#but its not like it didn't hurt her. even then she tried.

[cloudzoro]

Kink Discovery 3 | One Piece ♡

This is part three, part one is here and part two is here

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individual reaction/headcanon scenarios on kink discovery with op characters!

one piece masterlist

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

genre: smut (minors dni)

characters: mihawk, perona, reiju, shanks, smoker

cw: fem!reader, unprotected sex, all other warning are kinks which are outlined in the post already

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Mihawk - Cockwarming

It was your idea. A stupid idea. You didn't think Mihawk would take you seriously when you issued him a challenge. You had asked him to a competition of resolve. You're sat on his cock, and whoever gives in first loses. You may have underestimated your husband's competitiveness and self-restraint.

Your husband takes the opportunity to admire you perched on his lap, completely undressed. He's more than aware of the way your pussy is pulsing around his cock, you're desperate for him to move, but he won't. He won't give in; he's having far too much fun observing your reactions. You're practically shaking above him, your lip caught between your teeth as you try your best to stop your face from expressing your true feelings.

“You can't hide from me, Darling,” he says, reaching up to pull your lip from your teeth before you bite it off. His stare is intense, as always, as he gazes into your eyes. “I quite like this game you've come up with. I get to watch your beautiful eyes fill with desperation.”

✩♬ ₊˚.☁️⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Perona - Bondage

Perona has always been a little bit of a freak and has always encouraged you to explore your kinks with her.

When you hand her a rope and a book on shibari and other types of bondage, she's not sure what to think. When she next gets you alone, she delicately ties your wrists to your ankles and turns you over onto our back. She holds a vibrator to your clit as she kisses up and down your legs, outlining the rope with lipstick. Your restraints block every twitch of pleasure, and there's nothing to hold onto as the vibrations get more intense.

Perona watches, intrigued and impossibly wet, as you're forced to feel the full intensity of the pleasure without anything to ground you. Your arms twitch and move, your moans fill the castle walls, and your legs attempt to clamp shut around her hand. She is mesmerised by your body. She never expected to enjoy seeing you helpless like this, but there's something about the way you writhe in pleasure that has her feeling like a monster leaning in to catch its prey.

✩♬ ₊˚.☁️⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Reiju - Face Sitting

Reiju loves eating pussy; it's her favourite meal of the day. She's always wanted to try face-sitting, but you've been too nervous. You're always fretting about hurting her or just not making her feel good. Though she's been very clear that eating out is not a selfless act on her part, she derives almost as much pleasure from it as you do.

It takes a lot of sweet talk and irresistible touches, but she finally reassures you that it's going to be fine, and you agree. As soon as your pussy makes contact with her face and she gets a taste of you on her tongue, it's over for her. She is addicted, and she doesn't want to give oral any other way. Her firm grip makes it so you don't even have the option to hover. She's not satisfied until she has the steady weight of your body on top of her.

Her tongue laps at your walls as your clit bumps her nose. adding to the stimulation. You couldn't get any closer to her if you tried. She can't get enough of your taste. She is more than happy to let your thighs squish her as she gets her fill.

✩♬ ₊˚.☁️⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Shanks - Breeding

Shanks already had a kid before dating you. He never really thought much about having another one. It had never crossed his mind that he could have one with you. Your relationship was perfect as it was. He never thought about any possible changes.

That is until one day when you bring up the idea of a mini-you running around. It's like a switch flips in his brain, and it's all he can focus on. He pushes your legs up to your chest, holding you in place as he bullies his cock into you. He's dead set on filling you up as much as possible. You already have one fat load inside you and dribbling from your hole.

“You can take another load, can't you, baby?” he says, adjusting himself above you so he can hit a better angle. “gotta make sure it sticks”, He growls, burying his head in your neck as he cums for a second time. He whispers absolute filth in your ear as he empties himself inside you.

Shanks leaves zero possibility that his cum hasn't taken. He can practically smell that it's going to work and it makes him feel feral. He needs to fuck you raw as much as possible until you get a positive result from a doctor.

✩♬ ₊˚.☁️⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Smoker - Marking

You're such a pretty girl. Smoker insists that every guy who so much as glances at you is thinking about railing you six ways to Sunday, and it disgusts him. His irrational jealousy is calling, screaming, for him to do something that lets all these low lives know you're taken. Let them know he's wrapped around your finger and there's no room for anyone else.

After a long, hard day at work, Smoker likes to unwind by fucking your brains out. He pins you down, kisses every inch of skin he can possibly kiss while he stretches you out on his cock. His scent is all over you; trails of saliva glisten on your skin, but it's not enough. He needs something that won't wash away in the shower, something more permanent. That's when he feels the urge clawing at his teeth.

He leans forward, clamping his teeth over your shoulder. His cock twitches at the way you moan for him. He sucks your skin into his mouth, leaving a mark on your skin as a warning to anyone who may see it. He continues, leaving hickies and indents of his teeth in a pattern that makes it clear you are seen to. Seeing you bearing his marks makes him cum embarrassingly fast. Though when he's done, he stays sheathed inside you so he can admire his work before he shows it off to the rest of the world.

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i hope you enjoyed reading! so sorry for my inactivity recently :(

tag list: @bloodfixnd @sexysapphicshopowner @beachaddict48 @lem-hhn

[xxchumanixx]

Hiii! If its not much trouble could I request a tim Bradford and reader fic where she's really shy and sensitive, but still diligent at work and his rookie? He usually had a soft spot for her bcs he has a crush on her but she messes up a case and gets yell at by him?? Calls her a crybaby and all?? But later he comforts her and confesses? Maybe she thinks he likes lucy up until that point?? Just a lot of angst filled with pining and fluff! Thanks sm and I love your workk💕

Headrush

Tim Bradford x fem!reader

Warnings/Tags: language! (Shut up, Steve), fluff, hurt, angst

Word count: 2.523

Authors note: Oh my god, it's been so long, I'm so sorry! Thank you a lot for your request! I really liked the idea and I hope you'll like how I wrote it.

Lots of love! ❤️

Please, as always

Enjoy!

"Shit, shit, shit!" you cursed under your breath, biting your lip as your fingers anxiously fiddled with the belt on your hips.

This was not how this case was supposed to go.

Not at all.

It was like a damn domino effect - one thing went down the hill, and so did the rest one after another.

A whole fucking shitshow.

That your suspect was lying dead on the street was just the cherry on top.

He had tried to run from you, not watching where he went. You tried to warn him, yelled that he should watch out, when a car hit him, and sent him flying over the street.

Tim stood beside you, eyes wide and mouth agape, not really believing what he saw. He wasn't sure whether to yell at you, comfort you, or just get back in the car.

He gritted his teeth, hands balling into fists. He usually was softer with you, than he was with other rookies he had.

You just didn't know that he harbored feelings for you that went far beyond being your TO.

A conflicting thing, really.

"You-" he started, cutting himself off, eyes flying over the scene. The dead man on the floor, the shocked civilians all around you.

The poor woman that drove the car that hit the man.

The ambulance covered the man with a sheet, calling the coroner.

That was what snapped him.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Tim spoke up, rasing his voice as he looked down at you. "What the hell did you think?" You flinched at his tone, some of your usual shyness and sensitivity shining through.

Tim bit his cheek, so hard he almost drew blood.

He felt bad, sorry even.

To yell at you was one of the things he wanted the least, but he had no other choice if he wanted you to be successful.

At least, that's what he told himself.

"Sir, I-" you wanted to defend yourself, but he didn't let you. Once he was in that stage of rage, it was hard to see an escape through the fog.

"No, of course you did not!" he went on, the look on his face both terrifying and breaking you.

To ever think you'd stand a chance with the man yelling down at you seemed like the stupidest thing in the world suddenly.

"How could you let him get this far?" he continued to rage, seemingly not caring about the people around you that started to watch the commotion. "You should have stopped him!"

You swallowed, a bitter pill you'd forced upon yourself by letting the suspect get this far. That you'd fallen pretty badly along the way, most likely spraining your ankle, wasn't important anymore.

Who knew if he'd even seen it?

"I- I'm sorry." you breathed out, doing your best not to lose your face in front of him. The day had started bad, and it got worse the longer it went on. "I shouldn't have let him get this far."

Tim scoffed, hands fisting his belt as he looked around you. "I shouldn't have let you handle this on your own." he spoke, voice a mix of regret and spite. "I should have known better."

His words hit you like a punch to the gut.

You knew you were ready, and damn he knew it, too. Mistakes were normal, no matter how long you were doing the job already. But with your last week as a rookie rolling around, he pushed you more and more beyond your limits.

You felt tears burn in your eyes, the ugly tugging sensation in your jaw when you tried your very best to hold them back.

But Tim had already seen them.

His head tilted in disbelief, eyes widening before they narrowed.

Not a good sign.

"Are you gonna cry?" he asked, voice full of disbelief. "Are you kidding me? What are you? A fucking crybaby?"

Told you so.

You cleared your throat, cheeks burning in shame.

"No, no, of course not." you mumbled, trying to steady your voice. Tim tilted his head more, sending you a look that told you to repeat yourself. "No, I'm not crying." you repeated louder, looking up at him.

To say his behavior hurt was an understatement.

"Get in the car." he hissed, motioning at the shop. You nodded, doing as he told you without protesting.

It wouldn't have done you any good, anyway.

Moral of the story suddenly played in your head, and you couldn't help but think how right Ashe was, as you climbed into the passengers seat.

You had learned a lot about Tim the last year, yet he surprised you with how cold and harsh he was right now.

You should have never let your stupid crush get out of hand like this. Maybe to be hurt like this, to be talked down by him like that - maybe that was your moral of the story.

Like they said: Never fuck the company.

Not that you and Tim had gotten physically close somehow, but that didn't stop your mind from imagining sometimes.

You just were glad you experienced him like this before anything could have happened.

Not that you had much faith in that, anyway.

____

You let out a sigh, as you finally made your way out of the station.

It had been a long day, maybe the longest of your life. After driving back you had to wait before being questioned about the incident. It went on for nearly two hours, in which they decided you weren't responsible for the suspects death.

Yes, he had run from you, but it was his own decision, and you had tried to warn him.

You body-cam proofed it.

You hadn't seen Tim since you'd gotten out of the shop, silently thankful for it.

You didn't know if you'd been able to endure another round of his scolding today without actually breaking down.

Seeing Lucy though, only pressed on your sore nerves more. Yes, you liked her as a friend, but the thought that Tim seemed head over heels for her warred with that.

Only a fool wouldn't see.

The cold night air hit your skin, effectively cooling it down and clearing your head a little. You hoped to get home and fall in bed, only waking up again when you would have forgotten this day.

But someone seemed to have other plans.

"Y/N, wait!" he called out after you, and you only then noticed that his car was still in the almost empty parking lot.

You debated whether to ignore him, act like you didn't hear, but your consciousness said otherwise. You turned around as he stopped in front of you, silently cursing yourself for being such a good person.

He seemed at a loss for words for a moment, lips parted, like he didn't expect you to actually wait. "Listen," he then started, brows furrowing slightly as his gaze drifted away for a brief second. "I didn't mean to be so harsh on you back there."

You frowned, blinking a few times in confusion. Was he a-

"I'm sorry."

You didn't know what to say, now at a loss for words yourself. "I- i'ts okay." you then said after finding your voice, biting your cheek. "You lectured me, and it's not like it wasn't justified, sir."

He gritted his teeth, you could see even in the dim streetlight.

"No, that was too harsh." he gave back, shaking his head, frown deepened. "It wasn't your fault he was hit by the car. You tried to warn him and he didn't listen."

You pushed your bottom lip forward, not sure where his sudden change in mood came from. "Look, sir-" you started, but he cut you off. "Stop that." he demanded, the frown on his face bordering on angry now.

Your lips parted in confusion, not sure what you did wrong now.

"Stop calling me sir." he said. "We both know that's needless. It's not like- I mean, you're one week away from becoming a p2. We both know you'll make it with flying colors. Call me Tim."

He was selfish, he knew it.

But if it meant he'd hear his name from your mouth even once, he'd do anything. He didn't know yet if you'd choose to stay after graduation, and he'd have to take what he got.

He was in way too deep.

You swallowed before you nodded, gaze meeting the ground. Your teeth maltreated your cheek, not sure how to react.

"I've never- I've never seen a dead person like this before." you suddenly spoke, looking back up at him. "I didn't know where my head was, and you yelled at me. I was overwhelmed."

It just bubbled out of you. Maybe the dim lighting made you bolder.

"That's not me." you continued, shaking your head. "I- I'm tidily, I always make sure to give my best, it just-" Without you noticing, tears formed in the corners of your eyes, and you gasped for air.

Tim's own eyes widened, as he realized you were about to panic.

He closed the distance, wrapping his arms around you.

It was pure instinct, every nerve in him telling him to hug you, to comfort you.

To not make him see you cry.

He couldn't.

"It's okay." he spoke softly, as your fingers fisted the material of his jacket. "It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry for yelling at you."

You couldn't help the tears from flowing, not when he held you like this, doing his best to make you feel better.

"I should have known." you sobbed, pushing the shame for crying onto his jacket aside for now. "I wasn't ready."

He shooed you, one hand carding through your hair.

He knew if someone saw you two, this would have ended badly.

But he couldn't bring himself to care.

"You are ready." he gave back. "More than ready. I've seen you out there, you always have yourself under control. You're diligent, something that not every rookie is. You may be shy, and maybe a bit sensitive, but that's something good. You know how to talk to people, you understand them. And I know this wasn't your fault. You did your absolute best, and that's exactly what I told them back there."

You swallowed, cheeks heating up at his words.

You didn't expect him to be so open and soft with you.

"You- you really think that?" you asked, sniffing as the tears slowly subsided. He chuckled softly. "God, you have no clue." he mumbled, gaze flitting over the dark parking lot.

You frowned, not sure what he meant. But before you could have asked, he continued on his own.

"I'm not good at this emotional stuff." he said with a huff. "But you are. And I'm grateful for it, I really am, because I learned to get better at it, because of you. And I'm supposed to be the TO here, not you."

You chuckled, not having expected him to learn something from you whilst training you.

"You should talk to Lucy, then." you suggested, the thought jabbing at your heart. But if he wanted her, he'd be prepared for the emotional talk now, then.

Tim frowned, looking down at you with confusion. He gently pushed you away enough to look in your eyes.

"What do you mean?" he wanted to know, trying to make out what you were telling him. Your cheeks heated up, but you knew there was no turning back now.

Might as well reap what you've sown by digging into his personal life.

"I mean that you can tell her how you feel if you're better at emotional stuff now." you explained, doing your best to look encouraging. He scoffed a laugh, nose crinkling slightly. "Wait, you think I-" he started, but cut himself off with another laugh.

You frowned, suddenly feeling uncertain. "Yes, I mean-" you wanted to explain yourself, but he cut you off, hands on your arms as he leaned a bit down to look into your eyes. "No." he said firmly, a grin on his lips. "I'm not in love with Lucy."

The thought almost seemed absurd to him.

Why would he want Lucy when you were here, standing right in front of him?

Your frown deepened, thoughts running a million miles a minute. "Wait, you're not?" you asked, voice carrying a hint of disbelief and maybe relief. He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. "No." he confirmed. "I'm not."

Silence hung between you like a heavy fog, only broken by a huff leaving your lips. "Well, I'm not as good at reading people as I thought I am." you mumbled, biting your cheek.

He shrugged as if to say I noticed. "If you were you would have known I don't want Lucy." he said, empathizing her name.

You cocked a brow, looking up at him again. "What do you mean?"

He sent you a smile that sent your heart into a frenzy, and for a moment, you thought you'd have a headrush. "I mean," he began, eyes wandering over your face. "That I can't wait for you to be a p2."

You felt dumb.

"Tim-" you started, but cut yourself off, as realization suddenly hit you like a freight train. "Wait, what?"

He chuckled, a sound that seared its way into your brain the first time you'd heard it. "Yes." he confirmed. "I don't want Lucy, because I already want you, Y/N."

It felt like the night sky had decided to let all it's lucky stars rain down on you at once.

A mix of emotions rushed through you, and you felt like you'd actually have a headrush.

"What- How?" you stammered, words escaping your brain. "I- I mean, why me? Why not her?"

Tim cocked a brow at your words. He knew you'd say something like that, a clear sign of how well he knew you by now. "Because you're you." he said. "Because you care. You're smart, funny, cute. You are a good cop, and I couldn't ask for more in a person than you already are. I don't want Lucy, because I'm not interested in her the way that I'm interested in you."

You inhaled shakily, his words like a balm to your wounded heart.

"And if you'd let me, I'd like to take you out once you're officially a p2." he added with hope shining in his bright eyes.

A smile spread your lips at his words. "I'd love to go out with you, Tim." you gave back, causing his own smile to grow.

His eyes fell to the smile on your lips, and suddenly he cared even less about the open space of the parking lot.

"Can I kiss you?" he wanted to know, eyes finding their way back to yours.

Your smile widened, and you nodded. "You can."

It was delicate the way he pressed his lips to yours, like petals of a flower. One hand snaked its way into your hair, cupping the back of your head to pull you closer. Your own hands gripped his jacket, anchoring you.

It was all you could have wished for.

And suddenly, the headrush wasn't so unpleasant anymore.

Tag List:

@newobsessionweekly @laheysfilm @dhundhchrih @augustvandyne @rookietrek @nachofriess @dtftheavengers @wonderland2425 @freyathehuntress @skywalker0809

[listofwhyyouloveher]

I BEG, the gang with a crush in roller derby? Like crush carries skates around all the time, crush always has bruises on their legs, crush wins almost every match and goes bummed out when they don't. Just some derby stuff!!

Summary: The Outsiders x Roller Derby! Reader Warnings: none Authors Note: Is this my sign to get into roller derby PONYBOY has no clue what roller derby is. He didn't even know you did a sport until a few months into knowing you. He'd always notice the bruises and bandages on your legs and once he asked he was even more confused. You have to explain to him what roller derby is, basically step by step. He's always a little worried for you, asking you to wear kneepads and other sorts of protective gear when you go to play a match. He'll always treat you to ice cream after you win too! JOHNNY knows what roller derby is because every night a couple of girls skate past his house and when he was young he used to watch them go by. He think's its an admirable sport to get into, considering how bruised and battered you can get. He doesn't really like going to your matches because something about floor burns and seeing you get hurt just twists his stomach. Nevertheless, he'll wait outside for you, hugging you even if you didn't win. He will probably never try rollerblading with you, but maybe skateboarding if you ask nicely. SODAPOP actually used to watch rollerderby. It was always when he was surfing channels and drunk off of a couple of beers, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. He loves watching your games and get really rowdy at them. He's got so much spirit you'd think it was a superbowl game. Soda wants to try skates but he's not sure how he would fair, so he's fine just walking with you. He's definetly telling all the gang members that his girlfriend can solo all of their girlfriends because you're so incredibly strong to him. STEVE thinks rollerderby is the tuffest thing a girl can do. He's so into it and he thinks the bruises and bandages just make you look like a really cool greaser. He actually skateboards, so everytime you go out to skate he's coming with you. He thinks your games are the most entertaining things to watch and he's thinking about getting a rollerskate tattoo on his other arm. He knows your whole team by both their game name and by their real name and he fits in perfectly with them. TWO BIT thinks what you're doing is incredibly dangerous. He'll remind you every once and a while but he'll never act on it because he loves watching you skate and be happy just as much are you like skating. He wants you to teach his sister how to skate so she can get to school easier and he bought her and you a pair of matching hot pink ones after saving up enough money. He's actually a little intimidated by you because he thinks that you're actually stronger than him. DARRY hates you doing rollerderby. Not because he doesn't want you to be happy or anything, but he sees how much pain it can cause you and he gets frustrated that you're so carefree. He'll never try to pull you from the game though, and when you lose he'll list everything you did well even though it sort of hurt him to watch. He's always attending to your wounds and making sure you're not in more pain that you need to be. DALLAS thinks you're probably the tuffest chick in Tulsa. He watches you practice when he walks by and tries to stop in on some of your games. He's always there when you win, or he tries to get a recap of what happened. The rest of the gang just think he's being weird about a new sport but they're starting to get a clue that he likes you because all he talks about when he gets tipsy is how you massacred your competition in a game once. He'll NEVER pick up skating though. He thinks rollerskates are for girls, (he's fallen down when he was a kid and never got back on them).

[heartforbangtan]

The only exception | 2

Series Summary: What are the consequences of having your first kiss with your best friend?

Pairing: Park Jimin X Female Reader 

Genre:  Dancer AU, Friends with Benefits, Angst, Smut, Fluff, Romance, Mutual Pining 

Chapter Count: 2 /? (ongoing) 

Word count: 7+

Content Warnings: family issues

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This innocence is brilliant I hope that it will stay This moment is perfect  Innocence – Avril Lavigne 

Childhood

Busan, South Korea

The world seemed so big around you. Or maybe it was you who was too small for the world. On that warm, sunny summer day, in a little square near your house, playing on the toys, was when you met him for the first time.

Your mother was talking to another woman who also had her son playing in the park, late in the sunny afternoon. But you didn't know who her son was. You only knew that your mother was talking to someone she supposedly knew.

Sliding down the slide seemed so much fun and interesting that nothing seemed to take your attention away from that activity. Until you saw a boy about your size riding a bike. Your eyes lit up as you found a new amusement. You were quick to get off the slide's steps and head towards the boy with dark, straight hair.

He was walking around in small circles near the slide, also close to where your mother and the other woman were talking while watching the children. The boy noticed you approaching and stopped to stare at you.

“Can I ride too?”

He analyzed you for a few moments with a look that seemed unfriendly.

“Sure. Do you know how to ride?”

He looked at you with a mischievous expression, as if he had guessed that you didn't really know how to ride. The only attempts you had made with a bike were with training wheels. Without the training wheels, it wouldn't happen at all. But you felt embarrassed when you saw the boy's gaze and didn't want to admit that you still rode your bike with training wheels.

“Of course I know!”

You tried to sound as confident as possible, raising your nose. The boy laughed and got off his bike, handing it to you.

You swallowed and picked it up. You looked between the bike and the boy and then got on. You could feel it. You were going to fall. But the desire to ride his bike and prove to that boy that you could ride was bigger than you.

As soon as you started pedaling, the bike started to lose its balance a little, but you soon managed to keep it more or less straight. Feeling confident, you increased your pedaling speed and continued straight ahead. The idea was to make a circle like the boy did, but you knew that if you turned around you would definitely fall. So you decided to continue straight ahead.

He came running right behind you, trying to catch up. And then he started yelling for you to come back.

“Hey! Come back here!”

You knew you were going far in the park, but you didn't want to stop. It seemed like a dream that even though you were shaking a little, you were able to ride the bike without the training wheels.

But the moment lasted just a few seconds, you tried to dodge a toy and couldn't.

It all happened so fast. You thought you were going to be able to avoid it, but when you realized it, the bike had already hit the side of the toy and then flipped over with you on top of it. The fall wasn't very big, but it was enough to scare you so much that it made you cry. Your knee got hurt in the process and was now scraped and starting to bleed.

The situation that seemed to last minutes in your head was actually just a few seconds when you got on the bike, rode a few meters and immediately fell. The boy came running towards you, shouting something you couldn't understand. The shock of the fall left you too stunned to hear what was happening around you. 

“Oh my god! Did you hurt yourself?!”

You were already crying when he bent down next to you and saw your scraped knee. Within seconds your mother and the other woman who was with her came running to where you were.

“Honey, what happened?” your mother came towards you desperately and bent down.

“Jimin! What did you do to the girl?” the other woman who was with your mother seemed to reprimand the boy who you now knew was called Jimin.

“Mom, I didn't do anything, she fell on her own!”

As your mother helped you off the bike and stand up, you caught a glimpse of the woman scolding the boy. He was silent with a pout forming, clearly not accepting what she was saying. She turned to the two of you and apologized.

“I'm sorry about my son. He used to be reckless with his bike”

“No, please. Don't apologize. My daughter doesn't know how to ride a bike yet. She shouldn't have asked to ride, right?” your mother gave you a serious look and you cringed.

Next to the woman whose name you still didn't know, Jimin, who had previously been frowning, now wanted to laugh a little. And you soon realized why. Your mother had just told you that you didn't know how to ride a bike, revealing the lie you had told him minutes ago.

If your face wasn't already red from crying, it would be even redder from embarrassment. You hated the situation and swore you would never be friends with him in your entire life.

You two have become friends. You can't believe you've become friends with that kid who almost laughed at you after you fell off your bike.

Now, at 13 years old, you were in his room and Jimin was talking some nonsense about dancing.

“What? Dance?”

Jimin takes out his phone and starts searching for the song he wants to dance to.

“Yes. I need you to watch this and tell me what you think”

“Hmm, okay”

You settle down in bed and he leaves his cell phone on his desk, which is playing a random rap song that you've never heard in your life.

Jimin starts dancing in the middle of the room while you sit on his bed watching. You weren't expecting anything like that, but he kind of surprised you. His steps were still a little clumsy, but you could tell he was enjoying what he was doing.

The song ends and Jimin looks at you.

“So, what did you think?”

He's a little breathless from the movements. You analyze him and give a weak laugh, a little embarrassed.

You don't really know what to say. You didn't expect this all of a sudden, seeing Jimin dancing in front of you is something totally new and unexpected.

But you liked it.

“It looks good. You look cute”

He frowns.

“Cute? I don't want to look cute. I need to be cool!” he is outraged by your comment and you start to laugh. “Stop laughing at me”

“I'm not laughing at you. You know, it's okay to be cute”

“I don't want to be cute”

His sullen face gets cuter and cuter and you can't take it anymore. You laugh a little more and Jimin looks at you seriously but then starts laughing too.

“But I think you have potential. I liked your dancing”

He stops laughing and becomes more serious. His eyes light up when you say that.

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes. Maybe you can try some other dance styles”

Jimin sits next to you on the bed.

“But I don't know any other styles”

“I can help you look for it”

Your eyes meet and you can see that there is a feeling of gratitude in his gaze. Jimin is feeling embraced and you are internally happy about that. You really enjoyed his dance. And even more so because he shared something intimate with you and felt comfortable with it.

“And you? What do you like doing so much that you would show it to someone else?”

You lay in bed staring at the ceiling and start to think. Is there really something you like doing so much besides going out and having fun with Jimin?

“I don't know. Maybe draw? I really like to draw in my free time”

Jimin looks surprised. He lies down next to you and looks in the same direction as you on the ceiling. The sun's rays coming in through the window and reflecting on the ceiling where you're looking.

“Really? Why have you never shown me one of them?”

“I don't think they're good enough”

“I think everything you do is good enough to show”

You are surprised for a few seconds and then laugh.

“You're too kind to me.”

Maybe Jimin is one of the few people who support you no matter the situation. Jimin really is pure of heart and soul.

“What's the point of me being your friend and being mean to you?”

Now he really surprised you. You turn your face and look at him and Jimin looks at you too.

“What is it?”

“You said some pretty deep shit for a thirteen-year-old boy’

You laugh to break the mood and the two of you end up bursting out laughing. Jimin pushes you with his own shoulder.

“I know how to be serious too” he becomes more serious “And who taught you to speak like that?”

“Hmmmm, you?”

“That’s bullshit”

You both start laughing again.

Life was lighter and easier and you had no idea about it yet.

“I did some research on dance styles. Do you know contemporary dance?”

You kick a pebble that is in the path as the two of you walk towards school in the morning.

“No…”

“Sooo, I think it's pretty much your style. I can show you the videos I found”

Jimin makes some sounds of uncertainty. You start walking towards him, walking backwards and a little awkwardly.

“But what kind of music is used?”

“Any kind of music. You can even dance to the sound of a piano if you want”

Jimin looks surprised, his eyes glued to your feet that are taking uncertain steps backwards.

“I don't know…”

“Come on, Jimin! I can help you practice”

You are excited about the idea. The videos you saw got you excited and you can already imagine Jimin dancing like that.

A few more steps walking in this strange way and you trip on a piece of the sidewalk that is higher. You almost fall but Jimin is faster and grabs you by the arms before you fall on your butt.

“You need to be alive and well if you want to help me”

Jimin has a mischievous expression, already starting to laugh at you. You snort.

“Sure, dumbass”

You separate from him and go back to walking normally side by side.

“Why are you so interested in helping me?”

“Because I'm your friend?”

“Yeah, smart one. But why? “

You look at him and his expression looks kind of sad.

“Well, I like you.” His eyes widened a little, still looking at the floor where he was stepping, not having the courage to look at you. ”And I really liked the way you danced, I think you have potential. And the day you become a rich dancer, you will pay me stuff"

You finish speaking and push him with your shoulder. Jimin laughs through his nose, still without looking at you.

He can't understand how you can be so honest and not be ashamed.

“You're crazy.”

“Hey, I'm trying to help you.”

You pout and Jimin looks at you now. He pinches your nose tightly. “And I won’t pay you stuff. Get a job.”

“Ouch, that hurts”

You slap his hand hard and Jimin takes it away, pouting as if it really hurt. You start laughing again.

And from that day on, you started helping Jimin practice contemporary dance. You watched his steps and gave suggestions here and there. It wasn't like you were a teacher, but he trusted you to give him your opinion on what was good and what wasn't.

Plus, at school you two managed to find a dance group that Jimin could fit in. You couldn't be happier for him.

And although you enjoy drawing in your free time, maybe your new favorite hobby was watching Jimin dance.

At 13, you went to Jimin's first contemporary dance performance.

After a lot of practice, he finally got the chance to perform for everyone and show off his talent. You were amazed by his dancing and how he had evolved. He seemed to float on the stage. His movements didn't seem like they could be done by a human being. And yet, there he was, dancing. The way his body moved, his muscles, his facial expressions.

You watched the other dancers, but you couldn't feel the same way when you saw the way Jimin danced. They were good too, but you were mesmerized by the way Jimin moved.

It was incredible what he did and you were completely enchanted by his movements, following every step. You could only think that he was born for this. He really was born for this. He had found his purpose in life.

And maybe that was the first time you looked at Jimin and thought how beautiful he was, inside and out.

When the performance came to an end, you didn't spare him a round of applause. Jimin bowed a little embarrassedly, along with the other dancers, and soon everyone left.

“What did you think?” Jimin arrived slightly out of breath near where you were sitting, along with your parents and his parents.

He ignored everyone and just walked towards you.

“You were amazing!” you couldn't contain the smile on your face.

Jimin noticed this and smiled from ear to ear, his eyes disappearing as he did so.

You hugged each other tightly.

Soon after, Jimin spoke to his parents and hugged them too. They were both happy for him. Your parents also congratulated him. Everyone was so happy with the performance.

A few hours later, everyone was gathered at Jimin's house to have a celebratory dinner for his first performance.

At 14 you have your first trauma.

6 a.m. You stir in bed as you wake up to the sound of voices outside your room. Your door is ajar, leaving a crack just big enough for you to hear your parents talking outside.

Still groggy from sleep, you hear them talking.

“She can't do things right. I'm tired of talking”

You hear your mother's voice speaking but you can't understand the context of the conversation.

She keeps talking indignantly and you start to realize that the subject is you. She is pointing out things that she thinks you don't do right, such as: dressing well, taking care of yourself, studying more, tidying the house the way she likes when they were at work. 

And your father doesn't say much. He just agrees and your heart breaks a little.

It's not the first time your mother has made demands like this, and it won't be the last time. You just wanted to be defended for once.

You go back to bed. There's no point in listening to this conversation. Your feelings have been hurt enough for today.

You cling to the pillow, lying on your side, and feel the tears running down the corners of your eyes. You can't understand how your own parents could say something so cruel about their own daughter. It's immeasurable the pain you feel hearing them say these things as if it were nothing, at the breakfast table while you supposedly sleep in your room.

You don't feel as comfortable around them as you used to. And this house doesn't feel like home anymore.

Something inside you changed when you realized your mother's dissatisfaction with you. You couldn't help but think that she wasn't right.

You did everything to please her, down to the smallest detail. Still, she wasn't satisfied and demanded more from you.

You felt embarrassed because you didn't see any of your colleagues complaining about these kinds of problems at home. Everyone else's problems seemed more real than yours: parents who get divorced, parents who beat their children or their wives, absent parents…

It felt like your problem wasn't real and it was eating you up more and more.

You had to make a model of a human cell to hand in on Monday. It was Friday night and you and Jimin were starting to put things together to do the work.

“I thought about making everything with styrofoam, what do you think?” you suggest putting the materials on the kitchen table where you were going to work.

“Sounds good, but I have no idea how to do it” Jimin says, sitting down on the chair.

You show him how you planned to do it and Jimin agrees. Then you start working on the model.

As you did what needed to be done, you noticed that Jimin was looking too much at what you were doing. But you stayed quiet and decided not to comment, until he couldn't hold it in anymore and spoke.

“You're so good at this! I can't believe how you can do this” Jimin says sincerely.

He had such a genuine look on his face that it took you completely by surprise. You stared at him as he looked at your work with a smile. Your eyes filled with tears.

Maybe this was the first time someone recognized something you did as good?

Without even knowing it, he helped you feel a little better. Without even knowing it, he put a bandage on a wound that was bothering you. And that made you start to cry.

Jimin despaired when he saw you suddenly crying.

“Hey, hey. What happened? Did I say something wrong?” he came closer to you with a worried look.

You didn't even have the courage to open your mouth to explain. You threw your weight on top of him and hugged him with your arms around his neck. Jimin returned the hug, squeezing you tightly, trying to ease the pain he didn't know about.

His heart was tight. Jimin hated seeing you like this. He wished he could take away all the things that made you sad.

“You didn't say anything wrong” you say, still hugging him.

Jimin listened carefully to what you were saying, waiting for you to explain what was happening. But you didn't, and he didn't want to force you. But curiosity was almost killing him inside.

When you finally let go of him, your eyes were a little puffy from crying. His gaze was sad and you knew he was dying to know what had made you cry all of a sudden. But it was something that bothered you so much that you didn't have the courage to comment on it yet.

“I'm sorry about that”

You said a little softly, embarrassed after having burst into tears. And you even wet his shirt with your tears.

“You don't need to apologize for this, kitty. I'm just worried”

“Don't be. It's no big deal”

You giggled and wiped your wet face with your sleeves.

“I'll let it go today, but you need to tell me, okay?” Jimin said this looking into your eyes and you couldn't do anything but agree with him.

At 16 years old you crossed the barrier of friendship.

Adolescence arrived and with it the urge to feel pretty for boys. You were no different. Despite wanting to get the attention of a specific boy in your class, you also wanted Jimin's approval. You felt that if he liked it, then it was perfect. You couldn't really explain why, it was just that.

It was on one of those days that the subject of kissing came up in your conversation.

You were sitting in a distant hallway at school, enjoying your break away from everyone else. You almost always did this. You went somewhere farther away and played games, talked and laughed.

The break was almost over and you knew that next period you would have class with that boy you wanted to impress: Sungmin. So in the last few minutes left, you pull a lip gloss out of your backpack and grab your phone to look at it while applying it to your lips.

Jimin had been flipping through the manga you were reading for a few minutes, but stopped when he noticed what you were doing.

“Why are you putting this on? “ Jimin analyzes you while you are putting on lip gloss.

“Because boys like it.” You answer simply.

“I don't like this.” Jimin frowns, still looking at you.

It's a lie. He loves it when you put on lip gloss. But he hates the idea of ​​it being for another boy.

“That's why you don't have girls.” You mock, laughing.

Jimin frowns and crosses his arms.

“I can have any girl I want. “ He says seriously and you laugh even more.

“So why don't you have it? “ you turn to him and stare at him with your arms crossed too.

“Well... “ Jimin stares at you for a few seconds and loses his composure. He scratches his head and looks embarrassed. You start laughing at his face.

“Stop laughing.” He pushes you by the shoulder and starts laughing along with you. Jimin knew you weren't really making fun of him.

“I just don't have anyone who interests me.”

You look him in the eye, but you feel like what he says isn't quite true. You know why it isn't true. You caught him checking out another girl from your school, what was her name again? Minji? Yejin? You can't quite remember.

“And that girl from class B? Isn't her name Yejin? “ You ask.

“What’s about her?”

“Why don't you go out with her? I've seen how you look at her, I know you like her.”

You're testing to see if Jimin will admit that he likes someone. You want to know if he's interested in someone without asking him directly. Even though you're best friends, this kind of topic has never been brought up before.

“She's pretty…” but she's not prettier than you.

Jimin blushes slightly and doesn't finish his sentence. He hardly looks the same when he's in front of you. He doesn't act like this in front of other people.

Jimin tries to remember when he was staring at that other girl so much. He thinks you got it all wrong.

“So? Kiss her.” You encourage him, despite feeling a hint of jealousy deep down.

“I can't... “ he says softly

“Why not?”

“Well... “he scratches his head, clearly embarrassed “I've never kissed anyone and... I don't... I don't want to ruin everything with her”

More lies.

The part about him never having kissed anyone was true, but about the other girl, not so much. She was pretty, but she didn't catch his attention as much as you thought. In fact, he had never kissed anyone because he wanted to do it with you. But you didn't need to know that.

“What?!” You seemed too surprised by the information.

In your head, Jimin had already been with several girls. After all, he was full of charm and seemed to be flirting with everyone all the time. That information took you completely by surprise and unconsciously left you with a little hope. You had never kissed anyone either. You were afraid of doing everything wrong and the person started laughing at you. You wanted to try it with someone you were intimate with. Someone who was close, like Jimin was.

“What's with that reaction? You know I'm shy”

You break your thoughts when you hear him talking.

“No, you're not shy at all. You even perform on stage.”

You laugh through your nose because no, he can't be shy flirting with multiple girls like he does.

But thinking about it, he's shy around you, so maybe...

“One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“I think it has.”

“Well, but I've never kissed anyone.” He shrugs, admitting

“You should try. It's good.”

You try to encourage him, afraid that your happiness at knowing this will be too obvious.

“How do you know?” he raises an eyebrow. His heart beats wildly in his chest at the slightest image of you kissing another boy without him knowing. Because as far as he knows, you hadn't kissed anyone either.

“That's what people say “ you shrug and look away from him, which is too intense for you to handle.

You're afraid if you look at Jimin for too long, he'll somehow be able to read your mind and figure out what you're thinking.

“So you've never kissed anyone either”

“Well, duh”

You were starting to get nervous about this conversation. You put your lip gloss in your backpack and pretended to look at your phone. The silence was starting to bother you.

“We should go. Class is about to start.” you stand up and put your backpack on your shoulder.

“We should try.” Jimin says

Your eyes widen as you look at him. You can't believe what you just heard.

“ W-what did you just say?” your voice came out a little broken with shock.

“You know... we could try kissing to learn.” He says as if it were nothing, while putting the manga inside his backpack.

“What-why… why? 

You see him smirking, enjoying your nervousness. Your face heats up when you see the naughty expression on his face. That same flirtatious look he uses with some girls at school.

“We could learn, so we don't embarrass ourselves with the people we really want to kiss.” Jimin finishes closing his backpack and looks at you seriously.

And that was a bucket of cold water on you. So he didn't really want to kiss you, he just wanted to use you so he could learn and not embarrass himself in front of that girl.

Deep down you were hurt, but you would never admit it. And to be honest, you didn't really know why you felt so jealous of him. It wasn't like you liked him. Maybe it was the fear of losing him to someone else, since you didn't have any other friends as close as Jimin. Yes, maybe that was it.

“Right…”

You agreed even though you felt a little bitter inside.

When you turned your gaze to him, Jimin was already approaching you and your feet got tangled up trying to get away from him. You looked around, but there was no one around. But you despaired anyway.

“What? Now?” you move away covering your mouth, hitting your back with the wall behind you.

“Why not?”

“Because... Because I didn't brush my teeth.” You come up with the first excuse that comes to your head. You needed more time to process that.

He stops and thinks for a second. He hadn't brushed his teeth either. Jimin pulls away and blushes.

“When can we try then?” he asks, packing his backpack.

You stop and think.

“Today after class. “ You don't even have the courage to look him in the face.

“At my house or yours?”

“At my house.”

So you two agree to do it at your house after school. Your heart feels like it's going to jump out of your chest because you're so nervous. The rest of the classes were useless. You couldn't focus on anything other than thinking about what it would be like to kiss Park Jimin.

On the other side of the room Jimin was also so anxious that he couldn't think about anything but you.

You brushed your teeth. Twice. Just to be sure. And you put on some perfume for good measure. Oh, and you didn't put on lip gloss, since he said he didn't like it.

You looked at yourself in the mirror several times and wondered what movements you would make with your mouth. But every time you stopped to think, it made you more nervous and your hands sweaty.

He had arranged to come over to your house after lunch. It had been a few minutes since Jimin said he had left the house and he still hadn't given any sign of life. You were starting to think that maybe he had given up.

Until your doorbell rang.

You walked out nervously, walking awkwardly to the front door. You opened the door for him and Jimin gave you a nervous smile. You made room for him to enter and Jimin walked in. You could tell he was nervous too by the way he moved.

You both sit on the couch in the living room in silence. Never in so many years of friendship had you two been silent for so long as you were now.

“I don't know what to do. “ you say, suddenly. The nervousness is evident in your voice.

“Me neither.” Jimin says and looks at you.

You stare at each other for a few seconds.

“Is your mother home?” Jimin looks away briefly around the house.

“Not yet.”

Your mother used to get home before your father. His question made you more nervous, reminding you that maybe what you were doing was wrong.

Jimin looks at you, uncertain. You stare at him and a thousand thoughts run through your head. You had never stopped to think about him that way. But now you started thinking about how he would kiss you and what the texture of his lips would be like, you can't go back.

Jimin takes the first initiative.

“Can I...? “ Jimin says, getting closer.

“Yes…”

You both got close to each other. You closed your eyes and when your lips touched it was strange. It was new, but at the same time good. His lips were soft and warm and you tried to understand how a boy could have such a soft and inviting texture.

You spent a while just sealing your lips, testing the new idea of ​​kissing someone's mouth. You felt your hands sweating from nervousness and tried to wipe them on your pants.

Your position was strange. You were sitting side by side on the couch and neither of you were touching the other. You were tense and didn't know how to act. It was funny knowing that the same Jimin who joked about everything and flirted with several girls, could be like that too: shy and nervous.

You separated and opened your eyes. Your face must have been slightly red and his lower lip had a sheen of spit. You had already noticed that Jimin had beautiful lips, but nothing compared to now. You wanted to kiss his full lips more and feel his taste.

His eyes studied you for a few seconds, until he took the initiative.

Jimin's insecure hand gently held the back of your neck and brought your faces closer again. Your eyes closed automatically and that soft, pleasant sensation filled your lips again. You sighed slightly at the same time he pressed his lips against yours, and you could feel him smiling slightly.

This time Jimin was bolder and tried to use his tongue. His tongue tried to pass between your lips very slowly, but you got nervous and moved away from him.

“Are we going to use our tongue?” the question seemed too stupid after it left your mouth.

His cheeks were as red as yours must have been. Your thoughts were racing and you couldn't organize yourself into a concrete idea.

“If you want…” Jimin said uncertainty.

The way he said that made you want to bite him.

“Uh... Okay.”

Jimin leaned in again and kissed you. This time you let his tongue slip through. His tongue tasted like mint and you loved it. You opened your mouth wider for him and as you tried to fit in the kiss, your teeth chattered. It was nice to feel his breathing so close, trying to control yourself so as not to lose your breath.

It took you a few minutes to manage to fit in a kiss. As the tension passed, you both laughed together at the situation and your lack of experience. You separated a few times due to lack of air.

On the third attempt, you took a deep breath, looking at him. Jimin bit his lower lip, looking at you, and you felt your stomach tingle. Your lips met again, and this time the kiss was a little less harsh. You managed to caress each other's tongues more fluidly and without your teeth clashing so often.

Your legs were pressed together on the couch as you tried to get closer to each other. One of your hands was holding his arm, not sure what to do with your hands at that moment. His hand tightened around your waist, and you shivered all over.

You turned your faces to better fit the kiss, not letting go of each other for a second. His hand continued to tighten around your waist and your heart beat faster.

It felt so good to kiss him that you finally understood why your classmates were always talking about kissing boys. But it was still unbelievable to you how a boy could have such a soft mouth like Jimin's.

When his thumb reached the underside of your breast through your clothes, you heard a noise from the front door.

Your lips parted with a pop and his hand left you faster than you could feel it. He looked at you with wide eyes. “My mother is here.” You whispered, scared.

“Honey? Are you home?”

Your mother left the keys on the counter at the entrance and walked down the hallway that led to the living room. She looked at the two of you sitting on the couch, watching TV at a very low volume. You and Jimin smiled at her.

“Hi mom, welcome home.”

“Good afternoon, ma'am.” It was clear from afar that Jimin was nervous.

You both looked like you were up to something. You were holding the TV remote and sitting far away from him on the couch, with your legs close to your body. Jimin was sitting with a pillow on his lap and trying to hide his nervous expression.

“Jimin! I didn't know you were coming today. “ Your mother commented as she walked through the house to drop off her bag.

“Actually, I was just leaving, ma'am.”

“That's right, mom. He just came to borrow a notebook to copy the material.”

You two communicated with each other through your eyes while your mother disappeared into the kitchen. She continued talking about coffee and Jimin staying to eat, but you didn't pay attention, holding back a silent laugh.

And this was one of the times you were almost caught kissing in secret.

Even though you swore that everything would be normal, that nothing had changed between you, you couldn't help but feel embarrassed.

It was so inevitable that your friends started to notice that something was strange.

You always blushed when Jimin appeared out of nowhere and sat down with you. Or the looks you shared for a long time, only to look away and pretend nothing had happened.

“And then, she kissed me. And I was like, ‘Dude, what is this?’ She caught me completely off guard.” Taehyung said at lunch.

The slightest mention of a kiss made you and Jimin look at each other.

You were all sitting at a rectangular table in the school cafeteria. Jimin was sitting in front of you.

Your face heated up as he stared at you and you lowered your head.

“And then what? Cut the crap, Tae. You talk too much.” your friend, Yuna, says and everyone laughs.

“And that was it! What did you expect?” Taehyung looks at her mockingly.

“I don't know. Something more exciting?”

Yuna makes a bored face and everyone laughs even more.

“If you want something exciting, ask these two.” and he points at you. “They haven't stopped staring at each other the whole lunch.”

Hoseok turns to you and continues chewing as he speaks.

“What's wrong with you? You're acting weird.”

You pick at your food nervously.

“What? It's nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Jimin asks.

Hoseok raises an eyebrow and continues chewing.

“You two are acting suspiciously.” your friend says.

“We're not!”

You speak a little louder and everyone notices.

“See? Suspicious!”

And everyone starts laughing, agreeing.

Jimin can only stare at you. The tips of his ears are turning red.

“Stop doing that. It's nothing.” Jimin says. He's getting nervous too.

“How much do you bet that these two hooked up?” Taehyung says laughing as he eats and everyone starts talking at the same time at the table.

“What if we do?” Jimin says in a serious tone and you almost choke.

The table falls silent.

“Are you serious? “ Taehyung puts down his cutlery and stops giggling.

Everyone is waiting anxiously for an answer. You are shaking, not believing that Jimin is saying this.

The few seconds until Jimin's answer seemed like an eternity in your head, which was spinning with a thousand thoughts.

“Of course not. You've been reading too much fanfiction, Tae. Stop projecting your fantasies onto your friends.”

And everyone starts laughing again. You end up laughing too, but maybe it was out of nervousness.

02:22 AM

You couldn't sleep. Anxiety was taking over your body. You'd like to say it was just another one of those anxiety attacks where you don't know why it starts, but you knew why.

The constant cold war between your parents. The way they had been treating you over time and how it had changed – in a bad way.

You were feeling lost. You felt like you weren't being loved. You wanted to run away and hide from everyone, but there was only one person who made you rethink all of that: Jimin.

With cold tears streaming down your face, you searched for your phone under your pillow. Your eyes hurt from the brightness of the screen as you searched for Jimin's contact and called him. On the fourth ring, he answered with a voice hoarse from sleep.

“Hm, Y/n?”

“Jimin…” you sniffed, not on purpose, because your nose was starting to get stuffy. ”I'm not feeling so well…” you took a deep breath. “Can you come over?”

Your voice grew small as you asked him. You knew it was asking too much. But he lived next door to you, so maybe it wasn't asking too much.

You heard some things moving on the phone and then Jimin answered.

“I'm coming.”

A few minutes later, you were in your slippers, silently opening the door to a slightly disheveled Jimin wearing pants and a sweatshirt.

When you finished closing the door, Jimin pulled you into a hug, resting your head on his chest. You sniffed, because your tears were already starting to fall again. His scent was comforting and made you feel safe despite the sadness.

“It's okay. “ he said softly, just for you to hear.

His hand caressed your hair as you cried softly against his chest.

Jimin didn't question you why you were like this. And you knew he was the only person you could trust at that moment. You knew he wouldn't question you until he knew everything was okay. That was why whenever you needed him, you knew Jimin would know how to handle the situation. He knew you too well. Maybe he was the only person who really knew you, even compared to your parents.

The two of you walked to your room and lay down under the covers. Maybe it was strange to see two teenagers of the opposite sex, but you had known each other since you were little and sleeping over one day was nothing new.

Still, you felt a little nervous about letting a boy enter your room so easily. But you knew Jimin and how he was, you trusted him with everything you had. He was the only person who could make you feel good at that moment.

It was the beginning of winter, so the temperature was a little lower than normal, enough for you to want to snuggle under the covers.

You hugged each other head-on and your face was close to the crook of Jimin's neck. He had a scent all his own, which brought you comfort and made you relax. And at that moment, that was all you wanted to think about. And the caress Jimin was giving on your back.

Within a few minutes of this affection you could already feel your eyes getting heavy. Soon you were already sleeping, hugging the warmth of Jimin's body.

When the sound of your alarm clock woke you up, you could no longer feel Jimin's presence in your bed. You stretched and searched the bed for him, only to be dissatisfied knowing that he was no longer there. But you knew it was better that he had left before your parents woke up and wondered why Jimin was sleeping with you on a Wednesday. This could easily lead to hasty conclusions, when in reality the reason behind him sleeping with you on a weekday was much harsher.

Your eyes were still a little puffy from crying. You washed your face with cold water before taking a hot shower and getting into comfortable clothes for class.

While you were having breakfast, no one seemed to pay attention to your face, which looked a little downcast. Not that you wanted any questions at that time of the morning, but your parents' indifference seemed kind of obvious.

"You need to start thinking about your future. You need to do something to help." Your mother said in a harsh tone, before even saying good morning. In fact, she never said good morning.

Her words came in one direction and came out the other for you. Listening to her talk like that, it seemed like she hadn't said the same thing yesterday, and the day before that too, and every day of the week. She always said the same thing every day.

You nodded silently as you ate your egg bread, trying your best not to start an argument at this time of the morning, despite your growing anger. You knew deep down that you couldn't let your life revolve around this, but it ended up being inevitable.

Days like this, when you silently agreed, were when you were at your most emotionally exhausted. You just accepted reality and let it happen.

Most of the time, the situation was different. You responded in the same harsh tone and the argument started at 7 in the morning. But not today. Today you were tired of everything and preferred to stay quiet.

As soon as Jimin saw you, he went to meet you and put an arm around your shoulders as you walked.

“Hey kitty, how are you?”

Despite the somewhat provocative nickname, his tone of voice was one of genuine concern. You knew what he was talking about.

In other circumstances, you might have reacted to his affectionate nickname, perhaps even blushed a little. But today you were completely out of it and without any strength., not even that was enough to elicit a reaction from you. You were emotionally exhausted.

“I'm better.” you avoided his eyes.

You continued walking the short distance to school.

“Are you sure? “Jimin searched your face. He felt like you were hiding something from him.

Well, not exactly hiding. He saw the state you were in this morning.

“Uhuh”

Your voice came out unwillingly, as if you didn't even have the strength to do it. Jimin could tell what was happening and his thoughts were racing at a mile a minute, thinking about what he could do to make you feel better. To make that weight come off your shoulders, even if it was just a little.

When you arrived at school, you tried to change the mood by seeing all your friends together. You had a few laughs in the schoolyard before class started and somehow that made you forget your thoughts a little.

A/N: Yaaay one more chapter of The only exception. Sorry for the angst but.... yeap that's it hahahah. What do you think of the story so far? Please let me know in the comments or in the ask box.

As I said, I already have some chapters ready so I plan on posting once a week.

I hope you guys are enjoying it xoxo

© heartforbangtan 2024. All rights reserved.

[blookmallow]

so much blood on your hands you're gonna drown in it

[sukibenders]

Looking back at Girl Meets World, it will forever irritate me especially for how they handled/treated Angela. Oh this show really hated black women because how do you not only 1.) describe her, one of (correct me if I'm wrong) only few black and MAIN characters of the og show, as a "concept" 2.) have characters show obvious disgust at the small mention of her name 3.) depict her as a homewrecker for a new relationship that, really, shouldn't have ever happened 4.) have her old friends treat her like dirt and her old lover like she is the root of his problems, when there was nothing but positive love there 5.) reuse all the concepts from said previous love story just to elevate the new ship with a yte woman and 6.) compare her to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes that caused significant numbers of death, harm, misplacement, and trauma to people, largely of whom were black? Mind you, all these points I mentioned were toward the only main black character of the OG show before the spinoff, and the only, from what I can remember, black female character of the spinoff who didn't even stay long. Not even getting into the racist drama with some of the members on set, but you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that the way the show handled Angela, her story, and her relationship with the other characters + Shawn wasn't fucking disrespectful, you can't because I won't believe you.

[phantajam]

my hot take about descendants is that NONE of the core four were ready for a relationship until maybe like, the third movie (rant in tags)

[treesbian]

being mad at my parents for events long passed hours

[waheedawolf]

.

[coulsonlives]

.

[weezerlvr228]

It's giving the...main character syndrome. like who tf does she think she is??? Y/N???

NO OH MY GOSH ANON. LET ME TELL YOU. LET ME FRIGGIN TELL YOU.

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[a-b-riddle]

Part Six

Can't stop thinking about reader finally giving the boys a taste of their own medicine. And hurting my own feelings in the process of it all. I wanted to make this a baddie reader chapter, but its just a saddie reader chapter. I played Down Bad by T.S on repeat while writing this. Y'all need to thank @blueladys-world for being my ventor for this part.

None of them came the next day to pick up the box of everything you had collected. By everything, quite literally everything. Birthday cards and gifts. Keepsakes from your time together they had given you. Even going as far as returning lingerie they had given you. You didn't want any trace of them in your home anymore. You were gonna have to work hard in rebuilding it to be your safe space once again.

You were surprised that someone from the expo had DM'd you. Renée was an author who had tried to stop by to your stand, but got too caught up in the day. She was in London, working on her next series installment and wanted to pick your brain. Writer to writer.

The two of you agreed on a time. She had mentioned wanting to try this restaurant the last time she visited and you already knew you would be putting that meal on a credit card. It was a bit of splurge, but after the past week you deserved it. You could even wear that sexy black number that had been collecting dust in your closet.

By the time you were done getting ready and squeezing into your dress, you looked more ready for a date than dinner with a colleague.

A colleague. You had a colleague!!!

The knock on the door pulled you from your girlish glee. You didn't need to guess who it was. Your friends knew to text you before they came over and Renée had agreed just to meet you at the restaurant.

It was one of them.

You didn't even t bother looking through your peephole before you opened the door to find Johnny standing there with a floral arrangement of your favorite flowers.

Johnny began to speak, afraid you were going to shut him down immediately no less. But no words came out. His eyes traveled up and down your body, taking you in.

A vision.

You wanted to snap at him that your eyes weren't located on your hips. But damn if it didn’t feel empowering seeing Johnny’s gaze gloss over.

"Fuck me." He swore, gathering his bearings before realizing you were dressed. In a sexy black dress and heels and makeup and oh, fuck you were going out. "Where are you going?"

"First off, none of your business," you said holding a finger up. "And secondly, what are you doing here?"

"Listen," "Bon-"

"The box is right there." You said pointing to a large cardboard box on the floor. "That's everything."

"If you just let me make it-"

"Up to me?" You cut him off again. "I'm over it. Really."

"Just give me a chance."

"Either you haven't spoken to the other two to know I am well and truly done with this situationship, or you’re hoping some half-ass apology and flowers will let you get a last fuck in and the skedaddle. So hopefully if it was latter, hopefully the former answered that for ya.”

So if that's all you came here for, I've got to get going. My reservation is at seven and it's rude to keep a friend waiting."

"It's been a week and you're already going on a date?" He accused.

"Who said anything about a date?" You didn't outright say it wasn't. Where would be the fun in that? “It's just dinner with a colleague.” You didn’t want to lie. It wasn’t a date. But you didn’t need to say it was a woman. “Hardly a date.”

“Look at the sight of ye!" He said, taking the opportunity to take a quick look at how deliciously your ass filled that dress. “A fookin’ dinner with a colleague. Like one of us would show up to a briefing like that.” You opened your compact. Not needed in the age of cellphones but loving the feminine touch.

There was something so... seductive about using a compact mirror to apply your lipstick.

“Kyle does have the legs for this dress.” You said, applying that lipstick he loves. That same shade that looked beautiful on your lips. The same lipstick you would mark all over Johnny’s body. “Believe what you want. Not my problem anymore.”

You put your compact back in your purse along with the lipstick in case you needed to reapply it after dinner.

Johnny's eyes zeroed in on your lips before his eyes met yours. That's when you felt it again. That undeniably spark of chemistry that you had with him. With all of them. That feeling that sucked the very breath from your lungs and for a moment all you could see was the man in front of you.

"Bonnie," he said placing his hands on your neck. His thumbs stroking your cheeks softly. "Just one more chance." He begged, his voice breaking. "I'm a fucking git, but I won't let you go again. I won't leave." You knew that when it came to promises, Johnny had proven that even if he didn't mean to break them, he had forgotten he made them in the first place.

But in that moment you didn't care. Even after everything, Meredith was right. You had loved them. Everything else had ended so shitty. John had blamed you. Kyle had only shown up until it was too late. And Simon. The last time you would ever hear his voice was after he said such cruel things to you.

No.

If you were done with Johnny, you won't let the last time he fucked you being a quick, rough fuck doggystyle before leaving you naked and alone in your bed.

No. The last time with Johnny needed to be good. It might make it harder to finally leave, but you needed this. You needed to know that he could still make love to you and not just fuck you like an animal in heat.

"Johnny?" You asked. Your mouth dangerously close to his. "I don't want you to fuck me."

"I don't have to," he said, starting to take a step back to give you some space before your hands reached his. Holding him in place.

He can't let you go. You couldn't let him go. Not yet. Just one more. You needed just one more time to get him out of your system. The closure you needed.

"Make love to me." You begged, your eyes pleading. "I need to know that I wasn't just something you wanted to fuck." You don't move as his eyes search yours, looking for reassurance. When you nod, his mouth softly touches your own.

His hands travel along your body, but never fully leave you. Sliding your neck to your back. Pulling your body closer to his. A hand placed on your hip so tightly he's afraid you might disappear.

There's no rush, no haste in his touch. His mouth not eager to devour you.

He's slow. With his hands, his tongue. Even when he picks you up and walks to your bedroom with your legs around his waist.

He doesn't throw you on the bed.

Not this time.

He lays you down. His body laying on top of yours. His hand skimming along your bare thighs, but not daring to travel any higher.

But damn you needed him. You wanted love making, but if he didn't get inside you soon, you weren't sure you could let him go after this. You weren't sure you would be able to leave.

"Johnny," you whimpered, pulling away from his mouth. "Please." You took his hand, putting it between your thigh. Aching for any friction.

He obeyed without hesitation. If you told him to get on his bark, he would in that moment. Anything to make you happy. Anything to keep you.

"Got to get you out of this dress first." He resting on his knees before he began to slide the black satin from your thighs to your stomach. You maneuvered, helping him undress you leaving you in nothing.

"I thought you liked the dress." You couldn't help, but tease. Your hand finding its home on the back of his neck, pulling you to him once more.

In a tone lacking any note of humor and in all seriousness, he looked at you. Really looking at you. Taking in how your smile reached your beautiful eyes before he said, "I want you bare to me when I take you."

You felt your stomach flutter at his words before he began to take off his clothes.

He joined you again. His body relaxing when they got between your legs again. His mouth traveled from your exposed neck to your nipples. Sucking and flicking them with his tongue until your back arched. Pressing harder into his mouth.

Your hands tangled in his soft brown hair before you boldly guided him to your already dripping core. He slid down your body before his hands began to push your knees apart until you were fully expose to him.

With your knees bent, Johnny settled on his stomach, placing soft kisses on your soft inner thighs. God, did he love seeing you squirm. He smiled at your tortured expression before looking down at your sex. "There she is." He said before placing a kiss on your pussy.

It wasn't sloppy. He wasn't diving in and licking at your center like so many times before. He was kissing it just as tenderly as he kissed your mouth. Slowly building it deeper and deeper. Adding tongue. Breaking away to readjust his head.

The delicious ache between your thighs began to become to unbearable. "Need you inside me." You panted. "Johnny-"

"Shhh." He soothed. "Got to warm you up first , Bonnie." He said before slipping his finger inside of you. One was all it took before your head settled against the pillows again. When your body relaxed, he added another. He would need to add three to make sure you were good and ready.

His digits stroked that spongy spot inside of you that made your toes curl. "You're barely fitting around my fingers." Johnny was a good 6 inches in length, but the girth is what always did you in. It hurt to take anything past his head into your mouth. If you fucked him without any preparation, especially after a week of no sex, he would tear you into too.

His tongue caressed your clit, your eyes squeezing shut as you felt your first orgasm creeping up on you.

"Johnny." You moaned, your fingers running through his soft brown hair.

"Give it to me, beauty." He panted. "Come on my face. Squeeze my fingers, Lass." He begged before his mouth went back to you.

It was like lightning. Your body now sensitive after being forsaken for so long. Your vision blurred and before you could process it, Johnny was sitting on his haunches between your legs, stroking his cock.

You could only nod, dazed and barely keeping a grip onto the reality of what this was.

The end.

He leaned forward, his cock nestling against you. You knew this was going to be nothing compared to his fingers. "Tell me if I need to stop."

You smiled, mockingly. Reminding him, "Not our first time together, Johnny." just our last.

"You were wrapped tight around my fingers." He gave a half smile before kissing your forehead. The gesture like a knife twisting in your heart. "I just don't want to hurt you."

"I'm ready." You brought your legs around his waist again. Pulling him to you, your arms wrapping around his neck as your mouths meet.

He presses into you. The head of his cock sliding inside just one or two inches. You body contracting around him in a small spasm. He swallows your moan and lets you adjust. He pulls away before looking down where the two of you meet.

"I could die like this, Lass." He said, his breath coming out unsteady as he tries his best to control himself. So close to just burying himself inside of you to the fucking hilt. "Seeing you like this is this first thing I want to see when I make it to the other side." You let out a choked cry as he pushes deeper inside you. Another inch. And another. And another until you're taking all of him.

He slurs something that sound like "fuck", but you are in too much of a daze to care. You arch into him, trying to get closer.

His thrusts are slow and deep. His pubic bone brushing against your clit making you whine and squirm. Begging for more.

You're not sure how long he had fucked you like that.

You needed it to stop.

You couldn't handle it. The softness. His words.

I could die like this, Lass.

Your lip quivered as you told him you wanted to be on top. You needed a moment. A chance to create a bit of space before he shattered your world yet again.

He pulled out. His absence already making you ache for him again before he settled beside you.

You squatted above his cock. Your feet flat against the mattress as you grabbed his hardness and slipping it inside of you. The sound you let out was pornographic. A high pitched, soft moan slipping from your lips as he buried himself inside of you again.

You placed you hands on his chest. Using the leverage to ride him. Your arms serving as barrier for you to get your bearings.

You used his body just as he had used yours. Throwing your head back, you moved faster and faster. Readjusting so your hands went from his chest to his stomach, giving him a better view of your connecting bodies.

His hand slips between the two of you, thumb pressing against your clit, and you tighten even more around. A needy whimper coming out of your throat. The sound mixing in with the sounds of his labored breathing and slapping skin as he begins to fuck up into you.

Even though he had been doing all the work for the last several minutes, you felt the tension start to creep into your calf.

"Fuck fuck fuck." You screech, barely able to hold yourself up any longer. "Ow." You hissed as the cramp took hold.

"Leg cramp?" He asked, not even faltering in his thrusts. You pathetically nod before he takes it upon himself to flip you on your back again.

"I'm going to do this every chance I can." He promises, pressing a searing kiss onto your exposed neck. "Any chance you'll give me." You can't take it. His words, his mouth, his fucking cock. It's too much. "I'm going to show you how much I want you. How much I want to fucking worship ye. Do anything to make you feel good. Not going to leave you again like that, Bonnie."

You reach for him again, pull him into a searing kiss just to shut him up. You need him to shut up. You couldn't take his false promises. You wouldn't survive it. Couldn't.

"Shit." His thrusts quicken, his thumb returning to your swollen bud. Flicking it in a way he had crafted into an art. He buries his face into your neck and you know he's getting close.

You weren't too far behind.

He didn't want to come, not yet, but this was fully out of his control. It was pathetic. A week without sex and you had him nearly coming in the first ten minutes.

But that's what you want. To see him lost in the idea that you would stay.

"Johnny." You groan out. "Please. Cum inside me."

He draws fast, beautiful circles around your clit that immediately push you over the edge. You shut your eyes tight, squeezing him like a vice as you come in strong waves, continuing to push inside you.

in out in out in out.

Deliciously clenching around him tighter and tighter until he can't take it anymore.

"Fuck," he says again, and you see it in his face, and you see it in his face, the second it's all over for him. You want to sear the image in your head. Keep it there forever. Knowing you'll never see it again. The way those enchanting blue eyes squint nearly shut before closing in complete ecstacy.

His mouth would open. A moan caught in his throat that he isn't ready to let go.

His hand closes around your hip, holding you to him while he presses as far as he can go, and it's only then do you feel his cock twitch in quick, jerky movements. He moans out your name before taking your mouth into a searing kiss.

"I fucking love you." He says. "So fucking much."

He was still under the blanket when you returned from the bathroom. You picked up your clothes up from the floor. Looking at the clock realizing you had less than five minutes to get out the door before you would be late for dinner.

"What are you doing?" he asked. You couldn't look at him. Hearing the panic in his voice almost made you stop. Tell him it really was just dinner with a colleague. A woman. That you would be back. Beg him to wait until you came home.

"I can't cancel on the dinner." You said slipping your feet into your heels. "This was a mistake."

You weren't sure why you said it. You weren't sure if you were trying to convince him or yourself. If you wanted to hurt him or make him think you regretted it when you would truthfully do it again. You would do it again and again. You would never stop.

Like Johnny, you could have died in that moment, but for a completely different. Where he would be content, you would be saved from the pain. The pain currently coursing throughout your very soul.

"Lock the door behind you." You say as you practically sprint out the bedroom. Only slowing in your stride to snatch your purse off the kitchen counter before running out. The door slamming behind you.

The restaurant was nicer than you expected. The wine alone was the price of an entree. You didn't seem to be phased at all and were relieved when Renée insisted on picking up the bill.

Your dinner had been delicious and the conversation even better. Renée wrote fantasy romance and wanted to pick your brain about a Why Choose. You had nearly spent out the over priced wine you weren't even really enjoying. Oh the irony.

"It's like all the rage now, but it's hard to make more than one appealing as the love interest. You should have seen the Goodreads comments on my last book. So many people bitched about my FMC not ending up with a character who was quite literally her adopted brother."

"So," you took a breath trying to find the words. "I'm going to be honest. I only read your latest book and I loved Luka. But I can't compare him to other MMCs you've written about so I don't know if they are similar or different. But what I can say is that I'm seeing like this trend of MMCs where they are all this dark-haired, brooding or mysterious character who dislikes mostly everyone and is only soft for either a select few or only the FMC."

"I think if you are going to write a Why Choose you need to think of guys you wouldn't mind falling in love with." You couldn't help, but think of what drew you to your boys. "One could be the leader. Someone who isn't afraid to have his neck on the line. To make sure everyone else is taken care of and being strong enough to handle the stress of that. He would be big on words of affirmation. Lifting the FMC up. For me, it would be someone that I know will take care of business. He's confident in his decision. That confidence would extend to me." You clear your throat. "If I was the FMC, that is."

"Okay." She nodded, pulling out a pen and notepad. "You don't mind if I-"

"I don't write about polygamy." Crossed that bridge. Currently trying to burn it. "So feel free."

"Another could be the one who it's so easy to fall in love with their charm. The one who falls to his knees. Wanting to worship every inch of her. The one who makes her laugh. That one to make her forget about the sadness that creeps into her bones. The one to hold her whenever he could. He's about quality time and physical touch."

"So different love languages." She said, her pen quickly scribbling.

"Yeah." You said, leaning forward. "Then there is the gift giver." Your mind went to Gaz. Most of the gifts and trinkets in the box sitting by your door had came from him. He had gotten you new earbuds when yours broke. When you were being harassed at your gym, he had bought you and him a membership at a different one. "The one who would give her the world if she asked for it. If you're going with a high fantasy then maybe the one to take note of something at a market that the FMC had been eyeing and he bought it for her. Just someone who takes notice like that."

"So acts of service would fall with all of them then you think?"

No. Simon had been the one who probably spent the least amount of money on you. He didn't praise you like John. He didn't even try to attach himself at your hip like Johnny.

But if you needed something fixed, he would come fix it himself. He'd be damned letting a strange man into your apartment. And alone? Fucking forget about it. The one who hated any sort of cardio activity outside of fucking you, but didn't hesitate in attempting to keep up with you when you wanted to go on a run and get some fresh air. If you needed something done, he didn't pay someone else to do it. He did it. If you wanted to do something, he made it happen. He made you safe.

You couldn't bring yourself to say explain it. Your eyes begin to itch. Warning you to think of something else.

So instead you just told her yeah. That they would all commit acts of service. And even in your hypothetical explanation of characters that haven't even been written yet, Simon was still the ghost among them.

"Lucky fucking girl." Renée said setting down her pen.

"Yeah." You said, downing the rest of your wine.

You walked home. The cool crisp wind feeling like it was whipping your exposed skin. It was soothing as the ghost of Johnny's touch still seemed to burn you.

You had hoped that you would get some closure, but you just felt hollow. You came twice and still manage to leave unsatisfied. Johnny wasn't malicious... he was Johnny. He wasn't like the others. Simon would never apologize and John and Kyle wouldn't try to keep reaching out after you told them know once.

Johnny couldn't stand you being mad at him. He never could. He would beg and beg for your forgiveness. You didn't regret fucking him one last time. He needed to know that you were well and truly done. There was no going back from this.

"Hey, Love!" You were pulled from your thoughts at the sound of a voice coming from a source you couldn't see. You perked up, quickly scanning the dimly lit street before your eyes settled on a cluster of shadows just across the street. "Yeah." The slurring voice said again. "Talking to you gorgeous!"

You resumed your trek home. Now picking up your pace. "Don't be like that! Where ya off to?" The voice followed you. You kept your gaze straight. You were three minutes away. Three minutes and you would be at your building.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

"What's the rush?" Another voice joined the cacophony. "Just want to have a chat."

You turned. They were maybe twenty feet away. You kept your eyes glued to them as your started to make a run for it.

You had made it about ten feet before your body collided with someone. Firm hands gripped your upper arms, steading you as you threatened to fall back.

You sucked in a breath of air, ready to scream when you looked up. It was too dark to make out the man's facial features. He was tall. His head eclipsing the street lamp just behind him. You shook beneath his hands. The voices behind you now silent.

"Keep walking." You didn't need to see his face. You knew that deep timber voice anywhere. He released you from his grip before letting you pass him.

"Just wanted to have a chat." You heard one of them try to reason. "No harm done."

"No harm done yet." Was the last thing you heard Simon say before you broke out into a full fledged run.

[foxcassius]

just thought abt furuya sensei for a little too long. god she was infuriating.

[buckyalpine]

Imagine jealous!sharon want to get you out of the way so she can be with Bucky…

She hurts you (even it’s like a bruise) and Bucky begins to be so protective of you 🥺🥵

ABSOLUTELY.

I'm imaging this with a soft sweet reader and fuckboi Bucky. Hear me out, okay.

He's not looking for a relationship at all, finally feeling a sense of freedom after getting a bit of himself back. He's so flirty with everyone, so charming, he knows he can get whoever he wants.

He fucks.

A lot.

Sharon eats it up, loving the smirks he gives her, his playful baby blue eyes always sparkling. She loves the naughty way he bites his lip and don't even get her started on how gorgeous he is when he works out shirtless. His Brooklyn accent comes out when he calls her darlin' and it makes her weak in the knees.

There's just one issue.

The looks he gives Sharon aren't special. She's not the only one he calls darlin', even the old lady at the coffee shop shares the same pet name. Bucky can't help the little smirks he tosses around to others, flirty compliments naturally falling from his lips. He's a bit of a heart breaker but it's who he is.

That's just Bucky.

That's Bucky with everyone else.

Then there's Bucky with you.

The quite lab assistant who worked at the compound.

He didn't have it in him to playfully flirt with you when you asked about his day. He actually liked talking to you, finding any excuse under the sun to keep the conversation going, poking at the little nick knacks you have on your desk so he doesn't have to leave so quickly.

Sharon hates the way he looks at you. Whenever he's around you, he looks at you with puppy eyes as if he's wondering how someone so sweet could possibly exist. She catches onto the way he's not the same with you as he is with others. He's called everyone in passing darlin' with a drawl of his voice but you're his doll. He's never used that with anyone else. That's reserved just for you.

She can't stand it.

At first she tries to pick you apart in subtle ways' maybe you'd finally realize you had no business talking to someone like Bucky.

"You're so pretty even though you wear glasses"

"Don't worry, that dress would still look good on your body type, its meant to suit everyone"

"I wish I was as brave as you to wear that! I'd love to have that much confidence but I could never"

She smiled sweetly while you pulled your lab coat closer together, clutching it tightly in your hand. Your heart sank to your stomach. You'd worn one of your favorite dresses, one many others had always said you looked perfect in but some how Sharon made you doubt that, despite her sugary smile.

Then she took it a step further to make sure you were more isolated, insisting you'd be uninterested in plans when the team wanted to go out. Purposely giving you extra work when they had drinks together. Anything to keep you sad and holed away in your lab while she kept Bucky all to herself.

She'd do anything to get rid of you.

She was almost certain everything was going accordingly to plan, inching closer and closer to Bucky during a movie night until she was pressed against him, sharing his blanket. Not that Bucky noticed since he was more distracted over the fact that Sam was also squished against him on the other side of the small couch. Sam was also buried under the now too hot blanket, his deep snores irrupting the movie having fell asleep on Bucky's shoulder.

"Damn bird brain" Bucky huffed, ignoring the fact that he pushed Sharon off while reluctantly adjusting himself so Sam's head wouldn't slip, shaking his head when Sam grumbled, trying to snuggle into Bucky more.

"Bet you wish that was y/n, huh" Tony wiggled his eyebrows and much to Sharon's distain, Bucky blushed. Not did he deny it.

It didn't matter though. She'd find a way to get Bucky's attention, it wasn't like you were real competition anyways. She figured you'd have the sense to like someone better suited for you, someone in your league, definitely not the very handsome Sergeant.

That was until she found out you had a crush on the super soldier yourself. You'd let it slip out during a conversation with Nat, not realizing there was someone near the lab. Sharon didn't think you actually had a chance with Bucky but it didn't matter.

At this point she didn't care about what it took.

She was sick of the way Bucky was soft over you.

So she took a more direct approach.

"Y'know, I heard someone has a little crush on a certain super soldier" Sharon smirked, wandering to your table, tinkering with one of your tools while you looked at her like a deer caught in head lights.

How did she know?!"

"I-I don't-

"Oh please y/n, everyone knows" the blonde rolled her eyes at your gaping mouth before continuing, "I just thought I should let you know that he's not interested"

You felt like you had been punched in the stomach, the hurt expression on your face made her satisfied,.

"Oh" Was all you mustered out, embarrassed beyond belief while she shrugged. You blinked back tears while Sharon squeezed your shoulder out of faux concern, handing you a tissue.

"I'm so sorry, honestly I just thought you should know because he likes me. And I like him. So it would be best for you to move on, because were seeing each other" It didn't matter if it was a lie because she intended on making it real soon enough.

From that day, you avoided everyone in the compound like the plague, throwing yourself into work, feeling ridiculous for having even thought of Bucky that way. Of course he'd never go for someone like you, you should've known that from the start.

Sharon's plan was short lived after she overheard Bucky worriedly asking Tony about where you'd been all week since he hadn't seen you. After some endless teasing, Tony reassured him you were fine and just busy with lab work, not knowing the true reason as to why you'd overloaded yourself.

Sharon despised the pink that decorated Bucky's cheeks whenever someone said your name.

She hated that she'd seen him walking by the lab hallway in search of you.

She'd do anything to end all of this.

Including hurt you.

-

You made your way down to the gym hoping to sweat some of your unrequited feelings away, putting on your headphones before hopping on the treadmill. Sharon walked in moments later, blonde hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, her toned body on full display in nothing but a sports bra and some tiny shorts.

You felt even worse.

You tried to stay hidden, deciding 15 minutes would be enough, though your escape was cut short with Sharon caught your arm just as you were about to leave.

"How about we spar for a bit" She smiled sweetly, giggling at your confused expression. You'd never sparred in your life, in fact this was probably the third time you'd even used the gym the entire time you'd lived at the compound.

"Sharon, I-I don't think that's a good idea, I've never-

She cut you off, dragging you to the mat, practically shoving you to the middle with more force than necessary.

"It's fine! I mean, it's good for you to learn since you work here n'all C'mon, I'll help you and show you what to do" Before you could say anything, Sharon had flipped you onto the mat, twisting your arm behind your back without warning. You gasped in pain as she gripped harder, pulling further up your back until she heard your joints crack.

"Let-let go" You winced out, confused over what part of sparring this was, your body hitting the floor when she released her grip.

"Ops" Sharon pouted with faux innocence, taking a long sip from her water while you hissed in pain, seeing the formation of a bruise already forming on your arm.

"SHARON"

Sharon squeaked in surprised at the loud voice that boomed through the gym, bouncing off the walls. Her eyes shot up to see a very angry super solder making his way over to the mat, eyes darkening as they landed to your injured form on the ground.

"What the fuck did you do?!"

"Bucky, we were just-

"Don't" Bucky growled through gritted teeth, rushing over to your side, and slipping his arm around your waist.

"Angel, are you okay?" He cupped your cheek, helping you to your feet and taking your hand in his, examining it with the utmost care. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"M'all right" You nodded, your face heating up under his gaze, still a little shaken, your body trembling.

"How the fuck could you hurt her" Bucky spat, his metal hand clenched to his side, itching to punch Sharon in the jaw, having seen what she had just done but he didn't want to deal with the mess that would come afterwards. "The hell did you do that for"

"Excuse me? I was just showing her how to-"

Bucky's jaw clenched, instantly shutting her up. He refused to let go of you, keeping you firmly tucked into his side, growing unbelievably protective over you.

"Fine, go ahead, I'm sure she's different from all your other little side pieces" Sharon scoffed, smirking at the way your face fell. Bucky felt like he'd been hit in the chest; you were far more than any of his hook ups and he'd never considered treating you that way.

"You. Don't. Touch. Her" He glared her at before walking off with you. After the incident, Bucky insisted you go to the doctors to get checked over, waiting outside of the room like a kicked puppy. He couldn't help but feel guilty that all this had happened because of him. He also wondered that you thought.

Did you think he'd just use you for one night?

He would never.

He knew he wasn't into dating. He gave up on the dream of getting married, having kids, all that years ago. But that was before he met you. Ever since you'd thrown him a shy smile along with the softest hello Sergeant Barnes, Bucky had been a goner.

If his feelings were was bad before, it was even worse now.

You were told to ice your arm for the pain and swelling. Bucky had swept you away right to the kitchen, despite you telling him you'd be fine, plopping you onto the kitchen island wrapping an ice pack in a towel. He held it to your arm, frowning at the way you refused to look at him, your face downcast to the floor.

"Doll?" Bucky wrapped his arms around you for a comforting hug, wondering if the altercating with Sharon was still upsetting you, "Are you okay sweets? I missed you, haven't seen you in ages"

"I-I'm fine, I'm sorry" You pulled away from his arms, remembering Sharon's words from earlier, instantly missing the warmth of his body. "I know you don't feel the same way Bucky" You bit your lip to keep it from trembling.

Bucky blinked in confusion, having no idea what you were talking about. What did he not feel the same way over.

"What do you mean y/n"

"I mean I like you-but I know you don't like me that way so I kept myself busy so I wouldn't bother you because Sharon said-

"Wait, slow down, what did Sharon say"

You sighed before recounting all the things that had lead to this moment, Sharon insulting you, then telling you to back off, to straight up fighting you.

"Oh doll" Bucky shook his head, feeling worse over what had happened but over the moon over your confessed feelings, "She's right you know," He teased at the pout that made it's way to your lips before playfully pecking them, catching you by surprise.

"I don't do relationships. Certainly never had before. That was before I met the sweetest thing in the world and she's had my heart since" Bucky whispered, his hands, one warm, one cool cupping your cheeks, "She has me dreamin' of sayin' I do and that white picket fence, a ring on her finger, a pretty little baby bump with flowers on the window sill. Maybe a baby boy n' a baby girl. Maybe even a cat. She's the cutest little lab assistance and I'd love for her to be my girl, sweets"

Bucky held your face in his hands, his thumbs caressing over your warm cheeks while you grew bashfully shy, burying your face into his chest instead, making him chuckle.

"I didn't think you were the relationship type" You shrugged, toying with his dog tags, "I'm not you're darlin' Bucky"

"That's cause you're my doll" Bucky tilted your face up making you look up at him, his lips pressing the softest kiss to your nose and then your lips. "My one and only doll"

[emeraldspiral]

So another interesting thing about Jane Eyre is its take on relationship inequality.

Like, Jane is 18 at the beginning of the story and Rochester is said to be something like 35-38. And it's not casually brushed aside like that was normal back in the day. It wasn't. Concerns about the age gap are raised within the text. But the story emphasizes that Jane feels comfortable accepting Rochester's proposal, despite the age difference, the class difference, and him being her boss, because Jane feels that Rochester regards her as an equal. When they converse, Jane doesn't feel any tension, like she has to impress him or try to read his mind and say whatever he wants to hear. She feels that he respects her and values her thoughts and isn't compelled to use his power against her if she says something to displease him. Around the midpoint of the story, Jane believes that Rochester is going to marry another woman, and resolves to leave because she's heartbroken, believing that because she is poor and plain Rochester can't possibly be as hurt by their parting as she is, and he'll forget her and move on long before she does. But it turns out to be the opposite. After finding out about Bertha, Rochester begs Jane to stay and insists he'll be miserable forever without her, while Jane, still thinking she's too poor and plain to ever attract someone like him again, resists all temptation and leaves him. And she does this specifically because she feels that if she were to compromise her morals and self-respect to be Mr. Rochester's mistress, then he would lose respect for her and the relationship would fall apart. It was only by maintaining her integrity that the relationship could stay in-tact when the reconciled at the end.

St. John Rivers on the other hand, I don't think is given a definite age, but I think he's intended to be a much younger man, probably in his early 20s. He is poor and without relations aside from his sisters or any other connections, just as Jane. Jane finds out they're actually cousins at the same time she learns she's come into a vast fortune that was willed to her rather than the Rivers, but decides to share her fortune equally with them. So she arguably had more social capital, even though she made an effort to put St. John on equal footing with her, because the money was hers by right and she could've presumably cut him off at any time, just as easily as Rochester could've terminated Jane from her job.

And yet, Jane's relationship with St. John is vastly more unequal than her relationship with Rochester. Even though Jane practically worshiped Rochester but only cares for St. John as a brother and is acutely aware of his faults, she still finds herself desperately craving his approval in a way she never did with Rochester. And St. John is willing to exploit that intentionally. He asks her to do things she doesn't want to and make sacrifices for him just because he knows she'll do anything to please him, and that's why he thinks she's the perfect wife for him. Where Rochester tries to explain himself and persuade Jane not to leave him by addressing her concerns, St. John basically tries to command Jane to marry him and refuses to accept her "no" as final. He withholds affection from Jane as a tactic to get her to compromise in order to reconcile with him when he's the one who should be apologizing to her and considering her needs and not just his own. Jane knows that she can't ever be happy with him because he doesn't respect her and his lack of respect only makes her want to seek his approval, which he is all too happy to exploit for his own benefit.

But Jane ultimately stays firm and rejects St. John's proposal of a loveless marriage, just as she rejected Rochester's proposal of an unlawful marriage, because both situations were doomed to fail if she didn't put her own self-respect first.

So this novel from 1847 was really saying that power dynamics aren't pure black and white. Age and class and wealth and status can be a factor in making a relationship unequal, but you can also be equal on pretty much all social axis and still have inequality in a relationship. What's really important is that there's mutual respect.