#anyway these tags are getting absurdly long so i guess this is now

[jishyucks]

only fools. ‣ hrj

‣ pairing: huang renjun x reader

‣ genre: FLUFF, sorta angsty? idk, co-leads to lovers? is tht even a thing?

‣ wc: 2.2k

‣ summary: Renjun's made one promise to himself ever since the play's production started: I promise not to fall in love with my fellow cast member. But after months of working alongside you, he finds that this promise was something he couldn't keep.

‣ warnings?: sorta sorta cheesyyy?, mentioned that reader's smaller than Renjun, Shrek (loml?jkjk) mention

‣ an: I finally wrote something after having writer's block for ten million years I s2g,,, tht being said I'm not sure if this is the best I can do but I do believe it's really cute ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀) so I hope you enjoy it!

‣ tags: @mosviqu @sleeping-sirens

Dress rehearsals start in a mere thirteen minutes yet Renjun is sitting at the top corner of the football field’s bleachers in hopes that none of his castmates could find him.

He’s disappointed in himself because he’s being unprofessional. He knows damn well that if he did the same thing in the real world, it wouldn’t be accepted. Sure, it’s not acceptable now… the production is set for next week, yet he’s here wondering if he should even show up for rehearsals because of his own damn feelings.

Fuck feelings, he thinks, They’re stupid anyway. 

Renjun kicks the edge of the seat in front of him and watches as the football team finishes up with their warm-up. He’s not sure how long they’ve been running in circles, but judging from how the coach yells for them to finish strong, he could guess it’s been close to fifteen minutes. 

Fuck feelings, Renjun repeats to himself. 

He feels like beating himself up over the very fact that he broke a promise that he made to himself at the beginning of the show’s production. 

I promise not to fall in love with my fellow cast-member.

It was a simple promise that he thought would be easy to fulfill. Renjun was never one to develop feelings easily, which was exactly why he easily forgot the fact that feelings are something you couldn’t plan. Ever.

The reason it even came to existence was because his other castmate and best friend, Jaemin, had pointed out that this production was ‘romantic-full’—whatever that meant in his books—and that he was in some dangerous position of developing feelings for his co-lead. 

He clearly remembers waving off his ridiculous reminders, simply because Renjun’s already been in countless productions and not one of them did he develop feelings for another cast member that could be deemed greater than that of friends. The idea was stupid.

But he made the promise anyway.

Just in case, he told himself. 

Then this brings Renjun to now. With a broken promise dangling right in front of his face and feelings sitting rather irritatingly at the centre of his heart like a bullseye. 

Renjun blames you for it all. For the way his heart beats around your presence, for the way the butterflies erupt at even the slightest touch of your hand, and the way he loses all composure the millisecond you smile his way. 

Renjun doesn’t even know how it even got to this point.

But then again, it’s absurdly clear. The roles you both play, the late nights rehearsing just to get cues right, the impromptu hangouts after rehearsals… his relationship with you has grown over the past few months and he can’t really blame his heart for giving way for you. 

In fact, it would have been much more worrying if he didn’t develop feelings for you. Especially since it was you. He would be a total fool not to fall for someone like you. 

Nonetheless, Renjun’s frustrated over breaking the one and only promise he made for himself because now, after accepting these newfound feelings, he’s practically deathly afraid to face you. If he sees you now, he knows he’s going to make a fool of himself. 

“Okay, bring it in!” The coach’s voice was rather loud despite him being twenty steps below Renjun.  

He sighs and grabs a glimpse of the time. Eight more minutes until rehearsals and it was a good walk across campus just to get to the theatre. 

There’s a feeling in his leg that was itching for him to stand up and go, but he ignores it, instead laying down against the warm metal seat before throwing an arm over his eyes to block them from the sun. 

Renjun bangs his heels against the seat causing the whole bench to shake. He has to shift in his position so he doesn’t fall off. Then he groans and whispers a ‘what am I going to do?’ under his breath. 

Because that was the real question. What is he going to do? He’s unsure whether to wait it out and let the feelings disappear on their own or take his chances with you—if you even reciprocate these feelings. He can’t just avoid you until the entire production is over because he is one of the show’s main leads. Renjun worked hard for this role and he can’t just let the understudy do it all for him because of his feelings for you were getting in the way.

Renjun knows for a fact that actors and actresses have gone through the same thing he’s going through… but how the hell did they manage to get through it? 

He wonders if there was a book or YouTube video of some sort that provided him helpful steps on how to solve the situation in under 10 minutes—but one can only dream. 

Renjun lets white noise overrun his head as he lays in a still position for who knows how long, feeling the breeze move past him gently. It was a cool breeze, but it balances out the sun that was beating down directly onto his skin. 

Peripherally, Renjun can hear the sound of steps against the bleachers, but he quickly dismisses it, immediately assuming it was another student on their way up to isolate themselves like he was. 

But, boy, was he wrong. 

“There you are.”

Renjun’s heart thumps against his rib cage at the sound of your voice and he quickly sits up. “Y/N! What are you doing here?” His vocal pitch is three levels higher than usual, almost giving away the nerves that now have taken over his system. 

How should he even act around you? This shouldn’t even be hard. He’s been around you almost every day for the past few months, and he’s an actor for god’s sake. He can simply fake it ‘til he makes it. 

“And you don’t expect me to ask you the same thing,” you give him a look and wheeze, “You were supposed to be there like half an hour ago, y’know. You should be glad I volunteered to find you because they were going to send Doyoung and you know how scary he gets when he’s mad.” 

When you realize that Renjun wasn’t going to budge anytime soon, you sit next to him with almost no room left between your shoulder and his. You wait for a short moment for Renjun to reply, but you’re only returned with silence and the groaning of sweaty men down at the field, “Are you okay?”

“Of course, I am,” Renjun waves off your concern and stands up, “Let’s get to rehearsal.” He shuffles past you and makes his way down the stairs. Renjun’s quick to reach the bottom, but what he doesn’t know is that you’re close behind. 

“You’re lying,” you say when you finally catch up. It was blunt, but it was because you don’t have a single fibre of doubt in your body. 

Renjun shakes his head, “I’m not lying.” When he notices that you’re catching up, he speeds up just a tad bit to keep you from gaining any sort of eye contact. He’s not even sure why he’s doing this when he knows that he eventually has to make eye contact with you during rehearsal. 

“Yes, you are,” you retort, “Huang Renjun of all people wouldn’t willingly show up to practice late. There’s something wrong and you already know I’m going to try and get it out of you.”

Renjun chooses not to say anything, afraid that he’s accidentally going to give you hints of his dilemma. He focuses on the way his feet taked steps as you both find your way to the theatre. 

“So, what is it?” You start, “Is it homework? Roommate problems? Nerves?… No, it can’t be nerves…” You’re practically skipping to keep his pace. He can hear you rambling beneath your breath and he lets you be, refusing to give in too easily.

When you’re returned with silence for the nth time, you switch gears and let out a loud, rather deep, sigh. “Renjun, I’m being serious right now. I know something’s wrong. And it’s not because you’re showing up late to practice on purpose, but it’s because you can’t even look me in the eye.” 

“We’re going to be late,” he mumbles. Renjun’s walking so fast that he’s almost jogging. 

“Oh, c’mon, as if we’re not already late,” you roll your eyes and reach for Renjun’s wrist, forcing the both of you to stop in your tracks, “We’re not going until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I told you,” Renjun repeats, “There’s nothing wrong. Now, let’s go.”

Renjun attempts to wiggle out of your grasp but you simply just tug on his arm to reinforce it, “And I told you that we’re not going until you answer my question. What’s wrong?” You sigh, “Renjun if you don’t tell me now, my head’s going to be preoccupied during rehearsal. Do this for you and for me.” 

Renjun’s stuck. He’s not sure whether to tell you now, lie now and tell you later, or simply just not tell you (hard stop). All these options have one possible outcome in common and it was how he would possibly regret it all. 

“If you’re trying to decide whether you should tell me or not, I vote for the first option,” you say. Renjun hates how you can read him like a book—well, except for his feelings for you. If you could, then this entire situation would have been easier to handle. 

Renjun searches the empty hallway as if there would be an answer written bright and clear on the walls. He’s stuck and he needs to act quick. He doesn’t have all the time in the world anymore. 

Then, his eyes land on your hand still holding onto his wrist. 

Swiftly, Renjun slides his wrist down towards him. But instead of taking his arm back, he makes the impulsive action of intertwining his fingers with yours, holding your hand as if it were made of glass. 

“What’s wrong is that I can only do this,” Renjun gulps nervously. He hasn’t made the effort to look at your reaction just yet, eyes trained on his hand holding yours. He’s slightly relieved that you haven’t pulled your hand back. But then again it could just be you in shock. 

He gains the confidence to hold your smaller hand tighter before tugging you towards him. The two of you are practically chest to chest, so close that if Renjun simply leaned down, he could plant a kiss on your forehead. “This.” 

Renjun’s heart is pounding right against his chest and he knows you can hear it. But he continues and brings his forehead down to graze your own, “And… this.”

Renjun pulls away and it’s like all of his confidence is sucked out of him, “…as stupid characters in that stupid play while I’m here wishing that it could be more!” A brief silence lingers between the two of you before he turns to leave, but you’re quick to yank him back by the elbow. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Your brows furrow. Although it may come off as you being completely lost, you truly weren’t. You just wanted clarification and words that will confirm what you think Renjun is meaning to say. 

A huff leaves Renjun’s lips and he searches the walls once again. He can’t repeat the same things he’s already done, so now he needs to resort to words. 

“Y/N, we’re co-leads in a romance story!” There’s a hint of frustration in Renjun’s voice and at that point you can tell that this has truly been bothering him, “We practiced our lines together, hung out after, hell, I’ve learned the weirdest facts about you—that you open chip bags from the bottom because that’s where all the flavour is, how you take pictures of green onions in soup that look like hearts, that you’ve watched the second Shrek movie a bajillion times just to watch the fight scene at the end… Y/N, everyday for the past few months I was practically handed the opportunity to fall for you… and I would be a fool to not fall for you.”

Renjun lets his head fall forward and his bangs flop over his eyes, “I was planning on waiting until after the final show to tell you because I didn’t want to ruin the hard work that everyone’s put into the production just cause of my feelings… but I guess my feelings won.”

He waits for you to reply, bracing himself for the worst ever possible reaction from you. Renjun’s already imagining a rejection—a gentle one, of course—but when he sees your hand reach out for his own, he feels a pang of hope sitting deep in his chest.

Renjun feels you hold his hand tight, squeezing it before using it to draw him towards you. He lets himself stumble forward before planting his feet right in front of yours. Your toes are almost touching, so you shuffle forward so that they are. With this gesture, Renjun finally allows himself to make eye contact with you. 

There’s a sense of relief when he catches a proper sight of your face, a soft smile sitting upon your lips. And when you finally see that Renjun’s looking back at you, your smile grows ten times larger. 

“Well, then I guess I’d also be a fool if I hadn’t fallen for you, either.”

[cecilysass]

How to Eat Pleasant Holiday Meals With Co-Workers (3/5)

Read on AO3 | Rated M | Tagging @today-in-fic

Thanksgiving Day 1999

She’s walking out of her kitchen when her stomach betrays her. They’re heading out the door to make the drive to her mother’s: Mulder with his bowl of cranberries covered in plastic, Scully with a pie cradled between her hands, the first sweet potato pie she’s ever made in her life. She’s absurdly proud of it.

Just two steps and she stops, scowling as she tries to make sense of what she is feeling. Gingerly she sets the pie down on her kitchen table, placing both palms flat on the tabletop to brace herself.

“Scully?” Mulder, ahead of her, stops to peer back. He is wearing his black leather jacket, the bowl of cranberries in his hands. He frowns in consternation. “What’s wrong?”

She spins. Runs full throttle for the bathroom, the sour taste already coming up in the back of her throat. She collapses over her toilet and promptly pukes her guts out.

She’s still there, on her hands and knees on the bathroom floor, trying to catch her breath, when she becomes aware that Mulder is standing in the door.

“Scully…?” His voice is uncertain. She knows what he is thinking. Of course that’s what he is thinking.

He stands there, framed by the door, unmoving, staring, his lips pressed tightly together. Still clinging to his bowl of cranberries like it’s the damn life preserver he should have had in the Sargasso Sea.

Scully tries to read the meaning in the expression on his face. There’s very little in the curl of his lips, cast of his eyes, that might signify hope or excitement. She feels herself shrinking. It seems like a slap, even though she knows that is unfair.

“No. It’s not that,” she says in a small voice. She meets his eyes. “Not what you’re thinking. It doesn’t mean anything, Mulder.”

“Are you … sure?”

“It hasn’t been long enough.”

“Okay.” Now his eyes are softening.

“Two days just isn’t long enough … to have an indication like morning sickness. Even if it had been successful, the hCG levels wouldn’t be high enough yet.”

“I get it.”

They look at one another. All at once Mulder seems to remember himself.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Scully, let me put this down and help you out.” He walks out of sight to put the bowl down.

“It’s probably the stomach bug going around at work,” she says, as much to herself as him. “The one half the bullpen had last week.”

“Seems likely,” Mulder calls from the other room.

She closes her eyes regretfully. “I guess I probably should call Mom and tell her I’m not coming.”

Mulder reappears, sans bowl and leather jacket. “Let’s get you lying down, and then we’ll call. You probably need a washcloth, huh? Where are they?”

“Over there, on the rack near the bathtub.” Scully stands up and feels a little wobbly. She leans against the sink. “Oh Mulder, you were really looking forward to eating Thanksgiving at Mom’s.”

“I’ll survive, Scully.”

“You could still go. She’d be happy to have you.”

He gives her a look. “I’m not going to your mom’s for Thanksgiving without you.”

“Really. You absolutely could.”

“Come here,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulders and aiming her towards the sink as he wets a washcloth. He gingerly wipes off her face, which makes her feel ridiculous, as she is perfectly capable of doing it herself. But she lets him anyway. She scrunches up her eyes as the washcloth runs over her chin, and she feels like a child. His touch is so careful. Gentle. He wipes more of her face than he really needs to.

“Besides,” he says, as he sponges across her mouth, “if I left you, who would be here to watch over the Worst Patient in the World, a.k.a. Dr. Scully?”

“You’re going to get sick,” she warns.

“Come on, if you’ve got this bug, the odds are good I’ve got it gestating somewhere already.”

That phrasing makes her raise her eyebrows, and Mulder stops wiping. Their eyes meet. “Poor choice of words,” he says with a small apologetic smile, dabbing her nose.

She smiles back, lets herself again indulge in the luxury of his deliberate touch for a moment longer—probably a span too long.

“You won’t get to eat Thanksgiving dinner,” she whispers, realizing. He’s so close that she barely has to speak up at all. “You shouldn’t skip Thanksgiving.”

“Listen, we have a big bowl of the good kind of cranberry sauce,” he says, rinsing and wringing out the washcloth. “And an entire homemade sweet potato pie. That’s not such a bad dinner.”

“That’s not a dinner at all. It’s only carbohydrates.”

“Carbohydrates are objectively delicious, Scully. And if you aren’t feeling well, it’s all the more carbohydrates for me.”

He steers her out of the bathroom by the shoulders. “Go put on some pajamas, g-woman. I’m going to start moving your TV to the bedroom like we did last year when you were recovering from your short-lived partnership with Ritter.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mulder.”

“Oh, but I want to do it. I love carrying TVs around.”

“I could watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade,” Scully says in a voice of childish hope as she walks into the bedroom.

“That’s the holiday spirit,” he calls after her.

She goes through the motions slowly, as though moving with heavy weights strapped to her body, slipping into her gray silk pajamas. Mercifully, for the time being, her stomach is settled.

As she drags her pajama pants up over her hips, she wonders if Mulder is planning on sitting in the bedroom with her to watch TV. He probably would if she asked.

She climbs into bed and has another childish idea, more along the lines of a fantasy: what if he were to lie down with her, slide under the covers next to her? He would do that, too, more than likely. He did it when she had cancer. He did it after she was attacked during the Padgett case last year.

“Almost ready with your TV, ma’am,” he calls from the other room. “Are you decent?”

“I’m decent,” she calls back, although she feels a little adolescent twinge of self consciousness, lying there in her pajamas in bed. It’s absurd because he’s seen her in much more vulnerable and exposed positions before —many, many times before. Everything just feels so intimate now between her and Mulder. Sometimes she becomes abruptly aware of how intimate it has become.

Intimate in every way but one, that is.

Mulder painstakingly makes his way through the door with her TV set in his arms, hunching down a little to clear the door frame. He carries it directly over to her dresser, hoisting it into the same spot they used last year.

He huffs dramatically as he drops it down, although she doesn’t think it is really that heavy for him. “Gotta earn that sweet potato pie,” he says, pretending to wipe his brow. She rewards him with a small smile. “You look settled and cozy, Scully. Feeling better?”

“Right now,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Do you need anything? Extra pillow?”

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“I’ll get you some water. And I’ll call your mom.”

“Were you … also going to stay in here and watch with me?” She’s trying to sound offhand, but it just sounds so needy, so naked. Her cheeks flush.

His expression changes so subtly that another person, someone besides her, might miss the reaction altogether. He’s touched, she realizes. The question gives him some kind of satisfaction. “If you want me to,” he says, his voice in that same deliberately casual tone, “yeah, sure.”

He looks like he might want to say something else, but he stops. His gaze shifts to the TV. “There’s quite a bit of connecting of wires to do before that though. Let me see if I remember what we did last time.” Soon he’s distracted by fiddling with cords.

There’s almost no limit, she thinks, to what he would do if she asks him. After all, she asked for his semen in a cup, and he gave her that, too, with practically no hesitation.

She wonders whether she could theoretically get anything she ever dreamed of from him, just as a kind of favor. He could very well take any step just to make her happy, maybe out of a little guilt, a feeling of loyalty, his steadfast partnerly love.

Especially if a pregnancy did take, she realizes. He could feel obligated to step up and play any role she asked him to.

It almost frightens her, how easily that could happen. How far it could go without her ever knowing how he really feels or what he really wants.

“Aha. There it is,” Mulder says, turning her TV on. He walks over and hands her the remote. “Success. Are you impressed by my technical prowess, Scully?”

Scully, now sinking back into her pillow, just smiles weakly. She starts flipping through the channels, looking for her parade. She turns it on just in time to see a giant Snoopy balloon in a festive hat floating beatifically over the west side of Manhattan. Katie Couric and Matt Lauer are enthusiastically describing the technical details of his creation.

“Look, Mulder.” Her voice is soft.

“It’s Millennium Snoopy,” Mulder says, mimicking Katie Couric’s chipper voice, “specially crafted by balloon scientists to float into the new millennium.”

He walks over and sits on the other side of the bed next to her. He kicks off his shoes, and then he stretches his long legs out over the covers, propping a pillow up behind him. Scully glances over at him, resisting the urge to lean her head against his shoulder.

“I’ve never actually sat down to watch this parade before,” Mulder admits conversationally, linking his hands and placing them casually behind his head.

“Really?” Scully murmurs. “The Macy’s parade? Not even growing up? It was kind of a Thanksgiving tradition for the kids in my family, first thing Thanksgiving morning.”

“We had other traditions,” Mulder says. “Some more wholesome than others.”

“I always wanted to go to New York to see it in person,” she says wistfully. “A California child’s dream.”

“Looks unpleasantly cold to me. A Massachusetts child’s wisdom.”

She blinks at the screen. At the rosy-cheeked children in jewel-colored coats and scarves clapping for dancers in reindeer costumes. One little girl sits on her father’s shoulders, one arm wrapped tightly around his neck and the other waving frantically at a dancing reindeer.

Scully’s hand slowly creeps over the rumpled silk covering her abdomen. She can’t help but let her mind go down forbidden roads. At this very moment, if Tuesday’s procedure was successful, there could be a child taking root in this bed with them. A child closely related to both her and Mulder. A child who would one day have opinions about how holidays ought to be celebrated, who would probably want to celebrate them with parents.

They haven’t discussed it at all, in their typical rash and unwise way. What might Thanksgiving ten years from now look like? Would they be smiling chastely across a Thanksgiving table making conversation and passing potatoes, all for the sake of this unknown child? Or would Mulder be playing some more traditional role, maybe only because he sensed she wanted him to, out of his never-flagging allegiance to her? Would she and Mulder be playing house with some child they platonically conceived with very little forethought? Or would Mulder be at Thanksgiving at all?

The last idea makes her stomach clench ominously, bringing to mind fears she’s been holding back. What if a baby does come between them, just as he worried? What if he feels trapped by the prospect of being the actual parent of a child? Kept from the work he’s always made clear is his top priority? What if she will eventually have to set him free to raise this child on her own?

She subtly tilts her head to look at her partner, watching goofy dancing reindeer on TV. His eyes are bright and amused by the spectacle. He looks like a boy himself.

She knows she could do it — raise a child alone. She’s mentally prepared for the possibility. But in less rational places inside Scully— the dark, secret corners where she first quietly admitted to herself that her feelings for her partner were something more than partnerly, despite many denials– she frets. How could she stand losing him? What would she do without him? There is really nothing reasonable about her feelings for Mulder.

Shifting uneasily under the covers a little, she feels something caught in the back of her throat that has nothing to do with being sick.

“Mulder,” she says tentatively, her voice hoarse. He glances over to look at her. She’s cognizant that her heart is actually racing. “You don’t have to stay here really. In my room or in my apartment.”

“I thought you wanted me to,” he says, his brow furrowing.

“I do, I just…” She bites her lip, swallowing back her panic. “I’m going to go to sleep, and then I’ll just be bad company.”

He regards her quizzically, eyes darting over her face. Then he reaches his hand out from behind his head and ruffles her hair playfully. “Like you could ever be bad company a day in your life.”

“I’m serious, Mulder,” she says, turning to look at him. “I just want to sleep. And I’m sure you have other things you could be doing today. Work … or something.”

His face registers a flash of hurt, and she wonders how this got so complicated. For a second it looks like he might agree to leave. But then his jaw sets, resolute. “Where would I go, Scully? It’s Thanksgiving. You’re my family.”

The knots in her stomach loosen. “I know,” she whispers. “I know, Mulder.”

Now his face is unreadable. His arm stretches around her, and she is being pulled towards him, almost, but not quite, lying against him. She lets her eyes fall shut, and then is suddenly aware of the sensation of his thumb moving soothingly in circles on the silk of her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says, uncertainly.

“Shhhh,” he says softly, his fingers still stroking her shoulder. “Just relax and stop worrying, Scully. You’re sick.”

Over the swells of a high school marching band playing a peppy rendition of “Can You Feel A Brand New Day,” Scully feels her muscles let go, her mind drift free. She falls into sleep. Her head slumps towards Mulder; her body edges closer and closer to his.

***

Mulder lets her sleep for two hours. Her head has fallen against him and he doesn’t want to move, but eventually he slips out from under her to go into the living room and call her mother. He breaks the bad news about dinner and promises to bring her next week for leftovers. He puts up the pie and cranberries in the fridge, and then he comes back and changes into a pair of his sweatpants he knows Scully keeps for emergencies in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

He crawls next to her in bed and scoots as close to her as he dares. Close enough to run his hand carefully over her brow, ostensibly to feel for a fever. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her silk-clothed limbs, but only from proximity, not from touch. God, he aches to touch her. He aches to drape his body over hers and nuzzle into the warm places and maybe take a nap himself.

Only he doesn’t know if that’s exactly what she wants.

She asked him to stay with her today, a very rare moment of need from Scully. Maybe it’s fucked up —she’s sick, after all— but he’d been delighted. It was one way, of many, he wanted her to need him.

And then she practically kicked him out. Why? Because she changed her mind and got tired of him? Because she couldn’t stand his company after all? Because she is trying, in some misguided way, to be considerate of him? He really couldn’t say.

It’s like reading tea leaves with Scully now. A touch of his hand in the car, something heartfelt and open, followed by thirty minutes of reserved distance. An evening spent together eating pizza and drinking beer, and then a weekend of all-business work calls. Or a request to provide genetic material for a baby, which seems enormous. But no follow-up details about whether she might be hiring for the job of child’s father.

Of course, he’s not being entirely fair. He doesn’t ask, either.

He bites the inside of his cheek nervously, again letting his fingers trail over her smooth forehead. Her breathing is soft, just audible, and even. He’ll take whatever crumbs she throws. He has for years.

But is it time, he wonders, to ask the questions?

He turns and watches the rest of the Macy’s parade by himself. He doesn’t plan to tell Scully, but the whole thing feels a bit like a relentless series of holiday advertisements to him. Still, he watches it intently, trying to remember details to tell her when she wakes up. There are some fairly traditional clowns. Sentimental singers on garish floats. Broadway numbers on city streets. He’s amazed this is something she likes. Sometimes it’s like she’s a stranger, even after all these years. He’s really a terrible profiler of Scully.

She makes a mumbling sound in her sleep, and his head shoots towards her. It’s impossible to make out the sleep-addled words. If she was whispering the secret to her heart, he’ll never know it.

Before, when he stood in the bathroom door realizing she was throwing up, it hit him like a ton of bricks: she could really and truly be pregnant. This IVF idea had been seeming sort of theoretical, something he could do for her. Which was dumb — he knew perfectly well she’d gone into the clinic this week and had the procedure. It just hadn’t really clicked for him yet. The actual implications.

Right now, today, he could be having a child with Scully. Without ever having kissed her. Or asked her any of the real questions.

He lets his fingers play through the stray tendrils of her hair absently, pretending he is tucking it behind her ear. Is now the time, he wonders, to ask the real questions, take all the accompanying risks? Sometimes he feels like that’s the only real choice.

Maybe it’s better to go with the big lesson of the holiday. Be grateful for what you have, idiot. After all, what they have isn’t bad at all. A friendship so close that neither would hesitate to risk their life for the other. A true partnership. Family, maybe, from some point of view. If she’s really knocked up? Family for real. By anyone’s definition.

He presses his cheek deep into the pillow. It smells intoxicatingly like Scully, something clean with that slightly-spicy hint of floral. He inhales deeply, and he wonders.

***

When she finally wakes up, the TV is off, the parade over. Mulder, reading next to her in the bed, becomes aware of her stirring and turns to look.

“Mulder?” she murmurs, cracking her eyes open. “How long did I sleep?”

“Two hours,” he says. “Admirable. How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” she says cautiously. She blinks fast, trying to focus her eyes. “You stayed.”

“I told you I was going to,” he says, closing the journal. “You can’t tell me you’re surprised.”

She smiles faintly and pushes herself up into a sitting position, looking disheveled and disoriented. Her hair is sticking up wildly on one side.

“What are you reading?” She squints at what he’s holding.

“The New England Journal of Medicine. I found it on your bedside table,” he says, rapping his fingers on the cover. “Some article about cases of people developing heart rhythm disorders after they’ve nearly drowned. I only kind of understand it, but it’s interesting.”

“I haven’t read it yet,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

“A little classier than my usual bedside reading.”

“Hmm,” she yawns. “I thought those magazines had excellent articles.”

“Are you hungry, g-woman?”

“No,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “Not yet. Still a little …”

“Off,” he says, nodding. “I’d imagine.”

She leans back against the pillow on the headboard. Mulder slides up to sit right next to her.

“Need water or anything?” He speaks gently, so close to her. He hopes he isn’t hovering in a way she finds smothering.

“No,” she says, her eyes fluttering shut a moment again. He scoots a little closer, until her shoulder touches his arm.

“Hey Scully,” he asks, “I have a question.”

“Oh no,” she says weakly. “Please don’t make me go Thanksgiving ghost hunting. Not while I’m sick.”

“No,” he says, hesitating. “I was wondering … could a stomach flu have any impact on the success…” He gestures, somewhat inelegantly, to her abdomen, her womb, the place where their genetic offspring could currently be gestating.

“Ah,” she says, looking down towards her belly button. “No. Very unlikely.”

“Okay.” He nods, exhaling.

“An embryo is well-protected by design,” she says. “And digestive and reproductive systems are distinct.”

“That’s… great. I’m glad.”

He feels her eyes on him. There is a beat, and he feels self-conscious.

“You were worried,” she says slowly, as if realizing.

“I was,” he says sheepishly. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to be thinking about me.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but he feels the precision of her stare aimed at him.

“I’m just …surprised, I suppose.”

“Surprised?”

“I wasn’t sure you…” She hesitates. “I suppose I wasn’t sure how you felt about it, actually.”

He is startled into silence for a few beats. “How I felt about it?”

“How invested you felt in it.”

Mulder is appalled. “I think it would be hard not to be thinking about it at least a little.”

Her eyes glint. “Thank you, Mulder,” she says. “I’m really … grateful you’re worried about this for me.”

He turns his gaze from hers to the TV’s blank screen, because he’s afraid he’ll give away the truth of what he’s thinking. Which is that of course he is worried about this, and of course it isn’t just for her. It’s considerably more selfish than that.

It's a pretty basic instinct to be worried about the potential existence of your own child, whatever the arrangements around its conception or parenting. And it’s a pretty basic instinct to worry about the well-being of someone you deeply, intensely, unreasonably love. Someone who is the indisputable love of your life. So he doesn’t feel especially heroic for being concerned.

“I mean … I’m worried about it for us,” he attempts clumsily.

“For us?”

He internally cringes, because obviously there’s no them. They’re not a couple trying to have a child together. From her point of view, it could be as though he’s not trying to have a child at all, just serving as a friendly accessory to the process.

“Yeah,” he admits miserably. He wishes for more courage. “I suppose I was thinking of it as something we were doing together. Is that okay?”

She looks ahead at the blank screen, too. “Yes,” she says faintly. “Yes. Of course it’s okay.”

This would be an excellent moment to ask his questions, he thinks. But it’s a holiday, and he’s lying here next to her, and he couldn’t bear it if the answers took her from him.

“I think I’m going to get some cranberries,” Mulder says brusquely, kicking his legs off the bed. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

She shakes her head. “Quite sure.”

When he pads back into the bedroom a few minutes later with one of her cereal bowls full of cranberry sauce and a spoon, Scully looks horrified.

“An entire bowl of cranberry sauce?” Scully gasps. “It’s supposed to be a side, Mulder.”

“It’s all we have,” Mulder says cheerfully. “Except for your pie, which is obviously a dessert.”

“So much sugar,” she sighs. “Like eating a bowl of marmalade.”

“Are you saying you want some, too? Just say the word.”

She puts a protective hand on her stomach. “No.”

“It’s not the canned stuff,” he says with a shrug, shoveling a spoonful into his mouth as he sits back down on her bed. “It’s Mulder-made. How bad for you can it be?”

She throws him an incredulous look.

“Hey, you remember when I first educated you about correct cranberry sauce?” His tone changes. He sets his spoon down in the bowl for a moment. “When I came over here for Thanksgiving the first year we were partners? And that guy called to try to win you back?”

“Ethan,” Scully says with a groan. “God, yes, I do.”

“That made for kind of an exciting holiday, didn’t it? Do you think you have any ex-boyfriends who will call this Thanksgiving? I’d like to get on the phone and talk to them this time.”

Scully smiles and rolls her eyes in a self-deprecating expression. “Sadly, I haven’t had much time to accumulate new ex-boyfriends since then.”

“That’s okay. I bet Ethan would still want you back,” Mulder says with a knowing eyebrow waggle, between bites of cranberries. “Let’s call him up and find out, Scully.”

“I heard he’s married, actually,” she says. “A new baby.”

Mulder lowers his spoon and turns to her, scanning her for serious signs of distress.

“It’s okay, Mulder,” she says, feeling his attention. “I’m hardly upset about that. I wouldn’t want Ethan’s baby anyway.”

“No?” He sets down the bowl on the bedside table. Maybe not Ethan’s. But surely she’d want someone’s baby she was in a relationship with, someone she was married to. Surely she would want her baby to have a father in some traditional sense.

“No,” she says. “I’m more selective than that.”

He feels his skin warm all over, little sparks of heat. “Well, I’m glad my genetic material passes muster, Scully.”

She slips her hot hand into his, resting on top of his thigh. “Clearly it was more than just your genetic material, Mulder,” she says.

He can only lightly grasp her hand back, unable to formulate any coherent response. The only words that fill his mind are questions.

Was it more than that, Scully? What was it, exactly? Why would you ask me to do something so important and not anything else? He wonders what she would do if he leaned over and just kissed her.

“Going through all this right now, at the beginning of the holidays, I can’t help but think about next year,” she says, her voice a little tight. “Thanksgiving 2000, for example.”

“Millennium Thanksgiving, I think Katie Couric would call it.”

“With this process, the IVF, nothing is certain,” Scully says. “It’s just so hard to think about anything in your future when there’s so much you don’t know.”

He runs his thumb in little curly-cues over her knuckles. “Some things you know. Unless the world ends at the new year.”

“I guess,” she says. She looks at him doubtfully. “What exactly do I know?”

“Well, you don’t know if you’re going to have a baby. But I hope you know you have some people you can count on,” he points out. He pulls her hand up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles as softly as he can. “You know I’m always willing to cancel any plans to spend Thanksgiving with you, right?”

“Oh, so that’s a definite, then?” she asks, a small coy smile. “We’re on for Thanksgiving 2000?”

And every Thanksgiving after that, Mulder thinks. Just say the word.

“Of course,” he says. “If you make another sweet potato pie, obviously.”

She chuckles a little, a low, relaxed sound. Then she tightens her hold on his hand, picking it up and placing both of their hands over her abdomen. The silk of her pajamas offers little barrier, and he can feel the heat of her skin underneath, the taut give of her belly, the rise and fall of her breath.

He makes a small decision. He suddenly turns towards her, lays his head tentatively against her chest, right in the spot below her collarbone, curving his body around hers. In his ear, crushed to her breastbone, he can hear her heartbeat, now speeding slightly. He knows he is feeling the swell of her breast under his cheek – that maybe the heat of his breaths could even be felt on her nipples under the silk.

His fingers stroke the fabric covering her abdomen lightly, back and forth.

For a moment she doesn’t react at all. Then he feels her hand land hesitantly on his back, then beginning to rub gently in circles, and he wants to weep. He reaches out, to draw her closer.

“Scully–” he begins, speaking into her neck, overwhelmed.

She stiffens, pushes him abruptly away.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no,” she says in a clipped voice. “Bathroom.”

She scrambles out of the bed, bolting for the door.

He’s left there in her wake, thinking about the space on the bed she leaves behind.

[binniesthighs]

dear anon, sweet anon, thank you so much for requesting this <3 i didn’t know that i needed it in my life and now...here it is;) IT WAS SO FUN hehe

melt in your mouth | reader x jisung

Pairing: self insert, gender neutral reader x han jisung 

Genre: that good good smut 

Summary: After hearing a rather interesting story about a certain brand of chocolate aphrodisiacs, your curiosity gets the best of you and your friend’s roommate, Jisung.....a spin off of bites like bittersweet

Word count: 3.7k 

*photocreds to OP!

{see below for tags, nsfw and warnings!} 

Tags: aphrodisiac au, somewhat friends to lovers, hints of mutual pining, bestfriend!seungmin, seungmin’sroommate!jisung, hardswitch!jisung, hardswitch!reader, explicit language, mentions of food/eating, hand stuff (r &m), degredation, petnames, dirty talk, unprotected sex (stay safe cuties), creampie, voyeurism, and we love a plot twist ;)  

~💋~

two flavors seemed excessive. one flavor seemed like just enough. you didn’t want to break the bank or anything on something that was likely crappy quality or potentially psychedelic; even worse, it could be both. 

“and you want to try these with me why?” seungmin pushed his wire-framed glasses up his nose bridge and scrunched it up. he inspected the paper wrapper with a skeptical glare. the design itself was anything but trustworthy: in swirly cursive pink font, the name Cherri Amore and under it, a absurdly large lipstick mark with the outline of a couple doing what must have been fucking “spread eagle.” 

seungmin muttered, leaning over the counter of the dingy kitchen he shared with his roommates, “proven aphrodiasiac and libido booster...? y/n, sorry, i just--i’m fucking lost here--” 

“--ever heard of trying something for the hell of it seung??” you snatched the bar from his hand. “the review that i read online said that it made them crazy fucking horny, so much so that they fucked their best friend of something like five years or something like that. isn’t that insane?!” 

your best friend’s eyes blew out with his mouth aghast, “what the hell?? shit--of course you’d find something insane on the internet like this and drag me into it...”  

in your incredulous laugher, you threw your neck back so hard it hurt a little. “loosen up! it’s probably a scam or something. plus...if it does work on us...don’t act like i haven’t caught you in the act before...” 

seungmin, ever the angel, flushed a shade of fuchsia you thought inhumanly possible for someone to attempt. “that-that wasn’t--that wasn’t what you thought it was!!!” he cast away the chocolate bar as if it were his dick on the very night that you had walked in on something that was supposedly not what it looked like. 

“relax!” you punched your embarrassed friend on the arm which he dramatically rubbed into. “it’s not a sin to jerk off or anything. hell, i do it....obviously.” 

seungmin chuckled out unsteadily, “well, um, what if it does work then, what do we do?” 

you snickered, “ha! hell if i know. cross that bridge when we get there?” 

“so what you’re saying is...this could either be a massive waste of our time, or, both of us get so stupidly turned on that we decide to have sex....with eachother?” 

“that’s the gist i’m getting.” you took to the corner of the shiny pink paper wrapping at the corner. “but...who said that we had to fuck or anything...?” 

from fuchsia to nearly scarlet, seungmin averted his eyes at the speed of light. 

“seung!!! do you have something to tell me?!” your teasing grin spread wide and you lifted your hand to give your adorable friend a clap on the back. 

“i’m just repeating what you said!!” 

you broke the bar open, cracking off the first square on the counter with a solid snap. with a smirk, you offered it to your friend. he reached out, only to nearly jump out of his skin when the old-timey ringtone from his phone erupted in the hollow kitchen. 

“shit.” he murmured under his breath, pulling it out and immediately pressing the call button upon seeing the caller. “h-hello? yeah? wait, wait...slow down...the cultures did what?! and you have to start over?? shit--” 

before you could have anything to do with it, your friend was already throwing on his sneakers and sky blue raincoat. “sorry, y/n but i have to go. that was my co-worker, they said that something went bad with the incubator, and all of the cultures are ruined, and there’s the stupid lab meeting in the morning--” 

“i’m gonna pretend that i understood everything you said.” you hung at the doorway to the kitchen, observing him trip over pairs of shoes and other random-ass college-aged boy items. “you only get a pass because i have a feeling that the coworker we’re talking about here is the cute one.” 

your friend rolled his eyes, mouthing a reluctant, “yes.” 

“fine then. we can try the chocolates another time.” 

“fine--sure--” seungmin grabbed for the handle, “sorry. again.” 

~💋~

you felt like the chocolate bar was taunting you, just sitting there opened with two squares all ready for the eating. oddly, you really couldn’t figure out exactly why you had wanted to try them in the first place. for a second, the guilt and loneliness started to seep through and it felt sticky, pathetic, and stung like thorns right into your breaths. 

“fuck it.” you whispered under your breath, swiping them all up and walking over to the trash can. 

“whatcha got there?” a voice entered the room attached to one of seungmin’s roommates, jisung. 

the two of you had met many times in passing, and you had shared enough small talk to consider him somewhat of an acquaintance. from what you had gathered about the boy, he spent much too much time in his room working on his animations and was the dictionary definition of one of those cocky-assholes you had a soft spot for. 

“jisung--hey. it’s...it’s nothing. something stupid that i blew my money on.” 

“let me see.” he crossed the room, looking wired and overtired as usual. 

from staring at his screen for so long his eyes bagged with dark circles, but somehow it made him look mischievous, or something like that. his muscle tank had been cut low to reveal his sides and ribs which flared when he grabbed for the bar of chocolate. 

“huh.” he scoffed, “i’ve seen like, infomercials for these things. you were going to try it?” 

“yeah...i-i mean--no...i was.” 

“what’s stopping you? not curious anymore?” 

“window of opportunity passed.” 

“i don’t think so.” he grinned, matter of a fact. “i like chocolate.” 

you couldn’t quite believe what was being said to you at first. jisung, the boy that you barely knew, was standing there with his goofy heart-shaped smile and all, holding libido boosters and asking you to take them with him. 

“you do know what those are, right? what they could do?” 

immediately, he popped one in his mouth, nearly like it was a challenge. “empahsis on the “could.”” 

he held them closer to you, prompting you to take the remaining square which was flecked with little red hard-candy looking bits. 

“fine then. you’re right. what they could do.” you downed the candy, crunching it and finding that the quality was certainly not a guarantee. the thing itself tasted halfway between a tootsie roll and cold medicine. “fuck.” 

jisung laughed, throwing the rest of the bar away.

“what did you that for?” 

“i’m guessing whether they work or not, you might not need them anymore.” 

your friend’s roommate slicked his hair back, and ruffled it over his dark eyes. his face was slightly puffed with exhaustion, but it didn’t make him any less handsome. 

“so we wait now?” you asked, glancing at the clock. 

“wanna order some food or something?” he smacked his lips, “i need a fucking chaser after that.” 

~💋~

you didn’t know what time it was; late, probably. after a couple hours of realizing that nothing was really going to happen to you or your friend’s roommate, you had decided to stop expecting it. although, you had kind of hoped...

the sofa that the boys shared was just about as comfortable as you had remembered it. it was large enough to hold you and seungmin’s two roommates on better days, but, once again, random-ass college-boy stuff cluttered at least half of it. it was one of those “dumpster finds” and kind of smelled like a grandma’s house, but honestly, that was what made it so comfortable. 

the tv carried on, playing some kind of animated movie that jisung had chosen claiming that the director was some kind of “god of animation and storytelling.” you liked the colors, but soon you felt yourself being lulled and drowsy: your head felt heavy simply resting on your shoulders. 

your eyelids fogged, and the sounds from the tv set started to fade into inexistence. beside you, jisung had crossed his arms, but the lack of space had pressed both of your thighs together, and the warmth from his leg started to wash over your drowsy state. your head bobbed, swayed...then fell, directly onto his shoulder. had you been more lucid, you would have cared more. 

“oh--” he jumped slightly, and shifted awkwardly. 

the room darkened and soon all you could see was the thin line of light that your half-open eyes allowed. 

“this-this can’t be comfortable for you.” jisung hushed and clicked the tv off. “hey, you should be heading to bed anyway, it’s late.” 

“are you kicking me out, jisung?” you babbled, not really aware of your own words. 

your friend’s roommate chuckled, straightening his posture to support you. “i’m not gonna make you walk back to your place at this time of night.” 

“it’s only a couple of blocks--” 

“--you’ve slept over here before, haven’t you?” 

you stretched out your arms with a little squeak.

“yeah. on the couch.” 

“you...can’t do that. you’d have to sleep in a fucking corkscrew if you did that.” 

“yeah, i know.” you giggled, now finding yourself in a kind of stupor that made you wonder if the chocolates really were doing their job. “i’ll just take seung’s bed then--” 

“--he’s! not back...yet.” jisung hugged his arms to himself. “i dunno, shouldn’t he have his bed when he comes back?” he cleared his throat, composing himself. “of course, there’s space in my bed if you’d like.” 

“me? sleep with you?” 

“yes, with me.” just as he had before, that little challenging edge coated his tone, “only if you’re comfortable i mean. i guess that i’m forgetting that the most that the two of us have shared yet is some wack-ass chocolate so, i shouldn’t be making any assumptions.” 

“no, no!” you pounced off from the couch, reaching high to the ceiling to stretch out your sore back next. and, perhaps to let your shirt tuck up just a little bit as you did so. “i don’t have a problem with it.” 

jisung nodded, grinning in the half-lit room, cleaning away to-go boxes. you had noticed before, but the way that his triceps tensed when he moved around was really just a little too distracting. 

“you can head on in, but--be quieter about it. jeongin is sleeping in here.” 

you clicked off a sleepy salute, following the hall down exactly where you had known his room to be, but you had never entered it before. it didn’t surprise you, but it was just as messy as the rest of the place was, and you had to tip-toe around god-knows what to find your way.

after tripping on something soft and sort of damp, (which you prayed was a shower-towel) you made your way to jisung and his face illuminated by the blue-glow of his phone screen where he had immediately jumped in bed after navigating through the room much more skillfully than you had.  

“you have an issue if i sleep in my underwear?” you asked, realizing. 

jisung paused, wide eyed, but quickly fell back into his casual and cocky smirk. “i mean, that’s basically what i’m doing so...”  

“scooch over. i hope you’re not a blanket hogger or anything.” 

the bed was already pleasantly warm from jisung having occupied it. it would have felt amazing if you had been as tired as you had been moments ago, but now your entire body felt horribly wide-awake. 

“--and if you start to snore, i’m leaving you for the couch, got it?” 

jisung let out an airy laugh, shifting and creaking the bed a bit under him, “i don’t snore...for your information.” 

with the blankets pulled up to your nose, you turned to lay on your back, eyes finally adjusting to the darkness of the room. above you, the faint green glow of glow-in-the-dark stars sprinkled across the ceiling, making up constellations: from what you could make out, the big dipper was above jisung’s bed, and the little one was above jeongin’s, who peacefully slept with tiny breaths. 

jisung rolled to the side, accidently brushing his bare leg against yours. 

“night, y/n. sorry the chocolates didn’t work out. would’ve been kind of hilarious if they did.” 

“psh.” you rolled over too, closing your eyes, “you saying you would’ve taken up the opportunity to get in my pants?” 

“guess we’ll never know.” he sighed. 

~💋~

birds chirped, signaling the coming sunrise what was nearly breaking upon the horizon, and filled with deep blue sky with a type of orange-glow. the room was dim and stuffy, and noticeably much hotter than you remembered it being before. over the course of the night, you had tangled your legs with the sheets, finding them trapping you between them, and you shuffled to escape them and feel the air hit your skin. they shifted, letting you feeling the sticky mess between your legs. 

“what the--” the aching and heated desire made itself painfully obvious, soaking directly through your underwear, making a wet mess of them where you throbbed with an utterly unexplainable arousal that reverberated in your core. 

the friction from your legs only heightened the sensation, and you found yourself unwillingly rutting down into the mattress just to feel an ounce of relief. 

fuck, the chocolates, you recalled. while you had expected to feel something from them, this was twenty times more intense than anything you could have planned for. 

you were like an animal in heat, vulnerable, weak, dazed. your body set ablaze, and it only made sense to strip of any and all clothing that held you back. in your own desperation, you had completely forgotten about the man resting next to you. 

“y/n? what's--what are you doing?” jisung groggily croaked in a tone several octaves lower than you were accustomed to. your brain could only calculate it is as downright, unbelievably sexy. 

“jisung, i’m fucking burning up, an-and, i think i’m finally feeling something....are you?” 

he hadn’t noticed it at first until he did, but from where he could see where the blanket dipped all the way down to your waist, you were completely bare. with fluttering eyes, he gulped down dry. you noticed the way that he took you all in, looking at every inch of you. you reveled in how he greedily and shamelessly didn’t stop. 

under the covers, his own legs twisted. 

“me too.” he answered gravely, speaking with a low whisper.  

carefully, his tentative touch advanced under the covers, slowly reaching to your bare hip, where he settled a testing caress, squeezing harder, then cascaded down the small of your back to make you shiver. your own hand did the same, instead finding his leg and creeping your hand up and under his shirt. little space existed between the two of you, and only the panting of your heavy inhales and exhales could be heard. 

your eyes glued to his, beautifully brown and dilating, trembling a little while holding yours. from his light touches, it took every bit of your will to control yourself from launching over him. jisung’s hand fell lower, and toyed with the elastic band of your underwear which had started to feel painfully confining. each of your own fingers traveled up his torso, brushing over his chest which made his whole body shake. 

“sh-shit, i’m so fucking--” jisung started, dropping off his words to let out a wavering sigh. you didn’t need to guess any further. 

jisung slid two fingers under your elastic band, and it became too much to handle. 

“please, touch me jisung.” you whined out pitifully, clawing directly into the soft muscles of his back. 

you were shocked how quickly he had given into you, immediately crashing his lips against yours first, then using both arms to pull you into his chest so close it stole all of your breath away. you kissed him back roughly, ravenous to feel the sensation of his mouth against your own. he growled out a small groan directly into your lips, sloppily working every single corner and edge of your mouth with a devilish smile curling his own. 

lower, both of your hips met flush, grinding and twisting to create the kind of pressure that the both of you craved. limbs twisted, sweating and heated skin mingled, and you could feel every bit of his hardened cock right against your own arousal and how his shaft throbbed helplessly. 

“you taste so good.” he murmured between haphazard kisses, letting his low tone vibrate against you. 

“take these off.” you ordered, tugging at his boxers, nearly taking them off yourself. 

“take yours off.” he echoed, and you did. 

curious hands plunged deeper, delighting fingers in the slick of the other’s cum. 

“fuck.” jisung dragged the explicative over your lip where he lapped lazily into you. “don’t stop.” 

you gave him a moment’s pause, stopping to wet your palm with saliva, then met it with his cock. you worked his length with the sharp and twisting turn of your wrist, causing him to whimper out shamelessly. 

“shhh.” you hissed, pulling his lip with our teeth, “don’t want to wake up your roommate do we?” 

he nodded, biting each and every tantalizing little sound into his lip instead. your own breaths grew shallow feeling the pressure from his hand between your legs and how he had grabbed into your thigh to swing it over his hip for better access. 

“wouldn’t you like me to fuck you out, baby? fuck you like the good little cock whore that you are for me? i’ve seen the way that you look...you’ve wanted this...haven’t you?” jisung’s words were slick and luxurious despite their bite.  

to suppress the begging moan in your throat, you cupped your hand over your mouth, and pressed hard into it. 

the blanket tented from your pulling at his cock and how you rubbed over his slit: it was an ethereal sight even in the blurriness of the room. 

slowly, you leaned over to his ear, waist rocking back and forth over the sensation of his hand rubbing into you relentlessly. “don’t lie baby, you want my ass bouncing on your cock...don’t you?” 

in one movement, he swept his full body weight over yours and harshly pulled your legs back to open your entrance just for him to tease with his tip. he guided himself in slowly and meticulously, bottoming out once you had sunk your fingers into his shoulders to manage some of the screams you would have let out otherwise. 

“fuck yes, baby.” jisung growled, finding an animalistic pace that burned your whole body with white flames of pleasure. 

you grew impatient wondering furiously what his cute little pouty cheeks would look like when you fucked him from above, riding his dick. you wouldn’t wait any further, taking your grasp on his shoulders to then flip him, settling your hips over his dick which you pounced on to the tune of one of his moans slipping past, loud and guttural. 

“shut. the fuck. up.” you scolded him, throwing your hand over his pretty mouth. he whimpered out once again, eyes rolling feeling the tip of his dick reach as deeply inside of you as you would let it.  “cum inside me sungie, i won’t stop until I have every last drop.” 

jisung nodded, chest flaring as his breaths quickened. 

“cum for me baby, and i’ll cum for you...got it?” your breathy whispers scratched your throat, but you needed him to hear. 

you held his eyes which glistened with two pretty little tears that fell  as he came hard, shaking with his whole body and letting each of his gleeful moans come spiraling into your hand. 

your own heat came surging, right at your core, growing....growing...

a lamplight flashed on. 

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? WHAT THE--WHAT THE--” 

jeongin threw his sheets over his eyes, while shuddering. “I WAS FUCKING SLEEPING!!” 

his shrill scream sent you jumping out of your lust, and you scrambled off jisung’s throbbing and pink cock, and forgetting the force of gravity, which sent his cum dripping out from inside of you. in your panic, you grabbed at anything to cover up your body and his, only to get so tangled that you lost your balance on the edge of the bed and.....

~💋~

THUMP 

your body hit the wooden floor of jisung and jeongin’s room, right on your butt where you knew that it would be hurting for weeks. 

as disoriented as you were, it took you a good few minutes to realize what had actually just happened. 

“y/n?” jisung called with his groggy half-awake, half-asleep tone. “did you just fall out of the bed?” 

on the opposite side of the room, you whipped your head over to see jeongin still peacefully sleeping with his back turned to jisung’s bed.

“fuck--um, yeah. i did. shit...” 

jisung chuckled in the dark room just barely peeking with the first bits of the sunrise in streaming into the room. 

“i don’t know how you did that considering i gave you plenty of space. get back up here.” 

still dazed and brain overheating, you could have sworn you felt the little aftershocks of the orgasm that felt so real still coursing through your body. 

you felt it too: the way that your underwear had slicked. some part of it all must’ve been real. 

“jisung--” you started, not even sure if you wanted to tell him in the first place. “are you certain that you didn’t feel anything?” 

jisung turned to face you and shook his head, “no, you?” 

you hesitated, holding his eyes to see that he must have been telling the truth. 

“i just...i just had this insane dream...” 

“dream? about what?” 

“it’s hard to explain...” you trailed. 

“you look kind of shaken up, are you sure that you’re okay?” jisung extended a careful hand, and smoothed down the side of your face in the way that had felt frighteningly real only seconds ago. his hand lingered, falling down your neck and giving you goosebumps. your eyes fell to his lips, and you wondered if they would taste like you had imagined them to be. 

you leaned in closer, closing the gap. 

“it went something like this.” 

~🌹~

Bunch of (Ro)ses! 

@minaamhh @dazzlehoseok @synnocence @jjewibeans @hyunsluvv @unexceptional-h @bobawithchaitea @lechanters @sailorhyunjinz @silencefavarchive @lunarskzzz  @yourdaddychan @bubblelixie @spnobsessedmemes @cherrychngkyn @iwanttobangchan @bowlofblueberries @lmhmins @eunaeiekim

[l0vegl0wsinthedark]

Sparkle

Here's a little ficlet I wrote based on a random scene that popped into my head and wouldn't leave. Unbeta’ed.

Tags: implied/attempted noncon, alcohol consumption, eighth year fic. Pairing: Draco/Harry

-------

Draco Malfoy came back to Hogwarts after the War.

He was quiet and was nearly always seen in the company of his books. He talked to people, but not unless they addressed him first. He was always in plain sight, and always seemed to be in the middle of the most banal, tedious tasks, and Harry had no reason to be suspicious.

But Harry watched him anyway.

How was he to help it? Malfoy didn't look anything like the Malfoy he was used to warching.

Yes, he was still deathly pale and tall and reed-thin - but he held himself differently now. He didn't swagger around like he owned the school, but still had an air of aristocratic grace about him that made people hurry out of his way.

He didn't wear his hair combed to slick perfection; he had it buzzed down to the scalp on one side, the rest of his sleek, platinum hair pulled over to the other side in an artfully tousled sweep that sometimes fell over his eyes and caught on his long lashes.

He didn't wear his shirt sleeves down to his wrists to hide the Mark. Instead he had them rolled up to his elbows to reveal the pretty little pink and orange blossoms he had tattooed over the ugly, faded skull and snake.

He always had nail paint on - black, green, ruby red, purple.

He wore eyeliner, stark black against the paper-white skin of his translucent eyelids and blond eyelashes.

During the weekends, he wore soft jumpers over crisp white shirts, often in pastel shades that made him appear delicate and almost ethereal.

Draco Malfoy came back to Hogwarts after the War and Harry was obsessed all over again.

*

It was Christmas in a week. The eighth year common room was in full tumult, the Wireless charmed to blare music loud enough to be heard clearly over the cacophony of dozens of chattering students. Decorated extravagantly by the elves, two tables groaning under food and drink (spiked with an indecent amount of alcohol), and housing every eighth year, over half of the seventh years and a few bold sixth years, the room threatened to burst at the seams.

Harry was pleasantly tipsy, which was very mild compared to the state of some of his classmates. At least he wasn't trying to climb up into the mantel to attempt to jump off of it and land on an overstuffed armchair that was twelve feet away.

He really had to pee, though, and both the toilets attached to the common room were occupied, and when he went up to the dorm bathrooms, he found those occupied too - as well as issuing sounds made by the students inside engaged in various kinds of 'activities'.

Bladder uncomfortably full, Harry jogged back down to the common room and, with a wave at Ron and Hermione, exited the party so he could use one of the school loos. His mind was buzzing very softly and he wasn't worried about homework or, you know, dying, for the first time in a while.

Sighing in relief after having taken a long piss, Harry strolled slowly back towards the common room. It was well past midnight and he knew the seventh and sixth years would be in trouble if caught at the party. He also knew that every teacher was likely aware and chose to let it go. It'd been that way this term after the War.

He was about to pause and take a moment to admire the snow covered grounds and Forest out the nearest window when he heard a sound from the classroom in front of him. There was a soft thud and a garbled human voice.

Frowning, he crossed the corridor and halted outside the classroom, hesitant to walk in on students who likely didn't want to be disturbed. But then he heard, clearly:

"Stop. No."

"Incarcerous."

"No, no, no, I don't want--"

But Harry had already drawn his wand and kicked open the door.

He vaguely recognised the seventh year, tall and slightly plump with a mop of sandy blond hair. He was struggling to contain the thrashing student he had bent over a desk and looked around with a jump, panting softly, when Harry burst in.

"What the f--?" the seventh year began.

"Get out," barked Harry, indicating to the door pointedly with his wand.

The seventh year stepped away and the student he'd been pinning fell to the floor with a thump, his wrists bound at the small of his back, his ankles tied together with the same gleaming, silvery rope. And then Harry started in shock, because-

"Please," panted Malfoy, writhing on the floor as he tried to free himself.

"Go," Harry said in a low, dangerous voice to the seventh year, and there must have been something in his voice or face because the student quite literally pelted out of the room. Harry heard him running all the way down the corridor.

Harry walked forward slowly. "Malfoy?"

Malfoy thrashed again, out of breath and emitting little sounds of desperation. "Pl-- Just let me go!"

Harry quickly bent down and undid the ropes with a wave of his wand. Then he helped Malfoy sit up and lean back against the desk, still panting.

His face was clammy and his eyes bloodshot, eyeliner smudged, his face abnormally pale, likely with fear.

He was also clearly very, very drunk.

Harry suddenly remembered seeing him at the party earlier, flitting back and forth to and from the table of refreshments. And then he'd disappeared altogether.

Apparently, not with his consent.

"You okay?" Harry asked, hesitantly placing a hand on Malfoy's shoulder.

"I don't want to!" Malfoy declared, jerking off his hand.

Harry immediately held both hands up and away. "Okay, absolutely, yes," he babbled. "I'm not gonna-- nobody's gonna..." He didn't know what to say so he left it unsaid.

Malfoy just sat there, still panting quietly, eyes unfocused and rolling around a bit.

"Do... Do you need to be sick? Do you...need to use the bathroom?" Harry asked after long stretch of silence. Malfoy shook his head, hair flopping into his face. There was some colour in his cheeks now, and when he reached up to messily tuck his hair behind his ear, Harry noticed he was wearing sparkly blue nail polish.

"Bed," Malfoy said suddenly, voice hoarse. Harry nodded and stood up. Malfoy looked up at him in bewilderment. "I don't want to," he repeated, slightly plaintively.

The way he looked in that moment, as though pleading for his life, helpless and incapacitated, Harry's chest tightened.

"Nobody is going to touch you," he promised in a low, steady voice. "I'm just going to see you up to your dorm room. Do you need help standing up or are you good?"

Malfoy looked up at him blankly and then looked away with a sigh, uncrossing his legs and making to stand up. "I need help," he mumbled after a beat.

Harry helped him up and then immediately stepped away. "Come on," he said softly, indicating to the door. "This way."

*

Despite having gone to bed only well after 3am after the party, Harry was up by 8. He found Ron awake with Hermione and the three of them went on a walk after breakfast. In the afternoon, Seamus invited them to a snowball fight with the others. After he'd changed out of his sopping clothes later, Harry found himself entrusted with the task of going down to the kitchens to bring up snacks for everybody.

One flight of stairs away from the Entrance Hall, Harry was stopped by a soft voice addressing him.

"Potter."

Harry turned. Sat on the nearest windowsill was Draco Malfoy.

Harry, for some reason, felt his face heat, and absurdly found himself worrying that Malfoy knew that Harry had spent all day thinking of him.

"Hey," Harry replied, nodding. "Alright?"

Malfoy nodded back, expression neutral. Suddenly, Harry wondered if Malfoy even remembered the events of the previous night.

"Where are you going?" Malfoy asked softly, and there was nothing threatening or malicious about the way he spoke.

"Down to the kitchen to nick food," Harry replied honestly, shoving his hands in his pockets. And then, after a moment of hesitation, "How are you...you know, how're you feeling?"

"I feel fine," said Malfoy, a small line appearing between his brows. "Any reason I wouldn't?"

Yeah, he doesn't remember, Harry decided. Then he wondered why he's talking to Harry at all.

"No," Harry said, mouth curving into a crooked smile. "Well, I guess I'd better-" He indicated to the stairs with his head.

Malfoy nodded and said nothing.

Harry was halfway down the stairs when, "Potter."

Harry turned. Malfoy stood at the top of the stairs.

"Yeah?"

"I-- I just--" Malfoy was very pink in the face. Harry thought him very pretty at that moment. "I'm really grateful for your help last night," Malfoy blurted.

Now Harry went pink. Oh, so you remember, he wants to shout hysterically.

"It was no problem, Malfoy," he said instead. "I'm glad I was there to help." Malfoy just looked blankly at him. "Hermione's always going on about consent," Harry blabbers suddenly. "And you know... You weren't... You didn't...consent."

Malfoy nodded, throat bobbing as he swallowed, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his baby blue jumper. "Well, thank you," he said after a few seconds of silently nodding.

"You're welcome."

They stared at one another. Harry was aware of the seconds stretching on and on but he couldn't look away from Malfoy's artfully styled hair and rosy cheeks and sparkly nails and carefully lined eyes.

Then with an awkward and atrociously stupid wave, Harry turned away.

"D'you want to go to Hogsmeade with me later?"

Harry turned, almost slipping off the step and tumbling down the stairs.

"What?" he spluttered at Malfoy who was now scarlet in the face.

"I... I asked if you--" Then Malfoy abruptly seemed to deflate. "Never mind, Potter. Sorry. And thanks again for last night."

Malfoy disappeared around the banister and Harry heard him climbing the stairs while he himself just stood there.

Then, as though jerked into motion by an electric shock, Harry flew back up the stairs.

"Malfoy!" he gasped as he rounded the banister. Malfoy turned, looking surprised. "I-- I'd love to," Harry said, sounding a bit winded.

"What?" Malfoy asked, tilting his head, glossy hair sliding over his eyes.

"Go to Hogsmeade with you," Harry explained. "I'll-- I'd love to go."

Malfoy went brick red but he smiled as he did so, a small, shy smile that made Harry's heart skip a beat.

"Okay," Malfoy nodded, "Six? I'll meet you in the common room," he added, pointing up the stairs with one finger.

Harry grinned. "Cool."

Malfoy grinned back. And then, just as Harry was about to go back down, "Hey, Potter?"

Harry looked back up. "Yeah?"

Malfoy, still scarlet in the face, seemed to be making a physical effort to gather courage. "You... You have my consent."

Speechless and almost faint, Harry just watched him hurry away. Consent for what, he wanted to bellow after him.

Then he decided he'd rather let Malfoy show him what later.

***

[studiobeebo]

~♡ Winter Warmth ���~

Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen

Pairing: Megumi Fushiguro x Reader

Warnings: None

Words: 2.1K

Genre: warm and soft like mash potato. 

A/N: has this trope of sharing winter clothes been done a million times? yes. will that stop me? no.

as per usual, reblogs are the best way to get my works around since tags tend to be unreliable so they’re greatly appreciated! enjoy!

“You didn’t bring a scarf. Or a hat. Or anything.”

Your current ‘mission’ partner’s characteristically irritated tone broke you out of your current daze as you shifted your eyes towards him as the two of you walked side by side, close enough that it was clear the two of you were at least friends, but not so close that things were...weird.

“Oh, no..” You hummed, a puff of steam escaping with your words and just as soon evaporating into the cold winter air. “To be honest I didn’t think it would be this cold. Oh- but it’s not that bad, no worries.”

He looked at you for a second before shrugging and facing forward once again, the previous silence between the two of you settling back in as your eyes drifted back to your right where rows and rows of shop windows twinkled with Christmas lights and other inviting decorations. 

See, the so called ‘mission’ the two of you had been sent on wasn’t really a mission at all, it was more like an errand to satisfy everyone back at school’s ‘urgent’ need for a variety of coffees, hot chocolate’s, and tea lattes, which didn’t sound like much, however your oh so gracious sensei insisted you go to this very specific cafe that was about a half an hour walk away instead of the one that was barely a ten minute walk away. Fushiguro seemed particularly annoyed with that, but then again, when wasn’t he annoyed by one thing or another.

The only thing was that you assumed he was bothered because Gojō had made yet another needlessly difficult request of him, however while he was annoyed with Gojō , that wasn’t exactly the reason why. The reason he was particularly peeved was because his teacher said the two of you just haaad to go together. “It’s safer that way.” , he said “Treat it like a mission!”, he said.

Bullshit. 

Gojō was testing him on something even he didn’t want to think about, let alone admit to. Fushiguro told him one thing, ONE THING about you, just an off handed comment on how much you had improved using your cursed technique in such a short amount of time, and that’s all it took for Gojō to give him that fucking look. At least, Fushiguro thought it was only one thing, but the more Gojō started making little comments about the two of them, about how he thinks they’d be sooo cute together, he realized that maybe he had been unconsciously talking about you more than he thought. That was true too, but he wasn’t one for much talk and the little that he did say wasn’t enough to tip Gojō or anyone else off about his apparent interest in you. As it turns out, the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ is true, and that’s especially so for someone as observant as Gojō is.

He saw all the little things that most people probably didn’t have a second thought about, but he had known Megumi for a long time now so to him, his actions were clear as day. The little touches on your shoulder to gently move you out of the way, the way he would tend to gravitate towards you whenever all of you first years were on missions together, how distracted he’d be if you had a bit of a hard time fighting off a curse. Gojō could go on and on about the tiny ways Megumi treated you better, with more care, than anyone else, but he chose not to pester him too aggressively. He knew if he did that, Megumi would shut him down just as aggressively and dig deeper into the denial about his feelings for you. So instead, Gojō pushed him in little ways, like teaming you two together for training practices and in this case, sending you out together to get drinks.

Megumi knew that of course, that Gojō was messing with him, but man was it hard to say no when your face lit up and you exclaimed that you could actually go for a hot chocolate. So now here you were, walking side by side in silence that was currently doing nothing but make him overthink. Should he say something? Would that be weird? Or were you off put by the fact that he wasn’t saying anything? All the while he had that usual grumpy look on his face that was really just one of concentration, but you didn’t take it to heart regardless. You had known him long enough now to know that even when he did look upset, he kind of just had a resting grumpy face and it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Still, you would admit that you were feeling a bit awkward.

You liked Fushiguro, maybe a tad bit more than what you admitted to your other friends, but while the two of you were friendly and worked just fine together, you had never really spent time alone with one another outside of school, and as you walked through the slightly crowded sidewalks you realized you didn’t really know how he felt about you. Sure you were associates and classmates, but did he see you in that way? Did he only tolerate you? Or maybe he was just indifferent, not thinking of you as much more or much less than someone he worked along side. Even though you didn’t have any answers to said questions, you couldn’t say you were nervous to be out with him. In fact it was kind of nice, even if you weren’t talking much, and you were okay with settling and just internally gushing about it to yourself. So you kept to yourself with a slight smile on your face, stopping for a second here or there when something in one of the shop windows caught your eye or to press your cold hands to your mouth and blow warm air onto them.

You had said you were fine, but the temperature seemed to keep dropping, and when you felt a small damp prickle of iciness on your nose you realized why. That one snowflake slowly turned to many as snow began to fall steadily from the sky, catching on your hair and jacket but melting as soon as it came in contact with your cheeks. 

“Pfft, no wonder it’s gotten so cold. I seriously thought we weren’t going to get any snow until later on in the season, right?” You asked, turning to him with a laugh as you rubbed your arms as if that would do much to help through your coat. 

“Guess not.”, he said with another shrug. “Doesn’t look like it’ll stick though, we should be fine.”

He peered out of the corner of his eye at you, watching as you shoved your hands into your pockets and gave him a nod before looking up as you walked to watch the snow fall in a childlike awe. Something ticked in him, another one of those little irritating itches that he would get whenever you would do something like that. Something so simple, yet he couldn’t bring himself to look away. That, and the irrational part of him that was currently screaming at him to do something stupid, an internal voice that was getting louder and louder with every fall of a snowflake and shiver of your shoulders until finally he just had to give in.

He let out an annoyed huff, not at you but at the fact that he felt so stupid and absurdly flustered as he unwrapped his scarf and took his gloves off, temporarily shoving them into one pocket as he stopped to lean over and wrap his scarf snuggly around your neck instead. You jumped a little in surprise as you tore your eyes from the sky and gave him a quizzical look, but before you could say anything a pair of gloves that were a little too big for you were shoved into your hands as well. 

“Oh, thank you but I’m really-“

“It’s fine.” He cut you off, but not in a mean way. You noticed the hint of pink on his cheeks, but surely that was due to the cold, right? He sighed again in an attempt to make himself feel a little less tense as he continued on in a more relaxed tone. “Seriously, I was getting too warm anyways.”

Now you really couldn’t help but smile as you gave him a small nod before slipping on both gloves. They were too big just like you thought, but warm, and the fuzziness bristling in your stomach seemed to help warm you up as well. You absent mindedly tugged his scarf a little closer around you as the the two of you began to walk again, and your own cheeks began to heat up a bit as you inhaled his scent. Though you couldn’t really pinpoint what it was, it was like a little not-so-gentle reminder that he really did just give you his scarf and gloves to wear. You tried not to let it get to you, he was just being nice and he said he was too warm anyways, but you still had to bite your inner cheek to keep yourself from smiling too wildly and risk him thinking you’re a total creep. 

“Thanks Megumi, I appreciate it.” 

Oh god no.

He thought he had steeled himself but that caused him to stop in his tracks, only for a moment or two, before his body went into self preservation mode and moved on its own, but the way his heart skipped a beat in response to something as dumb as you calling him by his first name for the first time was everything but calm and collected. Still, as much as he tried to keep even an ounce of what he was really feeling from showing on his features, it only took that little halt in his step for you to realize what you just said.

“Oh, shit- I’m sorry. That’s probably kind of weird for me to call you.”

“It’s fine.” He repeated the same words he had said only a few minutes ago, only this time he didn’t sound nearly as confident. Whatever was going on in his chest was not, in fact, fine, but what was he supposed to say? ‘You treating me like I’m a close friend seriously fucks with my doubts of having a thing for you’? For heaven’s sake he could take out a literal murderous demon in the blink of an eye but god forbid he try to keep his normally cool composure in front of who he now had to admit was his crush.

“If it really isn’t fine you don’t have to act like it is.” You laughed out awkwardly, still having trouble trying to read his features. 

He hated seeing that bit of doubt and worry in your eyes, enough so that he shoved what he was feeling down even if it was just long enough for him to give some reassurance that you referring to him so casually was actually more than just ‘fine’.

“I’m not ‘acting’. If it really bothered me I would say something about it. Trust me, I’ve gotten good at telling people off...” He grumbled, his mood slightly souring at the mere thought of what Gojō would do if he could see him now, with color tinting his cheeks and his brain scrambling for the right words to say which, judging by the short laugh you gave that was simply music to his ears, he had successfully done.

“True, true. Guess I’ll just have to stay on your good side then, yeah? Dunno if I could take it if you were actually mad at me.”

He scoffed and muttered in response as he trudged ahead of you.

“As if you would ever be on my bad side…”

“Hm?”

“I said ‘can we hurry up before it gets worse outside’. If we take much longer Gojō is going to start blowing up my phone.” 

You laughed and then smiled in a way that you could only imagine looked incredibly goofy as you stared at his back while he continued walking ahead of you, maybe just a tiny bit giddy that he was ok with you being a little more personal and less formal with him. Surely that meant the two of you were friends, right? Or maybe he could think of you as something more some day…

“Are you coming with?”

“Yeah, yeah!” You exclaimed, shaking your head and leaving those thoughts for another time in order to allow yourself to enjoy this moment as it was, warmed in the face of the winter chill by a cozy set of winter clothes and a fuzzy feeling in your heart.

[revivisection]

its night time you know what that means! this is my diary now. very long week recap ahead.

my teeth are cool and good kind of now. they're actually still pretty awful but my front are work in progress they look mostly fine now and im not so vigilant at hiding my mouth :) not without a week's worth of pain and agony recovery but. you knoow. i will have to go through that again at some point oh well thank god for ibuprofen except it wears off before i can take another one. my upper lip was incredinly inflamed for a few days, bad experience.

you know you never really think about hpw much you use your mouth or just like. feel your mouth generally experience the life experience of having a mouth until there's problems with it. crazy how that works. i for one would have a much better time not having a mouth it's rather disgusting. ideal form i simply absorb energy through airwaves, or perhaps plug myself in to charge

after that i had to enroll in courses i was like surely i will have a fine and okay time. <-full of hubris. i slept through the first hour of course enrollment because i went to sleep at 6am and it opened at 9. so im now on two waitlists which probably wont let up. going to take latin though, going to become more pretentious just you wait. i think this is what you would call a "dark academia moment" but i dont think i actually know what dark academia is. school hasn't started yet but im having the biggest fucking imposter syndrome everyone who has ever told me how smart i am is a fucking liar.

had a fun lil trivia club day with some trivia club buddies. believe it or not, we did trivia. exciting, i know. anyways scratch what i said before whenever i get the right answer in trivia club i am literally the smartest man alive. why do all my friends have absolutely ancient editions of trivial pursuit (the words of someone who doesn't own any board games)

and yesterday i hung out with my dear friend @threecirclingbuzzards!! she let me scavenge through her big bag of miscellaneous patches it was very fruitful. my vest is very empty because i have to make everything myself and i simply do not. so now i have more things to put on it, the real question is when im actually going to sew. it was also cool because we are like brain linked we are like that image of clown-to-clown communication dont need to speak coherently because like. i get it. she gets it. we get it. the clown part is especially true because we were like. what to teens do. hang out at the mall. genius. and then we got there and it was two minutes from closing. genius. at the dollar store i got minecraft stickers god i love minecraft i will be forty fucking years old and not tire of minecraft

over the course of my mouth recovery time i listened to youtube videos to try and distract myself when falling sleep and i listened to a video about the evil within 1. i dont need to give background information but i will anyways.. back in like whenever of this year early this year some time this year i was scrolling through the discussion page of the tumblr sexyman wiki and there was a suggestion post for stefano valentini and i was like. woah. ive seen that man before. ive watched my fair share of oxbox/oxtra vids in my lifetime. and then i proceeded to go crazy. something about him makes me go absolutely nuts like awooga etc. who fucking knows. anyways i was content to never know anything about the evil within beyond that stefano valentini is like absurdly attractive until i watched that video about the evil within 1 while mildly Out Of It and i developed a very sudden crush on ruvik so now i know some things about the evil within. how was your day. another fucked up evil guy who i am compelled by. i cant fix him i cant make him worse but i CAN look at him from afar. all ive been able to draw lately is just ruvik faces idk man he's my latest fixation i guess. got him on the mind (except for when i was catching up on the patho tag today. i love my weekly spam reblogging from the patho tag except this time it's two weeks worth of posts becuase by god i was having a bad time)

perhaps i should actually watch a lets play of tew so i can know like. what the game is like in full properly and shit. shhhhh you dont see my incomplete patho2 save. i would play more horror games if i werent a little bitch, but im not so instead i just play stupid long fantasy rpgs. the sole reason i havent finished pathfinder kingmaker is because of that stupid goddamn darven quest oh my god i hate that man i hate that quest i need to speedrun it get it over with so i can enjoy the rest of the game but i simply cannot take it when the FUCK is he going to show up how much fuckng time needs to pass where are you bitch i need to xget this out of the fucking way so the hellknights stop crashing my place fucking my shit up i hate it her.e.

i wrote all of this because i am insuch! a mood today. idk whats up last nigh t i passed out instantly fell asleep died went to purgatory the moment i laid down on my bed like in an instant ive never been so sleepy in my life. and today i am incredibly humid but more than that the time actually melted away. like pretend time is a stick of butter in my hands except i preheated my hands in the oven for several minutes and the butter didnt even bother to melt so the preheating didnt matter it just slipped off my stupid little fingers. i woke up blinked now its night time. now nearly twelve hours have passed what the fuCK was i doing. nothing. i have no idea how this time passed i feel out of it (different) a different kind of out of it who knows maybe this is my natural tooth recovery time but instead for going outside two days in a row and having fun. this is my body and mind telling me to have less fun. wlel fuck you body and mind im hanging out with friends AGAIN tomorrow. see how you like that fucker. or maybe im just a little baby and its because i forgot to sleep with my stuffed animals last night. i have a build-a-bear longhorn i love him with my life i named him after my wife (artemy) he keeps me company because all i do is sit and rot.

also we havent read new pages of this dark endeavour in like11 days oops. the review WILL happen eventually okay i have so much to say about that wretched novel just when the summer book club completes it

[crystaljins]

River lead me home | 09 FINAL

Characters: Kim Seokjin x reader

Word count: 5k

Synopsis:  Ever since coming to the human realm when you were child, nothing seems to fit, and this was just supposed to be a simple roadtrip to help you find yourself.

Is that too much to ask for?

Spin-off to A long journey home

Rating: Teens

Genre: Adventure, fluff, angst

Notes: Ahhh. We’re finally here. At the ending. 

I feel like so much happened since I started writing this fic. I’ve been through so many ups and downs, and so have my characters. And you guys are probably the same; I wonder what adventures you guys went on as I posted this? I hope they were fun ones. 

Anyway, thank you for sticking around for this long journey home. I hope you enjoy the final chapter, and I hope you enjoyed following these guys on their adventure. 

Till next time, my loves.

Tags: @blue1928​ @veeparkersstuff

Masterlist

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 FINAL

It’s a long journey home. The three of you stay with the mice long enough to see the first of the recovered victims poke their little noses out of their burrows. The mayor, a harried, round little mouse with hay coloured fur and absurdly long whiskers, cannot express his gratitude deeply enough, other than to procure the three of you a comfortable stay in a nearby inn. 

The journey back is only slightly less fraught with danger. The Saishtas think the two of you are dead, and not long after you part ways with the mice, new begins to circulate in the local areas that the might, evil Saishta queen has died and that her kingdom has fallen into disarray. You come across one or two of the insidious lizardpeoples after that but none of them approach or acknowledge you. Why bother, when they failed to save their queen?

After hearing that news, it’s more of a relaxed journey. You all head on from town to town, purchasing supplies and another bed roll for Jungkook. Jin is strangely eager to spend what little currency you have on the most comfortable bedroll he can find, and when Jungkook suggests he just continues to share in the interest of saving funds, Jin nearly has an aneurysm. 

Jin’s behaviour is probably the strangest part of the journey. He’s not cold or standoffish like he normally is when having a crisis, but he’s definitely gentler. More reserved but also warmer. It’s not unwelcome. In fact, you can’t help but wonder. If the war had never come, would this be the life you had with Jin? Endless adventures amongst the thrilling dangers of your home realm? 

You bring the thought up to Jin and Jungkook one night, while the three of you huddle together over a fire, snacking on some of the dried meats you’d purchased from the last town. 

Jin looks surprised at the thought. 

“I’ve always thought it would be you and Taehyung going on the big adventures.” He points out. “The two of you were never able to hold still, even for a moment.” His smile is warm and fond as he recalls your childhood. 

“You’d have been dragged along.” Jungkook counters through a particularly chewy mouthful. “You’d probably be married to (Y/N) and forced to follow her around keep her out of trouble.”

Oddly, you expect Jin to flush, or protest, or attempt to strangle Jungkook. You certainly feel a bit flushed at the thought. But Jin is unfazed- he merely offers a secretive smile and tilts his head curiously at you. You couldn’t decipher the look if you tried, but it has your throat feeling tight. 

You change the conversation topic after that, but it’s not the only way that Jin has changed. A few days later, the three of you are attempting to cross a little slippery creek when you lose your footing. 

You stumble over a few rocks and land on your hands and knees. Even in the deepest part of the creek it only comes up to your mid-thighs when you are on all fours. 

Jin skids to a stop beside you, crouching before you in the water. He doesn’t seem to care about the way his clothes become soaked. 

“Are you hurt?” He demands. You take stock of your injuries- a scraped knee, a bruised shin, the palms of your hands rubbed raw. Nothing that won’t be gone in an hour or two. 

“I’m fine.” You reassure him. 

He nods awkwardly for a moment and then offers “I could kiss it better?”

It takes you a few blinks to comprehend his words, and even then, it makes you re-evaluate the severity of your injuries. 

“What?” You demand, shocked. He shrugs and looks away. 

“Like when we were kids. I could kiss it better. You used to always refuse to stop crying until I kissed you. We could try that again.” He offers nonchalantly. You must have hit your head. It’s the only explanation. You can only stare, your mouth dropped into an “o”. 

“I guess that’s a no.” Jin finally says, oddly sulky in the way he says it. “Just thought I’d offer.”

You wish you could say that it’s the strangest of his behaviour, but it’s not. The rest of the journey goes like that- if you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think Jin was flirting. Albeit, in a weirdly awkward, tentative way. Even Jungkook notices it. 

“Do you think he’s finally gone mad? Maybe the extreme social media detox has made all his brain cells shrivel up and die.” Jungkook whispers conspiratorially one night while the two of you wonder a small village that is throwing a little festival. Colourful lanterns line the streets and the various creatures that inhabit the village are dressed in bright colours. Jin had decided to stay back at the inn but the two of you had wanted to explore. 

“It’s the only logical explanation.” You concede, as much as it physically pains you to agree with Jungkook in anything. 

“All I have to say is, if this is how he flirts I have no idea how he gets so many dates.” Jungkook laments, and your eyes widen. 

“Stop.” You laugh. “He’s not flirting. It’s Jin. He thinks of me like an unwanted houseplant.”

“What if he didn’t, though?” Jungkook asks suddenly. His gaze is probing, and the mood is oddly serious for what you thought was a joking conversation. 

“What?” You ask, caught off-guard. 

“What if he’s actually flirting? Hypothetically. What would you do?” He questions. 

You go silent, as you contemplate your answer. Honestly, you’re not stupid enough to entertain the thought of Jin liking you back. But something about Jungkook’s earnestness has you genuinely considering it. 

“I don’t know.” You finally admit. You sigh, suddenly feeling tired. 

“Can I ask you something?” Jungkook asks, tentative and almost gentle. He tilts his head curiously. “Do you like him?”

The question startles you. It feels like it’s been so long since you came to term with your feelings that you forgot not everyone else was aware of your revelation. Honestly, even to yourself it had filtered to the back of your mind. An unchanging fact, rarely acknowledged. The sky is blue. Jungkook is annoying. You are in love with Kim Seokjin. 

“I do.” You finally admit. You’re reaching the end of the street where most of the festivities are taking place- the crowd is thinning and more distance separates each lantern. 

“Then, if he were flirting... wouldn’t the answer be that you’d date him?” Jungkook asks. He’s pulling a face like he’s working out a rather complex maths problem. “Why don’t you know what you’d do?” 

The two of you settle at the end of the street. Roughly hewn chairs are scattered randomly across the little square. In the corner, a large, greyish being snoozes, and a small group of little humanoid trees laugh over something and chatter in a foreign language. 

“I feel like there’s too much to sort out first. Like... to date him I’d have to be better. I’d have to have a job. And I’d have to have apologised to my mother. I’d need to stop spongeing off the people around me. And maybe live out of home. Be a proper, human adult.” You list. “The me that I am now... I couldn’t date Jin. I’m not... I’m not...”

“Good enough?” Jungkook finishes the words gently. There’s a sad look in his eyes, and it surprises you. 

You nod. 

“Yeah.” You admit, and your voice is oddly choked. It’s weird- you had thought you were at peace with your feelings. You were meant to be happy with whatever scraps of affection Jin threw your way. But you’re not- there’s a deep, miserable ache in your chest that won’t go away. 

Jungkook uses his sleeves to dab at the tears you didn’t even know were slipping down your cheeks. 

“For what it’s worth,” Jungkook offers. “Jin doesn’t actually care about that stuff. The only reason he makes a big deal out of it is because he thinks you’ll be happy if all that stuff works out.” He tells you. “And hey. Someone once told me that the best things are the scariest to start- maybe this is one of those times?”

After that, you call it a night, and Jungkook doesn’t bring the topic up again. But you can’t forget his words. The closer to the portal the three of you draw, the more the ache in your chest grows; the closer you get to going back to normal life. What happens to you and Jin when you step back into the human realm? 

What if Jungkook’s words are true? Would you... would you have to return to normal? Could you have more? Is it stupid that a part of your stupid, traitorous heart longed for it to be true with each new step towards home?

There’s a surefire way to find out; if you ask him. But you can’t. The words die in your throat every time you even consider it. You remember how he freaked out when Jungkook suggested it earlier on the trip. He likely already knows your feelings despite your denial, and it is only your constant denial otherwise that allows the two of you to exist in this strange limbo. If you stopped denying them, he’d have to address those feelings and then what? It would be back to square one- the avoidance and awkwardness as you cling to the shambles of your friendship.

You can’t go back to that- you’ve fought so hard to fix what is between you, to salvage things. Would it be worth risking it, just in the hopes that you and Jin could be more?

The night before you reach the portal, all the nerves and worries you have build up to the point that you find yourself gazing up listlessly at the canopy overhead. The branches interlace and you can perk glimpses of the stars beyond. This is the last glimpse you will get of these stars. You have already decided you won’t come back here. It’s time to stop looking back and only look forward. 

Yet, despite your resolve, despite everything, sleep evades you. Tomorrow, real life awaits. An existential sort of dread has gripped you.

With a sigh, you sit up. To your right, Jungkook has curled into a tight ball as he peacefully rests. But to your surprise, Jin’s bedroll is empty. You’re surprised you didn’t hear him move. 

It doesn’t take long to locate him. Only a short distance away, where the vegetation is a bit lighter and a clear patch of sky shimmers overhead, Jin lounges peacefully. He gazes thoughtfully up at the sky overhead as the starlight gilds his face in breathtaking silver. 

Wordlessly, you step towards him. A twig snaps beneath your feet and Jin whirls around in surprise. When he spots you, he smiles and gentle pats the open space beside him. 

Awkwardly, you settle beside him, hugging your knees to your chest. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” He questions, his eyes closed serenely. The soft sound of wind and distant sounds of wildlife filters through the night air. 

“Yeah,” you admit, your voice heavy with a sigh. He blinks open one eye to peer curiously at you. It’s the most relaxed and open you’ve seen him in a long time. “What about you? You couldn’t sleep either?” 

Jin shrugs. 

“I could have.” He informs you. “But I thought I’d enjoy my last night in this realm instead.”

You raise an eyebrow at that. Jin has made it clear throughout the trip that this journey has been anything but enjoyable. 

“Enjoy?” You say, only slightly incredulous. He nods and opens both eyes to stare up the sky. 

“I’m as shocked as you.” He concedes. “This place has only ever meant bad things to me. It’s why I could never understand your fixation with it.” 

You grimace.

“I kind of get it now, though.” He admits, before you can complain to him. “It’s a pretty beautiful place.” 

“What changed your mind?” You ask, your curiosity piqued. Jin shrugs. 

“You did.” He answers simply. 

“M-me?” You’re not sure why you stutter; perhaps it is the strange look to his eyes as he turns fully to face you. He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his cheek against them, watching you lazily. 

“Yup.” He says, as if it’s the easiest confession in the world. “When I used to think about this place, all I could think about was the night we fled. My dad didn’t even time to wash the blood off his hands. He grabbed me by the wrist and held on so tight I had bruises. I didn’t want to remember that. I didn’t want to remember the place that had caused us so much pain. And you... you were such a shell. I felt like one of my best friends had died in this realm and I was so angry at what it had taken from me.” His gaze is distant with recollection. “And then I was mad at you, because you couldn’t forget no matter what I did.” He gazes at you. “But now it’s finally given me something.”

You’re startled, by his heartfelt words. You’ve always known Jin hated this realm, hated the way the beings of this realm had driven you all out. But you didn’t know you had such a huge role in his opinion of it. “You.” He finishes. “So I guess I can’t really hate this place after all.”

You’re struck speechless in that moment, and your heart swells with an overwhelming feeling. You already know you love the man before you, but in that moment, you’re shocked at just how much. A feeling bubbles up at the base of your chest- your heart feels fit to burst. 

“What do you mean?” You ask- is this feeling hope? What does Jin mean, when he says the realm gave him you?

Jin merely shrugs. 

“I’ll let you speculate.” He tells you, shooting you a coy smile, an oddly cheeky look that he’s given to his friends before but never to you. But then his expression shifts into something more serious. “I think there are more pressing things to discuss first, though. Like why you’re sitting here with me instead of sleeping?”

The warm feeling from earlier instantly evaporates as you recall the reason for your melancholy. 

“I guess I’m just nervous.” You confess. “About going home. I’ve... I’ve really enjoyed this trip. And I’m excited to go home. But I’m just so...” you struggle to find the word. “So...”

“Nervous?” Jin suggests. He shuffles so he’s just a bit closer. His shoulder brushes yours- if you extended your neck, you could rest your head against his broad shoulders. A strange electricity buzzes through your body at the thought- it reminds you of your fight over the fungus a few days ago. The air had felt strangely charged then as well. 

“Yeah.” You admit, swallowing past a dry throat. “There’s a lot to do, back home.”

“Back home?” Jin echoes, and then his smile turns warm. His mouth carefully forms the word “home” and his eyes wrinkle into two joyous crescent moon shapes. “I guess there is.” He acknowledges. “But you’ve already made the first step. You’re calling the human realm home.”

That startles you. Obviously, it is your home. But you hadn’t realised how instinctive that had become until this moment; at some point the human realm had stopped being that uncomfortable alien place, and had become the place you’re meant to go back to. Home. Jin watches you process the words carefully before he speaks again. 

“You don’t have to be nervous.” He tells you softly. The tone to his voice is oddly vulnerable and delicate. Something delicate hovers between you like the flutter of a pixie’s wing. “You said you wanted to work things out together, right? So, you don’t have to be nervous because I’ll be there with you.”

He looks away and his expression is surprisingly shy. “I know you said I don’t have to be the guy with it all worked out, but I still want to try. It makes me happy. Being there for you. So even if you’re nervous... we’ll work it out together, right?”

It is that exact moment that you figure it out. Earlier, you had been uneasy at Jungkook’s line of questioning. You didn’t feel worthy of Jin’s love and affection, and that made you afraid. Because you couldn’t bear to lose him. You still can’t bear to lose him. But gazing into the warm eyes before you, you know you won’t ever lose him. The two of you have braved death together- you’ll make it through anything. 

You feel lighter then, and you offer Jin a smile. 

“Thank you.” You whisper. Jin smiles back. 

“Any time.” He whispers back to you in answer. 

Sleep comes easily after that, and so too does the end of your journey. All too soon you stand before the portal back home. 

The trip feels like it’s taken a thousand years and no time at all at the same time. By your calculation, the entire journey has taken almost a month, with all the detours and misadventures. That means almost six hours have passed in the human realm. Jin has almost definitely missed his dinner plans, and your mother is probably starting to wonder why you aren’t home yet. 

“What will you do, when you go back?” Jin asks. Jungkook has already stepped through and you’re surprised that Jin is making conversation now, of all times. 

“Apologise to my mother.” You say easily. “What about you?”

“I’m going to save my snapchat streaks and apologise to Joon.” Jin shares. He’s nervously twisting his fingers together. The energy he gives off is like an uneasy teenager about to do a huge public speech. It’s a big contrast from the person her was last night. Like he’s bracing himself for something. 

You thought you’d be bracing yourself too. On the other side is hard work and futile dreams and a bleary, dull city. 

But on the other side is your mother, your friends, your family. Your evil cat waits for you on the other side; the life your father dreamed of for you is on the other side. You had thought that so much in your life is wrong, and now that the portal is here, you realise that it’s not. It’s just life. Things go wrong and things go right. Like the path of a river, cutting through the vast, unknown wilderness. You had been thinking of it this whole time like you’d flip a switch and things would be easy. But that’s not what it’s going to be like on the other side of this portal, and it’s not really what you want things to be like. It’s an adventure of a different kind. 

And it’s an adventure that you want to share... with Jin. 

You remember what Jungkook had said- the best things in life are the scariest to start. And you’re scared now. No, you’re terrified. But if you’re this scared, then you know that this moment is going to be huge. Life-changing. You can’t keep the words in a moment longer. You don’t want to. You’ve spent too long running and fearing and hesitating and overthinking. But you’re confident, that the two of you will survive this even if he doesn’t feel the same way, and you’re ready to take that risk.

The river loves those who take the plunge.

“Jin,” you call, and you thought that if you ever did this that you’d be lost for words. But you’re not. Because you’re finally ready. Last night had solidified that for you. The words come easily. “You remember how you said that I look at you a certain way?”

You turn and face him, and he looks bewildered. 

“Like you’re my hero.” You recall. And then you steel yourself and meet his gaze. It’s the same eyes you’ve known all your life. The same eyes you want to look into for the remainder of your life. “It’s because you are my hero. No, actually, it’s more than that.” You assert, and he just stares, completely dumbstruck. “I look at you like that because I love you. Because I admire you and think you’re strong and brave and kind, and even if you’re not the guy who has it all together, I still feel the same way. And I lied when I said I just wanted you to be my friend. I thought it was enough, but it’s not- I want to be your partner. I want to be your best friend. I want to be your girlfriend.” You say. And then you summon all the exciting fluttering feels in your chest and let it pour into your smile. “I love you, Kim Seokjin.” 

Before you stands something you never thought you’d see. Kim Seokjin, the mastermind behind the Jant, is completely speechless. And then slowly, very slowly, he opens his mouth to give a response. 

“Are you dead?” Jungkook demands as the upper half of his body appears once more through the portal. “It’s been like 30 seconds in that realm which is approximately ten years in this realm if my maths is correct!”

You spring back from Jin. You’re startled at how far you have to step back- had you really been standing that close? 

“R-right.” You stutter. You feel like you’ve been caught cheating on a diet or something equally scandalous. “We’re coming.”

Jin just looks annoyed. 

“No we’re not. Give us a minute.” He snaps at Jungkook, placing a palm against Jungkook’s head and shoving him back through the portal none-too-gently. He then turns urgently back to you. “What did you just say?” He demands. His intensity has you cowering slightly- your bravado from earlier leaves you. 

“I said “we’re coming”?” You recall, attempting to divert the topic, but Jin steps closer. 

“No you didn’t. You said you love me. And that you want to be my girlfriend.” He accuses. 

“If you knew, why did you ask me?” You grumble. And then your expression softens. “But yes. I did say that. And it’s ok if you don’t feel the same. I know you could have any girl you want and I won’t be mad if you want someone else.” You reassure him quickly. He just stares, offering you no indication of whether he’d processed your words. It’s uncomfortable, but you suppose your words were going to be uncomfortable. You’re changing the very nature of your relationship by voicing them aloud. “But if you were willing... maybe you could give me a chance?” You trail away. 

Still, Jin just continues to look at you blankly. He looks like he’s a robot that just encountered a programming error. Hesitantly, you reach out to tap his shoulder, just to make sure he hasn’t died or suddenly been transformed into stone. 

A hand shoots up. It grabs your wrist, halting its movements. Jin’s eyes bug out of his head. 

“YOU’RE TELLING ME NOW?” He all but screeches. You flinch- you hadn’t anticipated a jant in response to your confession. “YOU HAD THE WHOLE TRIP TO SAY YOUR FEELINGS AND YOU SAY IT NOW? YOU COULDN’T HAVE WAITED ONE DAY?”

His nostrils flare as he releases your wrist so that he can point accusingly at you. 

“You had all your chances! You could have said it on the way to the forest spirit! Or when the Saishtas were chasing us! Or when we landed in the ravine! You’ve had literally the whole trip and you wait until right before I’m going to confess?” He spits out in that rapid-fire way that you’ve never seen another person be able to replicate. 

And then you process his words. 

“Wait-“ you say, hoping to abort the jant so that you have enough time to comprehend what he’s saying. 

It’s no use. 

“Seriously! I had a whole plan, (Y/N)! We were going to go to dinner and I was going to buy you flowers and I was going to ease you into it! But no! You just had to beat me to it, and for what? For what? So that you can make a half-assed confession right before we step into an alley next to a brothel?” He laments. 

“It’s not half-assed-“ you protest, because you’d poured your heart out to Jin. 

He steps in menacingly. 

“Take it back.” He demands. Your eyes widen. 

“What?” You cry, defensively. To your credit, you only cower a little which is an impressive feat for someone on the receiving end of a jant. 

“Your confession! Take it back!” He orders. 

“No!” You argue back. “I’m not going to do that.”

“You are!” Jin counters. “You’re going to take it back and we’re going to do it properly, over dinner, and you’re going to have washed hair and I’m going to-“

You don’t let him finish whatever stupid thoughts were filtering through his brain. If he wants a proper, romantic confession, then he’s going to get one! You hear a sharp intake of breath from him as your lips press to his. They’re slightly chapped after such a long period of rough travel, but the sensation is still pleasant. Your heart thuds in your chest and you feel like you’re about to burst. 

It takes Jin a moment to respond. But when he does, it’s with an intensity that is almost frightening. You’re startled by the way he pulls you close. It’s like the electricity from last night, but multiplied a hundred-fold. If you thought your heart was ready to burst before, it is nothing compared to the way molten lava fills your chest when his hands come up to gently cradle your face and deepen the kiss.

When you finally recall that oxygen is something you need, Jin pulls away and searches your gaze. His hands slide down to your waist, resting delicately along the flare of your hips. His face is bright red but his eyes are determined. 

Something about the way he is looking at you has you feeling shy. 

“That was weird, huh?” You stammer, trying to cover the way you feel so completely overwhelmed. “Sorry.” Your heart is dancing in your chest. It’s all too much for one person to feel and you’re just not really sure what to do with the sensation. Did he feel it too? This weird tension, like you’re a balloon about to pop?

Jin doesn’t break eye contact and his tongue darts out to moisten his lips. 

“Hard to say.” He finally says, breaking his long spell of silence. He then grabs at either side of your face, puckering his lips obnoxiously. “I think we need to try again to be sure.”

You barely have time to protest before he’s attempting to pull you in for a second kiss, although you slap a hand over his mouth to halt his advance. 

“Wait!” You accuse. “You can’t just kiss me and not respond to what I said!” 

“I already told you.” He snaps. “Your confession doesn’t count until we do it properly. Now if you excuse me-“ He grabs you by the elbows and tugs you back towards him, attempting to kiss you once more, but you stop him with a hand pressed to his chest. His expression turns pleading. “Just one more time.” He requests.

You swallow, and gaze into his eyes. It’s not an unfamiliar look, you realise. He’s looked at you like this before, but you now realise what the emotion was behind that look. 

“I love you.” You tell him. “I told you like this because yes. I couldn’t wait one more day. I don’t want to wait another day without you knowing. I love you.” You say one more time, just for good measure. 

His expression crumbles and he sighs in resignation, before pulling you tightly against him. His embrace is warm, and secure. It’s no different from all the other times he’s hugged you in your life, and yet nothing is the same.

“Fine.” He says, into the crook of your neck. “But I’m not saying it back until we have a proper date.” 

He pulls out of the hug and the love in his gaze is overwhelming. It’s not a confession, per se, but his intent is as clear as day. 

He loves you. You know he does.

“Deal.” You say back, and his response is his eyes crinkling up as he offers you that special smile, the one that he only shows when he’s really, truly happy. “But you’re paying.”

“How about we save any important conversations for the side of the portal where we’re not in constant mortal danger?” Jungkook demands, his head once more poking through the portal. There’s an awkward silence as he glances between the two of you, and then he groans. “Seriously? You had the entire journey to sort this out and you waited until now? You couldn’t even just leave it until after dinner?”

“Sorry!” You apologise quickly, going to follow Jungkook’s lead through the portal. But a hand wrapped around your wrist stops you- you hadn’t even noticed Jin had grabbed you. 

You turn to gaze questioningly at him, and he shrugs, shifting his hands until he can interlace his fingers with yours. 

“Wait. Let’s go together.” He requests, then pauses. “Can we?”

Something about this moment feels monumental. Huge. You’ve braved enemy encampments, crossed mountains. You’ve gone free-falling into giant ravines and overcome furious forest spirits. 

And yet this moment feels like the start to your biggest adventure yet. From this point on, real life starts. You smile at Jin and he returns it. 

“Yeah.” You say. “Let’s go together.”

Jin’s reply is covered by Jungkook’s annoyed call through the portal:

“What did I just say? Hurry up!”

                                                             ~Fin~

[cha-melodius]

Tags: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, (but everything else is the same), Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple, Mission Fic, Fluff, absurdly fluffy for a mission fic, blink and you miss it angst, Misunderstandings, Banter, Revelations, Public Displays of Affection, Developing Relationship, Idiots in Love, Non-Explicit Sex, Concerned Illya, Illya POV, Napoleon pov

Summary: Napoleon and Illya have to go undercover at a couples retreat, and the mission turns out to be both easier and harder than they expected.

Note: But chamel, I hear you saying, aren't there approximately eleventy-hundred undercover-as-a-couple fics in this fandom? Don't you have other things you've promised people you would write? Well, yes and yes, but I stumbled across this concept and inspiration is a bitch who insisted I write it, so here you go. I can promise that there is a twist to this one that I haven't seen in this fandom before (at least for this pairing, and of course I apologize if I missed something), so I hope it entertains. It's a mission fic, so it got longer than I planned of course, but it's not going to get super long *glares at story and tells it to behave*. The whole thing is very lighthearted, which I guess I needed after finishing a novel. I'll be updating on the weekends like I have in the past, because its easier to just keep to my schedule.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 [COMPLETE]

Preview of Chapter 1 below the cut, or read the whole chapter over at AO3. Chapters will be linked above each week.

“You’re late. Both of you,” Gaby hisses, jabbing an accusing finger in their direction. “We were supposed to be in briefing a half an hour ago.”

“It’ll be fine,” Napoleon counters smoothly. “Waverly probably hasn’t even finished making his tea.”

Gaby just glowers at him. There’s an easy grin on his face, but Illya can see the subtle tension in his shoulders, and he doesn’t doubt that she can see it too. She’s highly observant, even for a spy, and she knows them too well after more than a year of working together. Napoleon likes to pretend that he can still hide things from her, which is the whole reason they are late in the first place. Or rather, the argument that they had that morning about keeping secrets is the reason they are late, but Illya is happy to blame Napoleon.

Not that he can actually use that as an excuse out loud.

“What were you two up to before work, anyway?” she asks after she gestures impatiently for them to follow.

Illya looks sharply at her, but there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly knowing behind the question. Still, it’s disconcerting. “What? Why would you say that?”

“You arrived together, duh. Please don’t tell me that Napoleon called you to come get something off a high shelf for him.”

“Hey!” Napoleon protests, affronted, but Gaby ignores him.

“Actually, do tell if that’s the reason,” she muses, a small smile playing on her lips now. “It would serve him right. I don’t know why anyone needs bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling.”

“It was coincidence,” Illya grumbles. He told Napoleon they should stagger their entrances, but, well, they were running late, and Napoleon insisted everyone would be too busy notice. In a spy agency. Illya doesn’t know why he listens to him, ever.

Napoleon opens his mouth to say something—some excuse for their suspicious arrivals, an insistence that he is in no way short, or a defense of his bookshelves; hard to tell which—but they’ve arrived at Waverly’s office by then. Their boss does not look pleased by the delay, though it is difficult to tell behind the genial British manners as he invites them to take their usual seats. Napoleon settles into the leather armchair, Illya on the couch, and Gaby perches on the edge of the desk, the better to get a glimpse of whatever intel Waverly’s working with. Like the files won’t be in all of their inboxes immediately after the briefing.

“You all know we’ve been tracking the dealings of the Catharus Corporation for the last few months,” Wavery begins, folding his hands lightly on the desk in front of him. “It has been frustratingly difficult to infiltrate their organization by the usual methods, we only find out about their transactions after they’ve been completed. Well, this time Analysis is sure that they’ve identified where their next sale will take place with just enough time to get agents in place.” “What’s the product?” Napoleon asks. Catharus seems to have a greatly diversified portfolio of black-market dealings, from weapons to art to secrets.

“We don’t know that,” Waverly tells him. “All we know is that the sale will happen here, sometime in the next four days.” He taps at his keyboard and the large monitor behind him displays photos of what looks to be a beach resort, somewhere tropical. There are palm trees and pairs of beach chairs in front of a good-sized even center, with quaint little blue-roofed huts dotting the surrounding landscape. 

“Well that looks pleasant,” Napoleon says approvingly. “Always nice when villains have taste.”

Waverly gives him a typically dry look. “It’s a couples retreat.”

“Oh.”

The disappointment is obvious in Napoleon’s voice; couples missions almost always mean Illya and Gaby, and if it’s truly a retreat for couples only he’ll be reduced to taking a service position at the resort, if he even gets to go at all. He is part of the briefing, though, which suggests the former.

“Guess I’ll dig out my bikini,” Gaby chirps, her mood clearly improved.

“Guess again,” Waverly replies, so blithely that Illya almost doesn’t realize what he actually said. “This particular retreat is for same-sex couples.”

“Huh?” Gaby huffs.

“What?” Illya blurts.

“Say that again?” Napoleon queries, all at the same time.

“Same-sex couples, exclusively,” Waverly repeats, leveling his measured gaze at them each in turn. “I know this is an unusual request for you, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you were the best for the job.” He says all of this staring directly at Illya, which is understandable. That Napoleon is bisexual is in his file, and has been made use of multiple times in particular types of honeypot missions. Illya, though… Illya is the one who has always been visibly uncomfortable when those missions arise. Illya is the one who had point blank asked Waverly not to send him as backup on those missions unless it was strictly necessary.

It wasn’t for the reason that everyone thinks, though.

[makeste]

The anon who sent the Twitter thread here! Thanks for the answer ^^ I absolutely agree that harrassing Caleb (regardless of how correct are his translations) is absolutely unaccepatable and some people should, like, go outside or something. Or at least take step away from the internet given the pandemic. (also after rereading this ask before sending I realized it may seem as if I felt attacked and was defending myself, so I want to clarify it now - it's absolutely not the case lmao) I was asking stricte about the situation with the translation, but since you can't really separate translation and its translator, I mentioned Caleb, but I also did it only bc Caleb is the only one we really know to be responsible for translations. I guess I could've worded it better lmao. Also I wasn't aware that editors sometimes change things without his knowledge. That's,,, really shitty tbh, I thought Viz is more professional. Imo it should be consulted if the editor wants to change something, not did behind the translator's back. Either way, do you think it can cause people to lose faith in the official translations? With how inacurrate the fanscans can be (which imo is totally understandable, given it goes Japanese -> Korean -> English and especially nuances can be lost in translation), and how stupid some shitstorms are, official translations were kinda this safe space to confirm/deny some of the subtle differences.

just to clarify anon, I didn’t think you said anything inappropriate, and your ask was worded just fine imo. I sort of used it as an excuse to soapbox about the Caleb discourse just because it’s been on my mind on and off, and since you did mention him. this is like the epitome of a first world problem, but sometimes I’m itching to talk about a topic, but I don’t necessarily want to write multiple posts about it, and so if I’ve already got an ask related to it, I’ll just tag the rant onto that. but the problem is if all of my asks are polite and thoughtful and eminently reasonable, and I want to rant about the parts of the fandom that aren’t, said rant probably seems like an overreaction by me lol. sorry about that.

anyway! honestly I think that for the vast majority of people who read the official translations, it never even enters their mind to question it. for the fans who are more active in the online community who are reading multiple scans, they probably do become more skeptical when something like this happens. but I also feel like those are the type of people who are more primed to question translations anyway, just because they care more about getting those details right.

also I think it’s worth noting that this isn’t exactly a new problem with manga translations in general, as we’ve had to deal with inaccuracies and over-the-top localization efforts for decades. like I hail from the days when publishers like Viz still flipped manga pages so that they would read left-to-right, because they didn’t think fans would be willing to read a book that was right-to-left. and that’s not even getting into the lengths they would go to avoid having characters curse, or the absurdly cringey localization of characters’ names and other things like that. so the thing is, I already learned a long time ago that “official” doesn’t always equal reliable. (and a lot of times the changes that draw the most fandom ire actually are considered professional, which is part of the problem; what the industry considers “professional” doesn’t always keep pace with what the fans want.) and overall I feel like modern translations have come such a long way that relatively minor things like this don’t really bother me like they might otherwise.

and really I don’t think it’s the worst thing if this leads fans to do more research and possibly learn more about the Japanese language and the whole translation process. I think that’s kind of cool actually. in the end the people who want to know the exact ins and outs of a given line in the manga have more resources than ever to find that out, which is great. having people realize that no translation is completely without bias or flaws is a good thing imo. I just wish we could do it without all of the drama lol.

[buttercup-of-kaer-morhen]

Magic and Exams: A magical College AU

I wrote a little a little drabble for my Geraskier magical college AU that has been stuck in my head.

Main tags: college AU, it's modern but with magic slapped in, Non human Jaskier, And they were room mates~, pure fluff, pre relationship, pining... Kinda, unbetaed, we die like Renfri

---------

    Jaskier huffed as he rifled through the pile of clothes he had on his bed, stuffing only a few articles into the large pack he was trying to fit everything in. He had finally wheedled his dorm mate into letting him go on one of the infamous weekend camping trips that his roomie was always secreting away to. For as long as he had been bunking with the man, Geralt would hike up a mountain or hill in the vast forest preserve that was conveniently by the campus-- which is probably why they had so many Environment and Monster Studies Majors now that he thought about it-- whenever he had a weekend that had a holiday or a day of cancelled classes attached to the weekend. The musician had literally come into the dorm to find Geralt suddenly packing on a friday morning because he got emails that his classes cancelled for the day. Now usually, one of his frat brothers-- Jaskier still didn’t get confirmation if they were his real brothers or not, which was weird cause his group usually could find out anything-- Eskel or Lambert would go with the witcher but both were busy this time around and Jaskier did not let the opportunity slip through his fingers!

 

    The thing is, as much as he pestered the Monster Studies major into bringing him along… Jaskier had maybe, kinda, never actually gone camping or hiking before in his life. Well, unless you counted the nights holed up in a pillow fort in the living room with Yenn under copious amounts of blankets and pillows or sleeping in the backyard in a hammock under the stars with his sister Renfri. He was going to guess Geralt was not one who would though. So he was quickly trying to figure out what to bring before shoving it in the bag specifically made for this-- he was unaware those existed-- which he borrowed from Renfri. She had always been the better scout when they were younger and actually stuck with it unlike Jaskier who opted out for more fun, indoor activities much to the displeasure of his father. She also did him the kindness of also filling the bag with the actual “essentials” as she called them, he was just adding anything he may want personally and his clothing. Thankfully, he knew exactly what to wear from the many magazines, movies, and such that he had seen. He had already put one such outfit on before he started his attempt at packing, that way he’d just be able to get up and run out the door as soon as Geralt arrived. He was almost done too and feeling rather satisfied! He had clothes, a battery pack for his phone, his notebook, and a few textbooks he may or maynot get around to reading for class while they were out there. 

    Just as he was closing up the pack, the very man he was about ready to go look for, stepped into the room. “Ah, Geralt! I’m just about ready!” He said brightly, beaming at the stoic individual who was currently looking him up and down critically, as if he were appraising the slightly smaller man. It sent a small spark of excitement through Jaskier, knowing he’d impress the other with his knowledge and fashion. He knew he looked damned good for this fall excursion, well as good as lumberjack apparel could, and he was giddy to get the other’s approval.

    “Stop messing around. Put on real pants Jaskier.” Was the gruff reply he received as Geralt stooped by the bed on his side of the room and pulled his pre-packed bag out from underneath. No compliment. No other words of any kind! Nothing!

    Jaskier practically sputtered in offense as he exaggeratedly rolled his eyes and threw his hands out wide. “W-what!? These are real pants! Have you never looked in a magazine much less gone into a clothing store before? Well obviously not, what with the broody biker/mountain man aesthetic you have going on, but really?” He argued, trying to hide how deflated he felt just from the one comment. The man had a real talent for stealing the wind from his wings with one clipped sentence, the filling-less pie comment still haunted his dreams. Worry was slowly filling him about everything else now too, from what he packed to whether he’d only be a bother on the trip. 

    Geralt stood back up, slinging his own absurdly large bag onto his back and rolled his eyes. “No, those are a second skin. They make your ass look great but are worthless for anything else. For Melitele’s sake, they don’t even have real front pockets Jaskier.” Geralt explained with a put upon sigh as if the article of clothing were the bane of his existence. He at least didn’t sound frustrated or exhausted yet, so Jaskier was counting that as a win!

    “These ones do!” He exclaimed excitedly, not really in defense of the garment but in actual genuine thrill, as he shoved as much of his hands as he could into the front pockets. It was just his fingers but it was something and it was one of the reasons he had got that pair. Then his distracted thoughts took a left turn and crashed as he remembered the other thing the man had said. “You think my ass looks good?” He asked, genuinely stunned. 

    Geralt gave him a look and, ah, there was the irritation. “Sweating. Chafing. Itching. No protection against anything like thorns or brambles or anything at all really.” Geralt listed each one, counting on his fingers visibly to punctuate his words. “I’m not going an entire weekend with you complaining because you chose fashion over practicality.” He growled lowly, which had no right making Jaskier nearly swoon from how hot it made Geralt’s voice, as he tried to get the musician to understand what he was saying. Now Jaskier knew that Geralt was right after laying out all of the faults in his choice of trousers but, you see, if he were to admit that he only owned skinny jeans, booty shorts-- those were a gift--, and a pair of fluffy unicorn PJ shorts-- again, a gift from Yenn-- then Geralt would definitely know he had never done anything like this before. “You’ve never gone camping or hiking before have you?” Geralt asked in his weird way that wasn’t actually asking but rather was a statement, as he eyed Jaskier’s bag. Before Jaskier could stop him, Geralt was already pawing through the contents.

    “Whaaaaaaaaaat?! Noooooooooo- How could you- Don’t be abs- Ok, alright fine. Yes…” The half-human sputtered, trying to deny the accurate accusation but the jig was up. Jaskier had wanted to keep up the charade but knew when to give up  the goat-- the metaphorical kind, not the one Eskel owned and was currently hiding in the frat house-- even if it meant he’d be barred from going on the trip now. He had really been looking forward to the trip and getting to know Geralt better. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the witcher’s eye now that his lie was caught… That and he didn’t want to cry in front of the man because he had to look into his crushes eyes which would only hold ire or disappointment from Jaskier not telling him the truth from the start. There was an awkward silence for a few minutes before Geralt was suddenly speaking.

    “This was terribly packed and you made a good call on the flannel and knit cap. It’s going to be colder than normal because we’re in fall…” Geralt offered as he began repacking for Jaskier. The musician’s head snapped up at the comment and he watched the other work curiously, as a flicker of hope filled him. “Do you own anything besides those sorry excuse of jeans?” Jaskier opened his mouth to reply but stopped as the other shook his head without actually looking up. “Actually, don’t answer that. We’ll stop by somewhere and grab you some real pants on the way. I’m also going to hazard a guess and say you don’t have hiking boots so wear your old converse and we’ll pick up a new pair along with the jeans.” This was the most Gralt had ever spoken to the Multi-Minor student at one single go and he decided to see how far this role would continue on. “You won’t be able to wear them this time but you  can at least start breaking them in as soon as we get back. Just wear them to class for a while and you’ll be good for next time.” Geralt grumbled, mostly to himself as he planned out what they had to do before making it to their destination, as Jaskier’s brain tried to catch up. He was practically beaming at the witcher by the time he had lapsed back into his usual silence. The musician practically tackled the larger man, who easily caught him in confusion. Not only did he get to go on this trip, but there were future trips from the way Geralt was talking. 

    “So, I can still come with?!” He asked excitedly, wanting to confirm it anyway as the anxiety still lingered slightly. It just seemed too good to be true!

    “Yes? Why not? Just cause it’s your first time, doesn’t mean I’m just going to ditch you…” The witcher said genuinely, a small frown on his face at the implication that he would just suddenly leave the other behind. “Besides, someone has to teach you the ropes and keep you from killing yourself accidentally.” The man half teased as his frown turned into a slight smirk. Jaskier would have been offended if he wasn’t so happy right then. He wanted to squeal in joy but refrained for the sake of his roomie/crush’s sensitive ears. He also really wanted to kiss the man if it wouldn’t have crossed a line and ruined the whole thing but oh well, he’d have to just try to squash the urge. “Also, are you going to bring your wolf?” The man’s sudden question snapped Jaskier back to reality again.

    “You mean Wolf? My dog?” Jaskier asked, incredulously with a roll of his eyes. They had had this particular back and forth frequently since the day he had snuck his dog onto campus and into their dorm to stay. Geralt didn’t ask questions, only worked with him and helped hide the large pooch so that the DAs wouldn’t find either of their pets that they were living with together. It was an unspoken agreement to look out for one another between the four living in the small room. Hiding a pet from campus officials was like  practically a sport for their friend group now anyway. It wasn’t just them watching each other's backs either really. It was a pact amongst them all to pitch in and help if needed. 

    Geralt snorted a laugh of disbelief as he shook his head. “It’s a wolf.” He stated matter of factly and Jaskier just could not understand why everyone insisted that his lovely beautiful Wolf that he found abandoned on the side of the road was a wolf.

    “He’s a dog! Also, is Roach coming? I know she’s a horse originally but with the spell you got from Triss to make her appear as a cat, does she like, I dunno, need to deal with horse things or stretch her legs. Metaphorically speaking or… I guess literally too? Can she even change back into a horse at will?” Jaskier tried to divert the argument, nipping it in the butt before it could really start, but ended up rambling. Jaskier was never really given details on the whole weird adventure of sneaking the man’s horse in and disguising it as a cat.

    Geralt gave him an amused look as he cocked his head to the side. “...Yes, no, and yes?” He offered, sounding unsure of what he was confirming and denying. “She comes with for the fresh air but she doesn’t need to. She’s perfectly fine in either shape. Also she can turn back into a horse but doesn’t want to most of the time.” He clarified and Jaskier nodded.

    “Alrighty then… Sure, we should probably bring Wolf along. He’d most likely enjoy the exercise and we won’t have to rely on anyone keeping an eye on him or the DAs.” Jaskier relented. Besides, it would be more fun with all four of them.

    Geralt hummed before handing Jaskier his own pack to carry, newly repacked and everything. “Let’s go then. We’re losing light.”  Geralt hurried Jaskier along out the door and they both snuck out Wolf and Roach through the, thankfully, empty building into the parking lot where Geralt’s old beat up pickup truck awaited their arrival. Once everyone was in the vehicle-- pets and bags in the back seat, people in the front-- they set off for their weekend getaway. Jaskier smiled softly at Geralt as the man focused on the road before looking out his window at the hint of sun rising to greet the day. Jaskier had a feeling that it would be a good trip and he was already looking forward to the future ones as well. 

[poloniumicecream]

i was tagged by @starryeyedagony​ and @hashbrownteamcobrakai​ for this absurdly long list of personal questions <3 no one could possibly need to know this much about me, but let’s go


1. what is the color of your hairbrush? i just... use my hand.... i keep my hair short, it curls and does its own thing

2. name a food you never eat: 
idk i’ll eat what’s offered to me?? i buy what’s easy?? i have no strong food opinions at the moment

3. are you typically too warm or too cold? i have this bird bone body like an ailing victorian child, anything under 70º and i’m freezing

4. what were you doing 45 minutes ago? was trying to be productive but instead found a good link to the blue lick horror house🙏 idk what’s so fascinating about this thing, but i can’t let it go. maybe bc i have nightmares that resemble this space?? anyway i live here now

5. what’s your favorite candy bar? reeses never lets me down

6. have you ever been to a professional sports game? 
memories blocked, sports too boring to think about

7. what is the last thing you said out loud? i regret to admit i am reading this out loud as i go

8. what is your favorite ice cream? idk but the worst i ever had was peanut butter

9. what was the last thing you had to drink? some faintly bleachy tap water, delicious

10. do you like your wallet? i use a coin purse to hold cards and cash - it's a pretty recognizable bright colored mass produced one. a while back there was a popular celebrity on the periphery of my friend group (don’t ask pls) and one time at a bar or something i had my "wallet" out and from across the room they locked eyes with me and pulled the Same One out of their pocket. pretty sure it was weed tho. but imagine carrying ur weed in a normal bill-fold wallet. that would have been funnier :/

11. what is the last thing you ate? 
lost in the turbine of my memory

12. did you buy any new clothes last weekend? i did not but i just got a new desk lamp, genuinely v excited for that to arrive

13. what’s the last sporting event you watched? 
i don't think this question applies to my experiences

14. what is your favorite flavor of popcorn? popcorn smells are compelling but if i eat things that stick in my teeth i'll lose my entire mind. wait this is it, the answer to number 2

15. who is the last person you sent a text message to? close inner circle group chat planning our surprise private island getaway. no but we’re making (safe!) halloween plans

16. ever been camping? not as often as usual this year but yes! see above

17. do you take vitamins? 
those gummy ones like fruit snacks

18. do you regularly attend a place of worship? 
nah

19. do you have a tan? i'm ghostly

20. do you prefer Chinese or pizza? i'm pickier about pizza. u can't go wrong with chinese

21. do you drink your soda through a straw? no...?

22. what color socks do you usually wear? mostly dark but i have some fluffy pastel ones specifically bc the contrast in my laundry is funny to me

23. do you ever drive above the speed limit? i'm gay i don't drive

24. what terrifies you? 
third date kind of question!

25. look to your left, what do you see? dying jade plants and beyond these, a cat's loving gaze

26. what chore do you hate most? 
vacuuming. loud

27. what do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? 
family

28. what’s your favorite soda? 
dr pepper only. i don't really drink soda tho. i was raised by the kind of parents who put fruit juice in seltzer and sold me that lie. i guess it stuck

29. do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? there are so many food questions in this list pls

30. what’s your favorite number? 
secret information

31. who’s the last person you talked to? 
my father. probably the person i've spoken with out loud the most this year

32. favorite meat? i no longer eat meat

33. last song you listened to? it’s been a war on drugs kind of week

34. last book you read? 
i can't read

35. favorite day of the week? 
something cool about a thursday, i can't explain it

36. can you say the alphabet backwards? 
feeling very interrogated rn

37. how do you like your coffee? however it wants to be. i for real cannot supply food or beverage opinions like this on demand PLS

38. favorite pair of shoes? 
generic black leather lace up boots

39. time you normally get up? i'm drawing my shades and peering suspiciously outside through a crack rn

40. what do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? ok when ur out somewhere with no artificial light and it makes the sky more dramatic and cool, either one is good

41. how many blankets are on your bed? not enough, season transitions are rough

42. describe your kitchen plates? ... grandma is that u?

43. describe your kitchen at the moment: 
it's clean, it's fine, grandma get out of here

44. do you have a favorite alcoholic drink? 
among the friends i drink with, one is a skilled bartender and we let him surprise us with whatever obscure drink he thinks each person should have that night. i would trust him with my life. conversely i just remembered my very best friend is also a bartender but him i wouldn’t let serve me anything except straight from the bottle. hm. what i’m trying to say is, the company i keep is more important to me than what's in the glass. should i also clarify i made these friends before they pursued this work and i’m not, like, frequenting bars to harass the staff? this answer is a mess lol

45. do you play cards? 
i don’t have a great attention span for learning or enduring things like that

46. what color is your car? 
u know what's funny is how much junk mail i get with car insurance offers. i wonder what color they think the car i've never had is

47. can you change a tire? 100% no and that would not stop me trying. it won’t be my car so i have nothing to lose and all of myself (also nothing) to give

48. your favorite state or province? idk i feel like a stranger everywhere i go except nyc

49. favorite job you’ve had? ok, mr. fbi i think that's enough

😔 i have not kept track of who’s been tagged or done this already, and the links will kill my tags anyway. do u have shit u need help procrastinating on? here, try this

[ma-sulevin]

otp questions

Tagged by @chyrstis​! Doing Sharky and Mattie for this one...

(art by @ziorre​)

DISAGREEMENTS

Who is more likely to raise their voice? Neither one of them really yells at the other one. Sharky’s voice is naturally louder, but Mattie’s more likely to speak sharply.

Who threatens to leave but never actually does? Neither of them. Mattie wouldn’t threaten that because it’s mean, and it would really hurt Sharky’s feelings, and threatening that would never cross Sharky’s mind.

Who actually keeps their word and leaves? Neither.

Who trashes the house? Sharky’s naturally messier. If Mattie was away for a while, he’d forget to clean up after himself the whole time and spend HOURS before she showed back up trying to make sure everything’s perfect again.

Do either of them get physical? Never ever. Sharky would rather die than hit his partner, and Mattie would leave the second that ever happened.

How often do they argue/disagree? Not super often? They have minor disagreements occasionally, mostly about how to handle life in the post-apocalyptic world.

Who is the first to apologize? Sharky. Usually, he’s just sad about it and wants them to be done arguing, and whatever they were disagreeing about isn’t important enough for them to keep going with it. 

SEX

Who is on top? Sharky’s the penetrating partner, but Mattie’s more dominant.

Who is on the bottom? See above!

Who has the strangest desires? We all know who has the weird desires in a Sharky ship.

Any kinks? Not in particular? Sharky’s up for almost anything, but he’s not going to bring it up if he thinks Mattie won’t like it. Mmm, I forgot some stuff I decided Sharky likes, but it’s gross and I’m not talking about it.

Who’s dominant in bed? Mattie for sure.

Is head ever in the equation? Like, all the time.

If so, who is better at performing it? It’s not that Mattie’s bad, it’s just that Sharky’s really, really good.

Ever had sex in public? Not where people could catch them, but they’ve definitely had sex outside. Like, a lot. Especially once they’re living their best post-bunker lives.

Who moans the most? They’re both loud and gross.

Who leaves the most marks? Sharky for sure. He likes to see the evidence that they’ve been together, and he likes that she’s proud to show them off a little.

Who is the more experienced of the two? Sharky’s had more partners, but Mattie’s probably had more sex.

Do they ‘fuck’ or ‘make love’? Make love, mostly

Rough or soft? Usually soft, but not always. Sometimes you just gotta fuck.

How long do they usually last? I'm not really sure how to answer this? As long as it takes, I guess. Sometimes they like to tease.

Is protection used? Mattie’s not on any hormonal birth control. They use condoms until the condoms run out, and then they just try to make sure Sharky pulls out. Uh, they have a whole baby when they make it back out into the real world.

Does it ever get boring? Never.

Where is the strangest place they’d have sex? Things don’t really get weirder than in the bunker with Sharky’s whole family.

FAMILY

Do they plan on having children/or have children? They both wanted kids eventually, but they didn’t want them as soon as they had one. Harrison was definitely an accident, and Mattie doesn’t exactly love being pregnant. Sharky likes it more than she does, honestly.

If so, how many children do they want/have? They end up with four. Harrison who was the accident, then they on purpose have Ian, Ripley, and Max all about four or so years apart.

AFFECTION

Who likes to cuddle? Both of them! They are so gross about it. Disgusting.

Who gets naughty in the most inappropriate of places? They’re both always down to clown.

Who struggles to keep their hands to themself? Mattie, but Sharky’s not exactly upset about it.

How long can they cuddle until one becomes uncomfortable? Sharky sometimes gets too hot, but he doesn’t want to tell her to go away. They both soak it right up.

Who gives the most kisses? Mattie loves those smooches.

What is their favourite non-sexual activity? They like cuddling and just hanging out together. They’d watch movies if they still had access to all of that.

Where is their favourite place to cuddle? The couch or their bed.

How often do they get time to themselves? Less often the older they get. They almost always have little kids around, and then the Highwaymen come to the county and it’s a whole damn thing.

SLEEPING

Who snores? Sharky. Mattie does only when she’s pregnant.

If both do, who snores the loudest? Mattie.

Do they share a bed or sleep separately? They share. They’re all over each other.

If they sleep together, do they cozy up together or lay far apart? They cozy right the fuck up, especially in winter.

What do they wear to bed? Ideally, nothing, but usually shorts and t-shirts because of kids and roommates (Hurk).

Are either of them insomniacs? Sharky is. He has a hard time shutting his brain off enough to fall asleep, and once he wakes up in the middle of the night, he has a hard time relaxing again.

Can sleeping pills be found by the bedside? Nah.

Do they wrap their limbs around each other or just lay side by side? Oh wrapped up for sure.

Who wakes up with bed hair? They both do, but Mattie has more hair so sometimes it’s crazier.

Who wakes up first? If Sharky is still asleep when the sun comes up, then Mattie gets up first. If Sharky’s going to be awake early, it’s because he woke up randomly at four am and decided to start his day.

Who prepares breakfast in bed for the other? Mattie’s not bringing him breakfast, but he’ll do it for her sometimes.

What is their favourite sleeping position? Spooning! Or Sharky on his back and Mattie on top of him like a starfish.

Do they set an alarm each night? Mattie would, but they don’t need to.

Can a television be found in their bedroom? Sharky would LOVE to have a TV on 24/7.

Who has nightmares? They both do, especially after everything they’ve been through with the cult situation.

Who has ridiculous dreams? Sharky, definitely.

Who sprawls out and takes up most of the bed? Sharky’s just a bigger person, but Mattie doesn’t care because she wants to touch as much of him as possible anyway.

Who makes the bed? Who has time for that, really?

What time is bed time? Whenever they get sleepy!

Any routines/rituals before bed? They read to the kids (or tell made-up stories) and then get some good snuggle time in.

Who’s the grumpiest when they wake up? Sharky is, if he didn’t wake up naturally.

WORK

Who is the busiest? Mattie

Who rakes in the highest income? It’s hard to say under this situation

Are any of them unemployed? Technically they both are. It’s the apocalypse!

Who takes the most sick days? Mattie gets sick slightly more often, but they can’t really take sick days

Who is more likely to turn up late to work? Sharky's way worse at keeping time

Who sucks up to their boss? Sharky would be, but it’s totally unintentional

What are their jobs? They’re just like. Survivors.

Who stresses the most? It depends on the situation, really? They stress about different things.

Do they enjoy or despise their careers/occupations? Mattie misses some of the comforts of pre-war, but Sharky loves how things are now. It’s the ideal situation for him.

Are they financially stable? They don’t go hungry, so yes.

HOME

Who does the washing? Mattie has more patience for doing a good job.

Who takes out the trash? They both do. They have to be careful about it because of the wild animal situation.

Who does the ironing? Who has time to iron?

Who does the cooking? Mattie is better at cooking, but they take turns with it.

Who is more likely to burn the house down just trying? Sharky, obviously 

Who is messier? Sharky

Who leaves the toilet roll empty? Sharky but totally unintentionally

Who leaves their dirty clothes on the floor? Sharky, but again, unintentionally

Who forgets to flush the toilet? I’m not sure there are working toilets in the post-apocalyptic world, so...

Who is the prankster around the house? Sharky would be

Who loses the car keys when it comes time to go somewhere? Sharky loses them all the time. He just puts them down and forgets where.

Who mows the lawn? There’s not a lot of need for lawn care. 

Who answers the telephone? Mattie would

Who does the vacuuming? They’ll both sweep the house when it needs to be swept

Who does the groceries? Sharky will go out on supply runs more often than Mattie, but it’s because they want her to stay with the kids.

Who takes the longest to shower? It depends on whether or not Sharky wants to jerk off.

MISCELLANEOUS

Is money a problem? Nah

How many cars do they own? They always have at least one working vehicle, and usually others they can break apart for scrap

Do they own their home or do they rent? Well, they say possession is 9/10ths of the law, so...

Do they live in the city or in the country? Country. 

Do they enjoy their surroundings? Honestly? They really do.

What’s their song? Burn Like A Star Fire by Sleeping Wolf

What do they do when they’re away from each other? Basically whatever they have to do before they can get back together. Just what needs to be done -- taking care of the kids, supply runs, etc.

Where did they first meet? Same way it happens in-game. She finds him in the Moonflower and he falls in love immediately.

Who spends the most money when out shopping? Sharky's more impulsive about it, but there’s not a lot of actual purchasing happening? It’s more like grabbing whatever he thinks they need or would be fun.

Who’s more likely to flash their assets? Sharky for sure.

Who finds it amusing when the other trips over themselves? As long a there isn’t an actual injury, they both think it’s pretty funny.

Any mental issues? Mattie’s absurdly resilient mentally. She has nightmares from the cult situation, but only when she’s already otherwise stressed, and she has some minor PPD after the babies, but overall she’s really mentally healthy. Sharky has some ADHD issues, but nothing that’s holding him back now.

Who’s terrified of bugs? Mattie, but moreso because she doesn’t want anyone catching any weird germs from them.

Who kills the spiders around the house? Whoever sees it first.

Their favourite place? At home together.

Who pays the bills? No bills after the end of the world, but they work together to provide for their family.

Do they have any fears for their future? The future is incredibly uncertain. They’re always worried about illness or injury that wouldn’t have been serious before but is now, and that only heightens when the Highwaymen come around.

Who’s more likely to surprise the other with a fancy dinner? Mattie, just because she’s better at planning ahead for it.

Who’s the tallest? Sharky.

Who’s more likely to just randomly hop into the shower with the other? They’ll both do this, but I’m going to say Mattie probably does it more regularly.

Who wanders around in their underwear? Sharky more than Mattie.

Who sings the loudest when singing along to the radio? Sharky does everything louder lol

What do they tease each other about? Everything, honestly. It’s a fun relationship

Who is more likely to cringe at the other’s fashion sense at times? Mattie 100%. She loves Sharky, but... let’s be honest. The New Dawn look? Not great.

Who crushed first? Sharky fell had and fell fast, but Mattie wasn’t all that long behind him

Any alcohol or substance related problems? Sharky probably drinks a little more heavily than is healthy, but it’s not an abuse problem

Who is more likely to stumble home, drunk, at 3am? Uh, well, Sharky.

Who swears the most? They both swear a lot. They try to clean up for the kids, but... it’s hard.

[keelywolfe]

Drabble: Last Minute Gift (baon)

Summary:  A prequel to the main series, Sans has some thoughts about the Gyftmas season.

Note: One last short for the holiday season. Warnings for Kustard and for Mature Content, plus some very slight consent issues. Red and Sans, really? This is what you give me for the holiday?

Tags:  Kustard, Pre-Spicyhoney, Angsty, Definitely before Sans finally decided to go to therapy. 

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

It was their second winter on the surface, them and the skeletons who were and weren’t them, and Sans’d gotten pretty used to his particular brand of the clone war hanging around the house. Paps wouldn’t have wanted it any other way; he took particular delight in their unexpected family and he always invited them over for all the holidays, but especially this one.

Gyftmas in Snowdin hadn’t ever been quite this crowded. All of them sitting around the tree in a nest of torn wrapping paper, sipping their eggnog and going for that holiday joy.

Well, almost all of them.

The house was loaded with happy cheer, fa la la la la, and his bro was the coolest, no question, throwing the best Gyftmas party in town and yet, Sans couldn’t exactly blame Red for needing to take a minute for himself.

For starters, even he was starting to get a little nauseated by the way Edge and Stretch kept up with the snarling flirtation, circling each other like dogs in heat. Be a relief when the two of them finally caught a clue and shacked up, but until then, it left the rest of them vicariously stuck in their mean little seduction cycle, listening to every tease disguised as an insult, every snipe that begged for a kiss.

Yeah, if that was his bro, Sans would’ve taken a smoke break, too.

All the others were getting into a loud, cheerful argument over whether to watch a holiday movie or trying again to play Pictionary, hopefully this time without any damage to home or furniture, hell, they only had three fire extinguishers. Most of ‘em were, anyway, Stretch was looking a lot like he wanted a smoke break of his own, but Blue had confiscated his ciggies after his fourth one for the night, because long-term avoidance was only allowed for the family member who was the least house-trained and might damn well bite if anyone went for his nicotine.

Couldn’t be allowed for the whole night, though, and Sans gave Red about twenty minutes before he went after him, partly to get his own minute of peace but also, if he didn’t then Edge would and that was likely to start another ‘whose a shittier brother argument’ with him and Stretch. Seriously, he’d seen enough foreplay between those two for the day, thanks.

No one gave him so much as a glance as he slipped out the front door to the strains of Bing Crosby and amicable squabbling. The cold winter air felt good against his overheated face and Sans took a minute to breathe it in before trying on his Sherlock Holmes. Not that Red was too hard to find. A lack of extra footsteps through the snow led him to the cleared area between the house and the garage, and he could see the dim glow of Red’s cigar, smell the bitter musk of the smoke.

“done hiding out here?” Sans asked. “only, i think your bro is noticing a you-shaped hole in there, might want to fill it for him.” His own cigarettes were in his pocket, but he didn’t reach for them. Only watched Red exhale a pale cloud, his gaze flicking over Sans and who knew what indecencies Red was reading off his bones; Sans could read into the souls of anyone at all except his own and maybe that’s why Red’s was inscrutable to him.

No need to think about any of that shit right now, though, was there? Nope. All he was doing was making sure his bro’s party went off without a hitch and he wasn’t gonna let Red’s shitty attitude ruin it.

Red stuck his cigar between his teeth, grinning around it, “except you’re the one who joined the search party. wassamatter, miss me already?”

“what i’ll miss is not having a steady stream of bullshit in the air,” Sans scoffed. “but it’ll keep your bro quiet and my bro happy. you can call it a late gyftmas present.”

“yeah?” Smoke was trailing from Red’s eye sockets and it only emphasized how much his eye lights burned like coals. “but you didn’t get me a present, did ya, sansy?”

“guess i forgot. should’ve gotten your list to santa a little earlier,” Sans said lightly. “but then, i got a pretty good idea of how naughty you were this year, don’t i.”

Sans was pretty sure he didn’t mean to say it like that, as an unintentional goad. A reminder of how they’d fucked around a coupla times this summer while they were overseas. Ain’t much to the story, a drunken handjob once or twice at night when they were sick to their souls of playing nice around the Human politicians. Not here, though, never here at home, that shit was for strange places and times, any bitchy port in a shitstorm. So he wasn’t expecting the hands that reached out, grabbing a vicious fistful of his hoodie to swing him around, wasn’t expecting to get slammed into the house and Red pushed hard against him, holding him face first against the siding. Instinct was to shortcut, stifled sharply enough that he felt the burn of aborted magic, tasted it raw at the back of his throat.

“maybe i’ll take my present,” Red said roughly. He crowded in against Sans’s back, heavy against him, all the layers of his thick coat and clothes meant nothing as he ground their hips together, one hand reaching between Sans’s legs and cupping his crotch with rude intensity. “maybe this’s the gift i’ve been waiting for.”

“do i get a say in this? asking for a friend, just curious if i’m allowed to say no.” Absurdly petulant, strengthless and useless, like every other fucking thing in his life. As if his cock wasn’t already throbbing like a wound, bound by frustrating layers of fabric between it and Red’s hand.

“you sayin’ it?” Hot breath against his cervical vertebrae and that hand didn’t move, holding perfectly still even as Sans’s hips got sick of waiting for permission and tried to lurch into his grip.

Yeah, about that. Sans squirmed halfheartedly against the weight hemming him in and didn’t say a damned word. Too fucking late, his body was offering a strenuous, mute protest at the very thought and he was already het up on the giddiness of risk; anyone could come out here, Edge on a mission to find his bro, Stretch sneaking off for a cig, even his own brother finally missing him. But the momentum was already skittering dangerously out of control. Maybe it had since Sans took his first step out the door.

Just because the laughter was silent didn’t mean Sans couldn’t hear it, but fuck, it was hard to hear anything over the creaking sound of his own bones, flexing hard as Red’s hand wormed through the tangle of his shorts to grip him in cold, clawed fingers. Strangling tight around his cock and it was probably the only thing that kept him from coming right then.

The freezing house siding was warming beneath his cheek bone, leaving trails of snowmelt to run down his face. Red’s hand moved on him in quick, jerky strokes and dimly Sans could hear him breathing heavily, pressed hard against his back and there was nothing but hot breath and cold air and fuck, Red jerking him like the fucking bastard he was, too good, too, too fucking good, and if there was a difference between want and need in that moment, Sans didn’t know it.

Sans groaned through his teeth as he came, too loud in the still air and a hand fumbled over his mouth, a sharp hiss by his head of “shut up!” but he couldn’t, he couldn’t. Probably didn’t last for fifteen seconds but Sans was coming hard, crashing through his floodgates, and it’d been so fucking long, not since those drunken moments last summer. Left him stunned and sagging and he would’ve fallen to his knees if Red wasn’t holding him up, would’ve had to come up with a cheap explanation for snow-wet shorts.

“yeah, that’s it,” Red whispered roughly. “that’s it, just like that.” His hand didn’t stop, still squeezing and stroking until Sans winced, pushing it away.

He was still loose-limbed and lost when Red hauled him around, shoving him roughly up against the side of the house again. But not so much that Sans couldn’t turn his head away from the kiss that tried to descend on him, the sharp grin on Red’s mouth widening like he didn’t even mind.

“okay, sansy, have it your way.” Red let him go and Sans slid down a couple inches before he caught himself, braced against the aluminum siding. Red wiped his hand on his shorts, leaving wet smears that showed no color against his dark fabric which was a good fucking thing because he didn’t want to see Red try to explain why it looked like he’d had a pen explode in his pocket. He turned towards the house, tossing back over his shoulder, “thanks for the present.”

Sans didn’t move until he heard the front door opening, the brief burst of chaotic cheer escaping, cut off as the door closed again. Only then did he reach for his cigarettes, ignoring the trembling in his hands as he lit one and took a long, deep drag.

Yeah, so, that happened.

Inside, his brother was probably still glowing with happiness of the success of his Gyftmas party and Sans wasn’t about to let anything interfere with the joy to his world. He was gonna finish his ciggie, head back in, and see what way he felt like swaying the vote for Pictionary. No rule said he had to think about this shit for any longer than necessary, was there? Nope.

Wasn’t even the worst Gyftmas present of his life, not even close, and he was gonna stop thinking about that right fucking now.

Sans stubbed out his cigarette and headed back inside and if he pointedly didn’t look at Red, or talk to him, or even get fucking near him, eh.

Of all their shared talents, the one of refusing to see what was right in front of their face seemed like a universal trait.

-finis-

[glorious-spoon]

The Life Span of Parrots

Title: The Life Span of Parrots Fandom: Shadowhunters Link: On AO3 Warnings: None Other Tags: Fighting and making up; immortality angst Summary: Alec wants to live forever. Magnus thinks it’s a terrible plan.

Based on this thread.

*

The loft is dark when he finally gets home. Magnus pauses on the doorstep, wavering between disappointment and relief before finally settling on the latter. The outrage of this afternoon has curdled into a cold knot of miserable frustration; Magnus’s temper flares hot, but he’s never been able to hang onto it for long. Not the way Alec can.

The way Alec must be now, since apparently he didn’t come home after storming out of the restaurant earlier. Magnus sighs, kicks his shoes off, and shuts the door behind him, then leans against it. He feels exhausted, sad, ancient in a way that he rarely does these days.

For what must be the first time in decades, he finds himself thinking of the precise shade of blue of the Mediterranean the first time he saw it. The salt sting in the air and the hot Italian sun.

There was a boy there that he loved, centuries ago, when he was barely more than a boy himself. Magnus has always been careless with his heart, although at least he’s developed a talent for misdirection over the years.

It ended badly, as so many of his dalliances did in those days. As so many have over the course of his life.

Magnus knocks his head back against the door, staring up at the dark ceiling. He could use a drink, but he knows himself better than to think that’s a good idea right now.

He’s tempted to snap his fingers and summon one anyway when he sees something move out on the balcony. A shift of shadows silhouetted against the soft glow of the street lights below—Alicante is never as bright as New York, but it’s still a city—that resolves itself after a moment into the familiar shape of Alec’s profile.

He did come home, then. Magnus groans softly. It’s a rarity for Alec’s presence to fill him with irritation like this, but he was hoping to put off the rest of this particular argument until both of them have had some time to cool down. Maybe get some sleep.

Magnus could probably do that anyway. Alec had to hear him come in, but he hasn’t come back inside, hasn’t called out to Magnus. In fact, as far as Magnus can tell in the gloom, he’s still stubbornly looking out over the stern grandeur of Alicante. Giving him the cold shoulder like a petulant child, Magnus thinks, petulantly. It would serve him right if Magnus just ignored him in turn and went to bed.

Instead, he pushes away from the door and crosses the dark apartment to step out into the cool September night. Alec is leaned against the railing, arms draped over the edge, staring out into the night. A beer bottle is dangling from one hand, the label mostly picked off. He doesn’t turn as Magnus comes up beside him, but a muscle tics in his jaw. The silence between them stretches out into some miserable, leaden thing before Magnus finally leans against the railing, mirroring Alec’s posture. “How did you get home?”

“I walked,” Alec says shortly.

It has to be five or six miles, and that’s as the crow flies; on the narrow twisting streets of Alicante, it’s closer to ten. It must have taken him hours. Magnus firmly stomps out the fleeting impulse to apologize. Alec, after all, is the one who stormed out.

After Magnus called him a reckless impulsive child, but still. He’s not quite ready to apologize for that, although he probably should.

“Clear your head?” he asks, instead.

Alec lets out an unamused-sounding huff of laughter. “Sure.”

Magnus sighs. “Alexander…”

“You know,” Alec interrupts. “We never got to have pets when we were kids.”

“I’m not surprised,” Magnus says honestly. He’s not sure where this little segue is going, but with Alec it’s usually better to let him get the words out in his own time. Especially when he’s upset. Magnus dislikes the random tangents, but he’s learned patience over the centuries. A little, anyway, although the truth is that it’s never come easily to him.

That, and he doesn’t want to fight with Alec anymore. He never does, really, but now he just feels tired and unsettled and sad, without even the temporary fire of anger to warm him.

He just wants this to be over with.

“Yeah. Shadowhunter kids get weapons training, not pets.” Alec tilts the beer to his mouth, then sets it down on the stone with a hard clink. “We used to go to the Bronx Zoo sometimes, when we had the time. Izzy always liked the World of Birds. The parrots. She used to nag my mom about getting one for a pet. She wanted to teach it how to swear.”

“I’ve heard that they don’t make especially good pets.”

“No. They can live for more than seventy years, some species, did you know that?” Alec’s voice is quiet and even, but there’s an edge of bitterness there. Magnus thinks, finally, that he might be starting to see where this is headed. “You get one when it’s young and it’ll be with you your whole life. Then you grow up, move on, lose interest, and you’re still stuck with this fucking parrot.”

He’s drunk, Magnus realizes. Should have realized sooner, but Alec is usually affectionate and handsy when he’s been drinking. Prone to draping himself over any warm body in his vicinity, especially when the warm body in question is Magnus’s.

Not tonight, though.

“You’re not a parrot,” he says, somewhat absurdly.

Alec shrugs, turning back to look out over the city. “No, but wanting someone for fifty years is a lot different than wanting them forever, isn’t it? Especially for you. I just thought…” he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought, I guess.”

Magnus sighs, the last of his anger leaching away to leave something tired and cold in its wake. He moves closer, sets his hand on Alec’s shoulder and feels muscles twitch beneath his palm. An abortive flinch, but Alec doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t look at Magnus, but he doesn’t pull away. That’s something.

Finally, quietly, he says, “You’re not wrong.”

A short, bitter bark of laughter, and Alec does pull away from him, twisting jerkily out of Magnus’s reach. Now that he’s moving, it’s easy to see how unsteady he is. “Okay. Great. I’m going to bed.”

“Alexander,” Magnus says. It comes out sharp, banked frustration flaring up again. “Would you just listen to me for a moment? Please? Instead of storming off again?”

Alec pauses, then finally turns, folding his arms over his chest. “Fine. What?”

Magnus takes a breath, then says, “Immortality always comes with a price. Always.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think,” Magnus says carefully, “that you lack perspective. You’re twenty-seven years old. You’re so young—”

“I’m not a child,” Alec snaps, and Magnus grimaces.

“No. You’re not. But you haven’t outlived all the people you love. Your family, your friends. Isabelle and Jace and Max—” That last one hits home, if Alec’s slight flinch is anything to go by. Magnus wishes he could feel triumphant. “You would watch them age and die. And you’d love more mortals, and watch them age and die as well. Over and over again, for centuries. Forever. And immortals, what love is between immortals—” He breaks off again. “Camille was the norm, not the exception.”

“Cat isn’t like that,” Alec says stubbornly. “You aren’t.”

“Until five years ago, it had been a hundred years since I’d spoken to Catarina. In a few decades we’ll drift out of each other’s lives again for God knows how long. That’s what would happen between you and me, Alexander. If we were lucky and things went well and we didn’t end up hating one another a few hundred years from now, that’s what would happen. You can’t be married to a person for centuries. Not without destroying every bit of love there is between you.”

Alec is finally looking at him.

“I could never hate you,” he says.

“Time changes people,” Magnus tells him. “Do you honestly think I’m the same person now that I was when I was twenty-seven?”

The hot sun and the blue, blue sea. The boy with black hair and rough hands and a ready smile, laughing at Magnus’s clumsy Genoese and kissing his mouth in the shadows beneath the olive trees.

It was so lovely, until it wasn’t. Magnus was young then, young and foolish and in love, and honest in the way that only love-struck young fools can be. At twenty-seven, forever seemed romantic.

At least until the decades passed, and the boy with laughing eyes grew gray and bitter and eventually sought out the very solution that Alec is considering right now.

Nicolo Cavanei is in Paris these days, or at least he was the last Magnus heard. A respected leader among the vampire clans of Europe; Magnus has spoken to him in passing perhaps once in the last two centuries. There’s no sign left of the shoemaker’s son he once loved, but Magnus supposes he doesn’t bear much resemblance to the young man he was then, either.

Are you happy? he remembers asking Nicolo the last time they met, sometime in the late 1890’s at some political affair or another. Even then, it was an impertinent question imposed on a near-stranger, and no matter that once they’d shared a life together.

He remembers that Nico laughed. Five years younger than Magnus, and he looked twenty years older. Centuries tireder. Elegant and untouchable.

Are any of us, my dear? he asked in the same lilting Genoese that had so charmed Magnus the first time he heard it in that dark little shop that smelled of wax and shoe leather.

It’s a question that has lodged itself behind Magnus’s heart in the years since, not because he can’t answer it but because he can, all too well.

Alec tilts his head. His expression has softened, and there’s something curious about it. As though it never really occurred to him until this very moment that Magnus was once young.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. That’s softer, too. The consonants slightly blurred with drink, but his gaze seems steady enough. “Are you?”

“Are you the same person you were five years ago?” Magnus counters. “Ten years ago? Do you think you’ll be the same person you are now in ten years? Twenty? Two hundred?”

Alec takes a breath, lets it out, then says, “I don’t know.”

“I do.” Magnus rubs his fingers over his knuckles, over the familiar shape of his wedding ring. “Being immortal doesn’t mean existing outside of time. You still have to live through every damn minute of it.”

“Magnus…”

“I love you,” Magnus interrupts bluntly. Perhaps it’s what he should have led with at the start of this, but pulling apart the tangled threads of grief and regret and fear has never been easy for him, and Alec caught him off-guard earlier. “I don’t want to lose you. Not now, not fifty years from now. But this… it would destroy you, Alec. And I don’t know if I can survive watching that again.”

“Again?”

Magnus closes his eyes. “Someday I’ll tell you. Not tonight.”

“Okay,” Alec says quietly.

“I can’t stop you. If you choose to go through with this, I can’t—but I hope you’ll reconsider. Whatever it is you think you’ll solve by giving up your mortality—it’s not worth it. Please believe me.”

“Okay,” Alec says again, finally. It’s not acquiescence, Magnus can tell, but it is… something. Acknowledgement, at least. Some hope that Alec has been listening to him.

Alec touches his shoulder, tugging slightly, then says, “Can I—?”

Before he can finish the sentence, Magnus is already stepping into the circle of his arms. He wasn’t aware of being cold until now, with the heat of Alec’s body surrounding him like a warm blanket. It feels wonderful, and there’s a childish, cowardly part of him that wants to take it all back, that wants to tell Alec, Forget it, forget it all, everything I just told you, forget it and stay with me forever.

Instead, he tucks his face into Alec’s neck and says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you earlier.”

“I shouldn’t have just dumped that on you out of the blue.” Alec’s sigh ruffles his hair, and then he says, “Can we just—go to bed? And finish talking about this tomorrow?”

Magnus nods without lifting his head. There’s a lump in his throat that he has to swallow back before he can speak. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Alec says back, but it’s a long time before he finally lets Magnus go.

[pacifv]

HE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: Mik      Age: 26      Contact: IM, discord

Character(s) I rp: Eden ( in bleach ) -- I have other ocs but that’s another story Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): Eden... ? Current Fandom(s): Bleach , so far Fandom(s) you have an AU for:  more fantasy esque ones?  My language(s): spanish , english  Themes I’m interested in for rp:   Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: fantasy , religious

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?:   YES / NO   only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?:   YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?:  24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?:  IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting:  IM since this is pretty much new . just slap me with that and if you have some ideas , better --- if not let just brainstorm with what we have in hand . 

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner:  some minimal idea of the context and eden’s character . some ideas if possible . more than often I have gotten people straight up jump with no clue of what even is going on in my side character wise . 

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?:  depends , most likely really stop trying or let it sink . I’m not much of a person who would pressure for ideas when they don’t even come naturally for me in these kind of situations . 

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?:  First of all , ask what they particularly want and if they read the bio . and of course , have their bio as well ( if oc or any relevant hc on vague canons ) . I am honestly a bit shy on the input but if I found a ground to start letting my imagination loose ( like , something in common between characters or something that clicks well with my muse ) I can suggest several things . but in any case , I’m pretty passive and it’s a lot of gives and takes . 

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: depends on the thread , the time and the interest . things that go downtown in the excitement scale are :/  and I can’t blame anyone for dropping a thread . not all the time you will have muse for them , tho , if it was a relevant thread I would ask at least . - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?:  pretty much free to tell me or not . I’m no one to judge.

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?:  losing muse , interest , time ... pretty much the same . feeling like my muse is going too OOC for the sake of the other muse or smth .  - Will you tell your partner?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you?   YES / NO. - And why?:  I am very old school and having some OOC interaction to at least know how things are going , it’s as much as I can ask here .  - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?:  I mean , I should . it can turn me off a bit but it’s just natural ? there’s no way something can be perfect or be of someone’s taste . plus I am not that smart to be fully aware of all the things around the motif and IRL information I use on my muse . I’m no book , buddy. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way?  YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?:  development , exploring the muse , seeing what works and doesn’t work . often new blogs for me are basically prototypes , they are and will  most likely have minor or major modifications as my imagination starts working and getting excited . besides , in the basics , you can hardly manage to cover all ( if anything ) of how one’s muse would react to X situation .

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios:  a lot of quincy lore , come up with more personal connections with other quincies , fully develop a backstory and a post war scenario . cultural exploration  --- relationships of all kinds . 

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore:  pretty much I am fine with anything as long as we don’t cross the gross line . but I’m not afraid of the dark .

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: absurdly basic and with no context given . not even have an idea of what is the deal between muses . I can squeeze my brain but there is as much as i can do with little information .

What type of characters catch your interest the most?:  quirky ones , conflictive ones , most likely muses with specific motifs that spark my interest -- deepness . Aesthetically interesting ones . but overall , those who have out of the normal personalities . 

What type of characters catch your interest the least?:  personalities that doesn’t work or do not harmonize with the context of their characters . that’s all I can say .

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?:  I am.... creative ? gdi I did this meme already but it’s hard to reply these two ones. I am easily excitable . if we end up in a ship , expect me to be pampering af . I really enjoy the exploration of relations between people , emotions and psychological stuff tied around it . I do like casual and also very deep things . I’m not afraid of dealing with heavy topics . I like horror ???? also I am very into the secondary character role , as in : my muse is here to help your muse to grow or insight . that stuff . not much of a protagonist role in RPs. 

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: I’m .... very.... sporadic . My mood is annoying esp when I’m “new” blog around kind of thing . I’m shy , even if I don’t seem so --- I get pretty anxious over details . I am impatient --- with myself . I want to do so many things at the same time I end up overwhelmed . 

Do you rp smut?:  YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?:  YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?:  mmmmmmmmm , both. Depends on mood and context tbh . - Anything you would not want to rp there?:  nothing I can think from the top of my head.

Are ships important to you?:   YES / NO. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?:   YES / NO. Do you use read more?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?:  again , I’m big mood for interpersonal relationships ( romantic or not ) , the pros and cos of certain traits , ideology clash , personality clash , anything that comes in a relation that could make it come and go .  - What is your smut tag?: unholy.

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: all are hella okay for me . pre- est is my jam bc jesus christ the awkward first encounters make me go blue screen .

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?:  the fact she is basically a “religious fanatic” , with a quirky personality and a questionable morality , considering she has an inner conflict between the wellness of her race and her loyalty towards yhwach . At least pre war . post war , she has a flipped personality were she is mostly bitter and more angsty but will go from fanatic to straight up hater . 

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?:   bland personalities ? not sure myself , Eden is pretty much ready for anything since her personality is pretty laid back . I guess I would say shinigamis in general --- since she basically is stuck inside Silbern . - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?:  Quincies , ofc . and people who are willing to put up with her crap .

- What interests your Muse(s) in general:  the prosperity of the quincy , doing a proper duty , order , tea , annoying the fuck out of people . being eerie ....  - What do they desire, is their goal?:  the ideal world as thought by Yhwach --- later on simply for her kind to survive after losing the war and being left to their luck . - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?:  mmm , appearance  and reactions to her witty or narcisistic comments .  - What do they value in a person?:    loyalty , uniqueness . - What themes do they like talking about?:  most likely about the order of the army , tea stuff , herself (?) , but she is also a lot for debates and insight . - Which themes bore them?:  rebellious , silly thoughts . justice related topics . anything that critics her loyalty/life style . 

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?:  the first war was enough ? most likely losing comrades --- yhwach sacrificing the quincy for power later on .  - What could possibly trigger them?:  the simple sight of anyone laying a finger of the quincy for being against their views .   - What could set them off, enrage them?:  nothing. she cannot literally , physically get angry or enraged . but if we are talking bitter , that would be completely post war and it’s just the mention of yhwach’s name or those who went to god’s palace with him .  - What could lead to an instant kill?:  invasion of silbern , chaos . 

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?:  chaos , rebels , shinigami , anyone against the quincy . - Is there someone /-thing they love?:   her race , her pride , herself .

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:  just .... come to her and say hi . she is literally wandering around silbern all the time ( quincy speaking tho ) . for others , eh ... good luck . and wait post war (?) - Where are they usually to find?:  Silbern ... then Siberia . 

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?:  She is no saint , clearly . She has a questionable sense of things like loyalty and preservation of her race . she is honestly all over the place

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by:  honestly stole from @skyvar​  Tagging:  no one in particular.

[merryfortune]

Day 3: Rebirth, New Beginnings

Compendium Game Route 2019 for @vrainsrarepairweeks

Ship: Aoi/Blue Angel

Rating: T

Word Count: 1,736

Tags: Post Canon, Canon Compliant, Selfcest, Out of Character, Fluff Tinged With Angst

  Aoi wrestled with her sheets as she came to in the morning. As she awoke, she got the feeling that she had woken up slightly earlier than usual on a Sunday morning, the one morning she could guarantee a sleep in, however, little as her brother liked to have her up well before her internal clock would have her up. But something else was off, aside from her circadian rhythms.

  The morning was warm but unusually so. It was still early spring, barely bordering on the middle of it ergo edging towards summer. Just two nights ago, it had been freezing, even in the morning and now, it was absurdly warm. Aoi rolled over and that little niggling feeling inside of her became a full-on sensation of something being certainly wrong. She tried to move but something go caught on the light pyjamas that she wore.

  It wasn’t her sheets. It wasn’t any of her pillows. It wasn’t the Evilswarm Mandragora that she still cuddled with all these years later, either. It was something else entirely. It was an arm.

  Aoi’s blood ran cold and colder still when the arm phased through her.

  She scrambled out of her bed, taking her comfy blanket and Mandragora doll with her. She held onto them, frantic, as she looked over her bed. She had company. Impossible company because not only did Aoi go to sleep last night alone, the person who had wound up in her bed was not someone who existed. Not like this anyway. All blue, wavy hair and wings on her back.

�� “What... is going on?” Aoi asked, voice hoarse. “Who are you?”

  Cutely, the not quite stranger in Aoi’s bed roused herself from sleep. She yawned kittenishly and pawed at her face before looking up at Aoi with adorably offended, ultramarine eyes. They watered and her lower lip quivered; even her detached, white wings which slowly unfurled and fluttered. As meticulous as her movements were, in creating the image of someone bubble-gum pop perfect, there was a veneer to her. Creases in her night gown which glitched in and out of existence, the way her hair cut through what should have been the flesh of her body.

  With a snap of her fingers, this person, this figment, this whatever she was, she prettied herself up as though through some technological magic. Her hair was split apart and yanked back and looped until it was in perfect heart shaped buns and then pulled into twin pigtails. She traded her satiny nightgown like look for something more preppy and suitable for the daytime; a sleeveless white blouse, blue tie, and a hoop skirt which shimmered at the fluffy hems as she moved over the bed. She knelt there, looking up at Aoi, slightly rejected but rather pleadingly.

  As much as Aoi wanted to deny what she was seeing before her eyes, it was undeniable. Blue Angel, her Blue Angel, had somehow come to life.

  “I’m you, silly.” She giggled and then put a perfectly manicured finger on her chin. “Hm, I guess not. After all, you’re you and I’m... not you? But I am you. I was you.” She hiccupped and her eyes watered.

  She looked pathetic but not in the way that Aoi remembered being pathetic when she was Blue Angel. Pathetic in a way which was real. All torn feathers and broken hearts, beaten into the dirt, screaming and ugly crying, put to sleep, and so on and so forth. This was something far more manufactured, but this Blue Angel lacked the mark of the manufactured. She lacked a cyan notch on her neck; not that Aoi, or her brother, for that matter, trusted SOLtiS bots enough after the debacle with Ai, to have one around which might somehow, miraculously, absorb the likeness and personality of her original Link VRAINS avatar.

  Aoi hesitantly returned to her bed. She placed her hand close to the one which was keeping Blue Angel propped up as she was. With a trembling heart, Aoi wiped tears from Blue Angel’s eyes. Her skin felt like cheap polyester from the sewing shops that Aoi had wandered in and out of a few times whilst at the mall. It wasn’t bad but it was a little disconcerting, but Blue Angel was comforted by the act, even if it was ultimately in vain as Aoi blankly poked at the edge of her eyes.

  “How are you real?”

  “Angel dust and other magic.”

  Aoi snickered. “That’s a drug.”

  “You know what I mean!” Blue Angel defended herself, her shoulders perking up as her cheeks turned red.

  “Magic, basically.”

  “Yeah...”

  An awkward pause lingered between them and Aoi’s lips felt dry. Blue Angel prettily, daintily, waited for something to be said; she didn’t seem to want to take the iniative, being girlishly evasive. Aoi swallowed a lump in her throat.

  “Can I ask you a question, Blue Angel?”

   “Of course.” Then, with a wink, Blue Angel added: “So long as it’s in reason, you know me. I like to keep things a secret. Identities, motivation, all my different tricks.”

  “Why are you here?” Aoi asked.

  Having met Aqua, having fought Ai, having participated in the Ignis Warfare, Aoi knew that there was a world of things so scientific that they became magic that she didn’t understand. She was modestly certain that the Blue Angel before her was some manifestation of that. Having lost to Bohman, having lost to Ai, Aoi was terrified that things would come in threes and the Blue Angel that she saw before her was an ill omen in white winged disguise.

  “Because I love you.” Blue Angel replied with a beam. “So where else would I be, of course, silly?”

  Aoi’s heart fluttered. Her ears pricked up. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  Blue Angel leaned in and their foreheads bumped together. Their noses brushed up against one another. Whatever it was which allowed Blue Angel to be in this world was soft. She placed a hand on the left side of Aoi’s face.

  “I truly, truly do. True as blue.”

  “I’m glad.” Aoi smiled a watery smile in reply.

  Blue Angel frowned. Pouted, really. “But you abandoned me.” Her voice became a high strung, high pitched whine. She flung her arms back and bear hugged Aoi, sobbing. “You abandoned me.”

  “I... did?” Aoi murmured.

  Clutching onto her, Blue Angel looked up from Aoi’s breast. “You did.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aoi murmured as she tentatively rubbed Blue Angel’s back, navigating her floating wings and emotions in general. “I didn’t mean to abandon you.”

  “I know.” Blue Angel’s fingers dug in, clutching onto fabric, pinching Aoi’s skin beneath. “I know. All girls grow up. You got what you wanted by taking new chances, getting involved with all sorts of horrid affairs, was it worth it?”

  “I think so.” Aoi mumbled.

  She wasn’t sure. She could look at parts of her life with conviction; her becoming Blue Angel, her becoming Blue Girl, her becoming Blue Maiden. But there were other parts of her life which made her feel helpless, hopeless. Not realising Playmaker and Soulburner had been sitting in the back row of her own classroom all this time; not winning when it truly counted. It was enfeebling. She couldn’t do anything when her brother had sunken into that comatose state; nothing except watch.

  Blue Angel snuggled against her. “I’m glad.” Aoi flinched. “No matter where you go or how you grow, I’ll always love you, Aoi. I have loved you most since you were a child and I will love you forevermore, my angelic promise to you.”

  Aoi blushed. Blue Angel’s words were dulcet and like much of her persona, theatrical but not insincere. Aoi’s heart pounded in her chest. Feeling emboldened by such soft touches and sweet words, she angled her head down towards Blue Angel and she understood; perhaps intuitively, perhaps because she was some entity so intimately intertwined unto Aoi as she was, but she knew. She took the silent permission and kissed Aoi’s lips.

  Blue Angel’s lips were such sweet serenity to kiss. Aoi felt all her doubts and helplessness which stirred in her chest quell as Blue Angel sighed into the kiss. It was slow and tender, making a melting moment out of the succulent fabric which Blue Angel existed beneath the veneer of; neither flesh nor silicon, like the faces of uncanny androids.

  And it was such bitterness to end that kiss. Blue Angel didn’t need to breathe but Aoi did. She had to break off such a lovely kiss after what had felt like an eternity. She reared back and there was a delightful blush in Blue Angel’s cheeks.

  “How was it?”

  “Amazing.” Aoi replied, breathless but evening out. “Its not conceited to say that, is it? You’re, like, a really good kisser.”

  Blue Angel giggled impishly and Aoi was hit from every angle regarding just what bliss that she had woken up this morning into. The sunlight from the early morning outside was gently warm. Somewhere, birds chirped to a more chipper tune than the general hustle and bustle of city life. It was nice. Contenting.

  Aoi took a small breath and continued to look over Blue Angel. She couldn’t help but drink in the sight of seeing her childish style brought to genuine life like this. It was both embarrassing and heart-warming. Though, it raised a few questions which made her stomach turn.

  Was this how she saw herself? Or was this how Blue Angel saw herself? Or, more concerningly, was this how her fans saw Blue Angel? The very one which was retired. Aoi shuddered as she overcomplicated this weirdly simple situation.

  Blue Angel was real. Real enough to be interacted with. And that seemed to be all there was too it. Well, maybe she wanted somewhere to stay. Aoi’s brow furrowed. Well, maybe she needed somewhere to stay. After all, it wouldn’t be good for someone like Blue Angel, whatever she was, to be walking around. No matter, Aoi was quite certain that she wanted Blue Angel all to herself. She was still a selfish child like that, no matter how grown up she had become since her creation.

  For now, she would merely incite a few more kisses, a few more exchanges of sweet words. Anything else, anything practical-minded could come later. All Aoi wanted was to indulge herself and, well, herself.