#and them i immediately panic and have a small lock down about the interaction

[seungminsbaldspot]

Six Years, Five months and Two days | FIVE X READER

pairing: five hargreaves x reader

Part one: Six Years, Five Months, and Two Days | Five X Reader

Word Count: 5329

Genre: angst / smut

General Notes: Lila x Five did happen here folks :/, sexual themes, crude language, this does not correlate with whatever happens during seasons 4 other than Lila and Five jumping into a different timeline together for seven years, Reader is referred to as female and wife

Trigger Warnings: Sexual Content: Explicit descriptions of sexual activity and references to sexual encounters, Cheating and Betrayal: Emotional fallout from a partner's infidelity, Emotional Manipulation and Gaslighting: Attempts to manipulate emotions and control within a relationship, Non-Consensual Physical Restraint: Instances of physical restraint, such as pinning against a wall or holding wrists down, Physical Aggression and Violence: Descriptions of forceful movements and aggressive behavior, Themes of Anger and Hate in a Relationship Context: Emphasis on anger, resentment, and hate within a romantic relationship, Rough or Aggressive Sexual Behavior: Elements of rough and aggressive sexual encounters, bordering on non-consensual behavior, References to Self-Worth and Insecurity: Reflections on feelings of inadequacy and questions about self-worth due to a partner's actions, Emotional Pain and Trauma: Heavy themes of emotional pain, grief, and unresolved trauma, and Language and Tone: Use of harsh and aggressive language, including profanity and confrontational statements.

Notes: f! oral receiving, low-key toxic reader ( to be fair five cheated and I support women’s wrongs ) Handjob, Edging, dirty talk, vaginal sex

Author’s note: I have not watched season 4 and I still do not plan too, mwah

Spoiler: All you get is, There will be a part 3

Click here for next part three!

Click here for the previous part one!

The anger hasn’t waned; it has only solidified into a constant, heavy presence in your life. You’ve withdrawn from everyone around you, the thought of facing anyone else too overwhelming to bear. The pain and frustration have driven you to isolate yourself, seeking solace in solitude rather than the company of others.

The only person you’ve managed to speak with at all is Allison. She’s the lone exception to your self-imposed isolation, offering a semblance of normalcy and a listening ear. Her patience and understanding are a rare comfort in this tumultuous time, though even your interactions with her are tinged with the shadows of your unresolved feelings.

Five, on the other hand, feels like a constant, painful reminder of everything you’ve lost. Each time you catch sight of him approaching, a wave of instinctual panic drives you to flee. You avoid him as if he’s a physical manifestation of your anguish. When you see him heading your way, you almost immediately retreat to the room you once shared. There, you lock the door behind you, creating a tangible barrier between yourself and the world outside, a small fortress of solitude where you can escape the reminders of your broken trust.

Your new daily routine has become a predictable cycle. You stay confined to your room for most of the day, emerging only for the latter part of dinner when everyone gathers to eat. You join them just long enough to pick at your food, barely participating in the conversation. The silence and the strained glances from others only deepen your sense of isolation. Once you’ve finished, you retreat back to your room, the door clicking shut behind you with a finality that echoes the loneliness you feel.

You’re maintaining this ritual, this enforced distance, until one evening when you’re heading back to your room. As you walk through the hallways, the familiar routine feels almost comforting in its predictability. But tonight, something shifts in the air. The hallway seems quieter, more oppressive, and the weight of your emotions feels heavier than usual. Each step toward the door of your sanctuary feels more burdensome, as if the act of retreating is becoming more than just a physical escape but a symbol of your own entrapment.

You reach for the door handle, your mind a tumultuous mix of pain and anger. Just as you’re about to close the door behind you, a sudden sound from the hallway makes you freeze.

It’s Five.

Before you can react, he’s right behind you, closing the distance with an urgency that catches you off guard. His hand wraps around your wrist with a firm grip, and before you know it, he’s pinning you against the wall. The pressure of his hold is both commanding and desperate, his eyes searching yours with an intensity that cuts through the fog of your emotions.

The hallway around you seems to dissolve into the background, leaving only the two of you in this charged, claustrophobic space. His breath is uneven, mingling with the tension that hangs heavily in the air. His face is a complex tapestry of frustration and something deeper—something you can’t quite put your finger on.

The familiar surge of anger rises within you, a fiery response to the violation of your space and emotions. “Get the fuck off of me,” you snap, trying to wrench your wrist free from his grasp. Your voice is sharp, laced with a mixture of hurt and defiance. The intensity of the moment amplifies your feelings, making the struggle against his hold feel even more urgent.

Five’s grip tightens momentarily, as if he’s trying to ground himself, but his eyes soften just enough to reveal a glimmer of vulnerability. “I know you’re angry,” he says, his voice rough yet edged with desperation. “I know I messed up. But I need you to listen to me. We can’t keep doing this.”

You shake your head, the anger in your voice unmistakable. “No fucking shit, you fucked up. Now leave me the fuck alone, Five,” you grit out, struggling against his hold. His eyebrows furrow, his frustration evident. “Diego and Lila made up. Why can’t we?”

You grit your teeth, your voice steady but sharp. “I’m not dumb enough to fall for some shitty make-up sex,” you reply, your words cutting through the air.

He shakes his head, his expression a mix of frustration and resignation. “Of course not,” he says, his voice softening. “I’m not saying you are.”

He switches his grip, each hand now holding one of your wrists firmly but gently, as if trying to convey earnestness through his touch. The change in his hold is subtle, his fingers wrapping around your wrists with a delicate urgency. He looks into your eyes, his gaze pleading yet determined. “What I’m trying to say is that we need to talk about this, really talk. We can’t just keep avoiding each other.”

You try to pull away, your frustration boiling over. “Leave me the fuck alone, Five,” you snap, yanking your wrists free from his grip. You rush for the door, desperate to escape, but Five moves quickly, catching the door before you can open it. He pulls you back into the room, forcing both of you into the space you once shared.

“What the fuck? Get the hell out,” you grit out, trying to push him away.

Five shakes his head, his expression set with determination. He grabs your wrist once more, his grip firm as he overpowers you. In a swift, almost frantic motion, he pulls you both onto the bed. You land flat on your back, and before you can react, Five sits across your waist, his position intended to pin you down. His weight is a physical reminder of his resolve, and he tries to stabilize you, his face inches from yours.

“I’m not leaving until we can make up,” he says, his voice a mix of desperation and determination.

You groan in frustration, your anger bubbling over. “Then fuck, we’re gonna be here till we fucking die,” you retort, struggling against him.

He smiles, a touch of defiance and resolve in his expression. “I’ve got till the end of the world, babe.” His tone is both challenging and tender, a reminder of the stubbornness that has defined so much of your relationship.

“Fuck you, Five Hargreaves,” you grit out, bucking your hips in an attempt to unbalance him. Five’s eyes narrow slightly, his grip tightening as he struggles to maintain his position. Despite the shift, he doesn’t move, his resolve unwavering.

“Fuck, why can’t you just forgive me?” he says desperately, his voice tinged with frustration.

You roll your eyes, exasperated. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You fucked Lila, for fuck’s sake. Five, we’re married and you’ve never even seen me naked. How am I supposed to just forgive that?”

He sighs, the weight of your words visibly affecting him. With a defeated gesture, he loosens one of his hands, pushing back his hair, though he keeps his other hand firmly on your wrist. His expression is a mix of weariness and regret, struggling to find the right words amidst the turmoil.

“I know. I fucking know.” He says, his voice breaking slightly. “I’m so fucking sorry, alright? I don’t know what else to do.” His eyes search yours, a raw vulnerability in his gaze.

You sigh, your gaze drifting away from his. In a swift, determined motion, you buck your hips, shifting your position to straddle him. You look down at him, your expression a mix of frustration and intensity. “You’re so fucking infuriating all of the fucking time,” you say, your voice tinged with both anger and a deeper, unresolved hurt.

“I don’t fucking understand you,” you say, your voice trembling, “All of these years, and I feel like I just met you.” Your words cut through the air, laden with the weight of all the emotions you’ve been grappling with. He groans, his frustration evident. “Do you think I love being confused all the time, huh? It’s not exactly easy for me either.” His eyes, still locked on yours, as if he’s pleading for you to see things from his perspective, to understand that he’s struggling just as much as you are.

“I don’t give a single flying fuck about what happened in that timeline,” you spit out, your voice sharp and unyielding. “You fucking cheated on me. Someone you’ve known for 50 years.” You lean in closer, your breath mingling with his, every word laced with venom.

Five closes his eyes, his eyebrows furrowed in anguish. “I love you,” he murmurs, his voice strained, almost pleading.

Your heart clenches at his words, but the fury quickly surges back, hot and consuming. “I fucking hate you,” you whisper, leaning in to crash your lips against his, rough and unforgiving. You taste the salt of his regret, and it fuels the fire in your veins.

You release his wrists, not out of mercy but because you need them to support yourself as you shift your weight. As you begin to pull away, his hands find your hips with a desperate urgency. His grip is firm, almost bruising, and it ignites something primal inside you—a dark thrill at his neediness. He sits up, pressing his body against yours, trying to close the distance you’ve purposely created.

You try to jerk away, but he doesn’t relent. His mouth finds yours again, his kiss insistent, bordering on frantic, as if he could somehow erase the betrayal with the intensity of his touch. His nails dig into your sides, a biting reminder of his desperation to hold on to you, to keep you tethered to him.

“F-Five…” you hiss through clenched teeth, your voice trembling not with desire, but with the fury that he can still make you feel this way.

He hums in response, a low, needy sound, as his lips trail across your face and neck. Each kiss is too tender, too earnest. It grates against your skin like sandpaper, a mockery of the intimacy he once shattered. You grit your teeth, hating how his touch sends a heat pooling in your core, hating him for still knowing exactly how to get under your skin.

“I hate you so much…” you whisper again, but the words feel thin, brittle. They don't carry the weight of your rage the way you want them to.

He doesn’t stop. His kisses become more erratic, as if he’s trying to drown out your words with the only language he thinks he knows. His hands slide under your shirt, fingertips brushing your skin in a way that makes your breath hitch. You curse under your breath, torn between the urge to push him away and the overwhelming pull to lose yourself in him, if only to forget for a moment how much it all hurts.

He tugs at your shirt, and for a split second, you consider pushing him away again, making him suffer. But then you think, Fuck it. Maybe if he sees you like this, sees what he could lose, he’ll finally understand. You nod, a slight, reluctant movement, and his eyes light up with a mix of relief and urgency.

He rips your shirt over your head, his lips immediately trailing hot, fervent kisses along your neck. Your breathing quickens, your body betraying your anger as it responds to his touch. He fumbles with the hooks of your bra, and you don’t help him. Let him struggle. Let him know that this isn’t forgiveness—it’s a punishment. When he finally unhooks it, your bra falls away, and you watch his face for any sign of hesitation or doubt. But his gaze is intense, almost reverent, and you hate him even more for it.

The room is thick with tension, the silence broken only by your ragged breaths. His eyes roam over your chest, and you feel a flicker of insecurity. Did he like hers better? Are mine not good enough? The questions stab at your already bleeding heart, but you shake them off, forcing your anger back to the surface.

Without warning, you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him into a bruising kiss. You’re not gentle; you’re taking from him, using him. He doesn’t get to have this, you think bitterly. He doesn’t deserve this.

He gasps against your mouth, surprised by your aggression, but quickly falls into rhythm, kissing you back with a hunger that makes your head spin. His hands grip your bare waist, pulling you closer, his touch igniting your skin in a way that makes your heart race with a confusing blend of hate and desire.

You reach down, grabbing the hem of his shirt, yanking it up with frustration. You want him exposed, vulnerable, just like he made you feel. You want to see him stripped of everything—his clothes, his defenses, his excuses. You pull his shirt off roughly, and he lets out a soft grunt, his eyes wide with surprise at your forcefulness.

Your hands move to his waistband, tugging with more force than necessary. Five understands the message immediately, quickly shedding his pants, leaving him in just his underwear. His hands are on you again, this time more urgent, more desperate, as he pulls your shorts down your legs. His movements are hurried, almost frantic, as if he’s afraid you’ll change your mind and leave him half-naked and abandoned.

His hands roam down your body, grasping and squeezing your ass with a possessiveness that makes you bristle. He hooks his finger in the band of your underwear, pulling it away from your skin and letting it snap back. The sting makes you gasp, not in pleasure, but in shock. You bite your lip, glaring at him, hating how even now, in the middle of your rage, he can still get a reaction out of you.

He doesn't deserve this, you think again, but you’re already too far gone. You’re in too deep, both with him and with your own conflicting feelings. You hate him, but you want him, and that contradiction tears at you, making you reckless, making you want to hurt him the way he hurt you.

He smiles and lays you down flat on the bed. He slowly pulls your underwear down to your ankles.

You glare at Five, anger coursing through you like a live wire. His eyes lock onto yours, hesitant, as if he's unsure of his place with you now. You hate the way he looks at you—the way his gaze drifts over your body, as if trying to remember every inch, every curve. He has no right. Not after what he did. Not after the betrayal. But damn it, you still want him, and that infuriates you even more.

He cheated. The thought burns in your mind, a searing reminder of why you're here now, in this moment, letting him touch you, letting him come this close. You want to use him, to make him feel some fraction of the anger and hurt that's been simmering inside you since the moment you found out. You're not here to forgive; you're here to take what you want.

Five leans down, his lips pressing a tentative kiss to your inner thigh. You feel his breath, hot against your skin, and it sends a shiver through you despite yourself. Anger and desire mix in a confusing swirl, and you have to bite back a frustrated moan. You shouldn't be feeling this way—not after everything—but your body has other ideas. You're furious with him, with yourself, with how easily he still affects you. His hands slide up your legs, parting them with a gentleness that almost makes you want to scream. It's too soft, too careful, and you can't stand it.

"Don't," you snap, your voice sharp. "Don't pretend this is something it's not. You fucking cheated, I’m gonna use you."

Five's fingers hesitate, his eyes flicking up to yours, searching. But you're not giving him anything—no reassurance, no forgiveness. Not now. Maybe not ever. His touch resumes, more deliberate now, his fingers tracing a path up your thighs. You feel his uncertainty, his regret, and it only stokes the fire inside you. He’s trying to be careful, to tread lightly, but you don't want careful. You want raw. You want him to understand just how much he's hurt you, just how deep the wound goes.

When his lips brush against your core, you don't hold back the sound that escapes you—a moan that's filled with anger as much as it is with desire. It's a sound that tells him everything he needs to know: you're not doing this for him. You're doing this for you. His tongue moves against you, hesitant at first, but you grab his hair roughly, pulling him closer, forcing him to go deeper. If he thinks he can just make it all better with a few soft touches, he's dead wrong.

Your fingers tighten in his hair, and you arch against him, not in surrender, but in command. You're directing this, controlling it, making sure he knows exactly what he's lost, exactly what he threw away when he chose someone else. You grind against his mouth, not giving him a chance to catch his breath. You’re angry, and you want him to feel every bit of it.

He groans against you, his hands gripping your thighs harder, and you can't tell if it's out of pleasure or frustration. Maybe both. Good. Let him feel it. Let him understand that this isn’t about making amends. This is about you taking what you need from him, nothing more.

Your breath comes in ragged gasps as you climb higher, teetering on the edge of a release that feels like it could shatter you—or maybe put you back together. You’re not sure. You only know that you want it, need it, if only to drown out the anger that’s been suffocating you. His tongue moves faster, more desperate, and you can feel him trying to please you, trying to make up for what he’s done. But you don’t want his remorse. You want his surrender.

When you finally let go, it's with a cry that's part pleasure, part anguish—a sound that echoes around the room, raw and unfiltered. Your body shudders against him, every nerve ending sparking with the intensity of your release. You pull his hair harder, dragging him with you as you ride out every wave, every pulse, every ripple of sensation that he’s drawn from you.

As the pleasure fades, you push him away, catching your breath, your heart pounding with a mixture of satisfaction and lingering rage. Five looks up at you, his eyes filled with a mix of confusion, regret, and something else—maybe longing, maybe loss. You don't care. You're not ready to decipher his feelings. This wasn't about him. This was about you, reclaiming some sense of control.

You reach down his torso, into his underwear, that was still on. Your fingers wrap around his length, feeling him hard and throbbing beneath your touch. Five's breath hitches, a soft groan escaping his lips as you begin to stroke him slowly, deliberately. You can feel his body tensing, responding to your touch despite the anger that still simmers between you.

Your movements are slow, calculated, as you watch Five's reactions closely. His eyes are half-lidded, his breathing shallow, and you can see the conflict in his expression—the desire warring with the guilt. You increase your pace slightly, feeling a twisted sense of satisfaction as he struggles to maintain his composure. This is your power now, your control, and you intend to wield it mercilessly.

You tighten your grip, watching as Five's hips involuntarily buck into your hand. His eyes squeeze shut, a low moan escaping his throat. You can feel him trembling beneath your touch, fighting against the pleasure you're giving him. It's intoxicating, this power you hold over him, and for a moment, you consider pushing him further, seeing just how much he can take before he breaks completely.

When his breathing becomes more erratic, you suddenly stop, earning a desperate moan from Five. His eyebrows furrow as he looks into your eyes, confusion and need evident. You smile at him, shaking your head. His gaze holds a mix of frustration and longing, but you relish the moment of dominance.

You lay flat against the bed, peering up at Five. Despite your anger, you can't ignore the fact that this is your first time, while he's had experience. The realization sends a mix of emotions coursing through you - vulnerability, defiance, and a touch of insecurity. "It's my first time, you know," you say, your voice wavering slightly between accusation and confession. "And clearly, you have had experience." The words hang in the air, heavy with unspoken implications and the weight of recent betrayals.

Five's expression shifts, a grimace crossing his features as the full impact of your words sinks in. He nods slowly, acknowledging the truth in your statement. For a moment, he seems lost in thought, perhaps grappling with the consequences of his actions. Then, with a deliberate movement, he crawls over you, his arms braced on either side of your head. His gaze is intense, searching, filled with a complex mix of desire, regret, and something that might be longing. He opens his mouth, clearly on the verge of saying something, but you're not ready to hear it. Not now, not when you're balanced on this razor's edge of anger and desire.

You place a firm hand on his chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart beneath your palm. "Just save it, alright?" you say, your voice low and tinged with a hint of challenge. "Fuck me." The words are both a command and a surrender, a way of taking control even as you give yourself over to the moment.

Five hesitates, his eyes roaming your face as if trying to read your thoughts. You can see the conflict in his expression, the desire warring with concern. But you meet his gaze steadily, unflinching, silently daring him to back down. Finally, finding no uncertainty in your eyes, he positions himself at your entrance. You feel the heat of him, the promise of what's to come, and your breath catches in anticipation.

With a slow, deliberate movement, Five pushes into you. The sensation is overwhelming - a complex blend of pleasure, discomfort, and an intense feeling of fullness that makes you gasp. It's more than just physical; it's emotional too, a connection that feels both right and wrong given the circumstances. Five stills, allowing you time to adjust, his gaze never leaving yours. In his eyes, you see a swirl of emotions - desire, concern, and something deeper that you're not ready to name.

You clench your jaw, trying to suppress a moan as the initial discomfort gives way to a building pleasure. It's intense, almost too much, but you refuse to show any sign of weakness. Five begins to move, his thrusts slow and measured, each one sending waves of sensation through your body. Despite your anger, despite everything that's happened, you can't deny the intensity of the moment, the way your bodies seem to fit together perfectly. It's as if your bodies remember a connection that your minds are trying to forge

A moan escapes your lips, betraying the tumultuous mix of emotions surging within you. You bite down on your lip, determined to keep the upper hand, but it's becoming harder to ignore the mounting pleasure that spreads through you with each of Five's movements.

He maintains his slow, deliberate pace, his eyes locked onto yours, searching for any sign of pain or discomfort. You can see the concern etched across his features, but it only serves to stoke the fire of your anger. You don't want his pity, his guilt, or his regret. You want to take control of this moment, to reclaim your power in the face of the betrayal that still lingers between you.

“Harder,” you grit out, your voice low and demanding. You dig your nails into his back, urging him on. You want to erase everything—his betrayal, your pain, the confusion that lingers in every shared glance.

Five’s breath hitches at your command, his grip on your hips tightening as he adjusts his pace, thrusting deeper, harder. The intensity spikes, a mix of pleasure and pain that sends electric currents through your veins. You arch against him, every nerve alight, every sense heightened. The friction, the heat, the sound of your bodies moving together—it's overwhelming, consuming. The anger that has been a constant presence within you begins to shift, transforming into something raw and primal, a need that you're only now beginning to understand. It's not forgiveness - not by a long shot - but in this moment, the hurt and betrayal fade into the background.

You arch your back, pushing your hips up to meet his movements, matching his rhythm with a newfound intensity. Every sensation is amplified, every touch, every thrust sending you spiraling further into a haze of conflicting emotions. You hate him for what he did, for the pain he caused, but in this moment, all of that fades into the background, leaving only the raw, electric connection between you.

Five's breathing becomes more labored, his grip on your hips tightening as he increases his pace. You feel the pressure building within you, a tight coil that threatens to snap at any moment. Your hands claw at his back, leaving marks in your wake, a physical manifestation of your anger and frustration. You want him to remember this, to carry the evidence of this moment with him, just as you've been forced to carry the weight of his betrayal.

"Is this what you wanted?" you taunt, your voice breathless but defiant. "To fuck me like you did her?"

Five's eyes flash with something you can't quite place—a mix of anger, regret, and a desperation that matches your own. His movements become more erratic, his grip on you almost bruising in its intensity. He leans down, his lips hovering just above yours, his breath hot against your skin. "No," he growls, his voice rough with emotion. "I want you. I've always wanted you."

The words strike a chord deep within you, igniting a fresh wave of conflicting emotions. Part of you wants to believe him, to let yourself be swept away by the intensity of the moment. But the other part, the part that still clings to the pain and betrayal, refuses to let go. You push against his chest, creating a small space between you, just enough to remind him—and yourself—of the distance that still exists between you.

Despite the brief reprieve, the pleasure continues to build, a relentless tide that threatens to pull you under. You feel yourself teetering on the edge, your body tightening with anticipation, and you know that you're close, so close to the release you've been chasing. You dig your nails into his back, urging him on, needing him to push you over that final precipice.

You cling to him, your hands fisting in his hair, pulling him closer. “Don’t you fucking dare stop,” you warn, your voice breaking with the force of your emotions. You need this, this moment where everything else fades away and there’s only the sensation of his body against yours, inside yours.

Five responds with a deep, guttural moan, his face inches from yours. His rhythm becomes more erratic, driven by a mix of desperation and need. His breaths are hot against your skin, his forehead pressed against yours as he moves faster, his thrusts becoming more frantic. The bed creaks beneath you, the sound a rhythm of its own, matching the pulse of your racing heart.

You feel your body tensing, the coil of pleasure tightening, and you know you’re close. You grip Five’s shoulders, holding on as the wave builds, your breaths coming in short, sharp gasps. His name escapes your lips in a broken moan, a sound filled with all the anger, all the need, all the conflicted emotions that have been burning inside you.

His hands roam your body, one slipping between you to find that sensitive spot, his touch sending a shock of pleasure through you. It’s too much, too intense, and you throw your head back, a cry tearing from your throat as you come undone around him, your body convulsing with the force of your climax.

Five’s thrusts grow more uneven, more desperate, as he chases his own release. You feel him tremble, his grip on you tightening as he reaches his peak, a low growl rumbling in his chest as he spills into you, his body collapsing against yours in a tangle of limbs and sweat.

For a moment, the room is filled with nothing but the sound of your ragged breathing, the weight of what just happened settling between you like a heavy fog. Five doesn’t move, his head buried in the crook of your neck, his breaths warm against your skin. You lie there, staring at the ceiling, your mind a whirlwind of emotions.

Eventually, Five pulls back slightly, his eyes searching yours for something—understanding, forgiveness, maybe even love. But you’re not ready to give him any of that. Not yet. You turn your head away, your jaw clenched, trying to steady your breathing, trying to ignore the way your heart still races from the intensity of it all.

He tries to move closer, but you place a firm hand on his chest, stopping him cold. The heat of his body against your palm contrasts sharply with the coldness in your voice. “Don’t,” you warn, your tone low and laced with menace. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still a fucking cheater.”

His eyes widen slightly, a mix of shock and regret flashing across his face. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he struggles to keep his composure. His gaze drops to the floor, unable to meet yours. The intensity of the moment hangs heavy in the air, the silence between you almost palpable.

You feel a flicker of satisfaction at his obedience, his silent acknowledgment of your terms. His body tenses under your hand, a clear sign that he’s accepted the boundaries you’ve set. Your anger and sense of control are temporarily sated, a bitter victory in the aftermath of your cathartic release.

The room is filled with the soft, ragged breaths of both of you, the aftermath of your shared moment lingering in the charged atmosphere. You've gotten what you wanted—at least for now.

“Get out,” you command, your voice firm and unyielding.

He opens his mouth to protest, a “But—” escaping his lips, but you cut him off with a sharp shake of your head. “Leave me alone, Five.”

He hesitates, his eyes darting between you and the door. “We just fucked. Are you sure about this?” he asks, a mix of confusion and vulnerability in his voice. You stare at him coldly, the remnants of your anger still simmering beneath the surface. “I’m sure. Just go.”

He swallows hard, clearly torn, but he nods slowly, turning to gather his clothes. The silence that follows is heavy, each breath a reminder of the intensity of what just transpired. As he exits, the door closes behind him with a soft click, leaving you alone in the stillness.

Tears slip down your cheeks, unbidden. Why do you love him so much?

[dimorphodon-x]

“There are extra cubes for Nova in the fridge and a few hard metal treats in the cupboard,” Thunderclash recounted everything, “but, are you sure-?”

“Don’t worry, Thunders,” Starhawk smiled and reached for his larger, blockier hand. The large bot slightly jumped at the surprisingly solid grip, “I’ve gotten better at interacting with physical objects. I can take care of Novabird if he needs anything.”

A small squeak escaped Thunderclash as the ghost reached up and gave the brim of his helm a quick cold kiss, “you go out and have a nice date with Roddy, ok?”

“Uh-uh huh,” Thunderclash dumbly nodded and stepped back towards the door, “t-take care.”

“Have fun,” Hawk waved the large mech off, watching him leave with the smaller flame colored mech.

Now alone, the ghostly flier went to check on the sparkling. Novabird was still sleeping, and hopefully would for a few hours. Though at the same time, Hawk wished he could play with his son now that it was just the two of them. Nova couldn’t see him, but the way the little guy laughed and squealed in delight as his toys seemingly flew over his head brought the phantom much joy.

Though playtime with Nova was often short as Rodimus would quickly investigate what all the commotion was, and Starhawk would have to hurriedly put the toys back down before he opened the door.

Oh well, there was other stuff a ghost could do to pass the time. Like a bit of tidying up.

He couldn’t do any deep cleaning of course, that would be too conspicuous. Instead Hawk went about doing small tasks, like straightening pictures, or picking up small bits of unnoticed garbage and tossing them into the bin.

Such small chores were quickly finished and Starhawk went to sit on the couch in the living room. Thunderclash had left a datapad on one of the arms for Starhawk to read through to pass the time. 

The ghostly jet was about half an hour into his reading when a sound caught his attention. Small rattling and then a door being forced open a few moments after.

Someone was breaking in.

Immediately Starhawk rushed to investigate. Walls were no obstacle as he just phased through them to get to Rodimus and Thunderclash’s bedroom. The window had been opened and the intruder (or even intruders) entered the home from there. He could hear them going through some of the items in the hallway closet.

Panic setting in, Hawk rushed for Novabird’s room. There were two intruders. He didn’t recognize them, but that didn’t matter. They were making their way to the sparkling’s room.

“Frag, frag!” Hawk hissed. Nova’s door didn’t have a lock and he couldn’t yet pick up heavy items like shelves to block it. He looked at the sleeping sparkling in the crib. He doubted he could pick him up to move him to a safe hiding spot, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try.

The phantom’s fingers curled under Novabird, slightly lifting him up. Nova’s face scrunched up at the cold hands trying to pick him up and grunted unhappily.

“Shh shh! Stay quiet little Nova,” Hawk pleaded. His fingers were starting to phase through the little body, “oh please oh please oh please-!”

“Oh, what do we have here?”

No!

Starhawk gasped as his fingers gave, and Novabird plopped back into his cushioned crib. The short drop startled the sparkling awake and he shrieked. The two intruders hissed at the sudden cry.

“Uhg, noisy little thing,” the shorter of them snarled, rubbing at their audial. Their partner merely hummed and approached the crib. Starhawk instinctively shielded his crying son with his frame, yet the stranger could not see him.

“Go away, go away!”

“This is Rodimus’ kid, right?” Hawk gagged as a hand went right through his head as the stranger held a digit out to the sparkling. Novabird grabbed the intruder’s finger, still crying but starting to calm down.

“Yeah. What of it?” Short One joined their partner next to the crib, but kept their hands on their hips, “nasty little vermin.”

Starhawk growled at the comment and tried to swat the other mech’s hand away from his son.

“Rodimus is a Prime, right?” Creepy One smiled down at Novabird, wiggling their captured finger, “and Primes have money, right?”

“I guess. Thunderclash at least has money. I think.”

Starhawk did not like where this seemed to be going.

“And I’m sure little guy’s parents love him lots,” Creepy’s smile widened, “enough to pay lots of money to get their bundle of joy back home safe and sound.”

Shorty’s eyes widened and their grin mirrored Creepy’s, “oh, I gotcha. Much easier than stealing junk.”

Hawk’s vision went red.

“Do noT TOUCH HIM!”

The duo recoiled in surprise, and Novabird screamed again.

“What was that?” Shorty looked around, “you heard that too, right?”

“I didn’t hear it,” Creepy frowned, “but I felt something.”

The phantom lunged at Creepy, talons extended as he slashed at the mech’s chest. The intruder yelped as lines appeared in his paint.

“GET OUT!” Hawk snarled, Shorty shrinking back at his voice.

“Who’s there?” They whimpered pathetically, looking around, “show yourself!”

Creepy jumped forward and scooped Novabird up from his crib, holding the screaming sparkling up, “don’t try anything stupid, or the kid gets it!”

The room shook with a furious growl and the shadows seemed to grow larger and darker, crawling towards the intruders. In the darkness, they could just make out the shape of a mangled jet, and a pair of yellow eyes glaring at them.

Novabird shrieked as he squirmed in the stranger’s rough hands, trying to pry their fingers off of him.

“PUT HIM BACK.”

“Who… what are you?” Shorty hid behind their larger partner. The figure grew more distorted as the room again trembled with the phantom’s rage. The two backed towards the door anxiously.

“PUT. HIM. BACK.”

A black hand shot out and shut the door before the two could escape. Shorty wailed and all but collapsed to their knees in fear, while Creepy barred their teeth and stood defiantly.

“It’s a demon!” They hissed, eyes wide. They held Novabird up like a shield, “a messenger of Unicron!”

“I’ll show you demon,” Hawk snarled, broad wings flaring and engulfing the room completely in his rage.

Creepy was unable to see anything, not even the sparkling they were holding right in front of them. It felt like cold hands snatched the child away, and they could hear Shorty screaming and crying and begging for mercy.

“This isn’t real,” they whispered, “you can’t hurt us, you’re not real!”

“Not real?”

Moonlight returned to the room and the black figure was standing at the crib, the sparkling tucked in and sleeping soundly, despite having been crying only a moment ago.

Creepy glanced at their cowering partner, then to the phantom, their spark pounding behind their scratched chest plates.

“Not real?” The phantom repeated, eyes narrowing, “you’re stupid.”

The intruder frowned, stepping back, though their heel hit the wall.

Hawk stepped around Nova’s crib, his frame solid yet flowy like fire as he approached Creepy, “enough of my spark wants to stay behind to guard my family from the likes of you vermin. I’ve picked up a few tricks here and there, but there’s one thing I really want to test out on you tonight.”

“What?” Creepy pressed themself against the wall as cold hands grabbed his shoulders, “what are you-?”

“I’m experimenting,” Starhawk smiled as his frame dissipated, almost appearing to sink into Creepy’s chassis.

Shorty hesitantly lowered their arms and looked up at their partner, seeing their frame seize up and their eyes go white.

“H-hey. What’s wrong?”

Creepy blinked, their eyes dimming to yellow, and turned to look down at the cowering mech.

“Nothing is wrong,” they smiled, seeming oddly pleased with themself, “I’m just glad this worked.”

“What are you talking about? Hey!” Shorty yelped as Creepy grabbed their arm and yanked them up, restraining them in a tight hug, “what are you doing??”

“I’m going to make sure you both pay for this,” Hawk hissed, “I can’t believe you two, breaking into someone’s home and plotting to kidnap their child? Barbaric.”

“Y-you’re-?” 

“Roddy’s late husband,” the possessed mech smiled as they exited the baby’s room and made their way to the living room, “and that sparkling is my son.”

Shorty let out a strained whine as Creepy sat down on the couch with them still in their arms, “this is crazy. What are you gonna do to us?”

“Call my boyfriend,” Hawk answered simply.

Shorty made a face.

“Thunderclash,” the phantom clarified, then went silent as he seemingly made his call.

…

Thunderclash and Rodimus burst frantically into their home, but froze as soon as they saw the pair of intruders seated on their couch. The larger was stiff as a board, one arm wrapped around the other mech, and the other hand clasped over their mouth to keep them quiet.

“I… what is this?” Rodimus looked up at Thunderclash, who merely shrugged.

“Go check on Novabird, Rodimus. I can take care of these two.”

The speedster didn’t need to be told twice as he ran for Nova’s room. Thunderclash cautiously approached the couch, eying the strangers warily.

“…Starhawk?”

He nearly jumped when the bigger mech turned their head to look at him, and smiled.

“Hey Thunders. How was the date?”

“It… was fine. Until I got the call.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves. Shame these two idiots had to cut it short,” Starhawk frowned and glared at the trembling mech in his arms, “now, could you please restrain them? I’m actually really fraggin tired and it’s getting harder to move in this body. It’s also really gross in here and I want out.”

“Oh! Of course!” Thunderclash hurried to grab some tape and rope from the supply closet and was able to quickly tie up the intruders' wrists and ankles, freeing the phantom from having to possess one of them and then calling the police to arrest them.

It didn’t take long for the cops to show up and take the trembling pair away. The short one kept on blabbering on about something regarding shadows and spirits, but no one was paying any attention. Certainly not Thunderclash anyway.

With the thieves turned almost kidnappers taken care of, Thunderclash was able to join Rodimus in Novabird’s room. The speedframe had scooped the bitty out of his crib and was pacing back and forth, holding him close to his chest and muttering to the confused and sleepy sparkling. Thunderclash frowned as he watched Rodimus fret and carefully approached.

“How’s Nova?”

Rodimus stopped his pacing and swallowed. His voice cracked as he responded, “he’s okay. He’s unharmed.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Thunderclash sighed as he stepped closer. Rodimus shuddered and all but collapsed into the larger mech’s arm, “whoa!”

“We could’ve lost him, Thunders!” He gasped, “those bastards could’ve taken him away and we’d never see him again!”

Thunderclash hugged the smaller mech closer, glancing down at Novabird. The little bitty was staring back up at him with large blue eyes, confused and curious. The thought of returning to an empty crib made his lines run cold, “but he’s here, Rodimus. He’s here and he’s safe and no one will ever harm him.”

“We never should’ve left him alone,” Rodimus buried his face against Thunder’s neck, “never again, never never never…”

Thunderclash opened his mouth. He wanted to tell him that Nova hadn’t been left alone, that he was being guarded at all times. He caught sight of Hawk’s ghost, watching them from the other end of the room. His figure was faded and most of his features looked half remembered.

“I don’t think he’d believe you,” Starhawk’s wings drooped as he shook his head, “and it might only hurt him to know anyway.”

Thunderclash shut his mouth with a frown. Alright. Maybe another time then.

[alkaline-wtr]

ELEVATOR

Ghost x gn!reader

Description: Ghost and reader are neighbors who get stuck together in an elevator. Genre/Warnings: Ghost x reader, gn!reader, fluff, angst, a little hurt comfort, possibly enemies to lovers, imagine WC: 987

My Masterlist

**AN Good morning! Here's a little fluff, I don't exactly know if the genres I tagged it as fit, but either way i thought this piece was cute. Enjoy.

Ghost steps onto the elevator watching it close slowly, the doors are almost shut when he hears a voice.

"Wait!"

He peered through the two metal plates you come walking quickly down the hall.

Ghost lets out an irritated sigh realizing it's you.

You and Ghost were neighbors. Living on the same floor of the apartment building. For some reason, despite your efforts over the last year Ghost just didn't seem to like you. In fact, he despised you.

Ghost wasn't exactly sure what it was about you that made him dislike you so much. Maybe it was your intrusive nature.

You put your hand in between the doors causing them to retract.

"Good morning, Simon. How are you?"

You asked in a sweet voice as you stepped onto the elevator beside him.

"Fine."

Ghost grumbled in response. You smile back at him but there is a sadness in your eyes.

Ghost presses the button for the first floor. He is obviously in no mood for small talk.

The elevator begins its descent. A low hum emits from the fluorescent lights overhead. Filling the uncomfortable silence between you.

You're watching as the numbers go down when suddenly the elevator comes to a halt rumbling beneath your feet.

The first thought that comes to Ghost's mind is confusion. His hand reaches across you and taps the button a couple times.

You watch with wide eyes as Ghost fiddles with the buttons.

"We're not stuck, are we?"

Ghost's glares at you,

"Obviously." He snapped.

Normally the comment would have hurt you but all you felt at this moment was the rising panic at the realization of the situation.

Ghost sighs pulling out his phone. He immediately notices the absence of the little white bars on the top of the screen.

"No reception."

He states, holding his cell up in the air in an attempt to find a connection.

The pounding of your heart is like a drumbeat in your chest. The warm wave of the fear and adrenaline washing over you makes you feel disconnected. You don't hear Ghosts frustrated grunts.

You'd always had anxiety, and this was one of your biggest fears.

Ghost lowers his Phone and looks down to you.

"What?"

Ghost asks annoyed. Pure terror is apparent on your face.

"I-I just- This... has always been a fear of mine."

You stuttered.

His expression softens. Ghost was well aware of anxiety and the effects it can have.

"It'll be okay."

His attempts at reassuring you don't seem to work as your breathing grows shallower.

Instead of the usual irritation Ghost felt being in your presence, he felt sympathetic towards you. Understanding first-hand how you were feeling in this moment.

"I suffer from anxiety too sometimes."

His voice is soft, and you can see something in his eyes you never had before, vulnerability.

The momentary silence between you two is loud. Your eyes are locked with his before you finally speak.

"Simon?"

The words are soft. He looked at you expectantly.

"Why do you hate me so much?"

The whispered question hangs in the air. Ghost breathes out a sigh averting his eyes.

"I don't..."

He stops himself from answering and thinks. Ghost hadn't really had a reason. He just wasn't fond of you. His negative feelings were unjustified. As he thought back to all the previous interactions, he realized you'd never been anything but nice to him.

With the pain and hurt of his difficult past, He'd found it hard for him to tolerate your positive and bubbly attitude. He was hurting deep inside, and you only brought that to light.

The truth was you hadn't done anything wrong, Ghost just couldn't separate his feelings of frustration from his opinion of you.

"I owe you an apology, y/n. I've allowed my own frustrations to interfere with my behavior towards you. It is unfair, and you never deserved to bear the brunt of it."

You looked at him shocked by his words. Ghost didn't seem the type to apologize.

"Will you please forgive me?"

He asked. Ghost knew you had every right to turn him away. After the way he had treated you for so long, he didn't deserve your forgiveness.

As always you proved to be kindhearted with your generous response.

"Of course. We all have our struggles. I appreciate you being honest with me."

You smiled at him. Your smile seemed so genuine and pure.

"I know this may mean nothing but if I'm honest with you, I've always liked you."

Your admission takes Ghost by surprise. The truth of the matter was that you had feelings for Ghost for a while. By hanging around and being friendly you hoped he could eventually warm up to you. Although, it had all seemed stupid now, you should have just communicated.

Ghost searched your face for any indication of what you were thinking. He had no idea how to respond. So, he did the only thing that came to mind at the moment.

A rough hand grabs your cheek forcing you to face him. Ghost hovers his lips over yours for a moment a silent way of asking for your permission.

When you didn't pull away Ghost took that as an okay to continue. His plush lips brush against yours.

You stiffen in hesitation, unsure of your actions. This had been a moment you'd only dreamt of and now that it was happening you didn't want anything to mess it up.

Finally, you lean in, kissing him back.  laughing nervously, when he pulls away.

"I almost forgot that we are stuck in an elevator."

You whisper. Ghost chuckles to himself and glances around

"Oh yeah. We aren't we."

He leans across you and presses the emergency call button. As you're waiting for Ghost to find a solution to the situation you can't help but smile to yourself feeling giddy and excited about what is to come.

[specialinterestshows]

The following is based on an abusive!Rhea Ripley x reader fic. However, this particular fic will revolve around interactions between the reader and Damian’s girlfriend, another woman being abused by her partner.

I would like to present: Left To Face This Together. Let me know if you would like to be added to the tag list!

Warnings for this section: Abuse/domestic violence mention, bruising, dissociation

-

Left To Face This Alone Together (Part 1 of ?): Damsels In Distress

It wasn’t often that Rhea and Damian were feeling merciful or ambivalent enough to leave the women they had claimed as theirs home alone. The Terror Twins didn’t quite trust that either of you wouldn’t try to start your own small rebellion. Yet, here the two of you were, left alone… together.

You suspected they considered the two of you too weak to try leaving, as your respective partners had roughed both of you up a bit worse than usual before going to do the same to whichever faction they were fighting this week.

Sitting in Rhea’s living room, the two of you were silent for a few minutes. Your muscles ached as much from tensing them out of fear as they did from the blows that had left you bruised. Damian’s girlfriend stared off into the distance as if she was somewhere else, sat on the ground right where Damian had shoved her down - his preferred way of saying goodbye. The woman’s long, dark brown hair covered some of her face, but not enough to hide the tears that occasionally rolled down her cheeks. The leather collar around her neck had a small, heart-shaped lock on the front and it seemed like every time you looked at her, you noticed another bruise or cut. While the paranoid part of your mind told you to be wary, there was something about the woman that made her feel like a kindred spirit.

“S-so… um,” you finally gathered the courage to speak, wanting nothing more than to ignore the pain that plagued you, “What’s your name? …I’ve never heard either one of them say it.”

Being spoken to looked distressing for her, eyes refusing to meet yours as she seemed to shrink in on herself slightly.

“… Lucia,“ she whispered, looking for the first time like she was present, “He never calls me that, though.”

Neither one of you wanted mention your captors by name.

Rather than address this fact, you introduced yourself.

She gave a small hum of acknowledgement.

“How long do you think we have?” you asked, thinking aloud, “Until they get back?”

Lucia gave a silent shrug as she seemed to start drifting away again. A panic rose in you; you didn’t want lose this chance at a connection with someone who might understand.

“How do you-“ your words ran into each other until your voice faltered suddenly, so you began again, relieved when she seemed to be waiting for you to continue, “How do you… distract yourself? Y’know, from” - you sighed, thinking of your own situation as well - “everything?”

“…It’s stupid,” she mumbled, barely audible.

“Please?” the emotion in your voice made her look you in the eyes for the first time, realizing you were the one needing a distraction.

“… I make up stories,” she admitted, looking away again, embarrassed.

“Do you want to make one up now?” you asked, desperate.

She studied you briefly before giving a reluctant nod.

“Can you start it?” you immediately felt like this was asking too much, so you quickly added, “And I’ll keep it going.”

Lucia seemed hesitant, but began anyway.

“Once upon a time…” she said, the shyness in her voice dissipating as a small spark ignited behind her deep brown eyes, “There was an adventurer. She roamed the land with her brother, meeting new people and exploring new places.”

She became more animated, despite the sadness that seemed to weigh heavily in her words.

“Until! She was captured by a dragon,” Lucia slowly unfurled herself from the defensive position she had been in, “Her brother was fascinated by the creatures, so she joined him in a quest to learn more. But! The dragon decided to keep her and she was imprisoned in a dark, cold cell. Then, in the darkness, she heard a sound and realized there was someone else being held there too.”

“The other prisoner was… a knight,” you continued, allowing your imagination to rewrite your experiences in this fictional world, “She had been taken weeks earlier by another dragon from the same nest… and even though her armor was thick, she was badly wounded. The dragon that left her there came back to attack the knight every day, without fail.”

A look of complete understanding crossed Lucia’s face and she let herself stretch out her legs as you decided to join her on the floor. She continued the story:

“Noticing the knight’s wound, the adventurer took a healing salve and a bandage from her kit, and helped the knight.”

The next line comes to you without a second thought:

“‘Save your remedies for yourself,’ the knight told her, ‘I am too far gone and you’ll need to keep up your strength if you have a chance of escaping.’”

You watched as an idea appeared to form in Lucia’s mind, fear making her voice tremble, but a steadfast determination in her eyes as she said the last thing you expected:

“The adventurer shook her head, saying ‘You’ve been here long enough to notice the dragons’ habits and weaknesses. I have the research notes my brother and I gathered from stories about them. If we combine what I know and what you know of these dragons, we just might be able to escape them together.’”

[end part one of ?]

Part 2: “The Most Dangerous Language”

[hemipenal-system]

You seem very eager to let us know how the inside of your draconic stomach looks and feels... But for those of us unlucky enough to be within biting range, could you describe it, perhaps?

sure! (this is gonna become a lore post lmao)

So You Got Eaten By A Dragon. Here's What To Expect:

Mouth:

dragons, being omnivores, have both cutting and crushing teeth. be careful to not get stuck between them! there's a lot of bite force there! most dragons you'll encounter are large enough to eat you comfortably, so as long as you don't thrash around and scream and make yourself hard to eat, the teeth won't be a problem.

the tongue, on the other hand. expect a lot of coiling and grabbing at you as the dragon manipulates you in its mouth, moving you into a position that'll be easiest to get down. you may be in the mouth for a while, depending on whether the dragon wants to savor you or just swallow you immediately. dragons, like cats, have tongues designed for grooming and pulling meat off bones, so expect a significant amount of force behind each gradual lick as the rough, spiked muscle sweeps along your comparatively small body. dragon saliva is the acting component in their flames, and it's thick, incredibly pungent, and sticks to the skin. you'll likely want to shower after any interaction with a dragon's tongue.

depending on the dragon, it may use its tongue to take your clothes off. some dragons get upset stomachs from their prey's clothing. you don't need to panic about that, or expect anything sexual – though some dragons may be alright with that! just ask, and remember, consent is key!

if the tongue coils around you a bit, don't worry! dragons instinctively coil themselves around each other and their valued possessions. it's a sign of affection, and that extends to their tongues. just lie still and let them show they love you! dragon tongues are very large and it can be a bit scary at first but they don't want to hurt you!

Throat:

so you've been swallowed! the most important thing is to not panic. it's definitely a weird feeling, but flailing around can hurt the dragon! holding still is safest for the dragon and you!

dragons have proportionately long necks compared to humans. when swallowed, you'll likely experience a long, slow slide down as its throat ripples around you, strong waves squeezing and gently pushing you downwards. it's damp, and usually dark, but you're very safe, even if it doesn't seem like that to you.

from here, there are two places you can go: dragons have the standard stomach for digestion, as well as a sort of pre-stomach, nicknamed the crop, that sits at the bottom of the throat, similarly to that of many birds (and gryphons, but that's a different post)

Stomach I:

a dragon's crop is used to hold and bring back pre-chewed food for hatchlings by their parents before they're old enough to chew themselves. however, at the moment it's going to be repurposed for keeping you nice and secure. this is the safest part of the dragon to be in, especially long-term.

compared to the rest of the dragon, the crop isn't large. In adult dragons, it can only fit one, maybe two people in it. think of it as being cozy! since it's at the base of the neck, the musculature is fairly dense there, since a dragon's neck has some of the strongest muscles in its body. you should expect it to squeeze around you, soft walls locking you in place. it won't be enough to damage you, but it'll likely be fairly firm, since most dragons instinctively squeeze their first stomach when it's full to make sure everything stays in place while they fly.

unlike the throat, which may retain some vestiges of light, the crop is dark. unless the dragon you're in has some kind of bioluminescence, you likely won't be able to see anything. it's also incredibly damp, thanks to the glands in the crop that secrete a weak enzymic fluid. it won't hurt you at all, though, since your skin is tough enough to repel it. worst case scenario, you'll get a bit red. you will get absolutely slathered in this slime, though. no one gets eaten by a dragon and comes out dry.

the trick for the crop is just to relax and enjoy the experience. it's like climbing into a dark, wet sleeping bag that seals itself to your body and is incredibly protective of you while you're inside. once you acclimate to the feeling of the damp flesh pulsing and twitching around you, it's supposedly very calming. it's fairly common for humans to fall asleep to the gentle vibration of their dragon purring around them.

once you're ready, the crop will flex and open around you, lifting you back into the throat, which will either guide you up and out of the dragon's mouth, or down into...

Stomach II:

the dragon's second stomach is more similar to a human's, being where the digestive process takes place. it's entirely possible to be here long-term and survive unmelted, but unlikely. for most things that end up here, the intent is to fully digest them for nutrients.

should you somehow end up here, it doesn't necessarily mean you're doomed. many dragons who consume curious humans have carefully tested magic to bring their tenacious explorers back, so being digested is usually not that permanent.

the digestion stomach, depending on dragon size, can be as large as a small room or the interior of a car. it has a moistness to the air, which has a strong organic smell. there are usually just a few feet of acid on the floor, unless they've just finished another meal, in which case some residual acid may still be there.

dragons eat large meals and digest slowly, so the acid isn't as strong as in some other species. you can sit down in it and it'll just itch a bit after a few minutes. by fifteen minutes in, you may see some redness with severe itching. acid reactions aren't usually the thing to worry about, however.

unless the dragon is actively pushing more air down into their stomach, the lack of oxygen will get to prey faster than the acid will. it's not scary, really, just a seeping tired feeling. you'll want to lay down in the slightly itchy hot tub water, your back leaning against the gently moving soft wall, and close your eyes. many dragons who plan to bring someone back from this stage will be talking to them, coaxing them through the process, keeping their nervousness from getting too bad.

it's easy enough to fall asleep. you're getting so tired, and the acid is faint enough that it doesn't burn, only tingle a bit, even as more drips from the walls and ceiling and the water level begins to rise up your legs slightly. when you sit back, the soft walls curl around you a bit, giving you a nice warm hollow to rest in. they're talking to you, calm words assuring you you'll be alright. you're perfectly safe, they promise. they would never let you do this if it could actually hurt you...

you just have to let your eyes flutter closed...

Outside:

...and then you wake up, sprawled out on the grass in the field, or tucked into the covers in the massive bed you share, or laying across their claws in front of the fireplace. their massive tongue is licking the digestive fluids off you, attempting to clean you, but only slathering you further in saliva. it's the thought that counts. you can see in their eyes they care about you and they're overjoyed that you're alright even though they knew you would be, because there was just a moment before you started breathing again that they worried about you.

their first question is always are you alright

the second one is did you have fun, accompanied by a jaunty third-eyelid wink and a sly, toothy grin

[c0smic-dawn]

SELF-SABOTAGE | Chapter 33: Crush

‘You have to be shitting me’

(Y/n) stared at Soobin’s back as he focused on the locked door in front of him.

“What the hell are you talking about-” Soobin pauses as he finally turns to face the other person in the room. His tall stature freezing as the two made eye contact.

The air was tense as they stared at one another. (Y/n) seated at a break room table while Soobin stood by the door. The only sound being the group behind the door shuffling. It was suffocating from how awkward everything felt at that moment. Plus, the two were obviously still not doing the best after their ‘break up’.

(Y/n)’s hands moved to her lap and began to fidget with her fingers in hopes of calming the tension within her. Soobin shifted in his spot as he felt his throat tightening at the sight of (Y/n).

Despite this, he was the first one between the two to speak up.

“Hey..”, he said almost breathlessly causing the girl to look at him with a hesitant stare.

“Hi.” (Y/n)’s reply was barley audible.

It fell silent between them once more. (Y/n)’s eyes looking away from Soobin her mind going haywire from seeing him. Her chest feeling tight just from the small interaction alone.

However, Soobin’s gaze remained on her; taking in all her details even though he has seen them all before.

“Um, I saw the performance.”

That comment was enough to turn the girl’s attention back to Soobin. He shifted in his place once more.

“You did?” (Y/n) asked softly, almost nervous sounding.

Soobin nodded slowly and gave her a small smile that made her heart ache, “Yeah, you guys did great.”

(Y/n) gave him a tight lipped smile and thanked him quietly. She hated this. She hated how awkward they felt. She hated how much her heart ached from just staring at him. All she could think of was everything they did together. It was painful.

Soobin let out a shaky sigh and slowly walked over, taking a seat across from (Y/n).

Silence once more.

(Y/n) looked over at Soobin, who was quick to look away as if he was caught staring for too long, and sighed. “I’m surprised you still came.” She muttered out as Soobin looked at her again.

“Of course I would,” his tone was the same quiet one she grew used to on the late nights they stayed up, “I told you I’d be there.”

(Y/n) swallowed thickly at the comment feeling her heart stop for a moment. She was quick to shut down the feeling as she reminded herself that he most likely did it out a friendly act.

Soobin looked hesitant as he went to say what was on his mind, “you looked amazing out there.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?” He seemed surprised by (Y/n)’s sudden snap. Did he overstep a boundary? He was internally freaking out more than he already was now.

(Y/n) looked down at her lap, “Please don’t say stuff like that.” Her voice strained slightly as she spoke.

Soobin stared at her in confusion. Her eyes focused on her hands in her lap rather than the boy across from her. Her hands now tightly gripping each other as if to calm herself.

The boy slowly looked away from her and also directed his line of sight to the floor. An “I’m sorry.” was all he mumbled.

His apology seemed to be the final straw on (Y/n)’s growing heartache as, as soon as the words left his mouth, tears pricked her eyes. Every emotion she pushed back and distracted herself from was coming to the surface after being pushed down for so long.

She didn’t want to cry over something as stupid as an apology from him but with every memory running through her head and her suppressed feelings flooding in, it was impossible. She missed him and now here she was making him feel bad for just being nice to her.

(Y/n) struggled to fight off an oncoming sob. Her body jerked slightly as she let a small one slip out with some stray tears falling from her.

It didn’t go unnoticed by Soobin.

The tall male immediately feeling himself panic.

What the hell did he do to make you start crying?? He didn’t know but he felt horrible for it.

“Oh my gosh, (Y/n). I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m so sorry.” The words spewed out of his mouth in a blind panic.

(Y/n) quickly shook her head at his comment,

“No, no! Please don’t apologize. I made myself cry. Please stop apologizing”

Soobin felt his heart break slightly at how broken her voice sounded but suddenly felt himself grow confused. What did she mean by that?

As Soobin’s confusion grew, (Y/n) finally looked over at him. She was still fighting off a full blown breakdown; feeling lowkey embarrassed at Soobin seeing her like this.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let stuff go as far as they did because now things are weird between us.”

The words just tumbled out of her in a sudden wave of emotion as tears started falling from her eyes more.

“I feel so dumb and I’m sorry for avoiding you but it hurts so bad to see you. It hurts to know that we never really were together. Every time I look at you all I can think about is all the stupid shit you would do and I have to remind myself that you weren’t actually my boyfriend. I forced you into this and then selfishly fell for the own lie I made. You hated me. I forced myself into your life because I was selfish and now I hurt myself doing that. Even though I know you did everything for the plan it felt so real.” (Y/n) continued to word vomit seemingly unable to stop it, “I got so scared when I realized that Jaeyi no longer was there because I didn’t want to admit everything was for that. I was scared that I felt myself grow so used to everything we did. I would look forward to every date we had. Even if we just decided to stay in, you still somehow made everything so fun.”

(Y/n) was so focused on her rambling that she didn’t notice Soobin staring at her with wide eyes.

A sniffle came from the girl as she continued, “I’m so sorry that I just cut everything off suddenly but I was scared. I really didn’t want it to be fake. I’m sorry that I let it get real for me, Soobin. I’m sorry because now we can’t even be friends because I was dumb and messed it up for both of us.”

“(Y/n),”

“I just don’t know what to do because I miss you but I don’t know if that you was real.”

“(Y/n), listen-”

“No, please don’t say anything because this is embarrassing as it is and I don’t know if I can take anymore even though I did this to myself-”

Her rambling was cut off by Soobin as he suddenly pulled her into a hug.

When did he get up from his seat?

She didn’t know, but she couldn’t help but hug him back tightly. The smell of his cologne that she grew so used to made her feel more at ease.

Soobin held her until she calmed down. Feeling a bit emotional himself. He felt relief that he wasn’t the only one that was hurting between the two of them but also torn up that (Y/n) was in so much pain over this. She really thought everything he felt and did for her was fake? That thought alone stung.

The two parted slowly; Soobin’s hands still rested on her shoulders as they did so.

(Y/n) gently wiped her cheeks and sniffled, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spring that all on you. It’s just that it’s been on my chest and I kept pushing it to the-”

“I never hated you.”

(Y/n) paused and looked at him with furrowed brows. Her (E/c) eyes boring into Soobin’s brown ones.

“What?”

“I said, I never hated you.”

Soobin felt a weight come off his shoulders as he admitted this.

“I know you’ll probably not believe me and I understand how ironic this is going to sound, but I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time.” He finally confessed causing (Y/n) to just stare at him baffled.

It felt weirdly therapeutic to admit this after years of pretending to hate her. Soobin suddenly felt stupid for even keeping up the act because this felt easier than putting himself through all the stress of acting.

(Y/n), on the other hand, was beyond confused.

“But you have been acting like I’ve been the bane of your existence for years.”

While (Y/n) felt her heart skip a beat when he admitted her liked her, she couldn’t help but feel perplexed.

A shameful sounding sigh came from the tall boy in front of her as his eyes shifted away from her embarrassed.

“I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this, but I’m literally an awkward mess when it comes to processing things.” He sarcastically jabs,

“It’s stupid and childish but when I discovered I liked you, you already seemed you dislike me. So, being a stupid teenager at the time, I decided any attention was good attention even if it meant constantly trying to get your attention by being an ass.”

Suddenly, the quiet room filled with growing laughter from (Y/n).

“Are you serious right now?” She asked between giggles, “You could’ve just apologized and started being nice to me and we would’ve been friends much sooner.”

Soobin felt himself relax as (Y/n) laughed at the situation.

“It’s kind of hilarious that the story I made up on how we started dating was somewhat accurate.” She admitted once calming down a bit.

Soobin nodded in agreement as a small smile crawled onto his face. It felt good to see her laughing again. The silence between them feeling peaceful and needed after all the tension from before.

After a moment of peace, Soobin gently jabbed (Y/n)’s side.

“So…what I got from all of this is that you like me so much that it brings you to tears. Didn’t know I affected you so much. Guess I’m that charming, huh?” He smirked while teasing the girl in front of him.

(Y/n) was quick to scoff and roll her eyes, “you flatter yourself too much.” She said him jabbing him in the side in return, “But I guess you were an okay fake boyfriend.”

“Oh come on, you quite literally just confessed how much you like me.” Soobin rebutted.

“And I can retract that statement if you want.” (Y/n) mocked causing Soobin’s eyes to widen and shake his head.

The girl laughed and looked up at Soobin with a small smile settling on her lips. “So…how’d you like to be my boyfriend?” Her expression content as she stared up at Soobin.

Soobin looked off to the side and let out a hum of fake contemplation, “for real this time?”

“Yeah. For real this time.”

“Then yeah, I guess I’d be down with that.” Soobin smiled widely making his dimples come on full display.

(Y/n) rolled her eyes once more and gently laid her head on Soobin’s chest as she brought him into another embrace. The two just holding each other quietly and taking in everything. (Y/n) listening to Soobin’s soft heartbeat. Both feeling like everything was okay again.

“Soobin?” (Y/n) quietly spoke up.

“Hm?”

“I’m so gonna hold your old crush on me over your head.”

Summary: After (Y/n) breaks up with her ex, Do Jaeyi, she isn’t left alone by him. Finally after being bothered nonstop, she breaks and tells him she is dating her high school rival, Choi Soobin. Now they are left to keep up the act of being a couple till this all blows over. Little does (Y/n) know Soobin has been waiting for a chance like this.

Previous | Masterlist | Next

A/n: TADAAAAAAAAA here it is! This isn’t the end though! I’m going to probably make 1 or 2 more chapters before officially calling it quits. I’m gonna say what I’ve been saying for the past few chapters but I’m not very happy with how this chapter turned out but I don’t want to keep you guys waiting any longer. Please enjoy!

TAGLIST. Open @etherealcherrie @i2lain @hoonfever @faeryhee @prettyhoonie @aloverga @boiohboii @bunniesoobinie @chocorenchin @artstaeh @soobiverse @suzirumas @denimtangerine @silkino @moraxology @stigmasefecto @blamemef0rit @dead-isshh

[reblog-house]

The Room With a Cat

Written for Hermit-a-day-May, day 22: Iskall! ((I can't write Stress' accent so please forgive me and imagine it yourself. I'll figure it out. Eventually))

Wc: 627

Ao3: Here!

“Don’t get any ideas,” Iskall said with a scowl. The very sparing fur she had was bristling, and he could feel the tells of a hiss forming underneath. He didn’t like hissing. Made her feel like she wasn’t in control of his own body, like his instincts were stronger than him.

And in front of her, mocking her, was a feline, licking at its paws like it didn’t know exactly what it had done.

And what it had done was exist in Iskall’s vicinity, because Stress couldn’t leave the topic alone.

Sometimes, he wanted to hate Stress so much, but he could never bring himself to do it. She was so bubbly and cheerful that any resentment forming inside of him was immediately dispelled from his body.

This was getting very close, though.

The cat stretched, and Iskall bristled. It started pawing at the floor and it yawned, those vicious teeth showing. Oh how it unhinged, like a- like a monster.

Iskall scuttled back, the most he could in the box they were in. They’d rather be standing up, but Stress told him to sit down and relax, and if he didn’t, she’d be very disappointed. 

So that’s what they did. Minus the relaxing part. There’s no way Iskall could ever relax with that- beast! 

Normally, he wasn’t that aggressive when it came to cats. She preferred to have them very far away from her, but he could stand the sight of them. And being forced to tame them by Stress was annoying, but he liked humoring her and knew he could put them away somewhere they would never bother him again and that was it. Seeing a cat wasn’t enough to trigger his instincts. She was only one fourth creeper.

Being in a small closed space with one, now that was a very different story.

The creature started walking towards him-

“Away! Shoo!” She pressed against the wall as hard as he could.

The cat kept its walk, relentless. It was too close, too close-

“That’s it!” He jumped to his feet, startling the fiend. Good. He had to get out. Get out-

“Hey!” Stress voice came cheerful from a hole in the wall, right next to his head. He jumped from the fright. “Just came in to see how you were holding u- oh.”

Her eyes locked into his face, and even in his panic, he could see the instant regret. If those big eyes were good for something, it’d be how expressive they are.

Iskall reached through the new hole with both arms and pulled Stress by the shirt. 

“Get. Me. Out.”

Stress didn’t have to think about it. She broke the block below the hole and Iskall nearly flew away, taking her with him.

Far away. He had to be far away from the creature. Far. Far.

Only when he was far away enough, he could allow himself to breathe.

She was at that, catching her breath, trying to relax the fuse she didn’t have inside of her, when footsteps grew near.

She didn’t have the energy to look up. It didn’t sound like the beast, so she couldn’t care.

The sound stopped at her side, and then silence.

His breathing was slowing down now. Her skin was no longer fizzling under the surface.

“Hey.” Stress’ voice was gentle.

He still didn’t look up.

“I’m… truly, I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know it was this bad. You’ve never reacted that strongly before.”

“Don’t…”

Iskall took another breath, and looked up.

“Don’t make me interact with a cat. Ever again.”

Maybe he was being too harsh- no, he wasn’t! It was a very understandable response.

Stress stayed in silence. She was looking into the distance.

She breathed out and met his eyes. “I won’t.”

[heartfullofleeches]

so i read ur doll reader thing i love it sooo fucking much!!! like💞💞 aaaaaa💞!! i immediately got an idea/concept thing i wnna share:

so, like, initially, i thought doll reader was like a lifesize scale of what you would be in real life; so like if u snthn like 5"7 (me), or 6"4, or even 4"11-5"3 in real life, that's how big doll reader would be to scale yk?? does this make sense

so my thought w the above paragraph is like,, can you imagine someone stealing doll reader (regardless of how big/small they are) from the store or the yandere's home? like a giant ass heist for an exquisite doll that most would DREAM of having. imagine a robber seeing how expensive doll reader looks, and then just takes you (it? its technically you) w/out rlly thinking much.

can you also imagine if the robber also became a yandere for doll reader?? like maybe your looks were too good to give up, too gorgeous to sell for a very pretty penny. the robber buys the tools needed to keep you (it?) in mint condition, buying a giant (depending on your size ig) glass case in order to maintain a pristine appearance. strives for a higher paying job to afford the tools. (remember; you're (it's?) something literally few can afford! any price is worth it!) learns sewing in case moths ever somehow eat your clothes, in case stitches ever came loose or frayed, whatever the reason may be.

thats the end of the concept~ ; what're your thoughts? 😀

(It's cute! Reader is really just a doll -for now- and is in fact human sized)

"Okay, Y/n. I'm leaving now. Be good till I get back, okay?"

The shop owner kisses their doll's forehead, straightening out their coat as they prepare to head out. They really didn't want to leave you alone in the toy store all by your lonesome, but carrying around a proportionately accurate doll wouldn't be the best decision and draws more unwanted eyes to you. They normally tried not to go out for lunch, but didn't have time to get anything packed this morning.

"Take care, darling." The shop owner strokes your cheek before they finally take their leave. They lock every door and close every curtain, yet hesitation still plagues them. A rumble from their stomach finally drags them from the front door. Feedback clicks from a radio as they walk down the empty streets.

"Target has left the building. If we hurry, we should be able to get done before they return and avoid any interaction."

"Got it."

Two masked individuals round to the back of the toy store; both taking swings at the heavy duty lock with blunt objects until it finally pops from frame. They rush inside, staying low to the ground as they head to the front floor. The cash register and priceless toys lay about the stores display, but it's all ignored for the single doll sitting behind the counter. One of the robber's holds up a picture to make sure its the correct one; eagering a light smack to their arm from their companion.

"Hey, you see any other life sized dummies in here? Go grab it."

The former massages their sore arm, sneaking behind the counter to retrieve what they came to steal. They pause for a moment to look at it. They could see why the owner loved it so. In the weeks the group had been scouting the place, they nearver parted from it. It really was a beautiful doll and so lifelike too. The seed of guilt grew in their stomach. Their friends were in deep waters and needed the money offered by their employer, but this sorta felt like actual kidnapping. They thought this would be a painless transaction since the money from this doll alone would be enough to cover the debts.

"Hurry up, Kris!"

Kris snaps out it and grabs the doll, throwing it over their shoulder. Their radio chimes as they wall from behind the counter.

"Get outside, they're coming back!"

The duo run outside just as a van pulls into the alley way. They hop in the back, Kris losing balance from their panic. The doll falls over in their lap as they lay on the floor. They look at it, slamming the door shut before pulling it to their chest. As the car speeds off - they swear they can hear a scream.

-

"Fucking pick up!"

Kris stares into the doll's eyes from across a coffee table. One of their friends paces back and forth, shouting into their phone while the other snacks on chips beside them. The doll blanky stares back. They blush.

"God fucking damn it!"

Kris jumps as a cellular device is hurled into the couch cushion beside them. Their friend crashes down onto it with a defeated sigh,

"The buyer is not answering. Probably sleep or some shit by now, but the deal was supposed to happen tonight. What are we going to do with that thing in my house over night."

"Me neither." A voice chimes.

"I can take them!" Kris blurts out. The other two give them an offhanded glance. The first just blows out another breath of hot air.

"Fine whatever, take it. Use the van so nobody seems you hauling it around and we'll figure things out tomorrow. "

-

Kris loads the doll into the passenger seat and heads home. They take off their jacket and fit of over the doll to further avoid suspicion. They noticed the doll's head was slightly off centered - likely from the tumble during the escape. They carefully push it back into place.

"Sorry about that... What am I saying- Hm?"

As they turn its head, the see letters tucked under its shirt collar. "Y/n? That's your name? I think I remember that shop owner mentioning something like that.... Let's get you inside."

Kris knows they shouldn't be talking to a doll, but the habit sticks fast. They scoop you up once more and take you up to their house.

-

The first few hours are spent just examining you. The details are insane. Even small things like birthmarks and blemishes were included. It just added to the wonder of your build. You had full range of mobility with jointed fingers on top of that. Your eyes closed, hair as soft as cotton, and your clothes were fancier than any they'd seen outside of a fairytale or movie.

"You really are beautiful...."

Kris can't imagine a human prettier than you. They wonder what your voice would be like if you had one; what you personality would you have. They wondered if you could've became friends.

"There's got to be something wrong with me..."

They turn off their lights and head to bed; watching you in their computer chair from the street lights that seep beneath their blinds.

-

Relief is one way to describe how Kris feelings the next morning, even with the gravity of the news they receive.

"Mother fucker's dead."

"What?"

"The buyer. His house caught fire the other night and he was trapped inside. Probably didn't have much longer to live either way.

"Oh...."

"Sorry about getting you caught in this mess. We'll figure out what we do with the doll. Maybe some other rich asshole wants it."

"O-okay. Let me know." Kris hangs up; remorse and excitement heavy on their conscious. The former washes away as they look over at you, still resting in the chair. You were slumped back, eyes had closed from the position. It looked like you were sleeping as well. How cute.

Kris sits you up straight. Your clothes looked more scuffed than they remembered. There was even a tear on your sleeve. They were thankful no harm came to your body or they'd really be in trouble. Sewing was a lesser evil, and they had some pointers from past experiences with relatives. Nothing the internet couldn't improve.

-

Taking care of you becomes a fun hobby for Kris. After learning to properly sew, they notice your hair becoming tangled. They buy a special brush for it, and comb it every night before bed. They also become more open about speaking with you. Telling you all about their day and scolding you when they put you in a place they forgot, alongside the occasional compliment.

Their friends blew up their phone the following week and even showed up to their house; receiving no response from any of these attempts. They eventually stopped. Kris saw reports of the missing doll and the reward its original owner offered, but they were simply ignored. As many had said, you were priceless afterall.

Returning home from a long day of work, Kris picks you up from the couch and carries you to the bedroom. They lay you down on your side of the bed and crawl beside you; not even bothering you take off their work clothes or shoes as they snuggle up against you. They've been sharing the bed with you since the second night they brought you home. The chair is bad for your posture.

"Ah, I had a long day today, Y/n, but I'm glad to be home with you." They cry into the pillows. They grab your hand and place it over their head, looking at you with lidded eyes. "So please hold me and make me feel better, okay?"

[tvseries-writings]

Heart problems

Reader knows that hiding something to her girlfriends it’s not a good idea but chest pain it’s not something that they will just ignore, right?

TW: heart attack

Maya x Carina x reader

Requested: YES

One, two, three breaths ... the pain doesn't go away. No, this time the terrible chest pain just doesn't seem to be going to stop. An elephant has literally sat on you and you're having a hard time even breathing.

You untangle yourself with difficulty from Carina's grip, slipping out of Maya's too and, trying not to make any noise, you leave your bedroom and lock yourself in the bathroom.

As soon as the door closes, you squeeze your chest with your hand making a face and sitting on the ground, your back against the wall and your eyes closed as you wait for it to finish. It is the third time this week; it does not always happen at night, sometimes you are at university and you try hard to not to show how much it actually hurts you. And of course you hid it from your girls; a doctor and a firefighter captain tend to be a little overprotective in these situations and they are already busy and stressed, you don't need them to worry about you too. You don't want to be a burden to them. Your ex girlfriend would always blame you every time you were sick or something happened and even if those two angels you are with now made you realize that she was the wrong one and not you, you can't help but continue to believe that that which she said, perhaps, after all, had a basis of truth.

When chest pain decreased; you sigh and, as you stand up leaning against the wall to keep your balance, a light knock on the door almost makes you fall to the ground, catching you off guard.

"Bella, is everything okay in there?" It's four in the morning ... "

Carina's sleepy voice calms you before another pang makes you emit a groan that you can't hold back.

"Y / n, I'm entering"

Before you can even try to protest, the Italian has already entered your bathroom. Her sleepy look quickly turns into a worried one when she sees you with your right hand gripping the shirt right over your heart while with your left you lean against the wall to keep from falling. She quickly reaches your side, taking your face in her hands and catching your gaze.

"Bella, y / n what's wrong? Do you have a panic attack? "

You shake your head and give her a small smile. The pain has subsided again, you're okay, you just have to convince her that you are now.

“Car, I'm fine… really. I think I pulled a muscle or something in the gym, don't worry. I had a nightmare and I didn't want to wake you up so I came to the bathroom while I calmed down "

You don't even believe it but, considering the time and the fact that until recently the brunette was sleeping ... maybe your girlfriend will believe it and she'll go back to sleep.

"You know you have to wake us up when you have a nightmare, Bella ..."

Relief floods you when you realize that your girlfriend seems to have believed your lie.

«I know, I'm sorry… I didn't want to disturb you. You both had a long shift and you deserved some rest "

Carina sighs, shaking her head and bringing your foreheads closer to be able to kiss you.

"Let's go back to sleep mm?"

You nod and follow her. Exit the bathroom and hide under the covers. Maya moves a bit, hugging Carina as soon as she feels her close to her. You smile a little and put your arm around her waist, closing your eyes and trying to sleep.

……………………………………………………………………………

You wake up to the scent of pancakes, rubbing your eyes and holding back a yawn as you get up. The pain in your arm makes you make a grimace that you quickly hide as you enter the kitchen, being immediately greeted by the image of your girlfriends kissing.

"Good morning"

You smile before you sit down and put two pancakes on the plate.

Maya turns to you, smiling and moving closer before kissing you.

"Good morning love"

Carina glances at you, observing your interaction. Probably, since Maya didn't tell you anything, the Italian didn't talk to her about what happened last night.

"What time do you have class?" Carina speaks, sipping her precious coffee.

"Um ... in about three hours, you instead-"

A stab in your chest makes you drop your fork into the plate with a piece of pancake still skewered. You automatically squeeze the shirt with your hand as if this small gesture could alleviate, even if only slightly, that tremendous pain you are feeling right now.

"Bella? Hey! "

Carina catches you before you can fall off the chair; her and Maya give each other worried and panicked looks, trying to figure out what's wrong with you.

"Love, y / n what is it?"

The pain is stronger than the previous times, it takes your breath away and makes you squeeze your eyes so hard that you can't even answer; you gasp in search of air, limiting yourself to tighten the shirt even more tightly.

"W-I think i-is the heart"

Each word is like a stab.

Maya and Carina make you lie down quickly on the ground as their medical knowledge takes over. Carina runs to get her gown from your bedroom closet; although she was in gynecology she never wanted to leave the stethoscope and now she is particularly grateful.

Maya holds your hand, quickly dialing the emergency number and talking to what you think is Vic.

A groan of pain tears your lips while a particularly strong pang pierces you.

"Hey, hey, it's okay ... stay with us, stay with us Bells."

Carina almost screams; despite her medical training, she can't help being emotional, not right now. Not with you on the verge of a heart attack.

"Breathe babe, breathe, you have to breathe"

Maya says and if this were not the case, you would laugh in her face. Of course, it is easy to say on the other side.

Carina tears off your shirt before listening to your heartbeat. She moves the cold stethoscope across your chest, first to the left breast and then under the right one.

"Accidenti, cazzo, cazzo ... non va bene, per niente bene, è troppo veloce” (Damn, fuck, fuck ... not good, not good at all, it's too fast)

It is more than easy to understand that Carina's words are nothing more than real curses.

Maya is still on the phone but she doesn't lose sight of you for a second.

The pain suddenly increases, forcing you to close your eyes and to breathe harder and harder as you feel the weakness invade your body. You begin to lose consciousness and when your grip on Maya's hand loosens, the firefighter realizes that the situation is getting worse; faster than she expected.

"Vic, damn it, where is that ambulance? Y / n, hey! No, you gotta stay awake okay? Stay awake. "

The blonde barely refrains from screaming while Carina takes your face in her hands, barely holding back her tears.

«Hey, hey… baby, you have to breathe; you can't leave us okay? Please, hold on, the ambulance is coming-y / n !! "

You stop fighting it, the pain is unmanageable and you just let go. The last thing you hear are the screams of Maya and Carina telling you to stay with them.

Carina freezes when she sees your head go limp against her hands.

"No no no, y / n, wake up, come on, wake up"

The Italian puts two trembling fingers on your neck, praying to hear your heartbeat under your fingertips.

"Fuck, Maya, we have to start CPR"

Carina stretches you completely on the ground, lifting your chin upwards and starting the compressions.

One, two, three, four, five.

Maya stands there, motionless, not even answering Vic who is yelling at her on the phone. Her gaze is fixed on your deathly pale face while the only thing she would like to do is throw up and wake up from this nightmare.

"Maya! Maya I need you, you have to give me a hand! "

Carina screams at her wife before blowing air into your lungs and then repeating the compressions.

Maya seems to wake up from her state of shock the same moment Dean, Travis and Andy enter the apartment door and run with the stretcher towards the three of you.

"How long have she been in fibrillation?"

"For about two minutes, I have already performed two cycles of compressions without any results"

Carina says about her and, as soon as Andy takes her place in carrying out the compressions, she bursts into tears and Maya walks quickly towards her, holding her wife in her arms.

After the fourth round of useless compressions, Dean takes the defibrillator. He waits for it to load before placing the metal plates one on your left breast and the other about ten centimeters under your right armpit.

"Charge at 200. Clear!"

Your body jumps and both Carina and Maya are forced to look away from that terrifying sight.

Everyone's eyes turn to the monitor but the flat line creates even more tension in the room. Travis quickly takes Andy's place, performing two more rounds of compressions before Dean charges the defibrillator again.

"Charge at 300. Clear!"

Your body jolts again. And after a few seconds, the flat line on the monitor disappears.

Carina begins to cry, releasing all the tension she has built up in the last few minutes. Maya, on the other hand, barely holds back her tears, hugging Carina with her arm wrapped around her waist as they watch Travis, Dean and Andy settle on the stretcher and put on you an oxygen mask before leaving the apartment.

Carina and Maya get into the ambulance, they both hold your hand refusing to leave your side even for just a minute.

………..……………………………………..…………………

"Bella, you're awake!"

"Hey babe, you scared us a lot, you know?"

Your girls get even closer to the hospital bed and you give them a smile.

You grab the mask you have on your face with your free hand and, just when you are about to take it off, Maya blocks your wrist and Carina gives you a reproachful look.

"Don't even think about it Bella, you have to keep it on"

"Your heart is recovering and you need to rest y / n, no arguments about it" Maya uses her "captain's voice", as you and Carina call it. And when she uses it, what she says becomes law.

You push your hand away from the mask with a snort. Maya opens her mouth to say something but she is interrupted by the door of the room opening, letting Teddy in.

«Hey y / n, glad you woke . You scared us. How do you feel? "

You shrug your shoulders; your chest hurts and you feel a little weak but you are fine. There is nothing wrong with you.

"I'm fine Teddy, a little tired but I'm fine"

Teddy nods, writing something down on the folder she holds in her hands.

"You have already felt pains in the chest, pains in the arm or jaw in the last few days ... maybe even followed by dizziness, syncope ..."

You nod trying to ignore the shocked looks of your girls, as they were unaware of everything.

Teddy looks up from her folder, looking into your eyes. The heart surgeon sighs, shakes her head and then, after putting the folder under her armpit, she looks at you reproachfully.

"When did you first feel any of these symptoms?"

Damn, you're screwed. If a heart attack doesn't kill you, your girlfriends will do it.

"About a month ago"

Yours is little more than a whisper but alas, both your girls and Teddy hear it. Loud and clear.

In fact, chaos erupts within seconds.

"How could you underestimate it in this way?" We are talking about your health, y / n! "

Maya shakes her head at you, pissed off.

Carina starts pacing back and forth in the room, occasionally throwing bad looks at you, gesturing and muttering to herself in Italian.

The beep of the monitor increases in speed and both Maya and Carina stop, hushing and immediately coming to your side.

Teddy approaches you quickly, listening to your heartbeat with her stethoscope without losing sight of the monitor.

After a few minutes the blonde walks away, writing down other things on the folder she holds in her hands.

“I have prescribed an EKG that you will take today. Y / n, this is not something you should underestimate and you need to take it very seriously. A heart attack is not a joke and, unfortunately, it could repeat itself so try to rest and not strain yourself. We will keep you under observation for a couple of days and from the results of the exams we will understand what is wrong. Don't worry."

Teddy gives you a reassuring smile that you return. Her search-person suddenly rings and the doctor leaves you alone in the room.

Maya sits on the hospital bed and puts her arm around your shoulders, moving closer to you. She leaves you a kiss on the temple, closing her eyes with a shaky breath.

“It was terrifying; I have seen many terrible things in all these years but nothing has ever scared me like seeing you lying on the ground unable to do anything "

Maya sobs hiding her face in your neck. You look at her in surprise, holding her close to you. The blonde rarely indulged in her emotions, even when it was just the three of you.

Carina joins the embrace, hugging you with all her strength and whispering sweet words to you in Italian.

«Ti amo, ti amiamo… never hide such a thing from us again. Never."

You feel the tears of both wet your hospital gown. You hold them tight to yourself, cursing yourself for scaring them and not controlling yourself before it all escalates.

"Last night ... last night your chest hurt right?"

Carina's voice is little more than a whisper, shaking, scared and worried but you can still hear her and Maya too.

"Wait, what-"

Maya looks at you in confusion, wiping the last remnants of tears from her cheeks and waiting for an explanation.

Carina explains what happened last night and Maya is forced to use all of her self-control to avoid yelling at you about how reckless you were.

«Carina is a doctor, I'm a firefighter… we know what the symptoms are. It was stupid and reckless of you, y / n. "

Maya shakes her head, looking away from you and focusing on the ceiling instead.

“I'm sorry, it was stupid and I don't deny it but I didn't want to stress you further. I… you work so hard, I'm just a student and it didn't feel right to add other concerns to the ones you already have. I do not want to be a burden."

You sigh, wiping those few tears that have fallen, finally free from that thought that has tormented you for too long.

Maya and Carina exchange a look. They both knew you had a few happy days with your ex-girlfriend and that she had made you feel that way, made you feel ‘a burden’ but they didn’t believe you still were thinking about it.

«Bella, hey, you're not a burden to us, aren't you okay? Kylie was wrong and you know, did we work on it mm? "

Carina takes your face in her hands to get all your attention, a smile from her curls her lips and in her eyes you can see all the love she feels for you.

Maya intertwines your hands, giving you a smile.

«Car is right babe, you are not a burden and you never will be. We love you."

You caress her hand and smile at her. The two girls lie down on your sides, Carina on the right and Maya on the left, hugging you.

You still feel a burden to them but, damn, this is the best feeling ever. Squeezed between the two people you love most in this world.

Part II

Thanks for reading! So this is my first Marina x reader and I hope you enjoyed it. Constructive comments and criticisms are always appreciated. Have a great day!

P.s: requests are always open :)

Support me on ko-fi ☕️

Taglist: @mmmmokdok

[twistnet]

wrapping gifts [ erin lindsay ]

⋯ SUMMARY ; lindsay family traditions including rushing around at the last minute to wrap all the gifts you’ve gotten each other

⋯ WARNINGS ; afab!reader, slight angst [ unpreparedness + slight panic ] + general fluff [ sweet moments + cuddling ]

it was your first year being invited to your girlfriends home for the holidays -- seeing as you didn’t have any plans of your own and all of your friends had left town to visit their respective homes for the holidays.

once erin had secured her holiday time off, the both of you packed up and headed over to her adoptive parents home. you had met them plenty of times before now -- hank voight having run a complete background check on you and may have shown up on your doorstep to question what your intentions were with someone he considered to be his daughter.

erin had been more or less mortified when you had told her about the interaction, and it seemed she had given the man an earful as he was back on your porch the next day with his head hung low as he softly apologized -- while still maintaining that he would come after you if you broke her heart. something you promised would never happen.

hank had ripped the door open before either of you could knock, hugging you both before ushering you into the heated house and helping the both of you with your coats. olive was quick to enter the living room from the kitchen with daniel in her arms and a big smile.

“it’s good to see you both! glad you were able to make it in all this heavy weather.” case in point, the heavy blanket of snow that covered the road. you shivered slightly, rubbing your hands together in an attempt to warm them.

hank, who took note of your coldness, immediately gathered everyone into the kitchen for a warm meal, citing that he didn’t attempt to cook something for it to all go to waste. the five of you took your seats, happily chatting and updating each other on the events that had taken place in your life since you had last seen each other.

ending dinner with hank patting the top of the table and looking over at each one of you with a guilty smile, “would you be willing to help me wrap the last of the gifts?” he utters bashfully, looking down at his plate as the rest of you gape at each other, “hank, it’s christmas eve.”

“i know... i just can’t wrap them really well, and i was hoping everyone would be here a little earlier in the week, but then the snow...” he trails off, and erin quickly reaches across the table to pat his arm, “don’t worry, we’ll help you. where are the gifts?”

and that’s how you and erin found yourselves locked up in one of the guest bedrooms, wrapping hank’s gifts for olive and daniel. while you were sure that olive and hank were wrapping the gifts hank had gotten for you and erin. but you didn’t quite mind. there was a holiday movie playing the in the background -- something erin had insisted on playing while you wrapped the gifts in front of you. 

wrapping paper, tape and bows lay scattered along the floor, leaving behind quite the mess that you know was going to be stuck to the bottom of your socks if you somehow stepped wrong on your way out.

“is that all of the gifts?” you question, stacking up the pile you had previous wrapped into your arms. erin looks around and shakes her head, “i don’t see anything else, but i wouldn’t mind a little privacy to wrap something i got you.” immediately, you shut your eyes, nearly tripping as you ran into the door causing erin to laugh, “be careful!”

the second the door shut, she immediately dug into her bag. grabbing the small jewelry box and popping it open. inside sat a ring you had mentioned liking months ago -- erin had immediately purchased it and had held onto it until the right moment. this was the perfect moment, and all she had to do was wrap it.

once she was done, she piled it together with the rest of the gifts she wrapped and trailed into the living room to drop the gifts under the tree. she found everyone else already settled onto the couches waiting for her to join.

“took you long enough, hope you wrapped them better than me.” hank states as she gets everything settled in before taking a seat next to you on the couch. arm wrapping around your shoulder as she pulled you in case, hoping that you would be just as excited about your gift tomorrow as you were right now. and if the smile on your lips was anything to go on, it was going to be a good morning.

blog navigation ⇢ [ one chicago masterlist ]

[lonely-lost-soul]

Let Me Worship You

(C!Technoblade X Gn!Reader)

Request 9: Could I perhaps request a c!techno x gn!reader where maybe the reader is good friends with Dadza and meets Techno one day and they fall for each other? Bonus if the reader is maybe a great builder like dadza but too shy to actually meet anyone so they just build things quietly and then move on and no one but dadza really knows them? Soft! and/or protective! Techno would be cute but not needed!! 😊😊😊

Requested By: 🍀 Anon

I hope you don't mind the shameless art I made for this lol.

At this point in his life, Technoblade had known Phil for centuries, they started their own brief empire together and he watched him raise Wilbur the best a single father could. It was about five years ago when you started following Phil around, the first time Technoblade met you was entirely by accident. He just needed to drop off some building supplies to Phil and Wilbur when he saw you trifling through Phil’s stuff, you had gorgeous white wings and when the sun hit them just right he saw flecks of gold peek through. His piglin side was immediately enamored with the gold wanted to reach out and run a delicate hand through the feathers. Technoblade set his jaw and summoned his ax to his side, you turned around (e/c) eyes widening with shock and fear. Technoblade couldn’t help but feel pure satisfaction rush through his veins seeing your fright. You held up your hands and everything you were holding tumbled to the ground, wings puffing up with shock and horror. Hearing the noise Phil wandered into the room and was quick to diffuse the situation, you hid behind the taller male and Techno gave a grunt of an apology in your direction.

From that moment forward you were as much of a staple in his life as Phil was, Phil had explained Wilbur had found you half dead a little ways away from his home. You had wings like his and Phil couldn’t let you die without answers, his crows would never let him live it down. After he got what he needed from you, Phil noticed just how handy you were around the house especially when you were building things so he kept you around. Technoblade never really interacted with you unless Phil was there to interpret, you weren’t much of a talker and Technoblade was never one for long-drawn-out conversation anyway. However, when Phil had killed Wilbur and he and Technoblade had to move north you inevitably followed the birdman. That’s when Technoblade really began to understand and get to know you and your little quirks. He noticed that when you concentrated on blueprints to a certain build you’d stick your tongue out all cute like, or the soft songs you’d hum when you thought no one was listening.

But Technoblade always listens.

He also noticed that since you and Phil had moved in there was an abundance of not only Phil’s crows flying around but a few stray morning doves pecking at the snow as well.

With the encouragement of the voices, Technoblade had gathered up enough courage to attempt to hold onto a conversation with you. As he walked up to you he noticed the soft coo of a dove was heard, catching your attention. You turned around and your eyes locked with his own, he watched your shoulders tense and face flush a little as he approached you.

Off to a rocky start already. Great.

“Ugh. Hey?” Technoblade grunted hands crossing over his chest,

‘Hey? HEY? is that the best you can do? Look at them they’re cowering. Good, they should be, which means we’re well known.’

Technoblade cleared his throat a little as you held up a hand with a shy wave, “hello.” You greeted, your voice was soft and sweet like honey in his ears. The exact opposite of Wilbur and Tommy’s, he found himself enjoying the tone. “So um...did I do something wrong?” Your wings folded back and he watched you methodically run your fingers through the feathers.

‘Look at the gold flecks! I want them! I wanna pet them they’re so cute! So small and helpless like a little worm. Worm? Really? What it’s an analogy! A bad one! Shut up she’s giving us a look!’

“No? Did you do something I should be concerned about?”

“No!” You sputtered out in panic, dropping the bricks in your hand stumbling back so they wouldn’t crush your toes.

You had fast reflexes, that’s good.

The morning dove around you cooed in distress fluttering up to your shoulder, nesting there like it was its home. “I’m alright,” You whispered eyes going soft as you scratched under the bird’s chin, Technoblade watched with interest. Technoblade gathered why Phil really liked you, you were almost an exact replica of the mild manner builder, other than the anarchist tendencies.

“Didn’t mean to make you drop your stuff,” Technoblade clicked his tongue softly bending down to gather your materials. “Where do you want them?”

“You don’t have to-”

“I asked you a question kid.” Your mouth snapped shut and your lips pressed into a thin tense line. Technoblade observed as your eyebrow twitched, oh you were annoyed. You didn’t voice your annoyance he couldn’t help but mentally comment how cute that look was on you. A huff spilled past your lips and you directed him where to place the bricks in their proper locations. The both of you fell into light conversation after that, he caused you to laugh a few times and it made him feel oddly warm inside. He didn’t even realize that the sun began to set until you pointed it out, Technoblade rubbed the stubble on his chin glancing at you out of the corner of his eye. You were staring up at the sunset, the orange and red colors shone through the gaps in your feathers, your eyes were alight with wonder. You looked like an old Greek statue, an angel carved out of the finest marble and gemstones.

He flushed when you turned to face him, embarrassed to have been caught staring at you so blatantly. You smiled the tips of your pointing ears turning pink, “You should stay the night.” Technoblade spoke without really thinking about the consequences, “there’s plenty of room.”

“Alright. I think I will. It’s not safe flying at night anyway.” Your smile only growing in size at his offer, he made the right decision then, he led you and your little dove through the snow and into his cabin.

Spring rolled around and there was a little house set up right next to Technoblade’s home. It fit his aesthetic nicely, made out of wood, and always had its lanterns lit, it was your home. However, you began to spend most of your time at Technoblade’s home talking with the retired Blood God. You and Phil also had begun molting which was Technoblade’s least favorite time of the year mostly because of all the feathers. However, this year in particular he was particularly enamored with your shiny golden feathers he would find around his home. Maybe he collected them and kept them in his ender chest, it wasn’t creepy he was cleaning. At least that’s what Technoblade told himself, not because he found your feathers beautiful or anything and was enamored by the shine.

“Hey Kid,” Technoblade asked from his seat across from you in his sitting room, you picked your head up and tilted it to the side in a questioning manner. Your wings were ruffled, messy and you looked uncomfortable to be interrupted from your grooming. “Need some help?” He watched your entire face turn bright red in the process, “look you can say no. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable!” You argued, “just caught off guard a little Tech. I never thought it’d be something you were interested in.” Standing up from the chair you spread your wings wide, pulled over a stool, and flopped in front of Technoblade. He was a little shocked at how quickly you agreed, they must’ve really been bothering you.

“Do I...just stick my hands in there or…”

You tossed your head back and let out a roaring laugh,

“heh? What’s so funny huh? I don’t wanna hurt you.” Technoblade snapped at you with an embarrassed huff, your laughter slowly dyed down after a few more seconds.

“Sorry I just. Is that what you say to the ladies too?” Technoblade choked and blanked never once have you said something so dirty before, he didn’t even know you were capable of making jokes like that.

“I say that to everyone actually, I don’t discriminate to just women- I’m not helping my case am I? I should stop talking.” It only served to send you into another set of loud giggles, Technoblade was red in the face and stuck his hands into the little feathers by your back. He felt you tense up for a moment before relaxing into his touch, you let out a soft sound of pleasure. Technoblade chose to ignore the sound even if it sent the voices into a frenzy, to mark and claim, and...he was absolutely not going to finish that thought. You both sat there for about an hour and thirty minutes, fixing up your feathers making you preen at the touches. You were smiling like an idiot by the time he was done and you spread your feathers wide, almost like you were showing them off. Technoblade couldn’t help but feel proud that you liked the work he did so much,

“They’re so soft! Thank you Techno!” You turned towards him, eyes practically glowing with adoration. His face turned red, you were stunning, he kissed you that night and by wintertime, the both of you were an official couple.

Phil was quick to catch onto the change in demeanor between the couple, he clapped Techno on the back as congratulations. You were out on another building project, making a little farm because you knew how much Technoblade loved potatoes, you really were attentive. Surprising Technoblade, Phil had also threatened his first cannon life if he ever hurt you in any way, shape, or form. Techno was a little surprised Phil would go as far as to threaten him, but he promised his old friend he wouldn’t let any man, woman, or creature lay their hands on you, including himself.

It was the dead of winter and temperatures had dropped drastically, Technoblade had made both you and Phil warm clothes for the occasion that matched with his own winter gear. He had given you a friendship emerald and in return, you made him a necklace with one of your golden feathers on it.

Technoblade cherished the gift with his entire being. On occasion, while he was out on a long journey he’d press gentle kisses to it when he missed you, and he swore sometimes he swore it moved on its own. He walked into the cabin to see you spread across his couch, a book on your lap, wings curled in tight against your body. He smiled softly dropping the wood he gathered by the door, he snuck over to you and pressed a kiss against your cheek.

“Hi, sunshine,” You greeted turning your head to look at him, his face burned and his chest filled with warmth. Technoblade moved to sit in your lap with a smirk, he plucked the book from your hands to look at the cover. You frowned in his direction, “You lose my spot and I’m hitting you over the head with it.”

“Violent.” He tutted softly bopping you on the head with said book, you shot him a cold look.

“Hypocrite.”

“Nerd.” He responded casually, you let out a little huff, wings ruffling in frustration.

There’s that look, he loved that look. God, you were so cute.

You slapped your hands on his cheeks, and it shocked him back to attention. He felt your fingers spread across his cheeks and your thumbs brush against the apples of his face. Technoblade’s eyes softened and he snuggled into your open palms, he saw you smile and his eyes dropped to a content close. Technoblade did something he hadn’t done in years, he felt the rumble in his throat before it happened, he purred.

His eyes snapped open with fear and embarrassment, but the way your eyes were sparkling quelled the feelings immediately.

“Did you just purr?”

“So what if I did?” He grumbled another purr mixing with a growl,

“That’s the cutest thing in the entire world Mr. Big Bad anarchist. You only purr for me?” The light teasing in your voice sent him aflame, “Aw you do!” You cooed rubbing his cheeks with your thumbs again, he buried his face in your chest as more purrs spilled from his mouth without him wanting them to. “No need to hide it, keep them purrs coming.” Technoblade’s entire face was red as you reached forward to pluck his glasses from his nose. You placed them on the end table and grabbed a blanket wrapping you both inside a cocoon of warmth.

“You tell anyone about this and we’re breaking up.”

“Deal. Your secrets safe with me.” You hummed quietly running his hands through his pink locks melting against your touch. He finally relaxed completely resting the side of his head against your chest to listen to your heartbeat. Technoblade purred and you could feel the rumbles of his chest against your own. The ferocious Blade was akin to a cat, grumpy on the outside but a big softie who wanted attention on the inside. Leaning forward you kissed his forehead, another louder purr was pulled from the man and pressed his forehead back against your lips. “Good boy.~” You teased scratching under his chin he sent you a tired look but the redness in his cheeks gave away how much he enjoyed the praise.

“Shut up. You’re being cringe.” He growled with no real bite or fire,

“Take a nap big guy. You deserve one. You’re safe with me.” Technoblade yawned loudly at your words, his jaw unhinging a little, only proving to show how tired he really was. “I’ll protect you, always.” Technoblade smiled sheepishly and allowed himself to let his guard down just this once to fall asleep in his lover’s arms.

[whiteqnn]

PURE [4] - Corpse Husband x Fem! Reader

A/N: I’m back. Shout-out to my sister @mojajasnoscmrokirozproszy , who encouraged me into finishing this part.

part 1 

part 2 

part 3 

part 5

PURE [4] 

Corpse was confused, to say the least. He stared at the screen with his brows furrowed, not exactly understanding what just happened, or what caused Y/N to leave so suddenly. He thought they were all having fun, or at least that’s the impression Y/N gave while interacting with other players. 

Was she just pretending she’d had fun when in reality, she didn’t want to spend time with them? 

He knew it was none of his business. They didn’t even know each other, outside of these two short games they’ve both been part of. But Corpse was quick to get attached to new people, and Y/N’s sweet voice, her innocent demeanor, and pure personality made him instantly like her... 

Perhaps it wasn’t exactly a good thing that he felt so worried when she left, given the fact that two of them have spoken maybe for a few minutes since they met each other. But Corpse couldn’t help it, and certainly couldn’t stop this weird feeling that something was wrong and that he needed to make sure that Y/N was okay. After all, he was the only one who knew that she left. Except for his audience, of course. 

So the moment her white little astronaut suddenly disappeared, Corpse went on a killing spree. He didn’t even care about that whole finish my lyrics thing he decided to terrorize his friends with, he just wanted to finish this game and check on Y/N. It was obvious that she wasn’t telling the truth. Even though it looked like she was trying really hard to contain her emotions, he could still hear her quavering voice. It was too hard to hide, and he knew it firsthand. That’s why he made it his point to at least check on her.  

“Jesus Corpse, you just went full berserk on us...” Felix murmured when the last person was killed, and Corpse could see a sign victory on his screen. It didn’t make him smile though, not how it usually would. 

“It was great though! Let’s do it again, but maybe on the other map?” Sykkuno suggested, clearly very excited about this hide and seek game they’ve come up with. 

“Sure, let’s get the first one maybe?”

“Actually, would you guys mind if we had a little break?” Corpse asked before they could start another game. “We’ve been playing for a little while now...”

“Ah, yeah! Bathroom break!” came Rae’s response, followed by a few hums of approval. Corpse sighed in relief. He was afraid his worried voice would draw the attention of other players, but they didn’t seem to notice it. 

“All right, is ten minutes good?” asked Sean, and when everyone agreed, Corpse excused himself from his audience and muted his mic. He grabbed his phone and unlocked it, only to be hit by a sudden realization.

He didn’t even have Y/N’s number. 

“Fuck...” he cursed quietly under his breath, running a hand through his hair. How the fuck was he supposed to check on her? He couldn’t use discord, he was still streaming after all... Maybe Twitter would work? Nah, she probably wouldn’t even notice his messages. What was left then?

Of course. 

Sean.

Corpse didn’t even think about any explanation as he quickly typed in a message to the said man, asking if he had Y/N’s number. The response came almost immediately. 

“Yeah, I have. Why?” 

Okay, now what? He couldn’t just tell him what happened. Corpse knew that Sean and Y/N were close, but he felt like it wouldn’t be fair towards the girl if he told Sean what happened. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know... Maybe she didn’t want to speak to anyone. 

Him included. 

But Corpse felt as if he had to do it because that was something he wished someone would do for him if the roles were reversed. To at least show that he cared, that she wasn’t alone with whatever it was that bothered her... 

Was he being intrusive, for wanting to make sure that everything was okay? And what if she was totally fine and he’d just end up making a complete fool out of himself?

“Not that I haven’t already made a fool out of myself...” he mumbled under his breath, his fingers quickly typing the response to Sean. However, before he could finish it, the said man’s name appeared on his screen with an upcoming call. 

It was so unexpected that Corpse almost dropped the phone.

“Um, hey man” he said after picking up, his hands trembling as he tried to come up with some good explanation as to why exactly he needed Y/N’s number. “Look I-”

“Does this have something to do with her disappearance?” Sean cut him off, leaving Corpse with his mouth hung open, utterly shocked.  

“I um- no. I just wanted to call her and... cause I don’t have her number...”

“Corpse, I heard what she had told you...” Sean sighed into the phone “I was flying around you after you murdered me.”

“I...” Corpse tried once again and again found himself at the loss of words. His brows furrowed suddenly as he realized something “Wait- are you still streaming?” 

“I left for a moment to grab something to drink and call Y/N. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t say anything on the stream.” 

Corpse sighed in relief. If Sean managed to somehow play it off, then his fans maybe haven’t figured out what was going on. He didn’t want them to attack Y/N’s social media with tons of questions she obviously wouldn’t answer. 

“Do you know what happened?” Corpse asked quietly, hoping that maybe Sean knew something more that would ease his nerves. He hoped that it wasn’t anything serious, that maybe Y/N just had a bad day. “She left so suddenly and I got a little worried...” 

For a moment there was silence between the two of them, Corpse impatiently awaiting an answer and Sean thinking about the right words... or wondering whether he should tell him the reason for Y/N’s disappearance in the first place. 

“It’s- ugh.” Sean groaned, before letting out a heavy sigh “It stays between us, all right? I don’t want others to start texting her out of nowhere, asking if she’s okay. She would probably kill me.”

“Yeah, absolutely” Corpse nodded his head rapidly, even though Sean couldn’t see him. 

“Okay... So I don’t know the exact reason of her disappearance...” he began, and Corpse felt his heart sink in disappointment. “But I have some suspicion.”

“Can you be a little more specific, Sean? We don’t have much time before the next game...” Corpse didn’t want to sound rude but he was slowly growing impatient, and even more nervous when he still wasn’t able to check on Y/N and make sure that she’s okay.

“She received lots of hate after our last stream.” Sean finally explained, although his voice sounded quite reluctant. “And when I say lots, I mean lots, Corpse.”

“What?” Corpse grunted, his brows knitted together in confusion “What do you mean?”

“Oh you know, man... Comments on Twitter, on her Instagram, even under her latest video...” Sean let out an exasperated sigh “Apparently, some people are not happy that she’s playing with us.”

“Why?” Corpse managed to utter, completely shocked at the news. For some reason, it was the last thing he expected Sean to say. It didn’t even cross his mind that someone as sweet and polite as Y/N might have to deal with this kind of issue. 

She was always so kind, why would anyone hate on her? 

“You know how some people act online...” Sean murmured, his voice clearly gloomy, as opposed to his usual cheerful tone. “They think she shouldn’t be playing with us cause she’s not popular enough. Some consider her annoying, not funny enough, and so on...”

“What does popularity have to do with who we’re playing with?” Corpse almost growled these words, feeling anger slowly bubbling up in his stomach. He couldn’t comprehend why anyone would act this way towards Y/N, towards this little angel as Sean put it last time they played, towards this sweet, innocent girl, his partner in crime... 

“That’s what I told her before the stream” Sean explained with a sigh “And that she shouldn’t worry about what strangers think of her... but it’s easier said than done.” 

“You think she received another text or something?”

“I don’t know man” Sean sighed “I tried calling her like ten times already and she didn’t answer. It’s not like her to leave so suddenly, without saying goodbye. I’m worried something happened...” 

Corpse clenched his jaw, closing his eyes for a second. If Y/N didn’t answer Sean’s calls, why would she answer his? They barely knew each other, while Sean was her best friend.  

“Maybe... I’ll try calling her?” Corpse suggested anyway, his voice low and almost shy. He figured it was worth at least a try. 

Sean was quiet for a moment as if contemplating what to do. They were already running out of time, and Corpse didn’t know what to do. On one hand, he didn’t want to end the stream and leave his fans, he felt bad at the thought alone of disappearing so soon and disappointing them... But on the other, he couldn’t just leave Y/N like that. Especially, since as Sean explained, it wasn’t like her to act this way. It only proved that whatever happened was rather serious.

“Y’know what?” Sean suddenly said “I’ll give you her number, maybe she’ll pick up from you.”

“Thank you, Sean” Corpse said quietly, ready to end the call, only to be stopped by Sean’s words. 

“Look... I know I shouldn’t be asking you to do it, but... could you maybe try talking some sense into her?” he asked, clearly uncomfortable with this request “I feel like you’d be able to calm her down...”

“I...” Corpse stuttered, running a hand through his hair “I’ll try, okay? I’m not sure if she’ll want to talk about it though, I’m basically a stranger, so...”

“Corpse, she agreed to join us only after reading your last tweet.” 

Oh. 

His heart fluttered with something that didn’t seem like growing panic. And even though his face was expressing his worry, his lip corners formed a small, bashful smile. And whether he liked it or not, his cheeks turned completely red.

“I’ll... I’ll see what I can do” he managed to reply, before ending the call. 

Corpse ran a hand through his locks and down his face, releasing a heavy breath he didn’t know he was holding. He considered getting Y/N’s number a difficult task which, however, turned out to be the easiest one. Now came the real challenge. Calling her. 

For a moment, he just stared at the screen of his phone, scanning the new message from Sean, which consisted of Y/N’s phone number. It looked as if he was memorizing the number when in reality, he just felt panic overtaking his body and complete chaos in his mind. 

Let’s say she picks up the phone, and then what? Should he just say hi? Introduce himself? 

“Hi it’s me, the guy you basically don’t know and who became paranoid after you disappeared from the game” 

 Yeah, sure. Perfect introduction for the pep talk he was supposed to deliver. 

Why was it always that he acted almost as if on instinct one second, only to start having second thoughts a moment later. He couldn’t back out now when he had already got her number. Not when there was also another person counting on him. Not when he still didn’t know what the fuck happened, and for some reason was determined to find out. 

And then was the problem of his voice, which suddenly seemed stuck in his throat. It was a very weird feeling, typical for one to get while being on the verge of a panic attack. As if there was a need to talk, but the body refused to. As if his vocal cords were paralyzed and not eager to cooperate. 

As if it was him who just experienced something strongly upsetting, not Y/N. 

Corpse fidgeted with his phone for a moment, before deciding against the idea of calling the girl. He figured he wouldn’t be able to utter a single word if she picked up the phone from the unknown number in the first place. If she did though, she’d probably consider it some misdialed call or some prank. Which was the last thing he wanted her to think.

Instead, he opted on sending her a text. 

He sat still for a moment, thinking about a message that wouldn’t right away reveal the cause of his concern, but which would say enough to figure out who sent it. His thoughts drifted back to the game they were both playing, remembering his stupid comments and her gentle voice. His fingers typed out the message almost automatically. 

“Wanna jump into the lava with me?”

He hesitated just for a second, before sending the text, his heart doing a backflip in his chest the moment he pressed the send button. Corpse gripped the phone tightly in his hands, his eyes staring at the screen and waiting impatiently for those three little dots indicating that the other person is typing a response to appear. He waited and waited, and a lump slowly formed in his throat when Y/N didn’t respond immediately. 

Was he really getting paranoid? 

Maybe he was just tired. Or she had a bad day. Or she just found this game boring.

Or she didn’t want to play with them. Or she thought his comments were annoying. 

“I’m an idiot” Corpse muttered to himself and slapped a hand on his forehead, pushing those thoughts away. Deep down he knew that wasn’t the case, but the longer Y/N didn’t respond, the louder was the voice at the back of his head, telling him that her problems were none of his business and he shouldn’t be asking for her number in the first place.

But it was the right thing to do. He knew it, Sean knew it, and Corpse also hoped that Y/N did not perceive his text as some pathetic joke. He waited for a couple of minutes, before typing another message:

“I’m here, partner, if you need to talk.” 

He felt the need to assure her that despite the ongoing stream and the other players probably already waiting for him to return, he was there for her. That’s what he considered the best option, not to force her into talking, but to let her know that she wasn’t alone. And that it would take just one word from her to make Corpse drop everything and listen to her. 

After what seemed like an eternity of staring at his phone and analyzing his own messages, Corpse put his phone away, realizing that Y/N wasn’t going to reply anytime soon. He couldn’t help but feel disappointed in himself, and guilty as well. Perhaps it would be a better idea to call her, but at that moment he wasn’t able to trust his own voice. He thought about sending her another message but decided against it. Another new text was probably the last thing she needed, with her phone being drowned by hundreds of notifications from angered, and worried fans. 

All Corpse could do was hope that she saw his texts and that she knew she wasn’t all alone. He sure as hell wasn’t going to make her feel as if she was obliged to confide in him. After all, he was a stranger. 

Then again... sometimes to understand a problem and look at it from a different, new perspective, what one needed was, indeed, a complete stranger. 

-

The next two hours felt almost like an eternity. And a complete hell to Corpse. He tried his best to focus on the game and interacting with his fans, but no matter what, his eyes would drift towards his phone every now and then. Hoping to see Y/N’s name pop up on his screen, with a message saying that everything was fine. 

But then again... would it be enough to calm his nerves? Maybe she’d write something like that just so he wouldn’t worry. Just so he would leave her alone.

She might as well just tell him to fuck off...

The fact that he received so many notifications all the time, especially now, during a stream, didn’t really help. Each time his phone lit up with a new notification, he would crane his neck with the hope of seeing Y/N’s response, only to be disappointed when it turned out to be just some new comment or someone tagging him in an instastory. Something that usually made him really happy now was the reason for his irritation. 

He couldn’t focus on the game itself either, finding it difficult to do his tasks and form some logical arguments during discussions. He didn’t really care, to be honest, when people threw him away almost at the start of the game. Winning or being the best Impostor was currently the last thing on his mind.

So when he said his goodbyes after the last round of Among Us and ended the stream, after thanking his fans, Corpse didn’t know what to do with himself. The game, even though he didn’t really pay much attention to it, provided at least some distraction from his phone, which was still silent when it came to Y/N’s texts. She either didn’t see them or didn’t want to see them. Corpse could only guess what was her reaction if there was any. 

He’d exchanged a few messages with Sean though, the man asking about Y/N during the stream and after it ended. Corpse couldn’t stop the guilt from growing even more when Sean expressed his concerns regarding Y/N and her absence. He knew the older streamer counted on him when it came to checking on the girl, but, obviously, he failed at getting a simple message from her. 

What was he even hoping to achieve in the first place? That she will text back right away, telling him everything that bothered her, confessing all her problems? He would have to be a total idiot to expect this girl to react to his messages.

It was all so overwhelming and frustrating at the same time that he felt almost nauseous. 

Leaving his phone in his room, Corpse walked to his small kitchen to grab a glass of water. The cold liquid brought much-needed relief to his burning throat, giving him a momentary sensation of comfort. He tested his voice, clearing his throat carefully and mumbling some nonsense under his breath. A sigh left his lips once he realized he could talk again and this weird feeling disappeared. 

He splashed his face with cold water and returned to his room, plopping down on his chair and giving his phone a quick glance. Perhaps he didn’t expect Y/N to reply to his texts at all because at first, he didn’t even notice her name on the screen of his phone. He looked back to his computer, almost out of habit, glancing between the tabs he had opened on his screen before. 

And it struck him suddenly, making him almost jump out of his skin when he realized that she did text him back. 

Grabbing his phone quickly, he unlocked it and opened the messages, almost hitting the one with Y/N’s name on it. 

“Hey, partner.” was all the message said. And yet it made Corpse’s heart almost jump out of his chest, both from relief and a sudden feeling of panic. 

She texted him back. Now, what the fuck was he supposed to do?! 

He stared at her text for a second as if trying to convince himself that it was real and he didn’t accidentally pass out on his desk, dreaming that Y/N takes his comments and texts seriously. 

When he came to the conclusion that the text was, indeed, real, and Y/N probably expected him to write something back, he thought about the best way of asking her what happened. On one hand, he knew from Sean what could possibly be the reason for her disappearance. On the other, what obviously mattered was Y/N’s version. How to get it out of her though, without being too intrusive?

Corpse decided that the best option will be to make some dumb, small talk, which would ease her (and his) nerves.

“Y’know, I almost didn’t manage to finish the mission without you” he texted her, concluding that playing along this partner thing would maybe work. In his text, Corpse referred to the one time he was the Impostor after Y/N left, and which happened to be completely boring without her running around “Had Toast and others suspecting my every step all the time.”

This time, much to his relief, the three little dots appeared almost immediately.

“I’m glad you managed to kill’em all nevertheless.”

He imagined her saying it with that sweet voice of hers, which made him snicker, whether he liked it or not. While thinking of some right response, Corpse couldn’t help but wonder how did she know that he managed to kill every crewmate during that round... she wasn’t playing anymore then, so that could only mean she watched his stream.

“Not gonna lie though, everything would go way smoother hadn’t my partner in crime left me on the battlefield all alone :/” he texted her back. Corpse watched intently as the three dots danced next to Y/N’s name and suddenly disappeared, then appeared back again after a few moments, only to disappear again. And for a second he panicked, that maybe this text sounded passive aggressive, or that it made Y/N blame herself for leaving the game... 

However, when her response finally came, he realized he was wrong.

“Can I call you, Corpse?” 

For the first time in a really long time, Corpse was so eager to agree on a phone call.

He replied frantically, telling her that of course, she could call him, and then waiting impatiently for the call. And when she didn’t call immediately, like he expected her to, he found himself wondering if she suddenly changed her mind and decided against the idea of calling him. 

But then his phone buzzed and her name appeared on the screen.

The device almost flew out of his hands, his heartbeat quickening and a lump forming in his throat once again.

Relax, man. It’s Y/N, your partner in crime. You’ve heard her voice before. 

But this was different. The circumstances were different and the reason for a call was different too. And now it was just the two of them, as opposed to a lobby full of friends. And Corpse tried so hard to figure out how to convince her that all the hate she receives on social media didn’t mean anything, that for a moment he forgot she was still calling.

He pressed the green button carefully, as if he was defusing a bomb, and found himself unable to utter a single word, just like before. There was silence on the other line too, as if Y/N expected him to speak up first. 

So Corpse build up the courage and took in a deep breath, before letting out a quiet, almost shy:

“Hi”

 The word left his mouth almost as a whisper, and for a moment he thought that the girl didn’t even hear it, but then her voice told him otherwise.

“Hey... Corpse” she mumbled. She sounded so different, almost as if she was sick. Her calm and soft voice was so quiet that Corpse had some trouble hearing her at first. She sounded so tired, so hurt, so defeated, that he completely forgot every advice he had managed to stock in his mind before this call. 

“It’s good to hear you, partner.” he said after a moment, realizing that asking what’s wrong wasn’t the best thing he could do at that moment. He felt that she’d probably hung up on him if he did... “I didn’t think I’d hear from you after you aborted the mission.”

He heard her sigh out a laugh at his words, his tone playfully accusatory. The girl cleared her throat and wondered for a second, before replying:

“It wasn’t exactly my mission... And if I remember correctly, you were the one who broke our partnership, chasing me around the ship.” 

He could almost hear the smile behind her words, which made his lip corners curl up slightly. He was glad she still managed to joke with him. It meant that, perhaps, it wasn’t that bad. 

“Did I kill you, though?” 

“You would if you had a chance.”

“I had plenty of chances Y/N, and I never took one” he replied right away with a chuckle. “I may be the murderer, but I’m no traitor.”

“You say that after luring me to that lava pit and killing me and Sykkuno? It was a trap all along, wasn’t it?” she asked suspiciously, but he knew she was joking “I bet you were conspiring with MrBeast all this time...”

“How dare you” he scoffed, trying to hold back his chuckle “I took you there cause it’s a special place, it was no trap! It just happened to be the wrong place and the wrong time...”

“Sure, partner”

“I’m serious!” he laughed “Besides - I apologized, and if I remember correctly, I think we both agreed that I jumped into that lava pit for you after all...”

“After they voted you off! You didn’t have any other chance!”

“Maybe it was all planned?” he said, changing his voice to more mysterious “Maybe I conspired with MrBeast so I could jump into that lava pit... and the only way to do it is by being voted off. So, either way, I kept my word.”

“Fine... whatever.”

Their laughter died down and was replaced by surprisingly comfortable silence. Corpse was happy with how the conversation started - he believed it would be easier for Y/N to explain what happened now, if she wished to explain, of course. 

“Y’know...” he began after a second, deciding to change the subject and finally address the issue. “Partners are supposed to help each other... and be there when the other person is in need...”

He was careful with his words, being full aware that Y/N might find it uncomfortable to share her problems with him. He wanted to encourage her, just slightly, if his previous texts weren’t enough. 

She sighed quietly and he could sense her reluctance. 

“But only if the other person wants partner’s help.” he added after a moment, keeping his voice as soft as he could. Y/N didn’t respond right away, but she didn’t hang up either, which Corpse took as a good sign. He gave her a couple of seconds to collect her thoughts, before asking another question: 

“What made you so upset, Y/N/N?”

He could hear her inhale the air sharply as if she had trouble breathing steadily. The line went silent, not that Corpse was surprised. He waited patiently, giving the girl the time she needed to decide whether she wanted to answer that question and what words should she choose if she did. 

And when she finally spoke up, Corpse felt as if his heart could break.

“They are just so mean...” she almost whispered, her voice cracking. He didn’t have to ask whom she meant, it was obvious. “And I don’t even know why... I didn’t do anything to those people, and yet they are so mean towards me.”

Corpse hummed in response, allowing her to keep talking. If there was one thing he knew that helped coping with stress, it was sharing it with someone else. And even though he himself had a lot on his plate, he felt the need to be that someone for Y/N. 

“I... I don’t want you to think that I’m some crybaby, who takes everything super seriously and can’t take a joke, but...” she stuttered for a moment and Corpse fought the urge to cut her off and tell her that what he thinks of her is the complete opposite. “But those comments... those weren’t jokes, Corpse. I don’t think anyone would find them funny.”

His heart ached at the sound of her quiet, weak voice. And then it angered him, that some anonymous haters managed to upset this cheerful, innocent person. How could anyone do something like that to Y/N?

“I... I’m sorry for telling you this...” she suddenly trailed off, sounding rather awkward and uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with my silly problems...”

“They aren’t silly as long as they are problems to you, Y/N.” 

“Yeah, but... I’m sure everyone from the group has received such comments at some point of their career... or maybe they still receive them...” she murmured almost embarrassed. “Maybe it’s no such a big deal after all...”

“Let me ask you something” Corpse said, feeling anger bubbling up in his stomach. Not directed at Y/N, of course, but at the people who made her think this way. “Imagine that someone, let’s say me, calls you because of the same reason. Would you consider telling me that online hate, or any hate for that matter, is not a big deal? That those are just my silly problems” 

She was silent for a moment, thinking about his question, and probably not expecting it in the first place. However, after a few seconds of initial surprise, she replied firmly:

“Of course not.” 

“Then why are you trying to convince yourself that they are?” he asked in what would sound like an accusatory tone, but in reality was just his voice laced with worry. “There’s no such thing as a silly problem Y/N, as long as it bothers you. If you consider it a problem, then it is a problem. And the fact that other people receive similar, or even worse comments, doesn’t mean anything. Maybe just that they are longer on Youtube and they’ve learned to deal with this kind of stuff... And your reaction? It doesn’t make you a crybaby and please Y/N, don’t ever think that way about yourself.”

He said it all so quickly and almost on one breath, letting all his frustration out and trying to form his babbling into some logical statement. 

“I understand what you’re going through...” he confessed after a moment of silence between them. “I know what it’s like to go through the ocean of positive comments and find those few which say something completely different... something that is meant to hurt you and humiliate you... Something that ruins your day, or even a couple of next few days or weeks... Something that completely overshadows everything else you’ve read about yourself. Something that people write from the safety of their own computers or phones, without showing their faces and remaining completely anonymous.”

For a moment, Corpse allowed himself to speak about his own experience, thinking that maybe when Y/N realizes that he knew exactly what she was dealing with, it would make it easier for her. “And that is the key fact, Y/N, that they are anonymous. They do what they do because no one can see them because it is comfortable for them to leave a hate comment and not face any consequences. Because they don’t have to face the person their hate is directed towards.”

“Some of the accounts were not anonymous...” Y/N mumbled, and Corpse could clearly hear that she was speaking through the tears. “People were using their public accounts, with photos and everything...”

“But let me guess, those comments weren’t even about your videos, huh? They weren’t about any of your work?” 

“Well...” she whispered, thinking about Corpse’s question. “Truth to be said, no. Most of them just looked like some kind of a personal attack on me...” 

“Exactly. It’s not even criticism, it’s just plain bullshit cowards are sharing online. They probably aren’t even able to form some logical sentence, they just combine some random words which are supposed to hurt you.”

“It works...”

“Y/N...” Corpse sighed into the phone, hearing her defeated tone. “Let me ask you another question, okay?” she hummed in response, and Corpse cleared his throat. “Tell me, whose opinion matters to you the most?”

“My friends... and my fans’“she said.

“Okay.. and whom do you consider your fan?”

“Someone who finds the content I create interesting and entertaining and takes his time to watch my videos.” she replied right away.

“Okay. Do you think that people who left those comments took their time to even watch your videos?” 

“Probably not...” she replied after a second. “Look, I know what you mean Corpse... That I shouldn’t worry about it because they are not my fans and therefore their opinion shouldn’t matter... but that’s not the case. It’s the fact alone that for some reason people spend their time hating me when I didn’t even do anything to them.”

“You didn’t do anything to them.” Corpse repeated her own words in his deep voice. “And they didn’t watch your videos. It seems like they don’t have any reason to leave those comments, right?” he asked. “I know that it’s hard Y/N, I really do, but the truth is, you can’t really have everyone leaving positive feedback under your content... There will always be someone who will consider it a good idea to send you a hateful message, just because they can, not because they have any specific reason to. Now I don’t say that’s okay... but it’s in a way like some disease. The one there’s no cure for. Even though you can’t cure it, you can make yourself immune.” 

“How, Corpse? How do you make yourself immune to messages saying that you’re a fucking annoying bitch, that you don’t deserve what you have? That you don’t deserve your friends, and you are not good enough to play with them? To spend your time with them? How do you deal with comments suggesting that you should go and kill yourself, because you’re not famous enough, and you will never be?” 

Her voice suddenly rose, and Corpse felt as his heartbeat quickened with each comment she described. He gripped his hand around the phone, his knuckles turning white and his brows furrowing in an expression of pure fury. 

He considered her words for a moment, trying to come up with the best advice, but realized there wasn’t any that would satisfy her. He could imagine the state she was in, she probably wouldn’t take any of his advice seriously. And he wouldn’t blame her for that. 

“I’m sorry for snapping on you...” she suddenly said, her voice back to its soft tone. “It’s just too much for me to handle...”

“It’s all good, Y/N, don’t apologize. You have the full right to be angry and to show it. I just want you to remember that...” Corpse gulped the lump in his throat, feeling his cheeks getting warmer. “Those comments are not what define you. As a matter of fact, they’re not even about you. You know why? Because people who write them don’t know you. They don’t even take a moment to acknowledge what an intelligent and talented person you are, not to mention how kind... but I do. A-and everyone else too.”

She was silent for a moment, and Corpse panicked, that maybe he said too much, or made things awkward again. But then she spoke up, her slightly less weak than before.

“I suppose... maybe you’re right, Corpse.” she said, still sounding a little bit unconvinced. He understood, it was clear his one pep talk wouldn’t suddenly make her forget about it. It would be like telling a person with depression to stop having depression and expecting them to suddenly feel better. “Thank you. For listening to my pathetic babbling... and for not telling me to just pull myself together.”

“First of all, your babbling is not pathetic...” he began “Second of all... I know we don’t really know each other, but... If you ever feel the need to talk to someone, I’m here.”

“And for that I’m grateful, Corpse” she said, clearly smiling. “Sorry, I mean, partner.”

“Partner.” he chuckled into the phone, smiling from ear to ear. 

“It’s getting late...” she yawned into the phone. “Sorry. I think I’ll go to sleep, I’m really tired...”

“Of course” Corpse replied, hiding the disappointment in his voice. He really enjoyed talking to her, just to her alone, but he understood that the whole conversation and the event preceding it probably exhausted her. 

“Hey...” she suddenly said, and Corpse could swear that her voice sounded as if she unexpectedly became shy. “Um... it was really great talking to you, you’re a really good listener, Corpse.”

“Glad to hear that” he smiled happily.

“Um... would you mind if I called you tomorrow too?” she asked so quietly that he almost didn’t catch it, his breath hitching in his throat. “If you have time that is... if you don’t, or if you have some super plans, then I understand, it’s fine-”

“I don’t have any super plans, Y/N” he couldn’t help but chuckle, finding her nervous banter adorable. “Call me whenever you want.”

“Okay...” she sighed, almost in relief, but Corpse didn’t want to point it out to embarrass her even more. “So... let’s say, around 2 pm?” 

“Sounds good to me.”

“Great.” she said, her voice trailing off a bit. “I’m falling asleep here, Corpse... Thank you once again, for everything.”

“Anytime, Y/N.”

“Good night, partner.”

“Goodnight, partner.” 

-

Part 5 coming soon. It will probably be the last part of this series, I’m not sure yet though.

TAG LIST FOR PURE IS CLOSED. 

TAG LIST FOR CORPSE REQUESTS/OTHER FICS IS OPEN (if you want to be tagged, please send me a text)

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[thesunicarusfellfor]

Hey!! I love your writing. Can you do a Yandere! Ranboo, Tommy , and tubbo. where they are all in love with the reader and they kidnapped her to ‘keep her safe’ and the reader doesn’t know at first, then she slow realized they are obsessed with her. she like them back but she also want to live her life, so she tries to make agreement? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

The Ranboo gif is just beautiful and I love it. Lemme see what I can do for ya! I wrote a bullet point Platonic fic if that's fine? I'm still worried about writing the minors in romantic relationships, even if it's the characters.

Sorry, it took so long... My burnout got really bad and I refused to even write basic stuff. But I'm back now! Well. Mostly.

Safe Behind Glass (Yandere!Plat!C!Bench Trio x GN!Reader)

You were a little groggier than normal when you awoke, but it was nothing to alarm you immediately.

Just simply brushing it off as you weren't feeling the best that day, you rolled over to fall back to sleep, but quickly noticed something wrong.

It didn't feel... Right?

The blankets... The mattress... The pillow... They weren't yours...

You peeled your eyes open and your expression went blank with fear.

The room was beautiful mind you.

But it wasn't yours either.

You were laying on a fluffy (f/c) canopy bed, surrounded by quartz walls that were dimly lit soul lanterns that prevented you from being completely swallowed by darkness.

Slowly dragging yourself off the bed, you heard a metal 'clunk' that hit the cold quartz flooring below you.

Turning your head to face downwards, you saw that a decently thick metal chain was cuffed to your ankle.

Somehow, your panic became worse as you immediately grabbed onto it and started to yank on the solid metal, but it refused to budge.

You had no idea how many minutes or hours you spent in that room. Reaching at the iron door desperately, yanking at the chain around your ankle that kept you from reaching the exit, searching the blue lanterns for anything...

But then, the white metallic door slowly swung open, revealing Ranboo, Tubbo and Tommy.

You weren't that close to them, save for a couple interactions here and there, but hey, they came to save you! That didn't matter in the slightest!

You almost cried upon seeing them and moved to walk over, but the chain stopped you from reaching them, and you noticed that they weren't moving to help you.

"You're awake!" Tubbo chirped softly, his tan goat ears wiggling with joy, "I'm glad the potion didn't stick for too long... You could've wound up starving if you stayed asleep."

Horror slowly began to set into your heart as Ranboo nodded and walked over to the dark oak table in the corner of the room and set down a basket of food.

"Ran...Boo...?" You whispered, watching as the monochrome male turned and curiously tilted his head in your direction, "Why... Am I here?"

Instead, Tommy stepped in front of you with a bright cheesy smile, the same one that resembled when he would find a new disc or start a new adventure, "For your safety, (N/n)!"

"Safety?" You choked out softly, Ranboo quickly guiding you to sit in the oak chair, "But... I'm one of the richest people on the server... I have god armour... Nothing could kill m-"

"Techno and Dream can." Tubbo interrupted sharply, halting you mid-sentence.

Right... That masked man... Or whatever he was... He was extremely dangerous, as well as Techno. They could likely pierce your netherite chest plate without even flinching at the number of thorns you had enchanted.

"We don't want anyone to bring you any harm... There's no problem with that, right, (Y/n)?" Ranboo smiled, flashing his sharpened teeth unthreateningly.

No... You wanted to say, but you wanted freedom! You wanted to expand your house to the size of a mansion! You wanted to bicker with Quackity about the stupidest of things! You wanted to get building advice from Phil!

Not be locked away because your safety was a tiny bit compromised!

"Tommy... Tubbo... Ranboo... Please, I'm not going to just stay locked away because I-"

"You'll see things our way soon... Eat up, get your rest." Tubbo smiled and gave you a hug, ignoring how you froze suddenly, before turning and skipping out of the room with the taller two following behind him.

Despite... How screwed up the three were with their methods of making you be their friend, it was working...

They were actually incredibly friendly and funny. It made life in capture bearable! Even though you were incredibly snappy and cruel to them in the beginning, they never held it against you.

Although... Despite their kindness and your quickly blooming friendship, you still had a craving to go outside. Even if what the three told you about everyone forgetting you existed was true.

"You look sad, (N/n)..." Tubbo murmured softly, watching you stare off into the blank quartz wall, "Are you okay?"

Tommy straightened up from his handmade scribble of a map, turning his head towards you in confusion. Ranboo stopped writing mid-word likely and looked in your direction as well.

They never liked it when you were upset.

You pursed your lips silently for a moment, clearly unsettling the males around you, "I just... Haven't been feeling too great... Both mentally and physically I mean... I need sunlight..."

"Yeah... I was reading about that earlier..." Ranboo hummed softly, adjusting his crown as he looked up at the ceiling, "But the issue is..."

"My safety... Yes, I know. What if, I wear my full netherite armour and keep a totem AND a Rapple on me? And also not leave your sides?" You bargained nervously.

That hadn't worked before. But then again, You weren't as close to them before...

The silence that fell upon the room was unsettling and caused your heart to race quickly. If they didn't like what you said, you would be alone for a few straight days... You didn't like it...

"Okay."

What.

That worked?

You just had to ask?!

You watched as Tubbo stood up and pulled the small ender chest from his pocket and set it on the ground, causing it to grow to normal size.

Standing aside, he made a gesture for you to open it and get your stuff.

Hesitantly, You walked over and kneeled down in front of the ender chest. Looking to Tubbo and the others for confirmation, you slowly opened it once they nodded.

Carefully, you began pulling out your armour but paused seeing the lack of golden apples and totems.

Right... Before you had gotten kidnapped by the group, you had used a totem when you fell into the L'Manhole where L'Manberg once was.

That what caused them to kidnap you...

"I-I used... My totem... And Fundy stole my Rapple..." You murmured hesitantly, feeling ready to cry.

Your only chance to escape and you couldn't grab it...

"Hey! Hey! Don't cry! Here!" Ranboo eagerly held the two golden items out towards you at the first sight of tears gathering under your eyes.

"What...?"

"(Y/n)! We want you to be happy! If being outside, even with god armour, rapples and totems, makes you happy, then damn well we're bringing you outside!" Tommy grinned.

After a few tears and lots of hugs, Tubbo helped you hop into your armour while Ranboo unlocked the chain cuff from around your ankle. Tommy had left, leaving the door open for once, going to scout the area for any dangerous mobs.

"Ready?" Ranboo smiled, linking one of his arms with yours, the one that you held the totem in to be more specific. Tubbo happily linked his arm with the other one.

You could only nod, your voice caught in your throat as they began to walk you out the door, Ranboo had to duck down a lot, before leading you to the quartz stairway.

Once up the stairs, Tubbo pressed in a code to the iron door and it slid open quickly, causing you to flinch and pinch your eyes shut at the bright painful light of the sun.

It took about twenty minutes of trying to adjust to the sunlight with the two males encouraging you before you were able to look around.

It was everything you had missed...

The sunlight...

The trees...

God, it was perfect...

Tommy eventually came out of the tree line and sat down beside you as you took it all in...

Months, you were down there. And sure, they gave you plenty of decorations to prevent you from experiencing sensory deprivation, nothing could ever compare to the beauty of the outside world.

A voice cut through the air -calling for someone or something named Fran?- and you almost didn't recognize it. But then the owner came out of the trees, almost a similar direction that Tommy came from earlier.

Sam? He looked so... Different now...

The creeper hybrid slowly lowered his gas mask to show his mouth dropped in shock, "(Y/n)...? You're alive...?"

Tommy, Tubbo and Ranboo were freaking out, trying to bring you back into the bunker, as they called it, but you weren't budging. You hadn't seen another being in ages... And while you did platonically love the three boys, you enjoyed hearing a new voice.

"You... Remember me? But... Tubbo you said-" You frowned at the goat hybrid as they stopped suddenly, realizing that you weren't moving.

"You three... Kept them locked away... For almost an entire year?" Sam's voice was getting a little bit scary now, but it wasn't directed at you, instead, at your best friends...

"Sam! It was to protect them! Please!" Ranboo tried, but he wasn't making it better.

"You made Quackity believe they ran away... Made Philza wake up every morning and walk through the SMP for any signs of them... Gave Puffy false information on where you have last seen them... lied to everyone... Only to be the reason that they were gone." Sam growled out, gripping his trident, "Then you proceeded to make them think we all forgot about them..."

"S-Sam... You've got this all wrong big man..." Tubbo tried next...

The warden wasn't listening as he pointed his trident at them, his communicator in his other hand next to his mouth, then he started speaking, causing his voice to come out of Ranboo's, Tubbo's and Tommy's pockets. He was speaking on the public channel.

"Tommy Innit, Tubbo Underscore, Ranboo Beloved... You are being placed in the prison, Pandora's Vault, for keeping (Y/n) (L/n) imprisoned in a bunker and lying about their whereabouts."

It felt like someone splashed you with cold water...

[chloelucia13]

Made of Ashes

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x female!reader

Prompt: Faking your death wasn’t an easy thing to do, but SHIELD said that it had to be done. But you couldn’t stay out of the life you were born to have, even if it was risky. Even if it brought you face to face with the people who still believed that you were dead. Based off of “My Tears Ricochet” by Taylor Swift

Warnings: ANGST, a teensy bit of fluff, language, violence, gore, discussions of death (obviously)

Word Count: 5.1k 

A/N: We did it, boys, we’ve found another hyperfixation. Let’s see how long this lasts. Anyway, my tag lists and requests and DMs are always open! Hope you enjoy!

Death was never a foreign thing to you. It seemed to linger, its presence permeating every interaction and movement as if to remind you that you never know what could happen. 

Just because it wasn’t unfamiliar didn't mean that it wasn’t miserable, though. You’ve lost so many friends, family, and everything in-between and it never seemed to get any better.

You knew how painful it was, but you could never imagine the pain that you felt when you witnessed your own funeral. When you watched the people you love grieve over you while you were only feet from them but couldn’t comfort them.

You had watched their tears streak down their faces as they stared ahead at the closed casket, their cheeks glistening under the rays of sun that shone down on them. You watched their hands tremble as they showered individual roses onto the gleaming mahogany lid before returning to their seats with their heads bowed low. You watched the light sheen of sweat build on their skin that made them wonder if this heat was comparable to what you had felt.

They were told that you were caught in a building that Hydra had bombed, pinned underneath the falling debris as the flames rose as engulfed you. They were told that your body couldn’t be found, that it was most likely hidden under all of the rubble or turned to ash. They had to bury an empty casket.

The word had spread fast, and the wake that they’d planned on being a small gathering became flooded with familiar faces from around the galaxy. Basically everyone was there, eyes damp and hearts heavy.

In a car tucked away from the wake but still in view of it, you and Maria Hill watched their grieving in silence. “This is all for your safety,” she had explained to you, but the guilt of what she had to do was still lingering. You had nodded along to her word, but your mind was in another place. 

It was stuck in a whirlwind of panic, hurt, and confusion as you stared at the man who kept his distance from the crowd of Avengers, but his shoulders still shook with sobs as your casket was lowered into the ground. The man who gave you heaven and gave you hell. The man you swore you’d love until you died, even if you were already dead to him in his mind.

And to him, it was true.

You and Bucky had met when he was still the Winter Soldier, when he had dragged Steve from the water and dropped his limp body directly at your feet. You remember staring at him in a panic, unknowing of what he would do to you. He had stared you directly in the eye and gave you a nod before walking past you, leaving you with a seemingly-lifeless Steve.

That small, but meaningful, interaction had led you on a manhunt of sorts, devoting your free time to finding this “Bucky” that Steve spoke so fondly of.

After a couple of months, you came across a reported sighting of the Winter Soldier in Bucharest, though the man was not hostile. Immediately, you booked a flight there and, without telling another person, snuck off to find this supposed Winter Soldier.

You found him at a small market in the middle of town, your eyes locking with his as he lifted his gaze. The panic he felt from being seen was evident, but that panic seemed to melt away as a smile grew on your lips. He was still on alert, though, as you crossed the street and walked over to him. It was clear that he recognized you, but your gentle demeanor gave him a strange sense of comfort.

That first meeting had slowly built up to monthly visits that lasted for days at a time, the two of you nurturing a relationship that was kept hidden from the word, especially the Avengers.

The day that Bucky’s past life came rushing back, the two of you were on one of your monthly “dates,” as you’d jokingly called it.

The blue of his eyes had drawn you in for a moment too long, prompting a chuckle from him. You rolled your eyes and pursed your lips, turning your face from his so he couldn’t detect the blush blooming on your cheeks. “What, I can’t admire the beautiful sight before me?” you defensively hummed in Romanian, crossing your arms over your chest as your examined the baskets of fruit in front of you.

“I never said that,” he teased, playfully bumping your shoulder with his before turning to the woman running the fruit stand and asking her a few questions.

The woman handed Bucky a bag of plums and you both thanked her before walking down the street. “Plums?”

He nodded, shrugging slightly. “I figured we could make something with them.”

“I think there’s still some phyllo dough in the fridge.” He nodded, but his attention was clearly elsewhere. You followed his line of sight and saw a man sitting in a newspaper hut staring worriedly at Bucky. You touched his right arm and the two of you exchanged a glance before making your way over to the man. The moment he noticed the two of you stepping towards him, he retreated back before running out of his hut.

Bucky pulled the newspaper the man was reading off of the surface it rested on and held it out in front of him.

“Winter Soldier Cautat Pentru Bombardmentul Din Vienna”

“Bucky,” you spoke slowly, forcing yourself to tear your eyes from the paper so you could look up at his visibly shaken face.

“We need to go,” he grumbled, placing the paper face down and gripping onto your forearm.

The two of you walked at a hurried pace down the street that led up to his apartment, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible despite the fact that you both were shivering with fear.

After climbing the multiple flights of stairs with no one in sight, the tension slowly began to dissolve from the naive belief that they may not have tracked him down yet. His grip had loosened on your arm, as well, signifying that the fear had began to die down in his mind as well. The two of you silently slipped inside and closed the door behind you, letting out a soft sigh of relief when you could see that the apartment was empty. That breath hitched in your throat, though, when a pair of heavy footsteps echoed through the stairwell just outside the door. 

You nodded towards the bathroom door and he quickly pulled you into the small room, closing the door and tucking your form behind him. The creaking front door swung open and shut, and a shadow passed across the crack of the bathroom door. You gripped tightly onto the arm of Bucky’s canvas jacket and he placed his hand over yours, giving you a gentle nod. He led the two of you out of the bathroom and into the open space of the studio apartment, keeping your eyes trained on the familiar figure standing at the fridge that made your stomach turn.

After speaking out to what was most likely a voice in his ear, he turned on his heel to face you two.

You could tell from the look of pure bewilderment on his face that he absolutely was not expecting you to be there. “Y/N?” Steve questioned.

You gave him an awkward smile and a wave. “Hi,” you hummed with a simple nod.

A wave of emotions crossed over his face and he let out a sigh. “We don’t have time to talk about this right now.”

After the chase that led you, Bucky, Steve, and King T’Challa in prison, and the prison break that took place afterward, Bucky had kept his distance from you. He became cold, calloused to you. You figured that it was due to the stress of being framed for a crime he didn’t commit and the man who did commit it trying to tap into the Winter Soldier, but that didn't mean that it didn’t hurt. You’d spent months working on a relationship with this man who you loved more than you’d care to admit, all for it to be gone within moments.

But it didn’t go away, even after everything was taken care of and Bucky had came back to you.

The bright smile on your face couldn’t be suppressed when Steve and Bucky had came into view, both of them clearly exhausted from everything that had occurred. That exhaustion was tucked away, though, when Steve saw you standing there, and he quickly headed over to you and pulled you into a tight hug. You took his affection gratefully, the two of you chatting with equally wide smiles.

After about a minute or two, Steve told you that he had something to do before quickly slipping out of the room, leaving you and Bucky alone. Bucky stood a good distance from you, avoiding your gaze and keeping his stance rigid. It was obvious that he was still hurting, but you figured that your presence could cheer him up.

“Bucky,” you sighed, hurrying over to him and reaching out for a hug.

He turned away from your embrace, keeping his eyes on the ground and his face emotionless. 

“Buck?” You dropped your arms to your sides, brows furrowing in confusion as you attempted to search his face. He gave no expression, and you gave up on his face, instead glancing at his robotic arm that was no longer there. “Oh my god, your arm.”

“It’s fine,” he huffed, stepping away to stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the landscape of Wakanda.

He was shutting you out, acting more rigid than he did when you two first met. Your lips pressed together as you walked over to the windows, keeping a few feet of distance between you two. “It’s beautiful here-”

“God, do you ever take a fucking hint?” 

You jumped from the tone of his voice, giving him a look of shock while his face, still, stayed flat. “What?”

“I don’t want you here. I want you to leave me alone.”

His words made your heart sink to your shoes, but there was a pestering itch in the back of your mind that made you push him further. “You don’t mean that.”

He stepped forward until you were backed up against the glass, placing an arm on each side of your body and caging you in. “Don’t I?” He let out a huff, eyes trained on yours which were brimming with tears. “You’ve ruined whatever chance I had at being normal. You found me, you led everyone to me, and you got me sucked back into all of this bullshit.”

You shook your head. “I just wanted to help.”

He scoffed. “You sure helped a lot.”

You blinked back the tears and clenched your jaw, giving him a look of spite. You averted your gaze for a moment, eyes catching on the small black cord that peeked out from his shirt. The cord that was so familiar because it was a necklace you’d gifted him. You let out a huff before shoving his arm out of your way and stomping away down the expansive hall.

On your way to your room that T’Challa had given you the key to earlier, you ran into Sam, who immediately noticed the anger and pain radiating off of you. “Whoa, whoa, cool it on the stomping there. You might just smash through the floor,” he teased and gripped your arm with a smile, but it fell when his eyes searched yours. “What’s wrong?”

“Go ask Bucky, because I sure as shit have no clue.”

Months after you’d left Bucky in Wakanda, your “funeral” had taken place, and it pained you that you were never able to resolve the issues that had divided you two. 

You tried your hardest to live your life as normal (well, as normally as you could while staying as underground as possible and basically living a completely different life than the one you previously had), but that plan had crumbled and turned to dust like half of the planet. You’d lost Hill and Fury, the  only people who knew that you were still alive and were actively working to keep you safe. At first, it was horrifying to know that no one would be watching your every move as you’d grown so used to it. But as time went on and you realized that you had to be somewhat present in society, you had finally felt the freedom that you’ve been held from for years.

You lived life under the new identity that Hill and Fury had previously given you (Sandra McMahan, 27, unemployed, living in Boston, Massachusetts), but you couldn’t give in to the normal life that was at your fingertips, so close yet so far away. Instead, you launched yourself headfirst into researching all of the people who turned to dust. It was clear that it was a result from something that the Avengers fought due to the multiple sightings of spacecrafts that were documented on Stark’s databases, but it proved to be much more devastating than you could’ve guessed.

All of your friends were either dead or missing, and you couldn’t help but feel the immense guilt from the thought that you could’ve saved them.

Five years had come and gone in a haze of misery and loneliness, each day blurring into the previous day and the next day. You tried your hardest to participate in a society that was struggling to cope with the devastating loss that had occurred, but most days you had failed to get out of bed.

You still vividly remember the day of the blip, when the billions of people who’d vanished into thin air had reappeared just as quickly and in the same exact state. You remember the amalgamation of cheers and cries as people were reunited with their loved ones, all while you watched them from your 10th floor window in your dingy little apartment.

All alone.

The databases were updated at that point, displaying who had come back. Of course, there were still a few people whose status never changed, and no matter how long you refreshed the page in hopes that it would switch from “missing” to a blank spot where that word once sat, it didn’t. Instead, it changed from “missing” to “deceased.”

Hill and Fury had tried to get back in contact with you, but you ignored their messages, instead choosing to look deeper into the reappearance of one man.

You’d watched Bucky from a distance, lingering in the shadows as you went along with all of daily activities. Going to the grocery stores, spending Wednesdays at an asian restaurant with a man you didn’t recognize, and attending this weekly therapy appointments. His routines were, well, routine, until the day that he and Sam traveled to the Raft to break out the man who nearly landed Bucky in that same prison. They’d escaped successfully, and their movements brought you to Madripoor, a place that instantly settled a heavy weight in the pit of your stomach. 

The dress you wore in that dark and musty bar was itchy and the stares you earned from it made your skin crawl, but you bit your tongue and kept a straight face as you tucked yourself away into a dark corner. The doubt that itched in the back of your mind of how the three men would show kept growing stronger and stronger, only for it to shift into pure terror as Bucky and Sam walked in with that bastard. 

Bucky’s face was as still and hollow as it was the first day you met him, that hauntingly empty look that made your insides churn. But that churning was incomparable to the bile that bubbled in your chest as he attacked men at Zemo’s word, his actions harsh and merciless.

Silently, the three men were led into a back room by an armed man, and once the trio disappeared into the room, you overtook the man and disarmed him. You gripped the gun in your hands and stood just outside of the room, still lingering within earshot.

Zemo and who you assumed to be Selby discussed some sort of contract that had to do with the super soldier serum, of which he offered Bucky as payment for information on where to get the serum. The discussion was cut short by Sam’s phone ringing, which snowballed into a situation much bigger than they were expecting.

As Selby ordered for them to be killed, a gunshot rang through the air and Selby’s words were cut short. After attacking the guards that surrounded the room, the three men escaped out the back door, and you followed them. The road leading out from the bar proved just as treacherous as another spray of gunfire sounded from all around, and you all sprinted down the narrow street and into an attached back alley.

You shot down the two motorcyclists that had followed them in and stepped out of the shadows, gun trained on Zemo as your hands shook with fury. “Disarm him,” you spat, finger hovering over the trigger.

“Y/N?” Sam spoke, voice laced with shock.

“Power him down, Zemo,” you continued, ignoring the shocked looks from Sam and Bucky. “I will not hesitate to blow your fucking brains out!”

“Drop the gun” Bucky roared, making you jump. 

“Well, this is too perfect,” a woman’s voice echoed, standing in the space next to you and aiming her gun at Zemo. “Drop it, Zemo.”

Zemo slowly lowered his gun to the ground and held his hands in the air, retreating back as the other two men walked forward. “Sharon?” Bucky spoke.

“You cost me everything.”

“Sharon, wait-” Sam pleaded.

The four of them bickered while you stepped back and lowered your gun to your side, trying to catch up with everything that was going on while also trying to comprehend why Bucky was with Zemo, why he acted like he was the Winter Soldier.

Sharon’s offer of refuge seemed to draw everyone in, but as they all began to walk, Bucky turned to you and gripped both of your biceps in his hands, forcing you to drop your weapon. He backed you up into the brick wall and tightened his jaw, the rough material scraping against your exposed back. “Bucky,” you cried out.

“Who are you?” he hissed, pulling you close to him before swiftly slamming you back against the wall, knocking the breath from your lungs.

“Bucky, it’s me. It’s Y/N. Please.”

“Y/N is dead.” Sam appeared behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “Who. The fuck. Are you.”

“Bucky, we don’t have time for this!” Sam snapped. “She’s coming with us, let’s go.”

You silently pleaded with Sam but he walked away, allowing Bucky to wrestle both of your arms behind your back and walk you to the car.

*** As Sharon and Sam and Zemo conversed, Bucky dragged you into the first room he saw and threw you inside, locking the door behind him.

You let out a hiss of pain as you pushed yourself up into a sitting position, glancing dow nat the rug burn on your palms before looking up at Bucky. “Buck, come on, it’s me,” you begged, watched as he leaned against the wall that faced you.

“Don’t call me that,” he hissed, lips pursed tightly. “Who are you and why are you here? How did you find me?”

You spoke slowly, “Bucky, it’s Y/N Y/L/N. We met in Bucharest, we were... We were best friends, until...”

“What, until I went to Wakanda or until you died?”

“They made me fake my death, Buck, it wasn’t my choice. They made me hide away from everybody for what they said was my own safety. They said that I could be used by Hydra to get secrets about everyone, about you.” You let out a trembling sigh. “I’ve been hiding for seven fucking years. I’ve been alone for seven years.”

He looked away from you, gliding his tongue over his bottom row of teeth before pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. 

“You cut your hair,” you spoke after a moment’s silence.

“You came back from the dead.”

“So did you.”

He shot a glare at you, standing up straight and walking over to sit in a chair on the other side of the room. Hesitantly, you rose to your feet and walked over to him, leaving about 10 feet of distance between you two. “How did you find me?”

“Stark’s databases. They said that you were getting court-mandated therapy in New York City, so I went there, and I guess I just followed you from there.”

“Why...” He cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“Well, first of all, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to risk you getting hurt because of my selfishness.” You sat in the chair adjacent to his. “And I figured that it would be best that I stayed away from you since you despised me.” 

He let out a sigh, mouth opening to defend himself. 

You shook your head. “Do you know how much that hurt me?” you cried out, lower lip quivering. “I-I thought that you cared about me, but you didn’t, did you?”

“I can say the same fucking thing about you!” he snapped. “When I came back from the blip, I saw you everywhere! I thought that you were haunting me, that my guilt was just making you appear, but it was actually you!”

“I didn’t want to do that, okay.” “What, you didn’t want to haunt me? You made me miserable!”

“That’s just what you said the last time I saw you.” You pushed yourself out of the chair and faced away from him, not wanting him to see you cry. “You were one of the only people I had. After you left, I wanted so badly to go see you. I could’ve gone anywhere, but the one place I wanted to be was with you. And then I had to hide away from the world, and I had no one. And I had to live with the fact that I would never be able to fix things between us.”

“You’ve really got some balls to say that shit.” He gripped your arm and spun you around to face him. “Fuck you, Y/N. Fuck you and everything you did.”

You yanked your arm from his grasp and stormed away. “I don’t think I’m the one to blame here, Bucky.”

You slammed the door shut behind you and walked past the room where the other three were gathered. “Hey, where are you going?” Sharon shouted.

“Outside,” you grumbled, walking out into the open courtyard in front of the house. 

Sobs bubbled in your chest and past your lips, collapsing onto the front steps with your head held in your hands. Your shoulders shook and though you tried to keep the noise to a minimum, you couldn’t hold back the hiccups of air that you tried to breathe in.

Heavy footsteps clicked on the pavement behind you a few minutes later, and you hastily swiped away the tear tracks that soaked your cheeks. “Sam, I’m fine. I’ll be in in a minute and you can interrogate me all you want,” you choked out, wrapping your arms around your knees.

“Not Sam,” Bucky’s gruff voice rumbled behind you, his form settling beside you on the steps.

You pursed your lips, eyes trained on the concrete path ahead of you. “Why did you go to the wake?” The words tumbled from your mouth before you could stop them.

“What?”

“I... I saw you at my wake. Why were you there? I thought I was dead to you.”

He shook his head. “You were never dead to me. You... God, you were the only thing keeping me going. You were all I had.”

You finally lifted your gaze to his face, locking eyes with him. “Then why’d you hurt me?”

A sigh left his lips. “After that chase in Bucharest, I... I guess I realized that you being with me wasn’t safe. And then when Zemo was able to get the Winter Soldier to come out...”

“So you hurt me to keep me from getting hurt.”

“Y/N-”

“What, am I wrong? God, when you push people away you really go for the heart.”

“It’s not like it was easy for me! When I saw how badly I hurt you, it felt like a part of me died inside.”

“But you still had every goddamn piece of me in your hands. Was that not enough for you?”

He stayed silent, searching your eyes for a moment before directing his gaze to his shoes. You scoffed and pushed yourself to your feet, turning on your heel to leave.

Bucky reached his left arm up, the cool metal curling gently around your wrist as he also stood up. In one fluid motion, he spun you around to face him and pressed his lips into yours. You froze in shock, but before you could even decide how to feel about his bold actions, he pulled away and searched your eyes. 

You let out a shuddering sigh, trying to gather your composure as quickly as possible. “Bucky, I would’ve died for you.”

“That was the last thing I wanted. It still is.” His cool fingers loosened their grip, delicately gliding along the back of your hand. “And when I found out that you died, I blamed myself. I told myself that if I hadn't hurt you, if I was with you, then you would’ve lived.”

“Bucky-”

“My therapist, she made me create a list of people that I need to make amends with. I-I’ve gotten through most of it, but there’s a few names that I still need to get through.” He dug in his back pocket, fishing out the small pocketbook and turning to the last page. “I wrote your name down. I-I knew that there was no way I could ever make amends with you, but I felt like I had an obligation to.”

You stared at your name scrawled out on the page in his messy handwriting. It was the only name on the page, placed right in the center. Tears welled in your eyes and you let out a shaky breath, unable to find the words to say.

“You don’t have to forgive me, and honestly I don’t expect you to, but I just needed-”

“Bucky.”

He closed his mouth, his sweet blue eyes following your movements as you closed the book in his hands and settled both of your hands on his cheeks. You could see the stress melting off of him as soon as he felt the warmth of your touch, his shoulders dropping slightly and a hint of a smile threatening to crack on his lips.

“Bucky Barnes, you are the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” you sighed, giving him a small smile. “And I know it’s because you’ve been hurt more times than you can count, but if I can take away some of that hurt, I’d do it a million times over and never regret it.” The tip of your nose brushed against his, and you heard his breath hitch in his throat. “I forgive you.”

With a gentle tilt of his head, his lips bumped against yours before quickly locking together. Your fingers drifted down his cheeks and his throat before clasping together behind his neck.

He stole a few more quick kisses before pulling away completely, his tongue darting out to wet his lips before permitting a smile to rest on his face. You mirrored his smile and carded a hand through his hair. “Y’know,” you breathed, “I really dig this haircut.”

He arched a brow. “Really, I thought you liked the long hair.”

“I did like the long hair! It just... This is more you. Not the Winter Soldier, not HYDRA. You.”

You felt his arm pressed against your body as he tucked his book into his jacket pocket before both arms tenderly snaked around your waist and pulled you close to him. He pressed a chaste kiss, then two, then three onto your lips before letting out a small sigh.

“I’ve got clients coming in half an hour and I’d prefer not having people with targets on their heads making out on my front step,” Sharon shouted from the front door, giving both of you a pointed look before stepping back inside.

“I should leave,” you hummed, dropping your hands to your sides and beginning to wiggle yourself free of his grip.

“Y/N,” he breathed, fingers catching onto yours and weaving together. “Stay. Please. I... I just got you back, I don't want to lose you again.” Your eyes locked with his and he held the stare for a few moments before clearing his throat and shifting his gaze to the ground between you two. “Besides, I think Sam and Zemo might kill me if I don’t go back in there without you.”

You giggled. “Oh, that’s the reason you want me to go in there with you?”

“Yeah!” His voice was nearly drowned out by your laughs, but he persisted. “I swear to god, if looks could kill, I would’ve died before I could’ve even gotten out here to talk to you. Fucking Zemo even said something about ‘when you’ve got a woman like that, you should never take hurt them.’”

You grinned. “You think he’s wrong about that?”

He shook his head fervently. “No, no, not at all! I just... I guess I’m out of practice with this whole... talking thing.” He let out a breath and squeezed your hands. “I need to catch up on the seven years that I’ve spent without you, and there’s no better time to start than now.”

You bit down on your lower lip to suppress the smile that was close to splitting your face in two. “I don't know, Bucky, but that sure sounds like some good talking to me.”

He rolled his eyes, but a smile finally began to settle on his lips. “Shut up.”

You pressed a final, sweet kiss to his lips before slipping from his grasp, giving yourself a moment to admire the purple light that caressed his skin. “Come on, let’s head inside before Sharon loses her shit.”

[1-800-gaygentsofshield]

you + me = ? | n.r.

summary: after the war you and Natasha settle down, deciding to start a family in your cozy little home. The problem is though, how many times can hope be ignited before it fully burns out?

warnings: (trying to get pregnant) reader, canon/sterile Nat, swearing, Nat and you cry, post-endgame, sprinkle of angst with a very fluffy ending

word count: 4,016

im having baby fever rn im so sorry

-flashback, pre-endgame-

"I wanna have a family." Your voice is barely above a whisper as you both look up at the night sky, laying in the garden atop the Avengers compound. "What?" Nat asks softly, breaking out of her trance as she looks at you. You're laying on her chest and her arm is wrapped your back, Nat's other arm folded up behind her head.

"I wanna have a family, with you." You repeat yourself, making eye contact with your girlfriend as her brows furrow. "Y/n.." Nat's voice is hesitant and panic floods your chest, your eyes widening as you move to sit up. "Oh my god I'm so sorry, that was so quick-" You apologize quickly as you avoid Natasha's gaze, the redhead sitting up with you.

You've dated Natasha for two years but everything has been slow, knowing how the assassin will close herself off if you try and move too fast (emotion wise).

"Hey Y/n no." Nat says softly as she looks at your side profile, a soft frown forming on her face as she sees you. "That's not the reason why." She says as she gently turns your head to face her, fingertips delicately grabbing your chin. "I do want to have a family with you, moya lyubov'..it's just that I can't." Nat whispers and you finally lock eyes with her, seeing the pain and sadness on her face. "What do you mean?' You ask carefully and she sighs, waiting a beat before deciding to tell you. "In the Red Room me and all of my other group mates were sterilized..it was like a sick graduation ceremony that prevented us from having a family of our own." She tells you and hurt immediately grips at your heart, seeing Nat avert her gaze for a moment.

"Why?" You question and she purses her lips together, one of your hands rubbing her knee gently. "So we would never have any distraction from our mission..so that our only purpose in life was to kill and be used as a weapon." Disgust drips from Nat's voice at the last part, your soft hands on her wrist bringing her back to reality. "Im so sorry Nat, I shouldn't have anything I didn't know-" You start to apologize again but Nat stops you with a soft shake of her head, a bittersweet smile on her face. "Don't apologize, Y/n. I'm the one who should be sorry for not being able to give you the family that you deserve." She says and now it's your turn to shake your head, grabbing Nat's hands and caressing them gently. "Its alright baby." You smile gently before an idea pops into your head, your eyes lighting up and Nat gives you a look of curiosity.

"Besides.." You start, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "If you really..truly..wanted a family with me, there could still be other options. Like adopting or getting a surrogate..or I could get pregnant instead." You suggest and Natasha's eyes light up like the stars in the night sky, a small laugh escaping your lips as you see the excitement on her face.

"Really?! You'd do that?" She asks and you nod your head, giving your girlfriend a soft kiss before laughing. "Mmhm, but you'd have to put a ring on it first, Miss Romanoff." You giggle and Nat wraps her arms around you again, both of you laying back down on the blanket. "Im planning to, future Mrs.Romanoff."

-present day, post-endgame-

You nervously pace around the bathroom as you wait for the three minutes to be up, Natasha sitting on the edge of the bathtub and observing you walk back and forth. The pregnancy test is laying by the sink and you can’t help but glance at it every few seconds, not having felt this nervous since battling Thanos and his army. You’ve faced gods, powerful Titans, super soldiers, but you’re sure this the most nerve wracking thing you’ve ever had to do. Once the timer on Natasha’s phone goes off, you practically jump towards the sink, Natasha leaning forward a bit more on the bathtub. Picking up the white and pink pregnancy test, you nervously turn it over in your hands, eyes scanning the small window for the results.

Natasha doesn’t even have to ask for the results when she sees your shoulders slump and your face drop, quickly getting up from the bathtub to wrap you up in her arms. Hugging you from behind, she can see the negative test in your hands, gently kissing your cheek when you don’t say anything. “It’s okay baby, we can try again.” She says softly and you shake your head, slowly placing the test down and closing your eyes.

“Nat, what if somethings wrong with me?” You whisper and her arms hug you closer, tears pooling under your eyelids in frustration. “Nothing is wrong with you malysh.” Natasha reassures you and you turn in her arms, releasing a shaky breath as you press your face into her neck. “Three times Nat..three fucking times..” You sigh and she only holds you closer, knowing how much hope the both of you had for this one. “I know, I know.” Nat hums softly as she rocks the two of you back and forth gently, feeling the hope starting to dwindle from you. “What if we just weren’t meant to have a biological children? What if we weren’t meant to have lives after the war?” You question out loud and Natasha pulls back, gently tilting your chin up so you can look her in the eyes. “Hey no, don’t say that. We were meant to have a family Y/n, biological or not.” Nat takes a pause to brush some hair out of your face.

“Let’s try one more time, okay? And if that doesn’t work then we can look into other options.” She continues and you think for a moment, not knowing if you could go through the hope and pain again. “Okay.” You whisper softly and Nat nods her head. “Okay.” She echos you before placing a gentle kiss on your forehead, pulling you back in for a hug.

————

Nat’s leg is bouncing up and down as she watches the timer tick down, only ten more seconds before you can check. This is the last try, all or nothing. You’re too anxious to pace this time, instead opting to sit next to Natasha and leaning into her as you watch her leg bounce. “You know..whatever happens, I love you.” Nat says softly when she sees you blankly stare at her knee, lost in thought about what’s going to happen. “I love you too.” You reply equally as soft as you look up at your wife, grabbing her hand and intertwining them slowly.

Leaning into each other, you both share a soft kiss, love shining through the small interaction. You both only pull away when the timer dings, Natasha rubbing your back as you sigh and get up. It feels like time slows down as you walk towards the sink, heart pounding in your chest as you reach out to grab the test. The bathroom is silent as you pick it up and flip it over, looking at the little window for the results. You’re silent as you look at the results, body frozen in place as you stare at the test. Natasha’s brows furrow and she gets up, sighing as she rubs her temples.

“Baby I’m so sorry-” “It’s positive.” You interrupt Nat midway through her sentence, your voice in disbelief as you see those two pink lines. “What?” Natasha asks, unsure if she heard you right. “It’s positive.” You repeat as you turn to face her, pregnancy test in hand as you smile from ear to ear. “You’re pregnant?” Natasha asks, almost in disbelief as she stares at you. “I’m pregnant.” You nod your head and Natasha immediately sweeps you up in her arms, hugging you right and picking you up from the ground. “Holy shit! We’re gonna have a baby!” Nat laughs as she spins you around, joyful giggles falling from your lips as you cling onto your wife.

“Oh my god we’re gonna have a baby.” Nat breathes out as she comes to a stop, quickly putting you down once the realization hits her brain. “Shit, you’re pregnant we need to be careful.” She says and you only laugh, pulling her down a bit to kiss her. “You don’t need to be that a careful dummy, but yes..I’m pregnant.”

————

“Tony gave us an iron man onesie.” You laugh as you hold up the tiny piece of clothing, Natasha grinning as she watches you. Even though the announcement was made a week ago, the gifts have been steadily pouring in, Tony insisting that he pays for the majority of the things that are needed for the new arrival.

He paid for the crib, the high chair, the car seat, most of the nursery, and all the bottles and toys a newborn could ask for. Pepper had a huge part in it too, having experience since bringing Morgan into the world. “That man is self centered.” Natasha laughs as she walks over to where you’re sitting, her heart full of love as she kneels down next to you.

“Mmhm.” You hum in agreement as you fold the article of clothing away, Natasha handing you the next gift. You’re about sixteen weeks along and you’re already showing, a small baby bump forming from your midsection. You both decided to wait until the second trimester to tell the rest of the team, wanting to enjoy the first few months in peace.

Natasha watches you wordlessly as you open a gift from Steve, a smile tugging on her lips as she sees the captain america pacifier. “I love you so much.” She blurts out randomly and your head turns to face her, a smile on your face as you gently kiss her.

“You’ve gone soft Romanoff.” You tease and she only laughs, gently kissing you again. “I blame you, you’ve made me domestic.” She grins and you roll your eyes, placing the gift to the side.

————

As the pregnancy goes along, you start to notice Natasha’s lack of touch, the redhead only going as far as running her hands through your hair or holding your shoulders. You have no idea what has gotten into her and you're determined to investigate, missing the way Natasha used to spoon and cuddle you all day.

Your questions were finally answered when one day you and Natasha were watching TV in bed, the redhead's arm slung around your shoulder as you lean into her. When the commercial break finally came on, you turned your head to look at your wife, curiosity written all over your face. "Why don't you cuddle me anymore, Nat?" You ask softly and she looks at you with confusion, lowering down the volume on the TV. "What do you mean? I cuddle you all the time baby." She says and you shake your head, reaching up and gently toying with her hair.

"Ever since I've gotten pregnant you've treated me like I could break at any moment, what are you so afraid of?" You question and Natasha sighs, glancing at her lap for a moment before answering. "With these hands I've done some awful things Y/n..things too horrific to say out loud. I feel like if I touch you or the baby I'll just ruin it, or hurt you..like everything else in my life." Nat confesses softly and your heart melts at how scared your wife is, knowing how much she's struggled with her past and with the red in her ledger. "Natasha Romanoff." You whisper, gently grabbing her hands to put them in between the two of you. "You are the kindest," You start, gently kissing her knuckle. "Most caring." another kiss, "Most selfless" another kiss, "Person I've ever met" another kiss. "And I know, with my whole heart and soul, you would never do anything to hurt me or the baby." You look up at her and gently rub your knuckles over the back of her hands. "So please stop acting like you will. These are the hands that I love, the hands that will raise our child, they're strong and secure, so stop thinking otherwise." You finish as you wordlessly move both your hands towards your belly, gently placing Natasha's hands over the bump.

The redhead is stunned as your hands rest over hers, the baby suddenly kicking. A wide smile spreads across your face as you both look down at your belly, the baby never having kicked before. "That was the first time they've ever kicked." You inform Natasha and you could see her still processing that fact. "That's our baby?" She asks softly and you laugh, nodding your head. "Mmhm, that's our baby. They recognized their mama." You say fondly as the baby kicks again, Natasha's heart bursting with warmth as she looks at you.

Slowly, Natasha moves to lay down on the bed, resting her head right beside your bump and holding it gently. "Hi malen'kiy golub'." She whispers softly, your hand coming down to gently play with her hair. You smile as you watch Natasha gently cuddle with your bump, knowing without a doubt that she's going to be a great mother.

-----

Placing the stuffed animals down on the table, you turn to look at Natasha, a giggle coming from your lips as you walk over to her. "What?" Nat grins as she turns to face you, putting the paintbrush down to the side.

"You're a mess." You laugh as you rub some pastel green paint from her cheek, both of you deciding that the nursery would be painted a light grey with a pastel green accent wall. "I'm still hot though." She teases and you only roll your eyes, cupping her face as you gently kiss her.

"Yeah yeah you're always hot." You laugh and Natasha looks around the room, grinning at the stack of Avenger's themed stuffed animals your team gave you. "They're all trying to be known as the cool uncle aren't they?" She asks softly and you nod your head, knowing that whatever Avenger your child takes after will forever have that bragging right.

"Let them have their fun, they're happy for us." You smile and Nat only sighs, shaking her head with a small smile on her face.

-----

You feel like Natasha was more anxious than you when you went into labour, your water breaking in the middle of the night. There wasn't any dramatic screaming or freaking out, you just calmly pushed the sheet back and let out a soft "huh" as you saw the damp bedsheets.

"Oh, okay we're doing this." You say before turning on the light, acting like it was any other day as you gently shake Natasha awake. "Nat, baby wake up." You whisper softly as Natasha stirs, squinting at the light once her eyes opened. "Y/n? What's wrong?" Nat mumbles sleepily as she rubs the sleep from her eyes, seeing you in a sitting up position.

"My water broke." You say and it takes a second for the words to process in Natasha's brain, the redhead suddenly sitting up and fully awake. "What? Okay okay it's happening. It's happening." Nat says as she pushes the sheets off herself, her mind immediately going to all the books she's read over the past nine months. You've already packed your hospital bags a few weeks in advance so you aren't too stressed about it, only needing to change and grab a few extra things. Natasha, on the other hand, is working on full overdrive, pulling on sweatpants and making sure everything is in order.

"Natasha, baby." You say as you gently grab her arm, needing your wife to slow down if you're going to survive the next few days. "You need to calm down my love." You say softly as you hold onto her shoulders, making the redhead look at you and take a few deep breaths. "Okay..okay. I'm sorry. I'm just nervous." Natasha admits and you nod your head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"It's okay to be nervous Nat, you just need so slow down. We haven't even gotten to the hospital yet." You laugh softly and she nods her head, waiting a few more moments before stepping back slowly. "Okay, let's have a baby."

---

Your head is resting back against Natasha's shoulder as she acts like a backrest to you, allowing you to grip onto her hand when your contractions hit. Nat has been nothing but supportive the entire time, humming reassuring words into your ear as the pain washes over your body.

"Fuck." You whimper once another round of contractions end, Natasha's hand coming up to gently push back the sweaty hairs sticking to your forehead. "You're doing amazing baby, I'm so proud of you." She hums and you sigh, closing your eyes as you feel your wife rub your back. It's quiet as you feel Natasha's hands move down to your bump, rubbing your stomach softly as she sighs.

"Come on malen'kiy golub, your mommies are so excited to meet you." Nat coos and you smile into her neck, warmth flooding your chest as you listen to her. "And I know all of your aunties and uncles are excited to meet you too. We're so excited to hug you, and kiss you, and watch you grow." She hums as she rubs small circles on your belly.

"So please come out before your mommy kills me." Both of you laugh and you snuggle more into Natasha's embrace. "You're going to be an amazing mom." You whisper and Nat grins, looking at you with a quirked eyebrow. "Yeah?" She asks and you nod your head. "Yeah..I couldn't have asked for a more amazing wife, best friend, and now..a mother to our daughter." You hum and Nat blushes, kissing you gently.

----

Your eyebrows furrow as you grip onto Natasha’s hand, pain coursing through your body as you deliver the baby. “You’re doing amazing y/n, almost there.” Nat says as you practically crush her hand, hiding the pain in her face as she watches you. "Congratulations, it's a healthy baby girl." The doctor announces as the baby's cries fill the room, your chest heaving as you lay back. Nat cuts the umbilical cord ("I've seen worst in Budapest") and they place the baby on your chest, draping a blanket over the two of you to keep you warm.

"Hi baby." You coo as you hold your child close to your chest, Natasha standing next to you with unshed tears in her eyes. You look up at her and sniffle (you're crying so hard at this point) as you see the look of awe on her face, smiling as you gently reach out to grab her hand. Softly placing her hand atop of the baby's blanketed back, she slowly moves her thumb, the child's cries quieting at both of her mother's touch. Nat is speechless as she watches the tiny newborn cling onto your chest, loving the warmth radiating off of your body.

"She's a boob man, just like her mama." Nat whispers and you laugh, that being the first thing that comes to her mind. Your child's hand slowly comes up and wraps her fingers around Natasha's thumb, that being the breaking point for the tears as they finally fall down her cheek.

----

"Are you gonna hold her or are you just going to stare at me?" You ask as Natasha watches you and Mila sit on the bed, the two of you now alone with your child. Natasha looks hesitant as she walks over to you, never feeling so nervous as you look up at her.

"You aren't going to break her Nat." You say and Nat's eyebrows furrow, seeing the tiny infant look up at her with Y/c/e. The baby took from both you and Natasha, having scarlet red hair from her and beautiful y/c/e from you. "I just don't know..I mean what if I drop her? What if I do something wrong?" Nat worries her bottom lip between her teeth and you only beckon her to come closer, scooting over so she can sit on the hospital bed.

"You won't Nat, I promise." You reassure her and she slowly sits down on the bed, following your instructions as she places her hands out. Gently transferring the baby into her arms, you smile as Mila looks up at her mama, letting out a soft "gah". "See? She loves you already." You hum as you rub Mila's hair gently, seeing the love on Natasha's face. "Hi Mila." Nat breathes out as you rest your head on her shoulder, watching your wife interact with the baby. The tears return to Natasha's eyes as the newborn looks up at her, her emotions going everywhere as she processes that this is her child, her little bundle of joy that she gets the privilege of sharing with you. "Thank you." Nat whispers out as she looks at you, a smile on her face as she sniffles.

"For what?" You question and she only kisses you softly, smile still on her face as she pulls away. "For giving me another reason to live for." She whispers and her statement covers a wide range, thank you for being her wife, thank you for giving her a chance, thank you for her daughter, thank you for giving her the family she's always wanted, just thank you.

----

Mila's cries ring out through your room and pierce your eardrums, rousing you and Nat from your slumber.

"Mm, I've got it." You sleepily mumble out of instinct as you start to get up, now used to getting woken up in the dead of night.

Mila still doesn't have a sleep schedule since she's a newborn so sometime's she'll sleep for a few hours and other times only for ten minutes.

This time around though, you get gently pushed back onto the bed by Natasha, feeling a comforting kiss placed on your temple as your wife gets up. "I've got it, moya lyubov'." She whispers and you don't have enough energy to resist, watching as Nat walks over to the bassinet. "Hi malen'kiy golub, you have a healthy set of lungs don't you?" Nat mumbles sleepily as she pulls the newborn from the crib, cradling the baby to her chest and gently rocking her back and forth. "Yeah I know, it's okay baby. It's okay, mama's got you." She hums as the baby's cries slowly die down, you still sitting on the bed as you watch your wife in awe. "Your mommies need their sleep huh little one, that sounds nice doesn't it." Nat yawns and you cant help but smile.

"But don't worry, every time you wake up we'll be here okay? We'll love you and hug you each time you cry. And I'm gonna protect you, malen'kiy golub. I won't let anything happen to you or your mommy, I promise." Natasha coos as she continues to rock Mila, not noticing how you're wide awake now. It's a soft, quiet vow, spoken in the dead of night, that Natasha will protect her family with everything she has in her..and it makes you fall more in love with her, if that's even possible.

Getting up, you make your way over to your wife, gently placing your hands on her shoulders to notify her of your presence. She knew you were coming as soon as she heard the bedsheets rustle, even in her tired state she was looking out for the two of you. "Hi." Nat greets you softly and you only hum, a tired smile on your face as you rest your head on her shoulder. Your hand comes up and is gently placed on Mila's back, rubbing soft circles on her onesie. Natasha's heart swells as she looks at her small family, smiling when you kiss her cheek. "I love you." You whisper before looking down at your daughter. "And I love you too." You hum, gently kissing her fiery red hair. Nat kisses your temple gently and closes her eyes, finally at peace with her daughter in her arms and you at her side.

[chacusha]

Dreamwidth pitch

Sometimes I wish more people would talk to me on Dreamwidth but then I don't really talk about Dreamwidth and why it's good or how it works, so maybe it would be good for me to do that??

So I guess some of the basic selling points about Dreamwidth:

Signing up is free and quick. (Also, I believe you can have any number of accounts associated with the same email address.) It has a similar vibe to Tumblr -- a geeky/fannish space.

It is a journaling website based on LiveJournal. By this I mean that it's almost like having a diary where you can choose to make some parts of that diary public or semi-public (at which point it becomes a blog). Counter to the direction of a lot of social media sites which increasingly focus on metrics, engagement (in a numeric form of views/likes/notes/retweets/etc.), and wide availability and easy (or automatic) sharing of content so as to maximize those metrics, Dreamwidth goes in the opposite direction with a focus on privacy. Each post you make has three possible privacy settings: public (viewable by anyone visiting the site), friends (viewable only to people who you have intentionally granted access to your friends-only posts -- you can also freely define custom friend groups to select subsets of friends, although I don't usually use this level of compartmentalization), and private (viewable only by you). It's very easy to check which privacy setting you've used for a post and to change them after the fact. Because posts on Dreamwidth cannot be shared or reblogged, when you revoke access to your post, it is immediate and total because you control the only copy of the post. Usual internet exceptions apply: People may screenshot your post; the internet archive may manually or automatically take a snapshot of older content; or a person might still have "friends" access and then leak the details of a post outside of "friendslock", which would make semi-private material accessible to the public again even though you've tried to lock it down. But for the most part, you much less run into the issue where something you wrote when you were 16 is still public knowledge and can't be scrubbed from the internet. And because privacy settings are such a big feature of the site, there are strong social norms against violating someone's privacy by sharing details they've posted semi-privately outside of that space. I really like this aspect of Dreamwidth because being able to write up my thoughts on very personal things I'm thinking about or going through and have some close internet friends who I trust share their thoughts in response has been so helpful to me throughout my life. There are a lot of mental health benefits to keeping a diary and even more so when you can get semi-anonymous advice from people you know and trust on the internet. I cannot tell you how invaluable it has been to panic or vent about some situation I'm encountering for the first time and have an older and wiser friend give me some advice on how to approach it. I've really grown as a person through first LiveJournal and now Dreamwidth as its replacement because of the semi-anonymous (pseudonymous) AND semi-private way you interact with the site and other users, and I don't know any other social media website that can do this, except I suppose through DMs, but that always feels like having a side conversation whereas doing it on a journaling site makes it the main conversation, where it's easier to organize/search/sort through.

Dreamwidth was forked from LiveJournal many years ago by a small group of people who are very thoughtful and intentional about site design and purpose. You can see in the way DW and LJ have diverged since what the value is in having site runners who have a philosophy about approaching websites that's more than just "make money/break even." Dreamwidth is very "shoestring budget" in its feel -- it has fewer features, development is slow and (I'm guessing) largely done by the site founders or volunteers, and bugs are slow to fix. But on the flipside, the site is simple and loads quickly, the default look of the site is very clean and easy to read, and in addition, the site allows you to fully customize the default style in which content is displayed to you, something that other social media sites will never do (aside from a "dark mode", I suppose) because being able to establish and fully control the site look is key for a company's/website's branding. However, Dreamwidth goes another direction, because accessibility and accessibility features have been a value of the site owners from the founding, and they take that seriously. Dreamwidth is also very intentional about its content policy and takes pains to maximize free expression while still maintaining a safe environment conducive for dialogue and debate for its users. Finally, there are no advertisements on the site anywhere at all. Zero. How does the site support itself, then, you ask? It's based on a paid subscription model where a core of passionate users are willing to pay some money each year so that the site is able to support the amount of users/traffic it gets. This funding model means that the site remains the product being sold rather than the users (and their data/eyeballs). This is a good alignment to have because you want the site to be incentivized to be useful and valuable to users rather than to harvest as much as it can from its users so as to be useful and valuable to advertisers. Dreamwidth takes security seriously and keeps its users informed about potential security breaches (e.g. one where LJ's passwords were compromised, which led to DW accounts using the same password being similarly compromised). A comparison of what Dreamwidth and LiveJournal are like now is illustrative -- I find LiveJournal almost unusable because of the ads, loading times, and just general janky interface; LJ has also been subject to multiple purges and controversial content policy changes over the years. Being on Dreamwidth is almost calming and relaxing by contrast, even though it is clearly missing some obvious and sometimes very useful features like post-/comment-liking, video uploading, post scheduling, etc.

How tagging works on Dreamwidth: This is probably the biggest difference in how Tumblr/AO3 and Dreamwidth work. On Tumblr and AO3, tags are universal across the whole site. When you tag a post with something, then it will appear in global searches for anyone browsing that tag. Heck, on Tumblr, it might pop up unsolicited on someone's dash if they follow that tag. Tags are the main way people find and are recommended content from people they're not already following. On Dreamwidth, though, tags only apply to your blog. There is no universal tag search. I mean, you can search Dreamwidth for content you're interested in; you can also search users based on what tags they've listed in their "Interests." In my experience, though, this tends to not really turn up much useful stuff; you'll likely get a lot of weird/niche content probably not meant to be viewed by a wider audience, as well as users and communities who haven't updated their journal in, like, five years. Not very useful. (In general, content production and content discovery are extremely anemic on DW, a downside I discuss more fully below.) However, what this means is that tags are 100% geared toward the function of helping you organize your own blog. You have full control over your tagging scheme. Much more than any social media website I can think of (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram for sure), Dreamwidth facilitates having a complete record of every post you've written and helps you easily find specific content again even if you wrote it years in the past. This is why I say the site is very good for journaling. It's easy to double-check things like: "In order for people to understand this part, they need to read that post where I talked about that grocery store incident. Where is that post?" "How long have I been having this issue at work? Oh wow, my first post on this was eight months ago." "Where are all the posts I've made with my TV show reviews?" (Tip: The default setting on Dreamwidth is to display only a selection of the most frequently used tags in alphabetical order on your main journal page; I would recommend overriding this immediately to set it to show all tags because your tags are going to be a SUPER useful navigation tool for sorting through your own posts.)

Features that support having actual conversations with your friends rather than shouting one-sidedly into the void and maybe getting a supportive like in response IDK: Fully-threaded comments (and also, no "like" button). *old lady voice* Kids these days don't appreciate the value of a fully-functional comment threading system! Okay, so Dreamwidth allows you to start new comments in response to a post and reply freely to other comments, creating a kind of hierarchical tree structure. All the discussion associated with a post is viewable on a single page, and this means you can have a pretty detailed back-and-forth with the author of a post without coming off as hostile or without awkwardly spamming your followers with one half of the conversation, which is how conversations work on Tumblr. The comment character limit is 16k characters (~2500 words) so you can reply fully to a post rather than needing to condense the essence of your reply into a brief comment. You can talk not only to your friends but also to your friends' friends who are contributing to the discussion too. Separation of public and private spaces: I won't go into this too much but Dreamwidth has "personal blogs" (private spaces) and "communities" (public spaces moderated by the leader of the community) that work very differently (have completely different mechanics underlying them). Unlike Tumblr and Twitter, this means there is a clear separation between public and private spaces, behavior norms in each, and who you're accountable to when interacting in each space, which does a lot to ease social interactions and make them less fraught and contentious. And unlike sites like Reddit, you actually GET a private space without having to interact entirely in communities/special interest forums. These sets of features means that you can have a very deep, easy-to-follow conversation in a semi-public forum on a wide variety of topics while keeping the conversation all in one place and allowing interested people to follow the conversation. It's just a set of features that prioritizes responding to content with high-quality conversation rather than the mere sharing of content without comment.

If you're interested in joining Dreamwidth, here is a word of warning and then advice:

The warning is that, unlike Tumblr, it is very hard to make friends on DW. On Tumblr, you can make friends by browsing tags and journals of people who post things relevant to your interests or who interact on the posts YOU'RE making and sharing; you can follow someone whose content you enjoy and want to continue seeing and maybe they follow you back and start interacting with your posts! Cool. Easy. DW makes this process problematic in many ways: (1) as mentioned earlier, content discovery is difficult, (2) in some cases, most or all of people's content may be friendslocked which means you cannot preview it before you decide to approach someone suggesting to be friends, (3) assuming you do find a stranger whose (public) content is interesting, you can "subscribe" to them (the equivalent of following on Tumblr; their content now regularly shows up on your dash ("friends page")) and/or "friend" them (this will give them access to YOUR friendslocked posts); the person you subscribe to or friend will get a notification of this action, but this doesn't actually mean you are or will be "friends." You see, in order to be friends, someone needs to subscribe and friend you back. For the first thing, that means being interested in your content (usually not an issue; even if you don't have any content, people are willing to take a chance on you and subscribe back). But the second thing is more important -- by friending you back, that will grant access to all the friendslocked entries. Just because some stranger on the internet is interested in what you post and is like "Friends?" and give you access to their friendslocked entries doesn't mean you actually trust that person enough to give them full access to your years and years of friendslocked writing, you know what I mean? So making a random friend request might just result in being completely ignored. Instead, you often need to give someone the context for why you are interested in being friends, introduce yourself, and ask for their permission to friend before hitting that button.

Okay, so what this means is that it is very hard to find potential friends on DW and trying to friend people can be way more work than creating a new account and clicking some buttons on people's profiles. So how do people make friends on DW?! In order to get around this, people have come up with several things:

Friending memes: These are activities that happen every so often where someone gives people a form to fill out (where you talk about various interests and type of things you post about on your blog, potential dealbreakers in your content, etc.) and people browse through other people's comments and when they find someone who looks interesting, they can reply and be like "Hey! You seem like an interesting person. I also post about camping and photography. Want to be friends?" It's like, uh, speed dating but for online friends? This is much better than a cold approach as described above. In particular, every January on Dreamwidth, a group of people runs an activity called the Snowflake Challenge, where they have various fannish activities and challenges and you can choose to participate in whichever ones you like. A lot of them act as kind of icebreaker questions, and you can strike up conversations with other people by browsing things they've posted, and at some point in the activity, there's always a friending meme. Usually reccing active communities and helpful resources on DW is also part of the Snowflake Challenge (which is SUPER useful because being on DW can be like walking through a graveyard sometimes), so it's great for people who are new.

Stickied friending posts at the top of journals. These posts will often explain what kind of journal the person keeps, what content they post, how much of their journal is friendslocked, requirements for friending, etc. Comment there to introduce yourself, explain why you are interested in friending this person, ask to be friended back, etc.

Participate in public-space "communities" first and use that to find friends. Okay, okay, a bit difficult because there are a lot of communities on DW that are *tumbleweed blowing in the wind* -- dead. Abandoned. So quiet and unresponsive that it's almost worse than being fully dead because there are people there who will sometimes give you a bite but it's just not enough to feel worth the time and now you're all embarrassed for yourselves and each other. Here are some recs of active communities: dw_community_promo (for finding (newly) active communities, not necessarily fannish in nature); fandom_on_dw (any kind of fannish activities/communities); fandomcalendar (fannish events); thefridayfive (a currently active community that posts a collection of five questions each Friday; great for icebreakers and you can browse other people's answers); addme_fandom (if a friending meme were a community instead; this comm also has a lot of resources for new joiners of DW in its sticky post). Active but maybe a bit drama-llama-y (you may or may not enjoy these): fandomsecrets (an EXTREMELY long-running community run by maybe the most tireless/superhuman mod I know of; you can anonymously submit images containing a fandom-related secret you have, and they get posted in random order over the following week and people discuss in the comments -- it's a great multifandom space, especially if you want to vent about some fandom drama you're going through or an unpopular opinion you have, but can be intimidating to interact there non-anonymously due to the nature/contentiousness of the secrets/discussions sometimes; also, sometimes people are mean :(); fail_fandomanon (a fandom gossip comm, essentially, but also a good multifandom discussion place; very difficult to find friends, though, due to the anonymous posting requirement but it's very active and gives you plenty of reading material if you largely like to use social media to read interesting stuff you didn't know about before. Also, its "Ask meme" threads and its personal posts are great for getting anonymous help and advice -- like you know those newspaper advice columns or r/AITA or r/relationships? That kind of thing. You can be very detailed about an issue you're having in your personal life and people will give you advice. Even more so than fandomsecrets, "lightly bitchy and petty" is kind of the vibe of this place, and anonymous trolling is commonplace (one rule of the comm is "don't be THAT much of an asshole" which kind of gives you an idea of what baseline level of politeness we're talking about here). It's got a complicated set of norms that have developed over time (see, for example, the elaborate comment titles and the sheer number of acronyms flying around), which can make the learning curve for delurking pretty steep.

Weirdly, the type of communities in which I have made the longest-lasting LJ/DW friends have been "landcomms," a special kind of competitive fannish activity community. I think they were based on the House Cup of Harry Potter. At least, it's easiest to explain it that way: there are multiple "games"/"rounds" (each lasting 3 months, say) where all the participants are sorted into teams, and they earn points for their team by participating in various challenges and activities set up by the mods. I no longer have time to really be active in any of these but WOW they really help you make friends who you know pretty deeply because you're interacting and strategizing with your fellow teammates, and over time you get to know the regulars quite well. These communities often lock all their content and activities to members only, which means that it's a good sandbox to experiment with fannish creation because the audience is fairly small and a priori quite supportive. You can experiment and put your work out there in a way that isn't like "now everyone on the internet has access to this and can judge it." Anyway, I'm too old to participate in these, but apparently lands_of_magic is an active multifandom landcomm and might be worth checking out.

Some other random features of Dreamwidth that I like, and also the major weaknesses of Dreamwidth as a site:

Strength: You get multiple icons/userpics. It's kind of weird to me that social media sites have done away with the ability for users to have multiple userpics (I suppose it does make it easier to identify who is saying what!), but in any case, this is a weirdly unique feature that LJ/DW have -- you can upload multiple 100x100 little images and choose which one to accompany each post and comment you make (or just use your default icon). Icons on DW, to me, are like custom emoji on Discord. They are ways to be expressive through images without the need for words, they can be quite personal, you get some slots for free, but because a lot of people get REALLY into them, users are literally willing to pay money for more slots that they can use. Anyway, you get 15 icon slots by default, and there are a lot of users and communities dedicated to making icons that people can use. It's fun!

Strength: Dreamwidth has a very powerful and simple HTML editor. Weakness: I have never used Dreamwidth's rich text editor, and everything I hear from people who have used it suggests it is an unusuable eldritch horror. Cannot verify that experience, but even without using it, I am pretty confident that DW's "WYSIWYG" editing ("what you see is what you get" -- that is, however you format a post while drafting it, that's what it will look like to other people when posting) is extremely far behind other social media sites. If I were to post and format this post on Dreamwidth (and I will), I would be able to do a lot more with controlling how the bulletpoints look and are nested, and I could do things like create sections in the post that make it easy to navigate to specific sections, and I could do things like add tables and collapsible sections because I think Dreamwidth allows almost any HTML5 tag (more so than e.g. what AO3 allows). On the negative side, however, it is much harder to do things like arrange images in a photoset on Dreamwidth. In short, you WILL need some kind of HTML knowledge to do anything fancier than paragraphs of text (images, embeds, polls, bulleted lists, etc.). However, if text is all you're doing, it's a really nice editor. And for power users, HTML is a good skill to have and unlocks a lot of possibilities with your posts, and DW is one of the best interfaces for doing pared-down, simplified HTML editing I've ever used.

Strength: Some more on accessibility: So remember how I said that DW lets you control the way the site is displayed to you? This means you can heavily customize how your reading page and blog looks, what links and sidebar widgets are available and where they're placed on the page, etc. But you know, that kind of freedom can be dangerous. As you might know well from Tumblr, what about people with custom blog styles that are a horrendous viewing experience -- autoplay music, flashing gifs, low text-background contrast, color scheme that makes your eyes burn, etc.? Well, DW has thought about that. Whenever you get a link to a DW post or someone's DW blog and you don't like the style, you can just append ?style=site OR ?style=mine OR ?style=light to the URL and voila -- it's readable again. ?style=site will display the page in DW's standard style which is a light grey + red/pink highlights style that is designed to be easy on the eyes. ?style=mine will display the page in YOUR custom style, so if you've made tweaks to the site style to optimize your reading experience, you can now apply it everywhere you like. Finally, ?style=light displays the page with minimal styling so that it can be loaded quickly in situations where your connection is bad. All of these things allow you to have an optimal reading experience.

Strength: Polls. If you have a paid account, Dreamwidth lets you make polls. This is probably the number one reason why I have a paid DW account, to be honest, because polls are really useful for running communities and getting feedback. Like, when I mod communities and I want to get the opinion of members, I can post a poll, and my paid account lets me do this in any community as well as on my personal journal. I used to run a lot of fanwork contest type communities, and you can conduct voting pretty easily that gives each user one vote, which is hard to ensure through third-party voting mechanisms. The downside here is that the opposite is not possible -- you can't run a poll that is open to the general public. I believe all poll participants need to have a DW account in order to participate.

Weakness: Dreamwidth's image-posting capabilities are still quite weak. It is only relatively recently that Dreamwidth allowed you to upload images to the site at all. A free account gives you only 500 MB, which is enough if you want to post a graphic or a photo here and there but not a lot if you're posting e.g. your full set of vacation photos or gifsets or reams of screencaps or whatnot. The upload interface leaves much to be desired. It is very difficult to add images to posts -- you either need to use the rich text editor (which comes with its own set of challenges) or you need to be pretty comfortable with HTML and understanding what <img src=""> means. DW does provide some copy and pasteable HTML code to put your image into the HTML post editor, but yeah, putting an image in a post is not the click-and-drag experience that it is on most modern social media sites. When I want to add some images to a post, the process is like this: Open a new tab and go to the DW homepage. Click Create > Upload Images. Upload files. Make sure the privacy settings of the images match my post. Get each image embed code and go back to my other tab where I'm editing my post and paste it in. Repeat for all images. Yay. It is certainly not a simple experience.

Weakness: There is no reblog function. This can have some benefits: as mentioned, you own the only copy of your post -- if other people want to share it, they have to give people the URL to it. However, let me be very frank about the downsides: it means that Dreamwidth is not a low-effort content-sharing website like most social media sites are nowadays, which has two major ramifications: First, you cannot create an interesting blog simply by following interesting blogs and curating an interesting feed. I mean, I suppose you can kind of do this by collecting interesting links and posting them as a DW post every so often, but that's still very different from how modern social media works where you just directly share the interesting content and that IS your blog. What this means is that in order to have an interesting blog, YOU have to consciously craft/draft your own interesting content from time to time; you cannot just rely on encountering interesting content from other people. What THIS means is that your DW blog is inevitably going to be quite personal. This can be pretty intimidating for someone who is starting out. I remember my first LiveJournal post (which even 18 years later took me about 10 seconds to pull up on my laptop -- the archival functions of DW are AMAZING) was essentially me saying "Hm… well I got this LJ but I don't know what kind of things to use this thing for or how long I'm going to keep it…" Anyway, it's always very awkward starting up a DW blog because you can't just find some content you find really cool and just share it and people get to know you and your tastes and your interests that way. Nah, you're kind of thrown into the oversharing deep end here. You're going to have to personally write something if you want people to have something to read. Second, keeping a DW blog can be a non-trivial amount of effort. Like I mentioned, you can certainly use your blog to curate content, but it requires some amount of work and effort to do even that. You can't just scroll and click and bam, you've added some content to your blog.

Weakness: Dreamwidth is very lo-fi and text-based. I mentioned the difficulties of uploading images; I mentioned the lack of a share button. What Dreamwidth is geared toward is plain text posts. I recognize this is very not ideal -- where are the visual aids? The images to break up all the dry walls of text? The whole experience of being on Dreamwidth is doing a lot of reading. And a lot of writing. A LOT. Sometimes people just don't have time for that. I get it. I mean, you can choose how often and how much to write and how much of your reading page you want to read, but regardless of how frequently and for how long you choose to engage with the site, it is never going to be an easy scrolling, filling-a-three-minute-lull-in-the-middle-of-the-work-day sort of experience, IMO. The content can be very interesting but it's got a high barrier to entry.

Weakness: Content discovery is very difficult. I discussed this earlier. But Dreamwidth really doesn't do much to shove content in your face. It doesn't have recommendation algorithms. This can be good because it helps you curate your feed to content you enjoy and people you trust, so you rarely have to block people because they are irritating you. You can just not follow them or easily scroll by their posts (DW is very text-based and high barrier to entry, right, so it takes a lot of conscious effort to consume content; it's not the type of site where you can run across the worst opinion you've ever read in your life and by the time you realize what it is, you've consumed the whole post). Spammers also aren't really a thing. But it means that you really do need to build up an interesting set of people/communities to follow or there's nothing for you to read or DO on the site. It also means that people will not just stumble across YOUR posts unless you put forward effort to promote them somewhere (e.g. in an active relevant community, which, you know, may not exist). You're never going to get that dopamine hit of people liking and reblogging your stuff instantly after you post it. And even when you want to share something widely, it can be tricky trying to figure out whether that's possible at all. Strength: On the plus side, I suppose it really is like having a private little sandbox. Like you're over here going "vroom vroom" with your toy cars or whatever, and it's extremely unlikely you'll get some rando barging into your replies talking about how your car-playing is all WRONG and here's what you should do instead.

Weakness: Dreamwidth is "dead." I mean, you can still find plenty of people who are active on DW. I have a great, very active set of friends whose posts I enjoy reading (and they all post different sorts of things; I have enough friends that I can't actually read all the content I'm interested in, but I do try) and who regularly respond to my posts. I'm very happy there. Personal blogs are doing fine. But personal blogs are only one half of Dreamwidth -- the other half are communities (public spaces) and those are not doing so well in my experience. You have a couple of active islands I mentioned above, and if your fandoms are sufficiently big, you can probably find an active discussion comm for them. But if your fandoms are small or even if you're in a big fandom that just doesn't seem to have found a dedicated mod and a critical mass of active users interested in public discussions, then you're shit out of luck when it comes to public discussion venues on DW. Depending on your needs/interests, this might be fine, or it might be a dealbreaker. For me personally, as someone who was on LJ in its heyday, the lack of communities is a bit demoralizing. It's certainly quieter and it has this feel of there being a few towers of refuge in a barren landscape that people are flocking around. And like I said, communities help you make friends. And it's just a different way of interacting with people, which I value in a social media site, and I can't really meet that need on DW with the current size of its userbase.

Weakness: There is no ask system. There are DMs; sometimes people play askbox meme-style games in the comment of posts (someone posts a list of questions, people comment to select the ones they want the OP to answer, OP replies in the comment thread with their answers); and I suppose you could create a stickied post with anonymous comments enabled to act as your askbox, but there's really no equivalent to the big set of functionality that is the askbox system on Tumblr. There's no way to privately ask someone a question, and that question can then easily be published or replied to privately at the discretion of the blog owner. If you'd like to poke someone to check in with them, the only way to do that is with a DM or a comment posted on a random blog entry; there's not really an easy way to ask a question or propose some content to someone's blog with asks the way there is on Tumblr.

Anyway, I think I've covered the main things about using Dreamwidth. I always want more people to come talk to me on Dreamwidth because I feel like that site is the only place that facilitates people getting to know me both on a purely fannish level and on a very personal level (I know people can make the personal + fannish sharing combo work on Twitter and Tumblr, but having everything be out in public just really does not work for me). But I realize it's hard to just start using a site you're unfamiliar with, especially one like Dreamwidth that tends to have a bit of a learning curve and is generally out of step with the direction of modern social media. And especially when you don't have many friends there already, which is probably the case for most people. But it's a site I respect and trust a lot, and I think it facilitates deep, long-lasting friendships. More than anything, I think the main difference between DW and Tumblr is that Tumblr is mainly a site for sharing content with other people and reacting to it, while DW is more geared toward helping you organize your life and your thoughts. They have a lot of overlap in terms of the kind of personal and fannish musings and experiences that can be shared, though. Anyway, if you're interested in joining Dreamwidth but it's intimidating/confusing, please reach out! I have lots more recs for active communities depending on your interests, too!

(Probably the best way to do that is on the Dreamwidth version of this post.)