something new. And I understand it in concept, but I have been making mistakes that are typical of new learners. But because there was no SAFE place to make those mistakes, the pressure is on to do them correct the first time and every time.
Like with groups, right?
My first groups job I was doing really well, I thought. Up until we got to the football team, which was 45 minutes late to the location. And they lined them up by number even though we asked for tallest to shortest. And the coach said he wanted to do them by number. So I did them by number. When we got to the end of it, he saw how terrible it was to do them by number and we had to redo it by height. At this point, they're frustrated with me for not doing it right the first time. I am frustrated with them for not listening the first time and also being 45 minutes late. The tennis team was waiting for me on the other side of the school, so I did my best. I showed the photo to the coach before leaving. Boss didn't like what I made for the football team and had to go back and do it again because I fucked up. I told her all of this and she said that I should have accommodated them because they're the football team and they have to have the best, even if that means waiting 45 minutes for them to arrive and making the tennis team wait 45 minutes.
My second groups job was a middle school that was asking me to do the team photo AND in between teams do candids for the yearbook. The kids were not behaving well and did not seem interested in taking a good photo, so I did my best even though the kids were fighting. Unfortunately, I made the completely reasonable mistake of leaving my aperature on too low between tasks and they ended up a little bit out of focus- which was not apparent in the camera but WAS apparent on the computer screen. This is a mistake that other people have made. I showed each photo to the coach before letting them go.
My third groups job was a class groups job, which all I had to do was follow the guide given to me. Which I did, up until about the 4th grade classes, which had their special classes going on at that time. Because of this, the number the teacher gave me was incorrect and I had to add students to rows in ways that did not reflect the guide because the other option was to disassemble the class group and reassemble it so that it reflected the guide. Teachers were rushing me to hurry up, so I made executive decisions. This was unfortunately the wrong decision. I also posed them in a way that was consistent with what my boss wanted, but not what the district specialist wanted.
On my fourth groups job, I was told all of the mistakes I had made in the previous jobs and that I need to take consideration all of the details and guides that were there for me to use because my previous jobs required her to go back and do them again, so I had better not make the same mistakes (all of which were different mistakes each time). I am upset. So to make it easier on myself, I asked the coaches if they had a specific way they would like to have them posed. The coaches, delighted that I asked, gave me their feedback on previous years and what they would like to change. And I, delighted that they had preferences, obliged. I showed the photo to the coach before leaving. My boss said I did well! She was very pleased with my work. The district specialist was not! He said that I needed to follow the guide because the numbers were incorrect and that I needed to follow the numbers. He tapes a guide to the back of my slate to use. I ask my boss if she could help me next time.
On my fifth groups job, I am disheartened by the amount of criticism I've gotten but I am determined to get it right this time. My boss is present. I am placing the students with the order given to me by the specialist. I walk away to double check. She tells me that its wrong- that I shouldn't have 9 people in front. I tell her that I was using the guide. She shows me her guide. The guides are different from each other. I ask her which guide I'm supposed to use and she says 'whichever one is correct.' I ask her how I'm supposed to know which one is correct and she tells me the theory of how the placement is supposed to go instead of giving me an answer. I get a little shirty. She tells me that this is my 5th job like this, I should know how to do this by now. I start crying. She goes away for the rest of the day to do admin stuff and I handle the rest of the day fine.
My critique says that I am unable to adapt to change and I am inflexible, struggles to take criticism well or think under pressure.
So I'm expected to do well because its my third year. But I have two different supervisors who don't agree on what 'doing well' is and my progress is not seen as progress so much as 'another mistake.' If my mistakes were consistent, then that would be indicative of refusal to take criticism. But because the mistakes are different every time, that's not the case. I WANT to learn. But I would like everyone to be on the same page about what they want from me.
And when I pointed this out, I was told I was being confrontational.
So I am feeling the rage right now.
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Yandere Gamer Boyfriend Headcanons
GN!Reader x Male Yandere!OC
Warnings: Yandere, possessive behaviors, manipulation, mentioned cyberbullying, stalking, A LOT OF FLUFF
Note: It's essential to remember that the concept of a "Yandere" character is based on unhealthy and toxic behavior. These headcanons are meant to explore a fictional scenario and should not be considered as a healthy or ideal relationship dynamic in any way. Ngl, I felt a bit lonely playing video games and then this OC came up xD
Your Yandere Gamer Boyfriend is extremely possessive and protective of you
He becomes intensely jealous and paranoid whenever you spend time with other people, especially if they're male
Gaming is a major part of his life, and he expects you to share that passion
When he perceives a threat to your relationship, he's willing to go to extreme lengths to eliminate it. This can range from cyberbullying and hacking your rivals' accounts to more dangerous actions like stalking or even physical harm
"I'll always be here to protect you, my darling. No one else can have you but me."
Your boyfriend is more comfortable expressing his love and affection online rather than in person. He might shower you with extravagant gifts in games or write lengthy love letters through text messages and social media
Your boyfriend is not exactly a romantic kind of guy
However, he knows exactly what you like and love
One day, you come home, and the entire room is covered in red hearts. There's also a giant bouquet of roses waiting for you. Your boyfriend had prepared a romantic dinner for two, complete with your favorite dessert. His goal was to show you how important you are to him, and he did just that
He closely monitors your every move, both online and offline. He keeps track of your social media activities, checks your messages, and might even install tracking apps on your phone. He wants to know everything you do and everyone you interact with, just to ensure that you're not betraying him
He loves to keep you under his desk and pets you while his game loads
He often plays video games, but he'll stop and set aside his controller whenever you want to spend time with him
He's the kind of boyfriend who constantly talks to himself out loud as he plays games. You find it endearing, and it makes you feel closer to him
Your Yandere Gamer Boyfriend is incredibly passionate about gaming setups and technology. He spends hours researching and planning the perfect gaming setup for himself and you
Whenever your boyfriend loses a game, he gets so frustrated that he can't focus on anything else. That's when you come in. You sit beside him, gently placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a comforting smile. His anger slowly melts away, replaced with a sense of peace and calm. And, of course, you're ready to play the next round with him
"No matter how many games I lose, I'll always have you. And that's a victory in my book."
Whenever you have a bad day, he'll drop everything he's doing to come over and comfort you. He'll listen to you vent, make you some hot chocolate
He'll often tell you about game lore and theories that he's read online or heard from his gaming buddies. You don't mind because you love the sound of his voice and the way he gets excited when he explains things
Even though he can be a bit needy and demanding at times, he's always supportive of your hobbies and interests. He'll even try out new things just so you can spend time together
"Sometimes I can get a bit carried away with my video games, but you always remind me of what's really important in life. Thank you for being there for me."
Your boyfriend loves to tease you, often in the form of playful insults. But you know that it's just his way of showing his affection. One day, he takes it too far, making you feel insecure about yourself. You tell him how much his words hurt you, and he immediately realizes his mistake. He takes you in his arms, kisses your forehead, and says, "I never meant to hurt you. You deserve the best in life, and I'll make sure you always feel that way."
#yandere#yandere oc x reader#yandere oc x you#yandere x you#yandere headcanons#yandere oc#yandere oc x y/n#yandere oneshot#obsessive love#obsessive yandere#yandere fantasy#yandere fanfiction#fanfic#x you#yandere x female reader#x female reader#x fem!reader#x female y/n#male x reader#oc x reader#yandere male#headcanons#x yn#x y/n#x you fluff#gamer#oc#fanfiction#creative writing
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💭 Thoughts on Seven - song and MV
Are you looking for someone to react to this with you? Are you wanting to hear someone else’s thoughts so you can organize your own? Here you go! This is gonna be a long one but I have thoughts to share! I’ve broken them down into categories…
The Song
Lo and behold, the horny anons were (a little bit) right! This song is definitely about sex! Lol.
I’m gonna need a few more listens to really solidify my opinion, but first few listen throughs and… I like it! It’s fast, its a little chaotic, but it’s still so melodic and pleasing to listen to, courtesy of Jung Kook’s impeccable vocals, as usual. It’s a lot more explicit than I was expecting, lmao, but we’ve been saying for a while that he’s a grown ass man. No serious person was out here thinking he doesn’t fuck. Is the song somewhat aspirational for him with the “every minute every hour” thing, considering he spends at least 2 hours at a time in the middle of the night making noodles with ARMY? Perhaps. But hey, most of us alosexuals can only dream of getting lucky seven days a week, so I don’t blame him for manifesting that energy. Also, he didn’t write it. So there’s that.
Concept & Video
My condolences to the horny anons for the lack of steamy, sexy scenes in the video (the scenes that the rest of us knew wouldn’t be there, and let’s be real Jung Kook singing about fucking somebody right is already probably the most his fans can take at any one time lmao. I’m sure there were ladies fainting at his GMA performance like they were front row watching Elvis swivel his hips in 1956).
I liked the video! It was fun, and unexpectedly funny; JK playing the part of a boyfriend so obsessed with his toxic relationship that he keeps chasing his poor woman down even after every breakup (and murder?) attempt, through these surreal settings that just show how chaotic and unstable their relationship is. Han So Hee was gorgeous and did a good job despite her character pretty much having the same reaction/feeling in every scene but the last. Jung Kook, as so many pointed out, did a pretty terrible job looking angry or frustrated at any point 🤣 but that wasn’t really the point — the point is his obsession with his partner and willingness to jump off of a literal gurney and right back into the same situation that put him there in the first place.
Which brings me to my one gripe about the concept of the video which is that…. It doesn’t really match the lyrics? It’s not like that’s unusual in the world of MVs and I don’t think videos always have to be a play by play of the song, but it does feel like an excellent execution of a concept that would have fit better with a song about obsessive love, being unable to stop falling into the same toxic patterns, etc. Instead the song is pretty purely about sex and romance. To be honest, a few scenes of them falling into bed together would probably have made a bit more sense, honestly, if that’s supposed to be the reason he can’t stay away from this woman who seems to want almost nothing to do with him, lol.
Overall the video was visually satisfying and interesting, and this moment actually made me laugh out loud, boy was in his goofy element for a moment:
Latto
I’ll start by saying I was very excited when I realized that she would be featuring. I know some people had complaints, others didn’t know who she was, but I very much do know who she is and love her sound, so I was jazzed. My one concern was that… Latto lovers don’t be mad, but in my opinion she doesn’t have a lot of on-screen charisma.
I think it’s because she’s still relatively new. She’s beautiful, but I’m not sure she knows what to do with it yet other than sensually touch herself and minutely dance. It’s reminiscent of Dua Lipa in the early days when she wasn’t really great at dancing but was thrust up in the spotlight surrounded by backup dancers (who lest we forget have typically been training in dance nearly all their lives). For Latto, if she has no interest in dancing, that’s totally fine. I don’t think she HAS to do it or be good at it, but then in that case, I would expect a bit more expressiveness in her face and actions. And maybe you totally disagree with me — feel free to watch the Big Energy video and decide for yourself. To me though, she doesn’t bring enough energy (lol). Basically the opposite of Jung Kook in the GMA performance (which he fucking owned 😩 the 90s boy band vibes, the way he held his own and actually drew my attention the entire time despite the immense talent of his backup dancers. Holy shit that boy is a star.)
And my initial excitement and concern about Latto pretty much held up. Her rap was good, a fun add to the song, and I think she nailed the energy and the rhythm and the vibe (seriously when will male rappers catch up? Women are the only ones I want featuring on pop songs from now on. They’re the only ones who understand how to stay on topic). That being said her feature in the video was… just okay? The funeral scene was one of the better ones because of the above moment I mentioned, so that saved it, but I wish she’d given a little more than just like…touches to her boobs, you know? But to be fair, that was in keeping with the song’s theme.
Overall it’s a job well done for her. I was bummed she couldn’t join him at GMA but baby rapper JK came out of hiding and did a few of her lines, which was fun. He did quite intentionally change out the pronoun from “him” to “her” which brings me to…
Does this song mean he’s announcing he’s straight?!
I feel like I’m going to get a lot of anons about this… or maybe not since their wild predictions of pornographic make out scenes didn’t happen, after all… but I feel like there will be a lot of people calling this his definitive “coming out” as a pussy-loving straight dude. And to that I say…
Maybe? Here are my thoughts on this in no particular order:
We always say to listen to the guys. I didn’t disregard it when he and Jimin chose not to change the pronouns in their cover of “We Don’t Talk Anymore” and I won’t disregard the fact that he did change them in his performance here. For whatever reason, he wanted this song and this performance to be about a woman.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but him making this single about a woman doesn’t necessarily mean he did it out of an obligatory need to appear straight in order to appease his oppressive government. Maybe he just wanted to make it about a woman. And just in case you forgot…
Liking, being interested in, and/or being sexually attracted to women doesn’t automatically make a man heterosexual. Jimin has been giving off flirty vibes to men AND women his entire career, and he still melts over Jung Kook like a bomb pop on the Fourth of July. You can be a man and like women and also like men and those things can coexist and there’s a word for that. It’s called being bisexual. Hi 👋 there’s lots of us out here, even though we tend to get drowned out and ignored, especially if and when we pursue relationships with the opposite sex. Let’s not do that so much anymore, yeah?
I’ve brought it up before and I’ll continue to; he was in Charlie Puth’s video as a very obvious love interest. Now he has a woman in his video as a love interest. Neither one cancels out the other. Neither one is a definitive confirmation of his sexuality.
Also like… maybe it is that he’s just closeted and doesn’t feel ready to share his sexuality and so he’s going with heteronormativity because it’s easy and less questions will be asked. Idk. It’s not really my business to know.
Regardless, all the holding-hands-with-an-actress-in-a-music video moments in the world can’t cancel out this:
He supported Jimin in all these ways with all this undeniable lovey-dovey energy all this time. I don’t think his feelings for that man have changed one iota, whether it’s a really tight friendship (with… ahem, undertones of longing and desire) or a bona fide relationship. Either way, I think they’re enjoying it. And I hope they have fun exploring New York together.
Oh and I know he didn’t write it but… you gotta appreciate the continuity of “give me a good ride” and “it’s the way that you can ride” 🤭🤭🤭🤭
OKAY I think that’s all my thoughts for now. What are YOUR thoughts??? Please share them. Please share them respectfully, whether you comment or message or send an ask. I’m all ears 😁
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3 stars
Sadly, I didn't love this as much as I loved A.M. Strickland's In The Ravenous Dark.
I think this is mostly a fine book however I felt it really average at best and didn't really give me any depth that I would have liked on the multiple different things it had. It had a interesting concept like training novices in vampire abilities and slowly, slowly turning them to be more vampire and gaining approval to become a vampire by the vampire courts. It was like a vampire school which was a cool backdrop.
We don't really get any good worldbuilding here. There's a few mentions of how this is set in our world here with a sentence here or there talking about these are Nordic lands, we were fighters once, which okay but it felt odd to throw in there a couple hundred pages later and not have it mean much of anything??? Where did the vampires come from?? How did they take over? There's other areas where the Courts have influence in different ways other than Fin's experience living in the Red Court's land. Like science and governing. How's that work? Once we're very near the end, we suddenly get more new information on Founders and suddenly, this Nameless Queen in the last 30 pages or so. Why would you introduce a huge plot thing in the last handful of pages? We're also thrown a new term that hasn't ever showed up in the entire book in the last 10 pages? There's also some mentions of actual children being groomed to become vampires that's never explored.
Fin was a frustrating character for me because she thinks she's so clever and instead she gets one thought and clamps down on it and refuses to actually think or listen or use reason. She just bounces around suspects and during one moment when she confronts said suspect it becomes so embarrassing. I don't really understand her either. I understand she hates vampires but like... why?? Is the practice of enthrallment awful? Yes. Taking a handful 17-19 year old every year terrible? Sure. But it DOES give people who don't have opportunities in life to HAVE new opportunities. She was treated HORRIBLY by humans especially and she's like I don't hate them. But vampires actually treat her sometimes better and she's like I'M GONNA KILL THEM.
The romance was there but personally I didn't quite feel like it was done well. Gavron was kind of bland mostly, and naturally even though he's being enthralled to do things, it's still his hand. There should be some weight there, not of blame but just hurt. Especially since it seems it's fully Gavron's idea to place Fin as a thrall, which is the biggest fear of hers AND keep her with his blood so no one touches her. Which was hard to follow, another concept completely brought up once. And then they were equals or something. There's no talk really of the power dynamic between Gavron and Fin either.
I will say I loved the acceptance of queerness and non-binary. I think some of the powers are cool, and the side characters were interesting although we don't get much. The complicated relationship between Fin and her mother could have been interesting but it wasnt really focused on. To be honest, there's really not much character growth to the characters at all? The end is a giant clusterfuck of new characters, new enemy, and like... what's going to happen later. I really didn't follow much of the ending about the Council, blood they drank, alliances of Courts, and what's to be done for the Black Court. We do get this half-hearted "we'll look out for humans and police the vampires" vibe at the end, but there's nothing concrete or set in stone. It's just "Oh things will be better" with no evidence.
If you want a YA vampire fantasy, I personally wouldn't recommend but I realize it wasn't bad just not my jam.
#court of the undying seasons#a.m. strickland#steph reads#steph's book review#book review#2023 reads
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There was a fine line between confidence and having an ego. Wonyoung knew she vacillated between both concepts. Sometimes, she was this woman who carried herself with self-assurance and a strong sense of self identity. Yet many times, the idol maintained a much stronger ego. She wasn't sure where it came from, though she speculated that the industry she was in and the many comments she had read and heard about herself did play a huge part in it. Combined with her recklessness that came with her young age, the brunette was certain it was a recipe for disaster. This only amplified when she was around him — as if he was the main trigger who could bring out the worst side of herself. "I don't know, take a guess, smart ass" she sighed, channeling her frustration through her voice. Mingi wasn't wrong. She did enjoy listening to herself as much as she did watching herself — the egocentric side of the business swallowing her up so easily. Unfortunately, she was a victim of it and she wasn't sure she could ever get out of this vicious cycle, the same way she couldn't escape her ex and his provoking words. "What about it? You got a problem with it, Mingi?" This comment of his wasn't new to her. In fact, she had heard it constantly, especially around their breakup. The way she would express how disgusted she was by his action and how stupid he must be for cheating on someone like herself.
Cheating was one of the mistakes she had always sworn herself not to forgive. Yet, the first time Wonyoung had bumped into the other idol since their breakup, backstage of a music show, she found herself hazarding a few glances in his direction. Her mind telling her to stay away while her heart was desperate to have any sort of interaction with him, even if it was their signature argument. She could not explain what he did to her or why she felt that way but even months after, she couldn't seem to stay away for too long. The sudden thought of them in a secluded place was stupidly appealing. And the more he talked about it, the more she wanted it to happen. Her friends would absolutely kill her for having these thoughts. She could not get too close to someone who made her cry only months ago. Don't be stupid, she thought to herself. But like everything else, any rational thought vanished the moment she laid eyes on him. "You handled the old me. I got better at this now," she grinned though she was unable to hide the faint flush in her cheeks as he offered a wink. At times, she hated how weak she could be for him. And swiftly, thoughts of how she could conceal the effect he had on her formed in her mind. Soon, a mental note was made: wear more pink blush so he can't notice me blushing when he's around. It was a valid thought if it wasn't for the fact that almost all their interactions were never planned. "You looked like a baby with your nose all sunburnt, it was so adorbs!" she commented, amusement lacing her voice. "Maybe that was why I was nice to you, who knows," Wonyoung continued with a shrug of her shoulders before she focused back on the tteokbokki and took another bite of it. The heat from the spicy food crept up on her as she kept eating it, thankful that she had the corn dog to tame it down. "You're the one who keeps touching me, you weirdo!" she mentioned, not even waiting to swallow her food. The brunette was too eager to talk back to him like it was a competition. "You even licked my lips and kissed me like what the fuck?" she continued, completely ignoring his compelling yet childish argument. Now, the corn dog was a serious matter to her. She needed it to finish her tteokbokki without the heat making it impossible to eat it all up. "What happened to 'oh baby you can have anything you want' speech?" she curiously inquired, her words falling deeper as she imitated him. Playfully, she opened her mouth and soon found herself licking every corner of her corn dog painfully slowly, her brown orbs resting on his. Before finally handing it back to him. "Here, eat it now."
Fan service was a serious part of their job. Showing appreciation to the people that supported him and his members was important to the rapper. Giving them an innocent compliment or showing them attention for a few minutes shouldn’t have damaged his relationship with Wonyoung as much as it did. That’s the way he viewed it. Never understanding that his comments and flirtatious expressions could be a form of being unfaithful or appear that way. In an outsiders perspective, Mingi was in the wrong, and he should have fixed it sooner instead of the problem escalating to the point where a rumor caused the downfall of their breakup. No words of his could protect him when he had enough proof to say otherwise. Not realizing that trust had been crushed weeks prior to the rumor surfacing. He still didn’t realize how she couldn’t see the truth, and that despite his inappropriate comments towards the fans that he only had eyes for her. In no moment did he act or think about crossing that line of ruining what they had. But he also knew there was no chance to fix it unless whoever made the rumor would come forward that there was nothing else to the story besides it being completely fabricated. “Do you really?” The words should sting Minig’s chest but they only caused his heart to flutter at the cuteness she showed with one of her infamous eye roll. Though he agreed with her statement, he also copied her eye roll. A small sigh came out before he could realize it. “Sometimes I think you only like hearing the sound of your voice” He said it as if he wasn’t smiling just from listening to her talk.
In no way should this be entertaining for him. But his sanity was always put to rest whenever she was around. Mingi could already hear the groans from his friends once he told them about today’s adventure with his ex girlfriend. The guys would be mentally exhausted from hearing about the series of stories that the rapper had for them. He only meant to step out of the dorm room for a few minutes but he was confident that it had been much longer than that. The subject about what activities the pair could be doing behind closed doors should be prohibited. They shouldn’t even be trying to share food, but here they were. Standing in a place that they had been in before. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I’ve handled you before. Many times.” He glanced at her with a swift wink. It was a relief that it wasn’t a busy street. Otherwise, they’d find themselves in a scandal that would be hard to bounce back from. The sweetness of the corndog still lingered on his tongue the longer he chewed it. Each chew reminding him of their trip to Busan and one of the few times that they had a good day. One that was spent mostly in each other’s arms and making each other smile instead of trying to have this screaming match. Of course, one or two arguments usually slipped through no matter what kind of day they had. His frown appeared faster than he could let out his next words. “That’s when we went to the beach and I got a small sunburn on my face. It was the only time you were nice to me” He mumbled the last part, taking another spoonful of his favorite food. Lost in the moment… well, mostly lost because of her, he once again got carried away. His body taking the lead when his mind should when he began to lick the sugary goodness from her lips and focusing on how soft she felt instead of remembering that they were still around the food vendor. “What?!” He asked innocently. His arm pulling back after she smacked him. “Then stop standing so close to me” He took a couple of steps back, giving them space. Mostly it was to appease her but also because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from pulling her in again. “And stop saying shit that’s making it seem like we’re a couple. Batting your eyes at me and pouting your lips like you just were” He pointed at her, using his whining voice to showcase that he was now bothered. “Give me the corndog. I paid for it and like you said… we’re not dating so give me it.”
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Camila Noceda and Flawed Parenting
A perspective by a flawed person with loving but extremely flawed parents
I’m genuinely baffled at some people’s hostile reaction towards Camila. Like… do any of you have flawless parents that always know the best solution instantly, make no mistakes and never get emotional?
My parents are great. They’re super supportive and I love them very, very much. Overall I think I got very lucky in the parents department.
But god, they are far from flawless. I still live at home, and despite all the good, there’s moments when I can’t take my dad anymore. He’s the kind of dad that stayed up until two am to help me with homework when I was in school, and he does so, so many things to make sure I’m happy. I know that. But despite all of this, I have told my mom in emotional moments before that I’m not sure if I can keep living with him, because for all his good sides, he has a couple of fatal flaws that sometimes make him unbearable.
My mom listens to me and is very open to being educated on certain topics, but she has her flaws, too. She hates when I fight with my dad, and gets so torn up about it that I’ve once apologized to my dad out of fear of her getting into a car crash otherwise. She’s very vocal about certain flaws of mine, and sometimes uses the things she does for me as leverage against me when she gets very emotional.
And both of my parents pay a lot more attention to my brother because he needs it more, because he’s more of a “problem child” while I “seem so capable” even when I’m not.
And guess what? I’m not a perfect child. I make mistakes sometimes, some of them pretty severe. Just like Luz, I’m the kind of person that struggles to communicate certain issues of mine to her parents. I’m stubborn, and when I get emotional, I say very hurtful things sometimes. So do they.
And this has nothing to do with my parents being horrible or abusive. They’re neither of those things.
The takeaway from this should not be that my entire family is made up of terrible people, but that we’re all flawed in our own ways, despite loving each other and trying our best. There’s things about my parents I wish I could change, and there are things about me that my parents wish they could change. And to an extent, that’s perfectly normal.
In our strengths and flaws and frustration with each other, we’re all human.
Specific, spoiler-y Camila and Luz things under the cut since this got very long.
We have no indication that Camila has a pattern of emotionally manipulating Luz. Her “emotional manipulation” as I’ve seen some people put it, is people for some reason thinking that the second you become an adult, you’re suddenly perfect and can no longer make mistakes, lest you’ll be dubbed horrible and abusive.
The whole concept is absurd to me. There is no perfect way to parent. There simply isn’t. Of course, there’s some genuinely abusive patterns that are horrible and inexcusable. But out of the parenting styles that aren’t, which one works depends on a number of factors, one of which absolutely includes that every child is different and has different needs. Camila is an amazing parent for Vee, giving the kid everything she’s ever longed for. She’s not an ideal parent for Luz. And that’s because Luz and Vee have fundamentally different needs.
Likewise, Luz is a pretty great child for Eda, but not a perfect fit for Camila. Luz relates to Eda a lot more than she relates to her mom, and that’s why the two of them have an easier time understanding each other. Both of these mother-child relationships exist, and one is not more doomed to fail than the other, but I think you’ll agree that the better you understand someone and where they’re coming from, the easier it is to communicate, pick up on certain signs, etc.
As mom and daughter, Camila and Luz are both flawed and have issues seeing the other’s perspective because of how different they are. And we should simultaneously acknowledge both of their roles in the issue and give both of them the space to learn and grow past those issues.
Luz struggles to communicate her problems. She doesn’t want to burden people in the demon realm, and it’s a given that this started out as not wanting to burden her mom. So she keeps quiet about her issues. Camila tries hard but can’t read her daughter’s mind, so there’s only so much she can do to understand and help the way Luz needs her to. Hell, Eda, who Luz is a lot more open with than her mom, struggles to help her, because Luz doesn’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t see anyone calling Eda a terrible mom for that.
Camila tries her best, but she struggles to understand her daughter because of this, and because of how fundamentally different they are. She loves Luz’s creativity, we actively see her supporting it in the new episode—she keeps the weird stuff Luz made because she thinks Luz will regret throwing it away, and even plays along in what she assumes to be some elaborate role play because “she’s glad Luz kept her creativity even though it’s not made things easy for her at school”. But at the beginning of the show, said creativity got out of hand and people got hurt. Luz could’ve gotten hurt. So of course Camila had to interfere. I love Luz dearly, but she thought it was okay to bring snakes to school and set off fireworks inside a school building. Creativity is great. Doing reckless stuff that causes people to get hurt is not.
In sending Luz to camp, Camila tried to have someone else fix her issue because she didn’t know how to help Luz. That was a mistake, and a bad one at that, but she’s realizing that. She looks disheartened when Vee tries to throw out Luz’s stuff, because she never meant to change her daughter or take that part of her away. She just thought Luz needed a reality check—which, for the record, is something the narrative actually agrees with.
Luz spends her time in the demon realm getting reality check after reality check, realizing that even her ideal fantasy world where she has everything she always wanted doesn’t mean she’s free of consequences. She goes overboard constantly, causing:
-Eda to be forced to fly into a trap because Luz is chasing a fantasy (Witches before Wizards)
-Eda to almost be branded by her sister because Luz doesn’t think through why Eda doesn’t use magic to publicly announce her presence constantly (Once Upon a Swap)
-Eda and the twins to get kidnapped by a Slitherbeast because Luz stole Amity’s wand (Adventures in the Elements)
-Her friends to get hurt when she goes overboard trying to help Willow (Wing it like Witches)
-Eda to be captured and almost petrified because Luz thought she could just steal from the Emperor with no consequences in an attempt to help (Agony of a Witch)
I’m like 90% sure these aren’t even all. None of those make her a terrible person, for the record, but as all humans are, she is flawed and makes bad choices. She learns from these experiences and matures, just like her mom had hoped she would at camp. She’s also made friends there, which was another thing Camila wanted for her daughter.
You’ll probably realize that a lot of Luz’s behaviors I mentioned follow one of two patterns: 1. Luz’s idealized fantasy world causing problems, when she walks around with rose tinted glasses and gets people in trouble in the process because she hasn’t thought about the consequences, and 2. Luz trying to help someone she loves, but instead making things worse in the progress. The issue with this one is often that she doesn’t communicate her ideas/listen to the people she’s trying to help—like when Willow and Gus said they’ve had enough of Grudgby, or how she never actually talks to Eda about the healing hat idea before doing something reckless.
…does the latter one sound familiar to you at all? No? Because it’s the exact same thing that Camila did.
Some of the things Luz does are reckless and actively endanger others and herself, and that’s something that I think we need to acknowledge before judging Camila. As Luz’s mom, it’s Camila’s job to interfere in those situations. That she made a mistake while trying to protect Luz doesn’t make her a terrible person, especially as, again, the narrative proves her right to an extent.
I’m not saying her making Luz promise to come back and stay isn’t something that hurt Luz—it absolutely is. But it was born out of desperation. She’s emotional and in shock. She’s so full of pain and regret. She just wants her fourteen year old daughter home safe, and there’s nothing abusive or even morally ambiguous about that.
From Luz’s perspective, what she says is absolutely heartbreaking, but from Camila’s, it’s perfectly reasonable. I doubt Camila has the full picture, but even if she does, she’s had a full fifteen seconds to process that her daughter has not only been lying to her for months, but chose to leave her, and is in the demon realm of all places. Of course she’d be emotional and upset about that! Who wouldn’t? Camila isn’t a robot. If she’d been calm about this I’d be way more concerned, honestly.
My parents don’t get mad that easily, but if I would lie to them for weeks on end, they’d be pissed off too, not even taking the running away from home part into account. That’s a normal thing. People don’t like being lied to. Camila is absolutely devastated in that moment because she’s scared that Luz left because she hates her, when Luz actively states that her leaving wasn’t about her mom—which is another thing we should really be acknowledging.
Abusive parents suck and abuse should obviously never be apologized or trivialized, but saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment isn’t the same thing as being an abusive parent. My parents have done this. I’ve done this. And yes, those things can be emotionally manipulative, but there’s a huge difference in whether that’s a habit or a person speaking out of hurt and desperation in a very specific context. I doubt there’s anyone on the entire planet that hasn’t had a bad moment where they’ve said something like this because they were hurting. People lash out when they hurt, and they beg for reassurance when they’re scared. That’s something we all do.
The whole mindset of “all parents have to be perfect and can never get upset or make any mistakes” is harmful as hell, and honestly also very unrealistic. No parent is perfect, and especially people like me who have a relationship with their parents that’s very good overall should know that.
Once you have a child, parenting is a non-stop learning process, every day for the rest of your life. Taking away that room to grow and expecting perfection isn’t helping anyone, especially not struggling single parents.
And I see Camila as someone who is very willing to learn, because at the end of the day, all she wants is for Luz to be happy. Let’s give her some time to wrap her head around this whole situation. Let’s see what she says once she sees for herself how happy Luz is in that world, may it be via the videos eventually coming through or Camila visiting and meeting Luz’s found family, her friends and her girlfriend.
Ultimately, I don’t think Camila will force Luz to stay at home, but we have to give her some time. She wants what’s best for Luz, and she’s gonna need some convincing that a dangerous magical world is what’s best. I feel like that’s very normal considering the circumstances.
Her and Luz need to work on their communication on both ends, they both have things to learn, but I’m certain they’ll manage to fix their relationship in the long run.
If the bunk bed is any indication, I think Vee is gonna stay in the human realm permanently while Luz sleeps at home but keeps attending Hexside in the daytime. That feels like a solution that keeps everyone happy, and allows Luz to spend time with all the people she loves. I can’t see her being forced to choose at the end.
As a closing statement: Eda isn’t an ideal mom, Amity isn’t an ideal friend or girlfriend and neither is Luz, Lilith isn’t an ideal sister… but that’s because no one is ever an ideal anything. Being flawed is a big part of being human. Everyone has different facets to their personality. Their flaws are what makes them such great, relatable, believable characters.
And I feel the same way about Camila. She’s an extremely believable character that reminds me of my own parents, flawed but very loving nonetheless.
(Also honestly, I think it’s pretty telling that some of you guys immediately bash the black single mom that’s obviously trying her hardest while giving the benefit of the doubt to Alador, who has been portrayed as neglecting and threatened his six year old daughter on screen. This was already a thing before we knew much about either of them, and I’m disappointed but unfortunately not very surprised that it still is.)
#the owl house#toh#lumity#luz noceda#Camila noceda#Camila the owl house#toh spoilers#owl house#Camila toh#toh meta#eda clawthorne#luz x amity#eleena rants#noceda family#yesterday’s lie#toh season two#the owl house season two#Vee Noceda#spoilers#owl house spoilers#the owl house spoilers#luz toh#luz the owl house#toh Camila#character flaws#long post#spoilers under cut#Personal
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Well shit. The pet talk has me thinking about turning into a neko because of a curse gone wrong... would you like to write headcanons for the jjk men reacting to their crush befalling that fate? Who'd try to reverse it, who'd want to keep them that way? Who would use the chance to get closer or even turn it into pet play?
ahh to be a neko and be owned by a handsome jjk man.....
warnings: not sfw, afab reader implied, cat/neko hybrid reader, petplay mentions, master/pet dynamics!
♡ —-> below the cut: gojo, nanami, geto, toji, sukuna, mahito <—- ♡
♡ Gojo probably immediately figures out how to reverse it - but the thing is, right away, he doesn’t much want to. You just look so cute with the neko ears resting on your hair, your hands curled like paws, your tail curling around you so cutely. The light purr in the way you speak, the way your eyes keep contracting as you get distracted by a loose thread on his clothes or the light reflecting off his sunglasses.
He’s going to take a lot of pictures of you; partly to make fun of you with later, partly because he just can’t help it. You’re adorable! As part-cat now, too, you’ve gotten a lot less good at hiding your affection. Gojo is suddenly being subjected to you batting your head against him, rubbing your face against his to mark him as yours - and he’s not complaining about it at all.
He will very much use this as an opportunity for petplay. He’s got a bit of a power complex about being the strongest; you being a cute little pet at his knees, all helpless and mewling, is something he didn’t realise he’d want so badly. And you’re so sensitive, when he touches your ears or your tail. He kind of wants to get you a collar, to leave you like this forever - but he’s not going to, because at the heart of it, he’s a good man who wants the best for you.
It won’t stop him bringing this up all of the time afterwards, showing you the pictures, and buying you a cute tail and ear set to wear for him when the two of you are spending some alone time together, though.
“Aww, kitty - that’s right, smile for the camera - say ‘nya~’!”
- ♡ -
♡ Nanami is more concerned than anything else. His first instinct is to protect you, and his second instinct is to be frustrated with himself for not protecting you thoroughly enough. He takes you back to his place before Gojo or anyone can see you, knowing that most of them won’t let you live this down and preparing to organise things himself. When it turns out Shoko can’t have a look at you until the next day, citing the fact that you’re not in any real danger, Nanami resigns himself to having to spend the night with you in this state.
He tries to make you a bed in the spare bedroom but you crawl onto his bed anyway, nesting at the foot of it, curling yourself in covers. When he doesn’t pay attention to you, you sigh, rubbing your head against his leg, as if to say ‘well, go ahead, pet me’ - unfortunately, if you want Nanami to do that, you have to open your mouth and ask. He doesn’t want to take advantage of you.
When you finally do ask him with your words, he presses his lips thinly together but he also knows cats - you’re not going to let him rest until he does it. He finds himself soothed by petting your ears, the soft rumble of your throat, the way that his touch seems to make you relax. He hadn’t realised just how comfortable you must be with him.
Nanami will not do anything to you in this state, even if you try and initiate it - when he gets to take you to bed for the first time, he hopes there will be no cursed nonsense present - just you, and him, and the beating of your hearts. But at least this little experience has given him some courage to push forward with his crush.
“You really want me to stroke you? Well . . . I suppose I could . . . is this alright?”
- ♡ -
♡ Geto does not want to like the sight of you with your eyes big and wide and cute cat ears on your head and a tail extending from your backside as cute as he does. You’ve always been one of his favourite curse users, and perhaps he’s been nursing a crush on you for longer than he’d like to admit - but this just feels rude. You’re so cute with your head tipped to the side, sticking very close to him, fair brightening up when his hand so much as brushes your arm.
He does want to fix you, of course - he doesn’t want anything to dull your sharp knife-edges, the cleverness thrumming beneath your skin. He thinks of the people he surrounds himself as family, and you as - as more than that. But he indulges in it for a little too long. Liking to watch your tail swish as you walk, your ears twitch - liking the noise you make when he runs his palm over your face.
Geto, too, will indulge in a little petplay. How can he not, when you were so obedient and good for him even before this unfortunate occurrence? He soothes you with pets and kisses as you sink onto his cock, calling you his good kitten, asking you to purr for him and groaning when your slightly sharper than usual teeth nip at his neck and you mewl so prettily at the touch of his hands on your spine.
Out of anyone, Getou is the most likely to tie a ribbon around your new tail and get you a cute collar with a bow and a bell on it. When you’re sat on his lap with his cock inside you, he murmurs softly not to let the bell jingle, be a good pet and stay exactly where he puts you - and for Geto, you’re a very well-behaved pussy-cat, and you do exactly what he asks you.
“Mm, that’s right - good kitten. You feel so right there. You’re such a pretty thing, so well-behaved--”
- ♡ -
♡ Toji should want to do something about this. He hates the idea of all of this cursed energy clinging to you - but he also knows there isn’t much he can do, and he isn’t willing to lower himself to ask for help from anyone who can do anything about it. So, welcome to your new life - you’re Toji’s cute little kitten now. He likes his kitten to lie on his lap, to nest in his bed, to eat off a bowl on the floor and wear their pretty collar--
He likes his kitty to be well-behaved, but honestly, Toji’s treatment whether you are well-behaved or not is much the same. He likes that you’ll sit and listen to him like everything he says is the most important thing in the world - likes that, now you’re his good little housecat, he is the centre of your universe. He’s rough with you no matter what, but you grow to absolutely love that sensation - love digging your claws into his back when he fucks you, love it when he groans ‘good kitty’ into your ear, love it when he stretches out beside you and lets you nuzzle into his chest, purring at him.
He secretly likes it when you act up a little bit; if you spill your milk or if you purposely ignore him. He loves having an opportunity to tame the brattiness out of his kitten - to tug on your tail a little meanly, to remind you of who exactly you belong to.
“Aww, kittycat-- you’re really pushin’ my buttons today, huh? C’mere - lemme remind you who your owner is--”
- ♡ -
♡ Sukuna . . . if you’ve ended up like this and you’re Sukuna’s object of affection, we can only assume that Sukuna himself is the one to have engineered it. No other curse would dare to touch his property, after all - and if you are Sukuna’s, you are his property. You being a cute little kitty now doesn’t change the fact at all; if anything, it reinforces in Sukuna’s mind that you’re his pet. He owns you. You ought to be on your knees, your head bowed, practically quivering if he deigns to pet you or lavish you in affection--
You will be staying this way.
You’ll be learning exactly how a good pet behaves; how and when to use your tongue, how to respond to your Master’s petting of your ears, how to learn to roll over and present yourself when your Master wants to take you. Heaven help you if you go into heat, kitten - Sukuna’s deeply amused by your whimpering, by the way you keep nuzzling against his thighs and telling him that it hurts, please fill me up, pleasepleaseplease.
If you’ve been very good, he’ll reward you by filling you up fuller than you even realised you could be. If you’ve been very bad, you’ll be sobbing and clawing into his sheets and begging to be touched with your own need streaming down your thighs. Either way, in the end, you’ll be mewling into Sukuna’s kimono with tears on your face from the stretch, secure in the knowledge that you’re owned.
“A good kitten walks on all fours, hmm? A good kitten obeys their Master. A good kitten knows to do it immediately when I tell them to open their mouth--”
- ♡ -
♡ Mahito wants to find out everything he can about this interesting new development. Chances are, if he has a crush on you, you already know it - subtlety is honestly not one of the curse’s strong points. Chances are, too, if he has a crush on you and you’re still around, you’re okay with is - but this is probably going to push it over the edge. His hands are all over you, petting and tugging on your ears and your tail, probably trying to see how they attach to your skin and laughing when you flinch or blush or a certain rub of his thumb across your tailbone makes a purr thrum in your throat.
He’s telling you how cute you are through it all, laughing - he’s talking earnestly about the way humans keep pets, how he’s always wondered about it, and now he’s had one dropped into his lap, and isn’t that just fortuitous? At first, he wants you to be as much of a pet as you can - on your hands and knees, purring, mewling, the whole nine yards! But once he’s exhausted that option (Mahito’s moods tend to be whimsical and over in a flash before he’s moved onto the next one), he wants to explore your new additions and how doing certain things to you makes them feel. Expect to be fucked from behind by Mahito pulling your tail - expect him, too, to be very interested in the concept of cats going into heat! You’re an endlessly fascinating new toy, until you’re not quite as fascinating--
And then Mahito is shifting his soul to have his own cat ears and tail, to be mess around with you some more and see if your reactions are any different when he’s made himself your cat-boyfriend! Eventually, he’ll get bored of you being part cat and he’ll figure out how to get you back to your normal self on his own, but by then the damage has probably already been done and some part of you is just conditioned - to purr when your head is scratched, to docilely sit at Mahito’s feet and paw at the front of his trousers.
“You’re so cute! Humans like to play with their pets, right? Let’s play, then! Purr for me, koneko-chan~”
- ♡ -
#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk smut#jujutsu kaisen smut#gojo x reader#gojo smut#nanami x reader#nanami smut#geto x reader#geto smut#toji x reader#toji smut#sukuna x reader#sukuna smut#mahito x reader#mahito smut#jjk writing#jjk headcanons#Anonymous#jjk posting
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Just thought of something. What if, hear me out, someone where to try using the oblivion song to undo any damage done to another in the first place? Say, a certain desperate Monkie Kid who wants to help a certain demon prince turned mindless doll by a clone of himself~
So this HAS been plotted out before, both by myself and @@unseelie-robynx through the Tyrant Prince Timeline (though not between Xiaotian and Red) and something more close to the letter with @sleepy-pyggy over dms
So to start with, while it IS possible to undo the effects of Oblivion while also USING Oblivion to do so, it depends entirely on the person in question's knowledge on both the music and the person it's being used on.
In Tyrant Prince this concept is explored actually, through Syntax and Huntsman.
See since one of the main incurring incidents in the TP timelines is that Syntax goes to save Huntsman against direct orders and barely dodging getting caught by the rebellion, he's placed in charge of taking care of a still thoroughly brainwashed Huntsman (it ain't pleasant for anyone involved there's several escape attempts to be thwarted)
But eventually Huntsman is able to get... partially lucid (because Syntax had started acting overtly rebelliously and the Queen re-juiced him with Spider venom giving him another amnesiac bout and then exposing Huntsman TO Syntax like that) Lucid enough to know that he's had his brain screwed with and wants to get better. it's still really rough as they try to slowly and painfully deprogram his mind, but there's progress.
enough progress for Huntsman to get frustrated over his supposed LACK of it and manages to get hold of a copy of the music (over several nights of 'hey Syntax could you teach me this or that thing about technology? my latent brainwashing means i just like to listen to people talk yes i know its really late and you're about to pass out but i know you're weak to making me happy so pleeeaasssee?') And he basically goes up to Spider Queen and says 'hey i'm still mad at you for leaving me behind and also re-spiderizing Syntax but fix my brain' and Spider Queen was like 'sure'
then when he stewed in his own falling off the wagon SQ was like 'fuck i don't know how to do that' so she assigned it to someone that did.
Obviously, Syntax himself. whom has been part of the reverse project and thus has been experimenting with Oblivion, and while he doesn't remember Huntsman particularly well right now, is VERY invested in freeing him without pressing any of his own will onto Huntsman.
What he ends up settling on is not getting rid of anything, but sort of... de-tethering it all. putting a block in Huntsman's brain that keeps Oblivion from working without his explicit permission, and detaching all the 'lessons' and 'truths' everyone in the court ever put on him, into things that have no power over him and he can easily brush aside, to essentially let HUNTSMAN decide what he wants his new normal to be.
It's not a fun day for anyone and everyone walks out of it with significant trauma and a faint silver lining of Huntsman being essentially immune to Oblivion in the same way Syntax is
-
And then in my discussion about the whole thing with Pyggy Xiaotian actually is the one that tries to fix Red, but he knows nothing about both the music AND not much at all about Red Son, so he kind of makes more of a mess of things. He can get Red Son thinking again, and he can get Red Son kinda sorta making decisions, but he's still feeding into Red Son's addiction, as well as his reliance on him.
Red Son's addiction gets BAD after a point until it comes that Xiaotian comes home from work hours before Red was due to show up for 'dating things' onlyt o find the demon splayed out in his apartment, clearly broken in to dope himself up on the record and so far down in his own brain it took aWHILE of guiding to get him to actually wake up.
Basically you can do a lot with Oblivion TO oblivion, INCLUDING 'Oblivion doesn't work on you anymore' but you kinda can't make it not addictive anymore, and Red's been getting nightly hits for MONTHS now. Things kind of keep escalating from there as Xiaotian is trying to keep Red Son safe but keeps accidentally making it worse
he eventually Cold turkey's him 'handcuffed to the bedpost' style and that DOES manage to get Red Son clean, but that's only the BEGINNING of the drama there lmao
#oblivion series#tyrant prince au#long post#the Syntax and Huntsman one is fucked up btw#Syntax made a rough voice modulator so Huntsman wouldn't start affiliating his voice with obedience or anything#and ended up sounding like a dead ringer for Huntsman's long dead mom#something that he wasn't aware of until he was already IN there and Huntsman called him 'Mom' while he was down and thus couldn't back out#(though ironically it probably wouldn't have worked as well without that psychological thread)#Funfact: Syntax is my favorite character to be mean to without being mean ABOUT#though you might already know that from some of my drabbles
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this is what i’m referring to when i say new characters are added for the final season, i’m not saying they are canon in the comics because the show has gone past the source material and gerard might take another route for the comics. but again his approval has been asked for the ending of the series. he does have a hand in it. he is consulted with. and this has been shown in interviews with steve blackman who has talked about someone of the questions he has asked gerard about the story in order to make the show. steve is still trying to stay true to the comics and capture gerard’s vision. but of course he has added his own creative vision, like with the dance numbers as an example.
i get the impression steve blackman knows that the amount of storylines in the umbrella academy are too much to really fit the screen time they do have - as in the article calling out his shitty behaviour he was specifically quoted complaining about page’s transition and how page requested that viktor transitions in the show and this was another plot line added which blackman was frustrated by. at least partly because they don’t have a lot of time to do the storylines they already had well.
part of my pessimism that the umbrella ending won’t be satisfying is that we already have season three and so many of the questions from season one aren’t answered, or just end never to be spoken of again. i also felt like that when reading the comics. that’s my critique of gerard’s writing, but again just my personal opinion. however i will say this is a great advantage when writing concept albums because having a vague open ended ending to that story really makes you want to re listen.
g r r martin is a good comparison of what burn out can do to a person. from the interviews i have watched of martin, he also just doesn’t know how to end a story which is both a strength and a weakness because it allows him to write complex realistic characters in their fictional context, but because he’s writing their lives basically in an organic real time manner, letting the characters make their own decisions as he’s writing, he can’t cut the story short as the characters clearly live on after the credits roll, and his story’s conflict is one that may never actually get solved.
gerard works well when he has something to prove to the world. but the umbrella academy found its success early, prestigious awards and netflix and all. everything is said and done, all that’s left is to finish it off. art projects find their doom when they are put on a ‘i’ll finish it one day’ list. and when i said i would assume there would be pressure to complete it before the netflix series, i think it would be reasonable that blackman would want material to base the show off of instead of flying blind and basically making a fanfiction of how he personally thinks gerard would end the series. and dark horse comics would love to make money publishing it sooner rather than later, because then they can make sequels instead of occasional oneshots based on an incomplete series. the addition umbrella academy series may exist to help keep dark horse happy because the final comic hasn’t been written. i’m surprised there isn’t a contract in place for a timeline.
but keep in mind when i’m saying all this, i would love to see the series complete. and definitely did not mean to hijack your post - it’s just a topic i have a lot of thoughts on and couldn’t resist
Umbrella Academy news:
Only 6 episodes long, Gerard has approved of their ending but it’s not what we will get when the comics end officially. I still think it’s hilarious that now he and George R. R. Martin have in common not being able to finish publishing your work before your tv show adaptation.
For reference, the Netflix adaptation came out in 2019, the same year the last published series came out, volume 3: Hotel Oblivion.
It did take him ten year between volume 2 (Dallas - 2009) and Hotel Oblivion so we still have 4 years to go.
Source
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Questions
You have lots of questions for Harry and he tries his best to answer each of them.
a/n: hiiiii, think it’s been almost a year since I last posted my writing and I’m finally back! thanks to @oh-honey-styles‘s new fic slam prompts, I was able to curate something I liked enough to share. usually it’d take me lotssss of drafts to be satisfied and happy with something but this one only took 2! I hope you enjoy it and pleaaaaseee be kind ⭐️😸 I’d love to hear your thoughts!
warning: this is just pureee filth. not really smut, but filthy regardless.
Word Count: 1,775
Harry’s forest eyes ogle straight at you, lips pressed in a tight line and twitching on one side to form a smirk that he tried his very best not to show.
That was definitely the last thing he expected to come out of your mouth. He thought you just needed help with something minuscule, like putting together new furniture, fixing the wifi, or help pick out an outfit; things you’ve urgently called him about before. He never, ever thought you’d call him one day and ask for this, a lesson on blowjobs out of all things.
Luckily, sex has never been a taboo topic between the two of you, considering he’s the first person you yell to when you’re letting out your frustrations about your lack of experiences, or vice versa when he just had an intercourse dilemma that continues to leave an everlasting impact on him. But when you’re asking him about giving good oral pleasure, his brain is suddenly void of any thoughts that should help the situation at hand.
“Quit smirking at me, I’m serious!” Harry flinches when you throw a pillow at him from across the other side of the sofa, instantly wiping the smirk off of his face and instead letting out a soft chuckle when he successfully catches it. You throw him an intense yet jest glare, “just. Today at work. I dunno. I just need to know. I want to know.”
“How d’you suppose I do that?” he asks cautiously, leaning forward to settle his elbows on his knees and prop his chin up with the palm of his hand, “teach you, I mean.”
You’re usually never embarrassed around Harry, despite the many weird and unusual conversations you’ve both had during sobriety and drunkenness. You don’t remember ever feeling even the slightest bit awkward or sheepish when you told him about how IUDs work, or giving him a very vivid description of how exactly you feel during your menstruation cycle. He takes it all in and listens with amusement, sometimes with a bowl of extra-buttered popcorn on his lap.
But right now, in this exact moment, you feel slightly skittish and jittery, as if blowjobs were something you’re just now learning about. He can sense it, especially with the way you’re averting your gaze from his eyes to the silent flatscreen tv nailed on your wall — thanks to him. You’re also doing that thing he constantly scolds you for whenever you’re anxious and nervous, chewing ferociously on your bottom lip and squeezing your fingers into a fist to the point your nails will sink on your palm and pop your veins.
“Stop that, you’ll bleed,” he cuts the silence off, “and answer my question.”
You unclench your fist and turn towards him again, barely making eye contact and instead looking at the lovely framed painting hung on the wall behind him, “maybe just describe it?”
“It’s really not that complicated,” was all Harry said. He leans back against your soft couch, taking both of your feet with his hands and settling them on his lap to crack each of your toes. You flinch a little on his first try, turning your focus and watching his fingers work against your skin, “think of a lollipop. Or popsicles, something of the sorts. You put it in your mouth and just… suck. Lick. Move your mouth, without the teeth.”
Suck. Lick. Move your mouth; the words that tumbles out of his lips causes you to flush, your whole body heating up and turning beet red, the color dancing across your nose and emphasizing your imperfections flawlessly.
What Harry said was pretty accurate. It’s not as detailed as you want but you don’t really know how to ask for that without feeling mortified and even more flustered. He said it exactly how it is; you just put your mouth around it, suction your cheeks, use your tongue and bob your head. But you feel like there was something missing, as if there should be more to that. Well, because there is. You want to know more.
His fingers have started to dance their way to your calf, squeezing the deep tissues there in a tender and leisure massage to try and get rid of your tensed muscles. You’re wincing in between syllables when you finally speak after a couple of seconds, “question. It might be weird. Just… just tell me if you don’t wanna answer.”
His eyes lock with yours when he hums for you to continue, a strand of curl falling over his forehead and tickling his brow while his bottom lip gets caught in between his teeth in concentration. He presses his warm hands on your leg forcefully and harder and it helps calm your nerves and neurons, your habit of overthinking in situations like this disappearing little by little the more he moves. The lack of poise you had minutes ago is lessening and your question is on the tip of your tongue, ready to burst at the seams and be voiced aloud.
With your face turning a lot redder and goosebumps developing on your skin from head to toe out of the blue, you ask with your voice a little lower than it was a while ago, “will you tell me what you like? When.. you know.”
Harry’s movements quickly halt. Another unexpected turn. Another question he never, ever thought would come out of your mouth to ask him.
He lets go of his lip and keeps his mouth agape, irises instantaneously dilating and darkening under your lemon-yellow light and turning them into an even darker shade, like a week old leaf. His brain performs a short circuit for a few moments that passes by in silence before he finally swallows and says, “you want to know what I like when I’m getting head?”
“Yeah,” you shrug, feeling even more ridiculous the more you look into his eyes and open your mouth, “I mean, you have the most experience out of the two of us. That’s why I asked in the first place, but I feel — I feel like your first answer doesn’t really — it’s just not satisfying me. There has to be more to it than just.. sucking, I dunno.”
Sure, you talk to one another about sex casually; what one undergos and encounters and what the other simply has no preconceived notions of. Harry would tell his stories in the least disgusting way possible, knowing you’ll groan out loud and tease him about it if he gives away any sort of detail, but there was almost always zero utterance on your end. No lingering and continuous curiosity. You asking about what he likes when he’s getting head is very much unforeseen and maybe even a bit… amiss, especially for you.
However, he can detect a genuine inquisitiveness in your expression. You’re probably one of the hardest people to read on the surface, but he senses that there was more to that interest than just simply wanting to know. At least, he’s hoping there is.
You cross your arms over your chest, feeling a bit weird now the more he gawks at you and doesn’t make a single move to respond. You open your mouth to backtrack when his hesitancy becomes clear, but before you can even take your question back, he’s already mouthing a three-syllable word out loud, “mouth-fucking.”
A low gasp leaves your mouth and the sound doesn’t miss Harry’s eardrums. He should want to take it back, shove the words back in his throat and never say it again despite not being able to. Still and all, he realizes that he likes what you asked and the fact he gave you an answer, a brief one but an honest and precise answer nonetheless. The way your skin warms against the palm of his hands makes him start to sweat, your bare face becoming even more flushed if possible. You don’t really know what kind of answer your mind presumed, but it obviously wasn’t that.
You’re aware of Harry’s self-confidence and boldness when it comes to sex. He has lots of it and it doesn’t come as a surprise. So when he opens his mouth again to explain exactly what he meant, you were able to hold your second gasp back and instead listen in. You can just imagine how filthy he is in bed, considering the description he gives you seems to be even more graphic and explicit, “like normal sex, but I’m doing it to their mouth. I like the sound, the sloppiness of it all, it fuels me. I like being in control, I guess, and no one wants a dry blowjob. I like it really wet.”
You startle both yourself and him when you utter, “what else?”
Harry clears his throat and looks away from your eyes, not because of discomfort because there was absolutely none, but for the reason that the more he stares the more he pictures you inside his head doing exactly what he was evoking. He blinks a couple of times in an attempt to get rid of the colorful conception, yet it just becomes even more lucid and clear-cut. He tries to distract himself by continuing to answer your questions. It definitely doesn’t help. It just drags the mental image on.
“I like it when they let me come down their throat, then swallow it. Or when — when the aftermath of pure bliss just overtakes my entire body. Like, they just pull away for a second then suck me right back in,” the skin on your legs feel sticky under his hold. You swallow at his dazed appearance and tiny smirk, as if he’s picturing it all in his head. And he is, “yeah. I like that a lot.”
Somehow it’s gotten a lot warmer inside the tiny space of your living room, every corner closing in on the two of you in your peripheral vision and you can’t exactly make out the tingling sensation on the tip of your fingers and in between your thighs. Well, you do. You know you’re undoubtedly turned on but acting clueless and ignoring it would be the best way to handle it.
You ask him one more question, the last one you’ll emit for the rest of the evening, “and how was it for them?”
Harry turns his head, connecting his darkened eyes with yours. There’s an indecipherable message written all over his handsome face. His voice is heavy, raspier and deeper with his accent when he answers for the last time, a specific implication behind his tone, “one of these days, you’ll see.”
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Casimir with a Talkative MC
Fandom: Monster Manor
Characters: Casimir
Warnings: None!
Requested by: Anonymous
Prompt: I'm so excited to see you taking monster mansion asks hardly anyone seems to be paying it any attention! Could you do headcanons on how Casimir would reactor to an MC who will just chatter away, sometimes to him but mostly to themselves with really obscure/unusual topics?
Comments: Of course! I love this so much! I just randomly started thinking about this earlier today, so I thought it would be a good one to kickstart my new attempt at formatting! What do you guys think? Better than just answering asks??
I think Casimir is an ambivert, maybe bordering a little on extrovert. He's perfectly fine on his own, and he enjoys spending time alone for his hobbies because it's peaceful. But, given the option, I think he'd prefer to be around people. Specifically, around you.
He's been alone for a long time, so at first I imagine he'll get overwhelmed by it super easily. It's weird, having someone else around that can actually speak (and doesn't hide from him like Mimi does), and he doesn't know what to do with it. At all.
At first, you talking to yourself confuses him. Not because he's never done it-- he mumbles to himself all the time, when he's not yelling at the house or attempting to talk to Mimi. He's so unused to another person speaking in his presence that he automatically assumes you're talking to him, because well, that's what people do, right? The problem is, usually it makes little sense, because he doesn't understand half the words you're saying.
It doesn't bother him much, but as I said, it can get overwhelming. If he's already a bit frustrated, or you're talking really fast or loud, he'll often just quietly leave and go somewhere more peaceful. Don't take it personally-- he's lived in near-silence for hundreds of years.
After a week or two of living with you, he'll begin to get more used to your presence, and he no longer feels uneasy or agitated by your chattiness-- instead, he's found that he loves it. You're so cute like this, talking about the things you enjoy, and he finds himself wondering how it ever bothered him in the first place.
If you're just talking to yourself, he mostly lets you be, quietly listening to you talk. It's rather soothing, really, and he loves the sound of your voice. Even if he doesn't understand what you're talking about, he's perfectly content to just enjoy your company.
That said... please talk to him. He'll absolutely love talking about your interests with you! He gives you his full attention (you'll often have to gently remind him to actually work on the room because he's entirely forgotten about the task at hand.) He'll ask a lot of questions, and it's a perfect opportunity for you to delve really deep into the topic at hand, explaining all of the concepts and vocabulary he doesn't understand.
Depending on what it is you like, if you can bring him physical examples of it, he'll be absolutely over the moon. Hope the house doesn't mind you getting nothing done today, because all of your time will be spent showing it to him.
He's also a man of rather obscure interests, and he jumps at the chance to share them with you. He'll ramble for hours on end about his passions, and the way his eyes light up is the most adorable thing in the world.
It'll be a really good thing for the both of you! You're super enthusiastic about each other's passions, and you have long, in-depth conversations about the most random of topics. Small talk doesn't exist in this house. The only bad thing about it is that you're constantly at risk of losing sleep because you accidentally stayed up talking until dawn. Oops?
Seriously though, he'll love it. He probably has a bunch of journals that he writes in from time to time, and he has an entire section of books dedicated to you. He writes down whatever he remembers from your infodumping at the end of the day in the journal for that topic. He wants to learn about what you like, so he takes notes, and occasionally he reviews them to refresh his memory.
Writing Masterlist 🐝 Requests Open! Tag List 🐝
#beefriend-writes#casimir gévaudin#monster manor casimir#fictif casimir#monster manor#fictif monster manor
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No Manners
Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Fem!Reader
Word Count: 5k
Warnings: enemies/rivals to lovers, public sex, hate sex, heavy degrading, edging, choking, overstim, teasing, size kink, power dynamics, sir!Tsukki, dacryphilia, humiliation, spanking, slapping, exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, dumbification, creampie, this shit is pure filth (let me know if I missed any warnings!)
Song Inspo: No Manners - Superm
If there was anything you prided yourself on, it was being the smartest person in any given room you walked into. School had always come so easily to you, no subject too hard, no concept you wouldn't understand. That was, until you got to college. University was a beast unto its own, and it showed you that maybe the genius you had always believed you possessed could indeed be threatened.
While you found yourself at the top at almost every single class you took, your economics class was your Achilles heel. It irked you how the information just didn’t seem to mesh with you. It made you feel so inferior, and that wasn’t something you were used to. It also wasn’t something Tsukishima Kei was used to, however, thanks to you he was feeling a new sense of inferiority that was completely foreign to him. He, like you, was used to being at the top of his class, nobody coming close to him academically. Then, he got to university, and unfortunately for him you two shared a major, and took the exact same classes. It was odd enough in the first semester, and when it ended he was so glad to finally get away from you, and to regain his status.
Then the second semester came and once again, you both signed up for the exact same classes. This time was different, though, because finally, Tsukishima held something over you; you couldn’t understand economics to save your life, and it came to Tsukishima as easily as everything else did.
Understandably, the two of you had developed a bit of a rivalry. It would come around every so often that Tsukki did better than you on a test, scored higher in a lab, and it drove you insane how he would rub it in, so when you did better than him, you did the same. The two of you were starting to hate each other’s guts. However, you were on the verge of failing your economics class, and there wasn’t going to be anyone better to help you study than Tsukishima. When you asked him to help you study he straight up laughed in your face, entertained by the fact you were actually coming to him for help. It was such a stroke to his ego, he couldn’t possibly say no.
You two scheduled a study session for the following Friday evening. You met in one of the study rooms up on the third floor around five, intending to stay for a couple hours. Tsukishima had arrived a little early, as you walked in you saw him with his notebook and laptop out on the table, writing down some notes. You took a seat next to him, getting yourself ready to begin. As he attempted to explain all these concepts to you; rambling on about monopolies and price ceilings and deficits, none of it was clicking. You asked him to explain things time and time again, and he was getting visibly irritated the more you seemed to not be getting things.
“You agreed to help me study, Tsukishima. You can't go on and complain now that I don’t get it, you knew I didn't.”
“Yeah, I got that part, but I wasn’t expecting you to be this utterly dense.”
You folded your arms across your chest, letting out a small huff under your breath.
“You're such a dick.” You muttered, not thinking much of the remark. It was an unequivocal fact that anyone who ever came in contact with him had to know, which you yourself already knew quite well, but you hadn't expected him to be this bad personally. You thought since you were undoubtedly better at him in any other subject you would at least be spared of his ill mannered remarks, but it seemed to be the opposite; he'd get on you because you were so much better at him in everything else. It was the one thing he held over you, and he was going to make the absolute most of it.
“What did you call me?” He asked, snapping his head in your direction.
“I called you a dick, because you are. I get it, okay? I don’t understand the material, it’s above my intelligence level, I’m the dumbest bitch in the world. Cool, fine, awesome. If tutoring me is that much of a pain I’ll just go, alright? Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Utterly fed up, you tossed all of your things into your backpack and got up from your seat, starting to storm away. Tsukishima watched you as you went for the door, only momentarily, before getting up and following behind you. You barely got the door unlocked and open before a forceful push of a hand from above shut it, and you turned and looked up at the man, confused as to what it was he was doing.
“We aren’t done studying.”
“Yes we are. I can’t take your shit anymore, I’m done.”
“No, we’re gonna stay here and work on this until you get it,” He lowered himself down to make more direct eye contact with you.
“Got me?” He finished, once the two of you were level. You let out a chuckle, shaking your head a bit. This situation was unbelievable, and he was totally impossible. You weren’t sure how much clearer you could possibly get, but you had no problem reiterating yourself.
“No, I don’t. Makes sense that I don’t, right? ‘Cuz I’m ‘utterly dense’, as you said.”
“And incredibly mouthy, apparently.”
“Only when dealing with assholes like you.” Tsukishima let out a chuckle of his own after that line, straightening himself up and looking down on you once again. You hated when he did that, but it wasn’t like he had much choice, he towered over your much smaller frame. It personified your current situation almost too well.
“You know, someone should put little girls like you in their place.” He fairly quickly retorted.
“And someone should knock tall elitists like you down a peg.” You scoffed.
“I’d love to see you try.” Tsukishima took a couple steps back from you after speaking, as if to quite literally challenge you to do something. You weren’t a violent person to say the least, but at that moment you would’ve paid good money to punch the man before you in the face, and it seemed you were going to get the opportunity for free. How could you possibly pass that up?
You dropped your backpack onto the floor, lurching forward at Tsukishima before it even hit the floor. To your utter surprise he caught you before you got too close, his hand wrapped around your neck. It was nowhere near a tight grip, but it left you breathless, and forced you to look up at the blonde. There was this smirk on his face, like you had done exactly what he wanted you to, like he now had you in the palm of his hand. The look in his eye was so devilish, nobody had ever looked at you like that. You almost didn’t know what to make of it, almost.
“Now now, dumb little whores like you don’t get to touch me.” The pure filth that fell from his lips confirmed exactly what you rationalized from his gaze. It was all you needed.
“Fuck me, now.”
Tsukishima needed no further instruction, moving his hand off your throat and down to your thigh, pulling your leg up and prompting you to wrap yourself around him. He caught you midway through your small jump, and in an instant your lips crashed together. You couldn’t shake just how angry he made you, and he couldn’t shake how sexy you looked when you were mad. That little body of yours held so much aggression in it, and since he was more than willing to let out the beast in you, Tsukki was just as willing to tame it.
In fact, he would take great pleasure in doing so.
Tsukki walked back over to the table you two were sat at, placing you down onto the cold, manicured wood. The exchange of your lips was filled to the brim in the most carnal, lustful intent. The two of you fought for dominance with it, neither of you having even the slightest intention of backing down. Tsukishima was already more than frustrated with you, and your attempts to gain control of the situation weren't helping.
With a swift move he pulled away from the kiss and brought a hand around your neck once again, this time giving it a fairly decent grip. His face looked so calm, like this was nothing he hadn't done before, but his actions told a completely different story. How he managed to keep his expression so composed while taking full control of you made a shiver run down your spine, and the heat between your thighs grow exponentially.
“Listen; I’m the one in charge here, y/n. What makes you think a tiny, powerless slut like you could ever even attempt to control someone so much bigger, so much stronger than them, hm?”
“I-I dunno…” You stuttered out, much to Tsukishima’s liking.
“You don’t know, that's exactly what I thought. Well then, let me teach you where your place is.” While his left hand maintained its place around your throat, his right hand snaked up your thigh and under your skirt, his fingers ghosting over your clothed sex. The faint contact made you whine, you couldn't stand how badly you needed him to touch you. Your eyes pleaded for him to do something, and he basked in the glory of making you so weak so quickly. He then obliged, rubbing small, slow circles onto your clit.
“Your place is right here; being dominated by me. You will feel pleasure only when I allow you to. You will cum only when I allow you to. You will be obedient, and you’ll love every second of it. Am I understood?”
You nodded your head with what free range of motion you had, your hips bucking in the direction of his fingers, trying to gain more pleasure in the only way you currently could.
“Use your words, and address me only as sir.” He instructed, moving his fingers away from you. It was bad enough his moves were teasing at best, but denying you of any contact completely was infinitely worse.
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
Tsukishima let go of your throat, using both hands to undress you, leaving you in nothing but your panties, which were horribly stained with your eagerness. It stroked his ego immensely, looking at the girl who plagued his mind, who made him feel so inferior so many times, naked in front of him, so ready to be ravaged by him. So exposed, so pathetic, but so undeniably sexy.
He pulled up a chair, taking a seat in between your legs. His fingers danced over the skin of your inner thigh, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. You felt so needy all you could do was whine, not a single beg or plead coming from you. He hooked a finger onto the side of your panties, pulling them over to get a good look at you. Your pussy glistened under the fluorescent lights, coated in wetness you had never experienced before. It was like a work of art for Tsukki, who took a minute to admire the piece before he pulled your underwear off of you entirely.
He took his left thumb and ran it down the length of your sex, dipping between your folds before coming back up to your clit, finally starting to please you again. A moan slipped from between your lips, filling the quiet of the room. Tsukishima brought two fingers from his opposite hand up to your lips, and without needing instruction you allowed them entry. Your tongue swirled around his digits, a slight hum ringing from your throat as your oral fixation was satisfied.
His fingers left your mouth with a small pop, and they were brought down to your core. They prodded at your entrance, teasing you by the anticipation of entry. You wanted it, wanted it so bad it was much more a need, and at that point you weren’t too proud to beg for it. Just as your lips parted Tsukishima pushed them into you, a whine coming from you instead. You fell back onto the table, your back arching off the wood as his fingers worked wonders unknown on you. With an upward curl he brushed up against your g-spot, your hips bucking upward in response. The pads of his fingers massaged the rough patch of flesh momentarily, making your legs shake as helpless little curses fell from your lips.
As he began pumping his fingers again he also sped up the rate at which his thumb circled your clit, and it became quite clear to Tsukki that your orgasm was approaching, and was doing so fast. You could feel the knot in your stomach getting tighter and tighter, it was almost unbearable. You heard his voice say something, but your head was spinning you could barely make it out.
“Answer me, slut. I’m not repeating myself.” Was all you could make out, but considering you didn’t know the question, it was an impossible feat. Just as your orgasm was about to arrive Tsukishima removed his fingers from you, his thumb ceased all movement, and you were left with a ruined orgasm and your hips bucking into the air.
“You’re not cumming until you can answer one of my questions correctly. That should be good enough incentive for a stupid, needy little bitch like you, right?” You propped yourself up on your arms, looking at Tsukishima in utter bewilderment. You couldn’t believe what he was saying, or that he was going to make you answer questions in order to cum, but you had to admit he wasn’t wrong. It was a pretty good incentive.
“Y-yes sir.”
With a quick smirk Tsukki sank his head down between your thighs, his tongue dipping into your pussy, savoring your delectably sweet taste. His his hands held the backs of your thighs, giving himself unrestricted access to your sex. His tongue flicked over your clit every so often before lapping up your juices again, until he finally gave the bud uninterrupted attention. His lips latched around it, starting to suck as his fingers entered you once more. Your back arched sharply, and your hands moved to tangle into his hair, tugging on the blonde strands. Before you could even process what it was you had done, Tsukishima was hovering above you, slapping your cheek before taking a rough hold of your chin.
“I told you not to touch me, did I not?” You nodded your head frantically,
“You d-did, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you will be. Off the table.”
You followed your instructions, and as soon as your feet hit the ground Tsukishima pulled you onto your knees, and held your chin in his hand once again, forcing you to look up at him.
“I don't think I need to tell you what to do here, do I?” You shook your head lightly, your eyes full of wonder as you looked at him.
“No, sir.”
“Good, then show me that you're actually good at something.”
You shimmied in between Tsukishima’s legs, frantic hands fiddling with his belt as you tried to get his pants off as quickly as possible. You didn't know what was causing you to be so eager, but something in you urged you to act as quickly as possible. As you pulled his pants and boxers down his erection sprang free, the pure size of him catching you off guard. You were no inexperienced woman, this wasn't your first time seeing a penis, but you had yet to deal with anyone of his size. It was a bit intimidating, if you were to be completely honest.
As you were told, you weren't allowed to actually touch him. You presumed if you used your hands at all it wasn't going to end well for you, but to that you could fairly easily oldige. You licked a long stripe from the base of his length up to his tip, your tongue pressing along a vein that ran that same course. You circled his tip before sucking on it, letting out a satisfied moan around him as his precum leaked out onto your tastebuds.
You started to take him further into your mouth, each bob of your head adding another inch until you had all of him. Your eyes watered as you felt him in the back of your throat, and you gasped as you came up for air. Tsukishima looked down at you, smirking as he saw a tear run down your cheek.
“You should do more of that.”
“More of what?” You asked, tilting your head in confusion.
“Crying for me.”
Tsukki took hold of your hair, forcing his cock into your mouth and once again making you take the entirety of him. He held you there, letting out a groan as you choked around him. He brought you up for air and marveled at the tears running down your face, and the desperate look in your eyes. It was art for him and him alone to scrutinize, and he was most certainly a fan of the piece. Before you could fully focus your attention he was in your mouth again, his hips pushing up off the chair as he fucked your face. You gagged around his length, the sounds remarkably gratifying for Tsukishima to hear.
He brought you back up for air one final time, holding your head up so the two of you made eye contact. He chuckled at you, admiring your current state. Spit dribbled from the sides of your mouth, tears spilled out of your eyes, and you were perilously trying to catch your breath.
“Messy little girl. You're looking more and more like the stupid little slut I've always known you are. Cmon, say it for me, tell me you're a stupid little slut.”
As if his words weren't degrading enough, this request was surely the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the sundae. He had you exactly where he wanted you, powerless and obedient. Just a small little toy for him to play with how he pleased. He wasn't satisfied with your lack of obedience, and slapped your cheek once again, roughly grabbing your face after.
“I wasn't giving you an option. Say it.” He demanded.
“I-I’m a stupid little slut.” You complied, your voice barely above a whisper.
“I can't fucking hear you.”
“I’m a stupid little slut!” You repeated, much louder this time. Tsukishima let out a satisfied chuckle, nodding his head.
“That's right, and who's stupid little slut are you?”
“Y-your stupid little slut, sir.”
“That’s right.”
Tsukishima pulled you up off the floor, laying you out on the table. He pulled his shirt off, your eyes combing over every little detail of him. You knew on top of being a student he played volleyball, so he had to be fairly muscular, but you weren't expecting what you got. He had a body even Odysseus would be jealous of, making you the ever loyal Penelope.
Tsukki lubed himself up with your wetness, as you were far from falling short of it. No man was ever this rough with you, ever this dominant. It turned you on more than you would like to admit, but there was no need to with Tsukishima. He could tell from the look in your eyes, the tone of your voice, the way your hips slightly bucked as you sucked him off.
Without warning his tip began to prod at your entrance before starting to slip in. It was no easy feat, though. You were incredibly tight, and even then you hadn't taken anything even close to Tsukishima’s size. He took things slow, watching as every inch of him stretched you further. You whimpered at the sensation, it was intoxicating beyond what your words could even describe. A groan slipped between his lips as he bottomed out, light curses following it. The way you tightened around him made it so hard for him to control himself, but he knew you needed a moment, and he wasn't trying to hurt you.
Not at the moment, at least.
You nodded your head lightly as you felt adjusted, giving him free reign over your body once again. Tsukki grabbed your hands, pinning them above your head before he began to move. He slowly started to pull out, and with a sudden snap you were once again taking all of him, a soft scream coming from you. He did this a couple times, watching how your body jolted. Feeling how your thighs tensed up next to him. Each of these thrusts hit your cervix, sending you reeling each time.
He picked up the pace, starting to pound into you at a relentless pace. You wrapped your legs around his waist, keeping him close and forcing him to go as deep in you as possible. Tsukishima brought one of his hands down to wrap around your neck, the other still holding your wrists in place. He gave the sides of your neck a squeeze, the lack of circulation rushing toward you just as he hit you with a particularly hard thrust. A light scream fell from your lips, the pleasure in that moment so crazily overwhelming. This routine continued; harder thrusts while he actively choked you, very slightly less hard ones as he gave you a moment to breathe correctly, all the while denying you of your high.
“You better not cum, slut.” He warned as he felt you once again starting to get just a bit too tight around him.
“W-wanna cum....so bad.” You weakly replied, tears welling in your eyes as you spoke. Once again, just as you were on the precipice of release, Tsukishima denied you again, pulling out and leaving you empty. Tears fell from your eyes as you uselessly whimpered and protested, all of it only earning you another slap to your cheek.
“Really thought I’d let you, huh? Dumb little bitch.” He said as he turned you over onto your stomach. He filled you up again, but before he moved any further he began raining spank after spank onto your ass. You could only assume it was punishment, but it felt far from it. The pain was nothing but masochistic pleasure for you, and sadistic pleasure for him. Each stung more than the last, and thus each felt even better than the last.
Your senses were so overloaded as he started to thrust into you again that your brain had turned to utter mush. Coherent thought was so far behind you it was like it was never something you could’ve done in the first place. The only thing you could process was pleasure, and to enhance it you lifted one of your legs back up onto the table, the other continuing to stay hanging over to keep yourself up. This new angle let Tsukishima hit sinfully deep in you once again, adding to the utter brainrot you were experiencing. Words no longer were an option for you, only whines and whimpers, a stray profanity at the very best.
Tsukishima grabbed a fistful of your hair, picking your head up off the table. He made you look in the direction of the door, bending down to speak into your ear.
“Look, you left the door unlocked. Someone could come in at any moment and watch you getting fucked like the little whore you are. But I’m sure you'd like it if someone saw us, wouldn't you?”
You couldn't bring yourself to form any sort of coherent response, and Tsukki very well knew that. He chuckled at your attempt to reply, which was just a rhythmic whine as if you were trying to get some words out.
“You're not very quiet, either. Stupid sluts like you like having everyone know how good they feel, don't they? I’m sure someone's come by to spy in, hearing how utterly pathetic you sound.”
His words only made you whine and whimper more, your head in an absolute daze from the sheer amount of pleasure you felt. Tsukki let go of your hair and your head fell down, and you got a good look at yourself in the mirrored wood table. Your mouth was hanging open, your hair a tangled mess and drool slipping from the corner of your parted lips. He had fucked you so past dumb you didn't even know you could be this far gone, and all the while you still had no clue if you would be allowed to cum.
Your hips pushed back against his, meeting every one of his thrusts and forcing him deeper. Each time he re-entered his tip made quick contact with your cervix, the repeated feeling driving you absolutely crazy. Your eyes rolled back as you let yourself fall onto the wood once again. You took everything he gave you, all the while holding your orgasm back. Each time he felt you were a little too close he pulled out, you couldn't even count how many times you'd been denied release, you were sure the number was shameful. You could tell this was getting harder on Tsukishima as well, the twitching and pulsating of his cock inside you letting you know he was having trouble holding back as well.
You saw no use in begging at this point, and you couldn't have mustered the words for it even if you wanted to. You simply whined and whimpered with every thrust, your body jolting forward each time. Tsukki held on tight to your hips, keeping you in place as he pounded mercilessly into you. In your daze all your senses had dulled, but you could hear just enough for Tsukishima's next four words to be heard, almost as clear as day.
“Cum. Do it now.”
In an instant you finally let yourself topple over the edge. Your voice was so hoarse you couldn't scream, rather you let out something between an incredibly loud moan and a whimper, your back arching and your legs shaking vigorously. Tears spilled from your eyes as your body was overrun by an orgasm unlike any other you had experienced. The feeling was only intensified by Tsukishima cumming inside you, depositing a sizable load inside of you. Your vision was blurry and a little white around the edges, and your chest heaved as you let out shallow breaths. Soreness set into your body as you took time to regain yourself, almost ten minutes passing before either of you even thought to move.
Tsukki pulled out of you slowly, admiring how fucked out you looked, your small body sprawled out on the table. He figured moving would be hard for you, so he gently let your leg down and peeled you off the table, sitting down in the chair behind him and sitting you on his lap. Your head fell on his shoulder, your eyes still a little glazed over, but for the most part it seemed you had come to.
“Are you feeling okay?” You nodded your head lightly, your breath finally leveling out. Your throat was pretty scratchy, and you knew your voice would be raspy, so you just didn't bother speaking yet.
“What have you learned today, then?”
“A good couple things.” You croaked out, wiping a stray tear from your cheek.
“Oh really? Enlighten me.”
“Well, I learned that economics is just something I'm never really going to understand. I also learned that you are a complete and utter asshole, even worse than I thought. Finally, I learned that you are a way more experienced man than I thought you were, and maybe I don't hate you as much as I was letting on.”
Tsukishima laughed out lightly, giving you a bit of an approving nod.
“Good, I’m glad I at least taught you something. Maybe not what I originally intended, but learning is learning. I think with a couple more study sessions you’ll start to understand the econ material, though.”
You didn't say this out loud, but the thought of getting to spend some more alone time with Tsukishima actually wasn't the most terrible thought in the world. It seemed clear enough to you that the resentment between you two was clearly something much, much different than that, and so you were open to the thought of exploring what it actually was. Maybe not in as much of an erotic way as you just had next time. Not that you would've minded if it escalated to that point.
Although, you thought, if Tsukki was going to fuck you like that every time, brainrot from class material was going to be the least of your worries.
The both of you made yourselves presentable again, packing up all your belongings and leaving the room clean before walking out, which you did fairly slowly due to how sore your legs were. You both walked through the library, which was overwhelmingly empty besides a few staff members working hard at hardly working. It was to be expected; it was a Friday night and you were the only two in the world who'd pick studying over any other activity. You stopped just outside the entrance, turning to your side and giving Tsukishima a wave.
“I guess I’ll catch you later then, Tsukishima.”
“Oh, so no thank you for helping you study? I guess the one thing I didn't teach you was manners, huh y/n?” You chuckled at his comment, shaking your head a bit.
“Guess you didn’t. It’ll have to wait until next time.” You turned on your heel and started in the direction of the train. Before you could get far Tsukki grabbed your arm and pulled you back over to him, holding your chin so softly with his other hand, the action so outrageously condescending.
“Oh no, I’ll gladly teach you right now.”
#tsukishima x y/n#tsukishima x you#tsukishima x reader#haikyuu smut#haikyu x reader#tsukishima smut#tsukishima#hq x you#hq tsukishima#tsukishima kei#tsukishima oneshot#haikyuu!!
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i know | jj maybank
hellooooo i've risen from the dead and its with a fic about outer banks... i've fallen in love with jj... thats my baby
this was supposed to be a 5+1 concept and it still kinda is but i got really really carried away. as my new friend @captainpogue calls it the too much gene. so buckle up and grab a snack this is 21k words lmaoooo i hope you enjoy
i love you already
warnings: nothing more than what is mentioned in the show
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You were laying on your stomach, on your bed, flipping through a book. It didn’t have your full attention as your mind was elsewhere. Music filtered in through your headphones but you weren’t really listening to it, either. It was almost dark outside and with the power still out, the few candles lit in your room did little to help you focus on the words in front of you.
It was also extremely hot. You were sweating just laying there. Your shirt was stuck to you and your shorts felt uncomfortable even if they were cloth sleeping shorts. Letting out a frustrated groan, you drop your head down to the book but immediately wince when you feel it get stuck to your forehead. You have to slowly lift your head and peel the page off with your fingers. Gross.
Moving the book, you lay your head down again and just try to breathe. The events of the day are finally catching up to you, making you a bit tired. Your mind is racing as the memories flash through like a movie playing behind your eyelids. Walking down the street and hearing a distressed, “Just shut up, Pope!” You recognized the voice like it was your own and rushed across the street where you came face to face with your group. JJ had looked at you, guilt shining in his eyes as he looked back at Shoupe, “Yeah, it was all me.”
A distressed sigh -one that matched the one you let out as you helplessly watched JJ get pushed into the back of the cop car- leaves your body in a rush and it makes your bed bounce just a little with the force of it. Kiara had moved up to you as you watched Pope let out a scream and storm off, his dad following him angrily with the hat Pope had thrown to the ground. She explained what she knew and all you could do was close your eyes and let out a breath. You knew JJ getting arrested, again, wouldn’t be good for him. He’s seventeen now, still a minor, but he’s so close to being tried as an adult and that scares you.
“Hey, you want to go to the police station, see if we can do something?” Kie had offered when she noticed that you’d done nothing but stare off in the direction the cop car had gone.
“No, his dad will most likely show up.” you stated and winced at your own words. “I’m just going to go home. I’d say text me but you know, towers are down. And my phone might even be dead with the whole no power thing.”
Kie laughed at your tone and it pulled a laugh out of you as well.
Rolling onto your back, you cover your face with your hands and try really hard to keep your frustrations at bay. You know JJ didn’t do shit this time around. You know what he’s covering for and why he’s doing it but god damn it you wished he had a little bit more common sense sometimes. You wish he wouldn’t put others before himself sometimes, even though that wasn’t in his nature. You wish he didn’t have such a temper sometimes, or the need to prove himself, because then that’d help him stay under the radar a bit easier. But you knew that JJ would never lose those parts of himself, that’s just who he was. Someone who cared about others too much because he didn’t want them to feel what he’s felt his whole life but had a temper like no other.
The temper is something you’ve tried working on with him for as long as you’ve known him. Since the first time you saw him lose it at the age of twelve. It was an unhealthy coping mechanism, to fly off the handles as soon as someone upset him enough. You guessed it was because he knew nothing else. Growing up around that kind of behavior, it just kind of sticks. He tries though, tries to keep it under control for as long as possible though, hating that he gets so angry so easily but people just make him so mad. You’ve told him that he gets that way because he bottles up everything he’s feeling when he’s feeling it and it just keeps building until he snaps. And when he snaps, it’s because he filled himself up with so much rage it has nowhere else to go than through his fists, or yelling, or apparently holding someone at gunpoint.
Tears of frustration for JJ start to build behind your eyelids and your nose starts to tingle but you just can’t help it. JJ doesn’t deserve the things he’s been put through, he really doesn’t. He’s a good person. He has good intentions behind most of the crazy shit he does. It’s just that he doesn’t think of the consequences before he goes through with his impulses. His snap judgement choices weigh out any other rational thought in his head.
Like he clearly didn’t think of what would happen to him when taking the blame for a felony charge and you really hope he’s okay. You kinda hope his dad didn’t show up to get him from the police station and that he’s still there because you know the outcome of the scenario. You’ve been on the comforting end of those scenarios more often than not and each time it breaks your heart. To see the boy cut up and bruised by the hand of his own father. He brushes it off every time, ‘It’s nothing I can’t handle’ but you see the pain there. The shine in his eyes and the deep breaths to keep himself from crying. You see it. Every. Time.
You can only hope that today won’t be one of those days where JJ will be littered with dark bruises and deep cuts. Your heart hammers in your chest at the thought of JJ not even making it out of his house today. That’s he’s too hurt to move and that makes a breath stutter out of you in the force of a sob. You press the heels of your hands harder to your closed eyelids in hopes to stop the tears from falling when you feel a weight drop down around your legs. You let out a yelp as your eyes fly open and you sit up in the process.
JJ stands there, at the end of your bed, with his hands on either side of your knees. Your heart nearly drops to your toes when you take in his appearance. Your hopes of him coming out of today unscathed were just that, hopes. The left side of his face is nearly purple, there’s cuts on his eyebrow, cheek, jaw, and a few around his neck line. His eyes are red rimmed and the tip of his nose is just as red. Jaw clenched and breathing ragged, you can tell he’s doing everything he can to hold back his tears. Some have already fallen, you know that, but that was when he was alone. Now he’s trying to act like everything’s fine when you know it’s not. When you both know it’s not.
“JJ,” you breathe out, removing your headphones and tossing your phone to the floor. His face crumples at your voice and you’re a bit relieved. He’s not going to hide how he feels and that just makes you whisper his name again, “JJ.”
That’s all it takes before JJ removes his backpack and climbs up the length of your body, pushing you to lay back down as he settles on top of you. He shakes against you as you wrap yourself around him. One hand goes up the back of his shirt and the other knocks off his hat so you can run your fingers through his hair. He lets out a shaky breath against your neck and then he’s crying. He shoves his face into your neck and you move a little to the side to let him get more comfortable, wanting to give him all the comfort in the world.
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.” You repeat the words over and over again, hoping that they’ll sink in and bounce around in his head so he’ll believe them. “I was so worried about you. That’s why I was crying when you showed up. You worry me, JJ. You always do.”
He starts to settle down after that and you let out a breath, moving one of your hands to quickly remove the tears from your own cheeks before moving back to running your fingers through his hair. “It’s not a bad thing that you worry me. I only worry because I care about you. I care about you more than I care about anyone else.”
Stuttering breaths still fan over the skin of your neck and you just continue to run your hands over him. Your hand on his back is lightly scratching at the skin there, your fingernails leaving a trail of goosebumps. Your other hand is playing with the strands of his hair, untangling them and smoothing them over. “You’ll be okay, JJ.”
When you feel him nod, you know you got him back down to earth. “I’ll be okay.”
“Okay then, let’s go check out those cuts.”
You both get off the bed, JJ focusing too hard on the ground but nonetheless let’s you take his hand and guide him down the hall and into the bathroom. Once he’s seated, on the closed lid of the toilet, you move in between his legs to get close enough to inspect his face. His hands trail up the backs of your legs and wrap around your thighs. It’s a subconscious move on his part, it always is when you’re in this position. For some reason it brings him comfort, it grounds him, keeps him aware that you’re there and in front of him. His thumbs trace up and down on the outsides of your thighs as he tilts his head back for you.
You clean up the dry blood around his eyebrow, cheek, and lip. He hisses at the pressure to get it all off and whines when you clean the cuts with an antiseptic. You apologize by placing delicate kisses over the broken skin. A sigh escapes through his parted lips and his hands move up to the point where his fingers graze the bottom of your shorts.
“Hi, baby,” you whisper against his lips, ghosting yours over his to try and soothe the sting out of the cut. You’re not too sure how good it works but JJ relaxes a bit more under your touch.
A small smile pulls at JJ’s lips as his eyes meet yours, “Hi, baby,” he echoes and his lips brush against yours.
Running your fingers through his hair, you tug a little at the strands and his eyes fall closed once again. You take the opportunity to run your fingers carefully over the bruises littering his delicate skin. There’s nothing you wish for more than for your fingertips to magically heal the darkened, painful, skin of his face.
Another sigh leaves through his parted lips and this time he sounds a bit watery. You grab onto his face with both hands and push your thumbs up under his closed eyelids to see if tears will leak through. And when they do, you swipe them away. “I owe 30 grand in restitution for sinking the boat. My dad didn’t like that.”
The question of what happened would always sit there on the tip of your tongue but you always knew what happened so you would never ask. It was always the same, it was just the reason that changed. And JJ would tell you it every time, once he calmed enough to talk about it.
“You didn’t do it, JJ.”
JJ sighs, “Yeah, I know. But Pope doesn’t deserve that charge. He has so much to look forward to. A way to get out of here and I couldn’t let him throw that away.”
Your hands move his face to a position that when he opens his eyes, he’ll be looking right at you. He knows that so he does and when he does, tears slide down his cheeks before your thumbs have a chance to stop them. “Yeah, but what about you?”
“We all know where I come from. There’s no way I’ll ever be more than that.”
“Don’t-“
He cuts you off, “No, it’s true. Look at me? Look at the shit I’m in. I have nothing going for me. I have nothing to lose. I might as well start now, the life I’m destined to live.”
Your nose starts to tingle once again, the tears resurfacing, “JJ, stop.”
“What?” he scoffs, “You want me to stop telling the truth? When will you realize that I’m correct? That I’m not good for anyone.”
“You’re nothing like him, JJ. You never have been and that’s something you need to realize.” You tug on his hair again, to make sure you have his attention. “The way you care about those you love. I mean, today was a bit reckless but you protected your friend. You protect the entire friend group. You’d never hurt anyone just for the hell of it, just because you felt like it, that’s not you, JJ. “
Looking him in the eyes, you try your best to convey the severity of your words, “You say you have nothing to lose but you do. You have me for one, then there's John B, Kie, Pope. If you keep doing reckless shit you’ll lose us. We need you JJ, you’re the biggest support system in our little group.”
JJ doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He taps on your thigh, signaling for you to move and when you do he just walks out of the bathroom. You let out a sigh and drop your head, leaving it to hang for a few moments while you steady your breathing to make sure you don’t cry. Everything you said was true and you wished he believed it. The group is full of strong personalities but JJ is the one that keeps everyone a bit sane. He stops people from bickering, he keeps the mood light when it gets to be heavy, he listens to everyone so intently that he knows every detail about anyone. He’s the first to speak up when others are talking down to your group, he's the first to throw a punch in defense. He’s the one, specifically, that brings light to your life every day.
You clean up the bathroom slowly, distracting yourself so you don’t cry. Now is not the time to be emotional, not when JJ’s headspace is so low. This isn’t the first time this has happened and you know it won’t be the last. The amount of self loathing that boy has for himself will stick around no matter what people tell him. It gets better at times but his dad has a way of making it come to the forefront of his brain more often than not.
It’s about fifteen minutes later, stalling as much as possible, before you make your way back to your room. You have a glass of water and some pain killers now because you know that JJ didn’t leave, that he wouldn’t leave. He never does.
“Here,” you murmur, handing over the glass and two pills. “Lay down and go to sleep.”
He has his shirt off and he watches as you move around the room. His gaze is heavy and it makes you feel even warmer than you’re already feeling. You pick up things around the room, dirty clothes, cups, pieces of trash, anything to keep you busy. It’s not something you want to do but you also want to give JJ some space. You won’t admit it but it upsets you every time he starts talking like that and you know he knows that. He always lasts about 13 minutes before he breaks down.
And right on the dot, as you have an armful of dirty clothes to drop in the hamper, he speaks up. “Will you come lay down?”
“I’m going to take a shower. I feel gross.”
JJ lets out a tired sigh, “I’ve calmed down, please come here.”
“I feel gross,” you argue. He may have calmed down but you’re still hurt at his words. You know he doesn’t do it on purpose but it hurts to know that he believes he’s not worth anything, that he’s not afraid of losing you or anyone else that cares about him.
“There’s no point in showering, if I’m not going to shower and we end up pressed against each other anyway. We’ll be sweaty regardless.” He reasons, his voice on the verge of despair and you know that he needs you close right now. That he needs the comfort he seeks. “Please?”
Your heart softens at the tone of his voice and you cave. Dropping the clothes into the hamper you shuffle over to the empty side of your bed. JJ turns his back to you and you settle in behind him, shoving one arm under his neck and wrapping the other one around his waist. You pull him close to you, both palms flat against his chest, molding your body against his. JJ brings a hand to the top of yours and laces his fingers with yours. He lets out a stuttering breath when you place your lips to the back of his neck.
“I have one thing to lose,” he breathes out, “and it’s you.” You press another kiss to the back of his neck before digging your nose to the skin there. “I love you, you know”
“Yeah, I know.” You squeeze his hand and he squeezes back. “I love you, you know.”
JJ sighs and relaxes completely, like he’d been waiting for you to say those exact words, “I know.”
He falls asleep a few minutes later.
-
-
It’s about three days later when you’re walking down the street when you notice a familiar looking jeep coming towards you. Your hopes for it to just keep driving die before they’re fully even there because it stops next to you, making you stumble a bit at the closeness.
“Pogue.”
“Topper.” you sigh, stepping up to his driver window. “I have a name.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really care.” He looks you up and down before smirking, “But I could.”
You roll your eyes, “Hm, in your dreams. What do you want?”
“Just wanted to see how your little group of Pogues are doing with your precious Pope in the slammer?” He raises an eyebrow in question.
You cross your arms over your chest and step closer. You’re not above fighting. You know how to, you were taught how to fight correctly, your dad teaching you at a young age. He felt the need to, with where you live and the stability you have in such an area.
“Yeah, see, JJ was the one that ended up there.”
Topper’s face falls and his skin turns a bit pale at your words. He won’t ever admit it, but you know that he’s secretly scared of JJ. Him and his friends, they all are. Never once have you seen them go to him one on one. They always have 2 or more and it always fills you with pride because JJ does know how to fight but it’s never fair because he’s just one and they gang up on him.
“Why?” he questions.
“Well, Top, that’s because he’s a good person. Unlike you.” you sneer, not backing down. He’s bigger than you, probably stronger than you but you’re not scared of him. You never have been.
“I didn’t want to press the charges, it wasn’t me!” His cocky demeanor falls quickly at the newfound information and it makes you laugh. “It was my mom, I swear.”
“Right, so you couldn’t have stopped her? Couldn’t have done anything when you know the reason it was done in the first place was because you jumped someone who was just trying to do their job. Someone who works for their money. Does someone working to keep themselves afloat scare you? What is it! Huh? You don’t like it?” You can’t help yourself. The force in which your voice is coming out startles you just as much as it does Topper.
“Oh please,” Topper scoffs, rolling his eyes in the process, “don’t act like they’re all innocent. I had a gun held to my head.”
“Yeah, true, but you were about to kill one of our friends! You’re no better than any of us. Oh! And should I mention how you almost killed another one the other night at the outdoor movie? Should I bring that up to someone? Hm? Maybe your mom or maybe the police?” You tilt your head to the side, taunting him a bit.
“Like anyone would believe someone like you,” Topper laughs.
You laugh right back, “Do you forget that I’m actually right under you, status wise? That my family just chooses to live where we do because we’re not a bunch of prissy snobs. People would believe me.”
“Do your Pogues know about you?”
“Of course they do. Do you think that me having money changes anything?” You question, rolling your eyes. “Actually, this conversation is going nowhere. I’m done. I have somewhere I need to be.”
When you step back and start walking, Topper gets out and follows you. “Come back here!”
“For what! What do you want?”
“You need to be knocked down a peg or two. Remind you where you are and who you hang out with,” He steps up to you, trying to seem threatening.
You look up at him bored, “Okay, Topper. Why don’t you get back in your car and drive away. Go do some drugs or beat up on someone working.”
He grabs at your arm and pulls you chest to chest with him, getting in your face in the process. “You don’t know me!”
“And I don’t want to. Now, let me go.”
When you fight against his grip he just holds on tighter. You wince and you know it’ll bruise, “I’m not above hitting a girl. Especially when she’s asking for it.”
“Do it, I dare you.” you challenge, stepping up to nearly pressing your nose to his. You’re not too sure how you didn’t see it coming, probably because you were really challenging him. But he didn’t seem to think the same thing because he surges forward to press his lips to yours. You back away as far as possible but his grip on you doesn’t let you go far and his lips make contact with yours. “Get off of me!”
You stomp on his foot and knee him in the stomach and that gets him to let go. “You bitch!” he grumbles out and reaches for your leg, pulling it out from under you. You land on the ground with a groan and kick at him when he grabs your ankle and bends down to punch you across the face, “Fucking stop!”
“You’re the one that grabbed me, now let go!” You kick at him again and get him in the groin this time. And when he bends over you get enough momentum to deliver a punch to the side of his face. He lands on his side and you push him around until he’s on his back and punch him again before standing up. You stick your boot up under his chin and step on his neck just enough to make it harder for him to breathe. “Don’t ever fucking touch me again.”
“You bitch!” He exclaims again, trying to lunge up at you again but when it doesn’t work he scratches down your leg, cutting into the skin. You push into his neck more when he doesn’t stop. “You do belong with the Pogues.”
“I know,” you smirk, leaning down. “You get your mom to drop the charges against JJ and I’ll make sure he doesn’t come after you for what you just pulled.”
“You think I’m scared of him!” He yells out, choking a bit when your foot slips against his movement.
“I know that you are. And after he finds out it was you that did this to me, it’ll be a whole other type of anger from him.” you whisper, shoving against his throat again. “Drop the charges and I’ll keep him away from you, for this.”
Topper gasps and starts to grab at your ankle but you don’t move it and you won’t move it until he agrees. It only takes a few seconds before he caves, “Okay! Okay, I’ll do it!”
“Good,” you smile, pulling back a little and a gasping breath echoes loudly between the two of you. “Do it now.”
Topper groans and tries to fight you once again, punching at your thigh this time around and it makes you stumble back but not enough because you slam your foot down on his chest, knocking the wind out of him. “Do it now.”
He lets out a breath and fumbles around in his pocket before his phone is presented and he puts it to his ear. “On speaker.”
Once Topper hangs up the phone, after spitting out some bullshit excuse, his mom agrees. She sounds reluctant but she agrees nonetheless. Topper punches you in the thigh once again, this time harder, losing your balance and hitting the ground once more. He kicks at you, foot coming in contact with your lower back after you turned away from him.
“You won’t ever do that to me again, you hear me?” Topper yells, standing up above you.
You laugh and turn over onto your back, “What? Your ego hurt after being held down by a girl.” His face turns red and you can tell he’s trying his hardest not to kick you again. It just makes you laugh more as you stand up to your full height once more. “Don’t let the charges being dropped fall through. If they do? I won’t have any control over what happens.”
You start to walk away and another laugh escapes when you hear Topper, from behind you, let out a frustrated scream before his car door slams and he speeds away. He’s too easy. Messing with him is one of your favorite things to do, even if it ends up with you limping a bit and blood trickling down your leg.
When you reach your destination, The Chateau as always, you’re relieved to only see Kie at the dock you’re all supposed to be meeting at. You initially thought you’d be the last one to show up, your run in with Topper added at least 20 extra minutes to your journey, but you’re glad it doesn’t seem that way. Kie looks up when a branch snaps under your foot and you can see a smile outlining her face when she spots you but it quickly turns into a frown when she sees the state you’re in.
“What the hell happened to you?” she screeches, meeting you halfway.
You look around the property, in search of a certain blonde boy because you absolutely had no idea how you were going to explain this to him. JJ was absolutely going to lose it once he saw you and he absolutely isn’t going to let it go until he knows the truth. You thought about lying to him but he knows you better than he knows himself and he’d see through the lie before it would even have a chance to leave your mouth.
“Where are the guys? I thought I’d be late.”
Kie gives you an unimpressed look at your obvious avoidance of the subject, “I don’t know, something about Figure 8 and Sarah Cameron. That’s all I heard on the phone call.”
You nod, not really caring where they are in the slightest, “Cool. Now will you help me clean up a bit. It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks, I promise.”
She runs her eyes down your whole body before meeting your eyes, “That’s a lie. Do you not feel the blood actively running down your leg?”
Looking down, your eyes widen at just how much blood is covering your leg. “Shit,” you mutter, pressing a palm to your forehead.
“What happened?”
“I ran into Topper,” you sigh, the adrenaline quickly leaving your body now that you’re standing still.
Kiara gasps loudly, “By yourself!”
“Yes,” you groan, not really seeing the big deal. “He looks worse.”
Kie looks like she doesn’t believe you and she’s clearly about to question you when the van pulls up and JJ loudly gets out, yelling out to you both, “Yo, guys, someone beat the shit out of Topper and it wasn’t even us!”
He clearly hasn’t taken in the sight of you yet but you turn your attention back to Kie and you can’t help but smirk at the shocked expression on her face. “JJ’s going to lose his shit in about 2 seconds.”
And just as Kiara closes her mouth, JJ’s voice nearly echoes through the trees, “What in the fuck!” You wince at his tone and just how loud it is.
He was still behind you, you purposely kept your eyes locked on Kiara so you don’t have to face him just yet. But that’s clearly not going to stand because JJ steps in front of you, effectively pushing Kie out of the way. “Who did this?”
“I fell?” You raise your voice as if asking a question, scrunching your face up into your shoulders. The deadpan look on your boyfriend's face makes you let out a sigh and drop your shoulders. “I’d like to say for you to see the other guy but you already have.”
Pope’s voice cuts in before JJ even has a chance to process your words, “You did that to Topper!” He sounds impressed and a big smile pulls at your lips as you turn your head to look at him.
“Holy shit,” John B exhales staring at you in complete awe. “He was fucked up.”
A laugh bubbles past your lips and your cheeks heat up at the attention you’re receiving. The admiration on the two boys' faces almost makes you forget about the other boy in your presence. The one that’s been awfully quiet. You turn back to him and the look on his face makes you frown. His pupils are blown and his jaw is clenched so tight you’re positive his teeth hurt. His focus is dead set on the base of your throat.
Waving your hand in front of his face, you snap your fingers as well, trying to bring him back to you, “Earth to JJ. Come back to me.”
“Topper did this to you?” he asks and when you nod, something flashes in his eyes so quick you find yourself trying to chase it. Figure out what’s going through his head. “I’m going to kill him.”
You’re stunned at the way his voice sounds, deep and raspy, filled with so much hatred. You’re almost positive his voice has never been so low before and it sends chills down your spine. You blink at him but when you open your eyes he’s not in front of you anymore. He’s only a few steps away but you can’t really move as the pain in your leg finally settled in.
“JJ,” you cry out, half out of pain and half to get his attention. “Don’t do anything! Come back here.”
You swivel in your spot and watch him as he continues to stomp into the house. A few things crash around before he comes back out, shoving what you assume is the gun into the back of his pants. “JB, give me the keys.”
“No, don’t give them to him!” You yell out. You need to get his attention.
���What are you thinking? Do you really think I’m just going to sit here and do nothing when that piece of shit put his hands on you?” JJ shouts, standing a few feet away from you now.
Pope comes up behind JJ and puts both hands to his shoulder, “Calm down, man,” he says but JJ roughly shrugs his shoulder and pushes Pope off of him. He puts his hands up in surrender but stays close. “You can’t just go pull a gun out on him and kill him.” He reasons.
“Oh yeah?” He challenges. “Watch me.”
“JJ, stop it,” Kie cries out now.
“Yeah man, you saw what Topper looked like. You should be happy that she’s the one who did it.” John B points out, gesturing to you and JJ follows the movement of his hand and he looks to you again.
He looks at you with his brows furrowed, a storm swirling around in his eyes as he stares you down. The eye contact isn’t something you normally back down from but the intensity in his eyes right now throws you off. It feels like you’re being chastised. You know he’s trying to figure out why you fought Topper. He knows that you don’t just out right fight someone, even if they start it first. He knows that the only time you ever fight is in self defense or to defend someone you care about.
“What did you do?” JJ asks because he knows you did this for a reason. Something more than just for yourself because you don’t personally care for Topper, you’d never give him the time of day and that includes fighting him. “Why’d you fight him?”
“Well,” you shrug, looking down to your feet. Your leg was still bleeding. You should probably do something about that. “He made me mad.”
JJ scoffs, “Your temper is not as bad as mine. There’s more to it. Tell me, now, or I will go kill him.”
You hesitate some more, fixated on your feet and the way they look in your boots. They’re a bit scuffed but they still look good. You focus on that and not the four sets of eyes burning into your frame. Telling them, telling JJ why you fought would result in JJ feeling like shit. You really don’t want him to feel like shit because you did what you did to help him. But he’ll feel like shit because you got hurt and you got hurt on his behalf. There’s nothing he hates more than someone standing up for him and getting hurt because of it.
“Today, please.” JJ snaps and you look up at him to see the anger plastered on his face.
“I was walking here when he pulled up beside me. He wanted to taunt me about Pope being in jail for the whole boat thing and I told him that it was you that took the blame for it. He tried arguing with me but when I started to walk away he grabbed me,” you take a breath when you see JJ step forward like he’s ready to protect you from the words you’re about to say. “And well, when I was challenging him to hit me he kissed me but I -“
“He did what now?” JJ cuts in, his voice so deep and slow your eyes widen at him. Kiara and Pope’s jaw drops at the same time and John B looks taken aback at the way his best friend sounds. Never have they ever heard him sound so angry. You’ve never even heard him so angry before.
Everyone, but you and JJ, glances at each other in confusion but you don’t even dare to look away from JJ. They don’t know what’s going on or why JJ would get so mad at the idea of someone else kissing you. Kiara had a suspicion long ago that the two of you were dating but you shot it down even though she was right. That was almost a year ago and as far as you know they don’t know you’re actually together. At this point you’re not too sure why they don’t even know or why you haven’t told them but you have a feeling they’re about to be real surprised here soon. The look in JJ’s eyes is possessive, it’s down right a claim that you’re his and no one has the right to kiss you.
“Let me finish,” you put a hand up. “I kicked him, shoved him down to the ground, punched him, then held him by the throat with my foot-“
“My god,” John B breathes out, once again looking in awe. Pope just nods in agreement, almost in a daze. Kiara, well she just looks impressed.
“While I slightly choked him with my foot,” you pause for a second, preparing yourself for the worst reaction from JJ, “I got him to drop the charges on the boat.”
It goes deathly quiet for a few moments before three voices come at you all at one, “What?”
You ignore them, still looking at JJ, “By the end of the day your name should be cleared. You won’t be held responsible for the boat anymore.”
JJ doesn’t say anything, he just continues to stare but you watch him carefully. His breaths are deep and calculated, his jaw is clenching and unclenching, his fists loosen and he rests his palms against his thighs. You can practically see the wheels inside his brain working through the information, processing the fact that you did this for him. He’s not used to someone caring for him this way, no matter how long you’ve been there for him, he’s still not used to the love you have for him. He went so long without it, it takes him a while to process it.
But you see the moment it finally settles in his brain, the second that he fully processed the information you’d given him. His chest stutters briefly and you know the tears are going to come next. He breathes in a long breath, and holds it in his lungs before it rushes out through his nose. He’s trying to keep up his tough front, but he’s failing. His eyes finally soften and they go back to the normal light they usually are.
Then, in the blink of an eye he’s in front of you. His hands cradle your face before his body collides with yours, hard, and his lips are on yours. The kiss is hard, it’s possessive, passionate, sincere but hasty, fervent, needy, desperate. It’s overwhelming and so full of emotion that it takes you a second to respond but when you do, JJ sighs into it and pulls you impossibly closer. One hand moves to your lower back and the other one stays on your jaw where his thumb pushes against your face to open your mouth even more. He is absolutely, unquestionably claiming you right here, right now. Not that you need to be claimed but you don’t mind. You’ve never felt so alive before.
The love JJ is conveying through this kiss is everything you’ve ever needed and you reciprocate the best that you can. You want him to know that you’re his and he’s yours. Just how it should be.
JJ whines when you pull away and he chases after you but you need to breathe, “Jesus, J.”
“I’ll say,” Kiara agrees, a little out of breath herself at what she just witnessed. Two seventeen year olds should not know how to share such a passionate looking kiss.
“I didn’t know friends kiss like that,” John B jokes, nudging Pope when he laughs.
“That’s because they don’t.” he continues laughing.
JJ ignores everything they say, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I did.” You shrug, shifting on your feet and wincing at the pain that shoots through your leg and JJ notices that. “But like can we go get me cleaned up or something, I need to sit down.”
“Yeah,” JJ nods hastily, “you guys go ahead and go out without us,” he looks at the other three, that still look like they’re in complete shock, and doesn’t wait for their response before he looks back to you, “can you walk?”
You nod but he doesn’t listen. JJ swiftly throws you over his shoulder and starts walking towards the house. “I love you, you know,” he says once he’s far enough away from everyone.
“I know.”
-
-
It’s the next day when you and JJ make an appearance after staying inside all day the day before. Once you had showered and iced down the parts of your body that hurt, you fell asleep and stayed asleep until it was dark. The adrenaline in your system was completely gone and you were in a lot of pain so sleep came naturally.
You met John B, Pope, Kie, and even Sarah, at the beach. It was around 11am when you and JJ walked up to them as they were sitting there in the sand. As you approached, they went quiet and watched as JJ helped you sit, hand you a bottle of water before sitting down behind you. His legs press against yours on either side of your body and his hands rest on top of your thighs. You can feel four sets of eyes on you and you give it about 3 more seconds before someone breaks the quiet.
“How are you feeling?” Kie is the one to break it. You glance at her and give her a smile, one that she returns.
“Sore but I’ll be fine.”
John B laughs a bit of a disbelieving laugh, “What you explained yesterday was pretty badass.”
“Hell yeah it was,” Pope excitedly cuts in. “I should say thank you, as well.”
You just shrug, “I would’ve done it for any of you.”
“Did Topper really do that to you?” Sarah questions you, quizzically looking you up and down. Your face bruised and so did your leg. The scratches down your leg are scabbed and also bruised.
The hands on your thighs tighten and dig into the skin there. You gently place your hands on his, soothing the anger that still sits there. He calmed down yesterday, barely, but he did enough to listen to what happened when you explained it again. Adding in the details you knew would calm him down. He tried to argue with you a few times but you finally got through to him, made him accept the fact that you did what you did and there’s no turning back now.
“What a dick. I can’t believe I dated him,” Sarah continues when you nod at her.
As everyone laughs and starts to pick on Sarah for her choices, you shift your upper body enough to twist around and look at JJ. His eyes are dark and his jaw is clenched tight, pushing out the muscles in his neck. You let out a sigh and bring a hand up to his cheek, soothing your fingers over his jaw to get him to unclench. He’s angry, that much you can tell, but he’s trying his best to keep a wraps on it. It’s been very difficult to keep him steady. Every time he looks at you, he tenses and his breathing gets all deep. It’ll be like that for a few days.
“JJ, calm down,” you whisper to him. The fingers digging into your thighs tighten some more before he relaxes, his eyes meeting yours and the dark anger in them fizzling away slowly. “Hey, there you are.”
“I still can’t believe you won’t let me go kick his ass,” JJ scoffs, moving to lean back on his hands. The movement makes you sway a little, having not realized how much you were relying on him to keep you upright. “I just want to kick his ass.”
He always wants to kick his ass but you know the underlying anger in him would take it further than that and that’s not something you want. Also, “If you kick his ass the charges will come back,” you remind him.
JJ closes his eyes and takes a breath. You move around between his legs and sit sideways, your legs bent over one of his now so you don’t have to be so twisted to look at him. Your back hurts a bit too much for that. He pulls up the leg that’s against your back and presses it into you, giving you something to lean on. You place a hand on his thigh, up by his hip, and lean into him a bit, “I’m sure you’ll get the chance to kick his ass again but just not for this, okay? I hit him just as much as he hit me.”
That brings a smirk to his face, “You know, I wouldn’t mind seeing you choke someone out with those boots you wear. I’m a bit mad I missed it, I’m sure it was hot as fuck.”
And that catches the attention of everyone else and you turn your head when John B speaks up, “Fuck, I was thinking the same thing,” he laughs and laughs even harder when Sarah gasps. “I’m just saying.”
“Actually,” Kie shrugs, “I wouldn’t mind picking a fight with Topper just to see that.”
You let out a loud laugh, your head thrown back at the sheer force in which it comes out, “Can we wait a few days maybe, I hurt.”
JJ immediately brings a hand up to soothe over your leg. It does look bad and honestly it does hurt as bad as it looks. It only takes a few seconds for his other hand to brush over the nasty looking bruise on your back too. Four sets of eyes track the movements, “Does it hurt that bad?”
“Yeah, actually. The cuts sting the worst and the sun makes them feel like they’re burning.” Your answer makes JJ frown. His eyes flicker with anger once more, “Stay calm,” you state a bit forcefully.
You can tell that the group wants to question the movements between you and JJ. The kiss you shared in front of them yesterday was anything but the friendly kisses that you share with the group most days and it’s been on the forefront of their brains ever since. Sarah is the only one that doesn’t track the movements for more than what they are, she didn’t see the kiss and the closeness is no different than what it usually is for the both of you.
The good thing about being with JJ is that nothing really changed between the two of you when you started dating. As kids, you were alway closer than with anyone else. JJ trusted you, protected you, cared deeply for you from the beginning. The touchiness started when you were 15, feelings between you a little too strong to ignore so you went from the friendly hugs and touches to a bit more. Hands would rest in more intimate places, no longer would they rest on knees but now on thighs. No longer on the waist but more on the curve of hips or high up on the rib cage near the chest. Everything was taken in stride, the older everyone got the more common it was and no one questioned a thing about it. It was mostly friendly, being so used to being near JJ for years that the change in touches barely registered in your head, it was all normal.
It changed almost a year ago. The feelings you held for JJ getting to be too much to control, you felt they were getting more and more noticeable every day. JJ was getting closer and closer, lingering longer than usual, snapping quicker when someone offended you, acting a bit more possessive and it was a lot to process. One night, after a particularly large fight with the Kooks, you and JJ were alone on the hammock outside The Chateau when he kissed you. It was a real kiss, one with emotion and fervor, not just a friendly peck that you’d gotten so used to sharing.
You guys have been dating ever since. Keeping it to yourself. You share everything else with the group, nothing was ever private but this was something you wanted to yourselves. To enjoy with no pressure. It was only supposed to be that way for a few months, while you got used to the change in relationship, but you got so comfortable with the way you guys got to have each other in private, you just never mentioned it.
But with how deeply you loved each other, it was obviously getting harder to hide. Not that it’s really that important.
“I’m cal-“
“Are you guy-“
“What the fuck!”
JJ, Pope, and Sarah all speak at the same time but everyone focuses on Sarah’s distressed, ‘what the fuck,’ and looks to her. Everyone then follows her line of sight and what’s caught her attention. JJ immediately tenses and he sits back, ready to jump up. You tense yourself, pushing harder into your hold on him.
“Rafe, what the fuck are you doing here?” Sarah screeches standing up. John B follows her. Kie and Pope stand too, standing more in front of you and JJ.
“Let me go,” JJ whispers, his voice coming out harsh, especially when Topper pops up from behind Rafe.
“No.”
JJ huffs, an annoyed sigh heaving through his nose. His vision is locked on the two boys approaching your group. “We just wanted to check up on our favorite people,” Rafe jokes, the sarcasm rolling off of him in waves. You move completely around in front of JJ when you feel his body start to shake a bit at his continued words, “Especially the one who beat up my boy here.”
Wrapping your legs around JJ’s waist, you pull him closer to you before grasping his face in your hands. “Hey baby, how are you today?” you question, whispering to not gain the attention of everyone else. Pope and Kie are doing a decent job of keeping you hidden but JJ’s eyes are still locked on where Rafe and Topper are standing.
“Which one of you did it? He won’t tell me and I’d like to have a word.”
A twitch goes through JJ’s body, like he’s about to get up but you hold him tighter. Stroking your fingers through his hair, you tug on it a bit to get his attention. It works. “It’s okay.”
“None of you look like you got your asses handed to them, so I ask again. Who did it?” Rafe hums, clicking his tongue as you assume he looks around at everyone. You know that you and JJ aren’t completely covered and he’s bound to finally see you two.
“Rafe, just leave.” Sarah intervenes.
“Oh, Daddy’s little princess, I don’t think so. Not until someone steps up. I might even hang out with you today. I think it would be fun.”
“No, leave them alone. You come for them enough without reason. Go home!” Her voice is stern but Rafe is off the walls, you highly doubt he’ll listen. “Topper deserved what happened to him anyway.”
“Ah,” Rafe lets out, “So you know who did it? You think she’ll own up to it any time soon, I’m tired.”
You wince when JJ roughly grabs you and shoves you away from him. The movement makes you tumble into the back of Kie’s legs and she helps you up as JJ pushes to the front of the group, in the blink of an eye. You let out a groan as you get steady on your feet, your back burning with pain.
John B slaps a hand down on JJ’s shoulder as he steps in front of him, to keep him from attacking. You let out a sigh and shake your head as JJ puffs out his chest, making himself seem bigger. “Why don’t you leave her out of this,” his tone is menacing.
“Oh! You know who did it too?” Rafe exclaims, feigning ignorance.
“Rafe, I told you it’s not a big deal. Let’s go.” Topper interjects.
“No, man. Look at the bruise on your neck. Someone just doesn’t get away with that. Even if they’re a girl,” Rafe finishes, looking directly at you. You stare back, unimpressed, arms crossed over your chest.
JJ lunges for Rafe, “Keep her out of it!”
Rafe laughs as John B and Pope hold JJ back, “But it’s her fault!”
“Not when he’s all over her first! Come on, Top, be a big man and admit it was your fault!” JJ taunts, struggling against the hold JB and Pope have on him.
You sigh once more before stepping out of Kie’s grip, she squeezes you for a second but let’s you go when you keep walking. Stepping in between JJ and Rafe, your chest brushes his, and you challenge him. You want to protect JJ in this moment because you know if a fight was to break out, JJ wouldn’t have it fair because looking past Rafe’s shoulder you spot the rest of their little gang.
“Get out of the way,” JJ yells, placing a hand to your waist. His fingers squeeze into your side but you don’t back down.
“No, JJ!” you yell back, “this is something you can’t fight over. I told you that!”
JJ presses his chest to your back, trying to get as close as possible to the situation but you push back. “Damn it, let me do something!”
You ignore him, turning to Rafe who has a smug expression on his face from the exchange, “Leave. This has nothing to do with you!”
Sarah steps you beside you and shoves at her brother, making him stumble. “Go home.”
“Sarah, this has nothing to do with you.”
You take a step forward, “And it doesn’t with you, either. I’d leave before you end up like your buddy.” Your temper is rising very quickly. The continuous smug look on his face from not listening to you or his own sister making your skin crawl. Your blood is hot and you can feel yourself vibrating in JJ’s hold, the taunting of his words and the way he speaks them as if he’s demeaning you.
“Like you co-“ you don’t even let him finish before you’re throwing a punch across his face, hard. He falls to the ground with the force of it and you’re about to lurch forward to continue throwing punches but arms wrap around your waist and pull you back. Your legs kick up in the air as you fight against the hold, “You bitch!”
Sarah jumps in between you and her brother, knowing he wouldn’t hit her. “Rafe, leave,” but he just shoved her aside and tried to get to you. You’re still fighting in JJ’s hold, yelling at him to let you go but he just continues to pull you away. Topper jumps in to keep Rafe back, desperately trying to get him to listen. For once Topper is doing something smart.
“Let me fight him!” You scream, tired of him and all his friends constantly looking down at you like you’re no more than a piece of garbage on the ground. It’s tiring, frustrating, and you’re absolutely sick of it. You’re tired of having to constantly be on alert, wondering if you’re going to get attacked again just because you’re hanging out somewhere or walking down the street. “Let me go!”
“No!” JJ yells back, “if you won’t let me fight, you’re not going to either!”
“I’m not letting you fight because I don’t want you in jail, asshole!” You’re still struggling against him but his hold is too tight and you’re losing air. “I’m just trying to protect you, god damn it, let me do something for you!”
In your fit of rage you don’t even notice that JJ has dragged you both a few feet away from everyone else until he’s in front of you, hands grasping at your face, “Hey hey hey, will you calm down? Breathe, calm down, baby.”
“JJ, let me go!” You exclaim, still trying to pull away from his grasp. It bothers the bruise on your face but you ignore it. You just want to fight, to attack anything that puts JJ in danger. You’re not too sure where this sudden wave of protectiveness came from, granted you always want to protect him, but it’s a really strong urge these past few days.
“No, calm down. I’m not letting you go until you’re breathing properly again.” JJ argues. He soothes his thumbs over your cheeks but you’re barely registering them there. Your mind is still reeling, wanting to do anything to fight, to keep JJ safe and with you. “What is going on with you? Why do you want to fight so bad? You’re not one to fight.”
The questions seem to drain the fight right out of you, the adrenaline running through your system leaving your body in a single breath. It makes you sag against JJ, his hands on your cheeks the main thing keeping you up. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, dig a little. I need an answer so we can work on moving forward.” JJ throws your own words back at you. You smile a little at him, happy that he’s grasping onto the tactics you use to get him to open up about what he’s going through. JJ notices you smile and chuckles, “Yeah, yeah I listen to you after all.”
That makes you full on laugh, your whole body shaking as the laugh rips through you. Reaching up, you rest a hand to his cheek, “You’re so stubborn, I’m a bit surprised.” He leans into your touch a bit, eyes closing as he takes in a deep breath. Your laughter dies down and you just smile at him. “The idea of you not being with me, scares me.”
JJ frowns and steps closer, as if either of you would disappear if he wasn’t close enough. “I just-“ you breathe out when he places your free hand on his ribs, your place of comfort, your grounding place. “I just want to do something for you. I want you to be safe. I want to protect you.”
“Have you not realized that’s what you’ve been doing for me since we were like 9?” JJ laughs, shaking his head. “Baby, you’ve been the one protecting me for years. How many times have you taken the blame for something when you weren’t even there? How many times have you hid me in your closet so your parents don’t find out I’ve sneaked in after a particularly bad day with my dad? How many times have you patched me up and held me when things got too bad? It’s too many to count. You do things for me every day. You smiling at me, holding my hand, sitting beside me, sharing food with me, looking at me, hell just being in the same room as me; gets me through any day.”
The four others stare on in a bit of a daze. Rafe and his followers long gone so their attention has been solely on the two of you. But there’s no way either of you could’ve known. Emotions are running high between you and JJ that there’s no way you’d pay attention to anything other than him until you knew his mind was steady. You knew JJ was going through the same thing.
“Are they like.... together?” Sarah questions, to no one in particular. She always just assumed the two of you were just closer. That your friendship was just that, a friendship. She’s noticed that the entire group of Pogues were close and touchy, but it was always a bit more between the two of you.
“Yeah,” Pope answers.
Sarah gasps, “Why didn’t I know!”
“Because we don’t even know,” John B answers.
“What do you mean?” Sarah’s brows furrow. That has got to be one of the most confusing things she’s ever been told. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“They haven’t told us,” Kie shrugs, “But, I mean, it’s obvious. I figured it out like six months ago maybe?”
“Really?” Pope, raises an eyebrow. “I figured it out like 3 months ago.”
“Mmm,” John B hums, “I’m pretty sure I witnessed their first official kiss. You know how she kisses all of us?” he asks, looking around to the others. Kie and Pope nod while Sarah just watches on. “Well, one night, like last year some time. I saw them kiss and it wasn’t like the ones she gives all of us. Their dynamic changed the next day.”
Sarah looks around completely baffled. She feels like she should’ve known, should’ve realized but she just assumed because no one acted like you two were dating. But she didn’t grow up with you all, she hasn’t seen how the two of you dating wouldn’t be a shock. And the newfound information still doesn’t stop Sarah from letting out a gasp when you surge forward to kiss JJ.
The kiss is like the one you shared yesterday but this time it’s you pouring everything you’ve got into it. Pouring in every ounce of love your body has to offer. It’s deep and warm and all things good. It’s needy and greedy, needing to have his attention and wanting to take it all. He reciprocates with just as much fervor, hastily kissing back like his life depended on it. His hands are tight on your waist as he pulls you impossibly closer, always closer, and your arms wrap around his neck. Hands shoved in his hair, you kiss him with unrelenting fury. It’s a kiss that could easily turn into something more if you weren’t in public so you try to tone it down but JJ is having none of that. He just wraps both arms around your back and holds you to him when you try to pull away.
You step back though, breathing heavily against JJ’s lips. Your breaths mix with his and your lips desperately brush as you both just breathe, trying to come back to earth. You place a quick kiss to his lips and one to his nose, “I love you, you know.”
“I know,” he responds with a quick kiss to your lips and your nose.
-
-
The van is entirely too tense for your liking. The atmosphere is so thick, it makes it feel like you can’t breathe. John B is yelling profusely at JJ as he drives, like he’s part of a car chase, through the back roads of The Cut to get to where his brain has focused on.
It was a pretty normal day up until about 26 minutes ago.
You were the last one to be picked up for the day, JJ greeting you at the sliding door of the van with a quick hello kiss to your lips before grabbing your hand and helping you in. Kisses got placed on everyone, even Sarah -who was pleasantly surprised, because even if she won’t admit it, she was upset to find out that you’ve kissed everyone but her- before sitting down on the floor in front of the bench. JJ sat behind you and you wrapped your arms around his legs. All of you were going to head out to the boat, spend the day on the water and soak up some sun. Just hang out like teenagers are supposed to do.
That was until a supposed cop car pulled up behind the van out of nowhere and ordered for you to pull over. John B does as told but in the blink of an eye, there’s a shot gun being aimed in his face and orders are being thrown for everyone to get out. Orders thrown for us to lay down flat in the ditch.
Something about knowing Rafe and how he’s going after people to collect money he owes. JJ was constantly telling him that you’re all a bunch of Pogues, that he won’t find anything but of course he found the cash you keep in your backpack, along with the weed you hold for JJ. There were a few other things he found that he deemed good enough to steal but you didn’t get enough of a look to see what he found. It’s like he noticed every time one of you moved because he’d be quick to aim the gun at any of you who moved and threaten to shoot.
Which is why it was so surprising when JB was able to get into the car without the guy noticing. After that, it was amazing how fast the guy ended up on the ground, wheezing and groaning in pain.
“Oh, I know this guy! He sells coke to my dad!” JJ yelled before he kicked him in the stomach.
“No wonder he was talking about Rafe.” Sarah interjected, scoffing in disbelief.
JJ punched the guy across the face once more before reaching into his pocket and taking the guys wallet. “We have one more stop to make!” he laughs menacingly.
So, that leads you up to where you are now. Pacing the front lawn of a run down drug house. Crashes are coming from inside, along with the yells and screams from JJ and John B. Every time something hits the ground, you startle, completely on edge by the whole situation. JJ has damn near lost his mind, his eyes too wide and too unfocused. If you didn’t know any better you’d say he did a line of coke for breakfast this morning.
Deep down, you know this behavior is only fueled by the way he’s been treated his whole life. That he’s reached his limit at how much he can actually take. That he’s fed up with his life and what he feels like he’s worth. He’s snapped, something you’ve been trying to prevent for years, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You’re not scared of him, you know that you’d be able to calm him down but you know there’d be a fight before that happened. A fight you don’t want to go through. It’s only been four days since your fight with Topper and you’re still exhausted from it. You’re not ready to handle a fight with JJ.
“God, they sound like they’re killing each other in there,” Kie groans, pacing just as much as you. She looks worried.
Pope stands completely still, an anxious look on his face as he stares at the front door of the house. It looks like he believes he’ll summon them out with just his gaze in the door.
And Sarah, well, she just looks out of place.
You continue to pace, anxiously waiting, not daring to look at the door. You don’t want to know what’s going on. You wish you couldn’t hear what was going on either. You honestly feel like you’re going to wear a path down in the dead grass with all your back and forth.
“Now!” you jump at the sudden voice before the screen door to the house slams open. JJ steps out with a wad of cash in his hands. “We can all have, let’s see-“ he pauses for a second as he sorts through the stack, “5 grand each!”
John B looks aggravated, like he’s talking to a child that keeps asking ‘why’ for absolutely no reason, as he follows closely behind JJ.
“What are we doing! Stealing from drug dealers now?” Kiara exclaims.
JJ stares at her, throwing his arms around. “Aren’t you guys tired of this? We got a gun! A gun pulled on us today. We were robbed! Us!” JJ exclaims, face red. “I don’t know about you but I’m tired! I’m tired of being treated like absolute shit just because of where we live!”
You stare on in complete shock. JJ’s lips are parted and his eyes are wide, breathing ragged. This is a whole other type of anger that you’ve never seen out of JJ before. You’re not too sure how to handle this.
“Relax, JJ,” John B continues after him, his anger showing through as well. He starts pushing up against JJ, getting in his face.
“How’d you feel, huh? That shit was right there in your face,” JJ argues back.
“I’m putting it back,” John B moves to snatch the bag JJ has in his grasp and that leads to JJ shoving JB up against the van, hard. The impact of it echoes around the small area you’re in.
“You feel like a tough guy, huh?” John B snaps, not even trying to fight against the hold JJ has on him. He knows that JJ would never lay a hand on him, no matter how mad he got. “What will you do when he comes for us?”
“We punch him, in the throat,” JJ retorts, his voice coming out low and threatening. It does fit with JJ, he shouldn’t be capable of getting his voice to sound like that.
JB scoffs, “Oh, good fuckin’ idea, JJ.”
JJ steps back, a relieving sigh coming from you as he does, “I’m not putting it back,” he mutters and shoves past JB and gets into the van. From your vantage point, you can’t see him inside. You’re still so shocked to the spot, you can’t move. It’s only a few seconds of everyone just standing around before he gets back out. “What!?” he snaps.
“We’re sick of your shit.”
That seems to get you to snap out of whatever trance you’re in. You finally look away from JJ and look at everyone else. The worried look on Pope’s face, at his best friend's obvious breakdown. The indifference Sarah radiates because she doesn’t know JJ enough to feel any other way. The anger in John B’s stance as he looks at his best friend and the recklessness he’s showing. The disbelief on Kiara’s face as she looks at JJ like she’s never seen him before, “Yeah, you’re pulling guns out on people shit.”
“JJ come on man, put it back,” Pope tries to reason but JJ just snaps.
“Pope, come on! I took the fall for you, I owed 30k in restitution. The charges may drop but they can still sue me for that money. Might as well be ahead of the game!”
“I didn’t ask you to do that!” Pope exclaims.
“Yeah, well I did. Sorry for caring.” JJ mutters, looking around to everyone. He misses your frame, like he forgot you were even with them. “You know what? I’m just going to go by myself.”
All you do is watch as JJ starts to walk away, his head is down and you can see the hurt in his face as he walks by. The mask he holds up every day, faltering as soon as he can’t be seen anymore. He meets your eye and the wild anger that was there seconds ago is gone, all that’s left is watery eyes and disappointment. You take a step towards him, to give him the comfort he needs to get through this but he just shakes his head and keeps walking.
“JJ!” Pope hell’s out but it falls on deaf ears, JJ continuing his trek out of the area.
“Just let him go.” JB sighs, “let him do his thing.”
It’s quiet, so quiet you can hear the wind in the trees rustling each leaf, as JJ walks out of sight. It doesn’t take long for the last few minutes to settle into your brain and leave your blood running hot. When you turn away from where JJ had gone, you see everyone looking to you for some sort of guidance. They know you’re the only one that can successfully bring JJ back to earth, back to the present and out of his head. It’s been that way for years now. They just look at you helplessly, like you have all the answers. And you don’t.
It makes you angrier. It angers you that JJ did this. That he snapped and decided it would be a good idea to rob someone, a drug dealer at that. You would’ve much rather dealt with him getting into another fight with someone over having to deal with stolen money.
And it makes you angry that his best friends are apparently sick of him. It doesn’t sit right with you in the slightest.
“I can believe you guys,” you shake your head at them.
John B looks taken aback by your words, “Us!?”
“You can’t sit here and tell us you support him for what he just did!” Kie yells at you, stepping forward.
“Of course not!” You shake your head, “but I’m not going to sit here and shit on someone who is already down. JJ doesn’t deserve you guys to be talking to him like that, like you’re sick of him. That boy does everything he can to get things right with you guys. You mean so much to him and you’re just going to shit on him for it?”
“He’s robbing drug dealers, y/n.” Pope tries to reason but you just shake your head at him.
“One that just threatened to kill, each and every one of you.” You argue back, “Yes, stealing probably wasn’t the best thing he could’ve done and I’ll try and get it back so we don’t get into anymore fucking trouble. But, for you guys to turn on him the second he does something you don’t agree with is a bit fucked.”
You step towards them again, not realizing you were so far away from the group to begin with, “Pope, I know you didn’t ask him to, but he just took the fall for you so you wouldn’t lose your scholarship opportunity. He told me it’s because he’s not worth more than jail time, that you have so much more to look forward to than him.”
“Kie, who was the first person to accept you back into the group after you wanted to experience life as a kook? It was JJ. He sat there multiple nights, telling us that you haven’t changed, that you’d still be the same Kiara you were before. The one that’s understanding and supportive of everyone’s reckless behavior.”
“And John B,” you frown, “JJ was the one that was there for you when your dad went missing. He held you through the nights, made you eat and drink water. Did everything in his power to bring you out of your pain, while he was going through his own set of pain. He made sure you didn’t lose yourself when you lost your dad.”
“And for me? He’s been there for me through so much shit, quick to smile just so I would smile back. He could be in so much physical and emotional pain but he’s the first person to smile. The first person to crack a joke. The first person to offer comfort just because he doesn’t want people to feel what he feels from someone who is supposed to care for him. He may act like a jackass or someone who is tough and happy but he’s not. He’s really not.”
“You guys don’t see the way that mask falls off as soon as he’s alone. You don’t see how he beats himself up over the tiny details of his life. How he views himself as nothing more than a piece of trash for not being able to stand up to his dad. How he thinks he’s going to end up just like him. He’s scared, terrified of losing us. It’s why he’s so quick to fight, to protect, to make sure we’re happy. We’re literally the only thing, the only good thing, he has in his life. And you hurt him today.”
You hang your head after your rant, the weight of your words leaving you feeling empty after having said them. Your shoulders ache a bit but it’s still quiet. “I know, none of us agree with the stealing of the money. It was stupid and dangerous. But you didn’t have to tell him that you’re tired of him. You could’ve let Pope follow him like he wanted, to show him that he’s not alone.”
“Well, you didn’t follow him either.” Sarah steps in.
“He told me not to. I respect him for that. He knows what he did was a bit much. He wants to calm down, he was just mad that we all could’ve just died.” You shrug, looking around to everyone. They all look a bit guilty, realizing what it is that they just insinuated to their best friend.
“We didn’t mean it in a bad way,” John B says, running his hands through his hair like he’s stressed. And he is.
“Yeah, but do you think he’ll take it that way?” You question, eyebrow raised.
“We just want him to calm down.”
You nod, “I get that but you could’ve gone at it another way. That’s just me though. I’m gonna go home though. Be there just in case.”
Before they have a chance to say anything you walk away, in the opposite direction of JJ because you live in opposite directions. And that sudden thought makes your heart drop at the realization that JJ might try and go home. To show his dad that he can do something right, that he can get the money to pay off his debts.
You don’t hear from JJ for the rest of the day. Just your unread message of I know, to his I love you, you know, that he sent a few minutes after he left the group in the afternoon.
-
-
You didn’t see JJ until the following night. And when you did you kinda wished you hadn’t. You wish he hadn’t gone missing for over 24 hours. You wish you’d seen him all day and that this wasn’t the first time you were seeing him. As soon as your eyes landed on him, you knew something was wrong. Something went terribly wrong.
You and Kie had been together all day, running errands and shopping, picking up things for the movie night, dinner, at the Chateau. The Pogues all decided it would be a good idea because you knew that JJ would show up and they wanted to apologize to him. Everyone was worried about him, having not been able to locate him since he’d gone off the walls. But you knew him, you knew no matter how upset he gets about his friend, he’ll always come back to them. Always.
“I’m really worried about JJ,” Kie had said at one point. The two of you were picking up his favorite candy when she said it, looking forlorn into the shopping cart.
You felt her pain, but you shrugged nonchalant anyway, not wanting to alarm her with just how worried you were. If you were overly -which you were- worried about JJ then everyone knows it’s bad, “Shit happens in friend groups, Kie.”
She looked like she was close to tears, “But we’re not a normal friend group. We’re family.”
You nodded at her and held her in the middle of the market.
Now you felt like you were the one that needed to be held.
The sight in front of you was wrong. It didn’t belong in front of you. It didn’t belong anywhere near here yet, here it was staring you right in the face. You want to close your eyes and when you open them back up, you want it to be gone but you knew that wasn’t going to happen. Your heart is lodged in your throat and it was going to stay there until you knew everything was going to be okay.
“What did you do, JJ?” Pope gasps, in absolute disbelief as the three of you come up on JJ sitting in a hot tub, surrounded by hundreds of Christmas lights.
JJ looks up and scans over you, Kie, and Pope. You can barely see his eyes over the brim of his sunglasses. Why is he wearing sunglasses at night? You’re not too sure. “Oh, good you’re here. Come on, you have to get in right now! I have a jet going in my butt!”
He’s drunk, overly so, but that doesn’t stop him from drinking the champagne in his hands, right out of the bottle. Pope just drops his jaw, “How much did all this cost?”
“Well when you look at it; the generator, petrol, lights.. I don’t know? All of it?”
“All of it!?”
“All of it.”
“You spent all that money in one day?” Pope exclaims, leaning forward in his spot. It sounds like he doesn’t believe it. Like he doesn’t even want to.
“Yeah, burned a whole right through my pocket!” JJ waves his hand flippantly like it’s not a big deal. When it is. “But I mean, like, look, come on guys look at all of this.”
His voice is too high. It’s tight and too pitched to sound normal. To sound like he’s not seconds away from snapping. It brings tears to your eyes as you watch from the sidelines. Watch as your boyfriend crumbles right before you.
“Kie, what?” JJ says, causing you to look to her. She looks pained, absolutely shattered. “I mean,” JJ laughs but it’s anything but joyful. It sounds just as pained as Kiara’s face looks. “Can’t a man have a little luxury in life?”
He waves his hands dramatically. Showing off what he’s done outside of the Chateau, desperately looking for approval. That what he did was the right thing. “All this, scrapin’,” he trails off, as he rips off the sunglasses. “Come on, guys,” he looks around again, his eyes lingering on yours a bit longer before looking to the water. “I mean, like, guys, we-“ his voice cracks and he takes a desperate breath in. You find yourself copying his breath. “You only live once, right?” His hand comes up out of the water as he limply holds up one finger. Like the movement is too much for him.
The look on JJ’s face as he makes eye contact again screams sadness. Screams validation. He wants, so desperately for you to agree with him, for all of you to agree with him. But he doesn’t realize everyone is on the verge of tears, the breakdown too much for anyone to handle. His face wobbles a bit and you can see it pinch up through the steam around him. He’s seconds away from tears.
When no one responds, he does his best to wipe away the emotions. He fails. But he shakes his head and keeps going, “Enough of this emotional shit. Come on, get in.”
“We’re not-“
JJ cuts Kie off in a second, “Come on, get in! I almost forgot! There’s a disco mode.”
Fountains of water spit out across the surface and different colored lights shine through each arch. JJ smiles triumphantly and throws his arms up in the air, leaning back against the side of the hot tub again.
“Are you kidding me!” Pope shouts and your tears fall at how fast JJ’s face paints his disappointment. “You could’ve done anything else with the money.”
“You could’ve given it to charity!” Kie interjects, sounding a bit annoyed now. JJ turns his head to the side and rubs at his eyes. His breathing is calculated and you just know he’s doing whatever he can to stop from crying.
“Better yet,” Pope exclaims, “You could’ve given it back!”
“Ok, well you know what!” JJ yells, “I didn’t-“ he stands up and the ground almost falls out from underneath you at the sight, “I didn’t do that! I got a hot tub!”
Your hands shake against your face, just as much as JJ’s voice shakes. The deep, dark, bruises littering his abdomen and ribs, glues you to the spot. You can’t do anything but gape at him. When did this happen and why hadn’t he come to you, to anyone. Where did he go when he was clearly not okay, mentally and physically. Kie and Pope just stare, clearly not knowing what to do with themselves and most likely thinking the same exact thing. JJ just keeps clambering on, like he didn’t just shake the very ground you stand on.
“For my friends! Actually no, screw friends, for my family. I got a hot tub for my family!” His voice is shaky and still too high pitched. He looks and sounds frantic as he keeps moving back and forth in the hot tub.
“JJ, what the hell?” Kie cries out, trying to interrupt him.
If he hears her, he ignores her, “Look at what I did for us! I did this for us! So we can be a family!”
“JJ,” She tries again.
“No,” JJ holds up a hand, shaking his head desperately. “No, stop. Stop being emotional. It’s fine, okay?”
The way the word okay flies out of his mouth, fast and unsteady. The quiver his lips make around the word, breaks the spell that was put on your body. You work on taking off your shoes as fast as possible. Not once looking away from JJ as he bows his head and sucks in deep breaths through his teeth.
You pull off your last sock as he starts talking again, “It’s sweet? Yeah?”
You crash into him as he cries out, “Just get in.”
Wrapping your arms around him, you pull him into you, like you have many times before, and the movement punches a sob right out of him. He leans his entire body weight onto you and just sobs. It only takes a few seconds before you feel another pair of arms. “I just couldn’t take it!” he sobs.
His body shakes against yours and he holds onto you so tight it knocks the wind out of you a bit, “I can’t take him anymore!” The sobs hit at full force, leaving him breathless. “I almost killed him.”
You hold on a bit tighter, running your hands up and down his back. You’re trying to force every ounce of comfort you have in your body into his. Feed him what he so desperately craves. “I just want to do the right thing.” he cries out, sounding so small and vulnerable it shatters your heart into pieces.
“I know,” you and Kie whisper at the same time. You’re glad she’s here. Pope comes in next, his arms wrapping around everyone. JJ lets out a sigh as three pairs of arms wrap around him before he lets out another sob. His weight being held up by the three of you. “I know.”
You’re not too sure how long you’re there, standing in the middle of the hot tub, just listening to JJ sob but you know it’s more than half an hour before John B walks up, startling everyone a bit. JJ has calmed down enough and is just being held while he sniffles every once in a while. But his sobs come back as soon as John B asks, “What the fuck is all this?”
John B looks alarmed and quickly let’s go of Sarah to climb into the hot tub, immediately wrapping the group up in his arms. Once he’s here, knowing that there’s a stronger force, you let out your cries. It hurts to see JJ in so much pain, to see him suffering so much. You want to protect him from everything. You want to go to his dad and fight him, make him hurt the way your boyfriend does. But doing that would do nothing to help JJ. If you were to get hurt on JJ’s behalf, once again, but by his dad he’d never forgive himself. And that would hurt him even more.
You want to hold the broken boy in your arms until he’s pieced back together and is never in any pain ever again. But you know that’s not possible, that’s not something that can logically happen.
But what you can do is help him get out of physical pain. Help him get comfortable and hold him until he sleeps. Hold him until he receives the love and comfort he wants and needs. And that’s something you will always do.
“We should get out,” you whisper but everyone hears you. Even Sarah, seeing as she rushes forward to start helping you guys out. After a few moments it’s only you and JJ, the rest hovering around the steps to make sure you can get him out. He clutches on a little tighter when you try to step back, “JJ, baby, come on. We’re gonna get out.”
He nods a bit, his lips brushing the skin of your neck briefly, before he pulls away. He doesn’t go very far before he rests his forehead against yours, blinking languidly at you. He looks so tired and it rips your heart to shreds. A deep breath fans out across your face and his eyes close as he pushes his forehead heavier into yours. You stroke his cheeks and place a kiss to the corner of his mouth, running a comforting hand through his hair.
“Come on, baby, let’s go.” He nods his head once more and moves away. You grab his hand and four other hands reach out to help him out. John B gets his free hand first and basically picks him up and out of the hot tub. Once he’s steady on the ground, he immediately turns back to you, watching you get out. He looks so hopeless, young, vulnerable, and seconds away from crumbling to the ground. It only takes you a few seconds to have him in your arms again and moving towards the house.
“I’ll start dinner,” Kie murmurs, nodding towards the bathroom. You smile gratefully at her and shuffle towards the bathroom while the others move into the kitchen. They give you all curious glances before they’re out of sight and you’re alone with JJ.
You sit him down on the toilet and move around to get the shower started. Getting a glass of water from the sink you shove it in his hands and make him drink it. Once he’s done, you fill it up again and give it back with some pain medicine this time. He finishes it quickly and looks up to you. His eyes are watery and red, his bottom lip trembling. You’re not much better, you caught a glance of yourself in the mirror, but you try to hold it in for him. He continues to look at you as you brush your thumbs over his cheekbones, under his eyes, and move a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his bottom lip quivering once again. You start to shake your head, shaking it the whole way down as you try to place a shaky kiss to his lips. He doesn’t kiss back. “No, stop it. I don’t deserve it. I fucked up.”
“JJ, no-“
He cuts you off with an abrupt shake to his head. “No! I did. I fucked up. I always fuck up. My anger gets to me and I’m sorry. You don’t deserve someone who is going to fly off the walls every time something goes wrong. I robbed a fucking drug dealer for fucks sake! And I didn’t even give the money to something good, I wasted it all. All of it.”
JJ let’s out a painful cry as his body deflates, his head coming to rest on your stomach. “I can't do anything right.”
“You were scared of us dying, baby, it’s a decent reason to fly off the walls,” you try to reason but he just vehemently shakes his head.
“No, you shouldn’t be with someone like me!”
“JJ, please. We went over this a few days ago!”
“And look at what all has happened since then. You fought Topper and got hurt because of it. You still have the black eye and the limp from your leg being fucked up! We almost got killed, I robbed a drug dealer, I got beat up by my dad and I almost killed him! Can’t you see how fucked up this is. You don’t need to be here with us! With me!”
You let out a choked sob as he stands up, pushing you out of the way. It's getting steamy in the bathroom, too hot, and it’s making it even harder for you to breathe. JJ looks at you with his own tears in his eyes, “I can’t keep putting you through this.”
“No!” you cry out, hiccuping at the force of it. “No, JJ! I have been with you since I was 9! Nothing has fucking changed! We’ve always loved each other, we just kiss now! You’re not going to end this just because you feel like you’re not worth it! If you weren’t worth it, I wouldn’t have stuck around as long as I have!”
Your chest is heaving and you feel like you’re on the verge of a panic attack. You need to get out of here. Shaking your head, you back up to the door, “Shower, JJ. I’ll put fresh clothes on the sink for you.”
JJ’s entire face crumbles and his shoulders slump forward as if you took every ounce of energy out of him. “I-“
“No, shower.
Stumbling out of the bathroom, arms wrap around you as soon as you’re in the hallway. They’re strong and familiar and you break down as soon as they hold you to their chest. Kie is in front of you a few moments later, cupping your face in her hands and trying anything she can to get you to focus on her. Your breathing is too harsh and your vision is spotty. The next thing you know, your legs are barely holding you up and then you’re on the ground. John B holds you to him and he tries to get you to breathe properly.
It’s all too much. The events of the last few days finally catching up to you and breaking through the surface at full force. JJ getting hurt, twice, by his dad. The Pogues almost dying. JJ stealing a large amount of money. JJ trying to end it, twice in the same week, just because he’s feeling so low. It’s all too much and you just don’t know what to do. The love you hold for JJ, for this entire group, outweighs anything in your life. There’s no way in hell you’d ever be without them. No matter what you go through with them. You choose them every day of your life. It’s never been any other way. Ever.
Kie is still in front of you, her hands still holding onto your face. Her thumbs are swiping across your face and she’s trying to say something but you’re not picking up on it. Blood is rushing through your ears and pounding around in your head. Absolutely no other noise is coming through so you just shake your head, anything to let them know you can’t hear them. Kie seems to understand and she places your hands on her chest, keeping them there. It takes you a few seconds but you realize she’s trying to get you to copy her breathing.
It works. You start to follow her. Follow her hand movements and feel her breathing under your hands. Soon, you can hear everything once more. Kie praising you, John B trying to soothe you, Pope’s voice mumbling from somewhere in the distance, Sarah talking a bunch of nonsense but calming nonsense.
“I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Just lost my breathing there for a second.” You mumble, sitting up a bit. Kie reaches out to you quickly when you sway in your spot a bit. You do feel a bit dizzy. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Come on, let’s get you some food and water,” John B says, hoisting you up with him as he stands. “You know JJ isn’t going anywhere. He’s not going to break up with you.”
You nod, “I know. It still panics me to hear it.”
Sarah comes up next with the food you and Kie had bought earlier in the day and a glass of water. You smile thankfully at her and sit down at the dining room table, not making any movement to eat it. John B sits down in front of you and places a hand on your knee, “Has this happened before?”
“Mm, remember that time about 5 months ago when I didn’t come around for a few days? Right after the first time JJ’s dad beat on him in months?”
Both Kie and John B nod. “JJ was unbearable to be around,” Kie groans.
An unamused chuckle falls past your lips and you shake your head, “Yeah.....” you trail off. “He told me that he wasn’t worth it. That he was too weak to be with me. That if he couldn’t even defend himself against his father then he wouldn’t be able to handle anything else, even a relationship. I told him to leave and only come back when he came to his senses. It was harsh but I needed him to realize the only thing that changed was that we kissed, now.”
“He’s scared of losing you,” John B states.
“He is,” you agree, “of all of us. He feels if he does it on his own terms, it’ll be ok. That we’ll leave if we think he’s weak. But he doesn’t always think like that, it’s only when he gets into it with his dad.”
It goes silent after that, the words sinking into everyone’s brains. You pick at your food a bit, eating a few bites as Kie puts together plates for everyone else. Sarah sits down beside John B and Kie comes to sit next to you, placing a comforting hand to your leg. Sending her a quick smile, you grab her hand and hold it to you. The conversation starts to pick up around you and you try to listen, you really do but your mind is just quiet. It’s blank to anything other than JJ.
Your heart aches at the thought of JJ being in pain. Physical or emotional pain. He does stupid things but he doesn’t deserve the things he goes through. There’s not much that he hasn’t gone through since the time you’ve met and you’d like to be able to protect him from the bad things of the world. No matter how often he tries to push you away when he feels like he doesn’t deserve the love.
“Okay,” Pope breathes out as he walks into the dining area. “He’s out of the shower,” he comments, resting a hand to your shoulder, “are you okay?”
Glancing around at everyone, they’re all staring at you expectantly. If you could guess, they’ve probably been staring at you long before Pope asked if you were okay. You nod and you’re about to give a more reassuring answer when you hear shuffling behind Pope. He turns around and you get a full few of JJ, he’s wrapped up in a hoodie that’s too big for him, his face is swollen and a bit blotchy. He looks like he would be twelve and it makes your heart clench in your chest, a lump forming in your throat at his glossy eyes.
He looks at you and only you, “Can we go to bed?” You look away and to your hands, to the one that Kie has wrapped firmly in hers. “I’ve calmed down, please?” When you look back up at him, the glossiness of his eyes is now watery with unshed tears. “Please?”
There’s absolutely no way in the world you’d ever be able to say no to such a sad boy. To the boy in general. JJ turns around as soon as you stand up and you don’t even think twice about following him. He gets into bed, turning his back to you and you follow. You wrap yourself around him, shoving an arm under his head and one around his waist. Both hands press flat into his chest as you mold yourself against his back. Knees to knees, chest to back, and JJ lacing your fingers together.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, placing a kiss to your fingers, “I know that you wouldn’t be with me unless I was worth it to you. I’m sorry that I get knocked down so much that I feel useless to everyone. Especially you. I never want to be anything less than enough for you.”
You press a kiss to the back of his neck, “You’ve always been enough for me, JJ. Always.” You pull on his shoulder a bit, trying to get him to turn over. When he does, you place a hand on his cheek, soothing over the skin there, “You’ve always been enough for me, JJ. You have nothing to apologize for. You’ve been beaten down your whole life, that is not your fault.”
A tear slips down his cheek and you wipe it away. The motion makes him press a kiss to your wrist. “You’re the person that keeps me going,” JJ whispers. “I’m nothing without you.”
“Don’t say that, JJ.” you shake your head. He’s so much more than that. So much more. “You’re caring, loving, protective, sympathetic, and empathetic. I’m just a perk to your qualities.”
That pulls a giggle out of JJ. A few tears slipping from his eyes at the surprise of laughter. You push forward to place a kiss to his lips. Loving the feeling of him actually kissing you back this time. He pushes in deeper, an arm around your waist, pulling your bodies flush. You kiss with so much intensity, it knocks you on your back and JJ follows, hovering over you as he kisses back with just as much. It makes your blood warm, makes you feel like you’re on fire as his free hand trails down over your waist, over your hip and to the back of your thigh to hitch it over his own hip.
The passion being exchanged is absolutely mind blowing, your brain short circuiting at the overwhelming feeling of love flowing between the two of you. It’s ardent and you want nothing more for it to continue but when you slip a hand over JJ’s ribs, he winces, sucking in a deep breath against your lips.
“I’m sorry,” you breathe out, quickly switching positions with him and pushing up his hoodie, “I forgot.”
“It’s okay. I definitely just forgot about them.” JJ wiggles his eyebrows at you as the hand on your thigh moves to caress the skin. “Let’s continue to forget about them.”
You place three quick, consecutive, sticky kisses to his lips before moving down to place one on his chin, to the base of his neck at his throat. Before placing delicate kisses over the battered skin of his torso. JJ’s breathing hitches in his throat and he lets out a watery sigh when your lips brush over the sensitive skin of his ribs. The hand on your thigh squeezes tightly at your movement, almost as a warning, but you ignore it and continue to sprinkle your love over the bruises on his skin. You know it won’t heal them but you can wish that it will.
A groan is punched out of JJ when your tongue lightly brushes over one of the bruises above his belly button and you chuckle a little bit. He’s turned into a bit of a heaving mess, gasping for air. You know it feels weird, like a mixture of pain and pleasure and JJ has no idea how to react to it. So, he just breathes heavily. He moves one hand to lace his fingers with yours as the other rests at the bottom of your spine.
Placing a few more kisses to the bruise over his right rib, you pull his hoodie back down over his stomach, and move up to place a few kisses on his neck. He moves his head to the side to give you some room and you suck a bruise into the juncture of his neck, right where it meets with his shoulder. A soft moan escapes him as you do. “There,” you kiss over your work when you pull away. “A good bruise to look at. One from love, not hate.”
The breath JJ lets out sounds more like a sob and he pushes into you once again. Wrapping his arms around you and shoving his face into your neck, he’s almost completely settled on top of you once he gets comfortable. He kisses at your skin, where he can reach, a few times and squeezes you as if you’re the only thing keeping him alive. You hold him back tightly, giving him the comfort he needs.
“I love you, you know,” he murmurs.
You kiss at his hairline, “I know.”
He doesn’t fall asleep until he repeats his I know, back to you.
-
-
JJ was finally feeling back to normal. The few days after his breakdown in the hot tub, things were a bit tense. A little too quiet for his liking. The day after, he laid in bed all day really only getting up to pee. He didn’t eat until you had come back to the Chateau, after doing something with your parents, and forced him to eat something. You had to basically force feed him to eat the food you made for him. He was grateful for you, you kept him together when all he wanted to do was break down. JJ was positive that there’d never be another person to care for him quite like you do.
Yesterday, the entire Chateau was empty when he woke up and it unsettled him a bit. It was never a good thing when it was quiet around there and he didn’t think he could handle anything else that was bad. He wandered around a bit, pulling on a hoodie because he didn't really want everyone else to stare him down, until he found everyone sitting at the hammocks. It was barely sunrise and he was confused as to why everyone was up already for no reason, and why they hadn’t woken him up either. You looked up from your spot in the hammock as he approached and held your arms out. He climbed in with you immediately and fell asleep only seconds later, to the sound of you quietly talking with Kie. The rest of the day was spent in bed with you, everyone giving him space to regroup. It was nice. He got kisses and other things that made him feel like himself.
Then today, everything is relatively back to how it should be. With loud laughter, stupid jokes, and sarcastic comments. Today is a day out on the HMS Pogue and JJ is absolutely loving it. There’s nothing he loves more than being out with his friends. With the people he loves and cares for the most as you all do stupid shit togeher. It’s his favorite thing. Also, to feel your skin against his, especially when it’s a bit warm and sweaty. That just feels nice. It's a major plus.
You’re currently resting against his side, his arm slung over your shoulder and his hand resting comfortably between your boobs. You’re laughing at something Sarah said and it’s probably the most relaxed he’s seen you in a few weeks. Your head thrown back, nearly resting on his clavicle and your hand slapping against his thigh. He wishes he was paying attention to what was being said, just so he could repeat it to see you laugh like this again. So carefree, the way that you should always be.
The sun is beating down harshly on everyone, making everyone sweat just a bit but no one seems uncomfortable by it. In fact everyone just settles in more, sitting in complete bathing suits and drinking beer.
“Did you guys really start dating? And not tell us?” Pope asks out of nowhere, completely unprompted. But the more he stares at Pope, the more he realizes he was just lazily kissing at the side of your neck where he just so happened to be resting his head.
“Yeah!” John B exclaims, resting back in the drivers seat of the boat, Sarah settling with him, “What the fuck is up with that?”
JJ shrugs, “Wanted to be able to mack on my girl in private.”
“JJ, shut up.” You laugh, sitting up and making him go with you. “We just wanted to make sure it was serious? I guess. Wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just silly feelings from knowing each other for so long. It would’ve felt different if everyone knew.”
“We wouldn’t have judged,” Kie says, leaning in with her elbows on her knees.
“It wasn’t about that,” You shake your head, “it was more like, nothing is really private with us. We share everything with each other. And this was something that needed to be figured out with just the two of us. Nothing really changed between us so then we just kinda forgot to mention it.”
JJ can’t help but wrap an arm around you. Kissing you the night that he did was the best decision he’s ever made in his life. He took a leap of faith and it was the right thing to do. The moment you kissed him back he knew that everything was right, nothing could ever be wrong about his decision. He had a feeling things were changing between the two of you for a few months. Jealousy was shining through when one or the other would end up flirting with someone at a party. Touches were getting more intimate and possessive. The flirting was getting more and more serious.
You have been a constant in his life since he was nine. Always the first person who was willing to listen to his crazy ideas or go on his absurd adventures. You were the first one he went to every time his dad hit him. The only person that ever saw him in that moment of vulnerability. And that’s still to this day. You’re the only person he trusts, truly trusts. He knows that you’d never turn against him with the things he’s told you, shown you. You have years of knowledge on him, and he you, that you could crush him in a heartbeat but he knows you never will. You’ll never betray him. Even if you weren’t in his life anymore, there’s no way you’d ever do that. He just knows.
And he doesn’t even want to think about that possibility. You not being in his life just doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t want to find out what it’d be like.
“You know, we’ve known for months.” Kie laughs, pulling JJ out of his thoughts.
You gasp at her words, “What? How?”
“I saw your guys’ first kiss.” John B smiles, looking all sorts of smug.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” JJ chuckles, taking a sip of his beer. “It was at a party only we went to when we were 14.”
“Wait, what?” You question, turning to look at him.
JJ smirks, “Mhmm, remember the first time you smoked with me?” he looks to you for affirmation. When you nod, he continues, “Remember the game of truth or dare? You were dared to make out with the person you thought was the hottest. It was me.”
Your mouth drops open in shock, “Holy shit. That’s right. How could I forget?” The red suddenly tinting your cheeks is enough to make JJ’s heart skip a beat. To know he has such an affect on you, makes him feel good.
“You can’t handle your shit, baby,” he teases, leaning forward to flick at your forehead. You gasp and try to smack him but he grabs your wrist, leaning in to kiss you instead.
“Who knew they could get more annoying?” Pope groans. “You guys should’ve kept this to yourselves.”
“They were getting sloppy Pope,” Kie shrugs, “they wouldn’t have been able to hide it for much longer. You see the gross amount of love that oozes out of them when they look at each other.”
Everyone starts laughing but you just look at JJ and the look that's shining in your eyes is the same one they’re talking about. He knows the same thing must be reflecting in his own eyes because you lean forward and press a sweet kiss to his lips. On that he greedily accepts and returns. He smirks when he pulls away, placing a kiss to your forehead.
“So, John B what kiss did you see then?”
“One night in the hammock, like last year some time. I saw it and then the next days you guys were just different.” He shrugs, pulling Sarah into him some more.
You move into his side once again and look to Kie, “When did you notice?”
“Like six months ago?” She turns her head from side to side, trying to remember. “It was after breakfast at John B’s one morning. You guys thought you were alone in the kitchen. JJ was the one cleaning the kitchen, oddly, and you were on the counter by the sink. The way you were talking, it was about a date and you said that you loved each other but it was different than the way you’d usually say it. I left after that.”
JJ’s heart is starting to beat a little quicker in his chest. Something about talking about you or your relationship together just makes him excited. He loves it. He loves you.
“Pope?”
“Saw the secret hand holding at The Wreck one afternoon. Thought it was weird, seeing as you held hands all the time. There was no need to hide it but your fingers were doing that soft caress thing, it was obvious.” He says the whole thing like he’s disinterested in the topic. It makes JJ laugh.
“I think it’s amazing how long you’ve all known each other.” Sarah smiles and it makes a smile appear on everyone’s face.
John B then decides it's time to move the boat, to go somewhere to swim. Everyone gets excited, standing up and removing any leftover clothing, while the boat is moving, so once it’s anchored the swimming can begin without any sort of hesitation. It was too hot out now.
But then the boat comes to an abrupt stop and a few high pitched screams fill JJ’s ears before a splash of water. He’s been jolted to the very front of the bow, hitting his head on the seat there. It takes him a moment to connect the dots before he stands up to make sure everyone is okay. Kie and Pope are a couple inches away from him, groaning as they sit back up. John B rubbing his head, clearly hitting it on the window in front of him. And Sarah regains her balance as she stands up from the bench behind John B. You were nowhere in sight.
“Y/n!” He yells out, scrambling to his feet. “Baby! Where’s y/n!”
That seems to knock everyone out of their stupor and scramble to their feet. “JJ!” you groan out just as he spots your hand on the side of the boat. A cry rips through you as JJ and Pope rush to try and pull you up into the boat. You rip yourself away from them before they even get a chance to reach you properly.
“Baby, what’s wrong? Come on, grab onto me!” JJ yells, trying to keep in his panic. He has no idea if you’re hurt or not and the fact that you’re crying isn’t helping settle him at all.
“JJ! Please get me out of this fucking water!” You yell out, reaching up for him once more.
He immediately bends down, the panic in your voice, making him desperate to get you into the boat. He hears everyone else yelling, asking what happened, wondering why you’re having such a hard time getting out on your own, asking if you’re okay. But he ignores them all, finally getting his hand in yours and reaching down below your elbow to haul you up. Pope on the other side doing the same. You crash into him and with the force of his movement to pull you up and over the edge, he falls back into the other side of the boat, you landing on top of him.
You cry out in pain and flinch away from him, “Holy shit,” Pope gapes as he helps sit you up.
“What!” JJ exclaims, sitting up, running his eyes all over your body to find what’s wrong. It doesn’t take long for him to land on the giant red mark covering almost the entirety of your abdomen. “Oh, fuck. A jellyfish got you?”
“What?” You gasp, looking down to where his attention is. Kie shoves a water into your hand and Sarah sits behind you, wrapping her arms across the top of your chest. “Fuck,” you sigh out when you catch sight of it.
“Did you not feel that?” John B asks and JJ looks up to him for a second before back to you, trying to catch your eye. If you didn’t feel that, something else must be wrong.
“No! I think my ankle is broken!” You yell out, startling JJ a bit. He trails his eyes down your body until he reaches your ankle and fuck. Yeah.
“That looks broken,” Pope voices his thoughts perfectly.
“What the fuck happened, John B?” JJ snaps, his anger getting to him quickly. You getting hurt is the quickest way to get him angry. He hates seeing you hurt. In any way.
“The last storm must’ve changed the stream or something. We hit a sand bank. We haven’t been out here since then,” John B explains. “Let’s get back to the Chateau, we have to get y/n to the hospital.
JJ grabs your face in his hands and wipes away the water there. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No, I don’t think so,” you breathe out. It comes out in a harsh breath, like you’re in too much pain and it sends a wave of panic through JJ. You’re never one to show that you were in pain unless it was an unbearable amount.
“Are you sure?”
He watches as you clench your eyes shut, trying to regulate your breathing. You just nod your head, not opening your eyes again. JJ places a kiss to your cheek and moves down in a line until he meets your lips. He lets out a breath when you kiss him back. Anything to keep you distracted. He pulls back and looks around to everyone else, not knowing what else he can do. Kie has a hand gripped tight in hers, Sarah is running her fingers through your hair, and Pope is holding your leg steady from the bouncing of the boat. JJ feels absolutely useless.
And it’s like you can sense his distress because you grab onto one of his hands and squeeze tight. “JJ stop overthinking. Tell me something. Tell me a story.”
So he quickly jumps into recounting one of your many dates. Asking if you remember it. Telling you how you looked in your outfit, how you made him feel. How much he loves going on dates with you. How he likes that you like to go surfing with him, hiking, biking, anything that requires physical activity. You giggle and laugh at parts that are funny, at how he nearly puked before picking you up to go on your first official date. Everyone else joined in on the laughs too. Soaking up the information they’re receiving.
It helps because you stop crying and wincing at every little movement and it helps calm JJ down as well. He picks you up into his arms when the boat docks and everyone rushes to gather the necessities and get you to the van. JJ lays you down and rests your head in his lap as he continues to tell you about how much he just loves doing simple things with you. Grocery shopping. Clothes shopping, the dishes. Eating food. Anything he can think of, he tells you. He just wants you to know how much he loves you. It’s the only thing he can think of doing. He doesn’t know why but it’s the only thing rattling around in his brain.
How much he loves you.
When the van pulls up to the hospital, everyone is still in a mad panic. It startles the nurses and those in the emergency room when 6 teenagers come bursting into the waiting room, in near hysterics. They don’t really handle each other being in pain well.
The nurse forces him to stay in the waiting room, putting a hand to his chest when he tries to follow you back more than once. You look at him and tell him it’s okay, that you’ll be okay, and as soon as it’s fine he can come back. It does nothing to settle him and he just paces back and forth in front of the 4 other Pogues.
“JJ, sit down. She’s going to be fine.”
“I know,” he sighs, stopping. “She just scared the shit out of me. If she had hit her head instead of her ankle on the side of the boat, she could’ve drowned.”
John B stands to bring him into a hug, “But she didn’t. She’s okay and you’ll see her in a bit.”
And he was right. The doctor came out about twenty minutes later and let JJ go back since your parents weren’t there yet. The rest of the Pogues decided to wait in the waiting room no matter what, saying that they would like to see you too but for obvious reasons to let JJ go first. He’s thankful for that because he feels like he’s about to vibrate right out of his skin.
“Hey, tough stuff,” he jokes as he walks into your room. Your eyes open and you smile at him lazily.
“Hi, baby,” you murmur, reaching a hand out for him. You make grabby hands at him until he’s in reach and it makes him laugh.
He grabs onto your hand and leans down to place a kiss to your lips. You’re still in your bikini but it looks like the sting on your stomach has been taken care of and the lower half of your leg is in a black cast. “Hi, baby,” he whispers back once he meets your eyes again. “How’re you feeling?”
“Well now,” you let out a giggle, “I’m feeling absolutely great. The pain medicine they have me on is wonderful.”
JJ lets out a laugh and caresses your cheek, “You’re higher than a kite, my love.”
You let out a laugh, “Damn straight. You should be so jealous.”
“Oh,” JJ nods, “I am. Don’t you worry about that.”
You let out a content hum, nestling into his hand a bit. Closing your eyes, you rest back into your pillow. “I broke my ankle. And the jellyfish sting isn’t as bad as it looks.”
He runs a hand through your matted hair, “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m fine, baby,” you mumble, giving him the smile that melts his entire being. And when you open up your eyes he can see that you really mean it. “Did you really think our dates were that good?”
“Everything we do is that amazing,” JJ points out.
Pulling on his hand, you murmur, “Come take a nap with me. Please. I would like to be close to you. Help me relax.”
JJ doesn’t hesitate to slip into the bed next to you, the vibration of his skin is still there and he knows that it won’t go away until he’s close to you. You turn your back to him and he settles in behind you, curving his body around yours. His arm wraps around your middle and his hand comes to rest on your chest, your steading heartbeat calming down the vibration of his body. You melt down against him and he just holds you to him even tighter.
“I would appreciate it if you stopped getting hurt,” he murmurs, moving your hair out of the way to kiss at the back of your shoulder.
“Yeah, so would I.”
“How about we both stop getting hurt,” JJ suggests, his kisses moving up to the side of your neck. His heart rate has calmed down significantly in just the few seconds of laying here.
“I can do that,” you hum, resting further into his front. “You don’t have to promise it, but just know I’ll always be there to help you when you do get hurt.”
JJ feels a lump form in his throat at your words. He knows what you mean, it’s not something you have to explain to him. You turn your head to look at him up and over your shoulder, a smile gracing your face. JJ nearly cries at the sight, the beautiful sight that it is leaves him breathless. When you pucker your lips, JJ obliges, swooping down in no time and pressing a firm kiss to your lips. His skin tingles at the feeling and he wishes you were anywhere else than in a damn hospital.
“I love you, you know.” You smile at him, kissing at his lips once again.
“I know.” he says against your lips.
If there’s one thing he knows. He knows that you love him. That you’ve given him love every day since the day you met. The only person to give him continuous love, love that he needs. And he knows that you know how much he loves you. How much he will always love you.
So, when you finally fall asleep, nestled in his arms, he sleeps. He sleeps comfortably. The only way he can, when you’re with him
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
please feed my narcissism
my masterlist is in my bio
#outer banks#jj maybank#jj maybank x reader#outer banks x reader#jj maybank fluff#jj maybank imagine#jj maybank obx#outer banks imagine#kiara carrera#sarah cameron#pope heyward#john b routledge#jj obx#jj one shot#jj maybank angst#my writing#mine#obx
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IN YOUR MEMORIES
a/n: alright so this was inspired by an amazing fic called Graveyard by @wkemeup if you haven’t read it... WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? honestly, i was amazed by the whole idea of having to “pay a price” for a super power and i’ve been really itching to try myself out in this concept, so that’s what this story is. im really excited to share this with you guys so i hope you’ll like it!
pairing: Bucky X Reader
warnings: a hell lot of Bucky’s past pain, a little bit of angst aaand idk im really bad with these warnings
word count: 7.6k
masterlist
“I’ve been trying to figure out an effective way to help him, but it’s been more complicated than I expected. None of my ideas were good enough to even attempt them.” Shuri lets out a frustrated sigh as you stare at the peaceful face of the sleeping man in front of you in the cryo pod. The glass in front of his face is frosty, but you can still make his sharp features out, his chiseled jawline under the stubble, the elegant line of his nose and the thick lashes fanning over his cheeks as his eyes are shut closed.
“His whole mind needs to be rewired, his corrupted memories should be replaced or wiped out so the trigger words wouldn’t work any longer, but I can’t do that on my own.”
Tearing your gaze away from the man you look at her, an apologetic expression adorning her features, because she swore you’d find shelter in Wakanda, a place where you can be just like anyone else and yet, she is now asking you to use your power.
“Do you think he would let me help him?” you ask, glancing back at the man. Bucky, as Shuri called him, doesn’t look as old as he was said to be. A hundred and six years is a lot for a human like him, though he is not as mortal as others on the planet. Shuri told you about the experiments he had to endure through his life and even though you haven’t even touched his mind, you could feel the pain inside you.
“He is desperate to get rid of his dark side, I think he would do anything.”
Reaching up your fingers graze the glass over his face before you plant your whole palm onto it, trying to feel him even under the surface and ice. Eyes shutting close, you take a deep breath as you let your senses open up and find your way to the man.
Because of the cryo pod, you don’t feel him the way you usually do. It’s like he is just an echo in a huge empty room, you can’t make out his whole mind, but he is there. And even with him sleeping under the ice, you still can feel the despair and pain he had to go through as an innocent man. You know he deserves to be saved, he deserves to be freed from his own past and you are his only chance as of right now.
“Wake him up,” you simply tell Shuri before turning around to go back to your room that was assigned to you upon your arrival in the palace.
Bucky doesn’t feel like he has been asleep under the ice for more than just a few hours. It felt like a nap, but in reality he woke up months after the day he closed his eyes.
Shuri welcomed him with the news that the cure has been found and it’s time for him to get rid of the Winter Soldier for once and for all. She didn’t say much about the method, just told him to get ready by the afternoon. He was never one to question the genius young girl so he just obeyed.
After a hot shower he shaved and took the time to get accustomed to the prototype of the vibranium arm Shuri left for him. It’s not the final version, a lot of details need work, but it’s good enough for his everyday life for a while.
The world hasn’t seemed to change since he last saw it. Wakanda is just as flourishing and vibrant as he remembered, a truly spectacular place in his opinion. He wonders how his friends have been, what Steve is doing, if Natasha is alright… Is Tony still fuming after their last encounter? He probably is.
When it’s time, he leaves his room and heads to Shuri’s lab for their meeting. The guards let him in with just a nod, like he is an old friend and he finds Shuri at her computer as always. The girl beams upon seeing him again, complimenting on his freshly shaved look.
“So what did you invent for me, smartpants?” he smiles at her gently. Bucky owes a lot to Shuri and her brother, they took him in when he wasn’t welcomed anywhere else and now she is about to give him his life back. After this, he’ll forever owe her and her family.
“Well, it’s not my invention this time,” she chuckles shaking her head. Bucky is about to question her when the doors open again, both of them turning in the direction just to see you walk in. His eyebrows knit together at the sight of you, not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be. “Mr. Barnes, let me introduce you to Y/N. Y/N, this is Sergeant Barnes.”
You walk closer, Bucky’s icy blue eyes are glued to your form as you stop a few feet away from him, holding out a hand shyly.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sergeant James Barnes,” you smile softly as his flesh hand takes yours and shakes it gently.
Bucky is enamored with you instantly. He has never seen someone as delicate, soft and charming as you are, your whole aura just demands his attention and he wants to know everything about you. But he also notices that though you look a lot like any other human on the planet, he is convinced you are not from Earth.
What he doesn’t know is that the moment your hands touch, you can hear his thoughts and you can’t push down your smile at how well he is at inspecting his surroundings.
“Just call me Bucky, please,” he nods before your hands let go of each other and his thoughts quiet down again in your head.
“To answer your suspicion, I’m rorm a planet called Lortena. Life on my planet looks a lot like humans here on Earth, but our lifespan is a little longer and some of us have gifts, as my mother always liked to call them.”
“How did you—“ “How did I know what you thought?” you ask with a small smile, finishing his sentence as he nods in complete awe. “I’m what you might call… a mind reader. But my abilities go a little farther than just reading minds,” you admit and his lips part at the revelation.
Bucky glances over at Shuri, part of him thinking it’s some kind of joke or witchcraft, but the girl smiles back at him with an assuring nod.
“Why don’t we sit down and have a chat? I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” Shuri suggests patting Bucky’s shoulder before the three of you head into her conference room.
Though you’re not touching Bucky, you can sense his confusion and hunger to learn more about you. He is curious about what else you are capable of and though the news about your abilities are still quite odd to him, you can tell that he isn’t trying to shut you out entirely. He just has some reservations for now.
Bucky knows it’s rude to stare, but he can’t stop himself from inspecting you. Knowing that you are not from this planet is already enough for him to get his mind racing, especially because you look just like any other humans on Earth. But the little trick you did on him was enough of a convincing for him to believe that you are from somewhere else.
The three of you sit to the table and Shuri takes the lead to start the conversation.
“While you were asleep, Sergeant, life went on and we had a lot going on,” she smiles, her eyes falling on you. “Y/N is a refugee from her planet, Lortena. There’s a war going on there and she was sent away because she was a primary target. She wasn’t supposed to end up here, but there was a little mishap during her journey and landed in Wakanda.”
“Are you targeted because of your… powers?” Bucky asks, hoping he is not asking anything offensive.
“No,” you shake your head. “It’s because I’m the king’s daughter.”
“Oh!” he breathes out.
Great, so she is not only a breathtakingly beautiful creature with superpowers, but she is royal as well, he thinks to himself.
“And how… where do your… powers come from? Is that a usual thing on your planet?”
“Not quite,” you chuckle softly.
You give a glance at Shuri who nods and brings up a hologram of Loki’s scepter with the mind stone in it. Bucky is already familiar with them, but he is curiously listening to find out what it has to do with you.
“Long before the mind stone was trapped into the scepter, it was in our possession. We used it as out main power source, kept locked away from preying eyes and hands. We all knew it’s capable of more than what we use it for, but we didn’t want to risk it and use it for the wrong purposes.”
The hologram changes and now the mind stone is on display on its own.
“But not everyone agreed with that. A couple hundred years ago there was a war for the stone. Though our people sacrificed everything to protect it, they didn’t succeed entirely. Unfortunately, the attackers didn’t know how great the stone’s power is. In the midst of the chaos, there was an explosion caused by the stone. Almost everyone present was killed, only seven survived and they were blessed with different powers coming from the stone.”
Bucky’s lips part as his eyes flicker over to you from the stone in the middle of the table, while you are staring at the hologram remembering back the stories your parents told you growing up. He feels like he is being shared with an ancient legend, a piece of history that is a privilege to know.
“The powers they were gifted with were held at great heights after the war was over. And while some of them could pass it on to their children, some couldn’t. The seven became four, then just two and there was one left. My grandmother. When my father didn’t show any signs of the stone’s power it was believed the magic was gone forever, but then I was born and…”
“And you had the powers,” Bucky chimes in, completely in awe of your origin story. You nod with a shy smile as the hologram of the stone disappears in the middle of the table.
“Yes.”
“And why is there a war on your planet right now?”
“Because though it’s been a miracle that I inherited my grandmother’s powers, the people want to get the stone back and have more of its powers. Unfortunately, the stone was lost through the years and I was informed that Thanos got a hold of it some time ago,” you explain, turning to Shuri for assurance about the accuracy of your words and she nods. “Who then gave it to Loki and now it’s in the scepter. People were demanding my father to start a war for the stone to get it back to Lortena, but he refused to sacrifice his army to get the stone back from a titan.” Sighing you lean back in your seat as you think about your home, your family that was left behind when your father sent you away because he was afraid the rebels would use you to get to him.
“The stone is not at Thanos’ any longer,” Bucky speaks up and your eyes find him as you snap out of your thoughts.
“I was informed of that as well. It’s um… it’s Vision’s now, right?” They both nod. “Well, the rebels think it’s Thanos’ and you better hope it stays that way. Because if they figure out that the titan doesn’t have it any longer, they won’t hesitate to attack you for the stone.”
Bucky’s jaw clenches at the thought of another war to take part in, but also because you had to go through such terrible events because of other’s greediness.
“I’ve been trying to find a solution to help you since you’ve gone to sleep, but I wasn’t able to come up with any,” Shuri speaks up. “But then Y/N arrived and I think she could be the one to do the job.”
“You think you can do that?” Bucky asks, eyebrows pulled together. “What else can you do, other than reading minds?”
You feel hesitant revealing the depths you’re able to reach with your abilities and you’re afraid he would find it too invading after everything he has been through. You want to help him but he has to let you. Though you’re powerful, if someone resists your attempts, the outcome won’t be the same as if they cooperated.
“If you let me… I can change your memories. I can make them appear differently in your head so what they did to you won’t have an effect on you any longer.”
Bucky’s jaw twitches. He has no idea what he was expecting, but not this for sure. Letting another person get into his head, play with his mind like it’s just a toy, it’s something he vowed not to let anyone do it again. But as he stares back at you, he can tell the difference between you and the monsters who ruined his head before. He is at a safe place and everyone here wants what’s good for him.
“It only works if you let me do it,” you add and notice how he presses his lips together into a thin line.
“I would do anything to get rid of him. So… I’m in,” he nods at last and you let out a relieved sigh.
You’ve never tried to corrupt so much of someone’s memories before and you’re not sure how long it will take to complete the task so you requested to start the next day, giving you some time to get ready physically and mentally and of course, for Bucky to get himself ready for his mind to yet again get taken apart by someone else.
Not having much to really do since your arrival other than helping Shuri out occasionally at the lab or giving assistance for T’Challa around the palace, you’ve been able to explore your temporary home in the heart of Wakanda.
There is a hidden terrace near your room, one that’s not well-known even by the people living in the palace and you like the peace and calm whenever you are out there, surrounded by flowers and plants in hand-painted pots, some of them were made by yourself, watching over the breathtaking view of Wakanda in front of you, the sky turning from bright blue to shades of orange, pink, purple and eventually black as the Sun goes down behind the hills.
Tonight, this is where you are seeking peace again, sorting your thoughts out about what you’ll have to face tomorrow. Your power has a lot of benefits but it has its curses as well. You’ve only attempted to do something similar before and you had to learn the hard way what price you have to pay for having control over someone else’s mind, thoughts and memories.
Your brother was tragically killed in an uprising when he was only seventeen and you were ten. It was the result of a series of unfortunate event, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, no one could help him. Your mother broke under the pain of losing her own child and you listened to her cries every and each night for months before you decided that you needed to help her. She didn’t want to let you even try, afraid it might take too much of you to help her, but you insisted and she eventually gave in. You altered her memories and feelings about your brother’s death, only left her with the ones that bring her joy and happiness, but your gesture demanded a price you weren’t ready to pay.
Upon your own grief for your brother, you had to bear your mother’s as well, the pain of two people clutching your heart and mind in return for your mother’s happiness. You never told her how you cried yourself to sleep every night for an entire year, how you could barely control your dark flashbacks and the constant darkness that was pulling you down. No one knew what you had to go through just to see your mother smile again and you made sure it stayed that way. However, you didn’t dare to do it again, not entirely sure if you could handle the pain one more time.
You surprised yourself when you offered your help to Bucky. You don’t even know him, yet you are willing to take his pain and make it yours just so he can live a somewhat normal life. Though his memories and nightmares won’t torture you as long as they would have did with him, you’ll still have to fight his demons and he won’t even know it. Then why are you doing this?
You have no answer to that. Seeing him for the first time you just had a feeling that you have to do it, that he is worthy of it all and that you want to be the person to free him.
The glass door opens behind you as you’re watching the Sun disappear on the horizon and you’re surprised to see Bucky walk out to the terrace, stopping in his tracks once he notices you sitting on one of the wooden chairs.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone would be here,” he mumbles, his gaze snapping down at the floor.
“That’s what I thought too,” you chuckle.
“I’ll leave you—“ he starts, ready to leave, but you stop him.
“You don’t have to. Feel free to join,” you tell him, gesturing towards the other chair. His hesitation is clear at first, but then he closes the door behind him and sits beside you.
Bucky watches the sunset in awe, but he can’t shake his curiosity towards you, having to control himself not to stare at you as he tries to figure you out. You’re not the only one who doesn’t understand why you’re doing this major gesture for him, he’s spent the afternoon trying to find any alternative motives that might explain your willingness to help him. He couldn’t find any and it left him with even more puzzles in his tortured head.
“What is it like on your planet?” he finds himself asking, breaking the long silence between the two of you.
“It’s not too different than here,” you admit truthfully. “Though our technology is a little more advanced,” you add with a soft chuckle. “In a way I’m happy I ended up here, because Wakanda reminds me of my home.”
“You miss it, don’t you? Your home?”
“Who doesn’t?” you ask with a soft smile and Bucky nods. He misses his home too, but in his case, it’s not a place but a time, decades ago, when he was his true self instead of the monster Hydra forced him to become.
“I’m sure it’ll be nice to return once the war is over,” he hums to himself and he expects a warm and positive reaction from you, however all he sees is pain and sadness in your eyes. “What is it?”
You hesitate to share it with him, staring back at him you think about keeping your thoughts to yourself, but how could you expect him to let you get into his head if you don’t share your thoughts with him willingly?
“Bucky, I don’t think I’ll ever return to my planet,” you breathe out as your gaze moves back to the scenery in front of you, the burning disk of the sun already hidden behind the hills.
“What do you mean?”
“The ship I came with can’t be fixed and they don’t know that I ended up here. It would take them too long to find me here and that’s if… If my family will be alive by then. I have no idea what’s happening there right now, if the rebels are winning or my father is able to keep things under control. I see very little likelihood of my return.”
Bucky’s heart aches for you, knowing well the pain you feel, he finds it ironic how the both of you are stuck so far away from your homes, seeking shelter at the same place at the same time.
He thinks it’s fate.
“What’s your favorite memory from your home?” he asks and you turn to him with soft and shining eyes. He is expecting you to tell him about it, but instead you decide to show it.
Grabbing his hand that’s closer to you, you bring it up to your face and make him cup the side of your head, his thumb brushing against your cheekbone as you close your eyes and recall the memory, planting into his head as well, taking him back, like the two of you could travel time and space just that easily.
Bucky can barely believe what he is experiencing but he finds himself inside your memory and it all seems so real, as if it was happening in the moment. He is standing in the middle of a meadow filled with luscious, green grass and some kind of flowers, whites and purples and yellows dancing in the soft breeze. At first he thinks he is alone, he doesn’t see you anywhere around him and then he spots a woman in a long, light pink dress, her hair waving behind her in the gentle summer breeze and then he spots a little girl running behind her.
Bucky walks closer to the woman, but she doesn’t acknowledge his presence, she doesn’t even look his way and when he reaches out to touch her arm, his hand goes right through her figure, as if she was just a ghost.
The little girl finally catches up with the woman, a handful of flowers in her hands and when looks up Bucky realizes that it’s you as a child. Your main features can still be found behind the round cheeks and pouty lips.
“Mom! I picked these for you!” your younger self beams, holding the little bouquet of flowers up to your mother, who takes it with a bright smile.
“So beautiful, my love!” she hums, sniffing the flowers as you giggle at her. “But why don’t we use them for something?”
“For what?” you ask with a curious look and Bucky can’t help the smile on his face. It’s such a pure and joyful memory, he almost wishes it was his.
Your mother sits down in the grass, her skirt fanning over her in a circle as she pulls you down to her lap with your back facing her before she combs her fingers gently through your hair and starts braiding it, sticking the little flowers into the braid as she moves down. You start singing some kind of song, one Bucky doesn’t know, and your mother smiles brightly at your chiming voice. She braids with so much care and precision, at the end it looks perfect and very much princess-like with the flowers littering around.
“There. Now you are a bouquet of flowers yourself, my love” she smiles at you, kissing your cheek before letting you out of her arms, watching you dance around in your dress, singing to yourself without a care in the world.
Bucky wants to stay there, more than anything and see more of your younger version and your mother, but he is abruptly pulled back into reality when you pull his hand back from your face and the connection stops. His eyes snap open and they find yours, so enamored and in awe of what he just experienced, he feels like he was let in on a secret no one else knows in the world.
“Wow. That was… amazing,” he breathes out as his hand drops back to his lap while you just smile back at him shyly. “Is that… Is that what it’s gonna be like when you…?”
“Not quite,” you shake your head. “You won’t feel anything, you’ll just have to think back to all the memories you want to be changed or wiped. I’ll be the one stuck in your memories like you were in mine. And from inside, I’ll be able to change them.”
“Will I know later which ones were altered or they won’t be different at all?”
“There’ll be… a kind of shine to them when you’ll think of them after that. It’s gonna be the only tell that they were touched by me. But I won’t change anything you don’t give your consent to.”
Bucky nods, having answered his biggest concerns about tomorrow. Now he feels like he trusts you completely and you’ll be the first person he can open his mind up to without a worry.
No matter how much you tried to get yourself ready for what you’d see in Bucky’s head, nothing could have prepared to the pain and darkness he had to endure during his oddly long human life. All the torture, the blood, the hurt and fear of death, it all comes down crashing on you even after the first session you have with him.
It breaks your heart that such a sweet soul had to go through Hell innocently and now he has to live with everything he was forced to do against his will. You can only hope that the people who did this to him have gotten their rightful punishment.
The first time the two of you sit down to start his treatment you get stuck in his head for hours, going through memories and altering them to take away anything that is connected to the trigger words. You witness the time he was captured and the first time he was sat into the chair that broke him. You can’t help the tears rolling down your face as you use all your power to change the memory and leave him with just a faded picture of his cell and held captive. Bucky asked you not to wipe them entirely, leave him with reminders of what made you be the way he is today and that’s exactly what you do.
When you finally come back you almost faint from exhaustion, Shuri catches you right in time before you could fall off the chair in front of Bucky’s who is equally dizzy, but he still manages to reach out and grab your hand to help you steady yourself. You feel drained and almost tortured, Bucky’s memories imprinting into your own head and you already know they will haunt you for quite some time. Not as long as your mother’s grief did, you were just a child back then and you couldn’t control your power that well, but even though you’ve learned to use your abilities, it will still take a couple of months for you to get rid of the horrors you saw in Bucky’s head.
Bucky sees how broken you look after just the first session and he doesn’t want to believe you’ll be strong enough to finish what you started.
“It’s fine,” you assure him when he asks you again in the evening if you surely want to continue. “I just have to rest and we can go on,” you tell him, giving his arm a squeeze before returning to your room.
That night, you wake from a burning nightmare with a scream, gripping onto the sheets with terror running through your veins. In your dream, you were the one strapped to that chair, going through all the pain Bucky had to bear decades ago. It was vivid and torturous and you know it’s going to return.
But you’re determined to finish the work and you do it over and over again, every day for the next couple of weeks. You go through all of Bucky’s darkest memories, altering and changing them until there’s nothing left from the Winter Soldier in him, just some faint and blurry pictures of him being held by his captors. You take all the pain and let it sink its claws into your own head, clouding your mind with darkness.
Bucky can feel the change in himself instantly after the first time you get into his head and a few days later he sleeps through the night for the first time in forever, oblivious to the fact that not far away from his room, you are fighting his demons every night so he can have his peace.
He is always the one to help you back into your room after an exhausting session and he wakes you up with breakfast in the mornings, always making your favorite. You tell him it’s not necessary, but he insists that this is the least he can do for everything you are doing for him, and he doesn’t even know the worst things you endure for his happiness.
He is always the one to request days off from the treatment, not for himself, but for you. He sees how trying it is and though you would never ask for time off, you don’t have to, because Bucky does it for you. Every third or fourth day he tells you he needs some time to heal and get used to his new mindset, but he just wants you to rest and recharge and though you know it too, you appreciate the gesture.
Some days he asks you to join him for walks just to get you out of the palace and you gladly say yes, desperately needing something to bring the light back into your life and it doesn’t take long to realize that Bucky is that light that can ease the heaviness of the pain you are fighting.
You love seeing his smile as the first thing in the morning, you love how he squeezes your hands every time before you dive into his head and how insists to carrying you to your room even when you’re perfectly capable of walking on your own. You love how chivalrous he is always, something Shuri told you was more common in the times he was born and you adore it that it’s a piece of his past self still present after everything he’s been through.
Bucky is the only one who can pull you out of the dark hole you’ve been stuck in and you promised yourself that you’ll never tell him the price you had to pay for his happiness, because he deserves every ounce of it and you wouldn’t want anything to cloud over it, not even your misery.
It takes five entire weeks to go through everything that turned him into the Winter Soldier and then the day to test if it has worked finally comes. Shuri has made sure to have a capsule ready for the test, one that would keep him under control in case you didn’t succeed and he would be triggered by the words he already knows too well.
“Are you sure I won’t hurt anyone?” Bucky asked cautiously as he was strapped into the capsule, a good majority of the Dora Milaje guarding the lab as well in case the test goes wrong, but both you and Shuri are optimistic about it.
“Calm down, Sergeant. We can handle you,” Shuri jokes before finishing up. “Alright, I’m gonna close this now, but you’ll be able to hear us and we’ll hear you as well,” she informs him and he just nods as she closes the capsule, securing him inside.
You sit on the side, but still close enough to see his face in the capsule. His icy blue stare finds yours and you give him a soft, encouraging smile. You do believe he won’t be triggered and not just because of what you did, but because he has a strong will and if there’s still any part of the Winter Soldier in him, he’ll be able to come over it.
“Okay, ready for the words?” Shuri asks him and breathing out he nods, closing his eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
“Желание,” comes the first word through a speaker and you hold your breath as you stare at his face through the capsule.
“Ржавый. Семнадцать,” the words carry on and you see him squeeze his eyes a little, fear taking over you that he might break, but it never happens. “Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный…”
The trigger words ends and your lips part when his eyes open, noticing the tears in them as he finally realizes that he didn’t turn. The Winter Soldier is finally gone.
“Congratulations, Sergeant. You’re free,” Shuri announces as she opens the capsule and lets him out, sobs shaking from his chest before he is freed from the straps and able to step out of the capsule.
He is quick to rush over to you and wrap you in his embrace, both of you sobbing and crying and you hold onto him tight, as if he was just a memory that could vanish any moment, but he is there, flesh and metal, the Bucky you know and adore so much.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he keeps repeating as his vibranium fingers tangle into your hair at the back of your head.
It’s been over a week of freedom for Bucky and he hasn’t felt better in his life, well, not in this decade. Without the sessions, he now has quite some free time on his hands that he prefers to spend with you, actually.
The two of you have been joined at the hips since his recovery and not just because Bucky feels like he owes his life to you, but because you both can’t help falling for the other in the light of your newly found friendship that’s starting to slowly turn into more.
Bucky hasn’t been shy about showing his adoration and gratitude towards you, not after you’ve seen the darkest side of him and could still look at him the same way. He feels like he has bared his entire soul to you and you accepted it gladly, so there’s no need to beat around the bushes.
However you’ve been still trying to keep him away from the secret you’re hiding. He can’t find out about the nightmares, the screams and the tears you shed every night when his demons come for you. You can’t let him get close enough to see the price you paid for his own happiness. But even with all the cautions you’ve been keeping, you still can’t stop fate from finding its way.
One night Bucky is staying up late, binge watching a series Shuri has recommended for him. He didn’t intend to stay up so late, but before he could realize how fast the time has passed, it was already past two in the morning.
Shutting the laptop down he decides to get himself some water before finally going to sleep. Padding his way down the dark and quiet hallways in only a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, he unintentionally takes the route that goes past your room. He didn’t plan on dropping by, knowing you’re probably asleep by now, just wanted to feel that sense of closeness even in the middle of the night, but his original plans immediately change when he hears your deafening scream coming from the other side of the door.
His blood freezes in his veins and he is quick to turn into combat mode, ready to fight whatever is threatening your life, but as he pushes his way into your room he doesn’t find any intruder, it’s just you, curled up on your bed and even under the thick layer of covers, he can see how badly you’re shaking, your beautiful face churned into a painful frown as you keep your eyes shut.
He immediately realizes that you’re having a nightmare.
He rushes over to the bed and sits to the edge, the mattress dipping underneath his weight as he carefully places a hand to your trembling shoulder.
“Y/N! Y/N, wake up!” he softly shakes you, trying to get you back to consciousness, but you keep tossing and whimpering, a thin layer of sweat covering your skin.
“No, no, please! I’m not the Winter Soldier!” you cry out and Bucky freezes, his jaw clenching at your words, an eerie feeling running down his spine.
“Y/N, it’s just a dream, wake up!” he tries again and your eyes finally shoot open.
Though you’ve woken up, you don’t instantly see what’s really happening around you and you are quick to flinch away from Bucky, pushing yourself to the far end of the bed as you stare back at him with fearful, wide eyes.
“It’s just me. It’s alright, it’s me, Bucky,” he softly reminds you holding his hands up so you can see them. Your chest is heaving and your hands are gripping the sheets so tight, your knuckles are turning white.
“Bucky,” you breathe out and he nods.
“Yeah, it’s me. You had a bad dream, I heard you scream.”
Letting out a shaky breath you close your eyes and try to shake the vivid images that haunted you tonight out of your head, with not much success. Tonight you were beaten up in a cold and dark cell, the man kept telling you that you’re just a monster, a soulless nobody as he kept hitting you before he reached for a weapon that sent electricity through your body until it was too numb to move at your will.
You know it was one of his memories, because you’ve seen this scene before in his head and you remembered it clearly. Only that last time you saw it happen to him and now you were the victim.
“Fuck,” you breathe out, loosening your muscles as you gain your contact back with reality.
“What was the nightmare about?” he quietly asks and your gaze snaps up to meet his. You can’t read his icy blue eyes and for a moment you think about touching him so you could hear his thoughts, but you promised yourself you would never use your powers on him.
“Just… some nonsense stuff,” you lie shaking your head.
“Didn’t sound like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you beg to someone, telling them that you’re not the Winter Soldier.”
His face hardens as he inspects you while you try your best to hide anything that would tell him more about what you’ve been keeping from him.
“I don’t… I don’t remember it,” you shrug, scooting closer to him as you fix your pillows.
“Y/N, I don’t need superpowers to know that you’re lying,” he retorts and you almost flinch at his words. “Are you having nightmares because of what you saw… in my head?”
For a split second you think about lying. You think about telling him that it’s just because of what you saw and not tell him the real reason of your nightmares, but guilt has been already eating you away for not telling him and you wouldn’t be able to lie straight into his face. So you shake your head and your eyes meet his icy gaze again.
“I’m having… your nightmares.”
He looks confused, eyebrows knitted together as he is tasting your words, not entirely sure about what you meant by them, so you go into the details you’ve been keeping hidden from him.
“I can’t just take memories away and turn them into nothing, Bucky. Memories can only vanish if they get forgotten with time,” you start explaining, hoping you can paint the picture as realistic as possible. “When I changed your memories, I took parts away and… made them mine. And now I have to be the one to fight and forget them, but it happens faster for me than it would have happened to you,” you quickly add, as if it could make it any better.
“Why didn’t you tell me this is the cost of my recovery?” he snaps, clearly mad at you and he has every right, but you just wanted to save him. “I would have never let you do it if it meant you’d be the one to suffer for me, Y/N!”
“I had the chance to help you, I wanted to give you the freedom you deserve!” Tears are stinging your eyes as you stare at his harsh expression, the soft and joyful Bucky you’ve seen these past weeks is now gone.
“But it’s not worth it if you are being tortured by my memories now!”
“It was worth to me!” you snap back, a tear rolling down you cheek. “I might have been selfish for keeping you the details of what it would take to free you, but now you are the one who is being selfish, because you wouldn’t have let me help you if you knew and that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you! I chose to do it and I knew what I was getting myself into and I knew what it’s gonna cost.” More and more tears run down your heated cheeks, soaking your skin before they drop to your shirt or the sheets covering your lower half. Bucky stares back at you in disbelief as you reason about why you did it exactly. “You deserved this second chance and I was your only chance. If I didn’t do it for you, I would have had to live with the guilt forever that I let an innocent man suffer. It’s a small price for the happiness I was able to give you.”
Bucky is in total shock. He has had Steve do selfless shit for him plenty of times, hell, he wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him, but what you did is just above everything that’s been ever done for him and he is having a hard time accepting that anyone would put up with so much pain and suffering for him willingly. He can’t decide if he wants to scream and shout at you for being so stupid or if he wants to fall to his knees and glorify your name till the end of times.
When you realize that he won’t snap at you again, you carefully scoot closer until you can reach out and touch his face, but you don’t even try to read his thoughts. Not this time. You let his thoughts wrapped in the darkness of the unknown. Bucky melts against your touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a few moments.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Y/N.”
“But I did,” you breathe out with a bitter chuckle. “And it can’t be undone, so you better accept it.”
He cracks a tiny smile, but it quickly vanishes as a thought pops into his head.
“If you have the memories that made me into the Winter Soldier, how come you don’t get triggered by the words?”
“I might own your memories now, but there’s a natural bond with the original owner that can’t be taken. It’s what makes them so vivid and real for you, but it will never be as real to me. The trigger words have no power over me, because the memories are not mine, I don’t have the bond with them.”
“But you still have the nightmares. My nightmares,” he breathes out, a hint of disappointment ringing through his tone, though you’re not sure if it’s because of what you did or because he couldn’t stop you from it.
“They will go away,” you assure him, but you can tell that his guilt is eating him away. “Bucky, I’ll be fine. A few weeks, at max a month and they will be gone. I promise you.”
“You don’t deserve this,” he mumbles under his breath as his hand reaches for yours, squeezing it gently before he brings it to his lips and kisses your knuckles softly. “You don’t deserve any of it.”
“But you deserve happiness,” you reply with a chaste smile that makes his heart flutter in his chest. “Let me give it to you. You’ve had enough pain, Bucky. I’ll take the rest now.”
Bucky stares back at you for a long second before he decides to do whatever he can to make sure you get through it as easily as possible. Pulling the covers back he slides under them, lying down next to you as he pulls you into his embrace.
“Go back to sleep and if you’ll have another nightmare, I’ll be here to wake you up from it and get your mind off of it. You’re safe with me,” he murmurs, as you lay your head to his hard chest, his flesh arm curling around your frame while his vibranium fingers lace together with yours on his stomach. You don’t try to protest against him, you know he won’t leave and quite frankly, you don’t want him to. Knowing that if you go back to the darkness again he’ll be here to pull you out relaxes you, doesn’t let you worry about what kind of horrific scene you are going to be forced to see when you close your eyes next. You melt against him, inhaling his scent, listening to his steady heartbeat under your head as you let yourself go back to sleep, for the first time, ready to face whatever is waiting for you on the other side.
Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!
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If you’re requests are open can I get a Yandere Zuko x fem reader where after the war he looks for his darling by making his guards track her down but without anyone knowing bc he doesn’t want ppl to think that he’s back into his old ways again and keeps her in the palace
Ok Angel 💜👌💜. If you want, I could continue this as a mini part to part scenario series if I have the time T.Angel. There is just so many ideas worming around this concept and just think of the crazy things the darling and Zuko is going to go through, while also keeping both of their identities on the veeery low-key. Just let me know Angel 😊☕💜.
Also everyone is going to be aged up to 18+ Btw.
Side note: For the sake of this scenario, the darling will be from the Southern Water tribe. If this Angel decides to let me continue this as a mini scenario series, then the both of us are going to talk about if the darling can be a Waterbender or not.
Warning ⚠!!!: Their is going to be some slight Nsfw in this.
Yandere Zuko: A Dragon's treasure
Five weeks. It has been five weeks since you've went missing. Once the war has ended, Zuko was planning to propose to you. But every since his coronation of being crowned the new FireLord, you just up and vanished. It was like you were never there in the first place. And Zuko has been scattering everywhere in the palace and Fire nation to find you or some type of clue. But nothing. There was nothing there. You really covered your tracks, didn't you?
Right now Zuko was in his thrown room. He was fuming- No steaming with rage. If anyone were to walk in to the room, they'll notice it was boiling in there. He tried to look everywhere in the palace. Even outside the palace. But to no avail. Zuko couldn't find you. You've made it clear that you don't want to be with him or any where near him with this type of stunt you've pulled.
Zuko took a seat on his thrown. His hands was on his head, just about ready to pull his hair out and shout in frustration. But then a knock on the door stop him. " *Frustrated sigh* State your name and your business." Zuko said with spite and a hint of venom in his voice. The person behind the door flinched at his tone of voice. "It's me Sir. The guard you put in charge of the search party for Ms.Y/N". Zuko perked up at the mention of his missing lover's name. " Come in. " said Zuko. With out a second thought, the guard entered the room. She bowed down in respect for her FireLord.
" FireLord Zuko I have an update about Ms.Y/N's whereabouts. " Said the guard. She almost stuttered. The guard noticed how extremely hot it was in the thrown room. It was a clear sign that FireLord Zuko was pissed out of his mind. " Well, " Zuko said in annoyance and anger. Zuko was beyond angry at this point. He was a whole entire cluster fuck of emotions right now. " M-me and m-my crew found some people who could be connected to Ms.Y/N's disappearance , your majesty. " Stuttered the guard in slight fear. Zuko quirked up an eyebrow at what the guard said.
Ah. So the guard managed to find the ones responsible for his darling's vanishment, or at least had some part in it. " Bring them in. " Zuko said. The guard only merely nodded, not wanting to meet the FireLord's intimidating gaze. The guard got off their knees and went to call the other guards, to bring out the people that played some part of the darling going missing. The other guards quickly brought out four other people. Those people was tied up, bounded, and blind folded. The people was visibly quivering in fear. They were very confused and scared on what they did to upset the FireLord.
The four guards forcefully pushed the four people down to the floor. Each guard took off each person's blind fold. In front of the four people, there sat the FireLord in all his glory. FireLord Zuko glared down at the 4 people in a burning gaze. So these disgusting pathetic excuses of human was responsible for his darling going missing. Zuko scoffed at the thought. After a painful intimidating stare down, Zuko finally spoke. " So your the ones held responsible for Y/N's disappearance. " Zuko spat out to them with his voice dipped in poison.
" I-if y-you're talking about a someone that has (h/c), (e/c), and (s/c) then t-they came to m-my store to buy clothes." The woman stuttered in fear. Zuko stayed quite and only listened. " If you're talking about the same person; they came to my food stand and brought some food. " the old man said quickly in fear of what the FireLord would do to him if he took so long to explain himself. Zuko only merely quirks his eyebrow. " Y-yeah, that same person came to my Shop and bought some bags and extra equipment as his they were going on a trip. " The man said while sweating nervously. " The same person came to shack a-and brought some w-weapons. " Said the short lady in fear. Zuko only hmmed at what they said.
" So you're telling me the lady you just described went to all of your stores and shops to buy something. " Zuko said still glaring down the four people. " Y-yes. " the woman squeaked in fear. The old man only nodded quickly. " Mhm. " both the man and woman said. Zuko got up from his thrown and began to walk down to his stand. " What should we do with them you highness? " Said one of the guards. " Bring them to the dungeon. I will decide what to do with them later. " Said Zuko. " I-I don't understand what did we do wrong. " Stuttered the woman in fear and nervousness. Zuko quickly turned to the woman, the woman quickly shuts her mouth. Zuko then begins to slowly walk towards her.
Zuko shot one of his hands out and grasps the woman's face in a painful grip. The woman squeaks in surprise and fear. Zuko just merely just glares down at her. His eyes is filled with a flaming rage. " You all are held responsible for the disappearance of Y/N, " Zuko spat out in anger. Zuko releases his hand from woman's face. Zuko steps away from the woman and is now in front of the four bounded people. " Since you all play a part in my- err Y/N's disappearance, you all will be punished accordingly. " The four people only shook even more at FireLord Zuko's statement. " All of you take them away were they'll never see the light of day again. " Zuko said with venom dripping from his voice.
The four guards only bowed and said a quick " yes sir ". With that they took the four people away. Now Zuko was once again left in his thrown room...... alone.
Zuko let out a sigh of frustration out. He walked towards a window that was in the room. He stared down at his people, he was thinking about something. Based on what the four people said, Zuko can conclude that his darling is no longer in the Fire nation. Zuko dug into his pocket and took out something. It was a necklace. A betrothed necklace to be more specific. You see his darling was not from the fire nation, no no no. You were from a Water tribe, the Southern Water tribe to put it. While Zuko was on his trip to help Aang defeat his father and help him master firebending, Zuko found out from Katara on what her necklace means. He found out that from the Water tribe in order to marry someone, you have to make a betrothed necklace and give it to that special someone. When Zuko found out about this type of information, he instantly got rapped up about it. Ever since he's joined team Avatar he was thinking about what life would be like when he becomes FireLord, then his thoughts were drawn into marriage. He can't help but think, his darling would make the perfect FireLady. His FireLady.
And they'll have children. They'll be lovely children. With his darling swelled up with another one of his heirs all while holding another one of their children. It'll truly be a.. delicious sight to see ~ Zuko hmmed in delight at the thought of his darling bearing his children. But... that's if he witness such a darling sight. Zuko groaned at his mood being dampened and soured. But he knows it's true. Zuko knows if he doesn't act fast, he'll lose his darling. And that lovely little scene that played in his mind, will be nothing but a mere fantasy. Besides, he doesn't want to get himself accidentally sexual frustrated.....
With that aside, Zuko begins to start planning and strategizing. Zuko walks away from the window. He calls a servant, he orders them to get one of his best generals. The servant was slightly hesitant and confused, but never the less terrified. Wasn't the war over? They pushed their question aside, because they know now wouldn't be the best time to question the FireLord. He hasn't been acting himself lately and has been been flaring up at anything these past few weeks. With out much of a second thought, they did as they were told and went to see if someone could get one of the generals FireLord Zuko was talking about.
Zuko on the other hand, went back to sit on his thrown. He knew it will take time for the general to get here, so he decided to sit and be patient for him to get here. All while doing this, Zuko began to plan out in his mind on how he was going to get his darling. He was thinking about getting some of the Fire nation's best spies to help track down his darling. Sending out a whole search team and alerting the public while cause some type of panic. Not only that but he's trying to show that He and the Fire nation has turned over a new leaf, that and he doesn't want people and the other members of team Avatar know he's basically going back to his old ways. Since everybody knows the history on how he went to the ends of the earth to find and Capture the Avatar, and he's basically doing the same for his darling. It'll put a bad name on him and an even worse name on the Fire nation. So he'll lay as low as possible and keep shush shush about it, so he doesn't rise suspicion and ruin all the hard work he's been putting in the past time he's became FireLord.
With all those thoughts in mind, Zuko decides to call the same servant from before. So he can see if his message has been delivered. The Servant said they already sent a messaging hawk out to see if they can reach the general. Zuko only hmmed and dismissed them, and told them to report back to him once the massage has been delivered. With that the servant left, leaving Zuko in his thrown room. Zuko dug into his pocket again. He took out the Betrothed necklace out. He gently creased and rubbed the engraving and creases. He took so many hours and very much effort into making this for his darling. Looking at it always made him feel calmer, it made him happy knowing that his darling will be wearing it soon. But then his darling ran away from him before he can give it to them. Zuko pushed down on the purple garnet at the thought of his darling running away from him ( the rest of the necklace's gems are made up of smaller bits of Rudy and sapphire ). Zuko let out another sigh of frustration. He began to think. Once is darling is back with him he's never letting them go...........
My God, this was a boom ass idea. Not only that, but an idea of Zuko having a bit of a breeding kink has been floating around in my mind for some time now. I had a lot of fun with this. Like I said before T.Angel, If you want me to make a mini scenarios series about this let me know 😆! Well I hope you enjoy it. Until next time my Little Tainted Angels, see you soon ~💜❤💜
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