#and then making friends with as many of them as possible

[lilacstro]

★ruler of 3rd through houses: your highschool years★

long time no see!! I have recently started an instagram account, you can check it out if you please. I would post more exclusive things in the soon to be started group on Instagram :) lmk if you are sending a request since I do not want scammers or people with malicious intents on there :)

Send post suggestions if you like !! I really do not know why have I not started with Vedic astrology series yet but the thing is, I find it soooo vast that putting it into readable posts becomes so hard idk and I can't come up with topics. I wanted to start with dasha systems and divisional charts but I could not fathom where to start honestly idk. Maybe I have gone more used to making posts through the tropical system.

Paid readings open!!

Today we will see your highschool years through astrology and this may explain why you *were* or *are* a certain way. The planets in your 3rd do add an extra infulence without doubt, but to keep this post more inclusive I would not go over that. However, lmk if you want to see that and I may edit this post. PS: Though there can indicators of things like bullying and being bullied and all other that kinda stuff, I wont be mentioning that here :)) take it as a light post :) and if someone has incidents from school they would love to write, would love it too!!

☆Ruler of 3rd in 1st: Ah very likely to be the "popular" kid, or someone I may say who was heavily involved and present in school. Maybe school was big on playing a major role to your personality development and you had some life altering events in school. You could have drawn attention to yourself as well, or maybe you wanted to be seen. Very easily could have taken the roles of monitors and club leaders etc.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 2nd: Very possible that you were the kind of person who was not very withdrawn yet not quite present. Maybe you were quite reserved in who you talked to during school, but not that you were a loner. You could very well be someone who people found talented in some specific area, especially in things like debate or arts and singing. People could have secretly wanted to befriend you. Very possible that you "seemed" rich or were focused on earning money and it showed in school. Often seen people could admire you from afar, or maybe even crush on you and all that stuff.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 3rd: School could have been an important for you again. Very possible that you and your siblings went to the same school. Apart from this, you again could be someone who is rather smart and studious or is considered smart at the very least. Could have been really outgoing and talkative. Now it is indeed 200% possible that you could be introverted, but as you could grow in comfort, you could become someone who would speak and get along with most people.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 4th: Could have been homeschooled or maybe even your mother taught at the same school, or maybe you did not change too many schools as such and even possible that you studied in a place where you were born or near your home. Now, the ruling planet here actually decides how you could have acted here, which is usually a mix of both extrovertedness and introvertedness. It is possible that school was either very comfortable to you, or maybe you never felt comfortable in school at all, no in between. Not a big friend group, but probably a few real friends that you could have connected to even after school.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 5th: Could be someone who was very involved in extra curriculars and stuff. Great possibility of having dated people in school or appearing attractive to others, them having crushes on you or maybe both honestly. You could actually be someone who very well flunked or I may say rather did not take their classes as seriously. Could be someone who people reminisce about when they look back to their time in high school. A good possibility of being popular or seemingly charming! You could have enjoyed your time in school.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 6th: You could very well be someone who probably faced some difficulties to attend school I feel. Apart from this, you could be someone who no matter what they really do, are hardworking and took school seriously. Hard working, reliable kind of person. It is possible that people in your school asked you for help or favors and stuff quite often. Very possible to have had a mundane school life for many many reasons, maybe nothing too "exciting" and maybe school really did not cater too much excitement, stories or spice in your life.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 7th: The kind of person who talks to everyone, or atleast "knows" everyone and vice versa. People could often come up to you, and you could strike conversations just like that. The kind of person who would always be found in some kind of friend group, and friends with everyone, a large friend group. Some of you could even have found your spouse from school!! No matter if you were extroverted or introverted, you could have had good social skills regardless. Your teachers could actually know you or like you.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 8th: Could be someone who saw breaks and interruptions and hardships to have continues their education. Aloof, introverted and maybe a desire to hide, and not really be seen. The people who are wise beyond their age in school and try to avoid people, especially the ones who do not align with them truly. To be honest, your flairs and attitude and experience in and towards school could see a lot of shifts, maybe you were extroverted and then you became introverted and then extroverted again. Maybe you were someone who had no friends but then had too many friends etc. The end time of school could be important. Not hanging out in big groups at being by yourself mostly.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 9th: Could be someone who attended high school abroad or exchange programs etc or desired to go to college abroad. Probably very aware and serious about moving to university after school. Good at studying and smart, even if you may not intentionally spend time studying, you could be very very good at acing your school comparatively. Someone who was wise, and friendly and had a pleasant time in school, and a good and happy learning experience overall. Friendly, and could have had different kind of friends I must say.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 10th: Ah, outgoing people. Someone who is seen and known by people in school, well liked by most. Even if you are introverted as such, which is unlikely, people could notice you and maybe heard about you or seen you atleast once sometime. Could be someone who hangs out in big groups. Someone whose presence is known by most and many people in school for whatever reasons that may be. Popular people. Teachers could be important, maybe they noticed you, or maybe you pay great attention to them or the relationship is sour all together. The kind of people who are assigned roles and leads in clubs and events, etc. despite of not being the responsible person for that job.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 11th: Friends were important and you made quite a few friends in school yourself. Even if you were not a social person, you still could have found friends, and friend groups. People could feel easy around you, someone who is non judgemental and is friends with everyone, even the seemingly new kids. Always busy with some kind of event or activity or hanging out with friends probably even after school. Someone who probably made others aware about the drama and tea going on, or discussing internet, controversies etc.

☆Ruler of 3rd in 12th: Very possible that you completed your education overseas or you were homeschooled or may be you did not attend school too much. Someone who probably is uncomfortable with attention on themselves, and likes to seemingly merge into the background somehow, even if they may desire to have a complete experience of their surroundings. Zoning out in school often, being aloof by nature or choice, in your own world. Probably despising school or waiting for it to end. On a good note, whatever relationships you formed in school or experiences you had, could have helped you evolve, and grow out of your comfort zone and the bubble you could have kept yourself in, for maybe reasons like "I can't fit in".

take care, xoxo~

[nova-is-a-writer-now]

Highway Heat

Summary: Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and the trucker you flag down offers more than just roadside assistance.

A/N: Lord oh lord… I tried to be good i swear, i really tried to behave. The thing is my sweet beta reader @hautecouture02 requested a little roadside encounter one shot with Joel, specifically asking for FLUFF, and i swear on everything holy I tried my best to keep it PG… but sometimes things don’t go as I planned. So here, take this absolute filth of a one shot that’s little more than PWOP. ENJOY!!!!

Warnings: As previously stated, this is pretty much PWOP, Trucker!Joel i know nothing about trucks lol, maybe some dub!con at first but the internal dialogue shows hella consent, groping, fingering, a bit of praise and a bit of degradation, pet names like so many of them im not gonna list them all almost too many pet names if you believe in such a thing, grinding, oral male receiving, deep throating

Masterlist

You’re a good person—hell, a great person even. You give your spare change to homeless people, you donate to the puppy shelter every once in a while, you hold your friend’s hair back when they’re throwing up in the back of the club. You’re definitely not the type of person who deserves to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, sweating buckets despite wearing nothing but a spaghetti strap tank and the tiniest pair of shorts you own. This feels like some kind of cosmic punishment.

It is, undoubtedly, the worst possible time for your car to stop working. You’d been putting off the usual checkups on your car for months, knowing full well it was overdue for an oil change, a tire rotation—or whatever men who know their way around a toolbox always say. Your ex used to handle all of that for you, always acting like it was his job to make sure your car ran smoothly. He was that kind of guy who would go out of his way to make your life easier—didn’t mean he was above cheating though.

So now, you’re stuck in your geriatric Honda Civic, the AC busted and the engine refusing to start.

After a few minutes of trying to will it back to life, it’s clear you’re stranded.

You step out of the car, and the heat hits you like a goddamn slap to the face. The road’s deserted, no signs of life for miles, and of course, your phone has no signal. Perfect. Just fucking perfect. You glance down the road, hoping for a miracle, when you spot the rough outline of a truck—a big one, maybe a sixteen-wheeler—coming up in the distance.

Relief washes over you for about two seconds before your brain kicks in, running through every horror movie scenario. But it’s not like you’ve got a buffet of options, so you throw up your hand, waving the truck down as it rolls closer.

It’s a beat-up old thing, paint chipped and covered in dust, but it comes to a slow stop right behind your car. The door creaks open, and out steps a man.

He’s tall, broad, with a face lined with age and tan from long days under the sun. The net cap he wears lets a few of his longer dark curls peek out, the front pieces overpowered by graying hair. He sports a faded plaid shirt and jeans, a pair of well-worn boots kicking up dust as he steps toward you. His dark, intense eyes size you up like you’re part of the landscape he’s used to navigating.

“You alright there, sweetheart?” His voice is deep and gravelly, but the drawl is the star of the show, thick and sweet like honey.

You clear your throat, trying to keep your frustration in check. “Car broke down. Won’t start. No service either.”

He nods slowly, like this is exactly the kind of situation he expects to find out here. “Well, good thing I’m passin’ through.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes a little at that, but desperation makes you bite your tongue. “Think you could take a look?”

He stares at you for a moment, long enough that you wonder if he’s going to offer any help at all. But then he lets out a low sigh, scratches the back of his neck, and walks over to your car, popping the hood like it’s second nature.

For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of him tinkering under the hood, the occasional grunt or muttered curse as he checks things out. You stand there awkwardly, feeling the heat bearing down on you, watching as beads of sweat gather at the back of his neck.

Finally, he steps back, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Shit’s runnin’ on fumes. When’s the last time you had it serviced?””

You shift, feeling stupid. “A while. My ex used to handle it, and, uh… I’ve been busy.”

He gives you a look, something between amusement and pity, before shaking his head. He leans against the car, arms crossed. “I can tow you to a shop in the next town, but it gon’ be a ride.”

You blink up at him, surprised at his offer. “You don’t mind?”

“Nah,” he says, with a shrug, “I’m headin’ that way anyway.”

He moves back to his truck, grabbing a few chains and a tow hitch from the back. Within minutes, he’s hooking up your beat-up Honda Civic to the rear of his truck, working with the ease of someone who’s done this a hundred times before.

“You sure this is safe?” you ask, watching him as he tightens the last chain.

“As safe as it’s gonna get,” he replies with a shrug, brushing the dust from his hands. “Ain’t no mechanic shop out here, so this’ll do ‘til we get to the next town.”

You hesitate, then eye him. “You’re not gonna, like, chop me up and throw me in a ditch, are you?”

He chuckles at that, a nice gravely sound. “If I was, don’t think I’d tell ya, sugar. But no, I ain’t in the business of chopping people up.”

You look at him for a bit longer before sighing. “Fuck it, let’s go.”

He turns, heading back to his truck, his broad back facing you and making it a hell of a lot harder to concentrate

“Name’s Joel, by the way,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder as he opens the passenger door for you.

“Thanks, Joel,” you say, stepping up into the truck’s cab, the cool air from his AC hitting you like a blessing. Maybe your luck hasn’t run out just yet.

You sink back into the seat as he climbs up on his side of the cab, letting the icy air wash over you. There’s something else prickling at your senses though—something that has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s him.

Joel’s glances are obvious, a little too long, lingering like he’s sizing you up. Normally, it’d make you roll your eyes, maybe even tell him off. Old guy like him eyeing you up is nothing you’re unfamiliar with. But today? With the way your body feels sticky and tired, and the way the breakup has left you all out of sorts… you’re almost enjoying it.

You’ve been craving attention and the shitty one night stands with guys from dating apps have done nothing to satiate that need. It’s been months since anyone has touched you and that rational part of your brain that would be yelling at you to be aware of the sleazy old trucker who just picked you off of the side of the road is sounding real quiet right now.

“So…” His voice pulls you from your thoughts as he shifts in his seat, resting one hand lazily on the wheel. “Where you headed?”

You hesitate, eyes on the road ahead. “Just… trying to get home.”

He hums, slow and deliberate. “Home, huh? Got anyone waitin’ on you there? Boyfriend?”

The word slices through you, sharper than you expected. You tighten your jaw, glancing out the window. “No. Not anymore.”

Joel makes a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. “Well, ain’t that a shame. Pretty thing like you, all alone.”

You should hate the way he says it, the way his eyes flicker toward you like he’s just waiting for an opening. But instead, there’s a strange warmth pooling in your stomach, your pulse picking up in a way you’re not proud of. You shift in your seat, crossing your legs like it’ll somehow tamp down the growing tension in your body. He doesn’t miss it, his smirk growing a little wider.

“That line work on most girls?” you quip, trying to keep things light.

Joel chuckles, the sound low and dangerous. “Depends on the girl. But you look a little… flustered.”

Your cheeks heat up, and it’s not just the sun this time. “I’m not flustered.”

“Sure about that, darlin’?”

You glare at the open road, biting your lip as you try to ignore the way his words are messing with your head—and your body. It’s been way too long since anyone’s looked at you like this. Really looked at you.

The silence stretches out as the truck rumbles along the deserted road. You try to focus on anything but the tension in the air and find it’s impossible. His presence feels inescapable, it fills the cab wrapping around you, pressing down on every nerve.

“You never told me,” Joel says after a while, breaking the quiet. “Where’s home?”

“Texas,” you say quietly, your voice a little steadier now. “But I’m not in any rush to get back.”

“Family trouble?” he asks, his eyes flicking toward you again.

“Something like that,” you mutter. “It’s complicated.”

He hums in response. “Don’t I know it.”

You shift in your seat, crossing your legs, catching Joel watching you out of the corner of his eye. His gaze lingers a little too long on your bare thighs, and there’s a flicker of something dark passing over his face, but he says nothing.

You want to ignore it—God, you should ignore it—especially since you’re stuck with him for a while longer. But the rising heat in your body and the quickening pulse beneath your skin make it hard to think straight, harder still to make good decisions.

So you bite.

“You gonna keep staring, or is this part of your charm routine?” You cock a brow, trying to ignore the way warmth crawls up your neck.

A slow smirk curls at his lips, but he doesn’t look away. If anything, he leans in closer, his hand resting just near your leg, making the air between you buzz. “You think I’m layin’ it on too thick?”

“Little bit,” you quip back, though your voice betrays you with how soft it comes out. You bite your lip, trying to stay sharp, but his eyes flick down to the movement, and the pulsing need low in your stomach tightens. “It’s not working, though.”

His smirk widens, like he’s enjoying this far too much. “Funny. Seems to me it’s workin’ just fine.”

You roll your eyes, but you can’t hide the way your heart races when he shifts closer, his fingers brushing against your leg. The touch is light, almost casual, but it’s enough to send a shiver racing up your spine, your breath catching in your throat.

“You can roll your eyes all you want, doll. It don’t change the fact I can see what you need, clear as day,” he purrs, his voice dropping lower.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” you snap back, though your words lack the heat you want them to have.

“Little bit of attention.”

He reads you too well. It drives you insane. “I don’t need anything from you. Just get me where I need to go.”

A quiet chuckle rumbles from his chest. “That so? ’Cause the way you’ve been shiftin’ in that seat says otherwise.”

You bristle at his words, but the truth sticks like a thorn. There’s a reason you haven’t told him to stop, a reason you haven’t shut this down. You’re tired, frustrated, and the way his eyes keep grazing over you… you can’t stop wondering how easy it’d be to let him pull you under, to let him take all your worries away.

“You’re losing it, old man,” you shoot back, even though you know it’s a losing game. He sees right through you, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna make it easy.

“Am I?” he purrs, his hand sliding up to rest fully on your thigh. “So, you don’t want me touching you like this, darlin’?”

The way he says it—slow, deliberate, laced with that sweet, thick accent—it’s all innocence, even though everything about it screams otherwise. You know you’ll be hearing that “darlin’” in your head later, when you’re playing with yourself.

You smirk, giving him a little more rope. “I didn’t say that.”

He hums, eyes flicking between the road and your legs. “And I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t say a word if I moved my hand higher, would you?”

Your legs part just slightly, almost like an instinct. Barely noticeable to anyone else. But not to Joel.

“Look at you,” he drawls, a shit-eating smirk spreading across his lips. “Already makin’ it easier for me.”

You’re about to fire back, ready to keep this banter rolling, when his fingers slide higher. A soft sigh escapes your lips before you can stop it.

“You ready to stop actin’ up, or we still playin’ cat and mouse, pretty girl?” His eyes lock on yours, dark and unwavering.

Your pulse quickens at the challenge in his voice, your breath catching in your throat. His fingers are still on your thigh, warm and rough, and it’s messing with your head. You know you should stop this now, make him pull his hand back, but you’re not sure if that’s what you want.

“I’m not acting up,” you murmur, trying to hold on to some sense of control, even though his touch is making that damn near impossible.

His grin widens, like he’s got you exactly where he wants you. “Mhm, sure you ain’t.”

You glare at him, but it’s weak. Pathetic, really, and the worst part is he knows it. He knows how to get under your skin even though he has known you for half an hour, knows exactly what buttons to push to unravel you just enough to keep you hanging on.

“I mean it,” you snap, though your voice wavers. His hand shifts slightly on your thigh, fingers curling just enough to make your stomach twist into knots.

“I wanna believe you,” His voice is low, a quiet rumble that vibrates through you, all the way down to where you’re aching for him to touch you. He leans in a little more, so close now that you can feel the heat radiating off him, smell that familiar scent of worn leather and something dark and intoxicating. “But you keep lettin’ me touch you. Kinda sends a different message, don’t you think?”

Your heart’s pounding in your chest, the steady rhythm of it loud in your ears. You don’t know how to answer, don’t know if you want to answer. Every rational thought in your head is telling you to stop, but your body isn’t listening.

Instead, you shift slightly, your leg pressing into his hand, just enough to encourage him to keep going. His eyes darken, and a slow, dangerous smile tugs at his lips.

“Thought so,” he mutters, and then his fingers start to move again, sliding higher, testing the boundaries you haven’t set.

You bite your lip, trying to hold back the sigh that’s clawing its way up your throat, but it slips through anyway. He hears it, of course he does, and the satisfied gleam in his eyes makes your face flush with heat.

“You wanna tell me to stop, now’s your chance,” he murmurs, his voice soft but carrying an edge of challenge, like he knows damn well you’re not going to.

His gaze shifts between the road and you and it almost seems like every time those eyes are back on you they become darker.

You glance at him, your heart in your throat, and there’s that flicker of hesitation—you should say something, should stop this before it goes any further—but the way his fingers are brushing higher, dangerously close to the ache between your legs, makes it impossible to think straight.

So you just meet his gaze, and you don’t say a word.

His smirk grows, and his hand drifts even higher. “Good girl.” This time he fully gropes your thigh, groaning like he’s been waiting to unleash this. “You wanna take these off for me, sweetheart? Let me give you as much attention as you want.”

He must have some psychic hold on you because you follow his instructions with no hesitation this time. Your fingers eagerly unbotton your shorts and pull the zipper down, lifting your hips to shimmy them down.

He looks at you for a lot longe than he should taking into account he’s currently driving a beast of a vehicle. “Lord above… you’re a sight and a half, darlin’”

He goes back to massaging your thigh, making circles with his thick fingers, going each time higher. Once he reaches your panties he stops and just rests his hand there, right at the edge of where you want him most. His fingers teasingly brush the fabric, enough to make you gasp, but he doesn’t go any further.

“You’re gonna have to ask for it,” he rasps, his voice thick with something darker now. “Tell me what you want, pretty girl.”

His words are like a key turning in a lock, and your resistance crumbles. You can’t deny it anymore, not when his hand is right there, so close to what you need, your entire body burning up under his touch.

“Joel…” you whisper, your voice almost pleading now, barely more than a breath.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, his hand pressing a little more firmly, his fingers tracing along the outline of your heat through the fabric. “That’s what I wanna hear.”

Your breath stutters, and your hips shift on their own, pressing into his hand. You’re barely hanging on, the tension between you two crackling like a live wire, but he’s still holding back, waiting for you to give in completely.

“Please…” you finally manage, the word spilling out before you can stop it. It’s humiliating and liberating all at once.

“Please what?”

You let out the shadow of a moan. “Please touch me.”

Joel’s hand slips under the fabric, his fingers finally finding your core, and the groan that escapes him sends a shockwave of heat straight to your core. “Good girl,” he breathes, his voice like gravel as his fingers start to move in slow, torturous circles.

Your head falls back against the seat, a whimper escaping your lips as he finally gives you what you’ve been craving. “Jesus, Joel…”

“Feels good, huh?” he rasps, his eyes flicking from the road to you, watching the way your body reacts to every touch, every motion of his hand. “Told you I know exactly what you need, baby.”

You’re melting under his touch, your body humming with the pressure of his fingers moving against you, his voice guiding you deeper into the haze of pleasure. You’re not even sure what’s more intoxicating—the way he’s touching you or the way he’s talking to you, that low, commanding tone unraveling you completely.

“That’s it, sweetness, grind on my fingers, make that little pussy feel good” Joel growls, having a harder time keeping his eyes on the road now.

“Fuck… that feels you good da-“ you stop yourself before you’re able to finish the word. Your ex didn’t like you calling him that, so you usually kept that particular kink under wraps, but something about Joel is making it surface back up.

He looks up at you, pupils blown out. “Say it… say wha you wanna say baby.”

You lose all restraint and moan loudly. “It feels so good, daddy.”

“That’s right, babygirl.” He moans “Daddy’s fingers make your pretty cunt fucking drip don’t they?”

His words send a wave of pleasure through your body, a mixture of shame and intense arousal surging in your chest. You’re too far gone to stop now, letting the haze of lust pull you under completely.

“Yes,” you whisper, the word slipping out like a confession. “So fucking wet.”

Joel’s fingers move faster, rough and skilled, coaxing you into a rhythm that has you arching your back against the seat. His other hand grips the wheel tight, knuckles white, and you can tell he’s barely hanging onto his self-control, but that only makes it hotter.

“Jesus, you’re a fuckin’ dream,” he growls, voice thick with desire. “Been wantin’ to ruin you since the minute you sat your pretty ass in this truck.”

The vulgarity, the way he talks to you—it should feel wrong, but instead, it’s like gasoline thrown on the fire already burning inside you. You grind down harder on his fingers, chasing the high he’s offering, the tension building fast in your core.

You glance over at him, his jaw tight, eyes darting between the road and you, and there’s something so filthy about the way he’s trying to keep it together while driving, the way his control is slipping. You want to push him, make him lose it completely.

“You’re losing it too,” you pant, breathless, pushing your hips into his hand. “Can’t even keep your eyes on the road, can you?”

His gaze snaps to yours, dark and predatory. “Careful. Keep talkin’ like that, and I’ll pull this truck over.”

The threat in his voice makes you shiver, heat pooling low in your belly. You’re right on the edge, your body strung tight as a bow, every nerve lit up under his touch.

“Do it,” you challenge, voice breathless and wrecked.

Joel’s eyes flash with something dangerous, his hand gripping your thigh so hard it almost hurts. Without another word, he swerves the truck off the road, gravel crunching under the tires as he pulls into a secluded spot off the highway.

Your heart is pounding, adrenaline mixing with the arousal as he throws the truck into park and turns to face you fully. The look in his eyes is feral, like he’s done holding back, and you brace yourself for what’s coming next.

“Such a little attention whore, baby,” he growls, unbuckling his seatbelt with one hand, the other still teasing you between your legs. “I’m all yours now.”

In one swift motion, he pulls you onto his lap, your thighs straddling his hips, the weight of his hard length pressing against you through his jeans. He is big, a lot bigger than you expected and it makes your mouth water,almost like your body is showing you how badly you need him in a million and one ways.

His hands grip your hips possessively, eyes locking with yours as if daring you to make the next move.

You don’t hesitate. You grind down on him, both of you letting out low moans at the contact. The friction sends sparks flying up your spine, and you can already tell this is about to be the kind of reckless, dirty, no-going-back encounter you’ve both been craving.

Joel’s hands slide up your back, fisting in your hair as he pulls you down to feast on your neck. His lips trail down, biting at the sensitive skin there, and it’s too much, too intense. You feel like you’re going to combust right here in his arms.

“You taste so fuckin’ good,” he mutters against your skin, one hand slipping between you to push your panties aside, his fingers slipping through your slick heat again. “Filthy little slut, letting a stranger put his fingers inside you. Gonna make you come so hard you forget your own name, pretty girl.”

Your hips buck against him, the promise of release so close you can taste it. “Fuck, Joel, please…”

“Try again. You know better.” his tone is firm and commanding, all the previous playfulness gone.

“Please daddy, let me come”

“That’s it,” he groans, his thumb circling your clit with just the right amount of pressure, pushing you right to the edge. “Come for me, darlin’. Let me feel this tight little whole clench on my fingers.”

The way he says it with such authority, has you unraveling in his lap, your entire body trembling as you come hard against his hand. Your vision goes white, pleasure crashing over you in waves as you grip his shoulders, nails digging into his skin.

Joel watches you, his eyes hooded and hungry, soaking in every second of your release. He doesn’t stop moving his fingers until you’re shaking from the aftershocks, your body limp and boneless against him.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, his voice low and satisfied as he finally pulls his hand away, bringing his fingers to his lips to taste you. “Tastes even better than I imagined.”

You’re still catching your breath, head buzzing from the intensity, but the way his hardness presses against you makes it clear you’re far from done. It’s not like those other times when finishing a guy felt like an obligation, when the effort barely felt worth it because they didn’t take the time to get you there first. But Joel? Joel made you come so hard you can’t help but want to return the favor. It’s not a chore—it’s something you crave.

“My turn,” you murmur, fingers already working at the button of his jeans.

His grip tightens on your hips, eyes darkening as he watches your hands move, but there’s a flicker of restraint. “Don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart. Can’t have this beast of a truck just parked in the middle of the road.”

You shift back onto your own seat, lifting your leg off his lap to give yourself the space you need. The desire to make him feel just as wrecked as you burns in your chest, so you lean down, your gaze steady on his as your fingers trail lower.

“You can drive,” you say, voice low, teasing. “I’m not stopping you.”

Joel’s eyes flash with something dangerous, his jaw ticking like he’s fighting with himself. For a second, you think he’s going to tell you to stop, but then he huffs out a breath, shaking his head with a low chuckle. “You’re trouble.”

You smile up at him as you feel him start the engine again, your hand slipping lower, teasing him through his jeans.

Joel’s breath hitches as your fingers brush against him, a low growl vibrating in his chest. His hand tightens on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white as he tries to focus on the road, but you can tell he’s losing the battle.

His jaw clenches, a muscle ticking in his cheek as he tries to keep his cool, but you can see right through it. The way his body is responding to your touch, the way he’s barely holding it together, it only spurs you on.

You undo his jeans and pull the zipper down, feeling the heat radiating off him. His breath stutters, and his hand slips to grip the side of the seat, trying to ground himself as you free him from the confines of his jeans.

You wrap your hand around him, feeling how hard he is, how thick, and the groan that escapes his lips sends a thrill through you. “Fuck,” he breathes, eyes flicking between the road and you, his control slipping more by the second.

You lower your head, your lips grazing his tip, and Joel’s entire body tenses. His hips buck up, instinctively searching for more, and you can’t help but smirk as you take him deeper into your mouth.

“Holy shit,” he groans, his voice rough and ragged, his hand instinctively flying to the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair. “You’re gonna get us both killed.”

But even as he says it, there’s no hint of him wanting you to stop. He keeps urging you on in slow, measured strokes. The tension in him is palpable, and you can feel the way his control is fraying with every flick of your tongue, every inch you take him deeper.

His breathing grows ragged, and he glances down at you, eyes dark with heat and disbelief. “You’re so pretty with a fat cock stuffed in your mouth baby, look at you ”

You hum around him, the vibration making his hips jerk again, and the low groan that rips from his throat sends a fresh wave of adrenaline coursing through you. He’s unraveling, right in front of you, and you’re loving every second of it.

You pick up the pace, your hand working him in tandem with your mouth, and Joel’s growl turns guttural, his grip on the wheel tightening. “Right there, darlin’ girl, don’t stop…” he hisses, head tipping back slightly as his hips move in time with your rhythm, chasing the release that’s so damn close.

His eyes flick between the road and you, pupils blown, struggling to stay on course even as his focus is being torn apart by you.

“Fuck, baby… I’m not gonna last if you keep—” He cuts himself off with a harsh groan, his hips bucking again, muscles taut and trembling as he loses the last shred of his composure. He’s completely at your mercy now, and it’s making him wild, his control slipping fast.

You don’t let up, your hand dropping lower to play with his balls, and he’s right on the edge, teetering dangerously close. His breath comes in ragged bursts, and his body tightens under you, his hips jerking harder, more desperate now.

“Where do you want it, baby?”

Instead of answering you take him deeper down your throat, your nose burrowing in the dark curls at the base of his cock, his smell so musky and intoxicating it makes you dizzy.

“Shit, shit—” Joel’s voice is a strangled growl, and then you feel him pulse in your mouth, a low, guttural moan tearing from his throat as he finally comes undone. He’s barely holding onto the wheel, the truck swerving just enough to make your heart race, but it’s clear he’s past caring. He spills hot and hard into your mouth, the sound of his release drowned out by the pounding of your own pulse in your ears.

You keep going, milking him for every last bit, until he’s trembling beneath you, his breathing ragged and uneven. When you finally pull away, he’s still gripping the steering wheel like it’s the only thing anchoring him to reality.

“Holy fuck,” he mutters, his voice rough and wrecked. His eyes flick down to you, wild and wide, before darting back to the road. He lets out a breathless, incredulous laugh, shaking his head. ���Best hitchhiker I’ve ever picked up, that’s for damn sure.”

As if on cue, the truck finally pulls into the shop, the hum of the engine fading, the weight of what just happened still hung thick between you two. Joel cuts the ignition, his hand lingering on the key for a beat too long, like he wasn’t quite ready to step back into reality. He realizes his now soft cock is still out and starts to zip himself back up.

You try to gather yourself, smoothing your clothes and brushing a hand through your hair as if it’d erase everything that had gone down on that highway. You can tell it’s gonna stick with you for a good while longer though.

Joel clears his throat, glancing over at you with a look that was somehow both satisfied and conflicted. "Well, we’re here," he mutters, but his hand was already fishing in his back pocket for something. "Here." He hands you a crumpled business card, his name scrawled across it with a number underneath. "In case you run into any more car trouble or, y'know... anything else."

The corner of his mouth twitches, like he knows damn well this had nothing to do with the rugged old thing and everything to do with the heat still simmering between you. You take the card, trying to hide the smirk tugging at your lips.

"Thanks," you reply, pocketing it casually, though the way your heart raced gave you away. "For… you know, all of it."

He just gives you that signature look of his—half-smirk, half-smolder—and with that, you slide out of the truck, legs still feeling like jelly as you walked away. You didn't even need to turn around to know his eyes were glued to your retreating figure.

[lovemybluebully]

It's For Science

This is just a little something I scrounged together, inspired by a post by @snugglyfluffle 😊

https://www.tumblr.com/snugglyfluffle/761535277842022400/since-logan-has-a-shorter-waist-then-wade-does-do?source=share

Damn, writer's block has been a biiiiiitch. I wrote a lot of this in the later hours of the night after my long workdays so sorry if it's nothing spectacular, or if there's any spelling/grammatical errors. 

Wade gets it into his head that maybe not all humans have the same number of rib bones. His logic being that since Logan has a shorter body then he may be an exception. Unfortunately for Logan this is far too ticklish of an experiment for him to bear.

A small bit of ticklish!deadpool at the end too. 😉

Warnings for foul language and other Deadpool-type stuff.

"Deadpool and Wolverine"-verse

M/M Tickle Fic

Word Count: 4,234

"The skeletal system is comprised of bones that give structure to the body and work with the muscles and joints to provide movement. The human body contains 206 bones….," the certified doctor on the television explained as he gestured to a replica model human skeleton while Wade sat watching on the couch.

"207 if I'm watching Gossip Girl, hehehe. Shit, I already made that joke in the movie. Well it's still true anyhow, am I right?" Wade snorted a laugh as he turned from his position on the couch with his hand up for a high-five, but found his roommate leaned back in the couch with his eyes closed and his hands on his lap.

It had been a nice lazy afternoon for the two of them and Logan had KO'ed quite a few beers as the monotone voice of the television host was making him doze off.

"Pssht! Old man can't stay awake for five minutes," Wade waved him off as he turned back to the tv.

"The ribcage has an important job in providing protection to some of the most vital organs being the lungs and the heart. There are 12 ribs on each side, making 24 in total…"

The merc blinked in curiosity as he sat up tall and now slowly began to feel up each side of his body to count the ribs within, having to dig in pretty thoroughly to get through the muscle.

"Hmm I'm only feeling 20 here….," he rechecked to be sure, finding all the ones leading up to his collarbone.

"The 11th and 12th pair of ribs are called 'floating ribs' because unlike all the others they are not attached to the sternum but are still attached to the backbone….," the doctor went on as he pointed to two pairs of ribs on the back area of the skeleton.

Wade's hands wound around to his lower back and found the missing pairs right where the doctor said they'd be.

"Huh. What do you know, he's right. I mean, duh!" He bopped himself on the forehead, "Of course he's right. He's a fucking doctor. Hey Wolvie, you're missing some interesting stuff here."

"Mmph," Logan only grunted in response, not even hearing what Wade had actually said as he started to drift further into fully passing out.

Wade then had a thought pop into his mind as he looked over at his near-comatose friend. Logan's torso was a lot shorter than his own so he wondered if it was true that all humans had the same number of ribs. The doc hadn't specified if it was possible to have less and Wade's hyper mind needed an answer right away.

"Hmm. I suppose I could just Google it to find out for sure, but nah! I prefer to do my own field study. Plus you all need a fun little fic to read, and I know Logan won't mind if it tickles just a teensy little bit. Commence Operation How-Many-Ribs-Does-A-Wolverine-Have."

He slid over and wiggled his fingers up in the air before placing them on the bottom of Logan's ribcage, pressing in gently to feel the first two ribs as the man immediately jumped and blinked his eyes open in a groggy daze.

"Whatistha….Wade? What-heheh-What're you doin'?" He batted at Wade's hands with very little accuracy from being half-asleep, giggles escaping him as the fingers moved up to the next set of ribs.

"Well if you had stayed awake Peanut, you would have seen this educational program I've been watching about the human body. They say there are 24 ribs in a human, but I was curious if it applied to all body heights. Being that you're a little shorter than me I wanted to see if you had the same," Wade explained his current lunacy as Logan started to wake up a little more though it took him a moment to really process everything that had been said.

"Huh? The fuck are ya-eheheheehee-Ribs? Course I do, dipshihihit. Now stohahahop it," he was unsuccessful in trying to block out Wade's hands as they continued up his sides.

"I sure will. Once I have verified the facts. Though I'm pretty sure this would go a lot quicker if you would just hold still," Wade smirked big time, knowing there was absolutely no way Logan could ever stay still for something like this when his torso was so ridiculously sensitive, "Okay looks like that's number 5…..and oh, there's 6…."

"How abohohout I c-count your teeheeheeheeth after I knohohock 'em outta your fuhuhuhucking head?" Logan chuckled hard, taking a half-hearted and easily dodge-able swing with his fist towards Wade.

"Don't threaten me with a good time, muffin cakes. Come on, this is a fun game. At least smile, would ya?" Wade teased, looking down at his friend while increasing the speed that his fingers wiggled around against his sides.

The X-man's grin had lit up his normally stoic face while he made many attempts to shove Wade's arms away, but those nimble fingers were practically glued to his sides.

"Of ahahahall the stuhuhuhupid-Eeeheheheheheheh! Stahahahap, ya mohohohoron! Thehehehey're all thehehehere!" Logan was giggling uncontrollably and sinking back into the couch cushions, trying to will his body to phase through and escape but there was only so much give that he was allowed.

Truthfully after the relaxing day he'd had and the keg of beer in his belly he found that he wasn't too bothered about Wade waking him up with his dumb experiment.

"How can I be certain? Got any proof? Any reliable witnesses to corroborate your case? Hmm? Perhaps you have an x-ray of your body to show me? A scientific essay conducted by a world renowned researcher? Any of those would be acceptable."

Logan obviously could only shake his head.

"N-Nohohohohoo, buhut I can cuhuhut myself opehehehen and-ahahahahaa-you cahahahan loohoohook for yoursehehehelf!" He released one claw from his hand as Wade gasped in horror and quickly grabbed his wrist to pin it to the couch with his knee.

"Ohhh no you don't. You're crazy if you think I'm gonna allow my precious little badger to cause himself any harm. Besides my method is way less messy. Just wish I knew why you find it to be so funny," he stated, playing dumb as Logan attempted to growl through his giggles, though the intimidation factor was completely lost.

"Yohohohou f-fucking knohow why I'm lahahahahaughin', ya ihihihihidiot!" He retracted the sharp blade back into his body, trying to squirm free, "Now gehehehet outta thehehehere, ohohor ehehehelse!"

The threats were in full effect, but the claws remained sheathed.

Wade recognized that Logan was in a more light-hearted mood than normal, and he wasn't going to let it go to waste. If he had woken up with murder on his mind then Wade might have been more inclined to back off sooner. But now that he had the green light it was on!

"Or else what? Doesn't seem like you're trying too hard to stop me," he called his bluff and grinned at how the man weakly pulled at his wrists with his one free hand and was trying to curl up in defense.

He knew Logan would be fighting him a lot harder than this if he was really as disagreeable as he wanted him to think.

Actually, Wolverine had a little secret he was keeping. He would die before admitting it out loud, but there were times he found that he actually enjoyed this. Yes, enjoyed getting tickled within an inch of his life.

Definitely not at first though. And to fully grasp the situation we'll have to rewind the story just a…

"Aw nohohoo bub! Thehehey don't neeheed to hehehear all o' thahahat!"

Wade's heart skipped a beat as he gasped in excitement.

"Oh em gee! Your first fourth wall break! I'm so fucking proud of you!"

Shush, we're doing this.

Anyways Logan couldn't remember ever being tickled before so the day Wade had discovered that he was in fact quite ticklish he did everything in his power to fight him off and avoid it altogether. Wade wouldn't back off though and inevitably got him pinned down, even though it resulted in several stab wounds to his head and torso.

Having been alive for over 200 years Logan was very used to experiencing pain of some of the highest levels physically and mentally, but tickling was something very alien to him. Not surprisingly he struggled with processing the maddening, yet gentle touches.

He didn't like to show any signs of weaknesses, but being tickled completely overwhelmed his heightened senses, especially in the touch department, and it was impossible for him to not react to it. There had been feelings of anger and humiliation at how easily simple fingers were able to render him powerless, and it only got worse once he finally broke into agonized laughter.

Logan hated the feeling of not having control, especially over his own body. Once he had managed to break free, he had been extremely cross with Wade and went into one of his brooding moods for the majority of the day.

After giving him time to cool off, Wade eventually approached him to apologize, and Logan shrugged it off now that his temper had died down. Though he had been working on trying to better himself and he explained to Wade what it had made him feel and why he had reacted so strongly against it.

Wolverine being vulnerable enough to share his feelings with him was one of the only times Wade was ever completely serious and really gave his full attention. Despite getting a kick out of always annoying him Wade never wanted to cause him true stress and it made him feel like a real asshole when Logan ended up apologizing to him too.

Wade promised to never do it to him again but added that he just got carried away due to the fact that he really liked seeing Logan not only smile but laugh especially. Logan had become utterly stupefied by that confession. He thought Wade had only been trying to torment and embarrass him, which was what had really set him off.

He had then taken the next few days to reflect on that. He could definitely empathize with how good it felt to see someone you really cared about experiencing joy. Knowing that Wade's intentions were far from malicious had really put his mind at ease about it, realizing that his pride had gotten the better of him.

And the more he thought back on it it really wasn't that bad.

Which was why Wade's squawk of surprise when Logan tackled him from out of nowhere to attack his sides with tickles gave Logan the same fuzzy feeling he assumed Wade had had. Wade not only was laughing from the tickling, but from relief as well, realizing that he'd been unspokenly forgiven.

He didn't even fight it and just let Logan tickle him to his heart's content until finally the man stopped and grunted that he had hoped he'd "learned his lesson" while giving him a small smirk.

Wade was able to read between the lines and took the chance to pounce him the very next day, and despite some growling threats he received the older mutant didn't seem entirely displeased. Logan had completely let his guard down, which now enabled him to truly experience it in full.

Still, he made Wade work for it before he finally stopped holding in his laughter. The crazy merc then proceeded to make him laugh harder than he could ever remember doing in his past, and he found the brain chemical effects from that to do wonders for his mood.

The funny thing about it to Logan was that even though he was rendered helpless from tickling he realized that he was still 100% safe, and he found that to be a very comforting thought. It was a new experience for him to be in such a close proximity struggle where the end goal wasn't to try to hurt or kill him.

Sure, Wade would use tickling as a form of retaliation a lot of times, but it was all the same to Logan by now. Naturally he wasn't always in the mood for a tickle attack, but these days more often than not he didn't fight it too much and was quite content to let his roommate turn him into a squirming, wheezing wreck.

Of course, for appearances sake, Logan would still curse his head off and threaten the man's life at every turn. Up until the mischievous merc would tickle him to the point he could barely take it and turn that macho attitude into desperate pleas for mercy.

Which brings us back to our current situation.

"Dahahammit! I-I dihihihidn't ahahask for a wahahahaake up cahahahall!"

"No thanks needed! It's totally complimentary in el Casa de Wade. But don't mind me, feel free to go back to sleep. I'm just going to keep counting these ribs here until we get to the bottom of this. Ah, finally we found 7 and 8."

Wade was still acting as if this whole idea was just to count his ribs and hadn't even acknowledged that he was purposely tickling him and realizing that made Logan feel even more giddy as he let out a snort and shook his head.

"Wade c'mooon! Get ohohohoff! Ya-heehehehe-Ya know I'm ticklihihihihish, fucker!" His big-muscled arms were clamped so tightly against his sides, but there was no stopping the determined fingers crawling up his ribs.

"Whaaa? Wolverine? Ticklish? Ha! That's absurd! My guy Logan is way too mean and strong and tough to be affected by something so childish! Oh boy, and I thought I was the king of jokes around here. Now come on, stop messing around and just move your arms out of the way so I can finish this," Wade smirked, loving to tease him about his ticklishness in regard to his hard-core reputation.

"You fuhuhuhucking ahahahasshohohohole!" Logan snorted hard and now fell over to the side as he began scooting along the couch to get away.

"Heheh, where do you think you're going? Stop being so dramatic, Nancy Kerrigan. It's okay to make that joke now, right? 30 years later is fair," he shrugged at the camera, not letting up one bit as he followed along with his squirming prey, "I can feel 9 and 10 now. We're almost halfway there! Oooh! How exciting!"

"Cuhuhut it ohohohout! Heeheheheheheheh! Juhuhust drohop this stuhuhupid ideheeheeheea!"

The higher Wade went the stronger the tickling sensations felt, and Logan was pretty sure he was going to die before the last of his ribs were even reached, though in his mind it honestly wasn't the worst way for him to go.

"🎵 Ohhhh the itsy-bitsy spiders crawled up the waterspout….🎵," Wade effortlessly sing-songed with clawed fingers continuing their torturously slow progress, thoroughly scraping over every rib bone they came across, "🎵 Down came the rain….but couldn't wash the spiders out because they were having too much fun counting all these cute little ribbies. 🎵."

It always made Logan feel silly whenever Wade's teases took on a more juvenile form. He was the tenacious and deadly Wolverine and yet Wade was treating him like he was just some harmless little kid. He was never able to stop the blush from spreading across his face.

"Shuhuhuhuut uhuhuhup! Ohohor you're gohohonna haahahave another fuhuhuhuckin'-Hahahahahahehee-hohohohole t-to breheeheeheeathe outta yohohour fahahahat hehehehead!"

"Wow. We're body shaming now? I'm very sensitive about my fat head, you know. Well have you looked in the mirror lately, mister? Just walking around with those big, sexy arms and your handsomely chiseled jawline, and don't even get me started on all that sculpted beef that you're hiding in disgrace underneath this shirt. Yeah, doesn't feel so good now, does it, you absurdly attractive man? Uh huh….oh….yup, right there we got 11 and 12."

Wade was just so ridiculous sometimes, but when Logan was already caught in a laughing fit the merc's unstoppable blabbering only succeeded in making him laugh even harder. And unfortunately, he was slowly losing his will to carry on with acting tough through this tickle session.

"Fihihihiiine! I'm-heeheehehahahahaha-I'm sorrrrry! I tahahahake it bahahahaack! Just stooohohohoooop!" Logan didn't know how much more he could take of this. Actually, he did know due to having suffered under Wade's fingers for months now, and the answer was a lot.

"Why? I'm just trying to get a count here. 13……14…..It's for science. Hey look, I'm sorry……," Wade pretended to show some remorse before breaking into a huge smirk, "Sorry my wittle Wolvie-polvie is too freakin' ticklish for his own good!"

Logan's back finally met the armrest of the couch, preventing him from going any further as he leaned back over it to try to get away. Though this now had his ribcage fully stretched out as Wade stepped it up and dug his fingers in mercilessly between rib bones, making Logan positively howl in laughter.

"Ahahahahaa! Wade naahahahahahahaho! Pleheheease! Thahahahaat tickles!" He thrashed madly trying to wiggle away, but Wade had him pinned right where he wanted him as he just snickered at the situation.

"I think at this point you know that was part of my plan all along. Hehehe, but we're so close! Think of the prestige we'll get from this scientific breakthrough! Oh! I think I just found 15! Oooh! And could that be 16?! C'mon, buddy! Bear with me now!"

The upper ribs were basically in Logan's armpits that were covered with a more fleshy layer and Wade was really having to probe in there to actually feel the bones beneath.

"Not thehehehere! Noohot thehehehehehehhehehere! Haahahahaheeheeheeheehaa! Mehehehehercyyyyyy! Logan squealed helplessly with his head tilted back and showing off his elongated canine teeth; his face as red as a tomato as tears squeezed out of his tightly shut eyes.

The feral man's t-shirt had ridden up, exposing the lower half of his ripped stomach and Wade was currently in a position where it was at eye level. He smirked as he thought about how crazy Logan got whenever he would blow raspberries into his tummy, and he found the urge to do so was just too strong to resist as he took a deep breath.

"WAAAHahAHaHAhaHAHAAADE!!" Logan screamed with the first oral assault landing directly around his navel, breaking into silent laughter while wheezing desperately for air. Many more blows were delivered to his belly and ribs while the fingers continued tickling in his armpits as Logan summoned up any energy he had left and pushed with all he had in him at Wade's head and shoulders.

Eventually after being slapped and punched in the head so many times, Wade finally allowed himself to be pushed away, taking one last nibble at his hip bone.

"Geez, calm down Hugh, you over actor," he chuckled as he looked down at the man who was currently swallowing all the air he could and gingerly wiping away at tears.

"Okaaahaahay…..Fuckin' Hell……That's it…..for nohohow…..Y-You got me…..good……No more….right?"

"Weeeeeell if you would have just stayed still, we could have had this all over with. But noooooo, you just had to make me lose count," Wade sighed loudly in feigned disappointment, "Looks like I'm gonna have to start aaaallllllll over again."

With a wicked grin he began reaching out towards the still incapacitated man who was now shaking his head frantically as his hands raised in defense.

"N-No Wade. Not again. Stay back. Heehehehe-please. I can't take any more," he couldn't help giggling in anticipation as Wade hovered over him again.

"Hold still now…Don't worry Peanut, we'll get through this together. So that's 1……and 2…….and a coochie coochie coo…," Wade started again on his waist to get at his bottom ribs as Logan was already breaking into squeals.

"20?! Again?! For real?! I've counted three times already!"

Logan was hanging halfway off the couch; his hair sticking out in every direction and his cheeks slicked with tears as he coughed and tried to regain any hint of sanity he had left.

"It's……It's……fine…….Wade…..I'm sure……..they're in……there……somewhere……," he panted weakly, slowly starting to feel his energy revitalize.

"Or maybe you really do only have 20? My theory that you have fewer since you are shorter may be correct!" Wade was getting lost in his thoughts, but then at that moment a voice of reason sounded off.

"And remember, the 11th and 12th pair of ribs are referred to as 'floating ribs' and are only attached at the backbone….," the television was still on and by this point the doctor had gone back around and was summarizing everything he had just talked about.

The light bulb finally went on in Wade's head.

"Oh yeeeeah……forgot about those little buggers," Wade slowly turned to look at his friend whose eyes went wide as he scrambled to get away.

Five seconds later and Wade had Logan pinned on his stomach as his fingers wiggled into his lower back to find the missing rib pairs while Logan cackled wildly and pounded his fists with his feet uselessly kicking at the cushions.

"23…..and 24! Well would you look at that! I guess all humans are the same after all!" Wade declared happily as he finally climbed off of his roommate, signaling the end of his reign of terror, "Whaddya think, Wolvie? Aren't you so glad to have that useful little tidbit of information at your disposal?"

Logan gradually rolled over onto his back and raised an annoyed brow.

"Could've just fuckin' Googled it, bub," he growled, though a smile was still stuck on his face.

"Okay I admit waking you up may not have been the nicest way to go about it, but you know how impatient I am. And be honest, you really don't seem that upset about it," Wade grinned, reaching over to scribble fingers over his now exposed stomach while Logan snorted chuckles and tried to block him out with his knees before rolling away.

"You're lucky I didn't piss my pants, asshole. Drank a shit load of beers right before I fell asleep. I gotta piss like a fucking racehorse now," Logan stumbled to his feet and walked off to use the bathroom.

Wade grinned as he watched him walk away before turning to the audience.

"He's cute, ain't he? And I didn't hear any denial in that, did you? He doesn't know that I heard the author spill his secret earlier. It's nice to know that he actually enjoys it, even if he won't say it. I'm totally good with that."

The sound of Logan groaning in relief echoed down the hallway followed by the toilet flushing several moments later before he walked back out to join Wade on the couch.

"Did you make sure to put the seat back down? Althea won't be happy if she falls in again," he asked as Logan looked at him with a frown.

"That one was on you, shithead. I always remember to. You've lived how many years with this poor lady? I seriously don't know how she's put up with your stupid, inconsiderate ass for so long."

"Exactly the same way you do, sugar tits," Wade grinned and pinched his cheek, receiving an adamantium elbow into his side and grunting as the air was knocked out of him momentarily.

"It's a daily struggle that's for sure. But I owe ya a lot for breaking me out of my destructive cycle, so we'll call it even," Logan had softened his demeanor, knowing he truly owed Wade his gratitude as the other man noted this and took advantage of his guard being down.

"Awww there it is! Right there! I knew you loved me!" Wade squealed as he jumped onto Logan's lap and wrapped his arms around his head in the tightest of hugs.

"Gaah! Wade! Fuckin' dammit! Let go of me!" Logan struggled to pry Wade off of him until he was hit with a moment of inspiration as he latched his fingers onto Wade's unprotected sides to start tickling him with everything he had.

"Aahaahahah! Logan dohohohohooot! Thahahahat's nohohohot fahahahaaair!" Wade yelped with giggles as he quickly tried to escape, but Logan held him firmly in place.

"Fair? Okay, let's be fair. See we learned that all my ribs are there, but seems we've overlooked yours. Think it's best we check that out right away, don't you?" Logan asked with a crooked grin as Wade frantically shook his head while thrashing in his lap, "No? Well ain't that just too damn bad."

Logan dug right in with both strong hands, not even hiding the fact that his mission was to tickle the absolute shit out of his roommate.

"Okaahahahay yohohou cahahan cheheheck! Heheehhehahah! Juhuhust nohoho tihihihickling!"

"Now how do ya expect me to do that? You got an x-ray or some bullshit to show me? A fuckin' thesis paper on the matter? What? Ya don't? Well that fuckin' sucks for you. Looks like we're doing this the old-fashioned way. What number was I on? Oh yeah….1…….1…….1……1 again….."

"Cahahahahaaan't you fuhuhucking cohohount, you neahahahanderthal?!?!"

Logan smirked big time, repeatedly prodding into the same rib over and over.

"Guess not. Numbers apparently aren't my strong suit. Looks like this is gonna take alllll day then."

Wade could only laugh and squeal in response, knowing he had sealed his own doom.

[starreyblueberry]

Timmy Turners fate in the new series is one of the most anticipated/theorized aspects of the new show right now. We have multiple easter eggs towards him being a possible character in the new show, and due to the creator saying that Timmys kids could possibly be Cosmo and Wandas next godkids, I don't think Timmy has kids yet (aka the channel chaser ending might be on its way, but not happened just yet.) He is arguably going to either be a huge hit or miss, everyone has different ideas, fates, what he should be, what would be the best conclusion to his character. The lines between real genuine trauma and gags in the old show are blurry, as well as core aspects of his personality. It’s so hard to actually write him as an adult for the new show purely cause what exactly are you going to take from the show that MATTERS. Will you take the lovingness of his parents from season one? or the neglectful spiteful parents they become from season 4. Will you take the horrible grades as him actuallly being bad at school, or crocker failing him on purpose. Will chole even be his best friend? Or is it back to AJ and Chester? Or will his only friends be cosmo and wanda?

We’re Cosmo and Wanda parents to Timmy, or just godparents.

Its already proven that timmys magic somewhat stayed (aka Peris existence, Dale being a millionare, hell even dimsdale/fairy world being intact) If they will acklowdge that? The school mascot being Timmy turner adjacent, past fairy’s seeming to have remembered Timmy (The tooth fairy having a little card of Timmy, Jorgen hanging out w cosmo and Wanda more CAUSE of Timmy’s adventures etc). He’s somehow a crutal part of almost every piece of the show and he’s not even there. I fully believe they’re gonna explain why a lot of Timmy’s wishes have stayed (in my opinion so many of his changes have made the world in general a better place, and he has saved the universe so often undoing his shit would kinda change the whole fabric of space and time, thus making his magic stay, memories are more… iffy.)

I know a huge thing is also the family dynamic, the fact Timmy is their favourite, hell the HALL OF TIMMY!!! The fact they keep a picture of his room in their house, the fact that they reference him sometimes within conversations with hazel. Never actually spoken his name but implied that’s their Timmy (aside from one time) That the reason the world is right now the reason this problem or circumstance or blessing is happening is because of Timmy Turner.

The amount of pure power Timmy has over the show is something crazy, and I do trust the new writers to give us an ending that will satisfy us. He’s been so connected to many people’s childhoods, showing found family at its core. He’s snarky, loud, smart, kind, and more. People want to see him happy, people want to see him with his family. Who you count as his family is up to you. It’s already been semi-confirmed it’s gonna be connected to the channel chasers ending since most of the general audience has said they wished the show ended during that time ( I have my own opions about it but I digress.) It would be super cool if they did their own take, aka any unconventional Timmy future that we haven’t seen as a concept in the OG show. I know many people are rooting for too remember, for them to be united, and I really wish it happens. We also have to remember this is hazels story too, and we’ll be seeing the end of Timmy’s story rather then the middle of it. A special about him would be amazing though, especially if he’s either the hero, or the villain. Idk!!One day I’ll make a full post about every possible future Timmy and my preferences towards which ones, but for now I’ll stick with my analysis of the OG show.

All I know is that Timmy changed Cosmo, Wandas, and Peris life almost more then any other Godkid, and I like to think the show respects the impact he had. Not only as their godkid, but as their first kid to consider true family.

[buttercupjosh]

The Perfect Proposal (the 4 times you expected that Mat was going to propose + the 1 time he actually did)

(Gif credit to @mattymartin)

word count: 1,968

genres: established relationship, fluff, self-insert

warnings: none

A/N: This story is based off of the song “Joy of My Life” by Chris Stapleton and I make references to this song throughout the story. I highly recommend listening to this song before reading my story. This story is short, sweet and fluffy. It’s not set at a specific moment in time (It’s taking place in a fictional future but you could also say that it’s set this upcoming season or even a past season). It’s written with a female reader in mind because I’m a female of color but the reader doesn’t specifically have to be a POC or a woman and there’s little dialogue. This is not a sequel to Your Favorite Secret (which you can still read and check out and if you want this to be a sequel to that, you can interpret it that way). As always, I’m open to any and all feedback, comments or questions; just put them in my inbox or dm me. Thank you so much in advance for reading, I appreciate it😌

(P.S. I have other stories (linked here) that I have written for other players as well if you want to check it out)

“Someday it will come right on cue.” -Somewhere Love Is Waiting for You from the Schmigadoon TV series soundtrack

Prologue

Meeting Mat changed your life in the best way possible. You took Mat’s breath away when you met up for your very first date and since then, you continued to take his breath away in small doses every time you saw him. He added so much goodness and love into your life and you did the same for him. Mat felt so grateful to have you in his life and even though he made millions, being with you was his greatest treasure. You and Mat deeply appreciated each and every moment you had together, no matter how big or small it was; the two years that you had been together so far were some of your greatest times. You were both so smitten that you always looked at each other with such deep love and devotion and couldn’t get enough of your significant other’s presence. For a while, Mat knew that he wanted to propose to you but he just needed to figure out the best way how to and time when to ask that all-important question.

————————————————————

It finally happened. After 3 challenging years, you finally completed law school and earned your Juris Doctor degree from NYU. All of your friends and family came into town to celebrate your accomplishment. In order to accommodate everyone, Mat graciously rented a large AirBnb house in the Hamptons to host your graduation party. You handled some aspects of the party planning while Mat handled the rest and the party went very well. During the congratulations portion of the evening, Mat wanted to give a quick remark to acknowledge your achievement.

“For the past 2 years, I watched this wonderful person ambitiously work their way through law school. There were a lot of late nights, early mornings and so many case reviews and vocabulary study sessions that I think I could go get a law degree. Y/N, to say that I am proud of you is a massive understatement. My love, you are so amazing and you did it. I love you so much. Because I love you so much, I have a surprise for you.” Mat spoke.

This moment seemed like it was the right time for Mat to ask for your hand in marriage; you had been dating for a while, you lived together and blended your families together, and he had just finished a great speech that made all of the party’s attendees realize how much he was in love with you. Instead, Mat handed you an envelope. Inside the envelope was a copy of a check for the exact amount that you owed in student loans and a letter informing you that your loans were fully paid off. You couldn’t believe what was happening and began to cry.

“How did you do this?”, you mustered out through your tears of joy.

“So you know how you gave me access to your book of important information in case anything happened to you? Well, I asked Liana to call the loan office to pretend to be you and ask for your account balance”, Mat cheesily revealed.

Mat saw firsthand how much distress and frustration law school caused you so he wanted to help out someone he deeply loved by eliminating the stress of having to pay for a student loan; this surprise was better than an engagement ring.

————————————————————

After your graduation party and after the Islanders were eliminated from playoffs, it was the official start of the off-season. This year, it was a milestone birthday for Mat’s dad so the Barzal family decided to do a European summer vacation to celebrate. You were important enough to their family that you had been invited and Liana, Mat’s sister, also invited her best friend to accompany her on the trip.

Hand-in-hand with the man you considered to be the love of your life and his family, for 3 weeks, you explored England, France, Monaco, and Mat’s ancestral homeland of Italy. In England, you indulged in English culture while Mat hilariously attempted a British accent. In France, you shared plenty of kisses with your lover in the City of Love, swooning every time Mat spoke French. In Monaco, you and Mat felt like the protagonists of a spy thriller while hanging out in the city.

Once you arrived in Italy, you got to see a different side of Mat that rarely came out. He had been to Italy several times before but he was thrilled to share all that he knew about that special place with you. Mat glowed differently whenever you got authentic gelato together or when he swam in the waters along the Amalfi Coast. Of course, throughout the trip, you still spent plenty of time with Mat’s parents, sister, and her friend and attended a lovely birthday dinner on a boat for Mat’s dad while visiting Sicily.

On the plane ride traveling back to Canada after your whirlwind European tour, you thought to yourself that you were going to come back to North America with a new jewelry addition to your left hand; you did have a lot of date nights and one-on-one time with Mat on the trip. However, your wonderful boyfriend did get you a gorgeous Cartier love bracelet from the official store in Paris and you were returning back with the gift of good memories that were created with your future in-laws.

————————————————————

The remainder of the off-season went by so quickly; between weddings, summer holidays, and other events all happening, you and Mat were swept in so many different directions. Time flies when you’re having fun and soon, it was already time to return to Long Island for the hockey season.

The usual ups, downs, and chaos of the hockey season lingered in your household but you navigated through it together. As the season went on, you spent a lot of time studying for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam and Universal Bar Exam, which allowed you to become eligible to be admitted to the New York State Bar next year. Even though you had those responsibilities, you still supported Mat at most of his home games. One of the things about Mat that you loved was how he would always quietly tiptoe into your shared home after a late game but he loved how you always waited up for him to come home after every game, regardless of what time he returned. Before you both knew it, the year was winding down and it was almost Christmas time. You and Mat had decided to host Christmas this year and both of your families were coming. This wasn’t the first time that both of your families had been together to celebrate an occasion; they were there all together for your law school graduation earlier in the year and both sides enjoyed being together as one cohesive unit but for some reason, things felt different to you this holiday season.

You spent hours preparing and making sure that everything was right for the arrival of your guests. Christmas came and went wonderfully. It was so nice to have your families together during the holidays. You gifted Mat a new game day tie and a gift card to one of his favorite road restaurants; Mat got you a nice bag to carry all of your work things and a personalized padfolio for you to take all of your legal notes in.

Yes, you were secretly expecting a diamond underneath the tree this year but it was okay because you still got other great gifts as well. Despite wanting something else, you still deeply cherished the time you got to spend with your loved ones.

————————————————————

After the holidays were over, you and Mat settled back into your respective routines until it was All-Star Break. Mat was not chosen for the All-Star Game that year and some of the Islanders players and families decided to go to the Bahamas for their team All-Star Break trip. The time away gave you and Mat both some essential rest and relaxation. At the end of February, you were scheduled to take the Universal Bar Exam but you took a break from studying to enjoy your mini-vacation. You stayed with your lover and company at a phenomenal resort; you swam with dolphins, relaxed at the spa, and ate so much tasty food. You also enjoyed lots of group activities with Mat and his teammates and their respective significant others. During the trip, one of Mat’s best friends’, Anthony, and his long-term girlfriend, Emma got engaged. It stung a little to see someone else reach the relationship milestone you deeply desired to share with Mat and you had expected that it was going to be you and your lover’s turn to share that special romantic moment on this trip, however, you were happy for your friends.

————————————————————

One evening, you came home from a long, exhausting day of work. After passing both the Universal Bar Exam and Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam and completing some other requirements, you were admitted to the New York State Bar last month and got a job as a junior attorney. It was a pleasant surprise to see Mat cooking; he was subtly singing in the kitchen and tenderly caring for some handmade pasta. You couldn’t quite make out what song Mat was singing but it didn’t matter what it was because you had caught him singing songs that you’ve played around the house and pop songs from the radio plenty of times before. You smiled to yourself as watched him in his element before slipping away for a much-needed shower.

After you came out of the shower and changed, there was a beautiful plate of pasta waiting for you on the table. Mat tapped deep into his Italian heritage and made a delectable dinner for the two of you. You shared with Mat the details of work and although, he may not quite fully understand everything you were expressing your feelings about, he still listened to you as you rambled on. After dinner concluded, you and Mat were going to share a box of bakery cannolis and watch a movie on the couch but Mat told you to wait at the table and suddenly got up. He returned to the room with a look of nervousness on his face. You asked Mat if he was okay but you could tell that he had something important to say.

“I’ve been holding onto this ring for a while. There were so many other times that I wanted to ask but there’s just something that feels so right about this moment. Sitting here, I realized something very important. I want to spend the rest of my life, making you dinner when I can and listening to you speak. I want to continue to come home from my games to you and wake up next to you. I have the greatest honor of knowing and loving you. You have the sweetest heart that’s made of gold and you are like an angel brought down to Earth from Heaven. I want to be by your side forever. Y/N, you are the joy of my life. Will you marry me?” Mat declared while holding out the engagement ring of your dreams in a Tiffany blue box.

You were speechless because Mat was right; this was the perfect moment. You looked straight into Mat’s green eyes that you admired so dearly and accepted his marriage proposal; you were both super excited to embark on this new journey in your relationship. You and Mat swayed with each other to the sound of your fiance’s voice, serenading you to “Joy Of My Life” by Chris Stapleton, the same song Mat was singing to himself earlier. Patience was an important virtue and all of that waiting paid off at the right time.

[cdbabymp3]

meet editor!reader aka hamzah's super cool roommate 🖥️🎧🥣💝👟

˙ . ꒷ ⌨️ . 𖦹˙—❝ AND I CHANGE MY MIND, BUT IT'S STILL ON YOU... ❞

BACKSTORY ; editor!reader starting talking to hamzah online after submitting her editing portfolio to the channel. before she ever met him in real life, she was incredibly down bad for him. never in her wildest dreams did she think she'd be picked to be the channel's main editor/videographer. her whole life has changed in the span of only a few months. she moved to toronto, and after her soon-to-be apartment flooded, hamzah takes her in. what starts as a 'temporary' arrangement, leads to the two becoming long-term roommates with no end in sight. hamzah's too obsessed with her. she's too obsessed with him. but neither of them can muster up the courage to make the first move.

PERSONA && INTERESTS ; editor!reader, though shy, will randomly fire comebacks at hamzah and martin when they're in the heat of a joke. she's incredibly funny, which is one of the reasons why she fits so well working for the channel. her humor is stupid and sometimes dark, always reflected in the way she edits the channel's videos. she loves cutesy, girly things and is constantly forcing hamzah to decorate their apartment in that way. he fights it, but can't say no to her. she likes to draw and animate silly things for merch promo's and even designs some of the merch !!! at first, she never wanted to be on camera. she was too shy, afraid if she'd get hate or just weird fans. after request upon request from the slushies to see her, she finally starts making little cameos, working up to being in full videos. many people choose her as their channel bias, making edits and fan art. she loves her job more than anything. getting to travel and make silly content with her best friends is so cool and she never takes it for granted !!

໒꒰ྀི´ ˘ ` ꒱ྀིა taglist ; @nativegirltapes @etherealval + let me know if u wanna be added !!!

(i couldn't fit all the face claims i wanted bc tumblr has a stupid 10 pic limit but i will add more in mood boards to come !! i'm trying to make it as diverse and poc friendly as possible, so pls lmk if u have any suggestions !!! <3)

[ericshoney]

Inked ~ Brothers!Sturniolo Triplets

Summary: You get a tattoo dedicated to your triplet brothers.

Warnings: Possible swearing, nicknames, tattoos(?), fluff

Reader's age: 23

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You had planned this surprise out for months. Saved up so you could afford three very important tattoos. You had many tattoos, much like Nick and Matt. Chris being the only one out of your siblings not to have one, as Justin also had one.

You had a couple of matching tattoos with Nick and Matt but the ones you were about to get, were even more special. You walked into the tattoo parlour and your friend, Sammy, was prepping up.

"Hey Y/n!"

"Hey Sammy." You replied.

Sammy was the artist who did your first ever tattoo, since then, the two of you had become close friends and whenever you wanted another permanent creation, they were who you went too.

"I'll be ready in just a sec." They said.

"No problem." You said.

A few minutes went by whilst Sammy set up. When they were ready, you were called over and sat on the bed. You were getting the tattoos on your forearm.

"Do they know you're here?" Sammy questioned.

"No I lied and said I had a meeting for work. They had planned to hang out with Nate." You answered.

Nick, Matt and Chris were home in Boston, which made getting the tattoos done now more important.

"Simple but effective. I like it." Sammy responded, making you laugh.

"Alright. So I got to make sure this is right. It's a lion for Nick, a bear for Matt and a deer for Chris, right?" They asked.

"That's right. Can you also add their names under each one?" You asked, making them nod.

Sammy then got everything ready. First up was Nick's. Sammy started on the tattoo.

"Doesn't Nick have a deer too?" Sammy questioned.

"Yeah it was one of his first ones. He got a C placed near it and somewhere else on his arm there is an M." You nodded.

"That's cute really. Not only will the deer match with Nick, but also represent Chris." They responded.

You smiled and continued chatting with Sammy. Technically it was their day off but knew how much this meant to you, so came in just for you.

Five hours later, you paid and left with three brand new tattoos. You said bye to Sammy before heading home. When you walked in, you heard the triplets shouting from the kitchen, making you smile.

You walked through and saw them eating pizza, while watching videos on their phones. You smiled and hugged each of them.

"How was the meeting?" Chris asked.

"Oh about that." You began, a massive grin appearing on your face.

"What?" Matt asked.

"I lied. There was no meeting. I went and saw Sammy." You admitted.

You then showed them your arm, where the fresh tattoos sat. Nick gasped, Matt smiled and Chris cheered.

"They look amazing, sis!" Chris shouted.

"I had this planned for months. I saved up and planned the designs carefully." You replied.

"Wanna explain?" Matt asked.

"So Chris' is simple. A deer since that's your thing, you love them and it's part of your brand. It also matches with Nick's." You said first.

"It's awesome." Chris said, admiring the ink.

"Then a bear for Matt. This is because you're soft and cuddly but also protective." You continued.

"Then a lion for Nick. You're strong, protective and a leader." You finished.

The three smiled and hugged you tightly. You smiled and felt happy with their reactions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags:

@sturn-33 @lgbtq-girl @mattsfavbigtitties @onelesslonelygirlbieber6 @riowritesitall @sturniolo-fann @mrvlxgrl @melaniesturniolo @cl1tlover3000 @lottieluhvs @lovesturni0l0s @blahbel668  @emely9274 @nicksloverrr @emely9274 @nicksloverrr @pancjfrjb @luvr4miya @artloo123 @n0aa @sturn-rose @ivysturnss

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

𝐖𝐈𝐏 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄

rules — list the names/titles of docs in your WIP folder + open your inbox to have people ask about them!

@storiesoflilies thank you for the tag lily 🥺 this was so much fun to put together !!! i have way too many wips to put them all here, but i tried to narrow it down to the ones i’ve at least started working on … also didn’t include any drabbles, just fics !!

please feel free to ask about any of them, it’d make my day <333 most of these have been haunting me for…. a while lmao

true love is possible only in the next world

sorcerer!satoru x new hire!reader ; canon au, slowburn, satoru gojo is bad at feelings.

our need grows teeth

bunny!gojo x wolf!reader ; hybrid au, predator/prey dynamics, academic rivals.

i would have told you i was lonely too.

teacher!suguru x curse user!reader ; role reversal au, hurt/comfort, exes to lovers

come, come over here to me, to the place where the fox sleeps

kitsune!geto x reader ; (mild) dark content, imbalanced power dynamic, intense devotion.

the day before yesterday, i saw a rabbit

suguru x reader ; timeloop au, angst, obsession.

i’ll make a house inside of you, i’ll go in through the mouth

wolf/hunter!suguru x little red riding hood!reader ; fairy tale au, (mild) dark content, horror elements, forced captivity (yan!sugu).

be still my foolish heart (don’t ruin this on me)

childhood friend!suguru x reader ; university au, jealousy & pining, fluff.

give a heart to me and flowers for you

cult leader!geto x preschool teacher!reader ; sickening amounts of fluff.

consider the hairpin turn

best friend’s brother!kenjaku x reader ; teasing, tension, fractured narrative.

i slithered here from eden just to sit outside your door

tactician!kenjaku x monarch!reader ; historical royalty au, secret relationship, blind loyalty

i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time

naoya x male!reader ; childhood friends, angst, violently homoerotic tension

no pressure tags; @mieiri @satoruxx @stellamancer @nappingmoon @kissxcore @kisstoru 🌷🌷🌷

[penepoly]

like EPIC!odysseus (probably), i can't help but wonder what could've happened if he had told the crew what he knew about scylla and consulted them before making a decision. here are the possibilities:

they DO sacrifice six men to scylla: either the men volunteer themselves or they're selected by a draw. at that point i don't think it's too far-fetched that some might choose to die for their friends rather than perish meaninglessly by eventual starvation or drowning (poseidon) or as victims of another monster.

they attempt to fight scylla: we know this won't end well—a futile struggle that might leave them with more than six dead, many injured, and perhaps damage to the ship. but at least their conscience is intact and there's no cause for mutiny?

they avoid the lair of scylla and try to find another way: where to? and with their diminishing food store? this is a hopeless path.

my point is that odysseus's men were complex individuals with intelligence and dignity and autonomy, capable of weighing their options. they deserved to have a say in their fate. they deserved to know what lay ahead. odysseus was so desperate that he lost sight of this, losing his crew's trust and loyalty for good.

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Rat Bastard - Part 6

Pairing: You x Kyungsoo

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 11200

Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Idiots to Lovers, Fear, Spiders

Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

You’d expected some downtime; some boredom. It simply wasn’t possible for these three desperate employees to keep the two of you entertained for every minute of the day.

You had to admit you were both surprised and shocked when you actually saw the giant crate of activities and games; there were tons of board games, even more possibilities with the decks of cards you saw. There were even a whole slew of movies and a small device which you were told was a projector which would show the movie on any blank white wall, of which there were many to pick from. Mr. Chen was unpacking what seemed to be an endless bottomed box and you weren’t the only curious observer lightly touching the things that interested you the most.

You’d been instructed to grab items and make a stack of things you were interested in doing. You’d reached for one of the word games, one of the ones involving strategic spellings of words which you remember playing as a kid with your Grandmother and you placed it in front of you. This was your pick.

“Oh that one is fun, I haven’t seen this in years,” Kyungsoo’s fingertip touched just on the corner of your game and he picked up another classic with a grin, “this one too,” he said under his breath. It was like he was speaking to himself but he seemed to be adding things to your personal pile.

Did he think he was involved in your pile?

Did he take this, like the cooking exercise, as a team activity? The instructions implied that you were to build your own pile but Kyungsoo had just added Uno to the top of the stack he was building with your first choice board game trapped on the bottom.

You reached for the deck of cards because there was always poker and it also was vital for the backgammon game you’d just grabbed. You slowly began to build a smaller, separate pile beside the one he had commandeered, removing your first choice from underneath his and moving it to your own side.

“Ooo,” his eyes widened and he plopped Monopoly down right on top of your second stack, “I'm gonna kick your ass at that one.”

You lifted his game off of your stack and plopped it roughly down on top of his own stack.

“These are my picks, those are yours,” you mumbled a rhetorical, “who even wants to play monopoly?” You remembered the game being long and tedious. He looked at you and laughed once, grabbing another game, this one a music themed game similar to charades but with musical guesses and you’d heard through friends that he actually had a great singing voice. You never thought you’d actually get to hear it. He pointedly ignored your stack separating attempts and plopped this game on top of your stack.

“You're gonna sit all alone in a corner and play Scrabble by yourself? Come on, quit being stupid.” He ignored the small sound you made and grabbed your games, placed them in the same stack as his games and lifted the whole stack and walked away from you to set them on another table. He was already pulling the lid off of one of his games to start playing it and the other three people in the room quickly followed suit and began to pull chairs out of the table he was setting up. Those traitors. Why did his game get to be played first? You’d been standing at your original spot with your arms folded over your chest when he looked up from the money he was counting and separating to speak to you.

“Come and get your ass handed to you like a good little princess.”

You rolled your eyes harder than you’d rolled them before. You rolled them hard enough to really sell your annoyance at his antics. You rolled them desperately and very convincingly. Inside of your chest there was the most annoying little tickle brought on by his choice of words. This nickname of his for you sure had a way of making everything he said sound just a tiny bit suggestive. Or maybe you had just read too many trashy romance novels in your youth. God, you were lonely.

But more than lonely, right now you were bored. You pulled up to your chair for the game. Javier was the last to sit down after bringing over some snacks and some drinks. You were handed a champagne glass with orange juice and the first sip told you it was heavy on the champagne. It wasn’t even noon yet. He was back to his old tricks when you looked up into his eyes and caught the secretive smile.

Kyungsoo was sipping on a Bloody Mary with a celery stick in it and you braced for the first round of the game. You had always figured he was the competitive type. He had to be in his line of work, to have reached the levels of success as he had reached in such a cut-throat industry. And nearly every interaction you’d had with Kyungsoo had told you such. This man simply had to win. The way he wouldn’t back down from his story and lie against you and that level of stubbornness, well, he basically pitted everything he had against you. This translated into something entirely insane when playing a board game against him.

The first round of the game, when someone would usually settle into the groove of things, rolling their dice and moving their pieces, was unlikely to buy the property they landed on in the very first round — Kyungsoo’s first round came after the rest of the players had had a go around. Mr. Chen had purchased his property, Sara had landed in a space that gave her a few bucks, Javier didn’t buy anything and neither had you. You weren’t particularly interested in the cheap ones at the start of the board. Kyungsoo’s turn came around and he landed on one of Mr. Chen’s neighboring properties and immediately purchased it. Then his deals started. He was making a deal with Mr. Chen. Mr. Chen was accepting. He was grinning widely and spending money like there was no tomorrow. What about the future Kyungsoo? What would you do if you simply went broke? He was buying housing for his land. He was putting up buildings and you watched this crazy man go full tilt into this stupid game.

You figured you needed to do something on your next round and you bought whatever you happened to land on. Not really paying too much attention to deals and such, you weren’t a big negotiator.

The game progressed and every single one of Kyungsoo’s rounds felt exhausting. He was doing quick math, making deals with everyone else at the table, but weirdly he never once tried to make any deals with you. He was putting up more property every single time. You were sure he was nearly broke. There was no way this was sustainable. The deals grew more intricate with each round. There were even loans passing around between Mr. Chen and Kyungsoo who seemed to have developed some sort of a partnership in this.

Again and again, you were overlooked by the man who seemed to be setting up some sort of a scheme. He was the owner or partnered with the owner of nearly every single space in this game. It felt unfair. There should be some sort of a law against this kind of thing, it was like a monopoly — oh god, oh god that was the name of this game. He was an expert at it. He had been planning it from the start and he showed you in particular absolutely no mercy. In every single round, you lost money to him.

His fat stacks of bills grew to obscene amounts and he had to cash in some 5s, 10s, 20s for 100s or 500s. He was relentless with you. But only with you. You noticed he had a lot of leniency on the other players at this table. He giggled and gave Sara a discount with a sweet smile on his face during one of her stays at his fancy property, and when you pointed out that he wasn’t allowed to do that he just shrugged and told you he could do what he wanted with his own property while you sat in jail for four whole rounds, unable to roll doubles to get yourself out. You actually began to enjoy being in jail as you sipped on your third mimosa because at least you weren’t putting your precious money into that man’s demanding palm.

It all came to a head when you had just gotten out of jail and landed in one of his places. You did have enough cash to cover rent but just barely and he sat beside you flush with his cash, property, even get out of jail free cards, which he had traded Javier for a free stay at his most expensive resort for.

You looked at him and he looked at you with the smallest lift of a single eyebrow because he knew you were screwed. You had a single property card left that you had been holding onto to keep him from owning every single space of that color. You swore you wouldn’t give it to him but at this rate you might end up homeless with only this to your name. It was a miserable sort of existence. You couldn't afford not to be in jail and you missed the peace and quiet and free meals of those metal bars that protected you from this mad man.

The more you replayed the entirety of this game, It was becoming more and more evident that his entire game plan had been to bankrupt and ruin you. He made no efforts to partner with you, make deals with you and only ever seemed to create situations that would affect you negatively. He was so good at it too you wondered if he’d been training for years on how to be a grade-A asshole to his friends.

“Can I have a discount?”

“You don't deserve a discount.”

“You gave Sara a discount.”

“Sara isn’t a four-time felon. I might have to charge you even more for a security deposit. Who knows what sorts of sordid things you’ll be up to in there. I know your type.”

Sara’s little metal train play piece had been sitting in the jail space and you watched as she carefully moved her piece to the outer edge so it clearly sat inside the ‘just visiting’ space around the incarcerated section.

“Excuse me, I was not convicted of any crimes. I never even had a trial.” You couldn't help the actual offense you took at his words. Your type? What type? The poor, marginalized, under-educated, school to prison pipeline, falsely accused and incarcerated type? This society has been set up to see you fail. The entire system was against you from the start.

“That’s what they all say,” he laughed out loud, “Everyone in jail swears they are innocent.” His outstretched hand moved closer to you and you hmph-ed back in your chair with your arms crossed over your chest.

You were annoyed. You couldn’t help it. He was such a jerk and he was ridiculously against you in this game and in this life. You dropped your voice to a whisper and you leaned in closer to where he sat on his mountain of gold. “Kyungsoo, do you remember when we were cooking breakfast together? Do you remember how well we got along—”

You had his attention. He watched your face with a little lift of his eyebrow, no doubt his mind flying through a multitude of possible things you were about to remind him of — the embraces, the gentle and slow touches between the two of you, the pride in his eyes when you’d done something to please him — he looked down the length of your face as if he was compelled to and when his eyes bounced back up to look into your eyes once more you inhaled to continue speaking, “—when you weren’t allowed to talk?”

He lifted a hand to cover over his mouth and he snorted out a quick and silent laugh. It burst free from him and no amount of steely resolve could have kept that laugh inside of him. His eyes rolled closed with it and then back open and he lifted a hand, palm up and opened and closed his fingers twice. You hadn’t expected any other outcome. Not after basically telling the jerk that your favorite part about him was when he wasn’t speaking.

“You’re mean,” you said with a grumble and a severe pout of your lips, feeling actually upset deep down inside of you at how badly he had been picking on you during this entire game. The others at the table just giggled. “He’s crazy,” you heard Javier and Mr. Chen say to each other. His greedy fingers were leafing through your bills as he grabbed enough money to cover your rent, leaving a few small bills left behind.

By the next round you were bankrupt and out of the game.

You were only his first victim. It wasn’t long before partnerships were quickly abandoned in the name of record-breaking profits and long-time friendships were severed by filthy greed.

You just shook your head each time it happened, adding a loud “I told you not to trust him. Didn’t I warn you? He’s evil!” which was quickly countered with his overly defensive and judgmental rebuttal.

“This is how you play the game, Princess. Don't cry just because you’re bad at it. Think of it this way, you survived for six whole rounds and you even bought and sold property, which is much more than some incredibly stupid people do in their entire lifetimes.”

The group was imploding around you. A heated discussion about loyalty and friendship was being held over the sounds of crinkling bills and plastic clanking as properties were sold off to pay the man who was evil enough to become an actual billionaire if only this game had printed enough fake money to make that happen.

He won the game by crushing everyone else around him. You swore then and there that if you ever had the chance to see this man again, which was unlikely once you left this emergency shelter, if by some twisted nightmare of fate you ever had the misfortune of spending any amount of time with him and you were presented with the invitation to play this game again with him, you would throw yourself off the roof, you would hurl yourself into the sea, you would rather literally watch professional golfing marathons on tv. Never again. Not this game, not with this man.

Everyone needed a break after the game was over. You retreated to your space for a small while, laying down under your comfy down blanket and quickly deciding that you were simply too sick of sleeping to be in here. It was late morning and you’d had a few drinks by now and after leaving your room you wandered through the hallways, finding a space where one too many spiderwebs touched your skin that you just had to turn around and head back toward the kitchen.

It was mostly peaceful and empty here except for one person who stood at the stove. Kyungsoo was doing something in the kitchen and instantly, like a magic potion had been cast you felt all of the hard feelings about that game fade with the possibility that he might be cooking something tasty.

You slinked up by his side and he turned to the sounds of you coming, quickly spinning around and stepping to his ‘interior’ side to block your view of the pot he had on the stove. You didn’t smell anything delicious in the air and his hands were out the moment you arrived, grabbing you by the arms and holding you at a clear distance.

“What are you doing? Go back to your bed.” Your suspicions were raised. He was hiding something delicious. He was about to have ramen, maybe even two packs from the communal goods that Roxy and Jun had left behind and the filthy cheater was about to eat them both all by himself. You didn't see any piles of ingredients anywhere on the countertop

“What are you making?” You were direct with your words. You pushed your shoulders forward, trying to free yourself from his hold. He held on tighter. Behind you on the stove you could hear the bubbling of the water starting to boil. He would have to tend to his secret dish soon to keep from overcooking it. From the few times you’d cooked with him he was a stickler for cooking times and temperatures and doneness levels. He was insane about it.

“No, no, just go away,” you were being shoved backward with the two steps he took foward. His words didn't sound too serious. Whatever it was that he was hiding from you was fair game. You heard the soft grunt as he struggled and you tried to peer your head around his shoulder. He countered by tilting his own head to block you again.

“What are you making? Let me see. You’re sharing with me, I caught you so half is mine.” You were already giggling when you lifted both of your hands like claws and quickly began to stab him with your fingertips right on his ribs. “That makes no sense. Are you a squatter?” He said through a gasp and he yelped and let out some quick giggles with the tickling.

His hands moved from your shoulders to your hands. He was grabbing them and you felt spun in place, suddenly looking at the door with one of his strong arms wrapped around your chest. Your two hands were trapped behind your back and he held on tightly to both of them with his other hand, in an instant he had you trapped and you were facing away from the bubbling pot. Your hands were bound between your two bodies but you could totally still get him from here. You reached again, lower this time, feeling the lower part of his abdomen. You could hear his giggling from beside your head and you swear to God you felt a euphoric sensation pulsing through your entire body to hear it. You felt like you weren’t quite in your right mind, not with the alcohol, not with the desperation for a win against him. You were pressed right up against his body again and why the hell was he so strong? Why did every single touch of his hands feel like it would consume you from within?

“Stop, stop,” he was begging but still refusing to let you go. If he wanted you to stop, wouldn't he have let you go first, his strong hand still held both of yours tightly behind your back and you moved your hand lower, feeling the very real and sudden danger of reaching for a part of him you should never, ever touch. You felt the waistband of his denim shorts, the leather of the belt he wore there and his shirt shifted and you felt the warmth of the bare skin of his belly that surged with each of the heavy breaths he took against your neck. The rough but steady exhales seemed to change when you touched him. Something was changing and you slowed your hand, still pressed up against his skin, your fingertips lightly touching the leather of that belt. His hand that held onto yours moved too and you felt the soft tips of his fingers move just over your hand there. You felt the trembling and staggered touch of his hand. Why was he trembling? Why was his touch more gentle than the previous rough gripping?

“I’ll stop if you stop,” you exhaled into the space in front of you, “besides, I already caught you. There’s no use delaying this.” Curiously, you had both stopped laughing but his arms were still around you, although the tightness of his grip he held you with had let up. You could escape quite easily if you wanted to. You could leave his embrace and you should. You really ought to put a healthy amount of space between the two of you, if you knew how an enemy should be treated, if you knew what was good for you, you would.

You took the smallest step forward, thankful for the drop in temperature that brought just a little bit of sense back into your brain. You took another step forward and his hand that had been holding your hand still gripped along your palm as you moved. You weren't quite sure why you did not feel compelled to let his hand go, you held on to him with the same amount of pressure as he held you and you turned to take one look behind him at the stovetop with the pot that sat bubbling and dancing behind his back.

You saw something green, something green and white standing up inside of that boiling pot of water. Something plastic.

Something hilarious. The crazy man was boiling his toothbrush. You saw it and you covered your mouth to keep the snort from escaping. It didn’t help. You snorted in laughter and you could feel the shift in his body as he sagged his shoulders in defeat.

Kyungsoo was frozen. He made no attempts to stop you from looking just as he hadn’t made any moves to let go of your hand, and when you looked up into his face he was standing with his free hand covering his closed eyes. He was pink.

You were openly laughing and you shook his hand that you still held as you did it, “did you seriously boil your toothbrush, Doh Kyungsoo?”

“Shut up,” he whispered through clenched teeth, “this is why I didn’t want you to see.”

You lifted a hand to lay over his pink cheek and you were almost laughing too hard to get any real words out, “d-did you want to get r-rid of my foot germs, Kyungsoo?”

“Shut up,” you felt the smallest push against your hand away from his face, then another push against your shoulder and he was quickly spinning, letting go of your hand as he did it, as if he hadn’t also been the one to hold onto you for much longer than necessary even long after you’d both swallowed down whatever might been happening with your hands behind your back a few seconds earlier.

“God, you’re so mean to me. I can’t believe you did that. I asked everybody and nobody has any extras. You know the worst part? I can't even tell if you’re telling the truth about it. Did she really use my toothbrush to clean her foot? Did she really scrub between her toes or is she just fucking with me again. You make me feel crazy. All I want to do is brush my teeth…but feet…toes,” he was whining now, full on whining half mixed with giggles because even he knew how insane he sounded. He was using the handle of the toothbrush to stir it into the boiling water. You could feel the spasms of laughter build up again in your belly. You had to hold onto yourself to keep from doubling over.

“Oh so I’m guessing you’re not one of those guys with a foot fetish then,” You joked as you busied yourself now with gathering things so you could make your own damn ramen.

“Sorry to disappoint you but I do not. Even so, a foot fetish is not an ‘ancient bacteria from the dirty floor of an 18th century, spider infested, bunker in my mouth’ fetish. What if you single handedly brought back cholera?”

“I don't think cholera is gone. I think it still lurks.” You still couldn't help the giggles even if you absolutely did not like the idea of your sleeping space being spider infested. You hadn’t quite worked up the courage to inspect all of the dark spaces around your bed for fear of what you might find.

“Great. That’s great news. How long do I need to boil this to kill cholera?” His face was exasperated now, half laughter mixed with a hopelessness that was absolutely adorable on him.

You found yourself staring at him. You came to when he’d long stopped giggling and his eyes bounced a few times over your face, his eyebrows lifting up with the tiniest bounce of his cheekbones, lips lifted in the corners slowly flattening out with the tiniest flinch of his face. It was the winding down of his laughter and he licked his lips, leaving them behind wet.

He cleared his throat. You closed your eyes, unable to keep them completely closed, your eyelids fluttered, fighting you to open back up and look at him for longer, and the breath you inhaled didn’t seem to help with any of this.

You needed something to do. You’d gathered some packs of ramen and the camping stove and fuel from the communal table and you plopped it all down on the countertop beside his boiling pot o’ toothbrush.

“Make me ramen,” you said with a little lift in your voice and tilt of your head. Not quite a request, not quite a command, more of a sweet suggestion. “Think they’d let us eat outside on the patio? I think the wind has died down a lot. It’s just raining now”

He’d finally reached some imaginary bacteria killing length of boiling time and he was tapping the toothbrush on the side of the pan to remove the excess water.

“You’re not going to try and commit suicide again are you?”

You shook your head back and forth, placing your hand over your heart, “I won't even go close to the edge, I promise.”

“Your promises mean nothing.” He deadpanned, but he was reaching into the fridge for some eggs, reaching into the shelves for the cans of spam he’d put there and stacking it all up on top of the the stove as he made his way toward the patio door.

“Bring the water bottle there,” he pointed to the countertop and you grabbed the big bottle and brought it along with the pan for him to cook in, and some chopsticks and spoons for both of you. For the first time since this trip started you cautiously began to feel a little bit happy to be here with him. He would make you delicious ramen and maybe you’d get to steal some more glances at his pretty face without getting caught.

He’d already been out on the patio to drop off the supplies by the time you came to the door with your arms full, he held the door for you. He seemed to be going back inside for something and you heard him call back toward you, “Hey! My batteries. You never gave them to me. I’ll bring them with the radio.”

So much had happened since then that you had just forgotten about them. You simply nodded as a response and told him they were in your luggage by the bed; wondering when in the hell you began to feel so comfortable with this man and you felt no qualms about sending him rooting through your luggage to find the batteries himself. You knew he’d have to get through many items such as the underwear you’d brought, the bikini he had already seen you in, the personal items such as your perfume, makeup, and your deodorant. All of those things were right there for him to witness. Little human things that had no business being embarrassing but were nonetheless.

A sudden panic built when you remembered a particular pack of items that you had brought along to this retreat that you’d all but given up on getting the chance to use here, the box of condoms you’d stuffed into your bag at the last minute. They would have been within touching distance of your big pack of batteries. There was no way he wouldn’t see them.

He took a while to return. You used that time to build up a thoroughly deep-set sense of embarrassment for what sordid conclusions you were sure he would have jumped to about you. Perhaps he’d find you to be some easy or cheap floozy. You were an adult. You were allowed to partake in and enjoy sex. You were healthy and alive and you had regular doctors appointments and you took your sexual health seriously. Why did it feel so weird though? That he might know this about you when he saw them; that he might have an opinion on the quantity of condoms in the box, a generous 20 pack, not because — not because you intended on having sex 20 times in a single week but, but because — Well … well, what if? The packs they had at the store came in 3, 10, or 20 and what if you had met the love of your life here and what if you just had to close up shop after 10? What if time number 11 was going to be the best time? You were thoroughly overthinking this. You were an expert at this, overthinking things and making yourself feel embarrassed for no reason especially when it came to Doh Kyungsoo. It was practically your default setting with him.

The door opened and you jumped in surprise; halfway through the scenario you’d imagined in which you hadn’t brought the brand new pack of 20 condoms and instead had just tossed in the already open box of 5 with one missing because you were curious about just how stretchy they actually were and you opened it to blow it up into a balloon. It was actually very stretchy and you might have just kept on blowing if you hadn’t been gagging from how awful the spermicidal liquid that filled it tasted when it got on your lips. Imagine if he found the open box with one missing already! Who had you used that one condom on at this stage in the game?! What would he think then?! You felt dizzy.

He was pushing through the doorway with a six pack of beers he’d swiped from Javier’s stash and he had his radio in one hand and in his other he gripped the batteries he’d found in your luggage right beside the big box of your stupid condoms.

He sat down on the bench beside you and you watched as he opened the little flap on the back of his radio and inserted each battery carefully, bringing it to life and switching between staticky radio stations until something clear sounded through with easy to listen to pop music playing. When he moved down to sit on the floor where the stove was set up, you quietly moved down to sit beside him.

You watched him work, feeling the very real remnants of the embarrassment you’d tricked yourself into feeling earlier still lingering in the warmth of your cheeks. He was setting up the stove and filling the pan with water, he was opening the packets of ramen and setting the flame to the right height below the pan.

You felt the need to do something too so you reached for the bags of snacks you’d brought, opening the bag and laying it flat, then reaching for the beers, pulling two off the plastic ring and opening them. You met his eyes briefly as he grabbed the beer you offered and after he took a sip of it he set it down and stared down at the pan full of water, just waiting for it to boil. He was quiet for a while until he inhaled to speak to you. You knew he had inhaled because you’d been staring at his face when he did it, when his pink lips parted and he pulled the breath in through his mouth and those lips stayed open enough for some words to come out.

“You alright?”

It was a small and quick question. He lifted his beer and tilted his head for the drink, a small stream of the liquid pooled inside his mouth and he dropped the can as he closed his mouth and swallowed it.

“Yeah,” you whispered just barely loud enough to be heard over the rain, “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged, half of a shrug really. Barely even a shrug. “You’ve gone quiet,” he said and after the words his lips stayed open and you could see the tip of his tongue touching along the edge of his teeth for a moment. His eyebrows ticked above his eyes. “You’ve gone pink, too.”

You lifted your beer and took a big drink of it, holding the can up to lay over your cheeks. You could feel the heat in your face and the cold can helped just a little bit.

Not that he deserved it, but you felt weirdly compelled to fess up. You knew you were acting weird.

“I feel a little,” you started, turning your face away from him to continue, “weird…about something.”

“Weird like what? What about?” You hadn’t felt quite this disarmed around him before. It felt dangerous to let yourself speak so easily with him.

“Weird cause you hate me?” His next question came out very quietly and you pulled your eyes away from the raindrops steadily falling over to look at his face.

You opened your mouth to speak, finding the denial ready and heavy on your tongue. It was stuck there though and you closed your mouth back up and lifted the beer to take a long drink instead. The best you could do was the small head shake. You inhaled a breath and found he’d looked up from his boiling water to watch your face for your response.

Did he really want to ruin this nice moment to get into all of that right now?

“The water is boiling,” you said, meeting his eyes that still watched you without moving for two more swallows from this beer can you’d held onto for dear life.

He seemed to let it go. He was adding noodles and cracking eggs all fancy and one-handed, adding sliced spam and green onions on top. He was lightly prodding it all with the tips of his chopsticks and handing you the lid to use to catch the dripping noodles when they were done cooking.

You both grabbed noodles to eat at the same time and after he’d slurped up a particularly hot and noisy bite he sighed heavily while looking out toward the rain storm.

“Ramen really is the perfect food,” he remarked with his cheeks full of noodles.

Your nose was running a little from the steam and the spiciness of the broth but you held a ball of chewy and delicious noodles in your cheek and nodded your head earnestly. They were delicious and followed with the beer was even better than anything any 5 star chef could possibly whip up in the fanciest of kitchens.

It was when your mouth was filled with another bite some time later that he inhaled again, satisfied with his belly full of noodles, he turned to you and opened his mouth. His eyes narrowed at you before he said it.

“Twenty feels like a lot, though,” he said it so abruptly and you choked on the soup you were swallowing and started to cough, which he ignored, “logistically, I mean. This was originally a 5-day retreat.”

His eyes were still narrowed in your direction and you lifted a handful of the chips you’d opened up and threw several right at his face. His lips pulled into a teasing smile and he lifted a hand and swatted a few of the chips away. Two of them hit him in the face. His lips were pulled into a grin. You were still coughing and trying to keep your laughing from making you choke any more.

“No, no, listen,” he was laughing a little bit through the teasing, “that’s five times every single day, including day one. That means on day one, you have to have sex five times. Is it five different guys, or maybe two times for one guy, three times for another one? Or — god, is it one guy, five times in one day? Isn’t that too much pressure?”

You couldn’t breathe. You were laughing that painful laugh that takes every ounce of your oxygen away from you and never gave you a moment to pause for an inhale. You might just die right here, teased to death because Kyungsoo found your condoms.

“You just met them! I mean, I know that you’re obviously a beautiful woman. I will admit that,” his hand was lifted to his chest as he spoke, “and it’s much easier for a woman, especially one like you, to get laid; but five times? bam-bam-bam-bam-bam,” his hands were up and he was hitting one off the other one, a visual representation of the insane amount of sex you were having in this hypothetical scenario he was describing and you were trying your absolute best to breathe through your laughter. You felt tears running down your face from it.

He wouldn’t quit, “Sex. Straight away. No names, no facts about them, no rest because there’s no time. Right from day one, just … fucking. And then you have to keep up that momentum. Every single day, five times. It’s insane! How would you have time for anything else? Do you eat? Sleep? Shower?”

You’d moved at that point in his speech. You had leapt toward him. You needed to end this once and for all. This was what you feared might happen. You were laughing too much at his ridiculous analysis of the logistics of you bringing twenty condoms with you to be able to speak at all, you simply moved closer to where he sat on the other side of this pot of noodles and you reached up for him with both of your hands. You needed to stop him. One of your hands landed over his open mouth and you covered it tightly, the other one you wrapped around his shoulders trying to give yourself some leverage to stop him from talking about it.

He lifted a hand and pulled yours down from his lips, managing to eke out another giggle and a few more words, “t-twenty c-condoms,” he managed to get out and you struggled to pull your hand free so you could cover his mouth again. He was shaking with his laughter and you squeezed as tightly as you could, finding yourself practically sitting in his lap in the efforts to silence him. If he died from this he deserved it.

“Shut up, shut up, oh my god, shut up,” you cried through the horrified giggles, squeezing him tighter to try and end everything embarrassing that was happening right now. You hardly even felt the other hand of his that wrapped around your waist pulling you closer to him to keep you from falling into the hot noodles and burning yourself. It made your thighs part up high on his lap, right near his waist. The shorts you wore were so short you could feel the scratchiness of his jean shorts against your bare inner thighs. You could feel the warmth of him between your legs and you tried not to imagine how very tightly you were actually pressed up against his body, the warmth between your legs embracing the warmth of him. His grip around you was tight and this was probably only to keep you safe — the liability that you were, afterall.

You couldn’t have been the only one. There was just no way a single adult would come to something like this and not come prepared. When you managed to stop laughing enough to talk, you asked him.

“How many did you bring? And don’t lie to me and say you didn’t bring any.”

You released his mouth just so he could answer you and you watched his lips from up close as he licked them and opened his mouth to speak. You caught motion from his free hand and he held up his five fingers and his mouth silently spoke out the number.

“Five?” You flinched on top of him and his hand tightened around your waist, immediately pulling you back into him when you sagged away. You were slowly becoming more aware of how very close you were to him right now. The smallest shift of your hips and you would easily be straddling his waist. There was a growing humidity that built between the two of you where you connected with him here.

“Five,” he said with a slip of his eyes down on your lips, “a completely normal and reasonable pack of five.”

He bit down on his lips after the confession and you felt the muscles in his thighs below your ass shift, he wiggled just a little bit and with the wiggle you felt the slight change in how you sat on him. With that wiggle you could feel just a little more of his lap that you sat on and you could make out a definite flush in his cheeks, his ears, and the back of his neck. His lips in particular looked pinker when he bit down on them again and you struggled to pull your eyes up from them. You shouldn’t stare so long at his mouth. It brought up memories of the way he felt when he kissed you.

You could hardly make sense of his number though. You pulled your face back and shook your head in disbelief. You didn’t buy it.

“Just five?” You argued, “but — but what if you met the love of your life here and you’re both crazy about each other and wanted to just lock yourselves in a room for the whole week?”

He was giggling. You could feel it in his abdomen next to your inner thigh. Below your legs he felt firm and tense and his hand shifted as he adjusted his grip on you. His fingertips slipped beneath the fabric of your shirt and he felt even warmer than your burning skin felt that he now touched. His eyes were down on your lips again.

You couldn’t do this. You had to do something to stop this. This had crossed some sort of a line already.

“Well, maybe she’d be that one psychopath that brought twenty condoms with her.”

His words came out so quickly and they hit you like an electric shock.

The reality of this was back. It was an uncomfortable and dangerous feeling. It was splashing you in the face with cool water and you could feel the wrongness in it. This funny joke had gone too far. You saw it in his own severe reaction to what he had just said to you. He’d meant it as a joke, ultimately it had just been a funny joke.

After he spoke it, his lips flattened and the pinkness in his cheeks grew. His eyes which had been so playful suddenly dropped and he cleared his throat at the same time as you allowed gravity to take your balance and shift it away from him. His hand left your waist immediately and you scooted back and away from him, retreating to the other side of the noodles, off of his lap and out of his arms, where it was in your best interest to stay for good.

You had a renewed interest in your beer can. The brand was something local that you’d never had before and you read the back label from top to bottom without skipping a single word and without digesting a single word either. You could make out his movement from your peripheral vision and you heard the click and hiss of another beer can being opened, followed instantly by a second. It pulled your attention up from your own empty can and Kyungsoo was leaning forward with the beer in his hand for you to take, his flighty eyes not quite meeting yours except for the briefest of touches.

Without him perceiving you so closely you could feel yourself relaxing a little bit from the earlier humiliation and laughing fit turned inappropriate and stifling closeness that nearly suffocated you both with the unexplainable thickness of the air that had built up between the two of you.

Halfway through this beer Kyungsoo inhaled deeply, opened his mouth and asked you a silly question.

“Zombie invasion or Vampires?” he asked and you swallowed what was inside your mouth and looked into his face. He was looking down at his beer can absentmindedly while he clicked the tab with his thumb. It took you only a few seconds of thought and you shrugged, “Vampires, I guess.”

He nodded his head once and shrugged his face, “they’re only a problem at night,” he said in agreement. It was the same thought that you had about them. Zombies seemed like an all the time problem. Vampires would be solved with a curfew.

”Watching sports or playing sports?” You asked suddenly, figuring that this game involved taking turns. His eyes were lifted up into the air above his head and he pursed his lips, “playing sports, I guess.”

“Same.” You were nodding in agreement, finding sports on TV too boring to handle you much more enjoyed playing them even if you were never really great at any one sport in particular.

“Singing or Dancing?” It was his turn to ask.

You really enjoyed singing when you were alone, but you weren’t the kind of person to be able to do it in front of anyone. Still, if you had to pick one, you’d pick singing. You answered as such and his head ticked to the side with a cute eyebrow lift and a smile.

“Singing,” he said in agreement with you and you nodded your head, hoping he wouldn’t expect you to actually be any good at it. This was about enjoyment, not talent.

“Win the lottery or find your soulmate?” This one had him thinking. He had been such a crazy person while playing Monopoly you figured he would pick the money but after a few minutes of thought he shrugged and took a sip of his beer giving a soft “soulmate,” as his answer.

“Ohhhh, I didn’t expect that from you.” You teased and you swallowed more of your beer emptying the can completely as he watched your face for a few moments, probably expecting you to answer this one. You only nodded your head as a response. He lifted his eyebrows in question and you nodded again, confirming without words that you had the same response as he did. It was kind of spooky how many answers you both shared. Even weirder still that he understood what you were saying without you having to actually speak with him. It was something you’d noticed during some of the cooking challenges, the odd unspoken communication that just came easy with him.

“Right or left?” He asked very suddenly with a wide smile and you lifted up your right hand, shouting “exterior!” proudly and instantly. His eyes widened and gave you a round of applause before he asked another question, “East or west?” This one didn’t work. You lifted your hand and scratched at your lip, avoiding his eyes and pointing a finger in some direction that you’d just picked at random.

“That’s South.” He shook his head and furrowed his brows, “boooo,” he jeered at you and you shrugged in a hopeless sort of way with a giggle. “It moves around,” you whined and he shook his head slowly at you. “It absolutely does not. You move, it stays where it is.”

The sound of the patio door opening startled you both and you turned to see Sara sheepishly peeking her head out through the opening.

“Oh, here you are. I thought I heard laughing,” she said in her sweet voice, “we’re just starting a movie marathon, do you both want to join?”

It sounded fun actually. You’d wondered how much longer you two could play this or that before running out of ideas and you were nodding your head enthusiastically, pushing yourself up to your feet before Kyungsoo even had a chance to register the question.

“Oh, uhh — alright,” he said softly as if he’s only just now realized that he had been spending all of this time with you alone, the enemy — out of what, pure love for ramen? Need for fresh air and a distraction from the tedium? There was a movie marathon happening now, that was real entertainment. Not just a crazy girl who he could make fun of for packing way too many condoms for a 5-day trip, who doesn’t know directions, and who does awful things to him like call him mean names, attack his ribs because that’s where he’s the most ticklish, tries to suffocate him any chance she gets, and does terrible awful things to his toothbrush.

You were already cleaning up the space and gathering trash and used utensils to bring inside. Kyungsoo was only now standing up and picking up the last few beer cans and the remains of the delicious ramen he had made for you.

Inside of the kitchen the others had brought over some spare mattresses and pillows and laid them all out on the floor — they had turned out the lights and they were projecting a movie on the big blank wall.

It was something you hadn’t ever seen before, something grand and epic with a large sweeping universe, action, adventure and romance all in one. It honestly felt perfect for a movie marathon.

You could smell the microwave popcorn and you already had a cold beer waiting for you on one of the floor mattresses. You had a pile of pillows at your back and someone, god bless them, had gone into your room and brought your lovely winner’s blanket.

You eyed the rest of the group as they settled down in spots around the space, specifically leaving the space right beside you open for Kyungsoo. You noticed a cold beer next to his side as well. Normally you’d have gone out of your way to find another spot to sit. Or even drag a big heavy mattress over to use instead of having to share the same one with him. But now the movie was starting and there was really not enough time for all of that. You scooted closest to the edge of this mattress and out of your peripheral vision you saw him come up to the other side of this mattress and he sunk down into it, grabbing the beer and sitting a lot further away from the edge than you had done.

He wasn’t going out of his way to put as much space between the two of you as you had been. The lights were out and the movie began playing and soon this sitting at the very edge of this thing was becoming a bit too uncomfortable so you scooted yourself just a little bit closer to where he sat.

When you scooted though, you could suddenly feel the warmth of his thigh next to yours and as you adjusted you leaned against some of the pillows propped up behind your back, finding a bit more support when you leaned just slightly against his arm. You’d pulled your blanket up over your legs and pretended not to notice when his hand pulled the blanket over his legs too.

The movies were long and involved. Occasionally your mind would drift too far from the plot and the small whispered questions like, “wait, who is that guy again?” Would be met with whispered responses, “that’s the admiral’s son,” and your follow up realizations like, “ohh my god that’s why he’s being hunted,” got a white little hum as a response from him.

While you tried your best not to interrupt his movie watching experience you felt strangely comfortable asking him every single question that popped into your head and based on his calm responses you didn’t think he even minded it all that much.

The movie gave you whiplash though. It was quick with the surprises and it had reached a point when you’d already jumped four times from the dramatic twists and turns and you could feel some very real danger for the main hero when he found himself down in a dark pit, seemingly at the end of his luck. You could feel a creepy crawling sensation slipping up your back when you first saw them; it was spiders. Spiders. You felt a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach and you felt your breath feel sticky in your heavy lungs. There were so many. You were gasping. You were desperate for air but your lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Hundreds. Thousands of enormous, hairy spiders with thousands of legs and fangs; the sounds of their skittering feet and chomping jaws — the rooms filled with their webs, and human sized bodies trapped in those webs, wrapped up and wriggling and screaming. You felt your hands shaking and you had to close your eyes. You couldn't breathe. You couldn’t stop it. You were going to die right here without oxygen. You couldn’t stop it. You could feel their legs crawling all over your skin and you could feel their fangs sinking down into your skin. Ripping out chunks of your flesh. Burrowing under your skin. You had to dip your head down under the blanket and you were trembling all over and you couldn’t breathe.

“Hey,” you heard his low voice whisper out into your ear over the sound of the screaming, “hey, hey. Shh… you’re okay.” He was talking to you. You felt his arms rubbing over your back, you felt his arms wrap around your shoulders and he was rubbing you up and down in long slow pressured passes over your skin, shushing into your ear and willing you to calm down with the warmth of his cheek pressed up against your cheek.

“Shhh…They’re not real.”

“They can’t hurt you.”

“You are safe here.”

“You’re okay, honey, you’re alright.”

“Breathe in slowly,” he mentored the deep and slow breaths he urged you to take. You felt the slow rise of his chest as he did it. You gasped and your lungs stuttered as you tried to copy him.

“And out, slowly.” You felt the slow exhale he let out. He was so close, his breath warmed your face.

It took a long while. Your breathing was the first to begin to settle.

You’d lifted your face from where you’d been hiding against his chest and you found that you had been crying. It took you a few deep breaths to get your breathing to actually start to settle down and his words began to really sink in. You’d had some sort of a panic attack at the thought of all of those spiders and you must have been so stressed out lately being here with all of those bugs around you constantly, you’d simply lost your touch with reality for a moment.

“A-Are they gone yet?” You had it under control. You understood what had happened and you simply lost your mind for a short while but he brought you back. It was just panic. It happened occasionally and on those rare times when it took you over so completely, it took you hours to finally calm down. But here, here with him; he had been so quick to understand what was happening and he had been so steady and strong with his words and his distracting comfort. You felt taken aback and stunned.

It took him a few moments to lift his head out of the blanket and when he came back to you he gave you the smallest squeeze on your hand that he was holding and you knew it was over.

“They are gone,” he leaned his forehead against yours under this blanket and whispered the answer to your question.

“T-Thank you,” you whispered and you wiped your face with the back of your hand. You felt the small hum from his chest as a response and you held your breath when you felt the soft pads of his thumbs wiping the wetness from your cheeks. You felt like a mess. What a ridiculous human being you were. Unable to handle a little bit of fake spiders in a fake movie, you felt like an idiot. The shame from this was next to flood through your body and you whispered out a quiet word to him, “sorry.”

You felt his head shaking back and forth and he had already pulled both of your heads out from under the blanket that was quickly growing stuffy from the heat from both of your bodies.

“Don’t be. You’re fine.” He said it in such a matter of fact way, it felt so very true and finite. Don’t be sorry. You are fine. Then he squeezed down harder on your hand which he still held down somewhere under this blanket.

He wasn't letting you go. Was this just you being a liability again? Was he trying to keep you from weeping and screaming and causing a scene? You felt so caught off guard and nervous with him holding your hand like this that you felt too scared to move.

This fucking movie though, the whiplash continued because in front of you now, unfolded a sensual romantic scene. With you and Kyungsoo sharing this blanket with you on the same mattress and with your hand held tightly within his own, his fingers intertwined now within yours and the heavy weight of his bare knee resting atop of your bare thigh. They were kissing now. He had just walked in on her in the shower and he had shoved her roughly against the marble wall of the fancy hotel room and his hands moved to cup her bare breasts. The camera zoomed in on her nipples and his hands roughly gripped her ass. You stared ahead with your teeth biting down hard on your own lips when you felt the loosening of Kyungsoo’s hand as he straightened his posture and cleared his throat, and unwound your fingers from his fingers, your hand from his hand, he unceremoniously dropped you entirely and pulled his own hands together securely onto his own lap.

You felt oddly slighted but the scene had been too close to your first kiss with him for either of you to withstand.

The pair on the screen were fucking on a bed now. Seeing the quick progression of the love scene made you slightly thankful that he had let go of your hand when he did, even if you did feel a strange twinge in your throat for having been dropped like a hot potato by the man, his timing was spot on.

The second movie had finished. This was a trilogy and you’d all been watching this for hours now. You felt the need to get up and move your body some as a few of the others had done throughout the film.

You’d managed to untangle yourself from the blanket. Kyungsoo didn’t move when you left. He had taken on a more relaxed posture on the blankets and only the very slight reflection of the screen on his eyes gave you any indication that he was awake. But now when you looked at him, you no longer saw the reflection. His eyes seemed to be closed. You’d woken him up so early this morning; already it felt like ages ago.

In the back of this big room you caught sigh of Sara who had been pacing with an odd posture. You noticed she hadn’t laid down much on the mattresses during the films and she had opted for sitting up in a chair. She’d mentioned with a smile that if she got all the way down there she might not be able to get back up. Still, she was no longer seated but just doing slow and careful walking exercises here in the far back wall.

She caught your motion to join her and her shoulders straightened out as she greeted you with a smile. You noticed her hand fell down from where she had been touching her belly. Her smile was so bright that you figured she had just been absentmindedly touching her baby rather than feeling any sorts of discomfort.

“Are you here to join me in my walks?” She reached for you and linked elbows with you the moment you were within touching distance and you giggled beside this sweet woman and fell into step beside her.

You both took several slow and steady steps in a big lazy circle around the large open space. After a few moments of walking she squeezed a hand around your forearm and giggled into your ear beside you. “Has he kissed you yet?”

Always straight and to the point. You looked into her face with wide eyes and you could feel the heat filling your cheeks with the answer basically broadcasted with your reaction and her smiled widened further with the quiet little yelp of excitement that erupted from her chest.

“But he didn’t mean it,” you said in a whisper. She was still smiling and she nodded her head up and down, “Sara, he was just drunk.” She was giggling with her hand covering her mouth to keep her volume down.

“Oh psshh…” she waved a dismissive hand. “They never mean it,” she whispered, “until they do,” she added with a slow rub over her belly and a wild giggle and you gasped scandalously and tapped her arm to get her to cut that out. Your wordless denials had absolutely no effect on her. She had long ago left reality and now resided deep in la-la land.

“I am so serious,” she whispered with her head dipped down beside your face, “you don’t see the way he looks at you — no, the way he stares at you. If I didn’t know for the fact that he was terribly, hopelessly,” she inhaled and leaned into the dramatics with a suggestive whispered groan, “desperately in love with you, I’d think he was trying to set you on fire with his eyes.”

She lifted her head and touched the tip of her index finger to her chin, “actually I think it might be that too. He wants you to burn for him the way he burns for you. Gahhhhhh—” she was squealing again. You had to shush her to remind her to keep her voice down. Strangely she quit squealing quite abruptly and her hand was touching over her belly again with the smallest gasp.

This couldn’t have been a coincidence, you’d seen her touching her belly many times at this point with a sort of pensive look in her eyes.

“Sara, are you okay? What’s happening?”

Her mouth was shaped into an o and she exhaled slowly through her mouth.

“Just, normal aches and pains involved with growing a person inside of your body. It’ll pass,” she was assuring you of this but you couldn’t help but notice the light sheen of sweat that covered her forehead.

“Come sit down,” you pulled lightly on her arm, urging her to relax now but she pulled you back.

“The walking helps,” she said with her eyebrows furrowed together and her slow and steady exhale leaving her chest in a purposeful rhythm.

You felt a surge of worry with the realization that you had been watching her walking in slow and steady circles for the better part of three hours now. The walking helps, helps with what? Was she in labor?

“How long are the pauses in between?”

“It was — hours but they’re getting closer. It’s probably nothing,” her smile was back. She’d straightened out her shoulders and shrugged lightly, as if having a baby right now in the wake of a strong hurricane while not in a hospital was no big deal at all.

“We have to tell someone,” you said, moving through the large space of this industrial kitchen until you reached the space where the movie was playing. You found a sleeping Javier and a groggy Mr. Chen who noticed your movement. You kneeled down and whispered into his ear. He caught the important words, namely ‘Sara’ and ‘baby,’ and he was standing up instantly, tapping Javier roughly on the arm who woke up with a start.

“Javier, get up. Your wife is in labor. I have to call her sister. Oh my god, I’m going to be an uncle.”

Wife? Javier and Sara are married to each other? Uncle? Were all of these people part of the same family? The words came at shock to you and their quick movement woke Kyungsoo who sat up and rubbed his eyes.

The movie was turned off. There was a flurry of activity and movement and Mr. Chen and Javier were arguing with an impossibly stubborn pregnant woman who was so clearly in labor that she had to pause every ten minutes for breathing exercises before she would continue with her denials.

“I just don’t want to miss them,” she whined with a deep frown on her face and she motioned toward where you and Kyungsoo stood, “they got so close, it almost happened. And you’re telling me I can’t just cross my legs and go later? I think I can hold it.”

Sara was crying. She was irrationally invested in You and Kyungsoo’s story and she was in pain.

You assured her that there was nothing important here that she was going to miss and she needed to go with Mr. Chen and Javier now. She needed to go meet her new baby. They were headed to the hospital. Mr. Chen assured us that he was an expert at navigating the treacherous weather worn and flooded roads of this island and he would deliver her there safely. He even promised to return tomorrow as soon as he was able to and Kyungsoo got everyone’s phone number so they could send updates.

The big heavy door to the front of the building closed shut tight with a heavy bang and you found yourself standing in absolute silence opposite an equally quiet Kyungsoo. For the first time since you’d met him you were really completely and undeniably alone with the man who — against every single desperate and gasping breath and scream as evidence of your stubborn denial — alone with the man who you were in love with.

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

i see there's shipping discussion occurring in your ask box so i figure i'll throw in my two cents as well!

i used to be a REALLY heavy shipper, in exactly that shallow "reduce their personalities to the concept of kissing each other" way that tons of people are complaining about. i wouldn't get into ship wars or harass people or anything, but i was totally the kind of person who you couldn't just have a level character discussion with— because i would be pretty intent on just going through the motions with whatever best friend or acquaintance I'd decided they had a huge crush on.

by contrast now my biggest most important "ships" end up all being somewhere between 3-5 people with a lot of care put into the nuances of each connection on the relationship chart— i still refer to them as poly ships (as a shorthand mostly), but of the 3 to 10 different relationships between the characters, i usually only see a few of them as romantic or sexual, with the majority a lot closer to a found family or queerplatonic sort of vibe

honestly i think the biggest reason for the reductive style of shipping was that 1) i wasn't as skilled a writer then as i am now, so i wasn't really sure how to really retain all of the features of a character that i liked, and 2) i wanted the biggest feelings IMMEDIATELY and there's some kind of instant gratification to shipping where the end goal is for them to kiss and you can just draw/write/think about them kissing and you're done.

it's kind of like the instant ramen of fictional relationships to me. it's kind of "one size fits all", low writing skill requirement, low effort, really really fast and easy, and ultimately not really that rewarding at the end of it. and just like how real actual ramen exists separately from instant noodle cups, it IS possible to write a really amazing and beautiful and deep romantic ship fic that successfully plays off of the kinds of people these characters are, but ramen still isn't the end-all be-all of relationships! there are so many different hypothetical dishes that could be made with the same characters!

and my personal favorite is polyqueerplatonic ships for this very reason, because with just a few characters you can get a whole diverse array of interactions and dynamics!!

anyway tldr; i think romantic shipping is fun, and even "cheap" reductive romantic shipping can be fun, but (to return to my instant noodles metaphor) it would be reasonably upsetting to attend an awesome community potluck only to find like 90% cup noodles. and the people serving the cup noodles frown at you whenever you ask if anyone's serving like, gourmet spaghetti or dumplings or something.

so just know that if you're bringing your silly "ouhhh they should kiss" fan works to the fandom, you're appreciated and I'm glad you're having fun, and if you're bringing the super precisely thought-out nuanced relationship fan works to the fandom, you are ALSO so appreciated and additionally i really wish there were more of you in my own fandoms.

flashbacks to the time i looked up a ship that i THOUGHT was pretty popular but it only had like 230 works on AO3 at the time and basically all of them were romantic instead of my hyper-specific one-sided queerplatonic one-sided fully platonic thing i had pictured in my mind....

Okay, as someone who has tried their hand at writing slow burn in the past, I totally get the instant gratification thing. "You know when would be a good time for them to kiss? NOW"

I'd get frustrated at my own characters for not just making out already and I was the one writing them not making out lmao

[chefwhatnot]

A Too-Close Analysis of the Double Exposure Treatments from Duskmourn (2/2)

We return to the Double Exposure cards from Duskmourn! This post will be going over all the cards I didn't talk about in the first part, which is all the legends that don't appear in the main story (not including Altanak, Norin, and Arabella since they're all at uncommon so none of them got Double Exposure printings). Now, because we don't know much about most of these characters, this part will include a lot more educated guesses. Quick shoutout to wotc for posting the "Legends of Duskmourn" article a little bit earlier than they usually do so I have a little bit more to go off of. Away we go!

(Oh, and if you missed Part 1, you can find it here)

Toby, Beastie Befriender-

A creepy Jack-in-the-Box looms behind Toby's profile. Could simply be that kids are afraid of clowns, or perhaps something more? A Jack-in-the-Box is startling, and even though Toby says he has his Beastie friends to protect him, that would not make him immune to a brief startle, would it?

The Mindskinner-

A hand. Who is its owner? Unclear, but the clawed motif on the gloves make it almost look like it belongs to a Razorkin. From the Legends article, the Mindskinner is the fear of Razorkin, and employs a much more gradual and insidious methodology compared to the rest of the nightmares in the House. Based on this double exposure, it seems that not even Razorkin are immune to being targeted by its cruel whims. Plus, the only way to drive off the Mindskinner is to have your glimmer nearby, meaning Razorkin, who've already given themselves in to maddening pain make for easy prey. It might have enough intelligence to find this delightfully ironic, to torture that which first gave it form.

Kona, Rescue Beastie-

Overlaid on Kona’s profile is a set of canine jaws, facing the same direction as her. Two interpretations: one, that the prey instincts that were within whatever animal later mutated into Kona are still active and alive, that she still fears being snatched up by the jaws of some greater creature and devoured. Or, alternatively: those are Kona’s teeth. Beasties are, at the end of the day, as monstrous as anything else in the House, their masks being their attempt to conceal that fact. A beastie knows that if a survivor sees its true face, they will immediately flee in terror. The biggest fear of a Beastie is that its monstrous nature will be revealed, that for all its efforts it will terrify and lose those it seeks to protect. Or worse, that it will be the one to take them away, slipping back into bestial instincts.

The Jolly Balloon Man-

I've spent so fucking long staring at this one trying to figure out what the fuck that even is and I honestly have nothing. A kinda fucked up looking balloon animal? Some kinda I got nothin’. I will say, though, that I think the JBM's rictus grin is a very good demonstration of the way Razorkin have fully fucked up senses of pain/pleasure and such. But yeah I don’t like this one. Pass.

Rip, Spawn Hunter-

A skeletal hand, reaching upwards towards Rip, who has her back turned towards the viewer. Rip used to be a member of the Doorblades, the group of survivors who dedicate themselves to fighting back and eliminating as many of the House’s monsters as possible. Which, we know from the planeswalkers guide, is a group with a very high fatality rate. Turn your attention now to the flavor text on Came Back Wrong and the Duskmourn printing of Pyroclasm. Rip has a practice of burning bodies of those who fell in the line of duty. The skeletal hand is that of one of her former comrades, whose body she had to burn and leave behind. It represents doubt, doubt that she’s doing the right thing by cutting off any chance of grim revival for those who’ve passed, doubt that the human toll of spawn hunting is worth it. No wonder she prefers to work alone.

The Swarmweaver-

Ahh! The Bees! Not the Bees!! A living scarecrow beehive, with a giant bee layered on top. Insects, crawling within its being, beneath its wooden skin and throughout its spindly form. The Swarmweaver is a wickerfolk: maybe in life they feared what they now wholly consist of? Not a huge amount to go off of here- is what I would say if the Legends article didn’t confirm that the Swarmweaver can indeed still feel the corpse bees crawling around beneath its wooden skin, that they are constantly in pain and the only way they have to relieve that is to send the bees to attack others. Do you think they’re still aware enough to feel regret, for sending the source if their pain towards others?

Victor, Valgavoth’s Seneschal-

In front of his face is a moth, symbolizing his total devotion to Valgavoth. In the flavor text for the Special Guests printing of Sacrifice, they describe a ritual where cultists allow their fears to be fully consumed by the house, allowing themselves to be reborn. Victor has apparently undergone this process dozens of times, no trace of his original self remaining. The chain of eye-marks on the moth’s wings connect to Victor’s glasses. His fears are now inseparable from Valgavoth’s being: in a way he has made himself part of the house.

Marvin, Murderous Mimic- Another hand! Now, originally I assumed that this was the hand of the Razorkin who used Marvin as an intimidation tactic and possessed him, but according to the Legends article, Marvin isn’t possessed at all, and merely “quickened” when the Razorkin grabbed him by coincidence. Which is… not what I expected from the Chucky analogue and makes it a lot harder for me to explain what the skeleton hand means. Cool. I do still think the hand might represent a lack of agency, a vague memory of being used as a puppet by whatever ventriloquist originally owned him. Beneath all of Marvin’s psychotic behaviors is the fear that he might still be no better than a puppet after all.

And that’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed this writing exercise and all my philosophical wankery about this silly card game. I’m literally in the middle of my prerelease event so I gotta go now. Also plz read my magic the gathering fanfiction i have a lot of it and crave comments

[silenttrxxs]

mafia/assassin choi san! x reader

mentions of violence, swearing, blood, possible smut

another day, another dollar they say, but some thing was different about today, the air was thicker in a weird sense, something was not feeling right to you and you usually had a good sense for figuring something out before it happened it’s what got you into this mess in the first place.

you woke up as per usual slipping on your house shoes before truding your half asleep body to the shared kitchen flicking the kettle on before standing there and rubbing the sleep from your eyes as you team mates ushered around speaking nonsense about the days plans before you could even utter a word your view was blocked by him.

You tutted and rolled your eyes and turnt to stir your tea and moved around him, going and sitting down on the kitchen island next to Wooyoung, the teams accountant, well that’s what he liked to call himself if anyone wondered, he usually spent his nights counting up the money from the days work and ensured each member had the right shares and all profits were accounted for.

The other team members being Yeosang, the teams hackers, or like he liked to call himself, a messenger of sorts… well he was more allusive than that he would give himself the name of Blue Bird. Hongjoong, the sniper, or what he wanted to call himself was the best shot out there… he wasnt exactly wrong. He never missed a shot ever. Then there’s yunho, the resident navigator, he’s always in charge of ensuring everyone is in the right position and that the plan is to go without a single hitch, next was yunhos best friend and right hand, they both worked together, Mingi being the slightly stronger of the pair made sure that yunhos back was always covered, if something was to happen it was Mingi who would protect the team, but he did have a slight favour for yunho and it showed. Jongho, he was the pure muscle aside from the leader he made sure that all logistics was managed and that everything was accounted for although he was the youngest looking at the group it’s self you would be mistaken that he was the oldest. The oldest being Seonghwa, the resident doctor, ensuring everyone’s health was in the best shape along with ensuring that the comfort of everyone was guaranteed, some would say he was like the mother to everyone, he certainly gave that vibe off.

Lastly was the shadow covering your small frame as you stirred your tea. The leader of the group. Choi San, the most feared name of the city, the sheer mention would make the worst people quiver in their boots and run in the opposite direction.

The name struck fear into many but not you. You had been roped into this group after being caught in the wrong area at the wrong time and San had managed to sweep you off your feet and took you back to the bunker. And now you’re here 6 years later, sparing your life for the sake of money and goods, the goods were made and collected to spread a bigger message and everyone in the group believed that the system that was there was screwing people over more so than helping them so it was about time that people fended for themselves and took what was rightfully theirs.

You took the time bringing the cup to your lips as you raised your glance to meet his eyes, the same eyes that had been screaming hellfire at you for the night allowing you what 1 hour of sleep, this being noticed by Seonghwa that just tutted and shook his head as he passed by.

“What do you want san?”

“Nothing you usually make us both a tea but looks like you are feeling a little selfish today?”

A loud scoff leaves your mouth as you roll your eyes taking another sip.

“You know where it is san, I’ve barely slept because of you and today is a big day”

San sighs and looks at you, his anger and frustration subsides as you look at him, sheer exhaustion dripping entire body. He walks over to the kettle flicking it on and making his tea as he sighs running his hand through his hair before grabbing the cup and sitting next to you on the stool, taking a sip of the tea.

“Today is gonna be hard, you know I don’t want you out there y/n”

“You don’t have a say in the matter, im part of this team am I not?”

“Yes I just don’t want you hurt y/n”

“It’s part of the job San, you are always coming back late, I’m always finding you cooped up with Seonghwa getting treatments for your wounds it’s worrying”

You let your gaze fall to his chest as speak, remembering the mission that caused the relationship between you both to fall apart at the seams.

You had been given coordinates from yunho, positioning yourself at the bridge, gun cocked and ready for the opposition but a slight detail was missed, they had one more member than you, the opposing teams member emergered from the shadows without you being able to process a single second to breathe your body was falling, into the abyss of water below, the last sound you managed to process was the snap of the necklace that you had spent your entire life protecting, given to you by your late father. The water cascading over your body as it swallowed your body, the only thing you remember was waking up in the bunker, the bright light of Seonghwas torch shining in your eye as he completed his checks making sure you was as good as you could be given the circumstances. The night took a turn, screams and curses being thrown at each other, not a single one of you being entirely sure why you was so mad at each other but something was bothering you both. You had always had feelings for him, but never wanting to be the one to spark a single thing you held back watching from the wings as he lead the team, being at his beck and call at any moment, you caught the sly glances he would share to you but waved them off, trying to ensure your delusions were not fed.

Now you’re here, mad for the lack of sleep and the fact that your necklace was lost, and mad you couldn’t look at the man in front of you without your heart beating ten times more faster than normal. You looked at San again the hurt flooding your body as as you allow the memory of when he had been shot invade your mind again waving it off as much as you could you took a sip of your tea again and sighed.

“San..”

“Yeah?”

“Look I’m sorry, I am just as worried about you as you are for me, I think there is something I need to tell you”

“Hmm I’m listening”

“I-I have feelings san, for you… that’s stupid and insane for me to say, I can’t be falling for you that’s going to cause chaos for not only you, being the leader and all… but you know my history…”

“Yeah I pulled you away from the enemies side for a reason y/n, you think it’s just you feeling this way, it’s not, I’ve been watching you for years without you even knowing… but for you to feel this… the same feelings that I feel is … not what I expected but it’s certainly not something I’m willing to allow to fall through the cracks of my fingers”

San stands moving your stool for you to face him, you gasped as his hand was holding your chin urging your face to look up at him.

“Y/n I am in love with you”

San smiled as he leant into you attaching his lips to yours as he pulled your body closer to his, the kiss becoming heated as your feelings mixed together like a deadly potion that could kill everyone around, the air becoming thinner as the unsteadiness of your thoughts spilled from your body into his.

San felt every emotion that was possible, the sheer joy radiating from his body as he melted into the kiss. His hands finding purchase on your hips as he lifted you from the seat, taking your body to the couch, laying your body down gently as his lips found your neck, peppering the skin with burning kisses, marks being scattered along your skin as he looked around. His breath catching as he tried to compose himself.

“God you drive me crazy” he breathed out before pulling his phone out and ushering the entire team to stay in their own dorms as he dealt with his situation.

“Please San” you breathed out as you moved against him.

…..

Will make a part 2 as … my brain isn’t braining … hope you enjoy…

[cerisemerald]

One and only — Thomas Shelby x Fem!Reader

SUMMARY: She has been loving Thomas for a while now, and it is heaving on her the fact she thinks he still is in love with Grace — she needs a confession, a affirmation that she is not just filling in a gap. It comes in a unexpected night, followed by an unusual morning, but everything with Thomas was like that.

MUSIC: One and only by Adele

A/N: this is the second fic I am reposting from my old account (I accidentally deleted it) and it was from one of my celebrations (200 followers I think) that consisted of fanfics inspired by Adele’s songs from the album 21, this one was requested by a dear friend and it is very dear to me!! It happens between s1-s2, Thomas meets (Y/N) after grace leaves. Feedback is always welcomed!

WARNINGS: English is not my first language.

WORD COUNT: 5,477

[MASTERLIST] [MOODBOARD]

(divider credit is for @cafekitsune)

“Thomas,” she calls, staring at his back, but he doesn't answer, he continues to look at the field in front of them instead. “Thomas?”

“Hm?” He still doesn't look at her.

(Y/N) decides to finally walk to him, she does not stop in front of him though, sensing something was wrong and not wanting to disturb or annoy him somehow. She stops right behind Thomas, a step of distance between them, from this close she can see the tension in his shoulders better, and as much as she wishes to touch him and try to tranquillise him, she waits. He doesn't do anything, however, not even looks at her, and she sighs.

She looks at the field, too, trying to understand what is possibly happening in his head. But she has a strong guess, one she does not like at all. (Y/N) hates when Thomas lives more in his past than in his present life, for her, it was his biggest flaw; the way he was constantly living for memories and not for life itself. And she feels that now he is probably thinking about what happened two years ago, Grace.

(Y/N) does not care he is thinking of her, that she can understand, after all he did fall in love with her, it would not be easy, especially for Thomas who protected himself with so many walls, to forget the woman. She doesn't expect him to just stop thinking about Grace overnight, but it did hurt, sometimes, how it felt, as if she was living in the shadows of someone bigger than her. It had been Grace's mistake, but she was the one paying for it, paying for the mistakes of a woman she hadn't even met.

She also knew, of course, that it would take Thomas time to trust again, to open himself like he had before. She knew everything that revolved around a broken heart, she did, but knowing did not make anything easier to deal with. It was still hard to face Tommy and see how, even in his most present moments, a piece of him was lost. Sometimes, she would ask herself why she even stayed, when it seemed like Thomas would never love her the same way. But she did, returned to him every single time, hope, maybe, tying her to him.

“Tom, why’d you bring me here?”

Thomas had showed up in her house last night, surprising (Y/N) in the middle of the week. It was not how their encounters usually went, Thomas would see her mostly on weekends. Sometimes he would spend the night, sleep with her to leave only on Sunday morning, sometimes stay up until four pm, these nights they would dance in her kitchen while drinking whiskey. It was all simple, but what mattered was that they talked, that they would sit down to talk and would sooth each other. Everything between them was simple, even love, when it came to their realisations that they were in love. There hadn't been a confession, not from her nor from him, they had just looked at each other differently, held each other for longer, kissed with more passion than ever, and that was enough to understand.

But yesterday was very different. She could not understand what was happening, neither read it on his face. As soon as she opened the door, he was tense, eyes haunted — not like tiredness from work or exhaustion because of all his problems, but as if he had just heard terrible news and saw his world crumbling. When she greeted him with a kiss, he had not held her waist or face, and had returned the kiss distantly. Still, she breathed and let him in, hoping that she might help somehow. He didn't talk much, short answers only, but it was like he needed the attention, needed her to listen to him, so she did. After sometime, she had run out of ideas to console him and offered for them to share a meal together, and for the first time since they had known each other, he ate something. Almost unnerving, but she was so relieved that she chose to see that as a good sign. After that, Thomas just sat in silence while she cleaned the plates.

When (Y/N) finished, she turned around to see he was sitting still at the table, eyes closed, breathing like he was trying to control himself. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to hold back tears or a scream, whatever it was, it was consuming him, drowning him in anguish. (Y/N) moved slowly, getting closer to him and delicately grabbing his hand. Then she whispered his name like a secret, like she was afraid of being caught saying that, because, in truth, she wasn’t sure if she wanted Tommy to hear it or not.

But Thomas did, and he squeezed her hand like his life depended on it, returning the touch with such a force it took her aback. It was not like he never touched her, or that he didn’t show any sign of affection such as holding her hand, but that touch was different. It was acid, burning (Y/N)'s skin in seconds and leaving a million scars behind. Thomas touched her like she was the only one capable of saving him.

It was scary. It was exhilarating. It was a breath of heaven’s pure oxygen. It was suffocating as the smoke on a fire. And it was only a touch of hand.

But it said so many things, it said that he wanted her there, that he actually needed her there. And she was happy with being wanted, but being needed was something she could not even describe, it was overwhelming. It took (Y/N)’s breath away. It made her forget everything else she needed to do, because Thomas was there, all of him, in her kitchen, holding her hand and asking her to be there for him.

With care, she walked until she was behind him, her arms adjusting perfectly in his neck, allowing his head to find a rest in her belly, it was not often Thomas would let her be the one embracing him. Usually, he would be more vulnerable after they would have an entire night together, and he would lay down between her legs and relax on her chest while she caressed him. (Y/N) started to caress his hair, gently as she could, and she noticed that with time, Thomas was melting to her touch, a small smile grew on her lips, but she kept quiet. It was the first time she felt like she could have every single piece of him with her. He sighed as she took some strands of his face, inclining his head even more.

Thomas opened his eyes suddenly, and because of his moving, they were now staring right at each other. Her heart sank with what she could see, his eyes were dark and tired, hurt. Still, she didn't say anything, knowing it had to be him the one to initiate any type of conversation about what was happening, she only kept caressing his hair. After some seconds, he reached for her left hand and kissed it, making her smile again, he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, and she understood that it was his way of saying thank you. And, in a way, showing that he liked being near her like that. Although he seemed more calm, it didn't look like he would talk, and it was obvious how tired he was, so instead of asking anything, (Y/N) offered for them to sleep. He nodded, and they were quick to go to bed, a simple, but genuine kiss as a good night.

In the morning, he had all of a sudden woken her up with kisses on her neck — like last night hadn’t been so different, saying he wanted to take her somewhere. And yet, even though it was his idea to bring her, he hadn’t spoken since they got in here.

“I haven't come here in a long time.” He finally says something, making (Y/N) stare at him again. “My father…” Thomas takes a time to complete his sentence, “my father used to bring us here, sometimes, I hunted with him one day.”

“Hunted what?”

“A deer,” Thomas smirks, finally directing his look at her.

“You still didn’t answer me.” Thomas smirks only grows bigger at her words. “Why did you bring me here, Thomas?”

He keeps staring at her, she can’t tell everything he is thinking, but that he wants to say something and the words are hard to say, she is sure.

“I don’t know.” He confesses, and (Y/N) could have believed it if it wasn't for the hint of doubt in his tone, as if he didn't want to tell all the truth, but at the same time, didn't know all of it too.

She breathes deeply, she is trying really hard to understand him, she has been for quite some time, but he never truly gives her the chance. “It's that so?”

Thomas and her stare at each other for long seconds, it's not a battle this time, it's not her trying to reach him and him running away, (Y/N) feels as if she is already inside, but can't see what it is, and how could she? When he showed nothing before. She is not sure how to navigate this, what to search, what to ask, not this time, and that scares and frustrates her in equal amounts.

Thomas has these eyes that always make her feel naked, confused and alive. He sometimes looks at her like she is precious, like he cannot go a second without touching her, and she believes it, because his eyes are true, raw even. And then, he could look at her the way he is doing now, like she has just stabbed him, as if she has his heart in her hands to do whatever she wanted, and she decided to make him suffer. It wasn’t true, and it wasn’t fair, she didn’t have him like that, so why would he stare at her with all that devotion and agony?

She chuckles, lowly and dryly, and starts to walk, leaving him behind. (Y/N) doesn't know exactly what she is feeling at the moment, but everything is a little too much. She doesn't want to have to guess, it would be nice, for once, if he could finally say it out loud.

Stopping a few steps away from him, she finally takes a better look at everything in front of her, how beautiful that field is, how breathtaking the view of the sky is with no pollution from the city. The sun hadn’t completely risen yet, some shades of purple, pink, and orange decorated the sky. It looks just like a painting, she thinks, and it hurts a bit to realise that it would be a pretty day to feel good, for her and Tommy to be doing something enjoyable.

What bothers most is that it feels like there is just one last wall between them, and she had thought she would finally have him — but it's not simple, it never is. Thomas has to be the one to take that last step, he has to be the one to, at last, face what he is feeling. If she is the one to do it, to once again try to put pieces together to understand him, it will never change, he will only come home broken and expects mending. She wants more than that, she wants genuine words being said, wants to feel more than… a fragment.

She was afraid sometimes, what if the problem was not his past love, but her? Understanding that old feelings were hard to get rid of was easy, but to which point was Thomas protecting himself from any new feelings? Did it ever become a protection against her? (Y/N) would ask herself, what was he so afraid of? Afraid of having feelings for someone again? Or was he just afraid of… her? It scared her that maybe it wasn’t love and it’s disappointments that kept them apart, maybe it was her. And that she couldn’t fix.

She kicks some rocks by her feet and holds back another frustrated sigh, feeling like maybe she wasn't being fair, that her previous insecurities and frustrations might be influencing her. (Y/N) was trying so hard, to be seen, to be heard, to be loved. Because she loved him, honestly and easily, but had she not done this before? Tried to communicate, to understand? With others that now seem pale in comparison with Thomas, but still, love was a complicated thing. For her, it had always been, since the very beginning, since she had known what love was. It was not just Thomas, no, it would be unfair to say it was only him, perhaps she also needed time to deal with what was inside her. Yet she can't help to think it is different with him, there were others before, but he is the one that matters, he is the one she wants close at all times, the one she still stays close to even with all the hurt and words unsaid, waiting, wishing.

It was Tommy, after all, making her heart feel full and empty at the same time, occupying her thoughts, making her feel like things could get better someday.

If she just had the chance to properly talk to him… to cross all the bridges and understand, maybe then a conclusion would be made, one not based on assumptions she could not fully trust.

Nevertheless, here they are, turbulent thoughts clouding each one's mind. The surroundings are beautiful, the wind making leaves float in the air, both of them with their mouths clasped shut and minds running wild.

She can't see it, Thomas thinks, this time she doesn't seem to see the truth in his eyes. He notices the way she is shrinking inside herself, body almost crumbling, and he walks to her, he is tense when he hugs her from behind, arms keeping her in a tight embrace. Thomas knows she is fighting back tears by the way she lets herself go and relaxes her head against his chest as soon as he pulls her in. He can feel the way her body is fighting, half of her not willing to rest completely.

He never truly knows what to say, he did when he was with Grace, or almost always did, a clarity coming to him when he was about to do something stupid. With (Y/N) it is different, he knows how he feels, and she says the right thing, and he lets her read him, and they go on. Sometimes he has to say it, because she is tired, because she needs him to, or simply because he feels the urge to. But now it feels like they have reached a point that if Thomas keeps being silent, things will end.

Still, for a while they just stay in silence. Thomas keeps his touch steady, not entirely conscious that he is drawing patterns on her waist until she lets out a sigh that he recognises quickly by now, contentment, he can feel her relaxing a bit more. His hands wander a bit further, tracing her belly and up her chest, and as he remembers the night they met, his touch becomes heavier. For what felt like an eternity, he had wished to touch her. It was quick, she'd always say, how they met and how they ended up in a private room. She was not aware that for him, it had felt like a long waiting.

A party that he meant to go for business only, not even much interested in said business, at least not enough to try to do it in person, he had sent John to do it, but he got sick. Never before had Thomas been so happy with his brother being ill. Had he never gone to that party, he would not have met her. And it was a truth, even though he did not say it much, but a truth nonetheless, that since they met, she was constantly taking him out of his stupor. Since he had laid his eyes on her, he felt it, hands pulling him up, making him finally blink and wake up.

It was simple between them, it had been since the beginning, he had wanted her and there was no room for questioning if he would follow her, she had corresponded in the same intensity. Slowly their lives came in between, the days apart, the reality of each one, but even then, she only told Thomas she would be waiting, and there was no room for questioning if he would come back.

On the weeks with fewer visits from him, nothing changed, on the weeks he could see her more frequently, everything did.

Although his ghosts still haunted him, it was not the same as before, he could breathe now, push them away easier. But he had never been good with words when it came to this. To confess, he used words to get what he wanted, to conquer, long gone was the time words served as a way to connect and open himself. Grace had started to change that, easily as if she was a childhood love, she had picked up his heart on her hands. Thomas had not expected it, and when it hit him, he realised how truly in love he had been. For once his intuition had left him, after such a long time creating walls upon walls, they crumbled only to have to be raised again. He had also not expected it to change, to meet someone else, and yet, he did.

“What are you thinking?” She asks, head still resting against him.

“You.”

“You are thinking about me?” He can hear the small smile on her lips.

“Yes.”

“What about me?”

“The night we met.”

“Oh.” She chuckles, as if something suddenly made sense to her. “You were so pretty that night.”

Thomas holds back a smile, like he usually does when she says something like this. “I’d say you were more.”

(Y/N) laughs and turns to look at him, distancing herself enough so they could stare, he is relieved to see there are no tears in her eyes. “I was, but it didn’t last long after I met you.”

Her arms find a place on his shoulders as she hugs him, hiding her face on the crock of his neck. She radiates warmth, and Thomas welcomes it eagerly.

“It wasn’t all my fault.” Thomas says, dead serious, because sometimes she seems to forget they burn together, and she laughs again.

He feels when her body changes after a few moments, her breathing getting erratic, he prepares himself.

“Tom?” It's nothing more than a whisper.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking, and…” something in him is begging for him to interrupt her, he knows what is coming, he can feel it. “I think we should, you know, stop seeing each other.”

He stays quiet, his arms never leave her body.

“Why?”

She takes a long time to answer, and Thomas starts to look for words he can say, things he can do to fix whatever needs to be fixed. He knows what it is, but as her silence stretches so much, he wonders if there is something more, if there is more he did and was unaware of it, that isn't hard to imagine. He feels, somehow, the moment she shivers, her arms seem to lose strength, her embrace weakening.

(Y/N) takes a deep breath before speaking,“because… because I feel like I’m Grace’s shadow. I feel like you met me when you were desperately needing someone to replace the emptiness that she left at your heart. It’s not that I’m the same as her, no…” she hides her face even more in his body, “it’s just you wanted someone to make you forget all the pain. And it happened that I was there to be your distraction. And at the beginning, I didn't care. But now, I do.”

She stops, Thomas knows she is fighting back tears, knows that she hates having to say all of this. Then she whispers, “I care because I’m in love with you, and being someone’s shadow for the man I love isn’t my biggest wish.”

What a treacherous path Thomas had walked them into. He could not deny it what he felt in the past was real, what he and Grace had shared was still haunting him, as his deceptions and frustrations always did. He never admitted, but for him, things like that never left his mind, he just pushed them away, kept them hidden. And still, things did not need to be like this, he did not have to act like that. He did… he liked (Y/N), not just that, he loved her even. A small and fragile thing at first, threatening to hurt him, not because it hurt, but because it made him finally move on. But now, a year later, it was not that small any more, he knew what he felt, knew that he searched for her when they were apart. And Thomas had no necessity in comparing what he felt before with what he felt now, he knew it would take time for something like that to happen again — to be true, he had not even thought it would happen again, but it did, it is happening.

Thomas blinks, watching as flowers and leaves were stirred by the wind, a hollow sound surrounding them. There is so much more he probably doesn't know, more things she thinks and has kept to herself.

“You’re not Grace’s shadow.” He says in a whisper, his voice betraying him. It sounds weak, and he wanted to convey how strong his affection is. Nonetheless, he hears her sighing in relief, distancing herself from him a bit, but still not looking at his eyes.

“You love her Tom,” (Y/N) states, “you’re still deeply in love with her and all you lived by her side. If I’m not her shadow, then I’m a mere ghost of what she was.” She raises her eyes to his face, he is already staring, always staring at her.

She looks at him with so much resignation that Thomas is almost convinced he cannot change her mind.

“I’m not angry or mad or upset about this. I’m just sad.” She says it then, voice low, Thomas knows it is because she is holding tears back. “And it doesn’t matter how much I love you, I don’t want to be sad, to feel miserable every time I don’t act like someone I don't even know. I just don’t want that life for me, even if that means losing you.”

He looks away, not being able to stare at her eyes at the moment, not when he doesn't have the right words to say. It was not his intention for it to reach this point, for her to think he wants a copy of Grace. He knows he has to say it, explain himself, but it is like being paralysed. It's the kiss on his cheek that makes him finally blink, it is the way her lips are so delicate against his skin, a goodbye. She leaves his arms, turning around to go back to the car, but he holds her wrist immediately, (Y/N) stops, looking at him with knitted eyebrows.

Thomas takes in all of her at that moment, the determination clear in her eyes, eyes he has grown so accustomed to, that do not search him unless he opens himself, eyes that love him, tender him. Eyes that he cannot forget even when she is not with him. He looks at her lips, lips that have said the words he needed to hear, the ones he did not want to hear, lips that have kissed him with so much passion that he was able to forget the world for some hours. She has, slowly, found a place inside of him, roots with her name overtaking his chest. Her hair flutters around her face, she seems tired, (Y/N) offers no more resistance on her face, only resignation, but she does not pull away either. He engraves every single detail of her in his mind.

The words are not helping him, he cannot think of anything good enough to say, it is like she wiped his mind, leaving nothing but thousands of pictures of her behind. Of every moment she has used her words not to pry him open, but to convince him to do so, every moment she has held him in place instead of insisting on dragging him somewhere else.

It was at the moment, the sun shining brightly, orange light taking over the sky, making her skin seem warm to the touch, that he finally realised. It had always been simple between them, he did not need to complicate it right now, there was no need for elaborate words, only the truth. She wanted something straight-forward, (Y/N) was just asking for it to be real.

“I don’t want her,” Thomas says, words finally appearing. “I don’t want her like I want you. Not any more.”

And it was true, he had loved Grace, had felt something he thought himself incapable of after the war, and yet, it passed. She had betrayed him, and he still felt it then, sometimes still feels it now, but it passed.

She gives a step forward, “but you still love her, right?”

He allows himself to remember Grace's face, her tender touch, it was involuntary, the care that comes with it. But there is also the pang of heartbreak, the understanding and the sense of finality, there is nothing he can do to go back in time, and now, he does not want it any more. He has (Y/N), she mended what was broken. He takes a step towards her as well, hand tightening even more around her wrist, he wants her now more than he ever did.

“Yes.” he admits, because it is also true that (Y/N) can wring secrets from him. “But she’s past.”

“Is she, Tom?” She gives in a deep breath, “if that’s so, you’re a man living your days in the past. You’re always with her, even when you try to be here with me.”

“No.” he denies, low and firm, “It’s not me living in the past, (Y/N).”

“What is it then?”

He wants to say it at that moment, to confess she haunts him, that his past always does — who he was before war, who he became during it. It is a part of him now. But that is not his nature any more, to confess this easily, it takes time, and he has said more today than he ever did before. Instead, he looks at her, knowing that when nothing comes out of his mouth, that it's what denounces him, his eyes.

She reads him again. Thomas knows, he always knows when she understands. Maybe it is the look on her face, he has never been able to identify what it was, but something changed when she could get him.

“I know it ain't easy,” (Y/N) says, getting closer to him, she puts a hand on his face, “it seems to haunt you, Thomas.”

She is close now, enough that he can feel the warmth of her body again. Thomas lets himself relax against her, his hand still on her wrist, he can feel her pulse now, slightly accelerated.

“I feel left out sometimes,” she whispers, “as if she is right behind me, and I am echoing her words, or at least the words you wanted her to say.”

Thomas nods, “you are not like her.”

(Y/N) seems surprised at that, “what was she like?”

But that is too much. “You are different,” he establishes, firm enough for her to understand he does not want to talk about Grace like that. It's easier to just forget, sharing this feels strange, describing how he loved her — because it would not be just an impartial view of how she was. “And your words too, you do not echo her in my mind.”

You fixed it. Erased what hurt was left on the surface.

(Y/N) squint her eyes at him, he lets her stare into his eyes, lets her understand.

“If we…” she cleans her throat, “if you try, could this work?”

He bites his tongue to say that is already working, because yes, for him, it is, but she is opening herself to him and saying she is hurting.

“What do you want?” He asks, instead.

“You.” (Y/N) shrugs, “I know we can't be each other one and only. But it would be good if you opened yourself more, I cannot always read your mind.”

He must've frowned at that, because she immediately completes, “I know it's different for you, how you open up. I sometimes wish for words, it's true, but it is not what you can give me and I know that.” And although she understood it wrong — he was just surprised when she said she could not always read him —, he was happy to hear that.

Thomas puts a hand on her waist, pulling her and closing the distance that was left, he can feel her now, that smell that calms him every time they sleep together, he tightens his grip. There is not a world where he would refuse this, it is surprising, sometimes even slightly scary and annoying, how she managed to awaken him when he fought so much to numb himself. But he always comes back to her, always knocks on her door, because it is stupidity to refuse her, push her away, only a mad man would do that. He consumes her instead, goes to her house, drinks from her lips with such thirst it is as if he is famished, and it is never enough. Whatever she wants, he thinks, whatever she wants to stay.

She is looking at him with an indecipherable expression, but he cares not at the moment, he will have plenty of time to reflect on everything she said today, to understand her even more. Now, he searches for her lips, brushing his own against her, wanting to feel her before making the real move. He is not one for teasing, every time he does this, it is because the waiting feel as good as the actual kiss, the way he can feel her skin shivering, the way she whimpers slightly — because they are the same when it comes to this, she also has an insatiable hunger. They finally kiss, then, desperate to feel each other, it always feels like they are one at this moment, and nothing else matters.

She is the one to break the kiss, only to look at him and whisper, “I love you.”

Before Thomas can think of answering, her lips are crashing against his again, demanding, taking, and he answers it. He almost chuckles when one of her hands find her way to get under his shirt, but his own body leans into it in such a fast manner he knows he would be laughing at himself too.

Since the first time she touched him like this, he knew he had cursed himself. He knew he would be damned, growing hunger for that, fonder for her. She had scared him, and yet, proved herself to be exactly what he needed.

He broke the kiss this time, not being able to contain the smirk when he saw her drunk eyes, even though he was for sure laughing at himself too.

“I love you.”

She melts against him, smiles brightly. He does not know why he waited so long to say it, but he is usually like this, takes too long to say something important.

“You’re not her.” He finds himself saying, surprising the both of them, “you’re not her shadow.”

She nods, Thomas sees her blooming right in front of him. He feels something settling in his chest, his mind getting quieter, a miracle for its own, but even more special when he feels it because of her.

Please. He thinks as he gives a peck on her lips. Don’t ever say you’re a mere ghost, when I love you this much.

The wind was still stirring the flowers and leaves of the field, and the field was still the same, same as the sun shining in the sky. But somehow, everything seemed more right.

[sitp-recs]

hi! how are you?

so I read a fic some time ago that destroyed me…… like literally. I enjoyed it but at the same time I didn’t. but now I can’t stop thinking about it bc everything on it was so revolting and fucked. how to make a fic get out of our system? is it possible 😅 not to be dramatic but this fic almost made me lose interest in the whole ship lmao I just wanted to read something I enjoy again, you know? and nothing hits :( and when it does I’m almost finishing the fic and something horrible happens (that wasn’t really tagged) and I endure it until the end 💀 anyway if you have any fic that you read recently that is very romantic and monogamous or even if they are exes but they don’t date anyone else because they just can’t move on, pls share with us!! and it doesn’t have to be drarry, it can be anything. Im going through your lists and whole blog tbh looking for something that will save me lmaoooo I’ve read almost everything that interests me and you recced. (btw your break up make up list is amazing!) still I think the spark left me 🫠 ugh sorry for yapping

I’m sorry to hear that, anon :,( I think we’ve all been there at some point, god knows how many times I felt blocked, uninspired or just unable to connect to any fic. Personally, I find it helpful to take short breaks from fandom and focus on other hobbies for a while. Those fics will always be there when and if you’re ready to return! Also, imho you shouldn’t have to “endure” any fics that you find upsetting. I don’t typically have any triggers but I certainly have tropes/topics that don’t interest me much (or at all), and I have no qualms abandoning a fic when they show up unannounced 🤣

Now, it’s a bit hard to rec something randomly without knowing more about your fic tastes, but since you’re interested in romantic/monogamous stories, I thought I’d share some recs along those lines. This is a personal selection that might not work for you, but if it does I’ll be pleased to know that you’ve found that spark again :) Take care xo

Short fic:

Take the Moon by tackytiger (M, 15k)

Harry Potter has always wanted a family of his own, and when a deadly blood curse forces him into a marriage bond with his best friend Draco Malfoy, it looks like he might just have found one. It's just a shame they’d always planned to break up after a year…

Two Zinnias and the Scent of Lemon by @the-starryknight (M, 16k)

The Ministry didn’t turn bad overnight. Harry didn’t suddenly turn rogue either. Between covert Legilimency links and Polyjuice disguises and running and running and running, Draco has forgotten what it is like to have a safe harbor that isn’t a person. If there’s an art to fighting back, then they’ll find it hand in hand.

Us, in Lieu by Tepre (E, 29k)

Teddy needs help and Harry needs funding. Draco sits in the other room and plays the piano.

Long fic:

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them by nerakrose, dustmouth (T, 96k)

Malfoy is way too interested in coroner reports for somebody who's definitely not looking for ways to die, Harry wants to be friends with him, and Ginny wants to break up with Harry.

Who we are in the shadows by Quicksilvermaid (E, 100k)

What happens when you’re forced to become the very thing you despise? Ex-Auror Harry Potter, tossed out of the Ministry for something he had no control over, has been looking for a way back to his former life.

Far From The Tree by aideomai (E, 112k)

The arrival of Harry Potter’s children—snapped back in time, the children themselves guessed, twenty or so years—was the most interesting thing to happen at Hogwarts for years.

[race-week]

obviously Merc has a shit strategy but what happened there even it seemed like they truly are deliberately sabotaging lewis with fuck up strategies ever since then to make George look good or to make it look like he has what it takes to beat Lewis ( even deliberately shooting Lewis confidence for Ferrari next year even ) like toto is deliberately using lewis as their experimental person for the car and he can't say no to it like how many times has LH ignored toto just this season it tells me something that he never really is friends or that close with Toto to begin with and only close because of Niki lauda

Is this you?

In all seriousness let’s take our tinfoil hats off for like 2-3 minutes please?

Okay so first of all,

I think from the very beginning they’ve used the wrong word regarding these ‘experiments’ because what they are is set up changes. People are acting like these set up changes are Mercedes throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks, when that is not the case.

What they are/will be is the driver complaining of understeer in a corner or oversteer or just general poor handling of the car and the engineers go back to the data from the track, from the wind tunnel and from the simulator and use that data to make educated changes to the car that should fix said issue.

They aren’t just going “oh I wonder what will happen if I change this part drastically”, these are typically very minute changes.

What the problem is, is that the Mercedes seems to have quite a narrow operating window and is quite sensitive to other changes, so track temperatures, wind, distance to other cars etc, and it’s not always easy to have all of this data to hand, hence the cars sometimes behave differently in the race (but this goes for all teams).

Now let’s talk about the strategy, I must admit when I heard Hamilton was starting on softs, I raised my eyebrows a bit but I was also somewhat commending Mercedes, recently (the past few years) they’ve been a bit too safe with strategies and this is something they’ve been criticised for a bit, and this was actually a good opportunity to try something.

Now looking at the data it makes sense what they did it, if you do the same exact strategy as those in front of you, you will always be behind them. Plus up until that point Norris had never held P1 after the opening lap, so Hamilton starting on softs on the clean side of the grid made sense as a way to make up a position or two and then pit under the safety car which was expected (because it’s Singapore)

Also Hamilton is an adult, so don’t infantilise him, he can make his own decisions, I highly doubt that he had absolutely no say in his starting tyres or his race set ups.

Toto Wolff and Mercedes aren’t just strapping random things to the car and saying ‘right off you go’ there’s meetings about these things, countless meetings over the course of a weekend.

Teams don’t deliberately sabotage their drivers, because at the end of the day they need the drivers to score points and make the team look good, Mercedes in particular want to try to stay as close as possible to the teams in front, in particular McLaren as getting beat by your customer team isn’t a great look for them.

Now have a think about what I’ve said before you inevitably put your tinfoil hat back on