#and wants nothing more than to bring them misery

[aziraphales-library]

Hello! Thank you for the role you play in this fandom, I don't know what we would do without Aziraphale's fic library

Today I wanted to ask if you knew fics where Aziraphale and Crowley are bitter exes who end up realizing later that they haven't stopped loving the other.

Thank you 💛

Hi! We have #getting back together and #reunion tags you can check for plenty more fics like this. Here are more to add...

Even Now, I Still Love You by Zakani_Donovan (T)

It had been 6 years since Crowley had last spoken to Aziraphale, and considering their nasty little breakup, he hadn't expected their next conversation to start with them suddenly being neighbors.

Down to the River by CemeteryAngel725 (E)

Twenty-five years ago, Tony Crowley walked out of Azi’s life and broke both of their hearts. Since then, Azi has been living in suspended animation, working in the army/navy surplus booth he inherited from his dad and writing horror novels. Now Tony is back from the city, flush with success and wanting to catch up with Azi. Should Azi risk his heart and try to reclaim what they’ve lost? Or is it too late to start over?

Reason Enough by ffonippop (E)

Crowley and Aziraphale’s entire relationship spanned just a little under eleven months. If dissected, the entire affair can be categorized very neatly into three parts: a rocky beginning, a rocky middle, and a rocky end. It devastates Crowley, how something that was so promising and held so much potential could end in such a shitstorm. Diminished to nothing but a hungover, sad, and lonely stain on his couch, Crowley is left to wonder if it was always going to end this way— or if it’s ended yet at all.

Like a Martyr, Not Enough (The Decoy Bride) by vines_and_vellichor (M)

Author Aziraphale Eastlowe had been a dutiful son for the entirety of his life… mostly. After a bout of teenage rebellion, he learnt that disobedience only brings misery and heartbreak to those he cares about; it’s better for everyone to toe the line and make the most out of the plan that has been laid out for you by your family and God. When a courtship with the famous Christian singer Gabriella Archer presented an opportunity to exit the dog-eat-dog world of city life, the last thing he expected was an existence plagued by writer’s block and a wedding so enticing to the British press that the privilege of a private ceremony was tantamount to successfully teaching a duck to play the accordion. In desperation, they turn to Taddesfild, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, to marry. Things go south when a convoluted plan by Gabriella’s agents culminates in hiring local resident Anthony J Crowley as a decoy bride to put the paparazzi off the scent. The very person Aziraphale distinctly remembered dumping nineteen years ago. The situation is less than ideal: his fiancee is missing, the island is infested with bloodthirsty photographers and he has just accidentally gotten married to his ex.

Borrowed Words by sunrisesinthesuburbs (M)

Anthony J. Crowley, best selling author, has writer's block. He could blame the Accident, but deep down he knows his block started way before. He hasn't written anything in too long, if we choose to ignore the dozens of unsent letters addressed to the angel he lost two decades ago, when he moved to New York City. When his best (and only) friend convinces him to take a little vacation in a small town in Connecticut, he expects peace and quiet. He doesn't expect to see the smile that still haunts his dreams again. Apparently, small towns are full of surprises, and how late is too late? The world stops spinning on its axis or, at the very least, Crowley stops breathing. This is absolutely impossible. He forces himself to swallow, to take a deep breath, as he doesn’t want to scare this girl off. Muriel, who is still smiling, all bright and wide and just like- Oh, God. “A bookshop, you said?” He chokes out. This is impossible, and he’s being ridiculous. He is in London, this is just a sick coincidence and his stupid brain playing stupid games. “Yes, you can see it if you turn around.” Crowley doesn’t move. “It’s called A. Z. Fell Books.” Now, the world definitely stops spinning.

Sinking Ships by AppleSeeds (E)

The world is practically on fire and it feels like nobody's doing anything about it, but Crowley's outlook brightens considerably when a new member arrives at his local climate action committee. Crowley is immediately smitten, and is thrilled when he and Aziraphale become fast friends, although he can't help but hope they might one day become something more. When all of his wishes come true, Crowley starts to feel like life couldn't possibly get any better. He can picture exactly what his future is going to look like, until something happens that feels like a powerful bolt of lightning has struck and split Crowley's life right down the middle, with everything before that moment on one side, and everything that is to come - scorched, lifeless and devastated - on the other. With the help of a counsellor, Crowley begins the difficult journey of picking up the pieces and working through what's happened. When Aziraphale unexpectedly comes back into his life, Crowley finally has the chance to get some answers, revealing that the truth is very different from what he was led to believe. Now he just needs to figure out whether that changes anything.

- Mod D

[powdermelonkeg]

Important rules/tips I've learned as an adult that helped with anxiety

If people are mad at you, it's their responsibility to tell you, not your responsibility to guess

If they're mad at you in secret anyways, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

If people don't like what you're doing, it's their responsibility to tell you

If they say it's fine when it's really not, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

People are allowed to be wrong about you

If they are wrong about you, wait for them to bring it up, because if you try to, you will inevitably overcorrect

Some people are committed to misunderstanding you. You will not win arguments against them. Yes, even if you explain your point of view. They do not care. Drop it

The worst thing that will happen from a first-time offense is being told not to do it again. Maybe with a replacement if you broke something

You can improve relationships and gauge willingness to talk to you by giving compliments. It's like a daily log-in bonus and nobody thinks twice about it

Most things are better after you sleep on them

Most things are better after you have a meal

Most things are better after you shower

Your brain makes up consequences that are irrational. If the worst DOES come to pass and someone acts like they do in your head, they are overreacting, and you are entitled to say "what the fuck"

If your chest hurts after you feel like you've made a social error, that's called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. It means your anxiety is so bad that it's causing you physical pain, which is a good indicator that you're overreacting. Tense yourself, hold it for 20 seconds, let it go, then find a distraction

If you're suddenly angry at someone after you feel like you made a social error, that's also rejection-sensitive dysphoria. You are going to feel annoyed about it for awhile, but being genuinely pissed off is your anxiety trying to find something to blame to take the responsibility off your shoulders, and getting scared because it can't justify itself. Deep breaths, ask yourself how much you ACTUALLY want to be angry at that person, then find a distraction

"Sour grapes" is more healthy for you than stewing. Deciding you don't like someone who's perpetually annoyed with you, won't talk to you, etc. makes letting go of anxiety over them easier

If people don't like you, they will find reasons to be annoyed with you when they otherwise wouldn't. If people do like you, they will find reasons NOT to be annoyed with you when they otherwise would. People do not ping-pong between the two

You DO have to make a conscious choice not to think about something. If you're having trouble circling back to it, say out loud that you're done thinking about it and why. Then find a distraction

When you're upset, part of you is going to want to make false bids for attention (suddenly texting differently, heavy sighs, etc. but when someone asks you about it, you tell them it's nothing). Do not listen to it. You gain nothing from it except more misery

People like to help people they care about. It makes them feel good about themselves

If you think you're insufferable for needing help, see above. Yes, really. They get a serotonin kick from it

If you think you're insufferable for mannerisms you have, you either have to consciously choose not to do them, or accept that they're part of the package that comes with you. Being apologetic about existing does nothing except make you more miserable

If you do things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it makes it easier to do them when you hate it

If you avoid things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it reinforces and magnifies how bad it feels when you hate it

Seriously. Read those last two points again. If you can make yourself make a phone call when you've got nothing to lose, you will slowly lose that panic you get when you have to make a phone call you haven't prepared for. You do have to CONSCIOUSLY take that step

Hobbies that make you care for something get rid of that nagging feeling that you're not doing enough. Go grow some rosemary

If you don't engage with your hobbies regularly, you will feel miserable, and anxiety will spike

Hobbies are things that give you a bit of happiness. They do not have to be organized or named to do that. Go be creative in something. Play with coins. Make up lists. Start a new WIP

No one cares what you look like

If people point out things they don't like about how you look unprompted, they are being rude. You are entitled to say "what the fuck"

People who like you will find you pretty to some degree. Minor things about your appearance go completely unnoticed. Literally, scars and dots and blemishes do not register to someone who likes your company

You looking at yourself in the mirror is 10x more closely than anyone is going to look at you

If you're anxious about your body type, and you're creatively inclined, make/write an oc with that same shape. Give them nice things and make other characters love them. Put them on adventures. You'll start to see yourself in the mirror more kindly

You care about wording and perfect lines/colors way more than anyone who views your work ever will

Sometimes when you're upset, you're going to feel like not eating. Do not do that. Not eating makes you more miserable

Same with things you normally enjoy. Denying yourself helps no one. You are punishing yourself for being sad. Stop it

Both of these will take conscious decision to break the habit of. Make yourself do it anyways, and it will slowly get easier

And again, to reiterate: If someone is mad at you, it is THEIR responsibility to tell you, not your responsibility to guess

[goldsbitch]

can I request a Lando x reader where the reader’s weakness is when people stroke her hair? Her mind goes completely blank and she falls silent immediately when people stroke her hair and Lando uses it at his advantage.

Fluffy pls and ty🫶🏻

omg, i love this prompt so much - thank you and hope you like it!!

This is one is dripping with sweetness a little too much, don't say I did not warn you. No other warning.

Lando was born a tease, oscillating between clueless and shy, to unapologetic and bordeline dickish. It all depended on the setting, his relationship to the person and how much sleep he got the night before. Sometimes your boyfriend was the sweetest little thing, giggling shyly about everything instead of coming up with an actual response, and the other times he was a walking menace actively seeking every opportunity how to get you into a flustered state.

You and Lando were full on deep in the beginning of your relationship, the sweetest part of the honeymoon phase. To put it bluntly - fucking almost non stop. And the desire was never-ending. Blinding sunshine kissed good morning to every day you two got to wake up next to each other. Problems seem to be non existent. Bliss.

It was the way his hair curled when he got a little bit sweaty, his toned body what you were desperate to explore from every angle and the need to know every little secret trick that worked on him. It became some sort of a game, who would get better at knowing the other. Which one of you found all the buttons to push.

Lando rose up that morning and chose violence. Metaphorical one, of course. Snuggling up to you in order to wake you up as well for some morning work out, as he like to call it. Whispering sweet nothings to your ear and touching you all over your body. But you were just incredibly sore from the past few days, physically unable to keep up.

"Why don't you love me anymore," he pleaded jokingly as you murmured another weak appeal for your sleep.

"Lando, you know I love you more than anything," you replied, still half asleep. But it was hard to distinguish as reality resembled a sweet dream everyday lately.

"I remember when you used to want me, physically," he kept going.

"We literally had sex few hours ago, stop whining," you kissed him between your words. He looked at you with his incredible eyes, little devil dancing in each one of them.

"Exactly, too long ago. Wish I could go back in time when you were not sore and get inside you all over again."

You simply laughed, absolutely smitten with this lovey dovey side of him. His words made you melt like butter sitting under direct sun. You brushed your noses together and then he kissed you.

The best part of romantic relationships is the one that you cannot absolutely share with other people, the almost embarrassing pleas, desire and gross goofiness, simping at each other all the time.

"Fine, if you play by these rules, I'll come back with my own revenge," he said finally as you inevitably had to start getting ready to go to the paddock with him.

Today was the big day. You'd been spotted in public countless of times, the "girlfriend" title officially sitting on your head for weeks now. But this was the first time you were to join him in the paddock as a wag. You were trying to hide your nervousness, but he saw right through you. Before you exited the apartment, he made you stop and took your face in his hands. "I'm happy I get to do this with you. I love parading you around, for everyone to see that we're a team." You smiled, his words hitting like first snowflakes of the year. "Poor Oscar, I can't wait to finally trauma dump the shared misery you bring to our lives," you jokes and locked lips with him once again. "God, it's terrifying how much I like you," you said automatically, without having to think about it.

//

It actually wasn't as bad as you'd expected. It was definitely weird and strange, but not necessarily bad. Having Lando by your side as you passed the gates definitely helped. The photographers were lined up as people at a shooting range would and it did feel like that at first. But as quickly as you were initially overwhelmed, fatigue took over you and you blocked their ever-presence out. Trying to chat up those Lando introduce you to and memorizing the names. You knew how much some of these people meant to Lando, so you were trying to be at your best behavior. The thought that his friends would hate you in the same way as some of his fans haunted you.

In the middle of all the rush, you parted for a moment. To be honest, little peace of quiet and chill was something you appreciated. But remember, Lando woke up and chose violence this morning. And his plan was quite simple, yet bulletproof.

"Y/N! There you are, my love," you heard from coming from behind you. "I have someone to introduce to you! I'm very much sure you'll appreciate meeting him." As you turned, you saw Daniel Ricciardo walking your way with your Lando. You were a little perplexed as to why Lando was so cheerful about that. You clearly remembered him getting very upset when you admitted to him that at some point in the past, when formula 1 was a world far away from you, that you had a minor crush on Daniel. Which obviously went out of the window once you met Lando. That did not mean that Lando was 100% ok with it.

"Y/N, as I'm sure you know, this is Daniel, hell of a driver and good friend of mine," Lando continued and you knew him well enough to know he had ulterior motives. Not sure what to do, you smiles shyly and shook Daniel's hand.

"Hi, Daniel," you said, eyes flinching between him and Lando. You were full on preparing for anything. Lando's smirk almost had a life of his own at that point.

"Nice to finally meet you, Y/N. I've heard quite a lot things about you!" Daniel opened, life of the party as per usual.

You chuckled. "All good things, I hope!" And with that, Lando stepped behind you and put his arm around you.

"Only the best," he said, leaned closed and inconspicuously started to stroke you hair gently. Oh, he did not just go this low.

It was slow, yet like tidal wave. You stopped breathing for a moment. Your body relaxing, as if you'd just taken the world's best sedatives. The way his hands made you feel was etherial. It was the same sensation the luckier ones experienced when listening to ASMR and the less fortunate ones sometimes called an orgasm. Shivers slowly traveling around your whole body, every part becoming sensitive out of nowhere. You weren't able to look at Daniel, let alone continue speaking. Lando was more than aware of what touching your hair did to you. He'd discovered this trick quite early on. And it was his favorite one.

"So, where are you from?" Daniel attempted at small talk. But how could you possibly give a fuck at that moment. Not that your body would even allowed you to respond. The only thing you were able to take in from the outside world were the soft slow movements Lando's fingers were doing, blocking everything out instanteniously.

Daniel stared at you, waiting. From his perspective, this was a very awkward meeting.

Lando answered for you, with a smirk you did not see, but could feel from the tone of his voice. "You have to excuse her, she is bit shy in front of new people."

You could not give less of a fuck at that moment of what these two were saying. Your lips were starting to shiver from getting so sensitive. You took a short breath and someone who would be standing close and knew you well would know, that what escaped your mouth was not a nervous laugh, but something very close to a moan.

Lando and Daniel were saying words, but none of that was important, while Lando's fingers were working his magic. He would only leave your hair alone once he saw Daniel leaving.

You wanted to be mad at him. But you were still sort of high from all the sensation bomb Lando dropped on you. You slowly turned around to face him, coming down from your own personal nirvana.

You took a deep breath while he watched you without a blink and biting hims smile away.

"You promised," you let out air that got stuck in your lungs somewhere along the way. "You promised you would not do this in public." Your brain was slowly wiring up to normal again.

"I told you I'd punish you for the morning," he said as if it was the most amusing thing ever. "Also, if Daniel is my competition, I'm going to use all the advantage I have."

Lando had a way of looking at you that made you unravel instantaneously and there was no way of stopping it. There was just something about his smile that did it for you. As anyone who is properly in love, you could not imagine somebody being able tor resist that. In your love soaked mind, he was irresistible. To a normal mind, he was probably just a regular guy, but that idea was unfathomable to you.

"I'm pretty sure that after what I just pulled, you will not have to worry about Daniel liking me," you chuckled, having to accept that Lando won this one.

"I would never let my guard down...But yeah, I think this one is pretty safe," he chuckled once more. You kissed his overly proud face and promised to yourself to get back at him later, in the privacy of his bedroom.

[pomefioredove]

i crave angst and hurt/comfort/fluff maybe something like that with vil? maybe reader gets hurt pretty badly or something and vil gets upset?? hehe angsty scenarios>>

on my hands and knees rn... vil... save me vil...

summary: anger is an ugly emotion type of post: fic characters: vil additional info: romantic, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu, angsty..... mentions of bullying/abuse etc?? very open ended you can interpret that how you please, GOD this is indulgent

Anger is an ugly emotion.

So much is true even for Vil Schoenheit. If you asked him, there is nothing more undignified than losing your composure in front of others, especially those under your care.

No, Vil keeps such emotions to himself. If he feels the need to get a point across, or to settle a conflict, he will do so with grace and dignity. He won't even break a nail.

This is different.

This is seeing you turn away from him with tears in your eyes, and feeling as if the very world itself is crashing down around him.

He cannot stand it.

He cannot stand seeing you like this.

It shakes him to his very core. You've had bad days, evenings where you come crawling into Pomefiore looking as if the world had chewed you up and spit you back out at his feet, and he's tended to it.

He's combed your hair, cleaned the dirt out from under you nails, bandaged your paper cuts with a sort of gentleness he doesn't even reserve for himself, made you look new and whole again.

Vil can't help with this.

It drives him mad. It makes him feel like he's stuck inside his own ribcage with nothing but the sound of his beating heart, trapped in a flurry of confusion and anxiety.

He wishes you would just talk about it. It would make everything so much easier if you would let him help.

But he won't pressure you. He couldn't bring himself to. And, quite frankly, if he knew even the slightest detail about whomever had been making you feel this way, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop himself from finding them and mincing them to shreds.

As they deserved.

But Vil is not one to rush into anything. He is patient, cordial, taking his sweet time to understand a problem from all angles before enacting a solution.

And so, he doesn't ask.

He holds your chin between his delicate fingers and dabs at the corners of your eyes, hoping to brush away your misery along with your tears.

You sniffle. It's not a pretty sight- you're certainly no graceful crier.

He couldn't care less.

The only thing that Vil can think of now is how only one measly person could be your undoing.

After everything you've been through without even breaking a sweat, all it took were a few too-familiar words to melt you into a pool of bad memories and misery at his feet.

Sevens help whichever poor fool had done this to you.

"Now, now. That's alright," he coos, wiping your cheeks just as a new barrage of tears runs down them. "Don't worry about a thing."

You just barely manage to choke out a response. "I'm sorry, this is- this is embarrassing,"

"Nonsense. You have nothing to feel bad for. I promise I won't utter a word of this to the others,"

He cups your face in his palms, giving you a moment to compose yourself.

"Deep breaths," he instructs. "Seven seconds in, hold it, for just a moment, and then seven seconds out. There. Excellent job."

It's quiet. The sound of sobs and his own heart pounding seem to fade into quiet breaths shared between the both of you.

"Good," he strokes your cheeks with his thumbs. A repetitive, soothing motion. "How do you feel?"

"Guilty," you say. "I didn't mean to ruin your evening."

"You've ruined nothing. You're very important to me, you know. I would never want you to think I'm too busy for you," he offers a smile. "Now, how do you feel?"

You're quiet for a moment, likely mulling over his words. Your voice is softer when you reply. "Tired,"

"Oh... you poor thing. I can't have you dead on your feet tomorrow, now, can I?"

You shake your head.

He stands, pulling you up with him. "Come along, then. Let's get you to bed. I'll help,"

He begins guiding you away from the couch you'd spent the better half of the evening sobbing on. You respond in a quiet voice.

"Vil?"

"Mm? Yes?"

"You promise you won't say anything about this to the others?"

A look of utter softness crosses his face at your request, and he smiles again. "My lips are sealed,"

[ultravioletrayz]

So my idea for degradation fic involving Miguel would be something like this- (also please keep an open mind this idea is kinda out there)

So lets say Miguel is your mentor and you are so eager to please and do good work. You have always been kinda good at everything so people complementing you and telling you how great you are is nothing new. But Miguel is different, he's hard to please. So when you do something right he's not complementing you and that is odd for you, and when you mess something up well...he's quick to criticize you. this stirs something within you.

So you keep trying to please him and he's not into it he just keeps bringing you down and reader is starting to like it, sometimes wanting messing up. So lets say reader makes a big mistake on a mission and Miguel is ready to yell and degradant them but reader is getting turned on by it and Miguel noted it so he starts to degradant them more and it starts getting into NSFW territory. while he's getting into it he's just saying filth to you. "your so such a needy slut" "look at you getting turned on while I bully you, pathetic" "you want to be a good girl? you want me to praise you? too bad...now open..." *spits in readers mouth*

then if you can end it off where reader in passed out and thats when he's sweet in the aftercare when she dosn't know. he will open up to her one day just not yet.

Not even gonna lie, if Miguel was a meanie towards me i wouldn’t know whether to cry or cum.

Pairing: miguel o’hara x f!spiderperson!reader

Warnings: 18+, degrading kink, rough sex, fingering, orgasm denial/mild edging, getting bent over miguel’s desk, marking, clit slapping (like, once), pull-out method, absolutely terrible and rushed ending, miguel being mean, horny, and ultimately just socially-awkward

Summary: you strive for perfection in all areas… until the opportunity arises where doing the opposite will give you access to the perfection inside your mean boss’s boxers.

A/N: before anyone tries to come for me for making miguel seem like an asshole in this fic, ik that this isn’t entirely true to miguel’s character. however, i’m horny and dgaf. enjoy!!

Word Count: 3K (unedited)

For as long as you could remember, people would refer to you as ‘gifted’. It was as though everything you attempted to achieve was accomplished with ease. In your world, on the days when the Society was a distant memory and you were given the opportunity to act as a true Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Person, you practically lived in a bubble of praise. Surprisingly, the media worshipped you, recognising you as the hero you are. Locals chanted your name, asked for autographs, and even demanded you accept gifts and tokens of appreciation every time you were spotted in your costume on the streets. 

Although you forced yourself to stay humble within the public eye, you would be lying if you tried to convince yourself that the compliments and special treatment didn’t make you feel good, didn’t push you to be a better superhero for the sake of the citizens who practically worship the ground you walk on.

Which is the primary reason why having to tend to work and assignments at the Spider Society caused you so much misery. When you were first recruited, a few other Spider-People had mentioned how short-tempered and cold the boss is, but you had expected to win him over with your natural, over-achieving flare. That goal was quickly crushed when you met Miguel O’Hara for the first time. He had immediately lectured you on certain habits he had observed from footage of you fighting crime at home, giving you strict instructions on how to be better at your job. From then on, you’ve tried your best to view his constant criticism as a positive and value his (poor) attempts at mentoring you. 

It didn’t take long for you to realise that he wasn’t really trying to help you, and he was just a grumpy asshole as everyone had warned and wanted you to follow orders rather than going out and trying to prove yourself constantly. Lately, you’ve been slipping up, making mistakes. You had come to terms with the fact that Miguel wasn’t interested in showing you any appreciation or praise for your hard work, and it had begun to affect your performance on missions, bringing you to this point. 

“What the hell was that?” Miguel snarls at you, his platform lowering as he slams his fist on his desk and glares at you, his sharp red eyes burning holes in your pretty, sad little face. You had almost let an anomaly get away, blinded by your insecurities and Miguel’s lack of interest in your skills, you would have destroyed an entire universe if it weren’t for the backup Miguel had sent you.

“Miguel, let me explain-” You start, being cut off by an angry huff from Miguel.

“I’m sick of the excuses. I don’t care about how you handle shit in your own dimension. When you come here and are trusted to keep the multiverse stable, I expect you to do as you’re told. Unless the small task of containing the minor anomalies I assign you is too much to handle?” Miguel scoffs, shaking his head as he looks you up and down.

The look of disappointment on his tan, chiselled face would usually have you on the verge of tears, but as you’ve grown accustomed to his harsh beratement, it’s begun to have a very different effect on you. You can just imagine him, brushed back curls dishevelled and clinging messily to his face as he pounds into your needy pussy, whispering absolute filth into your ear as he uses you to get off. The thought has you practically soaking through your Spider-Suit, causing you to instinctively squeeze your thighs together as you force yourself to keep your gaze from dropping to Miguel’s broad, muscular physique. As his glare intensifies and he rolls his eyes at your subtle movements, you know he’s got you figured out.

Miguel’s heightened senses pick up on your current state of arousal, the scent of your slick making him dizzy as it clouds his mind. He had always beaten himself up about how harsh he could be towards you, reflecting on his cruelty to such a pretty girl with shame and regret. But finding out that you liked being treated so poorly by him, it has him going fucking crazy.

“Por el amor de Dios,” (for fuck’s sake) Miguel hisses, taking a step towards you, looming over your smaller form with a judgemental scowl plastered on his face. “You’re pathetic. Risking everything we work for here, just so that you can imagine me yelling at you while you finger-fuck yourself at night?”

Your eyes widen, his words reigning true as they hang in the air of the room. Yet, you make a miserable attempt at denying the accusation by shaking your head softly and taking a step back. Miguel only moves closer to you, intimidating you with his mere presence as his scowl curls into a cruel smirk.

“No me mientas, hermosa,” (don’t lie to me, beautiful) He whispers, one of his large, calloused hands grabbing your face and pulling you back towards him, fingers squeezing your cheeks as his breath hits your skin, sending shivers up and down your spine. “You’re usually so eager to please me. Did you think I was stupid enough not to notice when you started messing things up?”

“Miguel-” You whine, voice muffled due to the way he squishes your cheeks together, making your pretty lips jut out in a sad little pout.

“It always annoyed me how bubbly and determined you are,” He admits bluntly, sharp red eyes scanning your face, before trailing down to watch the way your thighs rub together in a pitiful attempt to alleviate the arousal coursing through you due to his relentless disparagement. “But I didn’t think you’d resort to acting like a dirty whore just because I’m not impressed by the ‘Friendly Neighbourhood’ act.”

His free hand trails down your body, fingers gliding between the valley of your breasts, down your stomach, and stopping just above the crotch of your Spider-Suit. He chuckles lowly as he watches the way you squirm in his grasp, hips attempting to roll against his hand for any kind of friction. 

If we had to be completely honest, he actually enjoyed watching you work. You really are gifted, always applying yourself to missions. When he heard you would be handling an anomaly for him, he would feel relieved, even proud. But he knew that any compliments he gave you would just be lost in the sea of praise you already received. So, in order to set himself apart, he decided he was going to be a complete dickhead to you. He figured bullying you would motivate you to seek him out in a crowd, make you strive to impress him and show off to him, and ultimately bring the two of you closer. It was shameful, how awful he is at making first impressions, that he’d rather hurt a beautiful young girl’s feelings as opposed to being a reliable boss and potential friend. But now knowing that he hadn’t completely ruined his chances at getting closer to you, he was certainly going to take full advantage of this new development.

“Now look at you, you don’t wanna be a good girl for me anymore, nena?” Miguel teases, grinning as he sees the need and innocence in your eyes as he releases your face with a harsh push. “You wanna be a dumb little slut for your fucking boss, instead?”

You want to say no, want to deny his harsh words and hopefully gain back some of the dignity he was stripping away from you, but your body yearns for Miguel’s touch, his degradation fueling your most carnal desires, and you nod your head frantically. Miguel sighs at your eagerness, tapping your cheek firmly as he wraps a hand around your throat, not applying any pressure but allowing his thumb to lazily stroke the side of your neck.

He leans in to bite your bottom lip hard, causing you to cry out in pain and open your mouth. He takes the opportunity and slams his plump lips against yours, tongue intertwining around yours inside your warm mouth as he groans into the sloppy, demanding kiss. His hand drops from your throat as his bulging arms tuck themselves underneath the fat of your ass and he lifts you up, carrying you over to his platform and dumping you on top of his desk, lips never leaving yours. Miguel’s razor-sharp claws protrude from his fingertips, slicing through the material of your Spider-Suit and prompting a startled yelp from you as he rips your clothes right off your body. 

The matching set you have on underneath has his dick thrumming in his suit, and he almost loses sight of his initial plan in a desperate temptation to worship your gorgeous body and shower you with the praise that he knows you deserve. But he wants to be different, wants to hold a special place in your heart, and this was the only way to do it. 

“You wore these for me, didn’t you?” He hisses flippantly against your lips, throwing the rags of your once cute little Spider-Suit across his office, before tearing your bra open from the middle with just the strength of his grip, claws retracting back into the pads of his fingers. “Puta de mierda.” (fucking whore)

Miguel flips your body over on his desk with ease, your face now pressed against the cold, hard material as Miguel leaves a trail of deep bite marks and hickeys across the exposed skin of your back, making his way down to your clothed pussy at an agonising pace, your ass wiggling enticingly to try and convince Miguel to give you what you want, what you need from him. Miguel peels your soaked panties off of you, tossing them onto his desk chair for later, as his fingers run up and down your already dripping folds, causing him to chuckle to himself.

“I never would’ve pegged you for a girl who gets off on this kind of thing,” Miguel whispers as his fingers explore your wetness, his tone much softer as his sharp, red eyes admire the way your body looks bent over his desk. He snaps himself out of his trance, opting to tap on your clit harshly with his fingers to bring himself back to a place of lust and callousness, and to tease you further.

Miguel dips his two fingers into your cunt, making you moan and cry out, your hands gripping the edge of Miguel’s desk as you push your hips back to fuck yourself on his thick fingers. He pumps his digits in and out of you at a leisurely pace, curling them to hit that sweet, gummy spot inside of you each time they delve deeper into your pussy. Miguel groans at the way you clench around his fingers as he thrusts them into you, his knuckles drenched in your arousal as he watches the way you grind against his hand when his thumb rubs your pulsing clit to stimulate you further. 

You’re completely falling apart at his touch, the way his fingers deliciously stretch your hole making you see stars as you approach your climax. Just as you’re about to cum, Miguel pulls his fingers out of your cunt and gives your clit a harsh slap, making you whine as your entrance twitches at the sudden loss.

“Sluts don’t get to cum ‘til I say so, muñeca.” Miguel taunts, disabling his nano-tech suit, the holographic material dissolving and revealing his tall, tan, muscular, the mere feeling of him towering over you from behind making you moan against his desk. He holds his fat, stiff cock in one hand, dragging it between your folds and gathering the slick trickling down your thighs as he scoffs at the way you tremble and spasm at his touch. “Especially sluts like you.”

Miguel plunges his dick into your pussy aggressively, bottoming out in one harsh slam of his hips against your ass and causing you to scream, his hand coming down to cover your mouth and muffle your echoing moans as he delivers fast, disciplining thrusts into the depths of your core, tip kissing your cervix with each frenzied movement. His cock rams into you mercilessly as he digs one hand into the plush of your waist while the other holds your head up, the two fingers he was using to play with your pussy forcefully entering your mouth. On instinct, you wrap your lips around them and suck the remnants of your essence off of his skin, moaning and choking on his thick digits as Miguel’s length stretches you to the brink of what is possible for your tight little pussy to handle and his balls slap against your puffy clit.

“Pussy was fucking made for me,” He grunts, delivering a smack to your juicy ass, the sting making you whine against his fingers, saliva dribbling down your chin and saturating the desk below your face. “Squeezing me so tight. It’s a shame that this pretty cunt can’t make up for how shit you are at your job. Maybe I won’t bother assigning you missions anymore? I’ll just call you in when I need a hole to fuck.” 

Wow. He really did think of you as useless. You had always considered yourself to be good at what you do. At home, you were a hero. Here, bent over your boss’s desk and being fucked so mercilessly, you felt like nothing but a whore. You cry, tears rolling down your cheeks as you moan and squeal with each thrust of Miguel’s thick cock into your hungry pussy. Despite your underlying feelings of shame for your recent failures as an employee, being fucked like a slut by the very man you’ve been fantasising about since the first time you had the displeasure of meeting was able to snap you out of your sadness and overwhelm you with passion.

Hearing you sob around his fingers fills Miguel with a sharp pang of guilt, but he brushes it off and pounds into you harder to remind himself of his end goal, breaking you down until he can make you his. If you really were as into his cruelty as you seemed, he was going to give you exactly what you so desperately needed.

“Mig-Miguel, I’m- fuck! I’m so close.” You whine, his fingers in your mouth making your voice come out as a spluttering cry. 

Miguel pulls his soaked fingers out of your mouth and holds your waist with both hands, fucking his cock impossibly deeper inside of you as the sound of skin slapping against skin and both of your desperate, breathy sounds of pleasure fill the dark office.

“Beg for it, amor.” He whispers against your ear, his chest pressed flush against your back as he nibbles at the smooth skin of your neck as his dick moves in and out of you at a brutal pace, the veins of his thick length caressing the warm walls of your pussy as he smushes his tip against your sweet spot with each thrust.

“Please, Miguel! I promise I’ll do better. I won’t make another mistake again, I’m gonna be so good, I swear! Better than I’ve ever been!” Your breathless pleas make Miguel feel a conflicting surge of both guilt and power. He watches the way your back arches and your thighs shake as you try so so hard not to cum, to be a good girl for him and follow his orders. At the end of the day, you just wanted him to like you, to see how good of a hero you are, and he knew that. Which is why he’s finding it so fun to toy with you like this.

“Shh, I know. I’ll let you cum, sweetheart.” Miguel coos, tugging on your hair so that he can reach your face and plant a kiss on your tear-stained cheek, his soft, long-awaited act of reassurance contrasting the lewd sounds of squelching as he fucks you with mind-numbing intensity. 

He reflects on his words as he listens to the way his unexpected words make you cry and whimper, and part of him regrets the way he approached your relationship, wishing he had just been honest with you and praised your efforts from the start, rather than being cruel and bending you over his desk to fuck you so harshly. But the way you tighten and pulse around his sensitive dick brings him back to the present, and he gives your waist an encouraging squeeze.

The tiny action of consolation has you spiralling, your vision going spotty as you squirt around Miguel’s fat cock, squeals and moans leaving your glistening lips as your whole body twitches with the all-consuming sensation of your release. Watching as you come undone, Miguel feels himself rapidly approaching his own release. He curses and pulls out of your sopping cunt, watching the way his leaky tip shines with your juices. It sends Miguel over the edge. He lets out a sharp whimper as he cums all over your round ass and your spine, thick globs of his climax staining your sweaty skin and making you exhale shakily. 

The sex and your crying make you pass out on the desk, and Miguel quickly covers you up and carries you to his quarters, laying you down in his bed and tucking you in. He whispers a quick apology to you, letting his cruel persona disappear and showing you how much he actually values you as a colleague and person when he thinks you’re asleep, but you hear everything. 

Maybe you didn’t really need to be praised by Miguel to know that you were good enough. And maybe he didn’t need to be so afraid of showing you that appreciation. For now, though, the angry sex would be a pleasant memory for both of you, in an odd way.

“Get some rest, cariño. You deserve it, for being such a good girl.”

I FINALLY FINISHED IT OMG. Thank you all for being so patient 💜💜

[flowercrowngods]

based on this post, because at this point i think it's safe to say @unclewaynemunson is actually my muse or something (hi anna i hope this is okay even though it’s, like, way angsty and way too long huh)

🤍 also on ao3

Two days after Starcourt, concussed and beaten, Steve has a seizure.

His ears are still ringing when the doctor gives him a stern glance over the rim of his glasses and pronounces him unfit to drive. No, in fact, he claims Steve poses a real danger to himself and others if he sat behind a wheel again.

Immediately, Dustin and Robin jump to promising that they won't let him do that, and in another life Steve is sure he would be grateful, or at least reasonable about it, but in this one he has a horrible second where the floor falls out from under him and he wishes, for just one second, that his head had been shaken a bit more, just enough to–

It makes him nauseous even thinking that. Everything does, lately. He closes his eyes against the offensive brightness of the hospital room and lets the sound of Dustin's and Robin's voices wash over him as he takes a moment to really take in what the doctor's orders entail.

He can't drive anymore. No more late night drives to watch the street lights pass and lull him into a safer state of mind than his bedroom walls could. No more driving the kids to their DnD sessions, no more taking Robin anywhere at the drop of a hat, no more bickering, no more reign over the music, no more stern glances through the rearview mirror, no more "Shut up, Wheeler, or you're leaving the car."

No more "Thanks, Steve!", no more "I'll bring some of mom's cookies if you drive us to the arcade", no more "You're the best" or "You're a lifesaver" or "I owe you one".

No more place for him in the group, no more use for him, no more...

No more. Nothing. Now he's just Steve, would-be lifesaver, 'has-been babysitter', 'could-have-been somebody until he lost his license to drive because he wasn't quick enough, wasn't good enough, wasn't strong enough'. Just Steve.

He doesn't know how to be that. Who is Steve Harrington without his car, without the one thing he was good for anymore?

The pit in his chest is deep enough, dark enough to pull him in, and for a moment the very thing he is good for is misery.

He waits until a nurse makes everyone leave for the night, and then he cries. It makes his head hurt, pressure building behind his eyes, but he's used to being in more pain than any teenager should be in, so he curls in on himself and hides underneath the blanket.

Here's to hoping the others won't notice just how useless he is now. Not too soon, anyway. He wants another month. A painless month filled with laughter and hugs, and then they're free to leave, to pull back slowly. Calls unanswered, radio channels changed so he won't reach them, sheepish apologies and rain checks, because now Nancy will drive them. Or Jonathan. Hell, maybe Max will take the risk just to avoid him.

---

He gets a week of daily visits in the hospital, the doctors and nurses insisting on keeping him here, a watchful eye on his vitals, scanning his head three times during his stay, insisting he has head trauma of a severely worrying degree.

Nancy picks him up from the hospital and it's awkward, tense, too much left unsaid between them but there's no one else to do it. Steve's hands are shaking, gripping the seatbelt the whole way home – and then his heart falls when he sees his Beemer in the driveway. The glorious, trusty, wonderful, best fucking car anyone could wish for. His baby. His.

He throw up into the brushes when he realises that he won't get to take it on one last ride. Maybe he shouldn't be so attached to a car. Maybe he's being pathetic about it. At least he can explain away the fat tears in his eyes now, and Nancy doesn't press.

The first thing he does when Nancy is gone is calling Robin, and she's excited when she says, "I'll come right over!" and Steve wants to ask, how, but he keeps his mouth shut, biting his lip. It's stupid, but the thought of someone else driving Robin over makes his skin crawl.

"Alright," he says instead, his voice raspy, and he hangs up before she can detect something in his voice.

After that, he goes outside again and runs his hand along his Beemer. It's shining in the sun; he had it cleaned the other week, the full program, every step in the book to celebrate four years since he got her.

"Four years, huh," Steve says, his nail catching on a minor scratch that isn't even visible but might be more familiar to him than even his home. "Damn good four years."

He's talking to his car. God, it's so stupid, it's so stupid, it's so stupid–

Steve's knees give out and he gives in to the desire that's burning under his skin sometimes, the desire to just sit down and ignore the world. Because everything is less real when you're sitting down somewhere you're not meant to be, and the ground is warm, and Steve just wants the world to go. His head is leaning back against the warm metal of the driver's door, and he closes his eyes for a while, his head still spinning, his ears still ringing, everything still awful.

After a while, there’s a shadow followed by a weight settling down between him, a head landing on his shoulder, a hand taking his.

"I'm so sorry, Stevie," Robin says. The lack of dingus makes it more real, somehow. More tragic. More pathetic.

"I'll live." And it feels a bit like a lie.

---

He gets his month. A month filled with barbecues in his backyard, the kids coming by after school to check on him, and Robin has practically moved in. Joyce picks him up on Friday nights for dinner at their house for a change of scenery.

It’s a good month, though Steve feels trapped. Caged. A bird without his wings, a boy without his car. Steve without his one purpose, the one thing he was good for. He has to be picked up because they don’t trust him walking, or they have to come to his place. And soon the worried glances that are thrown his way are too much, caging him further, reminding him of what this is. A pity party — quite literally. No one trusts him anymore, there’s always someone jumping to help him, not caring or listening to his protests.

And he can’t leave, because “What if you have a seizure in your room?”

It makes him want to scream.

Maybe it shows, or maybe everyone’s just fed up with him now that he can’t provide his taxi services anymore, but after summer the Byers dinners stop and the kids pull away.

“Told you that’s all I’m good for,” Steve says with a mean, pained huff as he hangs up the phone. Claudia said Dustin isn’t home, but he could hear the kids in the background. It hurts more than it should.

“What is?” Robin asks from her place on the floor with her back against the wall.

“Nothing.”

She frowns. “Come on, dingus, you can’t start and then—“

“No, I mean it. Nothing. That’s what I’m good for now that I can’t drive them anymore.”

“Bullshit!” she says, and it comes out so harsh that it makes Steve flinch. He swallows. Right. Robin isn’t hear to listen to him whine about how he feels like he has no place in this town, in this group, in this life anymore now that his head is so fucked up he can’t even be trusted to live alone.

That’s why Robin is here, right?

The babysitter becomes the babysitted… or something.

She doesn’t care, not really. She doesn’t listen. She doesn’t ask.

“Steve, they’re kids.”

“Yeah, well. So am I.”

He turns away from her and ignores the tears threatening to fall. The door to his room falls shut and he would love to lock it just to make a point to the world at large, a point that it can’t shut him out if he shuts himself in, but he knows it’s too risky. If he has a seizure, Robin needs to get in.

He can’t even stay in his room alone without supervision anymore. What kind of a fuck-up is he becoming, where does it end? He’s already managed to chase away the kids, even Dustin only checks on him sporadically anymore, and it hurts. He wants to know why, wants to know what he did, how to take it back, how to get them back.

But then he remembers how it all started. Dustin needed a ride and someone to take a beating. Both of which he can’t do anymore without risking life and death of himself and others. He’s a safety hazard. He’s useless. He’s Steve fucking Harrington, which doesn’t mean anything anymore.

---

And then it’s spring, and Chrissy Cunningham is found dead in Eddie Munson’s trailer. The group is back together again, the Party assembled once more. And Steve, for a just one second, hopes that he can get it right this time, that he can do this again. One last time. Because Vecna slash Henry slash One surely is it.

But then they turn on him — even Eddie looks confused, which is a rather adorable look on him — the moment Steve tries to get a word in.

“You’re not coming with us, Steve.” That’s Dustin, and Steve just rolls his eyes, but then Robin joins in.

“Yeah, no, I’m with the gremlin on this, dingus.”

“Hey!”

“Oh shut it, Henderson.” She turns to him, her eyes softer but no less burning another hole inside Steve. “We can’t risk it, Steve.”

“Risk what?” It’s a challenge. His shoulders squared, his jaw clenched, he’s challenging her, and it’s cruel.

She holds his eyes, her expression icy, like he’s stupid. “We can’t risk you dying. We can’t risk you getting a seizure mid-fight or just by being in the Upside Down.”

“Hey, woah,” Eddie tries to get a word in, but Steve won’t hear him as the desperation, the loneliness, the feeling of being caged like a bird and still the only human left on a desolate planet, all that breaks free.

“We all know that dying in a fight is the only thing I’m good for anyway.”

The silence among their war council, as Max dubbed it, is deafening.

“What?” Lucas sounds small when he asks that, and Steve closes his eyes. He hadn’t meant for him to hear that. Any of them, actually. They weren’t supposed to know.

“Steve, that’s not true.” Dustin’s words are filled with disbelief and worry, and Steve hates the worry, it makes his skin crawl, it makes his heart race, it makes his fists clenched and it makes him want to scream again.

“What else then, huh?” he asks weakly. “What else is there? None of you even talk to me anymore since Starcourt. Since summer.”

“Because you were pulling away,” Nancy explains, though her words are weak and her mouth clicks shut when Steve looks at her.

“Because we’re scared.” Max this time, and Steve doesn’t want to look at her, doesn’t want to tell a child that she’s not allowed to be scared for him— not more than he is, anyway. It doesn’t make sense for him to be hurt. They don’t want him to die. That’s a good thing, right? They didn’t want to see him hurt, so they looked away. It makes sense.

But it also hurts.

Steve shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose before all but running from the trailer. He doesn’t make it far (“Stay close so we won’t have to worry”), just needs some fresh air and to sit down somewhere the world will become a bit less real again.

The stairs it is. He tries to breathe through the lump in his throat, clenching and unclenching his hands to get rid of the anger and the hurt and all that excess energy.

He doesn’t want to die, is the thing. The very thought makes him nauseous and panicky. He wants his life back. His car. The freedom to just jump in there and get away. He doesn’t want the cage or the worry or the hovering or the loneliness when he isolates himself from all that.

Face buried in his hands, Steve almost misses it when someone comes to sit beside him. The thick smell of leather and cigarettes tells him who it is without looking up.

Eddie doesn’t speak for a while, just sits with him as Steve calms down.

And then, after a while, he lights a cigarette and asks, “You get seizures, Harrington?”

Steve nods. “Sometimes.”

Eddie hums. “That sucks.”

He nods again, and then that’s that. But even though it was a rhetorical question and Eddie didn’t even need an answer, it feels pathetically good to be asked about something. About himself. It only makes the pit inside his chest deeper, cutting into his soul with a sharp edge, this tiny little moment of normalcy. He wants to cling to it. He wants to talk to Eddie. God, he hasn’t really talked to anyone in so long.

“Before Starcourt — remember, the mall? The fire? Yeah that was, uhm. More monster shit. And Russians who thought I was a spy and then… yeah. Anyway. Uh. We used to be friends, I think. The kids and I. They used to care — or I like to think that they did. And then I got one too many head injuries, and the seizures started, and then they… It became too much. For them, for me. And the caring stopped. And, like, it’s fine or whatever, but I still care, and I can’t let them do all that alone. I know that all I was good for was taking them somewhere with my car, but I can’t drive anymore, so now I’m just… I’m just Steve. No titles attached, no use or function or point.”

Eddie just stares at him, puzzled and intrigued and even a little sad, and Steve wants to laugh it off when the silence stretches.

“Sorry, that’s kind of a sob story, you—“

“Wait here,” Eddie says, stubbing out his cigarette before disappearing back into the trailer. Steve watches him with a confused frown but stays put. A minute later, the door flies open and a scandalised looking Max appears, followed by the rest of the crew.

“You what?!”

“Uh,” Steve blinks. “I what?”

“Eddie told us you think you’re useless and that we don’t like you and that all you were ever good for is driving us from A to B with, like, no personal value whatsoever,” Dustin fills in, sounding no less bewildered. “Is that true, Steve?”

And God, the kid is so good at making all his questions sound like dares that Steve instinctively wants to swallow and negate it, tell them that Eddie misheard, that he’s fine, that everything fine.

But then Robin’s whispered little, “Steve” stops him from doing that. In fact, the sadness and confusion on their faces makes the dams break once more, confronted with months of spiralling and no one to drag him out, no one to listen.

Tears spring to his eyes and he gets up from the stairs to properly face them. He shrugs. It’s as much of a confirmation as anything.

And then Dustin sprints forward and tackle-hugs him, burying his face in Steve’s chest with no intention to let go anytime soon.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into Steve’s shirt and Steve runs a hand through his hair immediately.

“It’s okay, Dustin.”

“No! It’s fucking not okay, Steve, stop saying that. You’re my big brother, you’re my best friend, you’re my hero! You’re the coolest guy I know and nothing’s gonna change that, okay?”

“Then why’d you leave?” His voice is so small, but Dustin only hugs him tighter.

“Because you were hurting and I was… I feel like all of that is my fault.”

“Why would it be your fault, Dustin?”

He shrugs, and it breaks Steve’s heart. Dustin thinks everything is his fault just like Steve thinks it’s his.

“It’s me who got you into the thing with the Russians. I insisted. And you were tortured for it, Steve! You… You told us to go, and we did, and then we came back and you were— you-“

“Hey,” Steve whispers, curling himself around and over Dustin. “Hey, no, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. None of that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry I pulled away, Steve,” Dustin sniffles and looks up at him. “I swear it’s not because I think you’re useless. It’s just… I’m so scared.”

And it makes sense, somehow. The anger leaves Steve when he whispers, “Me too. And I don’t like it when you’re all scared and worried. I hate it.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Shut up.”

And then they’re both laughing with tears in their eyes. Lucas and Max join them with their own promises that Steve isn’t worthless to them.

“Did you read my letter? You know, the one if…”

“No,” Steve says. “You told me not to.”

“Right. Anyway, read it. Whatever happens, I want you to read it. Because you’re my brother and you mean too much for me to, like, never let you know. But, uh. Billy died. And I hated him, but it fucked me up. And then you almost died, and then you almost died again; and then you just… collapsed. And I thought, I cant do this again, not with someone I actually like. Not with you. And I didn’t wanna watch. I watched Billy. I… I can’t watch you die, Steve.”

She’s crying by the end of it, and Steve pulls her against his chest. Shit, he hadn’t meant to make anyone cry like that.

“It’s okay, Max, I get it.”

“Not okay,” she shakes her head again. “I know it’s not. But—“

“I know.” He’s stroking through her hair. “I know.”

“Uh, guys? I hate to break up the heartfelt confession time,” Eddie chimes in. “But I think our window is closing.”

Right. The end of the world.

With one last squeeze to Max’s shoulders, he lets her go and they gather their things. Discussions about Steve’s joining their mission have been put on hold while their window is still open. They can continue this later.

Nancy drives while Max holds Steve’s hand in the back. They don’t talk and she has her headphones on, letting Kate Bush work her magic, but it’s fine. It feels a bit like healing.

He catches Eddie’s eyes on the other side and holds them for a while. Eddie smiles before looking away, and Steve does the same.

---

In the end, Steve doesn't climb the rope with them. He stays behind in Eddie's trailer even though every fibre of his being screams at him to join. But Nancy has a point when she explains to him that she and Robin got this. It's the first time he stays behind, and he hopes it will be the last.

They hug him before leaving, all of them. Promises are made to talk about this later, after, and he nods.

"Go save the world for me," he tells Robin, holding her tight, unwilling to let go.

"Only for you," she promises, and kisses his cheek before pulling away. "You better be right here when we come back."

He shrugs and gives her an encouraging smile. "I've got nowhere else to be, Buckley. Now go." The last words are whispered and it feels like goodbye. Steve should join them, he should be there! But his head is pulsing and he knows that one wrong move could leave him half blind with a migraine, and they don't need one more handicap.

The one thing he can do, though, is helping them climb the rope, and it makes him feel ridiculously proud, seeing them land safely on the other side, smiling up (or down?) at him. Robin and Nancy wave one last time before heading off.

That leaves him alone with Eddie and Dustin. The latter is already climbing the rope, itching to finally do something, preparing the trailer for their plan.

Only Eddie is left, and Steve looks over at him.

"Will you be okay, Steve?"

"Sure."

Eddie sighs and looks up at the gate, disbelief and resignation and even a hint of fascination in his eyes.

"It should be you," he says, and Steve frowns, confused. "You're the hero here."

"No," Steve huffs, smiling at the metalhead. "No, I'm no hero. The real heroes are already up there, and in California. The real hero died after Starcourt. I'm just the driver who lost his license, the boy with the bat. The protector who needs to be protected."

Eddie looks at him again, that kind of intense stare, the one that shows Steve that Eddie sees something in him. He wonders what it is, but isn't sure he wants to know.

"I think you're wrong, Steve." He says it with such gentle conviction that it takes Steve's breath away for a second, and something passes between them as they hold each other's eyes.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but then–

"Eddie!" Dustin is calling for him from the other side, and the boys snap out of their daze.

Steve steps into Eddie's personal space and pulls him to his chest. "Make him pay," he says. "But stay safe. Come back, okay? First sign of danger, you abort mission. Come back, Eddie. I'll be right here."

"Yeah," Eddie rasps, and he squeezes Steve once more. "Catch me when I fall through that gate in two hours?"

Steve laughs, a sad little thing, and he pushes Eddie away from him, hands steady on his shoulders. "Sure, big boy."

"Hey, that's my part."

"Say it when you come back, then."

This thing passes between them again, and then Eddie goes to climb the rope. Steve's hands find their way to his hips, steadying him, but Eddie is strong enough to pull himself up without problem. Huh.

"In the meantime, wrap your head around the fact that you're the one I'm coming back for, pretty boy."

And then Eddie is gone. Steve watches as he falls through the gate, landing on the mattress with more elegance this time, and then he, too, grins down (or up?) at Steve.

He gives a little wave, and then he is alone.

Plenty of room to think when your friends have gone on a suicide mission and you're the one who has to stay behind. The one who will have to do the explaining when things go south. The one who will have to watch and listen, helpless.

It makes him regret the past few months, the self isolation, all the times he pulled back, all the times he didn't push for an explanation or a conversation, all the times he hadn't asked the kids if they're alright because he was too caught up in all the ways that he wasn't.

God, he wants them to be okay. He wants to talk about this, wants them to tell him he's more than the driver without a license, more than the protector who needs protecting. He wants Eddie to come back and explain what he meant, say what he wanted to say. He wants...

He wants his old life back. But more than that, he wants them in his new life just as much. He wants to be brave enough for this new life and find a new purpose. Create one if he can't find it.

But he can't do it alone. He refuses to do it alone even one day more.

"Come back to me," he whispers, looking up at the gate from where he's sitting on the floor, back against the wall. "Come on guys, you've got this. Please work. Please, make the plan work."

And then, miraculously, it does. Eddie falls into his arms with an undignified squeal and the rest of the Party soon follow. They're unscathed, miraculously, and Steve cries as he holds them, all of them, in a group hug that makes the trailer smell like relief and grief and a new life ahead of them. Slowly, with an unnatural sound, the gate above them closes, and then silence reigns.

They cling to him now. Refuse to let go. Good thing he has nowhere to go as Lucas gasps and sobs into his chest, explaining what happened, that Jason almost destroyed the walkman, that Max could have died. And Steve runs shaky hands through his hair, pulling in Max, too, so the three of them can just hold each other for a second.

Dustin and Eddie are hugging beside them, and Nancy and Robin hold hands, a different kind of horror in their eyes, but they smile wetly at Steve as their eyes meet.

It's over. It's done.

They did it. They really did it.

Steve closes his eyes and holds Lucas and Max tighter. They don't complain.

---

Three days later, Steve's house is brimming with life again like it hasn't in months. Turns out, Hopper survived, and he hugged Steve for a whole five minutes, telling him he did good, he did great, he's a hero. Again with that shit that Steve doesn't believe, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Hop, so he just buries deeper into their embrace.

"It's good you're alive," he tells him, and the Chief sobs out a laugh.

"You too, kid. This town would be lost without you."

"Yeah, right," Steve laughs back, and then that is that.

Except, it isn't, because when he returns to the living room with Hop, Joyce and El in tow, everyone's standing, looking at him with timid expressions. Robin and Eddie are holding hands this time, and so are all the kids. They all look like they have something to say, and the only thing missing is a large banner that says INTERVENTION.

"Uh, what's going on?"

Dustin is the first to clear his throat, but only after Erica kicks him. "We wanted to apologise. For leaving you when you needed us the most."

Oh. Steve's shaking his head, placating words already on the tip of his tongue, ready to explain to them how that's not their fault, how that was all him, he could have said something, he could have asked, he could have–

"Steve," Nancy says, effectively cutting off any protest he could have voiced. "Just listen, okay? Don't say anything."

He looks at Joyce, who nods, and Hopper who looks about as lost as he feels.

Dustin continues then. "You deserved better, Steve, you really, really did. We all did, I think, but you... You put yourself in harm's way from the get-go."

"Yeah, you came to protect me when you didn't even like me." Jonathan this time. "No thoughts, just protection. I owe my life to you. Every single one in this room does, y'know."

"And what you got for it is severe head trauma and... us abandoning you." Nancy.

"You're not just the driver, Steve. You never were just a driver to us." Hell, even Mike is in on this? "You're annoying, you suck, and you don't even try not to act like you're everyone's big brother."

"You're family, Steve." Oh, baby Byers. That's what gets his eyes stinging and his lip trembling, so he bites down on it so they won't have to see. It's futile with the way they're smiling.

"Yeah. You're so much more than our babysitter," Lucas explains. "You're the best basketball coach."

"You actually listen to my music and read comics with me," Max continues with a smile. "You suck just a little less than everyone else in this town."

"Hey!"

"No, she has a point."

Steve's not keeping up with the who's who anymore, he's trying too hard to keep it together.

"You teach me new words," El says, smiling. "You give me your clothes, you take me shopping, you teach me how to deal with meanies."

And the list goes on. Everyone has something to say to him, something beyond the ways he can be useful. Something that he is to them, something meaningful, something that sounds a lot like purpose and family.

"And we were so scared, because you were hurt. Because of us. You were protecting us, and look where it got you. You're a hero, Steve. As real as they get, you are one."

"More than Wonder Woman," Max agrees. "More than Superman. You're Steve! And that's... He’s our hero."

"He’s our brother," Dustin says.

"He’s my son," Joyce adds, taking his hand.

"He’s our friend," Erica, Mike and El say in unison.

“He’s the one we stay for.” Robin’s eyes shine as she smiles.

“And the one we come back for.” Eddie’s smile is gentle, confident, and captivating. Steve can’t look away, even through his own tears.

---

In the following months, Robin gets her license and Eddie develops a sixth sense for whenever Steve needs to just sit in a car and ride around town, watching the street lamps pass and letting them lull him to sleep. There’s an upside to being a passenger, he finds, because he falls asleep like this a few times, always waking when Eddie kills the engine. He drives for hours sometimes, admitting with a blush high on his cheeks that he didn’t want to wake Steve.

Somewhere on the highway to Indianapolis, between three and four in the morning, Steve looks at Eddie in the soft glow of the night, and finds that he’s fallen in love.

And in the weeks and months and years that follow, he realises that that’s something new he’s good at.

[lxvvie]

There's something about the way...

Price praises you. He encourages you to take the initiative even when he holds the reins. The battle-hardened bastard has seen so many amazing things in his life but nothing compares to the sight he sees as you succumb to yet another orgasm underneath him. And he'll do it again and again just to see you glow and come under his praises.

Gaz surprises you. Actions speak louder than words, and the man would much rather show you than he can tell you. And show you he does. You lost track of how many positions he's had you in and if you weren't so tired, you'd chuck a pillow at the cheeky bastard. You're pretty good, Gaz. Pretty. Good.

Soap worships you. You're like the fucking sun to him, something worth returning home to after every assignment. All the shit he's seen, you're a sight for sore eyes. Every flaw you think you have, he kisses it away. He'll always kiss it away. Your body is a sight to behold and he'll worship it every time.

Ghost excites you. He doesn't see how he does it, doesn't think he'll ever see it, but the intensity in his eyes, the purpose of every movement he makes, it excites you. The way he looks at you like he wants to devour you, the way he touches you even when it isn't sexual, god, it turns you on like no other. And even in the urgency of your lovemaking is Ghost still tender and considerate, everything he's always wanted but never had until you.

Alejandro soothes you. He knows all too well the pressures of life and leadership and would rather you be calmed by his touch than anything else. Every action, from the way his hands rove over your body to the words he whispers against your skin, blankets you like a soothing balm. You return the favor and you two find respite in each other's arms.

Rudy makes you laugh and makes you feel safe. He shows you how there can be humor even in passion. His quips are corny, yeah, but it suits him. And you'd have it no other way. Only Rudy can bring forth the deepest belly laughs from you while being buried deep inside you as well.

Phillip provokes you. He's a talented man through and through but the way he fucks brings out a primal need in you that you didn't realize existed. He fucks you like it's the last thing he'll ever do on this Earth and you respond with that same fervor every time.

Valeria captivates you. She is a woman who stares adversity and death in the eyes and tells them to go fuck themselves. Her presence can be felt even when she's not around and what she wants, she damn sure gets. This is what draws you to her, what has you yearning for more each and every time. And even in the midst of it all, when it's you two in the throes of sex is there a vulnerability that she doesn't dare show to anyone else, a side to her that's just as alluring as the badass you see and experience on a daily basis.

König embraces you. Because he himself wasn't embraced. Because he himself sought that same embrace. His frame, no matter how big, is comforting just the same. He's an interesting fellow with layers upon layers, each more surprising than the last it seems. Driven and focused on the battlefield, a nervous albeit eager and faithful mess outside of it. He more than makes up for it when he's with you and it's both a pity and blessing that no one, save you, experiences it.

Horangi tests you. The bastard lives life on the edge and it's no different when he's with you. The games he plays would infuriate anyone and you're pushed to the brink of orgasm and brought back every time. His fingers have you cursing and pleading with him to end your misery and let you cum―please, Horangi―but he doesn't relent. Not yet. He hasn't even gotten around to using his ace in the hole. Patience, baby.

[acourtofwhatthefuck]

Needs Must — Rhysand x Reader

While I put the finishing touches to the next part of Bluebird, enjoy this Rhys x Reader that I got a sudden burst of inspiration to finish this morning!

Summary: War changes everything, and the human-fae war changed the trajectory of your life completely — most pointedly decimating the relations between you and those closest to you. It’s been a long while since you’ve seen your brother, Cassian, and your friends. But that’s all about to change.

Warnings: Suggestions of solicitation/sex work/brothels. Nothing else, really!

Word Count: 1.5k

Enjoy! 💕

It’s all pointless, you think — the red velvet drapes, the burning candles, the sandalwood-scented smoke that clouds the air and creates a thick layer of fog that hovers just above the shag carpet. Pointless, because no amount of pretty décor will change Salt’s Pleasure Hall from the vacuous and miserable place it is.

Not miserable for you, no. There is no misery in the hefty sum of gold you’ll take home on a night. You are a master of pretty smiles and hooded gazes and saying all the right things that desperate, lonely males wish to hear. There is so much coin to be had in feigning interest and attraction. Bringing their fantasy to life for a night. There is talent in making them feel as though you’ve bared yourself to them, without having removed a single item of clothing.

And to think you once begged your older brother to train you, make you like him. Turn me into a weapon like you are, Cassian. We cannot change what filth sired us. But we can stamp it out from our blood and be better, be more.

And oh, he’d trained you, alright. Turned you into a weapon. Into something he was so fucking proud of. You knew the pride it had once brought him to strut around Illyrian lands with you at his side, clad in leathers just as he was, armed to the teeth just as he was. His way of showing off that he had done something good, something useful.

Oh, how things have changed. How the mighty have fallen.

For all you are confident, comfortable, used to the job you have now worked for some time, you are nervous tonight.

Tonight is different. Tonight is territory that has so far been untouched. Tonight, this room of velvet and silk and sensuality is your domain.

The Juniper Suite is part of the most expensive package that Salt’s Pleasure Hall has to offer. The package is similar to your usual night’s work in that you will smile prettily and pour drinks and ply whichever lonely male arrives with mindless conversation.

The difference is that in Juniper, those things lead to sex. And this is the first time since becoming one of Salt’s girls that you’re crossing that boundary.

So, yeah, you’re a little bit nervous. But — needs must, and all that.

With a soft sigh and butterflies dancing around in your belly, you slowly pace the circumference of the room, stopping every now and then to study the weird little trinkets that Salt has picked up over the years. A strange mishmash of things that you suppose he thinks creates a certain ambience. But tiny metal lions and old, fraying maps will be the furthest thing from your client’s thoughts when the two of you sink into the feathered sheets.

They will be here any minute, and for the first time since you started your work here, you allow yourself to wonder what they might be like. You never usually bother, because the other girls warned you on day one what to expect — that this place attracts a certain clientele, and that never wavers.

So, your guest will likely be far older than you. He will likely have dark smudges beneath his eyes and the weight of the world on his shoulders. There will likely be the faint mark of a removed wedding band on his left ring finger. He will likely want to talk to you about why he is a victim of life itself.

And you will coo sympathetically and pour him drinks, drag your hand down his arm and hold his hand. You will let him know how sorry you feel that life is so cruel to him. You will offer him the bliss of touch and feel, and make him think, for a short while, that you genuinely care about his shortcomings.

And then when he hands you the heavy pouch of coins you so desperately covet, you’ll switch it all off.

You swallow down another sigh and cross the room to the small, compact bar in the corner. You need a stiff drink yourself, something to settle your nerves—

But a knock lands on the door, and there’s no time.

For a split second, you doubt whether you can go through with this. Playing hostess for a few hours is one thing, but giving your body to a client is something you’ve never had the courage to do, despite the extra coin it would bring. But — needs must. You repeat it to yourself as you stride to the door. Needs must, needs must, needs must. You can do this.

You brace yourself, feeling suddenly too hot and sticky in the scant clothing that covers you — a pink lingerie set, barely covered by the sheer robe that sits open and threatens to slip down your arms. You are beautiful — and strong and sexy and confident. This is your body to do with whatever you want. And if this is the course you are taking, that is fine. This will be fine.

You lay your palm on the handle and yank the door open before you have to give yourself another pep talk.

But at the sight of who stands on the other side, you freeze. Your lips part in surprise.

A pep talk is not what you need — but rather a huge hole to open in the floor and swallow you down.

“What the fuck?”

It takes you a moment to realise that you’ve uttered those three words at the exact same moment your client did — Rhysand did.

He’s just like when you last saw him, but…older, now. Even though you were adults back then, too, he seems…more mature, somehow. He’s regal and stunning and night itself.

And fuck, he’s High Lord of the Night Court now.

And yet he’s ruffled, as he takes you in, gapes at you. Neither of you know what to do.

His eyes dip down to what you’re wearing, before travelling back up to your face. And he blurts, “Pixie?”

Pixie. You haven’t heard that name in years. The fond nickname that both Rhys and Azriel had coined for you, because you were so much like Cassian and yet so much smaller, a little pixie buzzing around.

But you are not her anymore. You haven’t been her since before the human-fae war. You had changed, just like the others had changed.

And the new you doesn’t need to explain to an old friend what has brought you to a pleasure hall in Sangravah. Nor does that old friend need to explain what’s brought him here, either. You owe him nothing. He owes you nothing.

But the situation is so bizarre that your mind freezes. You don’t know what to do. All you know is that you do not want to be in front of him, almost naked. You do not want to look him in the eye. The mere thought is humiliating.

So you move fast and try to slam the door shut in his face. You don’t care what kind of reprimand Salt will give you because of it.

But, of course, he is Rhysand, and may you never forget that. He’s quick as lightning, something about him always having been wildly feline. He always bested you when you sparred, always had the upper hand.

He has the upper hand now as he wedges his foot in the door and stops it from closing.

You grit your teeth, feeling just like when you used to bicker with him in Illyria as you bite out, “Move your fucking foot.”

“No,” Rhys snaps, shoving it in further. “Open the fucking—” he growls as he shoulders himself forward. “Pixie.”

“Don’t call me that. Go away—”

You’re not exactly sure what happens next. Either he loses his footing, or you do, or perhaps you both do. All you know is that the door is swinging fully open, and your balance is suddenly off, and Rhysand’s hand is gripping onto you as you fall backwards. Your attempts to right yourself are far too late and seem to make it worse. Down you go to that musty shag carpet, and down Rhysand goes with you,

Air whooshes from your lungs as he lands on top of you, far too close than is comfortable when you’re wearing so little clothing. You attempt to sit up, shove him off you.

But he holds you firm and stares at you with wide eyes. His face is inches from yours. He gives what seems to be a baffled shake of his head.

“Pix, what the fuck?” he blurts.

[shapard]

A Love tail that started with Jealousy ⛓️

Lucifer x GN!reader

A/n: Chapter 9 of "Feather of Fate" takes longer than I expected. So, I got a one shot/Scenario for my pookies who are waiting❤️

You fell in love with your dear friend Lucifer. Distancing yourself from him is hard but you had to do what you have to do.

Spoiler: It didn't work out the way you planned.

You sat at the reception in the lobby of the Hazbin Hotel. 

You are the receptionist of this lovely place; well, you were forced by Alastor. The one who owns your very own Soul. 

The time you spent in the Hotel was way better than you had expected. 

The sinners were nice, beside Alastor, and Charlie is a cutie pie. And you don’t even want to start with Lucifer.

He was so pure and didn’t judge you in any way. He supported you more than anyone else did. Here in hell and on earth.

He was always there.

A real friend. 

But Nothing good ever lasts long. 

After weeks in this friendship, you found yourself stuck in this messed up feeling called love. 

And it scared you. 

He is the Royalty of Royalty. 

He is the king of Hell.

It didn’t change the fact that you loved him with every part of your being.

You have to admit yourself that this feeling brings danger, danger to you but also to Lucifer. 

Alastor could use you against him.

So, you distanced yourself from him. 

It was bitter, a taste that never left your tongue. But you must protect yourself. 

He only sees you as a friend. Nothing more. 

As much as it hurts, at least you know before trying too hard. It was a fight between mind and heart. 

You ached for him. 

You wanted him to feel the same. But that’ll never happen. 

You distracted yourself by going out to the club with Angel. Getting drunk to numb the growing ache and pain that swelled in your chest.

But even that didn’t last long, you longed for him. Just seeing him reminds you of your misery.

Love really is the greatest curse of them all. 

Despite the fact that you two will never be and never will date around. Your heart still bloomed for Lucifer. 

You are surprised as you see Lucifer in front of you.

you gulped hard and anxiety and love pumped up in your heart, down to your stomach. You felt sick. 

“I Apologize that I have to disturb you from your work. But I couldn’t contact you for couple weeks. I’m worried.” He fiddled with his hat that rested in his hands, his pure golden hair was flowing with grace in the air. 

Fuck You internally cursed.

“I-“ You stopped talking, your words caught up in your throat. It felt like a knot that gets larger with every breath you took. 

To your savior the front door was slammed open, and a sinner entered the lobby. 

His eyes searched through the room till they landed on you. 

It is Mark, one of your recent dates. 

Not him.

You broke contact with him. Mark was way too obsessed and wouldn’t stop touching you at places that are a no no. 

He called out your name and tried jumping on you but Lucifer stepped between. Shielding whatever that guy wanted to do with you.

Mark fell with full force on the ground.

“Woahh. Let’s calm down, yeah?” Lucifer butted in and pushed Mark gently with his cane. 

Lucifer was disgusted but also angry.

Mark jumped up pushing Lucifers cane off him in the process. 

“I’m here to talk with them, not with you.” He growled at Lucifer and walked towards you in extreme speed.

Mark called out your name in a sang tone. 

You stood up and wanted to flee from his embrace, but it was too late. 

He cuddled you with much force on to him, his hand locked tightly on your ass.

You attempted to push him away from you, but his hold was way to strong. 

Lucifer grabbed Mark on his collar throwing him off of you. 

His horns were full on display and a bounce light was highlighting them in a beautiful way. His tail flicked from side to side, and he used his demonic voice to show off his dominance. 

“Get the fuck off of them!” Lucifer was not playing. 

The fact that a mere peasant jumped on you and touched you without consent was already a reason to kill him. 

Mark disobeyed his own king and touched his Love was his death sentence. 

Scared Mark ran away like a lost puppy but called you a Slut in the meantime. 

So, Lucifer killed him. 

Throwing Mark body in a dumpster near the Hotel.

With two seconds he was standing in front of you bowing in 90° and held your hand softly in his. 

The blood from the sinner was still fresh on his Hands but you two didn’t care. 

He kissed your hand softly and looked you deeply in your eyes with his snake like red Iris.

He knew that you were avoiding him the couple of weeks.

But now he was blinded with jealousy to even care about it.

“You’re mine. got it?”

💫

@i-have-no-life-charlie @sirenetheblogger

[ilove-sexydilfsnmilfs]

-Star Crossed- chapter 1

Pairing- Oc!reader(afab) x Logan Howlett

Words- 1.9k (not proofread plz excuse any errors)

Summary- it’s been nearly 2 years since Cora(reader) and Logan both lost eachother in their own universe, both broken, angry and hated amongst their people, They would do anything to see one another again, little did they know that day would come sooner than expected, and shatter their hearts into pieces and drive their long hidden desires to the surface ….will they be able to forgive themselves for their past and finally be together? Or will the universe just tear them apart once again?

Warnings- mentions of death, blood, 18+ (smut) in some later scenes/chapters… tension!!!! ./trauma/ no use of y/n I will be using a name but I won’t be describing any appearances! / Logan is aged down to be atleast in his early /mid 30s in this story / will add more warnings when needed.

————————————————————————

You’ve been rotting in your bed for months now, you can’t bring yourself to do much…not anymore.. you feel so lost, so hopeless..all because he’s gone, and you blame yourself for everything that had happened , you blame yourself for losing Logan.

You stare up at the white ceiling, Logans dog tags rest around your neck, his old grey zip up wrapped in your arms, his scent slowly fading with each day that passes. You feel nothing but sadness, you’ve cried so much you genuinely don’t think you can bare to cry anymore you just want out. Out of this fucking world, out of your misery. But what can you do? Just leave? No…what would leaving do? You’d still carry the pain you’ve felt since the day Logan Howlett died in your arms. Sometimes you swear you can still feel the warmth from his blood pooling under you, his heavy body laying stiff in your arms…the feeling of absolute dread when he stopped responding to your pleas to stay with you a little longer, when his hand fell from your face, body going limp…thinking about it makes you want to end your own life sometimes but you know that’s not what he would have wanted for you…he would want you to live on, but how could you live when the only man you’d ever loved was gone …forever?

You rolled over on your side, your face sinking into your pillow while you held his jacket close to your body, your other hand clenching his bloodstained necklace it’s all you had left of him since you left the x mansion, you couldn’t be there anymore, not with all the memories and not with knowing none of your friends were there anymore either.. they were all gone, dead… you were the last one left, and you couldn't bear to be reminded of all the happy memories...not when survivors guilt was riddled in your body. when everyone had died, you felt like you at least had a reason to live giving you still had logan by your side, but then he got sick, adamantium poisoning....you don't know how it happened, but the adamantium inside of him started to break down, entering his blood stream, it weakened him, slowed down his healing factor...you hated seeing him in pain, it wasn't like him to show it so much, it broke your heart almost every day and that's when you decided to find a way to help him before it got too bad...but little did you know... that would be the very cause of his death.

You blame yourself every single fucking day for his death, sometimes you wonder if you even deserve to wear those dog tags he ripped from his neck and placed in your blood-soaked hands...."I'm so sorry Logan..." you whisper into the jacket, muffled cries echoed through the quiet dark room, cries that soon turned into loud gut wrenching sobs.. you stayed like that for hours, crying yourself to sleep, the way you did almost every night.

you were jolted awake the next morning by the sound of hard loud knocks on your apartment door. You look around frantically, knowing who it was already...it was them.. humans. Humans who hated you more than anything, more than any other mutant...why? because they blame you for the deaths of the other x-men, and they most definitely blame you for the death of Wolverine. "fuck...that fast??" you mutter stuffing your things into a bookbag that lay on the floor next to your bed, they had defintely found you faster than last time....fuck.

you tried to sneak out the window in your bedroom when the door was kicked open by a few bigger men, they ran inside trashing the place, calling out your name in a way that made your skin crawl "COME OUT YOU BITCH" one yelled like a raging brute "come out come out wherever you are Cora, we just wanna make you feel the pain we felt when you killed the x-men" another cooed, his voice was one you'd hear when taunting someone, it was fucking creepy.

"Fuck me!" you spit in a whisper, they seemed even more upset than before...to this day you don't understand why the humans decided to turn against you, I guess they just needed someone to blame for the deaths...and you were right there and unscathed. As you were trying to make your way out the small window, the door to your bedroom flung open and 3 men entered, a mob of people behind them, they grabbed you almost immediately, grabbing your hands and putting them behind your back, and covering your eyes knowing full well of all your abilities. "We got you; you bitch, you're not going anywhere" . Now this whole ordeal would be a lot easier if you could just use your powers against them, but you took an oath when Logan died to never use your powers to harm a soul ever again...and yea these people were horrible trying to kill you but they genuinely think it's your fault your friends are dead...and you know you'd feel the same way if you were in their shoes, so yea...you took an oath to never use your powers to harm these people...but no one ever said anything about using your combat skills...like cmon you were a fucking x-men...these people are really stupid.

you kicked your leg up into the air, uppercutting one person causing them to fall onto the ground with a loud thump. you then brought your head back to headbutt the man holding your arms behind your back and when you felt they were free you ripped the blindfold off and quickly grabbed a lamp that sat on your bedside table, bashing it against another's head. A few people came charging at you at once, but you dodged them with minimal effort, grabbing their heads and bashing them together causing their bodies to go limp and fall to the ground. your right elbow landed directly into someone's stomach making them gasp for air then you brought your knee up to bash it clear into their face, as someone tried to climb onto your back you stumbled from the sudden attack and fell back into a wall causing them to bring a knife right down into your upper abdomen "GET OFF OF ME" you screamed in pain , pushing yourself back into the wall again and again but the person still had a grip on you, that's when another person tried coming at you full speed to tackle you to the ground...you were getting exhausted, you hadn't properly worked out in months and this sudden fight was one you weren't expecting... you were annoyed, trying to fight all these people, finally getting the person on your back off you head someone yell "YOU MURDERER, YOURE KILLING US BUT WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THEY NEEDED YOU"

"ITS ALL YOUR FAULT WOLVERINE IS DEAD" those words, those seven words snapped something inside of you...and well that oath you took...it meant nothing to you now. you brought your hands up into the air, your eyes glowing a bright white, the humans looked at you with nothhing but fear in their eyes. they all stumbled over eachother in the small apartment, but none of them were fast enough, you brought your hands down with a swift motion and everyone in the room flung back, some hit walls, some crashed into furniture and others flew out of windows, an instant death giving you were on the 7th floor. "I DID NOT KILL LOGAN" you screamed, people tried getting up but you didnt let that slide, "I TREID TO SAVE HIM, I LOVED HIM” you swished your hand to cause the ones trying to escape to fling back to the ground. You saw the man that uttered those words that made you snap almost instantly, you had heard them so many times before but for some reason today was the last straw, you tilted your head to the side walking towards him slowly as you brought your hand up you balled it into a fist and watched as he was lifted off the ground, grasping hopelessly at his neck, he couldn't breathe and you only squeezed your fist tighter and tighter as you watched his face turn blue, you glared at him, your eyes narrowing until

'POP'

His head was gone within an instant, blood painted your clothes and face. You were in uncontrollable rage, and couldn't stop, matter of fact you didn't want to stop. you wanted them to feel the pain they have been putting you through when you were already going through enough.

The others screamed, but you quickly shut them up, you twisted your head to the side, and without really thinking about it you opened a portal...it was another one of your abilities you rarely used, but as you were throwing people through it, the screaming stopped....they were all dead and you began to come down from your high while the portal was kept open...you fell to your knees and watched as the golden sparks from the portal started to dim....but before the portal closed completely you saw it...him...a face you hadn't seen in almost 2 years....Logan Howlett.

you felt your heart skip a beat when you both locked eyes, his expression showing just as much shock and heartache as yours, ignoring the bodies you absent mindlessly had thrown before him, in his hand held a bottle of whiskey but it soon hit the cold ground, shattering into pieces. you absent mindlessly grabbed the dog tags that hung around your neck, shooting up to your feet before calling out, "LO-" you were cut off mid-sentence as the portal closed as quickly as it was made and once again you were left alone in silence. You fell to your knees, shaking, your mind raced thinking if what you saw was just your imagination paying tricks on you...logan was dead...there was no way ....you saw him die , you saw-..."no....that's not possible" you mutter to yourself, you stared blankly at the blood riddled floor....that's when your mind began to drift to something Strange said long ago to you...how your ability was one of a kind, how with your own mind you could create portals to other worlds without a type of device...at the time you thought he was just wrong...every time you used your ability you only opened portals to other places in your world...not any others, only he had the ability to do that and even so it was with an object... or...at least you thought. "How...I don't even know wh- I don't even remember what i did .... how?" you were at a loss for words. Did you actually do it... did you open a poral to another earth, one where...Logan was still alive? you felt tears swell in the rim of your eyes, soon falling down your cheeks and onto the floor...you felt sick, crazed and as you looked around...horrible...if what you saw was real, then Logan, The man you've craved to see , the man you once loved and still do love, the man you tried saving and the man that died in your arms...is out there and just in your reach.

(I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE THIS, THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL HAVE MORE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN BOTH CORA (THE READER) AND LOGAN. IT WILL ALSO BE FROM LOGANS POV FOR A LITTLE WHILE let me know if you guys liked it!! 🫶🏼)

[batifresa]

Tashi is the eldest child of her family. We know for a fact that she has two younger brothers; we see them with her parents at the Adidas party. We also know her family was very supportive of her, and that Tashi is described by Zendaya as family-oriented.

But what about Art and Patrick's families? Here's what I think.

Patrick 100% has siblings! My take is that the only reason his parents didn’t care about him throwing his life away and being a disappointment, is because they already had another child perfectly trained and poised to take over the family business and carry on the Zweig name proudly. A boy, the eldest. And just in case the eldest failed, a backup, another boy, or a girl. The heir, the spare, and Patrick.

He was un unruly child, I'm sure, so they just sent him away to boarding school to be raised by someone else. More trouble than he was worth. His rejection issues (possibly) come from his parents always preferring his siblings over him. Abandoned and overlooked. The wound reopened, ugly and festering, when Art and Tashi married each other instead of him.

If Patrick were an only child, there is absolutely no way his parents would have allowed him to just fuck off into the sunset to play tennis. In my opinion, Patrick gives middle child energy, though he could be the youngest as well. That being said, he's obviously not close to his family at all. Given his current lifestyle, it's evident that at one point his parents either, cut him off, or he stopped accepting their financial support.

It's worth noting that, while Tashi's family was present at her match for the 2006 US Open (and quite supportive, complete with signs and video cameras), the families of Patrick and Art were nowhere in sight. Which brings us to:

Art. He's a tricky one cause, in my opinion, not only does he give strong "Only Child Syndrome" energy, but also "divorced parents" energy. His grandma clearly adored him and doted on him, but his parents were very much absent from his life. And no, I don't think they're dead. On top of Art's boarding school expenses, we know his grandma was in a nursing home, which are also very, very expensive. So who was paying for all of this? An uncle? Possibly, but I don't think so.

It seems to me that his parents divorced, but neither of the two wanted to deal with the living, breathing reminder of their failed marriage, so they shipped him off to boarding school. I suppose it's possible that he could have step-siblings from either of his parents remarrying, but they probably didn't want him anywhere near their new families. Lonely and unwanted. Aside from his codependency issues, this could be an extra motive to his complete aversion to separating from Tashi, despite his clear misery. He doesn't want history to repeat itself with Lily. Divorce brought nothing but pain for him, after all.

I've encountered people depicting Art's family as middle-class, but that's incorrect. WASPs usually come from old money, and we can tell that this is the case with Art. The sheer size of the rock on Tashi's finger, which belonged to his grandma, speaks for itself. The writer has also explicitly said both guys came from money, but were essentially abandoned by their families.

Before Tashi, they really had no one to rely on but each other. Which makes their fall out all the more tragic.

[libertyybellls]

I DON'T KNOW WHY I BITE ?

pairing; finnick odair x f!reader

summary; few years after winning his games, finnick endures the trials of being a victor and all he needs is a helping hand.

contains; ANGST, comfort, descriptions of forced prostitution, descriptions of gore, murder, typical hunger games mortality etc etc. not proofread… ever

☾⋆｡𖦹 °✩

the room once filled with a bond you could not quite replace, is now empty, gray. it lacks the golden boy who brings light to every aspect of your life- and it has been for two months now.

you know where he is, what he’s doing, and who he’s with. you know the light of his soul will be snuffed away by the calloused deceiving hands of the capitol- their everlasting appetite to claim their control over citizens and victors alike.

you almost dread the sound of your front door unlocking. your mind manifesting his misery would be long gone- begging to a higher power that he will be okay- that the pillars of his body are not crumbling in on itself.

nevertheless, as you near the front door- you see it in his eyes. he almost looks like the same 14 year old that got thrown into a death match and came out with two legs and two arms- but this time his legs can’t carry him any longer, his arms are practically hanging off his tired body.

the door is still open behind him, the chilled air seeping its way into your once warm home. his shoulders are slumped, there is no light in his eyes- only that small tinge he adorns when he is with you.

you want to pull him into your arms, to kiss the disgust off of his features, to show him he is unworthy of this muck treatment, that he is the only light that cannot be choked out, the anchor that is not misplaced, he is right where he needs to be now.

there’s a silent understanding, you can see the falter in his steps as he tries to walk towards you- so close to disintegration you can almost see his seams falling apart one by one.

you meet him halfway- pulling him into you- now you must be his pillar. you must cover his ears, quiet his thoughts.

his tears coat your shirt, your fingers run through his scalp. he wants to crawl out of his skin. he can still feel a touch that isn’t yours- it sets his nerves alight.

why won’t you leave me. his mind screams- but his voice can’t carry these words. leave me here, let me rot.

you can feel him self destruct, his knees fail and now you are kneeling infront of his vulnerable frame. you want him to look at you, to see what you see, but who are you to ask for more?

but all he sees is grief, blood from kids his age- even younger, he feels hands all along his chest- his back, he smells roses- luxury- a scent that isn’t home, he tastes metallic blood from his lips- gnawing from anxiety, he hears the praises- he hears that he’s special, that he’s so humble, what a handsome young man he is.

“i wish i could be good.”

you can’t see his face, you are glad in a way- you don’t think you’d be able to take it. “you are good finnick,” your own tears fall. “if anything you are good.”

you want to yell these words, scream them at him. so inconsiderate of you- but how dare he not see this is not his fault? a puppet has no control over his own arms.

finnicks mind screams more at the capital than himself now. your tactics have worked. you have taken every last bit of my innocence away. you control me. he begs to be left alone, he begs to be so pure and unsuspecting again.

you both know his fate, you know where he’ll be in a few years. you know that your love alone cannot keep him here- however strong. every inhale feels like poison- but he listens to you murmur as you rub his back, telling him to breath.

you see his eyes now, he tries to drink in your gaze- he wants it to be the last thing he sees, except less concerned, less worn, less worried. despite his thoughts only ever consumed by you, he looked pained- he looks as though he is elsewhere in his mind.

“nothings gonna hurt you now” sanity is a sheltered lie but you would rather surrender your wits than your boy. your fingers dance up and down his back now- erasing the sinful marks left laying in his mind.

-

so short so technically a blurb but wtv….

[beneathashadytree]

HUNGOVER - VINSMOKE SANJI X READER

Warnings : Sanji’s self-image issues, hangover, passing out, reader is gender-neutral!

Genre : fluff <33

Additional notes : This is part 2 to a fic I posted 2 years ago (crazy, I know) called Intoxicated, so I recommend reading that first! Inspiration suddenly hit me ig🙏🏽 To anyone else reading this, my requests are still closed!! These are just old requests I had in my inbox🫶🏽

Tip jar!

Masterlist

It was at times like these that Sanji cursed his entire being—most especially his body, for having gotten so used to waking up at a set time every day. Because here he was, with a pounding headache that threatened to split his head in half and squash his brain into a mush, and yet he was still unable to sleep in for more than 4 hours.

Delaying the inevitable, he tried his best to keep his eyes shut, even if just for a little while. Dread filled him at the thought that opening them would send lancinating pain shooting through his eyes and the back of his head, and that was an issue he did not want to deal with now.

Especially not after colossally mortifying himself like that last night. Actually, he’d much rather forget it all together. Maybe completely wipe the memory from his head.

Much of the second half of the night was a booze-induced haze, flashing images swirling behind his eyes like they’re floating in water, and he couldn’t bring himself to try and remember the rest of it. After all, why would he want to think about how he embarrassed himself in front of the one person he yearned for more than life itself?

Baring his heart like only an idiot would, skinning himself alive and prostrating himself in front of them without a single ounce of the dignity he’d tried so hard to preserve for ages… he truly was a lost cause.

“Putain,” Sanji swore under his breath, even his raspy voice sounding grating to his ears, and he buried his head further into—

—his jacket?

All inhibitions instantly cast aside, his head shot up from where it was, and he was hit with the surging pain of an unbearable crick in his neck. Eyes flying open and completely ignoring the sting of the light, it was only then that he realized that he hadn’t, in fact, stumbled his drunken way back to bed after his whole blurted confession and tumbled face first into dreamland.

No. In reality, he’d actually just slept an uncomfortable few hours on the kitchen table, his head just barely hanging on after being supported only by his crumpled jacket.

Shit. The kitchen.

It was at that moment he came to the sudden realization that the thrumming headache wasn’t only caused by him waking up, but also from the loud banging of another person in his kitchen pulling out his precious pots and pans.

It must be well past morning. Everyone was probably ridiculously hungry by now.

It took all he had for him to stop himself from snapping at whoever it was that decided to step up (and also make a wreck out of his sacred space and possessions) for only that reason. In his desire to drown himself in his sorrowful miseries, he’d completely neglected his duty as a chef. If not to sustain his crewmates and friends, what use was he outside of battle?

Nothing, he thought to himself, blearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes as he began to turn around with a sigh, not looking forward to the confrontation that was to come, nothing at all—

“There you are, darling,” came a soft voice from behind him, barely above a whisper. A blooming warmth rushed to his cheeks, and he almost toppled out of the chair as he recognized just who it was that was saying those saccharine words.

It couldn’t be. There was no way he he’d be so blessed by the angels first thing in the morning.

And yet. And yet.

Here they were, in all their fresh-faced, tender-hearted glory, leaning down to gently stroke his cheek with a deft thumb. If Sanji let slip a broken whimper of half-relief, half-agony, they made no comment on it. “You’re hungover, then?”

With his mouth feeling like it was filled with cotton wool, no words could come out, and he instead just nodded his head weakly. Thankfully, that too they let slide. “I got Chopper to help out with that.” They pushed a cup with an odd liquid and two pills towards him. “Should help.”

For a couple of seconds as Sanji downed them and sent a silent prayer to whoever decided to let Chopper have the lack of common sense to join their crew, they turned around, probably on their way back to the stove that now sizzled and emitted the lovely smell of caramelized onions and garlic—and if his nose wasn’t betraying him, simmering in some balsamic vinegar and soy sauce—that he had memorized long ago. But after a moments’ hesitation, they walked up to him once again, sliding his jacket out from underneath him and carefully folding it.

“You should go to your quarters and get a proper sleep in. I’ve got it from here.” With that sweet smile of theirs that threatened to send his heart into overdrive, they began to usher him out. “When you’re up again, I’ll reheat your food for you. You don’t look so ready to eat now.”

If he was looking as green as he felt, he couldn’t blame them one bit for calling it out as it is. Clearing his throat once then twice, he tried to speak again, voice awfully raspy (even more than after he’d had a smoke). “You… you cooked?”

They hummed in affirmation, now with their back turned to him as they began to crack eggs into a pan. “Not done yet, but yeah. You’ve only slept a couple of hours, so I figured it would be better if I managed to get us through breakfast in your place. Won’t be as good as yours, but I hope you can trust me to try.”

As they waved off to their left, he saw how they’d propped up his notebook against the pepper shaker. And maybe this was just him feeling extra sensitive and still a little in a haze, but something stirred in his chest at the thought of them carefully following every step in his recipes and diligently trying to emulate his cooking.

“Mon ange, you shouldn’t have…” His voice was still a little rough yet trembling with the emotions he couldn’t even try to hide; emotions that were bigger than his own feeble heart could take. His fists curled at his sides, eyebrows furrowed as he watched them elegantly handle the kitchenware like they were their own. This was too much for him. “I can handle my own hangover. It’s… it’s not your responsibility to do my own job.”

With a sigh, they turned down the stove and looked back at him with an exasperated yet incredibly fond look in their eyes. “You silly man, no one’s forcing me to do this.” At the affectionate lilt of their voice, Sanji’s mouth went dry, and he tried to swallow (with much difficulty) past the lump in his throat.

What could he have possibly done to deserve this? He can’t have earned this much goodness. There simply was no way.

“You don’t have to earn my love, Sanji.” Fuck. Had he really said that out loud? Their soft-spoken words and the sympathetic look in their eyes told him that yes, he had. He hadn’t intended to make himself sound so pathetic, and yet here he was, accepting the way they brushed his curly eyebrow with slivers of shame curling inside his chest. “I’ve already told you, my love is yours to keep,” they softly said.

“Your… pardon, quoi?” His heart came to a stuttering stop, all his movements halted and his eyes blown wide open almost comically as the words they said finally hit him.

One look at how utterly confused and shocked he looked, and realization seemed to dawn on their face. “I guess it would be too ambitious of me to expect you to remember much of last night,” they huffed out a laugh, before taking to the chopping board and beginning to chop up some fresh vegetables as they slowly spoke, as though hoping to break it gently. “You weren’t the only one who had an indirect confession in store.”

Digging the palms of his hands into his closed eyes, Sanji threw back his head and groaned as the memories came back to him bit by bit, achingly slowly and then all at once. “Merde,” he hissed out, the throbbing in his head doubling with every image that replayed in his head. “I can’t believe…” It was almost like he’d set a personal challenge for how much a person could embarrass themself within less than 12 hours.

What other explanation was there for him just completely forgetting that the one person who’d burrowed into the depths of his heart had somehow expressed that they felt the same for him? How else could he explain not remembering that they’d said that they wanted to be with him, in some miraculous way that he still couldn’t quite believe was real?

The chop-chop-chop of the knife stilled, and they set it down with a chuckle that sent tingles down his spine and his heart into near cardiac arrest. Lovely, lovely, lovely. His hangover seemed to have a weak spot for their laughter too, because why else would his headache somehow chip away just at the sound?

They were quick to soothe him with their words, their hands reaching up to tug his arms back to his sides. “It’s fine, I promise. You’re just a bit disoriented now.” Looking into such a fond gaze didn’t help the heat rushing to his cheeks, and he found himself being reminded of just how desperately in love he was; so much that he could swear it burned him alive. “I mean it though,” they earnestly mumbled, tenderly cupping his face, “and I’ll wait till you’re well-rested. Then we’ll talk.”

“Alright,” he managed to whisper out between breaths, “But—“

“Go.” They gave him a gentle push, before turning around to stir something in a small pot and add some spices that made the smell even more tantalizing. “If you don’t want breakfast to be a disaster, that is. Wouldn’t want to send my boyfriend’s kitchen up in flames.”

That’s it. A sharp pang in the deepest crevices of his chest and he was gone, his head floating with dizziness and his vision swimming. Sanji was long dead and on his way to whichever heaven would accept him; a heaven where he was somehow inexplicably loved and wanted; a heaven where he’d hear those words from their lips and know that they were indeed—thanks to some ridiculously generous higher power that blessed him beyond his wildest dreams—referring to him.

The last thing he felt were his limbs failing to keep supporting him, and a lightheadedness that overtook him so suddenly, crumpling to the ground in a helpless heap.

I think I’m gonna die a lucky man, he dazedly thought to himself, before finally succumbing to a blissful unconsciousness against the cold kitchen floor.

“Sanji!”

Taglist: @stories-that-shaped-me @finch-ya @wifeofkyojuro @fluffismystaplefood @angry-and-yandere @semi-orangeapple @carsonology @respitable @spotted-salamander @musiclover2119 @thatbaepizzalover @scentisterror @shengbiao-shiny @jammycheese @klutzycora-san @hyunskz

Sign up for my taglist here!

[fission-mailure]

I feel like the ‘the Jedi were too strict with Anakin and it was abusive and that’s why he fell!’ is telling of a certain ... power fantasy some Star Wars fans have.

Because Anakin didn’t have to be a Jedi. We know he could’ve left the Order, because that’s what Dooku did. The man’s the most skilled fighter pilot of his era, a capable combatant, has experience with diplomacy, has worked as a bodyguard, etc, etc, he would not even remotely struggle to find work, even without taking into account that his wife is a wealthy senator who could easily support him. Hell, while he’d probably have to give up his lightsaber, it’s not like it’d be impossible for him to build another one -- it isn’t illegal for a non-Jedi to own a lightsaber, and it’s clearly possible to acquire lightsaber crystals outside of the Order because, again, Dooku has a lightsaber. It’s not even like he’d have to give up his friendship with Obi-Wan -- Obi-Wan has friends who aren’t Jedi, he has a whole bunch of them. So does Yoda.

(Hell, it’s not even like non-Jedi aren’t allowed to use the Force. As Palpatine points out in the Revenge of the Sith novelisation, it’s not even technically illegal to be a Sith Lord.)

The only reason Anakin can’t leave the Order is because he doesn’t want to. He wants everything: He wants the power, prestige, excitement, and community the Jedi offer, but he also wants to not have to follow their rules. 

And I think for quite a lot of people that’s a very relatable thing, right? We want to have it all. The fantasy of being a cool Jedi is, for a lot of people, ruined by the addendum that there are things you would have to forego to do that. That’s one reason why the idea of Grey Jedi, which fully is just that ‘you can have your cake and fuck it too’ is so appealing to so many fans.

But that’s not what life is like, in reality or in fiction. And Anakin’s fall brings that crashing in: He tries to have everything, and he ends up with nothing. Less than nothing, because at the end of it, not only does he not have any of the things he wanted in the first place, but he’s also lost his freedom (because let’s make no mistake, as much of a terrible, gleeful executor of cruelty and misery as he is as Vader, he is also Palpatine’s slave) and his body.

It’s easy and in a way quite appealing to shift the blame elsewhere and go “Well, he could’ve had it all, but people more powerful than him stopped him from doing so.”

[silkscream]

CHAPTER 11: POISON ROOT

ੈ✩ gojo satoru x reader, geto suguru x reader

It disgusted you a little bit, needing them like a fiending addict. Living with yourself and yourself alone was starting to get old, though you aren’t sure how much left of you feels whole. You were always fruit split in between a blade, all the gory parts splayed out by the hand of someone greater than you.

ੈ✩ chapter cw/tags: explicit content (18+ mdni) , unprotected sex, drunk sex, threesome, oral sex, cumplay, phone sex, mentions of depression, angst, descriptions of mild gore

ੈ✩ wc: 7k

ੈ✩ a/n: here's a nice and fat chapter for you before we enter The Dark Ages <3

playlist ✸ read on ao3 ✸ series masterlist

“Sorry, what?”

Yaga scowls at you and you’re unfazed. Mostly, you’re exasperated.

“I’ve repeated myself twice already,” he says calmly. More so brusquely, but you didn’t care enough to gauge his reaction. You’re too busy processing his words.

“I—I know, I’m sorry,” you mutter. “But why me? Shoko’s technique is way stronger than mine.”

“Shoko’s technique is not your technique. And unlike her, you actually engage in combat.”

“Because the boys forced me—”

He brings a hand to your shoulder in an attempt for reassurance. You freeze.

“Your technique is remarkable. Stronger than you think,” Yaga sighs, almost in resignation. He doesn’t seem particularly enthused about what he’s proposing to you, but you consider that you’d probably worn him down over the past half hour.

He rolls his eyes at the look on your face. Mouth parted like an animal struck with fear. 

“But—”

“There hasn’t been anyone with a technique like yours in over ten years. I remember it. I had a family friend as a teacher here first—she talked about a boy that could regenerate cells. Practiced on plants and small animals as a child until he was able to resurrect bigger ones at your age.”

“That boy isn’t me,” you protest, your brows furrowing.

“He isn’t,” Yaga snaps back. “He died, and his death could’ve been prevented. This is why I want you to do this. I want you to be strong enough so that the same thing doesn’t happen to you.”

You swallow and look down, pretending to be interested in your thumbs. Your hands are delicate compared to anyone else’s. You had always admired people who could make something out of nothing, people who sculpted, crafted. Sometimes, you often wonder if what you do could be considered the same.

You haven’t told anyone, but it’s easy to destroy things with your hands. Much easier than it is to build anything up, to heal. 

You’d tried it during long walks through the forest. On your way back from solo missions, you’d take routes that were less traveled, needing to clear your head. Once or twice, you remember finding animals that were victims of hunting. Broken limbs, bleeding out too much for you to save. You’d practice the darker parts of your technique, letting quick rot take away their misery.

“For how long?”

“Just two months. July and August.”

You take a deep breath. You could be alone in Kyoto for two months. The boys would survive. At least, you think Suguru would.

When you tell Satoru the next day, it’s a disaster.

“You’re what?”

“Satoru,” you warn, crossing your arms. 

Dealing with him is arduous. You knew he would react this way. He looks at you with irritation, nipping at your bare thigh just to see you pout. You were in the middle of reading when he had barged in, craving the scent of your moisturizer on your inner thighs. Needed the whipped softness of your flesh squeezed in between his hands after some heated sparring with Suguru.

“You can’t.”

“That’s not your decision—”

“You can’t. What did that old man say? Some other guy had your technique and died?”

“I’m not going to die!” you huff, rolling your eyes. 

Satoru frowns, his blue eyes glowing. He was free of missions for the past week, treating you to dates whenever he could. It seems that you’ve ruined his bliss. That ugly thought in his head festered in his mind again — the need to possess you. Trap you in a glass cage to stay alive forever like you were his enchanted rose.

“Like hell you won’t,” he mutters. “Which is why you’re staying.”

“I want to get stronger, Satoru.”

“You didn’t even want to be a sorcerer in the first place! And now you’re desperate to train with your little cell regeneration? Are you gonna dabble in necromancy?”

You frown at his condescending tone. He isn’t taking you seriously. He never does. Satoru has always had his way of belittling others, but he’d sworn to never do that to you given your history. You take a deep breath.

“It’s just… an independent study, alright? This could help me in the future. I could go to medical school with Shoko or something, you know? If you’re so scared of me dying because of combat, then I could just focus on the regeneration part and—”

“And what about the other part? How you make things rot and disintegrate?” he asks you incredulously, nearly snarling.

“That’s another thing I can learn to control.”

“But–”

“I didn’t have private lessons like you! I’m not a prodigy like you. Can I just have this one thing?” you plead with exhaustion. You can see the way his eyes flicker with a quiet rage, his mouth turned down into a pout. Petulant even at his big age.

Satoru sighs heavily. He nuzzles his face into your hand, kissing the heartline. You almost feel proud of yourself for not giving into him before the conversation began. He’d come into your room wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves messily cut off, exposing the hard lines of his stomach. Just a gaze had ripped away your autonomy, brain dumb at the sight of him. 

You wanted to lick him clean before he opened his damn mouth.

“I won’t tell you what to do,” he says in defeat.

“Thanks.”

You sit with him for a while, staring at the ceiling, hair strewn around your pillow. Silence fills the air save for the sound of his breathing. Eventually, he curls into you, nose into your bare shoulder as he mumbles unintelligible things. His mouth in the shape of I’ll miss you.

“I know,” you murmur. “I will, too.”

Suguru copes by getting buzzed in the daytime. He liked the hope on your face, how the light hit your eyes in a certain way. It meant something more. He knew that you were worth more.

Lately, Suguru feels like less.

Not particularly less than anyone else, though he knows that he’s certainly less than Satoru just by default. He remembers the mission all too clearly—it’s the only thing that haunts his nightmares. The blankness on Satoru’s face, his willingness to kill a group of people just for the sake of it.

He thought he’d lost Satoru forever, that he’d fucked up the mission by letting a bullet go through Riko’s head. But then, of course, Satoru survived. Of course Satoru found a way to bring himself back to life. Everything should be fine, because Satoru came out alive, and so did he. So did you.

It didn’t feel like enough. The taste of curses started to get worse, if that was even possible. Suguru has been starting to believe that he didn’t deserve anything palatable. That the universe was working against him maybe, because his depressive spirals last longer now.

And you’re fucking leaving.

He knows he can have you whenever he wants, but he likes to lick the taste of you out of Satoru’s mouth. 

He bites Satoru’s lip and it makes the boy yelp.

“What the hell was that for?” Satoru pouts. Suguru only grins wolfishly. 

“Thought you wanted me to make you feel better. You don’t like it rough?”

“Of course I like it rough,” Satoru grunts. “But you know I hate teeth.”

“On your dick.”

Satoru pauses, rolling his eyes, then sinks his teeth into Suguru’s neck instead. 

“You smell like a dive bar. It’s fucking 3 pm.”

“Day off, bitch,” Suguru mutters.

Satoru pushes Suguru against the mattress and spoons him, rutting against his ass. It’s always a little violent with them. You used to joke about it—something about dogs and masculinity. Satoru kept wanting to fuck like it was a cage match. Bull-headed, annoying. For Suguru, intimacy always felt like a car crash no matter who it was with.

“You’re not fucking my ass,” Suguru mumbles.

Satoru whines childishly, of course.

“Ran out of lube.”

“Spit?” Satoru begs, his eyes comically large.

“Fuck you, dude,” Suguru scoffs.

“I’m trying!”

Suguru turns to fall onto the bed facing Satoru, then shoves his head downward. He feels numb despite his throbbing cock. He knows Satoru’s mouth is probably watering for him.

“C’mon,” Suguru slurs, unzipping his shorts. “You need to work on giving head.”

“Hey!”

“Not my fault she does it better than you.”

Satoru huffs but leans over the end of the bed anyway, his limbs too long to crouch on the bed. He spits on Suguru’s cock and pumps agonizingly slowly, coaxing out guttural sounds vibrating out of the boy’s throat.

For once, Suguru feels a little powerful when the Jujutsu world’s boy-god chokes over his dick. He looks down and pushes his head down, reveling in the sound of him gagging, throat slack. Not as good as you, but getting better. The drool makes him look pretty. It matched the glazed look in Satoru’s eyes.

Suguru nearly finishes right then and there, the barbed wire inside of his body starting to untangle until there’s a knock on his door. Of course you knock—the polite girl you are.

“S’unlocked,” he calls after you. Satoru makes a noise. Something in between a moan and a sound of protest.

Suguru likes your wide eyes. You’re out of your school uniform, dressed in a white number with embroidered flowers at the hem that hits halfway above your knees.

“Oh… I—”

“C’mere, baby,” Suguru rasps, his hand reaching out for you. He’s so close, threading his fingers through Satoru’s hair before pulling at his snowy mop.

Satoru coughs, his throat raw. It makes Suguru laugh. You watch like you’re outside of your own body, eyes wide. It was easy for them to get you under a spell. 

It doesn’t take long for their hands to grope you, have your dress pooling at your waist so that your bare ass is on display. Heathens. Being with them was always like throwing yourself to the wolves.

“So wet,” Suguru groans, circling a finger in the heat hiding behind your underwear. “Wanted a proper send-off, angel? Gonna miss us all the way in Kyoto, aren’t you?”

You can’t respond when your head is already so dizzy with Satoru’s teeth on your collarbone.

“Don’t talk about that, I’ll lose my boner,” Satoru huffs. 

“What a baby.”

“Stop arguing,” you roll your eyes. 

Suguru decides to be selfish, his dick already out and pulsing from the tease of Satoru’s tongue. He slides it along your folds, wetness pooling right underneath him. It makes him groan, his insides white-hot. He’d been craving this since he’d woken up this morning. The heat was making his moodiness deliquesce into desperation burning like acid in his stomach. He needed you and Satoru like a bullet begging to be lodged, piercing out of a bannister.

“Not fair,” Satoru grumbles, his knees bent as he gropes you. Rutting against the mattress pathetically as he whines, his desperation puppy-like. 

His mouth is salty, leftover from Suguru’s precum. His hair smelled like Suguru’s too—he must’ve been copying his hair routine for the hell of it. It was enough to keep him close without asking to sew himself into the boy’s skin. 

Suguru looks down at you and your blissed-out face, vulnerable before he’s even entered you. Your mouth is wet from Satoru’s kisses, spit drooling out of the corner of your pink mouth. Suguru smears it around and already imagines himself pulling out of you to finish there instead, just to see it on your lips. He’d like to see you cry again one last time.

You hum when you’re filled with him. Stuttering hips hitting slack thighs. Soft despite the violence inside him, the little voice in his head taunting him to wreck you. 

He likes you like this, first. Daisy-soft, his fingers in your mouth until you gag. Yelping in time with Satoru’s stupid whines. 

“Twigs,” Satoru breathes, his hot breath fanning your jaw. “Can I put it in your ass?”

You groan, shaking your head as Suguru howls with laughter. 

July, 2010

Gakuganji has you on a leash. It hasn’t even been a week and you’ve already gone on two missions, each that ended with you covered in blood, but luckily unscathed. Satoru would have a fit if he knew. The ghost of him hovers on your shoulder at your weakest moments — taunting you, challenging you. You know he wouldn’t be as cruel if he was with you physically, but your psyche conjures him in a way that feels like punishment. 

You can’t escape him, either. He’s needier than you expect — visiting you during off times during your weekends, treating them like serendipitous encounters. You don’t believe him, and you shouldn’t. 

(He warps to you when he gets in fights with Suguru. When he gets too horny to find someone at a bar, because if it’s not Suguru, it’s you. But he could never tell you that.)

You like to keep yourself busy in Kyoto. Whether it’s immersing yourself in your studies or practicing your technique, you can occupy yourself easily, even if you’re bombarded by images of veiny hands, long black hair, pink mouths. Blue eyes that are too bright, even in your dreams. 

You spend most of your time by yourself, anyway. It’s what you need. If not that, then you’re at the local bars with Utahime-senpai, who transferred to Kyoto months before. 

“Are you their little plaything?” she teases. You’re loosened up after a few beers, all on her tab, but the mention of the boys sobers you up immediately. You scowl.

“What?” She holds her hands up in surrender. “Everybody knows… Shoko kind of already told me.”

“Of course she did,” you snort.

“I’m just saying, you should be careful. They’re insatiable. And never in their right mind. I could advocate for Geto-kun, but I’m sure Gojo’s already corrupted him.”

Corrupted. It’s a funny notion. You wonder if you’ve been corrupted by both of them. Satoru as your first didn’t bother you. To have Suguru as your second only complicated things. You haven’t known anything else but them. You aren’t sure if this should concern you until Utahime talks about it.

“They’re kind of the same in that way,” you mumble.

“Are they both your boyfriends?” Utahime giggles.

“N-No…”

“So it’s not serious? I know I’m not much older than you, but I still went through a few flings. You shouldn’t let them keep you on a chain.”

“They’re not–”

“Are you sure?” she laughs. “You’ve been checking your phone every five minutes. It’s like they brainwashed you.”

“Hime,” you frown.

“I’m just saying,” she shrugs. “There are lots of men around here staring at you.”

“No, there aren’t.”

“Someone is staring at you right now. Behind you. Blonde. Tacky if he wasn’t like, a little hot like he is.”

“Shut up.”

She gives you a pointed look that causes you to look over your shoulder. Lo and behold, there is a man of that description making glances at you with a cocky smirk. It reminds you of the way Satoru looks at you. It makes your stomach flip.

“See?”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you mumble.

You move past the crowd to the single stall, plastered in posters from vintage porn magazines and graffiti. Your phone’s about to die, but the group chat with you and the boys has unread messages. It’s mostly Satoru complaining, arguing with Suguru about things that you couldn’t care less about. There are separate messages from them, too. Satoru’s suggestive selfies and Suguru’s words of affirmation. You scoff at the difference between them.

When you return, Utahime grins at you like she’s plotting.

“What did you do?” you narrow your eyes.

“He came over here! I knew it. He was interested in you,” she beams.

“What?”

“Relax. He’s a sorcerer. And I gave him your number.”

“Hime!” You shove her arm lightly, groaning when she laughs.

“You need to get laid by someone who isn’t an idiot.”

You roll your eyes. The many beers are making your head swim too much for you to actually be angry. If anything, your cheeks feel warm at the prospect of someone else being interested in you. It’s not something you’ve experienced in your youth, or now for that matter, since Satoru had sunken his teeth in you so quickly.

Images of him talking to other girls at parties flash in your mind, making you grimace. Maybe Utahime was doing you a favor.

The bachelor in question is nowhere to be found. You curse yourself for not getting a good look at him. A pit forms in your stomach at the idea of him texting you – a handsome stranger who watched you babble drunkenly to Utahime. It occurred to you that you hadn’t even considered yourself something desirable in a context that wasn’t bound to Satoru or Suguru.

On the walk home, the thought consumes you. You aren’t sure if you even know yourself without them. During most of your life, you’ve only known obedience. Intimacy with Satoru was no different, you realize. You were wrapped around his finger since you were children – it didn’t matter that you were apart for years. It would always be him.

You aren’t sure if this bothers you or not. You try to push the thought away, shaking your head slightly as if daydreams of him would fall out of your head. It doesn’t work, not really. You’re drunk. Naturally, you think of his pink mouth. The veins on his hands.

You unlock the door of your room. When you enter, darkness envelops you, which you’re used to, if not for the bright blue eyes that stare back at you. 

“Jesus!” you mutter, cursing to yourself once you can get the nearest lamp on. 

“What? Not happy to see me?” he slurs, flashing you a sloppy smile. 

“Can you at least give me a heads-up before you show up randomly?”

“That ruins the surprise, baby,” he purrs, walking over to you to set his hands on your hips.   Trapping you gently. 

“You’re drunk.”

“Hm?”

“You’re. Drunk. Why are you here?” 

“Had a mission nearby. Then I went to a bar to relax. And then, I thought, warping to Tokyo would take too much for a drunk. Why not stay here?”

“I’m not a motel.”

“C’mon, baby,” he pouts. “You’re not gonna kick me out, are you?”

You scoff, moving past him to sit on your bed and take off your shoes.

Satoru chuckles, taking a seat right next to you, thigh touching yours. “You’re drunk, too. I can smell it.”

“I haven’t even been here for a full month and this is like, the third time you’ve surprised me. What’s going on with you?”

“What? Can’t miss my lover?”

He says lover like it’s an inside joke. He never says girlfriend. Never partner.

“You’re so needy.”

“You like me that way,” Satoru says, his voice velvety. He’s not in his uniform, but a light blue button-down and slacks. You wonder if he’s planned this or if he dressed up for someone else, running to you as the safest option because you’re always there. Always willing.

You’d been ready to sink into your shitty mattress and dream of him. You hadn’t been anticipating the real thing in front of you. It was stupid, how he took your breath away, as if he was still something new to you. As if he hadn’t been in the back of your mind since you were a little kid, always.

“I’m tired, Satoru,” you sigh.

“You sure?” he grins. “You smell like beer. Still trying to have some fun tonight?”

You narrow your eyes at him and he laughs. He comes closer, pinching the meat of your thigh right under the hem of your skirt, chuckling when you swat his hand away.

“So short. Who’s this for, huh?” he taunts.

You swallow back an insult the moment you look down at the way his large hands play with a loose thread of your skirt. How large they are compared to your thigh, the calloused tips of his fingers running circles in your skin.

“No one,” you breathe.

“You cheating on me, Twigs?”

“Yeah, with Utahime,” you roll your eyes.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to that. Sounds hot, to be honest.”

Your cursed energy flares. You hate when he belittles you, but you could never do anything about it. You could only fall into his trap, giving into him the way he knows you will. You don’t even notice that he’s caged you within his arms, his hands settling on your hips as his body backs you into your bed. The back of your knees hit the mattress.

His breath smells sweet. It usually does, but it’s something sour this time. Something citrusy, along with the smell of something much too alcoholic. One of those whiskey sours, you guessed. You don’t realize how drunk he is until you look him in the eyes, his blue irises unfocused despite the desperation in his gaze.

“Of course not,” he grins, leaning in to inhale your scent. “You’d never. My sweet girl. My best girl, right?”

“You say that like I’m one of many,” you scoff.

“Are you jealous?” he rumbles, laughing. “As if there’s any other girl I like as much as you…”

He says girl and you think of Suguru. An exception, just barely. You realize how much you miss him, too.

Your eyes flutter closed as Satoru backs you into your bed, teeth grazing your earlobe. You aren’t sure if it’s him or the drunkenness of your brain. You don’t even notice his fingers massaging your thighs, trailing up to hook your underwear to the side to tease your dripping core. It’s his teasing laughter that snaps you awake.

“So wet… did you know I was coming, baby? Or were you expecting someone else?”

You don’t answer. Your breath hitches at the contact of his eager fingers prodding you, pushing upwards into your pulsating cunt before you can protest. The wounded noise you make only spurs him on further.

“You went to a bar, right? Were you thinking about me when you were there? Got yourself all wound up?”

You don’t reply. He’s too busy pushing his fingers to the very edge, stimulating the spot that makes your knees buckle before you can even form a thought.

You gasp, your mouth parting. Slack-jawed, eyes rolling back as you get closer to the edge before he’s even inside you. It could be pathetic if you cared, but Satoru always made everything around you melt, like you weren’t in your own mind anymore. You accepted being a body that belonged to him, nothing more.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he breathes, his lips tickling your jaw. “You’re so quiet.”

“Satoru,” you sigh. His other hand rubs the small of your back, touching the bare skin underneath your thin shirt.

He digs his fingers in further, knuckle-deep until he hears you make a pained noise. He grins at your broken moan like he’d just won a prize. He doesn’t stop, either — he wanted to hear more of those sounds out of your mouth. It was proof that you were still his, wrapped around his finger. 

You try to catch your breath as you lay back on your bed, his strong arms hoisting you up to the wall. You hiss at the feeling of his teeth on your thighs, biting desperately. Satoru was already sweating despite only coaxing bliss from you once. 

He claws at you, pulling at the buttons of your blouse and tugging your skirt down until you’re left bare for him. He groans at the sight of your silky skin, the way your chest heaves in anticipation. Everything about you is ripe, ready to break underneath his hands.

He’s less vocal this time when he takes you, pushing into you before you can say anything. He doesn’t realize how drunk he is until he does this, considering every sense of his was numb until he entered you, igniting his synapses on fire. 

You whimper from the abruptness, aching between your legs. You think that you would’ve bled if you weren’t so in love with him, but you knew better. Anything from him made your entire body warm and pliant, wet beyond your comprehension. You hated it, sometimes.

But you couldn’t hate anything about it now. You were doused in bliss.

“My girl,” he slurs. “So fucking perfect. Say it.”

You mutter nonsense under your breath.

He bends you in half, your calves resting on his broad shoulders. He chuckles at your pathetic whines.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Fuck — I – I’m your girl,” you sob.

“My perfect girl,” he mutters, correcting you. He groans when he looks down at you, his hips stuttering. His thrusts are harder than usual on purpose — he’d rather die than tell you that he’d only warped to you because he was having a panic attack in his room alone. 

He thought he could get his mind off of you, off of Suguru, who he’d assumed was angry with him all day. There were only dry texts from the both of you. No woman at the bar could compete, even if he managed to get a decent handjob in the bathroom. He could only think of you. 

Satoru knew you’d hate him for it. He was disgusted with himself. He feels it now, aching inside the cavern of his chest when you moan his name, knowing he doesn’t deserve a praising word out of your mouth.

He whines, on the verge of tears as he rides out his orgasm in your cunt. 

“Shit,” he hisses into the skin of your neck.

You can barely reply before he kisses down your stomach, licking himself out of you with his nails digging into your thighs.

“Satoru, what are you—oh, fuck—”

“Cum for me,” he slurs, lapping at your clit as he pushes his fingers into you. He pauses, mesmerized at the way his cum drips out of you, only for his fingers to push it back into the hilt, up to his knuckles.

You sob in protest, your thighs shaking as he plays with you. He doesn’t stop for a second. It’s almost as if he doesn’t realize you’re there, his heavy-lidded gaze fixed on the way your pussy swallows his fingers.

“S’too much,” you whine, grasping his wrist tightly.

“Fuckin’ love you,” he murmurs under his breath. You don’t hear him. Your body convulses as he continues to play you like an instrument. He only stops when he looks up to see tears pricking your eyes.

“S-Satoru…”

“Fuck,” he mutters. He finally retracts, licking his fingers as he looks at you intensely. “Mine… you’re all mine.”

The glassy look in his eyes is from the alcohol, you assume, but there’s something tantalizingly too real about the expression on his face. Raw with something he only buries inside his gut. He snaps out of it like it’s not something you’re supposed to see. 

He grunts when he lays his head on your lap, his fingers digging into your skin possessively as you tremble. You prop your head up on your pillow, trying to catch your breath as you stroke his hair.

“Why’d you get so drunk?” you ask quietly. “Were you alone?”

“Of course I was,” he scoffs, almost defensive. But he smells a sweetness on his skin that isn’t from you, and he knows you’ve already picked up on it. 

“You could’ve texted or called me instead of breaking into my dorm.”

“You just hate fun,” Satoru mumbles. 

Despite his attitude, he rubs his cheek against your thigh like he’s a pet. He thinks about taking you again, just to shut you up — enough to have both of you sweating, the musk of your sex drowning out any remnants from the bitch that Satoru had tried to use hours before.

Nothing could replace you and he had to live with that. 

He nips at your thigh, his mouth getting dangerously close to your core. You whine as you pull him back by his scalp, like the scruff of a dog. Satoru is always insatiable when he’s drunk, which is saying something considering what he’s like sober. His cravings for you are always intense. When he’s not in his right mind, you’re more considered prey than a craving.

You don’t have the energy to respond to him. His warmth satiates you for now as he locks his arms around your bare waist. The light breathing fanning your stomach calms you.

When you wake up, he’s nowhere to be found, but there’s a small floral arrangement on your desk. White orchids and blue hyacinths.

August, 2010 

You hate bringing anything back to life as much as you hate desecration.

It’s unnatural — though you know that nothing about the Jujutsu world is natural. Everything to you is a myth you have to deal with. After knowing Satoru for so long and seeing what nasty curses humanity could birth, you shouldn’t be stunted.

It makes you feel a bit ill when you realize how much power your hands wield. As ordinary as you’ve always been, these days you often wish that you were the true epitome of it. Only human, unable to see the horrors of the world. Left in the dark when it came to sorcery. Perhaps you aren’t cut out for this, despite how much you tried to convince Satoru you were.

His voice echoes in your mind. His pleading. The ways he wanted to protect you. He’d belittled your technique for a reason, maybe. You aren’t sure you’re cut out for this shit.

Necromancy is only exciting the first couple of times. After that, it’s the reanimation of body parts that freaks you out. It doesn’t matter that it’s the revival of small birds and rodents on a lab table. You feel like you’re playing God and not even doing a decent job of it.

It catches up to you in your dreams. The image of you getting held down, leaving you to resort to your technique. Rotting flesh. Even in your unconscious, the smell is somehow striking, as if you’re really there. Other times, you find horror in the reanimation of corpses under your hand. Split limbs coming together. Limbs that belong to people you love.

Tonight, you’re shaken by the image of Suguru mauled beyond belief. Sacrilegious violence that makes your stomach turn. 

When you wake up in a sweat, gasping, the alarm clock on your bedside table reads 1:12 am. You dial his number before you can even come to your senses.

“Twigs.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

You hear Suguru chuckle, deep and sweet like teeth sunken into cake. You’re filled with warmth almost immediately. 

“What’s up? Isn’t it past your bedtime?” he breathes.

“Had a nightmare,” you mumble.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” you sigh. 

“Fine. What are you thinking about, then?”

“You,” you mumble.

There’s silence on the other end. Despite this, you can still hear his grin. You can see his little smirk perfectly in your head. 

“Yeah?” his voice lowers. “What about me?”

“Y-your hands,” you mumble. “You make me feel safe.”

“Is that right?”

You make a small noise that shows your agreement, but it’s noncommittal. You hum at the thought of him. You’re sleep-dazed, partially wishing for this moment that he was more like Satoru. Able to talk your ear off without any effort from your end.

Suguru had always known you differently. He had you memorized as much as Satoru did, but uniquely, given the similarities between your personalities. He knew how you worked and he never held it against you.

Satoru would probably try to pry it out of you. Suguru would already know.

And at this moment, he knows. It’d be infuriating if you didn’t see it coming.

“You’re upset,” Suguru says.

“No.”

“You are. Or you’re pent up, which is also like being upset. Need some catharsis?”

“Maybe,” you mumble.

“Tell me what’s wrong, then. Or tell me about your nightmare.”

“No.”

He laughs. 

“Stubborn as always,” he purrs.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” you whisper.

“You want to hear me be mean to you. You like not being in control. That’s what makes you feel safe, isn’t it, princess?”

“Shut up.”

“C’mon, baby,” he laughs. “Give me something to work with.”

Your eyes nearly glaze over as you watch the flickering lights outside of your dorm. A broken street lamp flashes on and off, shadowing your room in darkness only to illuminate seconds later, back and forth. Unpredictably so. You aren’t sure what else you should look at while you’re still so drunk on Suguru’s voice. You think maybe you’d handle this phone call better if you were far from sober.

“I fucked someone else yesterday.”

The line goes silent. Your heartbeat picks up.

After almost an eternity, you hear Suguru’s voice again. It’s soft, almost cooing. It feels awfully dangerous despite this.

“Yeah? Who?”

You swallow thickly. 

“This guy who got my number last month. Like, I didn’t give it to him — Utahime did,” you ramble. “But then we started texting and stuff and he’s… funny. He, uh, came over yesterday.”

“Did you like it?”

You imagine your throat closes up. Part of you wishes it would, that you’d just pass out immediately for no reason just so you didn’t have to have this conversation. You curse yourself for even bringing it up.

“Y-Yes.”

“You don’t sound so sure about that,” he chuckles.

“I am…”

“You don’t have to be so scared, baby. I know that Satoru took away your virginity, but he’s not some kind of god watching over you.”

“I know,” you huff.

“But you feel guilty, don’t you? Like you’re betraying him?” he teases.

You open your mouth to say something, then close it. You notice how he talks about Satoru and not himself.

“Do you care?”

“I know how you feel about me.” His answer is simple. Blunt. It almost sounds sarcastic, but Suguru often talks like he’s cock-sure about everything. Even if he isn’t, he’s always held a certain confidence that was different from what Satoru exuded. 

Satoru was a bad liar, to you, at least.

“Tell me about your boy. What’s his name?”

“He’s not–” you gruff. “Naoya. His name is Naoya.”

“That Zenin brat?”

“Huh?”

“He’s in the Zenin clan. A right bastard, I’ve heard.”

“He seems fine,” you mumble.

“Someone’s defensive,” he teases.

You pause, staring at the darkness of your ceiling. You fix your shorts, your fingers grazing the wetness of your core. You didn’t even realize you were aroused.

“I should go back to sleep,” you whisper.

“I thought you couldn’t. That’s why you called me, right? You need some help?”

“I don’t need help,” you scoff. “I just… I had a nightmare and wanted to talk to you.”

Suguru smiles. He knows you can’t see it, but he’s beaming in the darkness of his room. He’d been restless for the past few days after some disagreements with Satoru. He tried to blame the heat on physical altercations — the sun burning down to rev up the irritation in their shared systems like they were still boys. Always wanting to pin each other to the ground.

They didn’t have you to mediate, so they’d come out of arguments with bruises. Marks from skin tugged too harshly. The ghost of teeth biting down on flesh. 

“I wish you were here, babygirl,” he sighs, his tone desperate. You almost cringe at it — you always assume he’s playing with you.

“Yeah?” you snort.

“Mhm. It’s funny. You didn’t even wake me up when you called. I was already awake, thinking of you.”

“Were you, now?”

“Mhm,” Suguru hums.  “I just kept thinking about your thighs. How small your leg is compared to my hand.”

Your breath hitches and he almost laughs when he hears it.

“Can you do something for me, baby?” he asks. “Want you to touch yourself. Tell me how wet you are.”

You gulp. Your fingers prod at the hem of your athletic shorts, the nylon riding up as you squirm in your bed. Your index and middle fingers prod at the center of your core experimentally. You’re fucking dripping and it makes your breath hitch.

Suguru calls your name.

“I”m…” you stammer. “I’m wet. Why?”

“Poor thing. Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep, no?”

“I-I’m fine… I just—”

“You should play with your clit. Since I can’t be there to do it for you,” he breathes.

“What?”

“C’mon, sweetheart. I can tell my favorite girl just needs to relax. That’s why you called me, right?”

You whimper. It was maybe half-true. Suguru had stopped answering his texts as frequently as he usually did, and you missed the sound of his voice. The odd ache in your chest wasn’t something that you felt like exposing to anyone else, not even Satoru.

The silk of Suguru’s voice brings you back. You wanted to breathe him in, but he hadn’t visited like he said he would. Didn’t have the warping feature that Satoru had, which to this day, still startled you whenever it happened. Ocean eyes whipping your senses from thin air, like a lightning strike. 

Despite your recent gripes about him, you needed the both of them like you needed air. At least to make it all more bearable. It disgusted you a little bit, needing them like a finding addict. Living with yourself and yourself alone was starting to get old, though you aren’t sure how much left of you feels whole. You were always fruit split in between a blade, all the gory parts splayed out by the hand of someone greater than you.

You needed Suguru’s musk, his hair in between your fingers as he rocked into you. Your hands were too small compared to his. 

He has you panting, sweating through Kyoto’s mugginess. The dorms were in even worse shape here than on the main Tokyo campus, probably why Gakuganji was such a vapid old man. Everything was too hot and falling off the bone.

“I feel like I’m hallucinating. It’s like I can smell you through the phone,” Suguru murmurs, his voice like a mirage. You’d laugh if you weren’t so deep in your cunt, fingers pruning and pushed to the knuckles. 

Suguru knew you would do anything for him, so he made you torture yourself because he wasn’t there to do it himself.

Your groans are muffled from you smothering your face in the sheets, knees pressing down and ass up. Willing to humiliate yourself without him even being there.

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up already,” he chides.

“I’m not,” you whine.

“How many times have you cum?”

“None.”

He laughs. “What are you thinking about?”

“You know what.” 

You’re close to tears by the time he lets you cum. The sound of his voice hitting you deep in your core, insides permeated with the thought of him. Sweeter than smoked sugar.

It was the sound of his grunt that tipped you over, imagining him with black strands sticking to his high cheekbones with sweat. The apples of his face candy-pink. Where Satoru looked cherubic, Suguru looked like a girl’s first wet dream. 

“Were you touching yourself?” you pant, coming down from your high. You don’t bother putting on your underwear again.

“Obviously,” he groans. The vibrations of his voice made the speaker blow off-kilter like the audio of a shitty VHS. “Came all over myself.”

You could fall asleep to the sound of his static hums. The chaos in your gut is settled by the time your alarm clock strikes devil’s hour.

“How are things?” you ask sleepily.

“With me?” Suguru asks. “Fine. Same as always.”

“You sound tired.”

“It’s three in the morning, sweetheart,” he chuckles dryly.

“Mm. My phone bill’s gonna be so high.”

“Get Satoru to pay for it.”

The bastard probably would, if you asked.

You don’t get much out of Suguru for the remainder you’re awake. His answers are deflective and clipped. He hangs up by the time he hears you breathing, knowing you’ve fallen asleep.

He sighs in his room, rummaging for his pills. If nightmares didn’t keep him up, then the sheer unwillingness of his brain’s tranquility was often enough for him to run a graveyard shift. Stumbling in the dark, half-dead. He’d gotten productive in finishing the video games he’d started with Satoru by himself. Not much else.

His throat feels dry. He couldn’t differentiate the tastes of anything anymore. It all tasted like curses.

You keep having dreams about Suguru.

Tonight, there’s two of him.

One is the image you’re used to – hair swept up in a bun. Broad chest in his Jujutsu Tech uniform. Eyes crinkling into half moons.

The other seems to be an alter ego. A cursed version, one with eyes to kill and blood on his hands. Hands that are trying to tear you apart.

When you grip his wrist, you can see the imprint of your hand on his skin. Flesh falling away, much too easily. The air around you splinters like you’re in a glitched matrix. The Suguru you know and love falters beside you, his skin suddenly sallow. Pale as bile.

When you scream, nothing comes out.

Pseudo-Suguru smiles as your Suguru fades away into ash. You stare into his cat-like gaze, the familiar of his mouth. 

“Come with me,” he says. 

It’s the last thing you hear before your body wakes you up in a sweat. You gasp as you jolt awake, fingers curling your damp bedsheets. You’re further startled by the crack of thunder as a torrential downpour occurs without warning — unusual for late August, considering the rainy season had died down weeks prior. 

You sit up and reach for your phone almost automatically, your hands shaking as you go through your contacts. Your fingers hover over two names as you swallow thickly.

A few beeps follow the push of the call button.

“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”

[writeyouin]

Idw Optimus and his s/o having a drunken good time? Like just being stupid drunk please?

Optimus Prime X Reader – Drunk Headcanons

A/N – I took a few liberties here making it a bit of a bittersweet request, with a Cybertronian reader.

Warnings – None.

Rating – T

Optimus Prime… Orion Pax. Right now, Optimus feels like he is both people, and neither.

The war on Cybertron is finally over, and having come back to his home planet, Optimus realises that nobody wants him there.

It’s such a strange and hollow sensation, yet he can’t blame any of the so-called NAILS for wanting him gone.

But without the war, who is he and where can he even go?

He knows too much. He’s not the archivist anymore. He can’t fathom going back to being who he used to be. Yet, he no longer feels like Optimus Prime.

He’s mulling this over when he spots you. An old flame from a long, long time ago. You and he used to hang out, back in the day. You were the personal assistant to some of the wealthiest bots on Cybertron, though they kept you more like a prize pet.

Optimus remembers how the two of you used to sneak away for stolen moments together, dreaming about the future, one where he was maybe a senator, and you were free to simply be yourself.

Then you both started listening to Megatron’s rallies, believing that you could be more than what the Functionalists decreed and after that… Optimus didn’t know. He had become the leader of the Autobots, and honestly, he thought you were dead.

Optimus followed you through the rowdy crowds of those recently returned to Cybertron.

He tried calling you, but you couldn’t hear him over the noise. Sometimes he lost sight of you and it stressed him out completely, even though it was ridiculous that he should still be attached to you after all these millennia. But he would always spot you again at the last minute, and finally, he was able to catch up with you. When he did, all he managed was a lame “…Hello.”

“Hello,” You echoed back, equally surprised to see him, and that he had followed you.

Optimus tries to explain why he had to catch up with you, but in truth, he doesn’t know why. He has seen a hundred familiar faces of friends he thought had perished, yet you were the only one he had felt the need to chase down.

He tries to ask where you’ve been all these years and how you’ve managed to stay safe, but again, words fail him.

Finally, you smile sympathetically. “Want to get a drink? I’ve got some high-grade on my ship.”

Optimus nods and follows you away.

When you said your ship, he thought you meant the ship you lived on, not literally your ship!

But it is. He asks you about it, but you shake your head and tell him to wait for drinks. You and he pass some crew, but a warning look from you sends them scattering. It’s not that you’re being mean, but rather that you have seen Optimus for the first time since the war began, and it’s clear that he needs something to hold onto. So, for now, you’re going to give him time to just

No leading, no pressures, just two old friends, catching up.

You talk about everything and nothing while you both get started on the high grade, waiting till Optimus is just a little bit tipsy before you explain where you’ve been all these years.

While Optimus was leading the war effort, you became a space Pirate, and Captain of the Good Ship Misery. It’s not an aptly named ship. It’s actually one of the happiest in the nearest 7 quadrants.

Your crew set up supply runs between the few colonies of NAILS that managed to survive. You looked out for the bots who couldn’t take care of themselves, bringing them energon, and medical supplies, or even escorting the occasional bot through Decepticon territory. Meanwhile, you learned how to fight, boarding Decepticon ships and taking what you could from their weapons to their body parts, if there was an innocent bot in need of repair.

You are so far from the meek young bot Optimus once knew. Then again, he’s nothing like he used to be either.

Yet, the way you tell it, that isn’t a bad thing.

Soon, you get onto the harder stories. Friends lost, traitors found, enemies made, that kind of thing. Optimus has a whole trove of such stories too. So, you both drink more and more, until it’s not as sad anymore.

Then, you’re both laughing. After that, you’re crying, but given even more high-grade, it’s back to the good times.

Finally, it’s getting early into the next cycle, and you’re sitting at the bar, head resting lopsidedly in your palm, staring at Optimus.

“Why did you follow me, Optimus?”

He looks at you like a sad puppy who doesn’t have a home to go to and follows the first friendly face it finds.

“I don’t know,” He replies, fear lacing his answer.

You lean forward to kiss his cheek-plate, only lingering for a few seconds.

“When you figure it out, tell me. In the meantime, you’re welcome to stay here, but I’ve got to get my crew together. We’ve still got work to do.”

You leave Optimus at the ship’s bar, giving him time to figure out what he wants now. It’s nice to see him again, even if you’re not sure that he’s going to stay.