#but some of these fics???? FUCK man they are more compelling than anything the show had????

[dailydegurechaff]

I wanted to know how do you interpret Tanya's gender. After reading chapter 58 of the manga i got the impression that she is definitely trans coded, but maybe thats just me

Very good question.

To be honest, when I think too hard about Tanya’s gender (and sexuality, for that matter) it gives me brain worms. Fun brain worms, but brain worms nonetheless. I can’t explain it. Everything she’s got going on is complicated as shit there’s way too much to think about.

Like, she was a man, but now she's a girl. But at some points she says she still sees herself as a man internally so is this MtFtM? How does that work. And if she accepts she's a woman now, is that just MtF or do we add more letters. More importantly: Was Being X being Transphobic or being the Greatest Trans Ally of All Time with the free divinely issued sex change.

Ok ok, jokes aside. Confession: I actually do not keep up with the manga, so I had to go find the chapter and read it first. Having read it now though, I see what you mean.

The conversation she has with the Salaryman/herself in that chapter really does read as essentially saying “I’ve accepted who I am now.” It’s a far cry from a much earlier part of the manga I remember where she has a breakdown about being a man/people seeing her as a girl.

A friend of mine was actually showing me stuff from more recent chapters of the manga (don’t know which chapter tragically, but I know it’s not currently translated to English) and from what I gathered of it, Being X was showing Tanya a dream of being back in her past life and in response she basically demanded to go back to being Tanya immediately. It is definitely not just you, I 100% see the trans-coding you’re talking about.

As for my personal interpretation of her gender, I touched very briefly on it once before, but I honestly think she wouldn’t want to label herself as anything. At first, this is out of hesitance and not wanting to acknowledge that anything might be ““wrong”” or ““different”” about her. Later on it turns into character growth, more along the lines of, “I don’t need the label to define me, I just am what I am/like what I like. I don’t care about it any more than that.” Yes this is 100% projection on my part. No, I won’t apologize for it lmao.

Of course, that's entirely my own headcanon. I definitely am not saying it’s the only way to interpret her, it’s just my personal thoughts. Especially since my opinion is subject to change on a dime depending on what I’m reading/working on myself. The Tanya gender is, in fact, transient, shifting like water.

Like. A transfem Tanya fic that focuses on her adapting to life in her new world and coming to discover she doesn’t actually hate her new body? I’d totally read that. I’ve seen a few fics that include that as a part of the narrative and those scenes of acceptance were among my favorite parts.

I get the feeling this is the route that the manga is going as well. It’s a bit of a shame that we don't have those aforementioned scenes in the light novel (or at least, I don't remember them), but I don’t think that Carlo Zen really intended that to be the focus/narrative in the first place. And honestly, I also think that’s a good thing because it allows for so much more room for interpretation and headcanon around Tanya’s character.

Anyway, the other direction is also compelling to me. A transmasc Tanya fic where, after feeling uncomfortable and hating how feminine he looks for years and years, he finally goes ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna go back to being a man’? I would read the fuck out of that too.

Could also be paired with him finally choosing to defect, where they think about it like, ‘Well there’s nothing to hold me back now, right? I don’t have to maintain appearances anymore. Also, since I’m defecting this would be a great way to hide myself. They’d all be looking for the wrong person. Two birds with one stone, how efficient.’ …Now we’re getting to fic ideas I won’t ever get to so it’s time to move on I think.

Semi-related to the Trans Tanya Concept, this actually brings me to a bit of a lore/headcanon/idea/question I want to present to the public for opinions. In Norden, during the inciting battle of the war, Tanya uses magic to “dope up” so she could enhance her strength and reaction time and kill pain. I took this to mean she used a formula to synthesize the narcotics/adrenaline hormone/whatever else directly into herself, right?

Can you see where I’m going with this? As long as you know which hormones to make, how they’re made up, and what quantities you need… Well, don’t you think magic HRT is completely possible? Of course, as I'm not sure it makes sense for Salaryman to have known the detailed specifics about it from the modern world, it would require a lot of in-universe research/science advancement for someone to actually do that, but theoretically...

The magic system in this universe has so much potential to be explored, I’m fascinated by what you can theoretically do with it. Although, this is long and off-topic already I think this should be the end, lol.

I think I talked too much? I’m sorry, you were probably not expecting such an answer. I told you, Tanya gives me brain worms (mental illness).

I guess the TL;DR is this: that kid definitely ain’t cishet.

[breakingblorbos]

Pinned Post/Blog Info!

Hiya!! Welcome to my BrBa & BCS focused blog! 👋🏼😊 The primary purpose of this pinned post is to give some info about me, my blog, and what you can expect to find on it. Everything below the cut is not required reading to follow or interact; merely just additional info if you are interested, or if you want to make requests. The only thing I require you to read is the following disclaimer:

This is an 18+ blog ran by an adult. You will find NSFT art/fic, dark and potentially upsetting themes, as is common for the BrBa/BCS universe. And I make very thirsty comments & posts about my blorbos, so just keep that in mind. However!! I am not going to restrict anyone from following/interacting with my blog. Use your own discretion and awareness. That's your responsibility, not mine. Anything that needs a content warning will be tagged appropriately, of course.

🌌About Me!🪐

Basic info - You can call me either Orion or Riley! I'm 25, neurodivergent, trans masc & nonbinary, and bisexual. Pronouns are he/him and they/them. I do also live in New Mexico (born and raised babyy!), which makes the shows that much more special to me!! I'm very friendly and open, but also very shy, so I tend to not reach out to folks even when I want to talk to them (which, honestly, is most of y'all. Oops.) If you ever do feel compelled to chat with me, please don't hesitate! I'm super excited to talk about BrBa/BCS with literally anybody!

I'm a writer, but I struggle hard with getting anything actually published on here or AO3. I try to write but it's not nearly consistent enough to ever expect anything from me. I'm working towards getting better at this! My main hurdle to overcome is my perfectionism and my fear of rejection (RSD).

I have a lot of interests, being autistic, so the only important one to list here is obviously Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul. You can certainly ask about my other interests, and I'll be happy to tell you more! I like to keep my special interests all separate on their own dedicated blogs, so that was the main motivation behind creating this one. Which leads me to the next section:

☣️About This Blog!⚗️

Most of the content is gonna be reblogs from others: fanart, fics, writings, memes, shitposts, etc. I myself am not an artist and cannot contribute with art even though I wish I could, but I may sometimes write little drabbles, oneshots, and universe willing, fic chapters for my ships/blorbos (more info on that below ↓). If you want to see something in particular, you're more than welcome to submit a request! I think I have a lot more motivation to write when I get specifically asked to write something, perhaps?

My main blorbos: (red shows the character currently occupying my braincell the most rn)

🥊Tuco Salamanca

🐍Nacho Varga (and by extension, Vaas Montenegro. I simply love MM.)

💀Marco & Leonel Salamanca

❤️‍🩹Jesse Pinkman

🎭Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill

Of course, I adore all the characters (except Walt ofc) and they're all very special to me!! But these seven men listed above have an absolute chokehold on my brain at any given time lmao, so they will be featured prominently in this blog.

My fave ships:

Default ship is character x reader

Vaacho (Vaas x Nacho)

Lacho (Nacho x Lalo)

Beef Sandwich (Nacho x Twins) I fucking love this ship name holy shit

Tucho (Tuco x Nacho)

McWexler (Kim x Jimmy)

Jesse x Jane

Jesse x Andrea

Jesse x happiness (this is a joke, but also not. Man deserves it.)

📨Requests!📝

My asks are always open for questions, requests, or really anything! I love sending/receiving asks and interacting with this fandom! If you're interested in requesting a writing from me, first read this list of what I will and won't write before you submit your request:

Yes, no problem!

Vast majority of ships

Smut/Explicit/PWP

Headcanons

AUs

Oneshots

Drabble

Reader Inserts

Gender Swaps

Fluff

Hurt/Comfort

Angst

Violence/Gore

Dubcon

Toxic Relationship

Most Kinks & Fetishes

Please ask first!

Fandom Crossovers (mostly just to ensure I know the fandom)

Consensual Noncon (depends on character)

No, I will not!

In/ce/st Ships (i.e. twincest, cousins)

Explicit content involving underage characters

Ageplay (calling a character daddy doesn't count lol)

Extreme Kinks, such as s/ca/t, v/or/e, n/ecr/o, etc.

Keep in mind that I reserve the right to deny your request for any reason, including no reason at all! 9 times out of 10 this won't be necessary, but if you're rude or demanding non-jokingly, I won't write for you! Just be chill and it'll be Saul Goodman! :)

Also I don't have a Masterlist to link here, because I've never posted anything ever! It's all just vibing in my Google Docs while I polish and tweak until the end of time! Fun! :D /s

So, yeah, I suppose that's the long and the short of it. I didn't expect for this to be so long, but I have a tendency to just keep adding details to things! Good for writing; not great for writing a blog intro. I'll edit as needed over time, though. Thanks for reading if you got this far! Seriously, props to you. Here's a cookie mwah 🤲🏼🍪

[realbeefman]

Angus loyal follower here I love your posts I actually started reading hilson fic because of you even though I’ve never seen the show and I never will because once I heard Hugh lauries voice in a fancam and it was so unsexy also they filmed a lot of b roll at my school anyway Seeing your destiel post was so surprising to me please tell me more about your spn opinions I’m so curious I love discourse <3

very long answer so i’ve hidden it under a readmore for the sanity of casual dash scrollers and people who dont care

first off his american voice or his british voice? this is kind of controversial and may seem wild considering i spend a solid chunk of time thinking about what house would be like during sex but i ACTUALLY find him deeply unattractive. i’d love to have his face and wear his skin but never in my life would i consider him a sexual being. he’s too british for it. the only way british people can be sexy is if they are women this is my most political belief on foreign policy. however i do think hugh laurie’s AMERICAN voice is actually very normal and makes him very endearing to me. hilson fic is awesome but honestly!!! most hilson fic for me just does not hit the same unless u can visualize the creepiness with which house looks at wilson. it’s genuinely sickening. he talks about wilson in the softest voice. so many of the most iconic lines in the show just dont HIT the same if u dont listen to the way they’re delivered.

that is SO cool that they shot b roll at ur school though!!! honestly seems like a dream. if i knew i had walked the same halls the house film team had i think i would die. the camerawork on that show is just fucking PHENOMENAL. i could write entire essays fangirling over how they shoot certain scenes but i fear that would be chronically desperately boring

oh man my supernatural opinions… first off disclaimer i have not seen supernatural recently because i am a deeply paranoid individual and prone to delusions and when i first watched the show i genuinely convinced myself that the monsters were real so. i think my most controversial spn opinion would have to be that it’s a PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT. have you ever met a normal supernatural fan? NOBODY HAS. BECAUSE THE SHOW DRIVES PEOPLE NUTS

other than that my opinions are pretty normal i thiunk. i actually dont have anything at all against destiel even though i am solidly on the wincestie side of fandom. i dont care for the ship and i think it sucks but OBJECTIVELY its a good ship and has strong canon support. i think my hatred comes because i have read SO many destiel fics and have yet to come across a genuinely good one that accurately portrays the characters. i dont understand why an objectively reasonable ship with strong canon support has created some of the middest fic ive ever read in my life. genuinely fascinating. it’s not even that the fic itself is not good or entertaining it just doesn’t feel anything like the actual canon dean and castiel! i have read like two genuinely entertaining destiel fics that felt realistic and BOTH were from authors who primarily write samdean so!!

other controversial spn opinions i have. the “chuck is god” stuff is by far the most entertaining late seasons retcon. objectively ridiculous but so goddamn amusing. i think season 8 and the leviathans was the peak of supernatural. by far the best season in my opinion. plotwise it was not the most believable but i strongly believe that what makes a story good is not it’s logical soundness nor it’s objective value but whether it is ENTERTAINING and COMPELLING and by god the leviathans were both of those things. what a season. also benny and dean were having sex. i loved castiel going insane. OH and i think endverse spn is overhyped both as an episode and in fanon! i did not understand what endverse referred to for so long because i couldnt comprehend that SO MANY PEOPLE could possibly by THAT fanatic over a very mid episode.

not a controversial opinion but rowena is hot. she should've been in every episode for this reason alone. last semester i set up an office meeting with my professor who looked JUST like her to shoot my shot and she literally died before the meeting could happen. i've always felt in my heart that these are related.

[itookyoudown]

Tim licks his lips and nods his head. Or maybe he’s starting to shake. Boyd doesn’t ponder on it, he just guides the cherry and presses it against Tim’s skin, finds a spot that’s pale and unmarred and ready for Boyd to leave his mark. He squeezes Tim’s hand harder and acts as an anchor while Tim weathers the pain with admirable resilience. Boyd himself is no stranger to pain. He understands its siren call. He watches with a mix of delight and jealousy as Tim falls headfirst into that song, his lips parting with a low grunt and the corners of his eyes stinging with tears.

Tim’s too drunk to control his face. Or swallow his noises.

Boyd twists the cigarette until he hears Tim make a sound that’s more animal than man.

“Oh, baby,” he coos as he sends the crushed cigarette off into the night. Boyd lets go of Tim’s hand and cups the boy’s face with both hands while Tim cradles his burned arm to his chest, breathing and blinking hard. “I love you, Tim, and I know you love me too. Love us both. Love us enough to hurt for it, ain’t that right?”

All that ice in Tim melts.

He’s warm and easy in Boyd’s arms.

Boyd kisses Tim then. Kisses those wet cheeks and his sweaty brow. More kisses over his closed eyes, his nose, and a final one pressed slowly on his forehead. Boyd rises up on his knees while Tim stays slumped on the ground, still trapped between his truck and Boyd’s body. They’re almost at their destination, but they still got a little further to go.

Oh boy oh boy this fic. THIS FIC. Fire Tests Gold.

I didn't struggle to get this fic written, the words actually flowed quite smoothly, but emotionally it was draining to put this one down and I was a bit anxious to send it out into the world. Honestly, I’m even wary about answering this ask lol but I’m not going to let past anon hate keep from playing with the justies and talking about my fics with folks that like my fics.

Here we go.

I should preface this author commentary by talking a bit about my take on Boy Chowder Boyd Crowder. I am simply…not interested in giving Boyd any type of redemption. Not even a little bit of redemption, as a treat. It doesn’t spark anything special in my brain. Boyd told us who he was every moment of the final season, right up until that very ending scene in prison. When people show you who they are, believe them etc etc. So, whenever I write Boyd, I take his choices in canon to heart and let it guide his characterization even when I’m off wandering into canon divergence or wild AU territory.

And to get personal for a moment, writing Boyd PoV always fucks me up a little.

Boyd is a compelling antagonist and an extremely well-written character, his place in Justified’s story is needed and it elevates the show because Goggins is such a stellar actor. But he's not a character I closely relate to on any level. Even if I’m drawn to try and understand him. 

When it comes to fanfiction, he’s purely a character I see from a "let's study him like a bug" perspective. He's not a character that holds up a mirror to show me something about myself. Instead, Boyd reminds me of all the different charming, dangerous men I've met in my life. Both the ones that have hurt me and the ones that I managed to evade by, you know, recognizing that charm for what it was and leaving before it got worse. Or cutting off contact before it could even start.

I often use fanfic, both in reading and writing, to grapple with difficult life events or help me sort through complicated emotions. And when I wrote Fire Tests Gold, I was in a creatively burned out space and haunted by some memories. So, yeah, this fic deals with heavy stuff while being wrapped up in a “boyd/tim with background ot3 in a toxic sadomasochistic tango” packaging, but when you open it up that’s what is going on inside.

Anyways.

I've written very dark fics before: in a pitch black world anything goes (Boyd POV) and last night i felt real arms around me (Quarles). These were approached as character studies focused on taking a peek inside their warped lil minds. The narration style was up-front about being what it was, about watching where that darkness was coming from without letting readers succumb to it. They’re horror stories in a way. Boyd and Quarles were portrayed in clear villain roles and Tim as an obvious victim. There’s no justification or excuse for what they did there, the reader is meant to be chilled by and grossed out and feel righteous in hating them.

…not this one. Not Fire Tests Gold.

Out of all the dark fics I’ve written, this one TO ME, takes the cake.

Tim licks his lips and nods his head. Or maybe he’s starting to shake. Boyd doesn’t ponder on it, he just guides the cherry and presses it against Tim’s skin, finds a spot that’s pale and unmarred and ready for Boyd to leave his mark.

I purposefully let Boyd's bullshit overpower the narrative and allowed him to influence the perception of things as an unreliable narrator. Likewise, I muddled Tim up so he doesn't seem like a hapless innocent in this.

Is the movement of Tim’s head meant to tell us Tim is consenting to what Boyd is about to do? Well…no. Even Boyd owns up to the reality, but this is quickly brushed aside as unimportant because throughout the whole fic Boyd has been compiling a long list of reasons and excuses and marks against Tim so Boyd doesn’t have to feel a crumb of guilt or regret for hurting Tim.

I made a deliberate choice to have Boyd's dialogue and his actions and his thoughts and his desires and his perspective take over everything else. Tim, what he's actually feeling and wanting out of this and trying to do, is locked up and only slips in a few places. What's going on with Tim is left as an implication in his silences and with his passivity. How Tim speaks and the particular way he phrases things is more important than what he actually says.

In fact, Tim doesn’t get any dialogue in this whole passage because it wouldn’t matter what Tim said. Boyd wouldn’t have let himself hear it anyway.

He squeezes Tim’s hand harder and acts as an anchor while Tim weathers the pain with admirable resilience. Boyd himself is no stranger to pain. He understands its siren call. He watches with a mix of delight and jealousy as Tim falls headfirst into that song, his lips parting with a low grunt and the corners of his eyes stinging with tears. 

Boyd’s viewpoint is smothering Tim’s. It even refocuses Tim’s pain so it’s about Boyd instead. I feel like Boyd’s cruelty in this is very…calculated and part of that calculation is Boyd telling himself lies when they get into the thick of things. He tangles up the narrative so this is something they’re doing together rather than something he’s doing to Tim. And he does that by acting like he’s being sympathetic and relating to Tim and even by complimenting Tim in a way.

Boyd has a natural way of seizing the spotlight and taking control, and he goes hog wild with that in the latter half of the fic.

Boyd twists the cigarette until he hears Tim make a sound that’s more animal than man.

This was really to just highlight that Boyd is fully snubbing the cigarette out on Tim. It’s not a light or quick thing. It’s done mean. That’s a burn that’ll scar and that’ll stay and Boyd does so consciously.

Most of the time when I write OT3, I write it with the idea that the polyamory starts out as a V with Raylan being the point of connection between them. That it doesn’t develop into a true triangle until later.

I made that true for this little fic. This is an entirely self-contained OT3 fic. It’s not connected to me and Kerri’s On the Back Porch series or a spin-off of some object of desire. I wanted to dive into something supremely fucked up and didn’t want to get hung-up on any backstory or try to explain why Raylan, Boyd, and Tim are living in Miami. I just in media res’d it hardcore.

Here Boyd carries around a lot of jealousy and anger and possessive, obsessive emotions that are itching for a way to get out and have been simmering for a long, long time. And because of that I do feel like Boyd does revel in this chance to punish Tim. He hurts Tim because Raylan won’t stop loving Tim. He hurts Tim because Boyd is attracted to Tim and Boyd resents that loss of control over himself. 

But he also hurts Tim because…he can.

Their dynamic here is also suggested by the title btw. Boyd is the fire and Tim is the gold (because Tim is Raylan's gold...and Tim will be Boyd's gold too if Tim behaves correctly aka if he lets Boyd have his way).

"Oh, baby,” he coos as he sends the crushed cigarette off into the night. Boyd lets go of Tim’s hand and cups the boy’s face with both hands while Tim cradles his burned arm to his chest, breathing and blinking hard. “I love you, Tim, and I know you love me too. Love us both. Love us enough to hurt for it, ain’t that right?” All that ice in Tim melts. He’s warm and easy in Boyd’s arms.

I wrote this with the idea that this is a desperate defeat rather than any type of healthy submission from Tim. If someone hurts you bad enough, sometimes you’ll want them to comfort you despite them being the source of the pain – and that’s why we don’t see Tim fight back or try to get away from Boyd. And of course the idea of love being used as a justification for awful things.

This is also where Boyd changes his tune. Goes from cruel to "sweet" because Tim behaves the way Boyd wants.

Boyd kisses Tim then. Kisses those wet cheeks and his sweaty brow. More kisses over his closed eyes, his nose, and a final one pressed slowly on his forehead. Boyd rises up on his knees while Tim stays slumped on the ground, still trapped between his truck and Boyd’s body. 

It was important here that I detailed how Boyd is the one doing all the kissing. And that Tim stays passive afterward.

They’re almost at their destination, but they still got a little further to go.

This was a way to indicate that both in the moment and in the long term, Boyd’s not done with Tim. He’s going to hurt Tim again and good lord he’s probably going to get away with it. This isn't the end of anything between them that's where the story cuts off.

I've rambled on about this quite enough I think, so I'll cut myself over here. Thanks for asking about this one!

(author commentary ask game)

[nasuversekinkmeme]

Weekly Roundup: prompts

Tsukihime

SHIKI and Kohaku. Make it fucked up. Bring in Akiha if you want too, all I want is some fucked up moments with them

Akiha bondage good. Akiha monstrous sex good. Monstrous Akiha in tight bondage would be awesome.

kohaku daily life

Transmasc!Arcueid, currently in pieces after Shiki's attack, uses the opportunity to give himself top surgery.

Smut, noncon, Akiha getting drugged and gang banged all night long

Kara no Kyoukai

KnK and cannibalism, please please

Fate/Stay Night

hi. leather bondage with archer in his CCC outfit with the red leather jacket and the dog collar please. put a harness on that beast. would prefer an artfill if possible (im a visual learner btw 👉👈‍‍) but im not gonna look a gift fic in the mouth 🙏

Rin and Luvia are assigned study buddies with each other. While at first Rin deals with this about as well as expected, overtime she begins to show enthusiasm towards them. She soon becomes a chubby, nerdy girl ready to list off 1000 different facts about any subject, so long as it's her beloved Luvia

FGO

Morgan, after getting sick and tired of Oberon’s bullshit does some REVENGE. She gets pesticides, bug sprays, anything that is able to harm insects, and when Oberon decides to fuck with her, she goes absolutely HAM with the bug repellent and going psychical. Local Oberon found dead in Chaldea hung on a wall

Smut, Barghest is determined to make sure her romance with her Master will not end in tragedy. To that end, she tries hypnotherapy, in an attempt to help control her impulses that compel her to "devour the one she loves". To everyone's surprise, it works! However, to nobody's surprise, it also involved altering the inherent definition of what Barghest considers "devouring" her beloved means. On one hand, Ritsuka is no longer in any danger whatsoever of ending up as her lunch. On the other, his pelvis may not survive the night, but that is a sacrifice he is more than willing to make.

Smut, Marisbury fucks Kirschtaria or Roman/Solomon with the gun he keeps in his desk drawer

Ritsuka is good at sex, for all the same reasons he’s good at being a master: empathy, endurance, a radical willingness to listen and accept even the unacceptable, etc. Still, he’s one guy with one dick; he has a limit, and dozens of voraciously kinky servants exceed it handily. He solves this problem, like all problems, with other servants; he becomes a human hookup app, matching servants to their ideal lay, mostly to take the pressure off himself. It may backfire, it may not.

Smut, Guda Castoria Oberon having the most insane unsafe and dubiously consentual sex in Chaldea. They have SO much beef with each other AND they're all either repressed or cursed to be unable to give regular informed consent like normal people. I want them have the most undernegociated and violent sex known to man.

Smut, "Oberon being mega horny for Ritsuka," tagged: overstim, rough sex

Tamamo has a fox dick. Tamamo Cat, being one of the Tamamo Nine, also has a fox dick. Koyanskaya, who is not one of the Tamamo Nine and is just faking it, gets a fox dick packer to fake it better.

Smut, Turns out there's another reason Li Shuwen's NP is No Second Strike, and that's because he's a one pump chump and literally comes on the first stroke. Can either be comedy about how he's bad at sex or orgasm denial edging play stuff to raise his endurance.

Smut, Drunk sex with Izou

Smut, Asterios x Barghest X Cu Alter threesome but bersercu is mostly there to help restrain ya girl from trying to maul big fluffy boy mid fuck. not saying he cant do that while hitting asterios's prostate though

Elizabeth and Carmilla actually both bond over their shared annoyance at being the future/past version of each other, doesn't change the fact that they both fucking hate the connection though.

The various Taunt servants - Leonidas, Georgios, Gareth, etc. - commisserate about being used as meat shields all the time. No bitterness - it's their job - but it's a hard job.

During this year Christmas the newest welfare is Caster Artoria Alter Santa Lily, except its actually just morgan after drinking the youth potion so she can relive her youth days

the nickname 'koyanchihuaha' becomes a bit more literal

Void shiki erases everyone's genitals at normal shiki's request because she can't fucking sleep with all the fucking that happens every night

Smut, I feel like Kirschtaria and Zeus should have had gay sex at least once

Smut, Barghest eating her veggies(going down on goghie and getting a little cannibalistic about it)

Tepeu getting This stable instead of This chair

Smut, Adding to that Zeus thing, Caenis and Kirsch also have gay sex after that but since Caenis knows the status of Kirschs body as well as Zeus' more than likely rough loving, he is much more gentle and caring while being mad tsundere

Morgan: “This is my partner Mash, and this is Mash’s partner Ritsuka, who is also my spouse. And these are Ritsuka’s partners Artoria and Oberon.”

muramasa gets a harem consisting of the gals from fate stay night (Ishtar, ereshkigal, jaguar warrior, anyone who knows him) and the artorias. they then have a brawl over who gets the poor man

Smut, incest, aurora fucking mélusine nasty in front of percival… the worse and more degrading for the latter two the better! can be dubcon or straight up noncon, either is a-okay with me! ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶

Archer is invited to train by a Heroic Spirit that is by all logic much stronger than he is, yet they are forced to go all out to keep pace with the red bowman. Archer did not fight on equal ground against Heracles for nothing after all

Smut, Someone tries to cuck Gudao by fucking Mash in front of him and he’s just happy she found someone and slightly confused on why they’re fucking in front of him.

Smut, Ritsuka and Oberon have a lot of hate sex. Like, it's pretty much a weekly thing. They even fight for who tops (It's almost always Ritsuka who tops)

Guda letting Castoria bite them on their shoulders/neck whenver they get mad

Fun fact! Baobhan Sith has A-rank Strength, which is even higher than Barghest! Anyway she should give Morgan a hug so bone-crushing that old woman needs a chiropractor

Cannibalism, Barghest can’t help herself and accidentally eats Gudao, mentally denying that it was her even as several servants begin attacking her

Might I request some Emotional Catharsis for Emiya Alter after meeting all his old friends and family in Chaldea, even if he cant really remember them?

Newly minted Servant Fujimaru Ritsuka is forced to farm nonstop for days on end by the Chaldea Farming Teams, so that, quote, "they know what it feels like for us!"

Either obecas or gudacas with an emphasis of how much of a nightmare it is to get explicit consent from someone who is cursed to constantly lie (for Oberon) and/or from someone who constantly agree to do shit she doesn't actually want to do because it's easier/safer than to argue (for Castoria)

Funny rivals moment: Mephistopheles teasing Archer Moriarty over how they’re technically older than him (going my their works’ release years)

Barghest deciding that if Baobhan Sith is going to keep mocking her for her appetites, she might as well swallow her whole too!

Any fandom

there's a common theme in prompts for this kinkmeme, so the opposite of that: let's get some non-Fate characters being asexual

Crossover/Multi Fandom

Shiki, SHIKI, [Shiki], Shiki, and SHIKI realize they actually have enough people to go to Five Guys. Tohno Shiki and Ryougi Shiki are idiots (complimentary).

let's delve in to a little crossover : the koyan twins are looking for product testing volunteers , and 2 people signed up ; Darkness , a masochist crusader , and aqua the useless goddess was forced by gudako to either take the job or aqua will be facing jail time for public intoxication. whatever fetishes the koyan twins inflict on them is largely up to the writers . but i'd like to see aqua undergo a blueberry inflation and when the machines finish juicing her she gets inflated right back up , possibly even bigger than last time. the juice would be later made into liquor. as for darkness im cool with putting her in some inflatable rubber bondage or strap her to a milking machine .

Kirby is summoned in chaldea

And don't forget, the Nasuverse Femslash Week starts tomorrow!

[call-me-corvid]

I accidentally found a Voltron fic a few days ago and was like “i guess im bored enough” and read all 189,000 words in 25 hours because it was GOOD and was like “i need more” so long story short it has been five days now and I have consumed six fics amounting to over 500,000 words in that time and this was not a rabbit hole i ever expected to fall down and boy oh boy do i not expect to be able to dig myself out of it now

[mypoisonedvine]

𝖗𝖔𝖈𝖐 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖙 || pirate!Jefferson x reader

summary: Captain Jefferson is feared by every would-be sailor, every tradesman of the British isles, even his fellow pirates; yet, he's oddly gentle with you... for now.

word count: 4.2k

warnings: smut (dub con, this is a dark fic! mostly soft dark tho!), unwanted creampie, verrryy slight breeding kink, implied/threatened noncon, unwanted touching, lots of praise, mentions of the plague (but this time it's not the current one), pregnancy mention, alcohol consumption, religion mention, use of a knife (not quite knife kink but not violence either), slight yandere vibes

Perhaps if you had woken up sooner, earlier in the siege of your ship by the pirates, you would’ve had more time to flee and make it to one of the lifeboats. If you hadn’t been so exhausted from a long day beforehand, you would’ve surely roused from sleep at the first signs of trouble. If you had thought to put on boots and not tried to run from your room barefoot, you might have made it further before the invading crew had taken over.

Then again, this all could’ve been avoided if your fiancé had helped you onto the lifeboat instead of leaving you behind to die. Useless fucking bastard. Now here you were in the hands of your ‘saviors’ who pulled you from the flaming wreckage of the ship they themselves had destroyed. Their intentions were anything but altruistic, though; you weren’t a survivor, exactly, but a captive. Survivors didn’t typically have their wrists tied in front of them.

“Pretty,” one of them growled as he ran a finger down your cheek; you turned away as best you could but you couldn’t do much with them holding your arms and circling in so close around you. Another finger pushed against your lips and probed your mouth, the salt of his skin easily the worst taste you’d even experienced.

“Got all her teeth, too,” he noted. “Must be rich.”

“Who gives a fuck if she’s rich?” yet another sneered, reaching to start pulling up your skirt as you tried to kick him away. “All that matters is she’s warm.”

“You know we have to bring her to the Captain,” someone behind you noted.

“Yeah, but can’t we have a little fun first?”

“No,” the voice answered back firmly, making all the men around you visibly deflate.

“Fine then,” said the man in front of you as he dropped your skirt, and you were relieved slightly just to know they had to leave you be for now. “You’d better be a good girl for the Captain, then,” he informed you through his rotted grin, “and maybe we’ll get reacquainted when he’s done with you.”

With that, though they didn’t seem too ecstatic about it, a few of the men in the crowd guided you across the ship, bringing you to a windowed door. at the stern of the ship. It was likely the first mate that knocked; you were too busy being restrained to do it yourself, and the other men were too busy restraining you.

“Come in,” a voice answered from the other side.

The door creaked a bit as it was opened, and you felt the need to recoil further when you saw the man in his chambers, staring you down coldly.

“We found her in the wreckage,” the first mate explained, “figured you would know what to do with her.”

“Oh, I know what to do with her,” he agreed flatly, and you heard a few snickers behind you. “Bring her here.”

You figured ‘bringing’ would involve more walking, but instead they essentially threw you into the room, laughing as you stumbled to the floor since you were unable to catch yourself with bound hands.

The door slammed shut behind you unceremoniously, and you were left to look up at your new, singular captor with watery eyes. He wasn’t nearly as repulsive as the rest of his crew, he was even… not bad looking, if you tried hard enough to see him that way. It helped that he was better dressed and groomed, though he still looked plenty erratic in his own peculiar way. At least you were indoors now, protected from the cold ocean breeze of the evening, and with someone whose gaze was a bit less ravenous than the others that had been on you so far.

He offered his hand to help you up, but you defiantly made your own way back onto your feet.

“A bit of an independent type, I see,” he noted with the slightest smirk. “You must really hate this, then.”

“Would anyone enjoy being captured by pirates?” you asked, voice a little too shaky to really sound properly indignant.

“Many prefer it to drowning in the Indian ocean,” he frowned tightly. “Some might even be thankful to those that show them mercy.”

You were about to ask what he considered mercy, but then he took a knife from a leather holster at his side, stepping closer and carefully slicing the ropes off of your sore wrists. “Th-thank you, sir,” you whispered, rubbing the tender skin, raw in a few places.

“Captain Jefferson,” he corrected instantly, voice tense even though his body language was still relaxed; nonchalant, even. “You’ve yet to enlighten me to your name, darling.”

For a moment you watched him twirl his knife around in his fingers and almost forgot your own name to answer him with. When you did stammer it out, he gave you a smile that lied just between friendly and predatory, white teeth sparkling in the dim light of his lanterns as he sheathed the blade at his waist.

“Lovely,” he cooed. “It suits you. That dress on the other hand,” he frowned slightly as he looked you up and down, “is atrocious.”

“It’s only a nightgown,” you defended, “and it was much nicer before it was torn and sullied by your men outside.”

“Well, I’m afraid it just won’t do,” he decided. “You see, I have a lovely dinner prepared this evening and I couldn’t allow you to dine with me in tattered rags.”

“You’ll feed me?” you realized aloud.

“If you choose to accept my hospitality,” he clarified, and the way he said it made your skin crawl; there were no friendly dinners with pirates, you knew that much.

“Your kindness is… appreciated,” you half-lied, “but I cannot accept. I’ll go to the brig.”

“No, you won't. You’ll be spending the night in my quarters. With me,” he added, making his intentions exceptionally clear.

“I most certainly will not!” you defended, incensed. His jaw tightened as he glared at you, just for a moment, before he turned calm and polite again.

“I could leave you to my crew,” he offered casually. “Forty-eight drunken sailors who haven’t seen a woman since we left port eight months ago... I imagine they would be considerably less kind with you.”

You swallowed, but the lump in your throat didn’t go down.

“So, get changed and join me for dinner,” he instructed. “There’s something you can wear in that closet over there,” he explained as he motioned to it, “and a screen you can change behind.”

It was an odd request, but frankly, you were in no position to refuse it. He walked to the other end of the expansive quarters to examine something on his desk, and you awkwardly made your way to the closet to acquire the garment before you ducked behind the screen.

You didn’t really feel comfortable changing at this point, and you didn’t really trust that he would give you privacy; you stalled for quite some time, just waiting for him to suddenly appear and try to catch you nude, but the moment never came, and you finally relented and began to undress.

Admittedly, it was nice to peel the wet, cold nightgown from your skin and slip into something warmer. The dress he’d provided was a burgundy silk pattern, much more flamboyant and revealing at the bust than anything you would wear in your spare time, but you still indulged in running your hands over the soft fabric and toying with the lace hem of your sleeves briefly. It was slightly old-fashioned and it made you wonder how he’d come upon a dress like this in the first place, let alone what compelled him to keep it.

You tried to tie the lace up the back but couldn’t quite get them all, bending your arms awkwardly to try to reach but sighing as you realized it was useless.

“Um… Captain?” you called out sheepishly.

“Yes?” he answered immediately, voice echoing from across the room.

“Could you help me with the bodice here?”

You didn’t really see him step behind you, but you heard him come closer and felt the warmth of his presence. He delicately brushed his fingers over the back of your neck, ostensibly to make sure your hair was out of the way, before taking the strings in his hands and lacing your dress the rest of the way, tightening it slightly. “Not too tight, is it?” he asked quietly.

“It’s fine, thank you,” you nodded as he tied them. You expected him to walk away but when you turned around he was still there, staring down at you with eyes that were darkened at yet sparkling in the candlelight. “Should I put on jewelry as well?” you asked nervously.

“No, this will do nicely,” he announced, his voice a little deeper than it had been before, his fingers reaching up to brush over your exposed clavicle. “You look beautiful.”

“Um, thank you,” you answered hesitantly, glancing away from his all-consuming gaze.

A heavy silence filled the space between you before he finally broke it with a smile. “The table’s set, you can take your seat,” he explained, stepping back and giving you room to walk to the dining table; it really was a fine meal, one you recognize as stolen from the kitchens of the ship you had been on before, the one that was rubble at the bottom of the sea now. “Is it to your liking?” he prompted, making you realize you were forgetting to mind your manners. It was probably best to stay on the good side of such a dangerous and unpredictable man.

“It looks delicious, thank you,” you rushed as he pulled your chair out for you, and you flattened your skirts to take your seat.

And it wasn’t a lie; around the candelabra was an array of meats, cheeses, and fruits, even some small tarts presumably for dessert. Any other circumstance and you would feel comfortable digging right in.

He didn’t sit across from you right away, moving instead to a liquor cabinet which he knelt before. “I have red wine, aaaand some mead,” he offered as he searched through bottles, picking two to show you. “Or are you a moonshine sort of girl?” he asked with a wink.

“I’ll just take the wine, thank you,” you mumbled. He nodded and poured you a goblet, unsubtly eyeing your cleavage from his new vantage point. You motioned that he’d given you enough, leaving him to pour his own drink and cork the bottle again before taking his seat.

“I hope you don’t mind if I pray before the meal,” he interjected suddenly, “I’m a devout Catholic.”

“Oh, go ahead,” you nodded.

He chuckled slightly, making you feel foolish. “I’m joking, obviously. I’m a pirate.”

“I didn’t want to make any assumptions,” you mumbled. “I’ve heard pirates are superstitious, after all.”

“So religion is superstition?” he mused, lifting his goblet to take a drink.

“That’s… not exactly what I meant,” you compromised as you shifted in your seat.

He just looked at you, seeming to relish in your discomfort, as he began to eat from his plate, still staring at you. "You're not eating," he finally noticed.

"I suppose I've lost my appetite," you weakly explained, pushing a grape across the plate with your fork.

"Is it me? Do I… repulse you?"

You couldn't determine if the question came from insecurity or was some sort of trick. "Um… no," you answered. "But it is the circumstances you've put me in."

"I really mean no harm. It's been many years since I've had a chance to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman for dinner, that's all."

"But I'm spending the night here?" you remembered.

"Yes," he agreed.

No harm indeed, you thought to yourself as you nearly rolled your eyes. "You dishonor me," you protested. "My fiancé—"

"I think we both know he's dead," he interjected sternly.

"He made it to a lifeboat," you informed the Captain.

"Do you not hear the storm outside?" he scoffed, standing up to approach his window and throw open the curtain, revealing the heavy rainfall and lightning strikes on the water. "No lifeboat could withstand that."

Just as you hoped to find something to say to break the silence, something that would distract from his obvious and unfortunate truth, but he spoke again first.

"Say, shouldn't it have been the women and children first?" he realized with a furrowed brow, turning back from gazing out the window to examine you. "How did he make it on and you didn't?"

"There… there was only room for one more…"

"He took your spot," Jefferson realized, before suddenly bursting into laughter. You frowned and felt your eyes sting as you looked at the napkin in your lap. "And you say I dishonor you, when your betrothed left you to die so he could save himself!"

He walked closer, and you tried harder to fight your tears as he leaned in right in front of you.

"We really should thank him for his cowardice, shouldn't we? He's made you the only survivor of the wreck of the Princess Marianna," he grinned, and in a moment of weakness to your anger, you looked up and slapped him across the face.

"It wasn't a wreck, it was a siege," you corrected with shaking anger as the Captain rubbed his cheek, "and I'm not a survivor, I'm a prisoner!"

"Is this how you think prisoners are treated?" he snapped, grabbing your wrist tightly when you reached out again. "Dressed in silk, given fine wine?"

"Stolen wine," you grimaced, "and I assume the same for the dress?"

"No, the dress wasn't stolen. It belonged to the woman I loved before she died."

You straightened suddenly, stunned by his confession. You hadn't even considered that a pirate could really love. "I… I'm sorry."

"So forgive me if I can't muster much sympathy for your dead fiancé, it's just that I can't imagine claiming to love someone and choosing myself over them," he explained with ill-concealed contempt, looking away. "I'd have given my life to save her. But there are no lifeboats in a plague."

Your eyes that watered with rage before now brimmed with sympathy; the hand that reached up strike him before now delicately cradled his face, soothing where his cheek began to turn red. "My mother…" you trailed off. "The plague took her as well. It's cruel to see someone you love rot away."

He looked back at you again and you felt exposed to his stare, like he could see right through you.

It made a chill run up your spine, but it was oddly pleasant. He held out his hand for you to place yours in, guiding you to stand before him as he drank in the sight of you.

"You haven't had any wine," he realized softly. "Drink."

Hesitant but entranced by him, you grabbed the goblet from the table and took a sip. His hand gently tilted the bottom further, encouraging you to drink more, until you were gulping down the whole portion. As you finished, a drop fell down from the corner of your lips; his thumb wiped it away, and he brought the digit to his mouth as he sucked off the flavor from his own skin.

You didn't even mean to watch him dart his tongue out and lap up the liquid, but it made your thighs clench of their own volition. "Sweet," he whispered, and you forgot he was talking about the wine.

He took the goblet from your hand and set it down, turning his attention back to you as he ran his fingers over your shoulder, gentle enough to make little goosebumps prickle your skin all over. His gaze trailed over your face in the same pattern that his fingers did, his delicate touch making you shiver as he caressed your cheek, your jaw, your lips and finally your chin which he lifted slightly.

“Kiss me,” he requested softly.

More willing than you expected or were willing to admit, you leaned in closer to him and pressed your lips to his, chaste at first before he started to pull you closer and move his lips with yours. It was him that traced the shape of your mouth with his tongue before sliding it between your teeth, breathing heavier through his nose and wrapping his arms around you tighter.

You found yourself being pushed back, guided to his Captain’s desk, which he lifted you just enough to set you on. Without breaking the kiss— though it did become much hungrier and more intense— he roughly hiked the skirts of the borrowed dress up your legs, grabbing you tightly as he held you by your thighs.

Perhaps you could blame it on the alcohol, but you weren't even really feeling it yet and you were melting into his touch, moaning softly against his lips. Just when you were beginning to really like his fingers rubbing circles on your inner thighs, he removed his hands from your skirts. Instead his hands fumbled at your back to loosen the very same lacing he had helped you to tie before, releasing you from the dress just enough that he could tear the front down to expose your breasts, which he instantly reached up to grope in the palm of his hand while you both sighed a little at the feeling.

"Beautiful," he sighed as he started to kiss his way to your ear, biting gently around it. "So beautiful…"

You were devoid of words or even thoughts, operating only on primal instinct as you shuddered and fumbled with his coat and vest, hoping to see more of him in return. He smiled against your skin, apparently pitying you enough to lean back and help remove his layers of clothing. When you pulled his scarf away, you gasped at the sight of a scar that encircled his entire neck.

"How did you—?" you began to ask with a concerned whisper.

"I was sentenced and hung for piracy," he explained quickly. "It didn't take."

He kissed you again as he kept stripping with your rushed assistance; you didn't get it all off, just enough to leave him in a loose-fitting undergarment that revealed his scarred, masculine chest which moved with every deep breath he took.

Your fingers trailed down the expanse of skin, your breath a little heavier as you found the belt of his trousers. He grinned and opened it himself with one hand, while the other moved under your skirts again, drifting higher and higher until he finally swiped a finger through your sex.

The feeling made you choke on nothing, and he did it again, gathering and encouraging your arousal. You never got a look at his member, your clothes blocking you from seeing anything useful, but you could feel the shape of it pressing into your thigh.

You didn't know enough about what to expect to be sure that it was particularly large… but you were intimidated either way.

His forehead rested on your shoulder as he guided the thick, spongy head through your folds, seeking your entrance hastily. Even just that pushed your lips wide apart, your head getting dizzy as you realized he intended to put that inside of you. When he found it, just barely beginning to push forward, he straightened up to stare down into your eyes.

“Look at me,” he demanded. “Look at me when I take you.”

Blinking quickly, you did as you were told, looking up at him and feeling your gut sink and your heart twist at the idea of being stripped of your decency in such a way by this man. It was hard to believe it was really happening; it was hard to comprehend the way it titillated you.

All at once, he shot his hips forward and filled you, making you nearly scream though you managed to suppress it to a gasp. He watched you closely the whole time, giving only one moment of stillness to adjust before he began to pull back and start the cycle all over again, each movement stretching you wider than you had ever dared to imagine.

His expression was almost blank, almost unreadable, except for his eyes; they burned with enough passion to consume you in the flames, seeming not to blink as if he couldn’t miss even a moment of your pain and your pleasure.

Releasing you from his stare, he looked at your lips instead which he captured in another dominating kiss, one that trailed over your jaw as he began to really find his pace and increase the brutality of his body carving its space inside yours. More than anything, you focused on keeping your eyes shut and trying to distract yourself from it so wouldn’t audibly moan.

His tongue and lips laved your neck as he thrusted into you, the shadow of stubble on his face just enough to scratch your skin while his hands guided your legs to wrap around his hips. You would surely fall limp onto the desk if he didn’t cling onto you so tightly, strong and calloused hands clutching your back.

When he reached some very specific place inside you, a jolt of energy through your body shot your eyes wide open and your hands up to clutch at his shoulders. “Oh—!” you choked, gasping for air as he drove the head of his cock right into it again. He pulled away from your neck to smile down at you proudly, watching you moan and shiver at the overwhelming sensation.

“Didn’t know it could feel good, huh?” he taunted huskily. “Didn’t think you’d like it?”

He continued his assault on your neck, sure to leave a mark now, and it was all you could do to hang on for dear life as he slammed into you, the loud noises of his skin on yours filling the room.

Pressure built and built inside you, threatening to seize up at any moment. His speed kept increasing, kept pushing you to the edge faster and harder until you cried out, your nails digging into his shoulders as your body tightened and relaxed rhythmically.

“Oh god,” he moaned, right against your ear, “beautiful… you can’t imagine how wonderful it feels when you let go for me.”

He didn't slow down even slightly, keeping you suspended in pleasure with every desperate thrust into your pliant body.

"Do it again," he demanded darkly, but you were already spilling over the edge and sobbing at the onslaught of sensations filling you from the top of your head to the ends of your toes (which curled without you even realizing). He grunted as your walls gripped him with every wave of pleasure, his fingers digging into your supple flesh, sure to leave marks in the morning. "That's it," he purred, "give me everything."

You realized with dawning horror that his moans were getting louder and deeper but he showed no signs of stopping to finish outside. “Wait—”

“Fuck,” he hissed against your ear, holding you tighter as you started to squirm. “You’ll make me come.”

“Not inside,” you whimpered, swinging your arms to try to push him away, “you have to— please take it out—”

He growled and grabbed your wrists roughly, making you yelp a little. “You’re mine now. I’ll do with you what I please.”

“No, I can’t,” you whined.

“You can,” he promised through his teeth. “You can take all of it, beautiful… you can take every last drop of my seed inside you.”

You sobbed and struggled but ultimately as you felt his cock begin to flex against your channel and heard his panting breaths against your ear, you knew it was too late and he was spilling himself within you. He groaned and you let out one last weak whimper, going limp in his arms as you felt warmth begin to bloom from your core where he’d filled it.

The only grace he could’ve given you in that moment was just to leave you alone, toss you into the brig like you would’ve preferred in the first place, but he couldn’t even do that: he stayed inside you, holding your face and kissing you slowly while he caught his breath, mumbling praises you didn’t care to parse.

He carried you to his bed, undressing you from the gown until you were bare and had only his body to shield you from the draft in the room.

"I never told you something about my beloved," he whispered in your ear as he cradled your body under the blankets of his bed. "When she passed, she was with child. I lost both of them… and now you'll be filling their space and giving me what she couldn't, what I'm owed."

You blinked blankly through silent tears that streaked down your temples.

"Oh! And I never told you the name of this lovely vessel you'll be residing on," he realized with a breathless chuckle. "Welcome, darling, to the Devil's Fortune. I hope you enjoy it here… because I won't ever let you leave."

[hereticpridevinyl]

Ok I finished your gay!dean manifesto and SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!! I am incabible of putting words together and sounding coherent cause my brain is melting from my ears and psalms 40:2 has gone and replaced it. Gonna think about it for life but honestly it’s made me such a gay!dean stan now! Can I hear more of your thoughts on it and just why cause it’s so big-brained snd there but I feel like my head has been caved in by the concept cause how tf am i only seeing this NOW???

first of all, i'm so glad you enjoyed my fic! thanks for reading :)

as for the gay dean brainrot... WELCOME BESTIE, JOIN US! gonna preface this all by saying that i adore every sexuality headcanon for dean (except straight—vile energy. evil, even, and wrong) and as a bi person i would be remiss if i didn't acknowledge how wonderful bi dean is. however. HOWEVER.

(under the cut because this got away from me enormously)

i've talked about this a lot on twitter, and i know a lot of people have said this more eloquently than i, but i'll try to sum up my thoughts here.

the way dean is into women is so incredibly performative that often it can't help but be read as an act. there's almost a routine to it: dean meets Beautiful Woman, dean flirts with Beautiful Woman, dean (sometimes, but not always) sleeps with Beautiful Woman, dean pats himself on the back for fulfilling his role of Most Hetero Man In America. it's as if being into women is another aspect of his job, another skill he was taught and forced to utilize, much the same way he was taught to hunt. in early seasons, dean's interactions with woman quickly gain a stale, rote sort of taste. we as the audience expect dean will hit on any attractive woman he sees; dean as a character seems to expect it of himself. there's no anticipation behind these interactions. they're predictable and often lead nowhere—especially if dean thinks the woman is unattainable. dean's hot-blooded all-american cishet lady's man persona is just that—a persona.

we see the cracks in this persona most often during moments that are ostensibly played for laughs. haha, dean likes a show about a sexy male doctor! he gets flustered when he's around the lead haha! he's so masculine and straight and tough but he falls apart when his favorite wrestler shakes his hand and winks at him! he can't form a coherent sentence when he thinks this man is flirting with him, and he's so flustered that he doesn't try to stop it haha! he's psyching himself up for this hookup with a woman because it's funny if he's not confident! look, he likes wearing panties and his comfy bed and cooking for his family and dressing up like a cowboy but those are all things he does in private because he's actually very straight and manly! see? in an effort to make dean seem incontrovertibly heterosexual, his character becomes a parody of himself. these brief moments that we're supposed to laugh at become tragic; watching dean winchester perform his compulsory heterosexuality becomes a waiting game, seeking out those flashes of his true self, his most genuine self, from-moment-to moment.

and then something insane happens: post-season 12, dean stops hooking up with women at all.

his hookups had been waning in the two or three seasons leading up to this point, but after s12 he stops trying completely. it's as if that aggressive need to perform this learned role eventually died out. he just... stops. late seasons dean is a man who would rather stay home and watch lost boys with his husband and his brother and their son for the millionth time than have sex with a woman he's never going to see again. this is who he becomes—and the show forgets to make us laugh this time.

and we all know that supernatural has a disease that almost always keeps them from writing women well—all marginalized groups, actually, but that's a topic for another rambling post—which could be a significant factor as to why dean's most compelling romance-coded relationships are with men, but it can't be the only reason. sam's relationships with women are frequently interesting to watch, and if not groundbreaking, they seem natural. there isn't anything forced or performative about sam being into a woman. obviously the brothers are very different people and cannot be compared one-to-one, but there's definitely something to be said about sam's lack of go crazy go stupid hot girl summer star-crossed lovers cas-benny-crowley situation that dean's got going on at all times.

in my opinion, the best chemistry dean has with a woman is charlie—and while that's very strictly platonic seeing as she's a whole lesbian and probably wouldn't go for dean even if she wasn't, it's undeniable that there's just something intoxicating about watching them on screen together. while i might be biased with this analysis, i think it's worth pointing out: it's like dean's letting out a breath he's been holding his whole life when he's with her. because he knows she's unavailable, he knows there's no world in which she'd be into him, and therefore he doesn't have to bother putting on his macho straight dude persona. he doesn't have to go through the motions of hitting on her, or sleeping with her, because it's out of the question. he can be himself. turns out, "himself" is a huge fucking nerd who likes to pretend he's someone he isn't and hang out with a woman because he loves being her friend and not any other reason. the axe of heterosexuality is no longer hanging over his head.

there's a throwaway interaction way back in s2e11 that sums this up more succinctly than i can:

DEAN: of course, the most troubling question is why do these people assume we're gay?

SAM: well, you are kinda butch. probably think you're overcompensating.

DEAN: (pause) right.

we've got some splendid jacting here where dean gets control of the vessel for a moment and sort of nervously smiles at sam, a sad kind of scoff that just gets me. here's another moment where we're supposed to laugh, but there's nothing funny about the way dean reacts to sam's words. there's no overblown anger, there's no begrudging laugh, he doesn't roll his eyes. he just smiles. looks down. doesn't argue.

[viscountessevie]

Justice for Shelley Conn!!! The writers did her and Mary so dirty and even so she was so so good. I know that every one has a grieving time but it would be so much more realistic to have Kate's father dying like a year prior, it would explain better Mary's emotional absence and why Kate had to take charge. Also I think Edwina should have known about the deal with the Sheffields since the begging, it would have made her character more likeable if she was willing to marry someone to take care of Kate and Mary and would explain the urgency of her wanting to get married so fast, the feeling that she failed her family when Anthony didn't propose and the fear she was not going to be seen as marrying material anymore after he didn't. She could have said to kate that she wanted to marry anthony and be his viscountess because she knew for what she saw that he was going take care her family if the Sheffields backed down and Kate could have understood her distress was because Edwina was in love with him. In the wedding scene her mortification would have been because she almost married a man who was in love with her sister and who loved him back all because sometimes people who love us try to proctect us instead of seeing us as adults who can handle the truth, then she would reveal to kate she knew about the deal with the sheffields and the rest of the season would be pretty much the same since it would be a big scandal for anthony to marry one sister after the other ran away from their wedding. Hire me netflix i fixed season 2

Anyways I’m done with my anti-Polio triade and we’re back to doing S2 Asks!

Also there’s a point/complaint I’ll be making in this post about post-S2 fics that came up again as a discourse on my dash last night - I really thought we put Edwina discourse to bed yall, why are yall like this T.T

Anon first off I am SO sorry to keep you waiting - this is a VERY old ask from like months ago?? I think it was prompted by my posts appreciating Book Mary and Edwina after the show butchered their characters? 

JUSTICE FOR SHELLEY CONN INDEED!! God she was SO robbed of scenes and while I love my moots who dislike the Sharmas in the show because of the writing I get very annoyed when they get anons that put it all on Mary, calling her neglectful and emotionally abusive like literally it’s not that deep yall, the writers just ignored her!! But yeah I do hate that they made her Violet 2.0 just so Kate can be more like Anthony which is such a tired take. 

Kathony in the books worked because while they were very similar, they did have differences that made them their own people! 

As for your fixed version of S2: It’s an interesting take and definitely better writing than S2 - then again ANYTHING is a step up from S2 (well other than the weirdos writing S2 fics they’re either fetishising Kate or making The Sharmas out to be as abusive as the Penwoods and making Anthony Kate’s white knight which ew please fucking stop) 

More Under The Cut [The Viscountess Essay Things]: 

I do love that the first part is essentially what happened in the books. I’m not sure if you have read the book but for those of my anons/moots/followers who are show only fans here’s some context: So in The Viscount Who Loved Me the Sharmas (well Sheffields in the books not to be confused with Mary’s parents in the show because they don’t exist in the book thank god so HC that Mary’s REAL parents were fucking angels) were all aware of their financial status, including Eddie and knew they had to have Edwina marry well to secure a better future for her. I’m sure Mary and Eddie wanted that for Kate too but it was a mix of her being overlooked/intimidated by the men and her not really wanting to be married either that they just focus on giving Edwina the full season treatment. So Edwina herself is well aware of the responsibility she has to her family. 

This is what made the sisters SO compelling in the books, they both had their burdens to bear and different responsibilities. Edwina wasn’t this ‘never been scarred by life and clueless’ naive deb the show made her out to be. In the books yes she is naive about marriage and what comes with it so in a way the full weight of her responsibility doesn’t really quite hit her. And who can blame her, she was 17. And it was a really good move of JQ to use their ‘courtship’ to illustrate how fucked up society was back then with the age gaps and essentially child brides. I especially loved that scene where Anthony sees El and Eddie together and Eddie is being a cheeky little sister and it hits him how young she is and how close he came to basically marrying someone like his sister.

I just loved how everyone was aware of who they are and where they stood in the books. The only clowning that happened was when Kate and Anthony were around each other - it’s like all their brain cells got yeeted from the horniness. It was funny af.

That being said, the book arc Edwina got about being the perfect deb and feeling the pressure and responsibility to marry well for her family was what I thought they were going to do after the coconut oil scene in Ep 3 but they just had to FUCK IT UP with having Eddie have a crush on him. 

I do see how you fixed the mess of a plot after Ep 4 but personally I would have just YEETED the engagement and Edwina’s romantic feelings all together because come onnn Edwina and Anthony’s utter lack of connection and chemistry before they became in laws WAS FUNNY AF. Look at this shit: 

I’m not sure if you want my rewrite of the season but here’s what I would have done: 

- Adapted the book more close lmao but keep the horse riding motif; would have still loved for a funner version of Colin - well I guess that’s Ben in the show to have introduced them and they pretend to not know each other from the horse ride and we still get their book intro just with more layers 

- Keep the new bee scene and maybe have them be caught by one of their parents - listen I just want these clowns together in an official capacity before the halfway mark of the season because WE DESERVED MORE MARRIED KATHONY IN THEIR OWN SEASON

- But instead of getting married right away, they have a longer engagement instead so we have one ep dedicated to them still struggling to accept their feelings so they use the engagement time to figure shit out. Then after a montage of hate fucking fuck buddies Kathony - we get the confession scene after the new accident scene which was just a normal riding accident she wasn’t running away but like the accident puts shit in perspective for both of them. 

- Maybe not a week long coma but like a couple days and Anthony is losing his shit, Kate wakes up and is like Life is too fucking short I love you, you fucking idiot. The confession a mix of the one from the book and the show WITHOUT KATHANI. HER NAME IS KATHARINE. [Before anyone sends me asks about this bit please read my Kate Name Discourse tag on this I have talked about it to death]

- In this version just like in the books, Edwina feels n o t h i n g and their ‘courtship’ conversations are boring af. She quickly sees through him presenting the performative version of himself for her. She gleans this from how he is with Kate and also after her convo with Daphne going “Anthony, even tempered???” She’s like Something isn’t right here?? And calls him out for it and he sheepishly admits he wasn’t being himself (actually the “Let’s stop playing our roles” speech could be directed at Anthony here instead tbh) and they start to get along more as friends/future siblings in law. 

- Also what pushes Eddie to call him out and stop their courting is her falling for Dorset who is a mix of Bagwell and Dorset in this. We’re yeeting his “I went to India once and made it my whole personality” trait. He can still have visited and not always bring it up in convos. So replace that Edwina and Anthony scene talking the drawing room with Dorset. Basically they have the Edwell romance that was in the books. 

Spicy Alternative that could have avoided the Straight Mess™ that was The Engagement Plot and stupid fucking triangle: Edwina is a lesbian. Girlie has read definitely Sappho she knows what’s up. But because of her own burden and responsibility to the family, there’s a bit of hetcomp at play. That’s also why Eddie feels nothing for him lmao. I can also see her being bi to be honest. But yeah Lesbian!Edwina would have been fun to see with El, replacing Theo (love him but YEET the man teaching a woman about feminism) and this way there’s no stupid rebels plot that the Queen can threaten El with and Pen can go off and ruin someone else’s life (Cressida maybe who actually deserves it??) 

- I don’t care if this picks apart the other plots cos fuck all the Featherflops and LW storylines, Cousin Hack doesn’t exist in this season, all his screentime goes to developing the Sharmas and giving Kate the backstory SHE ALWAYS DESERVED! GIMME ALL THE SHARMA SCENES FROM THE BOOKS. WE NEEDED THE MILK SCENE. MARY TELLING KATE SHE VISITS HER MOTHER'S GRAVE TO UPDATE HER ABOUT KATE. A L L THE KATE/EDWINA/MARY BONDING SCENES

So many fucking good book scenes and lines and we got n o t h i n g.

- Also!!! Anthony should have had sex dreams. Like if they didn't want to have them having sex until after the engagement plot, fine - could have offset it with more scenes pre-confession with his sex dreams dammit.

Anyways that's my take, hope yall enjoyed it and thanks for reading this all the way through if you did!

[ Ik yall can tell how much I hate S2 sometimes it honestly makes me tear up at times I feel stupid]

[kkyujikoo]

These are my... 2...? Maybe 50, cents about the whole "freejk" thing. I'm gonna be extremely petty and at some points a whole lot sarcastic and it's gonna be long but I had to say it. As soon as I get my computer I'm gonna make it under read more, but the app does whatever it wants, as we know.

Listen, this ain't my first fan rodeo, and not even the first fan rodeo where I've been directly or indirectly accused of being some sort of pervert or delulu. I've been in fandom spaces since I was a teen, I was shipping mlm couples when queerbaiting in TV shows was still something that was seen as the norm rather than some cheap disgusting trick. I was there when fanfic spaces saw "slash" fics as something "different" and to be tagged with a more mature rating even when they just looked at each other.

I was in BBC's Sherlock's fandom and I shipped Johnlock during the hiatus between S3 and S4, at this point I'm not even feeling it when people call me delulu or a weirdo.

So, yeah, take this with a grain of salt: as a person who has seen thousands of times fandom drama unfolding and has lived too much of it... This whole situation is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. Like, yeah, it's maddening how people will blame anyone and everyone because they don't even see their own bias and homophobia, granted, but like... It also makes me laugh for the sheer dumbassery of the reasoning behind it all?

Like... Y'all are getting mad and for what? Because it sure as hell isn't the invasion of privacy, since y'all are watching the same content we're all watching and you're paying to see it the same way everyone else is. If you don't want to "invade their privacy", you should just... Stop watching content that isn't their music videos, RUN episodes or interviews. Memories and any kind of dvd/video that shows what they're doing behind the scenes shouldn't be part of their job as musicians, and therefore we're intruding in their privacy... Or aren't we?

Or maybe it's more nuanced than that: maybe the content they release on dvd/on their official channels is part of their job as entertainers, and it's been approved, and it's a small window THEY are granting us.

You know what's the REAL invasion of privacy and what REALLY invalidates someone autonomy? When you, who maybe aren't even paying to see that content (which is something I understand, like, dude, I'm not covered in money either), DEMAND what kind of behind the scenes content you want when I swear ABSOLUTELY NO ONE has asked you. Once again: you don't like it? You think it's some huge invasion of privacy? Don't buy it. Don't interact with it. Convince your friends to do the same. For all I care, just go and petition to boycott this kind of content. I know you won't do it, because... That's the thing, isn't it? It's not the invasion of privacy that bothers these people.

Y'all aren't mad because we get into their business or else you would have gotten real mad when we were privy to REAL private moments like people crying their hearts out.

No, no. Y'all are mad because it's "shipping content" and "fanservice" which apparently bothers you because it lacks authenticity.

Pick a side, lovelies: either you DON'T want to invade their privacy, and thus all the content they release should be focused on what fans want to see, or you WANT to know how they interact TRULY in private.

And here's the catch: "shipping content" can be anything. Shipping existed WAAAAAYYY before the word for it was invented, same way with fanfictions. Shipping means, literally, "seeing two (or more) people interact and thinking they would make a good romantic pair". That's it. That's quite literally it. Everything else is just some nuance of the concept of shipping, but at its core, it's nearly impossible to ban all shipping content when it's a group of seven people, because they should for real go in social distancing mode to do so. Most people who have parasocial relationships tend to have "ships" whether they know it or not, because we've all, at least once, looked at a dynamic from the outside and thought "oh man they look cute together". So, even if, o dear ones, your wishes were granted... What the hell do you mean by "shipping" content? Should they just film solo clips, avoiding talking about the other members? But wouldn't that be fanservice, since it's focused on pleasing the fans? (Which, ultimately, is what fanservice MEANS, and I hate to break it to y'all but the whole concept behind entertainment and thus all the content BTS releases it's... For the fans. Like, they're not going out of their way to just meet our expectations but they're certainly doing fanservice by the mere act of releasing bonus content.)

But it's not even quite that, is it? Because no one bats an eye if it's Tae kissing Nj's cheek. I've seen no hashtag against everyone - and I mean literally every one of them - wolf whistling at Nj. It's okay to show intimacy... Because they're bandmates and it's okay to be close to someone who you see basically 24/7, I hear you. And it's also okay when people see that and gush over that closeness, because it's such a nice thing to see.

Soooooo... We've got to free JK from whom exactly? From what?

Are y'all mad cause people pointed out there's very little way a bruise that stayed for a whole ass night could be a quick bite? Because that doesn't harm jk, at most makes fun of him and jimin and their poor excuses (seriously, guys, next time consider using mosquitoes or "I was doing stuff". It'll be equally embarrassing but at least the meme will be funny), and it's literally... A fair observation. Like. It's a hickey, people are gonna make jokes about seeing a hickey and poor excuses of covering it up in the exact same way they're gonna make jokes over jimin falling out of chairs. And yeah, a hickey is AT LEAST something that happens in a sensual context. Like, I could understand "people who are extremely familiar with each other will have different body language/touch in areas where usually you wouldn't see friends touching each other", but that's not. Not a hand on the thigh. It's a hickey on the neck. I don't even know a more stereotypical placing for a hickey. But once again, are y'all mad because someone is pointing it out? Because that's not being delulu or even being a shipper, really, it's just commenting on something that was approved to be shown and discussed in something that was released BY THEM.

Are y'all mad at hybe for showing something that literally fell onto their hands? Cause like, unless someone (I'm counting on Jimin, since as we know Jungkook was busy spinning him round and round and had both his hands busy) called at hybe headquarters to say "yo bang pd substitute, is it okay if I give my friend jk here a hickey? Cause he's being really annoying rn and he has to pay", I highly doubt anyone expected Jungkook to come to rehearsal all neatly marked up. Or idk, maybe someone at hybe asked them "we need Jungkook to come in with a hickey but refuse to say it's a hickey, so that fans will feel reeeeally served." That sounds perfectly plausible too. Or a good marketing strategy.

Now, if you're a big company and your objective is to have some footage of the rehearsals for a concert, and the fandom is too good at noticing stuff for their own good, and one of your artists comes in with a very visible mark, and he and his bff bropal4lyfe come n with a story about how they were playing and a bite happened, you've got three choices: 1. Cut the artist out of aaaaalll the footage. Someone would have noticed the "bite mark" anyway, you best believe that. If you don't want anyone to notice it, you gotta cut him in most of the footage where it's visible. 2. Keep the hickey, discard the explanations. You could do that, but also it would feel a lot more unfaithful to everyone involved. Also they clearly worked their ass off to invent an explanation, come on! They truly tried to do their best inventing something that was not "it's a mosquito bite", they should get some credit! 3. Keep the bite, keep the explanation.

Notice how none of these solutions include the biting never happening because... They couldn't prevent it? The only thing they have any control over is how they're framing each "accident". And that's not an easy job.

I applaud you, people on the editing team.

So... On whom should we cast the blame now? Ah, yes, I think it's finally time for the ultimate scapegoat of this fandom: Jimin. Which is funny, cause... You know... If this were really about privacy, or being "victims" of shipping... This should be about freeing him too, you know? But obviously Jimin does it for attention, while Jungkook, poor angel that he is, doesn't even know what shipping is.

Furthermore, don't we all know how much Jimin imposes himself in Jungkook's life? To the point where he, multimillionaire man feels compelled to share a car with Jimin even if they're both late in the process. And can't you see how uncomfortable he is, draping himself over Jimin, making Jimin drap himself over him?

Oh lordy, truly such an awful eight years Jungkook spent, choosing to have vacations with someone who made him uncomfortable, spending free time with him, even having to suck his ear in public to the point you can see his saliva just because Jimin was sad :( truly an all-around bad time for Jungkook, as evidenced by alllll those times when he said Jimin was pretty, cute, and all-around knowing every little thing about Jimin. I absolutely concur, the dude would be so much more happy if jimin was not in his life.

Did that sound weird and absolutely ridiculous and a really absurd joke? Because that's what y'all sound like to me. Like. Jungkook is out there living his best life, getting hickeys and showered in affection and y'all paint him as a fucking martyr??? I'm sure he's really truly desperate that Jimin holds him in such high regards 😭😭😭 I can see him suffering whenever he starts doing his own serendipity rendition 😭😭 and when he claimed you are me, I am you as his and Jimin's only 😭😭😭 I cannot believe this poor baby 😭😭😭

I've reached a point where every time I hear this stuff I laugh because the levels of twisting reality when it comes to jikook are extraordinary, Jungkook will have a literally blissed out face and people will cry in outrage.

But coming back to my point: let's pretend you're not mad at Jimin and the possibility that jikook are dating: are y'all mad... At the hickey? Because at this point it seems like the only feasible solution. And if you are, do not worry: I'm sure Jungkook's skin was throughly healed by his boo. A kiss soothes even the worst pain, doesn't it?

[axwalker]

AFTER

I’ve never liked the way PB wrote everything that happens after Drake gets shot trying to save MC --they don’t even go to a freaking hospital!! 

I think this might have been done before but I wanted to share my own version of it. I hope you enjoy it!

 This is my contribution for DAY THREE OF TRRAW hosted by @trraw 

This ONE-SHOT belongs to The Walker’s universe but it’s a stand alone. MASTERLIST HERE.

I hope you enjoy it!

Book and Pairing: TRR Drake x Alexis (MC)

Warnings: Shooting, coma. 

ALL MY FICS ARE +18.

Words: 2,868

Disclaimer: All characters and some dialogues and places  belong to Pixelberry. 

Tagging perma:

@mskaneko @drakexwillow @burnsoslow @thegreentwin @kat-tia801

@gkittylove99     @no-one-u-know @twinkle-320 @forallthatitsworth @marshmallowsandfire @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @princessleac1 

@twinkleallnight @tinkie1973 @moneyfordiamonds 

DRAKE

My lungs draw in air, bringing consciousness and chaos rushing back to me. And pain. So much pain. My vision is blurred as if I’m underwater. I can’t move; I can hardly take some shallow breaths. Gunshots, screams, and fire sound through the ringing in my ears. My left arm is heavy with deep, piercing pain. I feel dizzy and disoriented, but I have to make sure where Lexie is. She has to be alive. I remember the gun pointing at her, and terror, as I’ve never known, invades me, carrying adrenaline through my blood.

“Lexie,” I croak. “Lexie!” My gaze darts all over, assessing. A pool of blood, seeping into the floor below me, freeze my veins. Please, God, don’t let it be her. I struggle to sit up, but the sharp pain stops me. Trembling, I turn to see the hole in the skin of my forearm, up to my elbow. The screaming starts again closer, and I realize that Alexis is not hurt.  

My relief is short-lived when I realize Alexis’s crying inconsolably. She seems desperate; her hands are drenched, red. Her dress is soaked up in blood. For a minute, I panic again, but I realize it is my own blood she has all over her. I sigh, relieved, and try to tell her that I’m in fine, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth.

I struggle to stand up, but I feel someone or something trying to keep me pinned where I am. It’s not Lexie because she’s kneeled next to me. Telling me … something. I can’t hear her. Her hands go from my face to my chest and my hair. Huge tears are rolling from her eyes. Suddenly, her soothing touch stop, and I want to scream. Leo is holding her; she seems so broken. I want to take her in my arms, tell her that I’ll be okay, but I can’t speak.

Finally, my eyes fall shut under a wave of dizziness that I can’t avoid. The last thing I see is Alexis’s sad face before blackness comes down.

A thousand stars twinkle in the sky; I’m lying in the middle of the woods. Lexie is next to me, her small hand engulfed by mine. Despite the frosty wind, I feel warm, content for the first time in a long time. I want to stay here, like this, with her forever.

Suddenly, we’re back at the palace, and she’s in my arms. We’re swaying slowly at the rhythm of an old waltz, and I realize it’s the happiest moment of my life. Just moments ago, her warm body was writhing, moaning beneath me. She was mine.

Now she’s here. With me. You have to wake up now, she says. Please, Drake. Wake up, my love. I don’t understand what she’s talking about; I try to hold on to her, but she keeps crying and begging for me to wake up over and over again.

I try to tell her I’m here with her. That I’m never going to let her go. That I regret every second, we wasted because I refused to listen to her. That I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together. But I can’t. My eyes refuse to open, my brain to cooperate. She’s so close and so far away from me. This is punishment for chasing after what wasn’t mine. For using Liam’s trust and deceive him. For hurting Lexie. I hurt the woman I loved when I swore I’d never do that. Never love anyone. I shouldn’t love anyone. I know I don’t deserve her, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Her tornado-like personality sweeps people up, and it was so powerful, it drew me in so that I wanted to kiss her and touch her and make her mine.

Please baby, please, stop crying.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My eyes flare open, and my body spasms. Terror surge through my veins as I slam into the floor. Not the floor, a bed. My brain registers white sheets, fluorescent lights, incessant beeping—a sharp pain sliced through me. I try to scream, but something in my mouth and down my throat pushed air into my lungs instead.  

“Drake.” A voice in my head. Soft and sweet. “Drake, look at me.” The voice is outside my head. I reach for it. I need it more than air. Lexie? I try to turn my head.

“Easy, now.” A man’s voice. Authoritative. Hands push me down at the shoulders. “Calm down,” he says. “That’s it. Don’t fight the machine.”

I try to inhale and exhale, but I can’t control my breathing. All the while, fluorescent lights come and go—my eyes. I’m opening and closing my eyes. I’m in here. This is me. The pain. Holy fuck, the pain. A red-hot sledgehammer to my right arm.

“Drake,” Lex says. Warm fingers fold around my hand. “It’s all right. Try to lie back.” Slowly my brain put things together. A bed with white sheets and beeping machines. This is a hospital. And Lex is here.

“Lexie,” I say. Or try to. The fucking tube in my mouth and down my throat blocks the word. I gag as more air pushes in.

“I’ll call the attending,” says the man, who must be a nurse. “Just stay with him. Keep talking and help get him oriented.”

Stay with me, my Lexie. Forever. My eyes fight hard to stay open. A plastic tube and white tape obscure my vision, but through and around it, I see her. Standing over me with brown hair falling down around her shoulders. Like a beautiful, peaceful dream after a long, dark night.

“Hey, Walker,” she says softly. Her little fingers intertwine with mine; her other palm runs smoothly over my forehead. “You’re all right. Just listen to my voice.” Her touch is so soft on my head. “You’re on a ventilator. Okay? It’s breathing for you. Try not to fight it. I’m right here. Keep listening to me. The respirator is to help you breathe until you come out of the sedation. That’s all.”

I wink again, unable to do anything else. Lexie reaches out her hand and caresses my cheek. I move my eyes and see Li and Savvy behind her.

My eyes fall shut in intense relief. My best friend and my little sister. Memories of safety and love from my childhood play on fast-forward—scraped knees and the time I fell from the treehouse. They were there for me. Over their shoulders, I see Bertrand and Max smiling. Savvy is here, Lexie is here, and Liam is all right. Everyone is.

“Hey there, Drake.” A tall man in a white coat is at the side of the bed now. “I’m Dr. Lahela. Let’s take a look at you…” He shines a light in my eyes. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Walker. You’ll need some physical therapy for your arm, but you’ll be fine.”

Alexis takes my hand and squeezes it. “You better never scare me like this again, Walker.” Her voice finally breaks. “I can’t live without you, Drake. Please, don’t do that again.”

I can’t talk, so I look at her trying to compel everything I feel for her. I treasure every shy smile, every kiss, every single laugh. I love her, and I don’t care if I deserve it or not. I’m never letting her go.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One Year Later

The day is finally here. I’m not one for nerves and that bullshit, but there’s no ignoring the tightness in my chest as I walk down the street. Even though I have the address memorized, I recheck my phone to verify that I’m at the correct address. It’s there in my text messages, the location Lexie sent.

We’ve been together for more than a year, and sometimes I’ll get texts like these. Lexie loves to be spontaneous. I never know if I’m going to show up and find some dark bar where she wants me to fuck her in the bathroom… or if it’s going to be this really fucking cool bookshop where we’ll linger for hours, talking about books before she eventually buys both our favorites.

Those dates mean everything to me. I love the sex—fucking love the sex—but Lexie is a world into herself, and I could spend the rest of my life exploring her and still not know everything there is to know.

Today’s different, though

It’s not just any day, not just any date.

It’s been a year since the attack.

I touch the box in my pocket, take a deep breath, and push through the doors and into the restaurant. After a quick word, the hostess leads me up a set of stairs to the roof. I shake my head as I look around.

Lexie does nothing halfway.

The roof isn’t huge, but there is a gazebo in the middle that I’m nearly certain isn’t there during regular events. A small bar has been placed in the side, and the rest of the space is cleared of tables and chairs. It will just be us tonight.

She’s leaning against the railing and looking out across Portavira. We’re high enough to have a decent view of the sea. Personally, I only have eyes for her.

She’s wearing flat sandals and a stunning red dress; it clings to her body all the way down to her knees before flaring out. I will never know how she walks in the damn thing, but I appreciate how good her ass and tiny waist look on it as I walk over and lean against the railing next to her.

“I’m surprised you didn’t have me jumping on a plane to find you this time.” Something she occasionally does. She loves to travel. And I love her: ‘Surprise, I’m in Athenes, come get me’ texts.

“I did consider it.” Lexie turns to me with a grin. Her mouth is painted a crimson shade identical to her dress. Fuck, the woman is so beautiful it makes my chest ache. Not just her face. All of her, inside and out. She bumps me with her elbow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I love you.”

Her sexy grin turns into a full on smile that lights up her entire face. “You’re such a guy. All it takes is a short dress and a red lipstick.” She teases.

“It’s not that.” I take her hand and tug her toward the table set up for us. As we walk over, I study her expression. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” Lexie catches my raised eyebrow and sighs. “Look, this day is never going to be easy for me. I thought I lost you, but I promise I’m okay.” She hesitates. “How are you holding up?”

I answer her honestly. “I’m fine. I know this was a horrible day to you, but I barely remember anything.” I take Lexie’s hand and brush my mouth over her knuckles. “So, why’d you pick this place?”

She looks around, the light wind pulling at her silky hair. “It’s romantic.” She turns her hand in mine to lace our fingers together. “We’ve both been working a lot lately. While I fully intend to take you home, so you fuck my brains out, I thought it’d be a nice change of pace to have a nice Italian dinner first.” She smiles. “And this place has a cool seasonal menu.”

The bartender delivers drinks that Lexie must have ordered for us—both Macallan’s 18 years. We order and then sip in silence for a few moments. I shift the ring box, an ever-present reminder of what I plan for tonight at the beach.

I’m not used to feeling off-center. I sure as fuck have wasted too much time doubting myself. I do not doubt that I love her wildly. That she’s the woman for me. It’s her answer that frightens me.

And I’m still not sure tonight is the night for this.

“Drake.”

I realize I’ve been spacing out and grimace. “Sorry. What did you say?”

Lexie leans in, her expression going playful. “I said, ‘Is that a box in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?’”

I follow her gaze down to where the square is very plainly in view pressed against the slacks of my front pocket. “Well, fuck.”

Her eyes go wide. “Seriously? It’s not earrings or a bracelet or something?”

I pull the box out of my pocket, and I’m fucked up to realize my palms are sweaty. Jesus fuck, this is not how I planned to do this, but here we are. “It’s not earrings or a necklace, no.” I set the box on the table between us and take a breath. This might not be how I planned to go about things, but that doesn’t mean a fucking thing. Very little goes to plan when Lexie is involved; that’s one of the things I love most about her. I’ve learned to roll with the punches.

I take Lexie’s hands and hold her gaze.

“That night, I was terrified. When I saw that gun aimed at you, I thought I might lose you. And I can’t live without you.” Fuck, this is harder than I expected. It’s not the opening myself up that’s so challenging. No subject is off-limits with us. It’s more that I want the perfect words to describe how I feel, and I’m shit at words. I’m not a damn poet. I’m just me, and just me will have to be perfect because she deserves nothing less than perfection. “This year has been really fucking good, O’Brien. Every time I think I can’t love you more, you go and prove me wrong. I love the adventures and shit we get into together, just like I love the long afternoons we spend with takeout and movies and board games and shit. And the lazy mornings in bed. I love it all.”

I release one of her hands to open the box. It’s an heirloom, but it meant so much to my grandmother, I hope she likes it. Lexie deserves perfect. It’s a single ruby against a simple setting that lets the gem stand on its own.

Lexie stares at it for a long moment and then at me. “Drake, that’s so perfect.”

“You’re one hell of a woman.” I don’t move, barely breathe. “Will you marry me, Lexie?”

She screams and throws herself at me. “Of course I will.” Her lower lip quivers a little. “Damn, you’re going to make me cry after saying all those sweet, perfect things.” She holds still while I slip the ring onto her finger. She holds it up, smiling at the way it glints in the city lights. “A perfect fit.”

“Just like us.”

“Just like us,” she repeats. A heartbeat passes. Another as I try to rein myself. Then I lean down, take her face in my hands, and kiss her desperately like she’s the last thing I’ll ever taste. I kiss her with the power surging through my veins, with all the strength of my desire and happiness over this day. With all the want that’s burning through me—want of more than just her body. Everything I long for, everything I hold precious, I pour into her mouth—and my Lex responds beautifully. Her arms twine around my waist, pressing her soft belly against me. I’m so damn hard, I just want to push myself against her until she spreads her legs and lets me in. Instead, I slide my tongue into the softness of her mouth. She gasps. It makes me smile around her lips, knowing that I can make my girl gasp with just a slip of my tongue. I explore her slowly, wrapping an arm around her back and cradling her head, so when I thrust my tongue into the hot, soft sanctuary of her sexy mouth, she doesn’t have to work to stay upright. I kiss her soft and slow, and longer, harder until she’s gasping and my hand is slowly caressing her neck. Her back is pressed against the rail, and I’m thrusting against her. She’s rocking against me, too, and I stop. I see the waitress coming. We’ll have to wait a few hours until we’re together at the cabin, and I have time to explore every inch of her. Even if I know, it will never be enough.  

She’s blushing, and it’s so fucking adorable I want to kiss her all over again. “You know, for a guy who says you’re not good with words, that was one hell of a proposal.”

“I just love you so fucking much, baby.”

“That’s why I’m going to marry you.” She hooks the back of my neck and brings me down for a kiss.

Lexie leans back and meets my gaze. “I don’t suppose you’re thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That we should pay the tab, get the food to go, and take it back to our cabin.”

“A man after my own heart.” She kisses me again, sweeter this time. “I love you, Drake Walker. So fucking much. I can’t wait to marry you.”

[the-music-maniac]

You ever notice how similar Xie Wang and Han Ying’s stories and character arcs are?

A warning here that this contains spoilers for all of Word of Honor/Shan He Ling. Stop reading now, I reference a ton of shit.

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I was actually discussing a couple fic ideas with a friend a few weeks ago, and I got to wondering after thinking about those parallels I could see -

Does Han Ying x Xie Wang exist as a ship?? Is that a thing?? That exists?? Can it please exist??

It has so much potential. There's so many narrative parallels with these two characters.

They're two people who deserved better than their respective endings, who never got what they wanted, because of the manipulation of men who wanted power and would stop at nothing to get it (Jin Wang and Zhao Jing). The manipulation of those who saw them as less then what they were.

They also have similarities in their relationships with their "mentor figures" - Han Ying and Zhou Zishu, and Xie Wang and Zhao Jing. They have quite a lot of differences too, enough that their lives parallel each other instead of mirror, and I just think that their personal experiences could make for a very compelling storyline if these two were to interact. It would be an interesting road to a development of a potential relationship, and moreover an opportunity for both of them to learn from the other and heal.

And real talk? I just want the both of them to be happy tbh (and of course that obviously doesn't need to involve a romantic relationship - I just have no self control. I'd be just as ecstatic about a really good friendship though).

I also know they never interact in the drama - but then again these two are also literally dead in the drama. Reality is what you make it 🤣🤣. And considering how close the Scorpion was working with Tian Chuang - honestly I'm pretty sure you can't really say they haven't met either.

So anyways, I guess reasons why I think this would be a good ship dynamic:

First of all, their relations with their mentors and how it's similar to each other and also not. The resulting potential for mutual support:

Han Ying's dearest wish is to be a disciple of Zhou Zishu's, as he says plainly in that one episode.

The thing is, there could be quite a lot of subtext taken from that - I've read interpretations that he's in love with Zhou Zishu, or at least has romantic feelings for him - a strong crush possibly - which I can plausibly see (I can also see it just being platonic, which I will talk about later). But yeah, a romantic interpretation just because of how strong his devotion towards Zhou Zishu is. The wistful looks?????

In that kind of situation, IF the romantic feelings are two-sided instead of one-sided - which I would like to go on the record and say that with Han Ying and Zhou Zishu, I don't believe it is - and as a result actually becomes something, that type of relationship would not be the most healthy, because there's a very strong imbalance of power. Even if the mentor figure genuinely cares and actively minds the mentee's feelings - the mentee still undeniably has that level of hero worship - it won't ever be equal. We can see that already in Han Ying's case, Zhou Zishu repeatedly tells him to stop treating him with so much formality because he's not the leader anymore and yet Han Ying still remains deferential.

In that interpretation, if that were the case of it being two sided - Han Ying would have quite a lot of similarity of experience to Xie Wang's relation to Zhao Jing -

And here I can talk about how Xie Wang and Zhao Jing's relationship is uh. Kinda sus tbh. Like. That doesn't look like a healthy or platonic father-son relationship and it gives me the creeps. In Xie Wang and Zhao Jing's relationship, I'm more inclined to believe there's some semi-incestous yifu fucking going on than anything platonic, there's just so many sus moments - and if I'm not mistaken they dubbed over a line in the show where it was basically stated plainly that it's not a platonic relationship. Or at least - Xie Wang doesn't view Zhao Jing platonically (and I don't believe Zhao Jing discourages it at all, if anything he actively encourages and guides it to make Xie Wang dependent on him). So we got another setup where it's potentially one sided romantic feelings/hero worship. Or maybe two sided for them, who knows.

But the thing is, while I talked about unhealthy romantic relationships in my section about Han Ying, a fundamental difference between Xie Wang and Han Ying's relationships with their mentors is that Zhou Zishu's relationship with Han Ying would be a lot healthier. A LOT healthier. So much fucking healthier, I cannot emphasis that enough. And that's mostly because their relationship is not two-sided, and because he sees Han Ying as a person.

He cares about Han Ying a lot but not as anything beyond platonic - he views him as a student and a subordinate and protects him as such. Han Ying on the other hand could have romantic feelings for Zhou Zishu. Not in love per se, it feels to me like it could be a mix of a really strong crush with really strong hero worship. I don't think Han Ying truly knows Zhou Zishu's other aspects of personality (yet?? I guess because if we're gonna hypothetically bring both Han Ying and Xie Wang back to life he probably will eventually get to know Zhou Zishu properly), because I doubt he ever showed anything beyond his stern assassin leader type of persona to his subordinates. He was likely caring yes, but in a way that keeps people at a distance. So, a mentor-mentee type of relationship where Han Ying could be crushing quite hard on Zhou Zishu. But still a healthy one, as Zhou Zishu, one - doesn't intend to pursue a romantic relationship with Han Ying - and moreover, although might know about his feelings, or his devotion at least(tbh you'd have to be blind not to), he treats them, and him, with respect. He doesn't try and manipulate Han Ying, or use his emotions for his own purposes. He sees Han Ying as his own person. His affection and regards towards Han Ying remains unconditional, even if Han Ying messes up or doesn't follow instructions. Instructions that, btw, repeatedly try to keep Han Ying out of the line of fire, and makes it clear that Han Ying is to put himself first.

Everything Zhao Jing does however is solely to cripple Xie Wang and make him wholly dependent on him. He's been grooming Xie Wang from such a young age, and his positive regard and care is ALWAYS conditional. As soon as Xie Wang messes up, he takes it away as punishment, and because of how Zhao Jing's made himself the center of Xie Wang's world, that action is devastating to him. He subtly encourages and toys with Xie Wang's regard for him for his own purposes, he tries to make Xie Wang jealous so he works twice as hard to earn back Zhao Jing's attention. And as we see with his intention to eventually discard Xie Wang as soon as he is no longer useful - he doesn't view Xie Wang as a person. He's merely another tool in his arsenal.

The reason why I wrote such a long ass analysis about the similarities and differences between Xie Wang and Han Ying's relationships is because as I mentioned before, one reason I think this would be a pretty interesting ship and dynamic is how these two could help each other. At first, it might be more Han Ying helping Xie Wang.

Xie Wang hasn't ever experienced what a proper and healthy guardian type relationship is like, or even what it means for someone to choose him first. He's a victim of abuse, and should he manage to survive the avalanche at the end of the show, there is potential for him to start to undo all the damage that Zhao Jing has inflicted on him all those years, especially if the man is truly no longer around. And I think Han Ying would be in a very good position to offer him support in that journey. Moreover, if Han Ying has had an experience similar to that, it could be the reason he would want to offer support to Xie Wang. He's experienced a lot of what Xie Wang has experienced, but he's also seen what it is for someone to genuinely care about him, and as a result likely has a more healthy view on that type of relationship. They're similar enough for Xie Wang to potentially not want to push Han Ying away if he ever offers his help, but also dissimilar enough that Han Ying could offer new avenues of thought.

At the same time, if you just read Han Ying and Zhou Zishu's relationship as a really strong type of hero worship, this dynamic could make sense too. Han Ying clearly looks up to Zhou Zishu quite a lot, and on top of that, Zhou Zishu in a way represents everything Han Ying has wanted and couldn't have - aka a family and a mentor figure and a home to call his own. Regardless of if it's purely platonic or not, it's still an infinitely healthier relationship, a parallel to Xie Wang's experience, so the potential of the offer of support remains the same.

Second of all, similarity in origin and life experiences, which is a small thing tbh but still an important thing:

Han Ying is someone I don't know a lot of background on tbh - I presume he doesn't have a family anymore, and somehow ended up in the Window of Heaven. I've read fics where Zhou Zishu was the one to save him at some point and offer him a position in the assassin group, and I'm inclined to take that as a plausible head canon (unless it's actually canon, idk I haven't read tyk yet).

So, in bare bones, he's an orphan who is taken in by a mentor figure, and becomes a high ranking member of an assassin group.

Xie Wang is also someone who no longer has a family - we don't know that much about his background either, but I presume he was happened upon by Zhao Jing in some way - I'm not sure at what age tbh, is it assumed that he was raised by him?? Or maybe in teenage years??

Whatever it happens to be, Xie Wang was taken in, maybe even "saved" by (although if you ask me, he'd be better off without) Zhao Jing.

So in essence it is the same thing as Han Ying's experiences, an orphan who is taken in by a mentor figure, and becomes a high ranking (or the leader of) an assassin group.

And not only that, as I mentioned from the beginning, these two both realize and know, eventually, that they’re being used by men who are desperate for power (Jin Wang, Zhao Jing).

I mention this actually as just an extension of my first point, because while I mentioned that Han Ying very obviously can support Xie Wang in that particular “past grooming and abuse” aspect, there are probably still many hidden traumas and scars for these two from the lives they’ve both lead. Their similar experiences lead to similar choices which helped shape who they are, and as a result, I think these two could truly understand each other and where they’re coming from.

Their personalities would fit pretty well with each other. I think:

I don’t know if my interpretation on how these two are is accurate tbh, so feel free to let me know if you think it’s out of character.

To me, Han Ying seems like someone who would be pretty calm around the people he cares about; responsible, smart, eager to learn, with a steady sort of presence. He seems like someone who would wear their heart on their sleeve around people he trusts too, but not in any overtly obvious way. I think the reason why I get that impression is that, upon rewatch, I could plainly see his worry about Zhou Zishu in episode one, but when I first started the show, I somehow missed it entirely. Han Ying also didn’t show any qualms about admitting to Chengling that he wants to be Zhou Zishu’s disciple - which can be a very personal piece of info. The way he was around Zhou Zishu, and Wen Kexing also gave off an air of innocent eagerness to do well in his accomplishments and for approval. I’m not saying he’s always like this, because I’m rather certain he has a darker side too - as we see with all the characters, no one is without their traumas and no one is without artifice or without complexity. They’re all grey moral in a very human way, and Han Ying is no different. We’ve seen before too that once he’s got his game face on, the man is pretty competent and also ruthless (his conversation with Gao Chong for example) - I don’t think he could be any less if he’s that high up in the Tianchuang hierarchy. But at the same time I can also see him being a bit of a very subtle disaster (almost?? Slightly dorky??) in certain situations, and we can see that kind of peek through when Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing hijacked his kidnapping attempt and he was kind of like uhh. Okay so, I’m in a choke hold, I think that might be my former commander, so like. Let them go. It’s actually really funny cause while Wen Kexing was telling Gao Chong and Chengling to hurry up and leave, I swear you could see Han Ying contemplating his entire life.

The face of a man confuzzled.

Xie Wang on the other hand, is someone that’s more impulsive, liable to push or be mischievous, less of a steady personality and more like - for lack of better word - an absolute gremlin. A pretty murderous one. It’s a bit hard to tell all aspects of how Xie Wang is tbh, since he has many different mannerisms while talking to different people. With Zhao Jing he has a very subservient, almost dutiful, childlike and innocent air about him, and a sort of. Sa jiao (撒娇) type of demeanor. He craves approval from Zhao Jing, and is just generally very baby around him, and I’m really not sure how much of that is how he actually is and how much of that is him learning that this is the best way to get Zhao Jing’s attention. And tbh I don’t think all of that is grooming, I think Xie Wang probably does have the potential to be as soft or as innocently childlike and happy with others he cares about (just hopefully in a lot healthier way). I think we see his soft side a little with Qianqiao when he gives her the cure. Despite that though, we can still see other aspects of him surface. He makes suggestions and pushes when he thinks Zhao Jing’s refusals are unreasonable, he just goes and does his own thing sometimes (um usually murderous things. Like when he killed Song Huai Ren and told Zhao Jing he’s a traitor). He’s mischievous about some of his actions (after literally stabbing a man, ‘what? he said I should kill him if I have the ability’). He’s a lot more obviously gritty and aggressive and morally grey than Han Ying appears, which I think adds dimension to his character when added in with everything else. He’s also very smart, competent, ruthless - obviously since he runs the Scorpion, but he’s surprisingly fair and almost? Honourable? In certain aspects? And like Han Ying, he does somewhat wear his heart on his sleeve, retains that eagerness to do well and is somehow not as jaded as he could be, as he still finds the capacity to eventually care for a stranger (Liu Qianqiao). 

I may be oversimplifying how these two could be, but with their personality types I think they have a lot of potential both in a romantic relationship or as close friends. And in a way that at first glance would probably be puzzling - how in the hell did these two become friends/get together (lmao you’ll see Han Ying in his rather sensible disciple robes and then Xie Wang is just there in his braids, dramatic black outfits, winged eyeliner, etc. 🤣🤣😅😅) but on closer thought, makes sense. Han Ying could be a more steadying presence for Xie Wang, and Xie Wang in turn could help him loosen up a bit more. (That’s kind of oversimplifying it but it’s 5 am where I am rn and I’m too tired to elaborate) I also believe Xie Wang might push Han Ying to be more ambitious, be able to do things for himself more - because Xie Wang went through a process of, everything I do is for someone else, until I realized they were using me, and now I’m going to do it for myself. In that way they could potentially push each other to higher heights in what they do, and they are pretty similar in ideology and morals and previous actions. They both have blood on their hands, and they’re not afraid to be ruthless or do what’s necessary to get the job done. They have their traumas, their complexities and an understanding of what it’s like to put on masks for different people.

The potential for found family. All the found family. Gimme:

This one I feel like is more obvious and changes some things about canon, but the timeline I imagine for if Xie Wang x Han Ying would be a plausible ship is one where Han Ying survives the stealing of the fake glazed armour incident and becomes one of the disciples of Siji (second disciple of the sixth generation????). Everything else would likely proceed in a very similar way (although in this au in my mind Gu Xiang and Cao Weining are alive). And then during the avalanche incident, with WenZhou trapped in the armoury, Xie Wang ends up surviving and they end up finding him somehow.

Whether or not it’d be out of character for WenZhou to save him I think could be explored, but the bottom line is that eventually they would probably take him back to Siji. There, whether him meeting Han Ying goes smoothly or not is up to interpretation - I very much doubt it would be an amiable meeting tbh - in fact I fully imagine it to be antagonistic af at first, considering what opposing groups they used to be a part of and the knowledge of how deadly the other can be - trust would be hard to come by, which makes a slow development all the more interesting. And moreover them becoming friends or dating would likely help Xie Wang into the dynamic at Siji because now there’s a more tangible connection between him and the place, and I can see while he’s getting to know all the people of Siji, eventually thinking of them as family as well.  And Han Ying in turn gets another person who cares about him, and for him to care about.

I’ll be honest here and say that I don’t particularly care at this point how realistic or in character it all would be -  I need found family in my life I have no self control. Xie Wang and Han Ying my beloveds needs all the good things.

Another possible meeting is just Han Ying being sent to negotiate with the Scorpions instead of Duan Pengju (is that how it went? I’ll admit I’m a little fuzzy on plot points here) and meeting each other that way. There could be moments of understanding while working together, an inevitable kinda separation, and eventually seeing each other again at Siji, after all the shitshow is over. The development could continue from there.

The closer age gap:

I’d like to preface this part with a disclaimer that I’m not trying to bash any other ships that are out there, this is actually just entirely my personal preference.

I don’t really like big age gaps in my ships unless their both established adults - for example in their 30's 40's, even 50's. Even if one of them remains young in body, it’s just not a dynamic I generally like. The most popular ship that comes to mind here is Ye Baiyi x Xie Wang - and all the more power to you if you do ship it tbh, I can see it being really adorable and healing for the both of them, especially since Ye Baiyi never really gets a happy ending either (and he absolutely deserves one 😤😤😤) - but that as a ship dynamic is personally not for me, especially after Xie Wang’s kinda hinted relationship with another man that’s also older than him. Ye Baiyi obviously is ten million times the man Zhao Jing could ever be, and it would be an infinitely healthier relationship anyway, but yeah the age gap thing is just my personal bias.

So I don’t know, I appreciate that Han Ying and Xie Wang are both closer in age to each other. I know there aren’t confirmed ages (I think?) but if I had to take a guess, I’d say I think both of them are probably in their early to mid twenties.

Anyways, it’s literally 5:43 am now where I am, so I think I’m gonna end this way too long post and pass out. Honestly, I’m not even sure if this thing is coherent anymore, I’m half delirious with exhaustion while writing this. I might possibly write a fic or do something about this Xie Wang x Han Ying ship, I might not, but I just wanted to get it out there. It’s a cute idea.

Oh god my eyeballs are burning. Cheers, goodnight.

[suntrastar]

sink or swim

pairing: ransom drysdale x reader

summary: you first meet ransom when meg drags you along to a party. everything somehow spirals from there.

warnings: swearing, smut (but like very vague smut, nothing super explicit), ransom’s general assholery

word count: 9.3k

author’s note: i hate ransom drysdale! he is a shit character! if he existed irl i would whoop his ass with NO hesitation. but i still wrote this fic because ... a bitch gets thirsty okay?? okay. and ik this is very long BUT a lot of it is dialogue so it should flow pretty fast!!! likes and reblogs are always appreciated!!! ily now enjoy!!! you can also read this on ao3 :)

There’s something fun about being somewhere where no one wants you, and then something shameful. 

Meg isn’t touching you, but as she drags you around her famous grandfather’s mansion in search of people to bother, it feels like she has you on an invisible leash, fastened tight over your neck. To keep you tethered to her- like a fucking dog. 

The leash hurts like it is not made of plastic or metal but instead two hands squeezing tight, wringing you dry, choking you harder and harder and bruising you purple with no remorse.

Now, she’s debating political theory with her douchebag fuck of an uncle, who almost hits you once- almost hits you twice with his cane while waving it around as he quotes Fox News-

Their voices rise. You’re the only one that flinches.

Standing awkwardly on the edge, you wonder why you are the only guest at this terrible party that looks so lost. Meg gives you a covert this-is-total-bullshit glance, and a small, pained, rehearsed smile, both of which you have to return- that’s the real reason you’re here, after all- and her uncle rants on, wholly oblivious.

You look past them both, to where one man stands by himself.

He’s leaning against the far wall, and while Meg retaliates with some of her favorite words, including audacity and bigoted and problematic, you take a sudden, intense interest in the wallpaper pattern, sweeping your eyes over the span of it, looking over the man just once.

He is staring right back at you.

All it takes is his eyes- he’s just staring, but you’re absolutely embarrassed. 

He looks rich, with too much product in his hair and a coat that looks like it cost more than your rent, with loafers that expose an uncomfortable amount of ankle and an expression that morphs into something wolfish as he starts towards you-

Before you can think, he’s joined your little circle- Meg prefers standing, so of course, everyone stands- and smiles when she glares at him. 

He isn’t looking at you anymore.

“So,” he interrupts, and his voice is so dark, “what riveting political topic are we debating tonight?”

You should call an Uber. Why did you accept Meg’s offer of a ride?

“Ransom,” Meg says sweetly, “could you just, like, fucking not?”

This is supposed to be a Christmas party, but none of these people seem to be in the Christmas spirit. Including her uncle, with his stuffy sweater set and clunky-as-hell shoes. He sputters something about young people and their profanity, and then hastily leaves. 

Without thinking, you breathe out a heavy sigh of relief. 

The man smiles wider. Unfortunately, it makes him look very handsome.

”Ouch,” he says lightly, to Meg, and turns to you.

A shiver runs down your spine. 

You hate him immediately. 

“Who are you?” he asks.

For whatever reason, the question makes Meg scoff. She shakes her head at you- a warning. Her hair flounces with the movement.

Because she doesn’t want you to, you give him your name. And then add, because your name alone seems like a title too stripped down, “I’m Meg’s friend.”

It’s hard to convince yourself to be polite, when you don’t like how he’s been looking at you- with his eyes narrowed and brown furrowed and lips parted. He gives an insufferable nod.

“Right,” he says. “The one she’s been showing off all evening.”

Your heart skips a beat.

“Ransom-” Meg starts, and suddenly you are so angry, at this man for confirming what you thought was all in your head, at Meg for suddenly swooping in to save you, like she’s been waiting for it-

“I guess,” you say, and smile a little, and regret everything.

“That’s pathetic,” he says, and looks at you kindly.

 Apparently, Meg is the only one allowed to be self-righteous in her annoyance, or anger, or any other mildly passionate emotion. She doesn’t return your covert this-is-total-bullshit glance. 

So you fend for yourself.

“Well, so is this fucking party, so-”

He interrupts you with a laugh. 

It’s loud and arrogant and mirthless, and you’ll climb out of a window, find a way to walk through the walls, if it means that you’ll escape it.

“I’m just joking,” he says, pursing his lips, and the hands on your neck, ever-present, nearly crush the breath out of you. “Don’t get your panties all in a twist.”

“So funny I forgot to laugh,” you say, and instead of replying, he just looks at you.

He looks at you slowly, like he has nothing better to do, like he has time to waste. You can smell him- some cologne that’s spicy, and expensive, and Meg is staring at you in shock, like you’ve committed a crime. 

But she’s quiet.

“I’m Ransom,” he says, and raises his hands to make little air quotes, which is weirdly adorable in a way that you hate, “Meg’s ‘asshole cousin’”

“Weird name,” you say. 

You’ve changed your mind- you’re not even going to attempt to be nice.

For a second, he looks furious.

It’s attractive.

“Yeah,” he says. “Anyways, I’m about to ditch. Do you want a ride?”

How does he know you came here with Meg?

He was staring at you from the wall-

From his butterscotch-colored coat with its awful, ostensible lapels, he pulls out his car keys. The BMW logo flashes silver and blue, clashing against the gold of his pinky ring, clinking against the metal as he twirls the key ring around his finger-

For a second, you think that he’s about to toss the keys across the room and command you to fetch.

“Um,” you say, uncertainly, irritated with your own restraint, “Thanks, but Meg will-”

“Meg will what?”

He’s mocking you, and there is no one to come to your rescue. 

Hesitantly, like she has to think twice about it, Meg opens her mouth to say something. What is her problem? What is your problem? Why are you treating her like she is your saving grace? 

You talk before she gets the chance. “Okay, yeah. A ride would be great.”

***

Ransom offers because he likes your face.

You’re better-looking than the girls that Meg usually brings along to these parties, or maybe his standards have fallen- he isn't sure. Does it really matter? Even though he’s been looking at you all night, even though he’s positively thrilled to have you in his car, he’s not going to try anything.

There’s something desperate in your eyes that compels him against it.

You inhale sharply when he turns left. 

“You forgot your turn signal,” you say, and he kind of likes how you chastise him, not angrily or even upset, but just exasperated-

How is someone like you friends with someone like Meg?

“Don’t worry about it,” he says lightly, and the tired glare you give him is enough to make his entire week.

Now that he thinks about it, his mother is always on his case about things like this- compassion and civility and basic human decency, and how he lacks it all, but what about now? He’s taking a miserable girl to her home, simply from the goodness of his own heart, with no strings attached. 

This is such a good deed- this is like charity.

His mother is also always telling him that he’s severely, almost clinically narcissistic.

He definitely is, but again, does it matter?

“So, what do you think about my family?” he asks, making a big, dramatic show of using his turn signal before swerving right, feeling too pleased when you smile. 

He steals a glance at your knees and somehow feels guilty.

He’ll have to do something about that.

“They’re pretty... lively,” you say hesitantly, and he’s suddenly hating the dark, this stupid fucking night- he’d like to see you better.

“Lively,” he repeats, and barks out a laugh. “They’re fucking crazy.”

You laugh, too, a real one- off-kilter, and too loud- none of that artificial shit he heard at the party. Nothing meant to please.

“I was definitely thinking that,” you say. He catches you looking at his hands, but boldly, you don’t look away. “I just didn’t want to be rude.”

“Now you’re worried about being rude?”

“I’m in a car with a strange guy I’ve never met before, so yeah.”

You’re smiling but look uncomfortable, and then afraid.

All bark and no bite- you’ve been talking all this talk, when really, he realizes, you’re so washed-out, so faint, like the bare sliver of moon out in the sky, the same weak moon he’s been cursing out. The same stars, too- you are just as scattered.

You look pretty.

“Are you scared?”

He keeps his eyes on the road because he thinks you’ll snap at him if he doesn’t. Not like anyone drives out here anyway- not like he can’t pay off a ticket or two or five-

“Should I be?”

There is something so delicious about this moment, with you starting to worry- he can’t look at the road anymore, not when he can watch your throat bob as you swallow instead, and it still feels so violating, but so good. 

“Nope,” he says, and you startle when you hear him say it, and he has to bite his cheek to keep himself from smiling. “No need.”

“Great,” you say, and go quiet. 

When he pulls up to your apartment complex, not too far from where he lives, he holds his mouth in check. He could say so many things right now, but for you, he restrains himself.

You have your bag in hand, seatbelt off. From the streetlight, the planes of your face look waxy yellow.

“Thanks for the ride,” you say. 

Your hand is on the door handle, nails glittering. He can’t make out the color of the polish.

While looking at it, a sudden urge overcomes him.

And he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but he wants to, so bad. It’s borderline frantic, the desire- it’s necessary and all-important and crucial, for him and his basic peace of mind, and maybe for you, too-

Who is he to deny himself?

“Wait,” he says, even though the door is open and you have half of yourself out the door. 

The cold is slowly seeping in, bone-chilling.

You wait.

“Let me just,” he says, and can’t bring himself to say anything else.

He reaches out for your waxen face with one hand and presses it firmly against your cheek.

Under his touch, you shiver. He fans out his fingers to hold you better. 

Your eyes are wide. He thinks you look a bit horrified- horrified with yourself for not resisting, maybe.

But he closes his eyes as he leans in, so it doesn’t matter.

He turns your head for you, a bit forcefully. You don’t protest.

He kisses your cheek.

When he pulls back and opens his eyes, you’re staring at him with your mouth in a perfect circle.

“Uh,” you say, and suddenly look away and out into the night, and it makes him angry, even though it should be flattering, “Merry Christmas.”

*** 

You don’t think about Ransom as much as he probably would have wanted- life picks up too fast.

In the last days of the year, Meg calls you and texts you and even goes so far as to send a few emails, but finally, you seem to have found the self-respect to not respond- consider that ridiculously wealthy bridge burned. 

In January, your brother leaves to study for a semester abroad. All the walls in your small apartment are suddenly looming, standing high over you, standing empty. You try to shove off the loneliness by studying harder, by staying distracted.

In February, you have the same dream nearly every night- you’re sitting outside on a porch in the sun and for some reason there’s a bird on your head, and in your lap there’s a clock whose hands don’t work, and you’re wearing a heavy necklace made of gold links that jingle, and you’re so happy. 

Does the bird count as company?

In early March, while you’re watering your plants, your phone rings with an unknown number. 

You shouldn’t pick up unknown numbers.

You pick up.

“Hello?”

“Remember me?” 

His voice nearly gives you whiplash.

It’s dark and harsh, faceless and yet as arrogant as ever. 

“Hi, Ransom,” you say, and think of the night in the car for the first time since, think of how he gripped your face so hard that his ring left an imprint. “How the hell do you have my number?”

“Meg gave it to me,” he says smugly. “She says hi.”

You wonder what Meg thinks you did to her. It’s obviously something bad, something terrible, if she so willingly gave your number to this pretty-faced, pretty-voiced, ugly-coat-wearing asshole-

“Awesome,” you say plainly. You don’t want to talk about her. “Do you, like, need something, or-”

“I want to take you out,” he says.

You laugh and your grip on your pitcher slips, sloshing water over the edge.

“You’re joking.”

He is, right? 

He takes an impatient breath that, for some reason, sounds inappropriate. “I’m serious.”

“Ransom,” you say, slowly, “I don’t even know you.”

“Then get to know me,” he says testily, and you can perfectly picture him, sitting in some colossal brownstone his parents bought him, while a butler daintily dabs the sweat from his brow with an embroidered handkerchief. “Tonight.”

You’ve overwatered your marigolds. 

Has his voice really swept you this far away?

“No,” you say, and shake your head, even though he can’t see it. “No fucking way.”

“Oh, come on,” he says, like you’re the one being unreasonable. “You have anything better to do?”

You don’t, but you take a deep breath and prepare yourself to lie-

“I’ll treat you good,” he suddenly says, and his voice is low and sticky-sweet, dripping with honey. “I promise.”

He says it in a way that makes your knees weak.

You physically have to sit down- he knows how to get what he wants.

Could you actually do this?

Could you go out on a date with a crude, pretentious, trust-fund piece of trash, who probably thinks you’re easy, who’s only calling you because he’s bored, who has already subtly insulted you twice in this conversation alone-

-who got your number from his cousin that you both decidedly dislike, who kissed your cheek like you were pretty in the dark of the night, in his cold car?

“Fine,” you say. “Take me out.”

***

He doesn’t tell you that you look nice- he just stares.

There is something predatory in his eyes.

You’re out on a Wednesday night with a bad man, wasting your time, trying to get something out of nothing, smiling a fake smile when he orders you a drink you don’t like, already irritated with him, and trying too hard to stop looking at his face.

How are you actually interested?

You tell him that you’re in medical school.

“Really,” he says, like he doesn’t believe you. “You don’t strike me as that kind of girl.”

Underneath the table, you clench your hands for some sense of control, but still feel like you’re spinning. “What kind of girl?”

“Smart,” he says, and picks up his drink. The glass sweats beads of condensation, wetting the tips of his fingers. “I didn’t know you were smart.”

You shouldn’t dignify his flimsy insult with a response- he’s just trying to get a rise out of you, trying to make you roll your eyes or scowl or shiver. He wants you unsettled. 

But the moral high ground is, unfortunately, too high.

“And I didn’t know that you’re such a terrible date.”

His teeth gleam white when he smiles. He knows.

He knows that he can say whatever the hell he wants, because he has money, and those eyes, and that insufferably nice rich-boy hair, and that sweater with its charmingly frayed hems, and that voice- he has everything, and then some, and he’s about to have you, too, if he keeps on looking at you like he already does.

“You’re so sweet,” he says. 

“Fuck off.”

He winks and you could cry, you’re so fucking bothered-

You’re not usually this uptight, but he has you so drastically wound up that every little thing he does, even how he’s sitting- body sprawled, manspreading- is fire licking up on your skin, scorching-hot and ruining you with no remorse, like you have done something to deserve it.

When his eyes trail down, from your eyes to your mouth to your neck to below, you are so acutely aware of wanting him that you feel guilty. Like it’s a crime.

***

You don’t seem like the type of girl to fuck on the first date. 

So, of course, Ransom tries to fuck on the first date.

As you stand outside the restaurant, in your dress and strappy sandals, you look so tense that he wants to laugh.

 He can’t help it, because this whole thing you have going on- this weariness you approach everything with, this attitude- is so funny. Maybe, in any other situation, it would be irritating, but he’s been so bored lately that it’s stirring.

“Do you want to go back to my place?” he asks, quietly, taking a step closer to you so that at this very moment, under the waning sun, you should be able to just lean up and kiss him-

You blink slowly and keep your silence.

This is fucking tedious.

This should be so easy- all he has to do is settle his hands somewhere soft and let time pass, and then before he knows it you’re there and under and begging. But he can’t bring himself to touch you just yet, not when his head is calling you pathetic, and his heart calls you-

His heart just calls you.

You start to answer, and then hesitate. All five stages of grief flicker over your face at once- denial to acceptance in the same breath. 

“Sure,” you say, unevenly, desperately-

When you step inside his house, your eyes go wide. As you take it in- the decor, the windows, the excess, he locks the door behind him and takes you in.

You step further inside, and he thinks of where it would be best, but then your eyes crease as you smile- it’s impossible to wait when your smile looks like that- and so he backs you right into the closest wall, cups your face with both of his hands and kisses you.

He kisses you and you curl your hands over his shoulders and immediately kiss back, and he is taken aback and delighted. 

And he knew- the entire time at dinner when you were making eyes at him like you couldn’t believe that you were actually sitting there, present in that moment- he knew that secretly, you’re a freak. He knew it- he knows it.

He hopes it.

“Let me fuck you,” he whispers, right into your mouth, when your heart has been beating right into his for a while, “Let me fuck you right here.”

You bite his lip.

He takes a hand away from your face and reaches under your dress fast, rucking it all the way up your thighs, trailing up to touch you-

“Fuck,” you gasp, and arch your back up against the wall, and he grips you a little tighter-

He presses a finger into you- pushing aside your underwear and, good grief, you’re already wet- harshly, and pulls away from your mouth, so he can watch your face. 

The lines creasing your forehead look like poetry.

He thinks he likes you. It’s a shame he had to meet you through Meg- it would be nice if he had met you somewhere else, on his own. 

That way, he’d be able to waltz in one day, to another insipid family gathering, with you tucked under his arm. You, with your promise of a medical degree and your strappy sandals, and your iron grip on his shoulders and your drawn out breath of a moan-

The looks on their faces would be priceless.

“I’ll take care of you,” he says, and he’s a little irritated at how cracked his voice sounds, but it’s the right thing to say- you swear again and he picks up his pace, pressing hard on your clit. “If you’ll be good to me.”

“I’ll-” you say, and you’re actually stuttering, and breaking out into a lovely sweat, still forced back into the wall with his hand and body. He leans closer, so he can’t tell where you and him and the wall start and end. “I’ll be- fuck, Ransom-”

You still have your arms wrapped around him, like an embrace. He keeps one hand between your thighs, your dress pooling over his arm like water, and uses his other to work at his belt buckle.

This is also funny- you stay exactly how you are, even though at that moment, there is nothing holding you back.

***

The world is begging for you to consider your actions.

But you don’t. You know that when he offers, you’ll meet him again.

It should be too late. You’re exhausted, from a day full of lectures and an evening spent in a lab, working as a professor’s research assistant, and then studying for a few hours in the library- all you really want to do is sleep. 

But then he calls.

The night is suddenly brimming with possibility, and you’ve never been more awake.

On a whim, Ransom suggests ice cream, and because you can’t bring yourself to deny him, you end up at a place that you would never go for- where everything is handmade and served in thick paper cups with multicolored plastic spoons, but he pays, because of his stupid ego or fragile masculinity or whatever the hell, so you don’t care.

He stands next to you as you order, and his shoulder keeps on brushing into yours. You can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not. In the glass shield that the tubs of ice cream sit behind, you’re both reflected, your body warped and tall, his body warped and taller. In the glass, his eyes meet yours.

The tension is strong- it’s only a matter of time.

Your heart flutters.

When you sit, he bumps his knees against yours- you’re sure it’s on purpose, now, but you don’t say anything. What even is there to say? 

That you like it? 

When he digs into his ice cream, the plastic spoon- a green one- snaps in his hand.

 And because you’re so caught up in your own ridiculous thoughts, before he can go back up to get another, you pull your own from your mouth- a pink one- and offer it to him.

The proposition makes him smile.

Why does he smile like that? Each movement, each twitch of muscle is so perfectly detached and coordinated- it’s violent. 

But he still takes the spoon from you gently, with a soft hand. 

He’s too pretty to be mean, you think, but against any type of judgement- not just the better kind- you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You let yourself laugh and he scowls. 

“This place sucks,” he says, like he isn’t the one who chose it.

He adjusts the womens’ scarf he’s always wearing, carefully arranging it over himself so it looks like it was carelessly thrown on. The blue in the paisley print brings out his eyes- it makes him look so stupidly hot that you start to get angry.

You just shrug. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

He puts your spoon in his mouth and looks at you.

Again, the night ends at his place- this time on an actual bed, because you ask for it, and you think he likes how you look when you ask for things in the current state state you’re in-

He fucks you in the dark, and swears into your ear, and is not kind or soft in any way, but after he finishes, he takes the time to kiss the spot in between your breasts, and you think that maybe he isn’t entirely horrible. The bedsheets are cool against your skin, and his mouth is always hot.

You leave without a word.

***

He takes you out this time, in a real, urgent show of wealth- he picks you up in his fancy car, takes you to a fancy restaurant where the numbers next to the fancy menu items are all appalling, where he spends the whole time making these awful, unfunny innuendos that still manage to rile you up, because they’re coming from his mouth-

On the way back, while waiting at a stoplight, you take a deep breath and brace yourself before looking at him.

He really is gorgeous- all lazy grace and harsh angles. The light colors his face red, red in his eyes and in the plane of his cheekbone and in the slope of his mouth- like a beautiful warning sign. His hands are carelessly draped over the steering wheel and, despite the warning, you reach out and trace a finger over his knuckles. 

His whole body jerks.

You quickly draw your hand back.

“What?” he asks sharply. He’s staring at you like you’re crazy.

You don’t know why this is suddenly so fucking embarrassing, all you did was touch him- but you suddenly feel terrible, and-

“Nothing,” you say, with the same tone, and whip your head away from him to the window, where you smolder in the dark and furiously stare at nothing.

The light turns green. He takes his foot off the break and all but slams it on the gas pedal, driving as atrociously as ever, looking over at you for a split second when you don’t protest. The blood rushing in your ears is too loud for you to think- you can’t form any words.

Once it subsides, marginally, you add, “Sorry.”

His jaw tenses.

You look back over at him, at his ring, and imagine it pressing into your neck.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” he suddenly asks- suddenly demands, with a blazing authority that makes your stomach do flips.

You don’t know what answer he wants. “Um, one time I snuck out of-“

“Let’s do something crazier.”

On an abandoned road, he pulls over, and then you’re under him in the backseat- doing something crazier. 

You might have some type of psychic tendencies, because his ring presses heavy into your neck as he pushes himself inside you, starting at a bruising pace, and then he says your name in the dark, and he looks so beautifully flushed, startling when you grab his hair, laughing when your hand accidentally skims his thigh, smiling when you come-

You wish you had the resolve to put an end to this.

You wish you could stay when it’s over.

***

You don’t like his house.

It’s not the brownstone you imagined, but rather a huge, minimalistic box, with too many windows and spotless paint and modern wood fixtures. Ransom has all of these customary rich-person things, including stately furniture and eclectic art pieces and tall shelves stuffed with books, but owning any actual personality has escaped him.

Standing in his house feels like standing in an empty room- it’s all so apathetic.

Still, you show up when he calls.

You haven’t done anything this bad before. 

But there’s a first time for everything, right? First time for enjoying bruises and biting and an unwavering grip on your neck or hips or waist or thighs, first time leaving something so intense so awkwardly.

Each time is worse than the last, with the awkwardness spiraling, accruing beyond reason, and each time you struggle with what to say- even now, you just do your best to stay quiet as you start to get up, reaching for your clothes-

Ransom drapes a heavy arm over you before you have the chance.

“You can stay,” he says flippantly, and then shifts to pull you close to him, so that you are suddenly lying bare-backed against his chest, so that his sweat-slick body and heartbeat imprints itself on your skin.

Is he asking?

You crane your head over your shoulder to get a look at him.

He returns your stare like he’s been waiting for it. 

His face is still flushed pink and a lock of hair hangs low over his forehead, and if you were any braver, you would comb a hand through it, gently, with no real intentions. He’s breathtaking. Even the new, foreign purple under his eyes is a sight- pretty like something you would want to kiss.

“You want me to stay?”

He rolls his eyes and tilts his head back. You would lick the sweat from the divots of his neck, if he asked you to.

“Or leave, if you want. I could care less.”

He cares

You know it because his grip is unwavering, because the terseness in his eyes is enough to make you look away.

Eventually, you settle a hand over his arm and try your best not to tremble. Ransom mumbles something under your breath- you can’t make any of it out, but you don’t ask him to repeat it, for the fear that it’ll upset this fragile bedroom balance you’ve so painstakingly built yourself into-

He wants you to stay. 

“Are you okay?” you ask, because you don’t think he is.

He inhales. You feel his chest against you; it’s shaky. You wonder, for a second, about who he might actually be, underneath the arrogance and egotism and constant need to be an asshole- is he someone you could like without feeling bad about it?

“Yeah,” he says, and throws his other arm over you, so that he is holding you. “Why?”

There isn’t a genuine bone in this man’s body, but he genuinely sounds confused.

It’s possible that you’re the one who isn’t okay.

“Because,” you say, and take a great leap of faith- holding your bare heart in your hands, you turn to face him.

You’re fully exposed and subjected to his gaze- it’s nearly eviscerating. His eyes dip down to your chest and something like insecurity flares in your chest. It’s awful and terrible and you urgently want to kiss him on the lips.

He always kisses you first. You don’t know if you have it in you to kiss him yet. 

You wouldn’t ever try, in case you don’t.

“You look kind of tired,” you say, and his eyes bore into you with a sinking weight, threatening to drown. One of his hands finds a blooming bruise on your skin and lightly presses. He doesn’t react when you wince. The action is still kind- almost tender.

He sighs, and it is such a delicate breath, fanning hot over your skin. 

“I’m not tired,” he says, almost childishly.

You might be overstepping. But you don’t even know where the lines have been drawn. 

“Okay,” you say, and because you would not dare kiss his lips, you lean close and kiss his jaw instead.

He startles and then gives you a crooked, lazy smile. He is everything good, you think- for this one moment. Pretty and soft-handed and made of glass and honey and all other lovely things.

You tuck your head in the crook of his neck and wrap an arm over his, tight, so he knows you are there, and hope for the best.

***

In your spare moments, you’re always thinking.

Ransom knows this because of how you look when you do it- your brow furrows and your eyes go glassy, and you frown with an intensity that he has never seen on anyone else.

It happens when you finish a sentence, when you have no response for him, when he is still talking but you’ve stopped listening. When you think it’s quiet.

It never happens during sex- is it pathetic to take pride in that?

As he stands in your apartment for the first time ever, you look like you’re in near-despair, like your thoughts are wreaking havoc on your mind, destructive and distressing. You wear basketball shorts and a college sweatshirt and glasses.

He didn’t know you wore glasses, and that you looked like this in them- he’s been missing out.

“Hi,” you say, and stare at him with troubled eyes.

Your apartment is so small. He almost feels claustrophobic, standing in here. When was the last time he willingly stood somewhere so small?

The lengths he’ll go to, for… 

For you, he supposes.

“Hi,” he says, and wonders, also for the first time ever, what it is that you’re always thinking. “Why do you have so many plants?”

On the windowsill, with even spacing in between, sits an entire row of glass jars housing plants- all singular flower stems, some budding, some in bloom. The petals of a marigold brush against the window, orange against the grey outside. It’s cute, he absently thinks, in a struggling, shabby type of way.

“It’s just something I do for fun,” you say, sounding irritated. “Like, a hobby.” 

Infringing on the living room space is a small table, cluttered with textbooks and pens and an open laptop with its screen dark.

It still baffles him that you’re smart.

“So,” you start, and cross your arms over your chest. He feels kind of offended, because he’s just realized that he really only knows a handful of things about you, and even that handful is sparse, slipping through his fingers. “Why’d you want to see me?”

He called on impulse. 

He’s just- he’s in what someone could call a mood, where he hates everything and has the intense desire to ruin something, and while he was thinking of how to fix it- beyond just getting wasted- he thought of you.

And when he called, you were sounding so tired and so he even said he could just meet you here, so you wouldn’t have to drive, so you could squeeze in a few more minutes of studying before he inevitably invades your mind-

Easily, he deflects. Nearby, there’s a hallway with two doors, one of which is tightly closed shut.

“What’s in there?” he asks, and points towards it.

You relax, slightly.

He wants to gather you up in his arms, but he doesn’t know for whose sake- his or yours?

“That’s my brother’s room,” you say, and your shoulders slump, and he resists the urge to pull you upright, and the urge to gawk. Brother? “He lives with me. But he’s studying abroad this semester.”

“Where?”

“Prague.”

He nods. This is a stiff, perfect, shocking distraction. “Nice city.”

You nod distantly and head back to the table to put your things away.

“Yeah,” you say, after too long of a pause, as you start to cap pens and set them aside. You look at him as you do it, and so you miss a few times, accidentally drawing dark lines of ink all over your fingers. “I’m glad he got to go. When we were kids, he was obsessed with wanting to travel- he had this entire map in our room, and he would draw stars over every country he wanted to visit, and there were, like, a hundred of them, and he could list every single one, in the exact order he wanted to visit, and he could even list the capitals- I’m sorry. You probably don’t care about any of this.”

He doesn’t.

Or, he shouldn’t, but your eyes are clearer, and as you neatly stack your textbooks in an order only known to you, he is almost intrigued.

He’s longing for you- when you are right there.

He feels like a person outside of himself, when you look at him and smile tiredly.

“Do you want to watch a movie?”

There’s a cheesy ‘90s horror movie you find after a few minutes of channel surfing, complete with terrible special effects and edited-out profanity. The days are longer, now, and to stop the sun from casting a glare over the screen, you close all the blinds. It adds to the atmosphere, you say lightly, fully phased out of whatever just possessed you, and his hands are so itchy- itching to do something.

He sits. Patience is a virtue, but he is not virtuous, and so when you sit next to him and bring your knees to your chest, making yourself small, he goes to-

Something in his stomach stops him. 

It’s butterflies- is he actually nervous?

This is so fucking infuriating.

You’ve got him trapped in some type of pain-and-power-play, some type of unassuming purgatory, and all he can bring himself to do is lightly brush a hand against your shoulder. You smile at his touch and his heart fucking breaks.

As the second boy in the friend group gets murdered onscreen, you close your eyes and duck your head into your knees.

“Tell me when it’s over,” you say, voice muffled.

“Scaredy-cat,” he says, even though this is no time for jokes. 

You crack one eye open, looking only at him, and give him the finger.

Come here, he almost demands. The butterflies protest- he holds his tongue.

The dance continues. When the sun sets, everything darkens, settling into a dim blue. You look like something out of a painting. Faintly sad, unusually serene. The skin around your eyes has smoothened- you’ve stopped thinking so hard and he can suddenly breathe easier because of it-

And then there’s a jumpscare, and he shouts, “Jesus!”

The murderer has broken down a door, and all of the remaining characters are screaming, and you burst out laughing.

He’s in the middle of a crisis, and you’re laughing.

You lean into him as you laugh, with your head turned away from the screen and your eyes open, looking at him so fondly that he suddenly feels violated, and you let your shoulder brush against his.

“Scaredy-cat” you tease, and it’s absolutely now or never-

You’re making him weak- it takes too much time and effort for him to draw an arm over you.

You don’t flinch, but he is sure that you can hear his heart beating dangerously fast, without abandon, like it's trying to break free of his ribcage. He almost gasps when you come even closer and lightly kiss his cheek, wrapping your arms around him, and his head is just saying yes yes yes-

Your mouth goes over his ear, lips ghosting over skin. He waits, more scared than he’s ever been in his entire life, for what you have to say. 

***

So this is Ransom’s deep, dark, ugly secret.

He likes to be cuddled.

If it were anyone else, you would laugh.

But it’s Ransom, and so you just take it in stride, as part of his extremely fucked-up psyche that is probably a result of a hundred things he’ll never tell you- childhood trauma and neglect and the consequences that come with having more money than you need or deserve.

He’s always talking, always talking shit, always talking over you and over everyone else, and you realize, one day, that he really only is treading water- he’s only focused on staying afloat, speaking whatever he wants, but never actually saying anything.

He’s responsible for his faults, of course. But still, when he smiles in low light or curls his hands over yours so viciously, you don’t know if you should leave, or if you should just stay and pity him quietly.

You’re starting to like him too much to even care.

He starts coming around more. And he actually stays, and starts leaving pieces of himself behind. He has a toothbrush next to yours and a phone charger on his side of the bed and imported, undoubtedly expensive snacks in the kitchen.

He leaves clothes, too- you wash them with yours and keep them, neatly folded, in your closet.

On a warm day in May, he meets you at a cafe.

He does most of the talking, like always. It’s been months, already, but you still find it difficult to start conversations.

You still have trouble telling him certain things without feeling like you have to defend yourself, and he still rarely deviates from being a total dick, even when you hold him or have his head in your lap, when you make him laugh or when you kiss him.

Or when you put your hands in the sleeves of his sweaters and rub your palms against his forearms, because he’s always running warm and your hands are always cold. 

He always acts like it annoys him, jumps when your hands meet his skin- but you know he secretly likes it, because whenever you’re done he pulls the hems all the way over his hands and looks at you with something amazed in his eyes.

With the weather warming up, he’s ditched the sweaters and taken to wearing these awful fucking short-sleeved button-downs, all unnecessarily tight and showing way too much collarbone. He’s making you sweat.

“You’re staring,” he says, and smiles, self-satisfied.

You bring your straw to your lips and shake your head. “I’m not.”

He knows that you can’t help it- he is always so gorgeous. He’s infuriatingly pretty.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says, and nudges your foot under the table, voice suddenly low, and it’s like, holy shit-

You bring your drink down and lean over the table, careful to avoid knocking anything over, and kiss him quickly.

He tastes like bitter coffee.

You’re sad, all of a sudden.

When you settle back in your seat, you clear your throat like nothing happened. You want to lean in again and button up the rest of his shirt, and kiss him again. You want to come so close that your noses touch, and then yell at him, just for being him.

He looks appalled

“What was that for?”

It’s the first time you’ve ever done this.

“No reason,” you say. “I just felt like it.”

“You just felt like it,” he repeats, and it’s like the same reaction from the night at the stoplight, and you realize-

He’s dumbstruck.

Then, just as quickly as it came, it disappears. He sets his jaw like he’s about to get up and leave. You try not to scowl, even though you feel like you’re drifting, tide carrying you away, sand clean and smooth on where your body once was-

It gets to you.

“Can I not just kiss you?” you snap harshly, glaring at him with a ferocity you don’t think he’s ever seen.

It’s inevitable- the result of months of frustration. You can only suppress yourself for so long. Why, you want to ask, why are you not entitled to him the way he is to you and everything else? Can you not ask for him so wholly?

He flinches.

Ransom Drysdale, asshole extraordinaire, flinches.

It brings a small sliver of satisfaction with it. There’s some nerve you’ve struck, and the discontent on his face is steadily growing- 

You pay it no mind, drinking the rest of your iced coffee in calm silence. 

Outside, the day is vaguely summery, where the sun is out and strong, but still too cold in the shade. You stare past his head, towards the door. How quickly can you leave?

“You can,” he says quietly, when you’re rising to throw your cup in the trash. “Whenever you want.”

His eyelashes are so long- they command a moment of attention all on their own when he blinks- soft and slow and gazing at you from underneath them. You wonder if he is doing this for the same reason you are. If he’s lonely, too.

When was the last time you had the dream with the bird?

You smirk. “Whenever?”

He is forlorn. 

You like him better in the spring.

“Whenever.”

“Let’s get out of here,” you say, and make your voice low, since two can play at that game.

He considerably perks up. 

*** 

When you wake up, he’s still in your bed.

Lately, he’s been spending more time at your place than his. You think that all those windows are finally starting to get to him.

Ransom always holds you fiercely in his sleep. You break free as gently as you can and take him in for a brief moment- you like how he looks when he’s asleep. Unconcerned, chest rising slow with each breath, hair splayed over the pillow in nearly every direction. He almost looks innocent.

You get up quietly, even though there’s no chance he’ll stir- he sleeps like the dead.

Daylight filters through the blinds in white-yellow streams, dappling him golden. 

You almost take a picture, but regretfully leave the room for other tasks- you stretch and water your plants and check your email, and then sit down at the table to Skype your brother.

He picks up fast.

“Hey!” you say, and at once feel so much relief, to see his grainy, smiling face on your laptop screen.

Europe has done him good- he’s grown out his hair, and his skin is glowing, and he looks so happy.

He tells you about what he’s been doing lately, studying architecture. It makes you so proud, this fact alone- that unlike you, he can do whatever he wants and doesn’t have the looming promises of debt and academic burnout and crushing, ever-present stress hovering over his shoulders. It is so good to see him, and you are so grateful that he can be who he wants to be, do what he wants to do-

“Holy shit, who is that?”

He’s looking past you. You turn around and almost jump- 

Ransom stands in the kitchen, shirtless and rummaging through the cupboards. He waves at you.

You would think that someone like Ransom would exclusively sleep in, like, silk pajama sets, or something, but at least he’s in sweatpants- however low-rise they might be, however loosely knotted the drawstring is. It’s better than nothing, at least- what if he had walked out in nothing?

When you turn back to the screen, you catch a glimpse of yourself in your camera feed- you look absolutely mortified.

You are absolutely mortified. This is the start of what can only be a nightmare.

“Are you dating that guy?” your brother asks incredulously. He’s still staring at Ransom with his jaw hanging loose. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“No,” you say forcefully, without thinking. “That’s, um... “

Hopelessly, you gesture back towards him, trying to come up with the words. Nothing feels right in your mouth- every title you can come up with is too consequential, too heavy.

“...That’s Ransom.”

“Weird name,” your brother says, and grins.

You take a breath that feels more like a gasp. “I know.”

“Hey,” Ransom says, from the back, and continues to loudly open and close the cupboards- what the fuck is he even looking for? You don’t keep enough shit in there to warrant this much noise- he’s doing this for theatrics.

“I think I’m going to go,” you say loudly. “Love you.”

“Bye,” your brother says, and he’s grinning stupidly, like a madman.

You disconnect and feel like you might faint.

Not your boyfriend, right?

“Was that your brother?” Ransom asks, casually, finally finding what he was looking for- two mugs. There is no way that he didn’t come across them earlier. 

“Yeah- yes,” you say shakily. It feels like someone has filled your brain with fizzy water.

There’s a few boys your brother has met over the years, but you’ve always been careful. Because an introduction is like making a statement- it’s like saying that this person you’re with is important enough to you that they’re going to overlap, exist in more than just one part of your life.

But Ransom is a catastrophe of a person- you can barely handle him as he is. How could you ever have him as anything more?

He goes through the cupboards, again, and finds a box of teabags. “The one studying abroad?”

“I only have one brother,” you snap.

“Okay,” he says, totally unbothered, surprising you. He’s not a morning person in the slightest- why is he being so cordial? “Where do you keep your kettle?”

“Second cupboard on the right,” you say, and bury your head in your hands.

He looks at you. He is so many things, but never kind, until now. His hair, in its adorable bedhead, flops over his eyes. Before, it was only almost, but now, you think, he looks completely innocent, like the type of guy you could give kisses without feeling nervous, the type of guy you wouldn’t deny as your boyfriend.

What is wrong with him?

What is wrong with you?

At the end of the day, he’s always there- you’re exclusive, aren’t you? Isn’t that enough to deserve a title?

He finds the kettle, and then sifts through the box. He sorts through different flavors with a gentle precision you’ve never seen before- is this really him? Is he the type of person that is gentle and precise?

The uneven smattering of blue-black bruises on your thighs say no.

You’re so confused that your head hurts.

“None of these flavors are any good,” Ransom says, and shakes his head. His hair shines in the morning light. “Earl Grey- who the hell drinks Earl Grey?”

“Don’t insult my tea like that,” you say, and he looks back at you and gives you a brilliant flash of a smile.

If he’s bothered at all by your denial, he never brings it up.

*** He’s too far gone.

He’s in freefall, feeling weak- he’s fucking succumbed.

To you. To your comebacks and the world-weary gaze you have of everything, to your nonsensical collection of plants and your painfully unattractive basketball shorts, to the way you laugh too loud and too little, to the way you say his name, where he can never tell if you’re happy with him or exasperated-

It’s wrong. 

But, he thinks, so are all of these other things, like drugs and alcohol and blowing money on shit he doesn’t need- and you make him feel better than any of those things ever have, so why should anybody have a problem with it? A week goes by after you tell your brother that he isn’t your boyfriend- and it doesn’t bother him, because he’s never wanted that title in the first place, never has- but it obviously bothers you. 

You’re disappointed in yourself, because you think you’re supposed to be better than him, because you’re so smart and he is so terrible.

He hopes that that’s not how you actually think. It hurts him to0 much to even consider it, and so he doesn’t, and so he thinks of how to keep his hold on you, and then he thinks of why he even wants to-

The truth is too apparent to deny.

After a week, he calls.

***

He’s very slow.

Not tired- just consumed with the sudden need to savor things. When you let yourself into his arms, Ransom treats you like you’re fragile.

“What’s up with you?” you ask, and as he stares, your voice reduces to something small. You go timid when his eyes are on yours, he realizes, and the thought sends a thrill through his body- he slowly rocks you, to calm himself.

Your shirt is off and you wear a bra with a small lace trim- not racy, but very cute- and he just keeps on staring.  

Wow, he thinks. He fucked up good.

“Nothing,” he says, and moves one hand from your waist- he has you in his lap, straddling him- up to the top of your neck. He trails down and over to your collarbone, hooking a finger into your bra strap.

You laugh, breathy and indecent.

He lifts it, subtly, and you whine, and he bites back his own.

“You’re so pretty,” he says, and kisses your neck. “So fucking beautiful.”

“Ransom,” you gasp, with your hands splayed over his back. He slowly skims his hand over, to your back, feeling every little thing, dip and contour and curve, everything- and then unhooks it, and you are bared to him and he is breathless.

He takes you by the shoulders and twists, to bring you down, to pin you against the bed. Your comforter is dark blue, like ocean water.

Your eyes are endless, like ocean water.

“Are you upset about something?” 

Your chest rises and falls and he almost reaches for the waistband of your underwear, but stops himself. He presses a wet kiss to one of your breasts, and you arch into his mouth. He feels like you know every single secret of his, when he has told you none.

You know by accident that he’s ticklish. That’s it.

“I’m not,” he says. “I promise.”

He bends low to kiss down the length of your body, repositions his hands to hold your waist. He thinks that this is more intense- it is just his mouth and your skin and the sound of your breath hitching.

He still has it put together, remarkably well- unfathomably well.

“I feel like there’s something you’re- ah- not telling me, honey.”

That does it.

He grips your waist harder, in the way he knows you always like, so that tomorrow he will be able to retrace his steps, follow the blue-

“Say that again,” he says, and presses a soft kiss over you- even through your underwear, with its delicate lace trim, he can feel how wet and wanting and ready you are for him.

“Say- fuck- say what?”

Your hand flails, for a second, before you thread it through his hair, and yank. It hurts, pleasantly.

He hooks his fingers into your waistband and shimmies it down your thighs, and you instinctively spread your legs. He puts his mouth to your slit, slicker than he imagined, and the heady arousal rushing through his mind- and everywhere else- is nearly enough to make him forget what you even said-

He is quite possibly drunk off of you alone, and he wants to slap himself, and, like, press you so close into him that you forget your way out.

With the spare glow of one lamp, you look like you’re made of gold.

He breaks away from you for a terrible moment to strip, and with one hand he teases your clit, and with the other he pumps himself, hard, once, twice, three times in anticipation-

“Don’t make me ask again,” he says, and comes back up to cup your face once more, and slips his hand back down into you at the same time, with his cock hard against your thigh- this is all quite slippery- the game you’re playing at and the risk he’s trying to take-

“Honey,” you say, and you’re smiling deliriously, but shakily. “Honey honey honey.”

“You’re killing me,” he says, and his voice, in a moment of terrible, vulnerable, unspeakable betrayal, cracks. 

“Good,” you say, but your voice is all wobbly as he lines himself up and roughly pushes into you, holding you a little tighter to keep you steady. “You deserve it.”

He kisses you openmouthed, with his teeth scraping- it’s rough and jarring, the way you always take it. Against his mouth, you swear incoherently, stringing together a litany of curses with his name thrown in between, and goddamn him- it makes him smile.

He wastes no time- he can’t be patient any longer, not when he has you under him like this, and so he goes fast, snapping into you at a bruising pace and keeping his mouth close, and rubbing at your clit, to overstimulate you and make everything faster, harsher, more immediate-

When you come you always say his name, thickly with gravel in your voice, and gasp like the breath has been stolen from your lungs. This time, when you are so far gone that he thinks you’re beyond the realms of sound, and sight, too, with your eyes tightly screwed shut, he says it, for the sake of himself.

“I think I love you-”

[ephemerlskies]

constant craving 03 | jjk

⇢ pairing: jungkook x reader

[other members - seokjin]

⇢ genre: drabble series, ANGST, bestfriend!au, unrequited love, the same idiocy just in a different font 

⇢ word count: 4k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, alcohol consumption (drunk jungkook makes his first and final appearance enjoy it while you can), vehicular misdemeanor (drive the speed limit kids), an all out emotional and verbal brawling, a lack of communication on one end and a communicational vomit on the other, seokjin appearance for about .02 seconds, the entirety of this is just.... angst

⇢ summary: your dates with Seokjin had become a somewhat consistent fixture in your schedule, however, jungkook's itinerary seemed to clash with yours when he called you after a night of drinking for reasons you assumed to be him helplessly pleading for a safe return home.

♪ playlist: constant craving - k.d. lang, bad religion - frank ocean, misunderstood - lucky daye, neu roses - daniel caesar ♪

╰ series index: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 (final)

a/n: whew, okay.... this was probably the most argumentative fic i have ever written so prepare yourself. i hope you all enjoy this god awfully angsty installment of the series! also, yes, jungkook is a sentimental drunk and you all know it

part three: i love you

It's true. It's always the biggest pills that are the most difficult to swallow. And if you could compare someone as elusive as Jungkook to anything, it would be the largest pill imaginable. The kind that hurts the first try, then when you drink half your body weight in water, the Jungkook-emblazoned pill forces down your esophagus no easier than the first gulp. You were still holding it in your mouth, pretending that pill wasn't about to dissolve and stain your mouth forever.

And that was the whole process, just to get over Jungkook. Because getting over him wasn't a one-step program. It was waking up everyday, training and retraining your mind not to think of him first thing in the morning. It was resisting the urge to press the send button on multiple texts and funny videos you knew would make him laugh. It was refusing his calls and every memory that would saunter in your mind and compel you to ask him to watch a movie or order takeout.

It was saying yes to Seokjin when he asked you on a date. And, it was doing your best to sever that instinct of yours to ask Jungkook for advice.

But old habits die hard, and this one still clung onto the bit of breath it wielded. That explained why your idiot of a best friend was sitting on your couch, offering half-hearted nods whenever you would walk out draped in a new outfit.

"Okay, this one?" You twirled around, as if doing so would make you any less skeptical of how you looked. And you were never one to scrutinize your appearance so closely, but this was the date. The one that might light the torch to a brighter romantic future and lead you to someone other than the man who could never be yours to begin with.

"Yeah. Cool." At this point, five outfits in, he wasn't paying any attention at all. He couldn't even bring himself to pretend, his eyes lazily fixed onto your dvd player.

"Jungkook, you didn't even look! Let me guess. You wanna play video games. Is that why you're giving fuck-me-eyes to my T.V. set?" You knew a laugh was far along, but you hoped that would get some sort of reaction out of him. Unfortunately, your words were barely registered for a good ten seconds, though, it felt much longer.

"Hm? Oh, sorry. Just tired, I guess." Jungkook said through barely parted lips. You knew when he couldn't even pronounce his words properly, something he took more seriously than others due to the hauntings of a certain speech impediment, there was definitely something wrong.

Things felt off from the moment he walked into your house. Judging from the way he avoided your hug, that alone suggested a sort of imbalance. It was a casual greeting exchanged between the two of you so often that when you lifted your arms to embrace him, it was born of reflexive association. Like Pavlov's dog, trained to hug him the moment you saw him. But the oddity of him almost discretely walking past you before any contact could be made wasn't where the tension bordered.

Following his arrival, he would have littered a few snarky remarks about how messy your kitchen was, while already scavenging through your fridge, just to get a rouse out of you. And Jungkook wouldn't call himself a connoisseur of all things fabric and fashion, but he surely would have a few thoughts consisting more than two-worded responses. But he just sat on your couch, armed with a face any poker player would commend, and gave you insincere cool's or nice's when need be.

"Okay, what's up? Is it Irene?" You sat down since taking a break to figure out what Jungkook was thinking felt better than continuing your self-absorbed fashion show.

"Kinda... We broke up. Well, she broke up with me or... I don't know. It was weird." It bothered you a bit too much that he didn't even look at you. But if he had, then you would have seen a film of red dousing his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Kook. Is there anything I can do? Anything at all? Want me to egg her house?" This time, he did laugh. You felt relieved he could at least ease slightly back into his expressive self, even if it was just a fraction of what he usually was. A fraction of Jungkook was more than enough for you.

"Nah, no need to go to jail for me. It's not like I didn't see it coming, and apparently she felt the same. Whatever." He let out a sigh that sounded trapped in for a while, then sat up. "We have more important things to worry about."

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe that. Jungkook, literally a week ago you told me she was the love of your life! And now you're just like 'yeah, whatever, I saw it coming.'" You used your notorious 'man voice', which was just yours lowered a few octaves, knowing it would crack another smile along Jungkook's lips. "Come on, I know you love her. This must hurt a lot. I wish... I wish there was something I could do."

You knew exactly what you were doing. Self-sabotage under the guise of consoling your friend. Clearly, it was selfish and regressive to use Jungkook's heartbreak as a means to avoid doing what you could never do before, what you knew deep down you probably would never be able to do: swallow that pill. And what felt even more pathetic than that was the stale, yet persisting hope that he would ask you to stay.

And that's when reality gave you the most gutting and obvious sign. Jungkook was your best friend, the man you had to lug home when he was too drunk to drive, let alone speak coherently or stand. He was the person that buys you ice cream when you're sad, but just as quick to cancel plans with you when Irene needed him. He was just a friend. You'd never be the person he chose, and it nearly made you angry at him for not seeing it all this time.

So, what he said next made everything he was most likely unaware of all too clear to you.

"No, you go have fun. I'll just... chill here?" It was his avoidant way of asking to stay the night, because you knew him to never sleep alone when he had an ache in his heart. "Maybe raid your pantry and use your Netflix account to binge some shows?"

"Fine. Only 'cause I can't say no to you when you're like this." His smile was reimbursement enough for all the food you'd have to restock and the electricity bill that would be higher than usual.

But what he did next, you could almost never forgive him for. It was so subtle, as though it could have passed as an accident or an act he was trying to perform secretly, without any intention of you even noticing. And how could you not notice? The far too temporary and entirely disarming linger of his hand on yours.

Now, you were always one to decipher his most subtle mannerisms, but this one felt beyond the reins of your perceptiveness. It could have been a small gesture of a thank you, but the gentle, and what one could even describe as sentimental, way his skin pressed against yours bore no semblance of a mere expression of gratitude. And it wasn't possible this was a caress of love, because he was already low on currency in that field, spending it completely on Irene.

So, what was it?

How would you describe the way he rested his hand on yours, as if asking you to stay without words, yet punctuating it quick enough to justify it a coincidental form of contact, that your hand just happened to be where his hand was?

"Well, I'm gonna go eat through my problems." Jungkook stood up before you could bat away the wetness in your eyes from your momentary refusal to blink, as if that would somehow help you visualize the meaning of what just happened.

"Oh- Okay. I, um... I should get going." So you did. You walked out your door, and made a decision beyond the demands of your devotion to Jungkook.

Because it probably meant nothing, and he was your best friend, after all.

---

It was easy with Seokjin. And surprisingly enough, that wasn't a bad thing.

You had come to realize everyone craves that passionate kind of love because, in the movies, that's the blueprint for what love should feel like. But that's all it is, something pretty and shiny enough to work into a film. Make believe. And it could never extend beyond the realm of silver screens, where best friends don't magically fall in love and passion awarded more broken hearts than you could count.

Besides, your heart was worn.

See, your heart is a muscle. It works itself to the bone keeping you alive, willing your lungs to breathe, administering blood to each vein and so on. To strain it for someone who was already in love was functionally inefficient. The heart, like any other muscle, grows tired. It can exhaust itself the same way your hand aches after writing for too long.

You needed a break from the gripping emotional aerobics that is and was loving Jeon Jungkook. So, it sufficed that Seokjin was easy. No more overexertion, no more aches and pains and residual soreness occupying your chest, no more of any of that. Because you knew Seokjin liked you, which was safe and easy knowing there was no point mapping out the possible meanings of every inflected word or shrug or smile. They were simply words and shrugs and smiles with him.

And yet, the thing about giving your heart a 'break' is the period succeeding it. When you were finished resting, you knew who would be waiting for you. Who you would always wait for.

"___! Hello?! I can't hear you! It's too loud!" It wasn't really that loud, your idiot of a best friend was just that drunk. You couldn't tell what concerned you more, the fact that his hearing degenerated when he was, from the sound of it, seven shots deep or that this was the third of alcohol-induced call for this week.

"Where are you?" You asked through a sigh, eyes trained on your Twitter feed and ears occupied with the urgent voice blaring through the speaker phone.

And since it was the third time this week, you were not even half-amused by the repetitive stunt he was pulling.

"I don't know... I walked out and now I'm out and I don't know." The hiccup following his messy sentence was comically textbook 'too drunk'. “Hey, we should take a trip! We should, like, go somewhere!”

“The only place you should be going is home.”

“See, I would totally do that, but I have no idea where I am. Why are these street signs so hard to read?” The end and beginning of each word blended together, rendering that sentence one long, slurred word.

By now, the step by step plan synthesized by you had been memorized. And even though you labored your brain to rewire any feelings leaving you at his beck and call, it clearly hadn't been proficient since your keys had already been gathered and his whereabouts programmed in your GPS via his location services.

"You're so annoying." It might have been rude of you to want him to feel guilty, but it was just as rude of him to interrupt your one night off, which was supposed to be spent with Seokjin, with his intoxicated antics. "I'm coming to pick you up."

"Yo- u are? I love you sooo much. You're the best friend ever, ya know that?" Overly emotional professions was your que to drive fifteen miles over the speed limit so he didn't do something stupid enough to land himself in an ICU.

"Okay, I'm almost there. I think I see you. Wave for me?"

The slumped silhouette you were squinting at began to frantically throw its arms side to side, making you both laugh and pull over so he could drag himself into your passenger seat. And, if you were being honest, he looked better as the blackened shadow of himself.

Jungkook, in all his glory, had his shirt almost fully turned backwards, hair ruffled into a mess, and face as red as the time you and him laid on the beach until your skin punished you with a second degree burn. And all those factors didn't amount to how he smelled like he bathed for hours inside a hand sanitizer bottle.

"God, you're a mess, Jungkook." You said that as jokingly as possible, but meant the sternness embedded in each word. Jungkook was a mess, physically and mentally.

"Hey! You're judging me! Stop being th-o mean, ___." Whenever he was this drunk, his lisp made more appearances in his speech than when he wasn't.

You hated how easily it reminded you of when you were in middle school and he was still navigating and rehearsing through his speech patterns. In middle school, when he was the sweet boy with his only fault being his lisp, who gave you his hoodie and a compassionate smile upon meeting you because your current bully plotted the embarrassment of a lifetime with that piece of chocolate on your seat. In middle school, when Jungkook was the only person in your grade who was kind enough to be kind and true to his word when he pledged his loyalty as your best friend. Forever.

With just one word, you were that timid little middle schooler again, helplessly and unconditionally in love with Jungkook.

Hauling Jungkook, who was more muscle than bone and flesh, over to his door was an art form you had trained, practiced, and mastered about thirty or so times before this one. He weighed about twice as much as you could normally carry, and nonetheless, he was out of your car and in his house in no time.

After you locked the door, you turned around to meet Jungkook, rendering the door frame into a crutch and effectively detaining you between his body and the solid wood behind you.

If you weren't so reminiscent in the car seconds before this, then the vodka-scented souvenir on his breath would have gagged you. However, being this close to him, feeling the warmth of his body consuming and overpowering yours, just made you want to sink into him even more and give him everything you had to offer.

His head was hung so when you looked up, you were greeted with Jungkook's lazy smile that gave his lips a boyish asymmetry and draped his eyelids halfway down his irises. And he had you spooled around him so tightly, this look just made him all the more appetizing.

"Kook, we gotta get you to bed, buddy." You tried to ward him off by weaponizing the most strictly platonic nickname you could think of, partnered with a neighborly pat on the back.

It was mostly to remind yourself that this man, who was an inch too close to your face, was your friend, and that in less than ten minutes you were expected to see Seokjin, but from the way he was looking at you, as if he reached into the depths of your heart to devour all your feelings for him and make them his own, you had to remind him of the universally accepted best friend boundaries.

No deep, romantic gazing into each other's eyes. No intimate activity that could be a precursor to anything more affectionate than a hug. No doing exactly what you two were doing as of now.

"Don't call me that." You hoped his aggression against what you said was merely his inebriated irrationally talking, and as always, his emotions were far beyond his control.

And, shamefully, you also hoped it was because he actually did feel the way you felt. What if he wanted the date that Seokjin was going to get tonight and he wanted all the hand holding and none of the back patting, a 'baby' instead of a 'buddy'?

"What? You're drunk-"

"Don't." Before you could drag him by the arm to his bed, a firm palm settled on your torso and closed the gap between you and the door while widening the gap an inch further between Jungkook and his bed, where he would fall asleep without the warmth of the only person he wanted. "___, please."

His voice was strangled with desperation and Jungkook was depleted of all resistance. He just needed to drink you up. To fill himself with the nourishments of your lips, your body, you.

"What-" He could have silenced you easily with a 'shh' or a finger to your lips. Or anything to your lips except his lips.

His lips. They were greedy and giving all at once. Making soft and intimate ministrations against yours as he kissed you before you had the chance to register what was going on. And even when you did, you let his tongue slide into your mouth. This moment was brimming with all the spontaneity you could ever be prepared for, and though it was new, there was no denying that kissing him felt like finally coming home just from the amount of times you had played this moment out in your daydreams. Plus, Jungkook seemed to ease his tongue along yours a bit too confidently for this to be the first time the idea of kissing you has ran through his mind. 

You're being stupid, you told yourself and Jungkook, but that didn't matter when you were finally allowed a taste of what it felt like to be kissed and touched and possibly even loved by Jungkook.

Your shirt was bunched halfway up your torso, his body pressed to your front a reprisal for the chill of the door against your back. Jungkook was, admittedly, a phenomenal kisser even when the lens of sobriety wasn't available to him. The way he ran his hands along the bare of your back like some desperate pilgrimage to discover the undiscovered parts of your body and took your bottom lip between his teeth like it was his to begin with was nearly enough to undress you from all your defenses, from all your clothing, from every single barrier that kept you from Jungkook for the past twelve years and let him have you. And finally have him. It was nearly enough.

Your hands divorced his body from yours before your lips and heart were ready to let go. It was painful, but the heartbroken look wringing his face into a tearful frown was even more so.

"No." You pushed him away further only to walk past him and seek refuge in the open space of his living room. "You don't get to do this."

"What? What does-"

"You don't get to drunkenly kiss me, Jungkook. You don't get to hold me and kiss me like you love me. It's not fair."

"Hey-"

"Because you don't. You don't love me..." If you weren't too busy finally permissing the hot words to boil over from pure anger, then you would have felt the even hotter tears wetting the expanse of your cheek.

"Well, how the hell would you know that?" His voice drowned out the loud pumps of blood beating in your ears like a drum.

"Because it would have happened ten years ago, Jungkook! Jesus, it would have been obvious from the beginning. So if you love me, if you really love me, then it wouldn't be happening now, like this. When you were drunk out of your mind and still vulnerable from Irene."

"You don't know anything." If that were the case, then Jungkook somehow knew even less than you.

"Yeah, clearly. I didn't know you'd stoop this low. I thought I was a lot of things to you. But I never thought I'd be some rebound."

"A rebound? You think that's what this is?" Jungkook seemed upset, but to your knowledge he had absolutely no reason to be angry with you.

He was, as always, displacing the burdens he didn't feel like dealing with on you, moderating you into an emotional punching bag. But what hurt more than those scrapes and bruises, was the aftermath of letting him fuck his worries away which would have consisted of him telling you the next morning that it meant nothing, expecting you to nod demurely, maybe even console him, and act like your chest hadn't been emptied and filled with his baggage in the most murderous way.

"Fuck you."

"Wow. You're really being like this? You really wanna talk about this now?

"You know what? Yeah I wanna talk about it. I wanna talk about the years. The years, Jungkook, that I've spent loving you! I- I wanna talk about the amount of times I've spent thinking about you when you were with her, and I probably didn't even cross your mind. Or how about the fucking thousands of times I've spent crying over you because I knew I was never going to be the one you'd want to wake up next to! And I had to watch! I had to fucking watch you fall in love over and over and probably wonder why I didn't fall in love either. It was you. It was always you, Jungkook."

"___, I-"

"No." His attempt to intervene was quickly denied. You were too angry to let him speak, too tired to carry these grievances any longer. "You don't get to talk. It's all out there. I loved you. I still love you! Fuck, I'm trying to get over you. And it's like you know. It's like you can read my mind or something and strike right when I'm about to recover from the last wound."

Your breathing was as heavy as Jungkook's was shallow. He could only stand, breathlessly, only curse himself for ever being so blind and regret taking advantage of your love even if it were entirely unknowingly, just to let his heart sink deeper until it fell completely out of his chest while his tears fell just as heavily.

"I'm done, Jungkook. I'm tired of trying to outrun you in this race that you're not even competing in. I'm tired of loving you. So, I'm done."

All the words Jungkook wanted to say, the words pleading for sound, carving deep gashes in his throat and leaving him vocally impaired, could never amount to the apology you deserved. Maybe this once, he wouldn't leave you wounded. He would gather the nobility to shut up and let you move on from him. Because you wouldn't know from his lapse of silence that he was empathizing with every bit of pain he caused you, and he hated himself more than you did right now for allowing such a pain to ever fall in your hands. But, where you knew you could someday forgive him for it, he knew he would never forgive himself.

He could scrounge for a few things to respond with, pour the weight of his emotions into the scarcity of his words, but he needed to let you leave and be selfless for once in his life.

"I should go. Drink some water before bed, okay?" You mumbled to choke back your tears, though it wouldn't matter letting a few more tears escape since you were previously sob-ranting and he'd seen you cry like this a hundred times before. He was the shoulder you never thought you'd have to miss leaning on, but walking out of his door punctured a hole in you. An empty space in your heart designed for the one person who had crushed the rest of it.

If this were a movie, with star-crossed lovers and a fiery infatuation blooming into what everyone secretly wants: true love, then Jungkook would have ran out of his door and held you close, professing his undying love for you. He would have won you back, reassembled your broken heart into fullness, kissed you beneath the brilliance of the moon, and lived happily ever after.

But this wasn't a movie, and he did none of those things.

Instead, he stumbled his way into his kitchen. He poured himself that cup of water you advised. He thought about how even when you swore to him you were done, you spared a bit of compassion to remind him to take care of himself. He wondered how deserving he was of everything you are. He touched his lips, searching for the echo of yours. He fell into his queen-sized bed meant for two, alone, and whispered the words that were ever eclipsing to the space beside him where he longed for you to lay so you could hear them for yourself.

"I love you."

a/n: sorry to put you through that, but the idea was born and i am but a humble vessel to bring it to life <3 hehe thank you all so much for reading and like i said, don't worry there will be a happy ending!!! (and possibly a longer-than-drabble final chapter to this series)

[deepdonutkid]

Can I ask for multiple character break downs?👀

Well if I can, then would you please do one for Ada and one for Tommy and one for John

But if only one has to be done, then you can choose any one of these.

Thanks! <3

Thanks for the ask! 💞

Ada Thorne nee Shelby

How I feel about this character

Just love for her! She is adorable, strong, fierce, absolutely amazing! Ada and Polly are the best developed female character on the show. Mainly, because Tommy can’t fuck them, so they can’t be reduced to his love interest, which is such a good thing, because I love strong women. Makes me weak in my knees.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Freddie Thorne, Ben Younger, Jessie Eden, because Ada is bi, she just gives off that vibe, u know.

Somehow I prefer to read stuff with a female reader for her, more than a male reader for her. Because it’s either Freddie x Ada for me or Ada x female reader.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Lizzie, Polly, Ada and Linda are an amazing combination! She and Tommy have an interesting dynamic as well! I would have loved to see more John and Ada interactions, because they have not such a big age gap inbetween, so I think they are close. Especially after Ada got her child and John got married with Esme. Oh, Ada and Esme would have sooo much fun together. Esme would be like the sister Ada never had.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think her character changed a lot between season 1 and 2, because of Freddie’s death and also after she joined the business again. Sometimes when I make memes or the alignment charts, I have two icons for her, one from first season and one from third season, because I think she is one of the characters who changed the most through the series. First season Ada would do a lot of things different and more naive than third season Ada. Mainly, because she still believed in communism in season 1 and she somehow lost her faith after losing Freddie. Which is super understandable tho.

She acutally becomes wiser with age... unlike her brothers, who just do the same shit over and over again.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wished Ben hadn’t died, because they kill her lovers even fast than Tommys. WTF, right?

On the other hand I wished Ada talked some sense into Jessie, to NOT SLEEP WITH TOMMY THE WHORE SHELBY! Because Ada knows her brother very well and I think she genuinely liked Jessie, or she liked her enough to save her from the pain of being Tommy’s toy or pleasure doll.

And I’m still bitter about the way they killed of Freddie... but more about that later...

Tommy Shelby

How I feel about this character

Relationship status: It’s complicated!

Yes, well, I ramble about Tommy’s shit a lot. I know! He is still an intersting character and it’s so tempting to think about his actions in certain situations, but if I would meet him as a person- I would hate him from the bottom of my heart! <3

He is such an asshole all the time and when I first watched the show, I forgave him a lot he did to his siblings, because I was caught up with his good looks and the presentation of him being the good guy who does bad things to survive. But I spend some time to think about his actions and I noticed, he is an awful human being... to Polly, to his siblings, to his lover and actually to everyone. He might think he does all those mean things to archive a bigger goal, but he is just a gambling addict who can’t stop taking risks he isn’t even prepared for.

Shitty things Tommy has done over time:

Forcing his brother to marry somebody, John didn’t even know at that time, to end a feud, Tommy had started himself and only when it was in his favour to end it, he used John as pawn, so he could archive his plan. HOW FUCKED UP WAS THAT? Nobody seems to talk about this. It was fucking awful! And the way he did it was horrible to! Tommy said nothing to John until the very last moment, when they were already surrounded by enemies, so John couldn’t said no. It also shows, that Tommy thinks he is above his siblings. Tommy thought John wasn’t capable of chosing a wife for himself, so Tommy did that for him too. Even when John didn’t ask for this at all!

Destroying Ada’s relationship with Freddie and chasing his best friend out of town, just because... TOMMY WAS AGAINGST HIS SISTER HAVING A RELATIONSHIP. and yet he proclaimes to listen to woman and to give them a fair change. Maybe just not for our dear Ada!

Destroying Arthur’s marriage, because he kept dragging Arthur into shit, he wasn’t mentally stable enough for. Putting thoughts of rejecting Linda into Arthur’s head, by talking bad about Linda and making jokes about her any given time.

Sleeping with Lizzie over and over again, even when he knew she loved him and when she tried to get over him by dating someone new, he made the order to burn down the pub of Angel, humilated his family, and have him killed later.

Sleeping with Jessie, so he could use her

Humiliate Polly, when she was at her lowest, after Rueben had left her

Drag Michael into the illegal business after Polly begged him not to

Dragging Finn into all this shit after John died, because John wasn’t avaiable anymore

Calling Grace a whore, when they first met

Paying Lizzie in his head, even after she stopped being a sex worker

Helping a fascist

I could go on for a while, but you see my point here!

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Nobody! I want to see him miserable and alone! Honestly I’m never going to read all these soft!Tommy fics or whatever, because they really don’t interest me. I don’t want to see him happy.

But go have fun people and write and read whatever you want!

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Tommy and Lizzie, because they have a sexual relationship, which is not based on romance and I love this sad and depressing dynamic between them. It’s so interesting to write and read about.

Tommy and Ada are great in the show. I love their talks and Ada actually points out when Tommy is acting like a douche again.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I have a lot... where should I start?

I get so annoyed, when I see Tommy shown as a twink, because the actor is just 1,70m... which is not small to me. I know a lot of men around that height and I think they are average and not small. Also a lot of men feel bad for not being tall enough, because everywhere in our society it’s normal to have a tall man and a small woman. And the way tall man or small man are sexualized in this alpha/omega thing or in a top/bottom dynamic is so... meh. It’s really uncomfortable to see how people try to push the patriarchal man-woman dynamic into same-sex relationships.

Tommy is a class traitor and a horrible husband.

Man, I could rant for hours, but I stop right here. Just remember, please don’t feel attacked, I don’t mean to attack you. Even if you write or draw... whatever with Tommy, I would never say something bad about this. Enjoy creating Tommy content, I will love to ignore it!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I was so disappointed when they killed Freddie, because those two could have had an interesting and compelling relationship. Freddie could have been a great frenemie. I put this here and on on Ada, because their marriage wouldn’t changed the plot as much as Freddies and Tommys friendship. Tommy would have been a way better person, if Freddie was around.

John Shelby

How I feel about this character

MY HUSBAND! I love him and he has never done anything wrong in his life.

Nah, John has many faults, but I still adore him as a character, because his faults are actually making the plot more interesting. I also read, that he and Tommy fight a lot, because John is more moral and has way more integrity than his older brother. It was just hinted in the show, but I love this side fact and I will base my whole characterisation this.

I love to write, draw and read stuff with him. He is my favorite character from Peaky blinders and my love will never die, even though he did.

Funny tho, when I first watched PB, I adored Tommy and was annoyed by John, but as I rewatched it I changed my mind about those two.

He had so much potential and I would spend all my money, which is not much, but the devotions counts, to see a spin-off with just John and his army of children.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Esme, because they are sooo cute together!

My OFC, because I love writing them.

Any reader, because I’m a sucker for John.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

All kinds of interactions with other characters and John are great! My favorite is John and Ada to be honest. But here are other dynamics I adore as well:

John & Polly, (she would help him a lot with the kids)

John & Arthur (they come to the garrison to drink and play cards, they talk a lot about their problems, deep bond here)

John & Tommy (in my head they are always fighting)

John & Lizzie, because they have a great friendship, and they helped each other a lot. She spend time with the kids and he gave her financial support, so she would quit her job, which she didn’t do, because she feared being all alone again, and she has trust issues) (I’m actually writing a fic about these two)

John & his kids (I’m soft for dad!John)

John & Michael (especially in season three, because John seems to be jealous of Michael)

My unpopular opinion about this character

John is not completely stupid. Well, he is certainly not smart, but he works in the betting shop, and Arthur does not, or not really, because Arthur is bad at math... John at least knows his numbers. And also Tommy chose him to be the legal bookie over the others, so John must do a good job there. He just never got a degree or something similar like Michael. Which is also a reason, why John seems to be bitter about Michael joining the business. Michael was put in a higher position than he did.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

This one is obvious... John should have survived.

[darlingandmreames]

Here I am once again enabling your writing and being as selfish about it as every other time because is it really enabling if it’s done out or self indulgence??? ANYWAYS— dream husbands + (not so) fake marriage:

I have almost definitely said it before but by god I will say it again: the funniest possible way to do the whole “fake marriage” trope would be like two people getting married so they can invoke the spousal privilege that lets them refuse to testify against one another in court. a couple of mobsters sweating bullets in a vegas wedding chapel so they aren’t compelled to rat on each other when the next heist inevitably goes sour

I am absolutely in love with this concept and it’s 100% A Thing now asjdsfks You’re the best enabler a local trash goblin could ever dream of ^-^ so this 100% deserves a long fic full of mutual pining and the two of them being idiots and it’s definitely going to get one because I have zero self control, but here’s a short snippet about how it all started.......

*******************************************************************************************

Arthur leaned his head back against the cinder block wall with a frustrated sigh. This was bad. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d ended up in police custody, but it was the first time he’d ended up in custody with actual decent evidence against him. Maybe even a prosecutable case. If he could get out he could maybe disappear- he’d gotten very good at that over the years- but he couldn’t make bail without accessing…less than legal funds, which would be more than enough for them to remand him. But if he couldn’t make bail, he’d be stuck in custody until court, and that would complicate things. And if this went to court, he wasn’t getting out of it. Not easily at least. He just hoped Eames had managed to get away without being caught; he knew Cobb had but he wasn’t so sure about Eames. Things would get even more complicated if they were both in custody. The sort of complicated that could get them both put away for a couple of decades if they weren’t careful.

He and Cobb hadn’t even supposed to end up in the states to begin with. Cobb was still very much a wanted man here, so it simply wasn’t an option. Canada was certainly a risk- the physical proximity and ease of extradition made Arthur nervous- but it had been a good sounding job. Easy sounding, with a good payout. It’d gone south though, both figuratively and literally, and when they’d found themselves in Chicago Arthur had scrambled for a way to get Cobb back out of the country undetected. Eames had thankfully been finishing up a job in the area and offered to help with documentation, but not before the authorities had caught wind of the situation. Cobb had thankfully managed to get out before the raid, but Arthur hadn’t quite been so lucky. The charges he’d been arrested on certainly hadn’t been the worst they could’ve been- mainly aiding and abetting, accessory, and fraud- but they weren’t great either. And unless he managed to somehow get out of this cell, he’d likely be facing time for them.

He was, quite simply, fucked.

“Come on.” The sound of the cell door being unlocked pulled Arthur from his thoughts. “You’ve made bail.”

He looked over, surprised. “I…did?”

“Yep. Your husband put it up.” The officer stared at him with a bored expression. “Now come on. Unless you’d rather stay.”

Husband? Arthur couldn’t fathom who the officer could’ve possibly been referring to, but he kept his expression neutral as he stood up and walked out of the cell into the hallway. He was certainly confused but he wasn’t an idiot; this wasn’t the time to look a gift horse in the mouth by asking questions. If it got him out of jail for the moment, he could work with it. He’d figure out the details later.

He stopped dead in his tracks as he walked into the jail lobby. Of all the people he thought he might’ve seen waiting for him, he certainly hadn’t expected it to be fucking Eames. There he was though, leaning against the lockers as casually as could be. He flashed a warm smile as he caught sight of Arthur and Arthur nodded slowly in return, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Bailing Arthur out put Eames at significant risk; Arthur knew full well he had several active warrants in the states. Unless he’d already been caught as well. But if that was the case, the most sensible thing for him to do was disappear, not get Arthur out of jail by pretending to be his fucking husband, which brought up a whole other set of questions on its own.

The officer behind the window slid him a bag filled with the belongings he’d had on him when he was arrested: wallet, keys, belt, notebook, three pens. No passport though. He frowned slightly at that; it wasn’t surprising, but it was annoying. He was going to have to use a different one to get out of the country anyways, but it would’ve been far easier if he’d had the original one as well. He sighed and collected his belongings, only half listening as the officer ran through the expectations for him while he was out on bail before walking over to where Eames was waiting by the door.

Eames leaned in and pulled Arthur into a quick hug, startling him. “Good to see you, darling. Glad I was able to get you out.”

“Right. Yes.” Arthur tried not to let his rapidly growing confusion show as Eames slipped his arm around his waist. “Good to…good to see you too.” He followed Eames out of the building, blinking in the sudden sunlight. They walked like that for several blocks, keeping up the appearance of whatever the fuck sort of cover Eames had gone with. It wasn’t until Arthur was confident that they were far enough away from the jail that they were likely only being watched from afar that he stopped, pulling away and finally letting his internal bewilderment creep into his expression. “Eames, what the fuck was that?”

“That was me getting you out of jail, darling, try to be at least a little appreciative. Though I’m sure I could return you if that’s what you’d prefer.”

Arthur stared at him. “What are you even still doing here?”

Eames grimaced, running a hand through his hair. “I got picked up too. They didn’t have quite enough to keep me in custody, but they managed to freeze most of my accounts and I’m pretty sure they have me under pretty close surveillance, so getting out of town is a tad difficult at the moment. Besides,” he shrugged, “I figured someone had to get you out of jail. And with Cobb jumping ship, that left me.”

“So you claimed to be my fucking husband?”

“Listen, I was just thinking ahead. We’re both stuck in this, at least for now, so I figured I’d get us some protection in case this got to court before we could get out of it.” He quirked an eyebrow. “They can’t make us testify against each other if we’re married. Spousal privilege and all. One of the few things you Americans do right.”

“Yes, thank you Eames, wonderful idea.” Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to wrap his mind around what Eames was telling him. He could already feel a migraine starting from the stress. This had already been an absolute fucking mess and Eames’ little ploy had just made it ten times worse. “Except for the fact that are aren’t actually married, which I’m sure will make us look great once the investigators find-”

“Yes we are.”

Arthur’s thoughts screeched to a halt and he looked up in confusion. “We’re what?”

“We’re married.”

He stared at Eames, dumbfounded. Was this what having a stroke felt like? Because that was clearly what he was having right now. “Eames, we’re not married.”

“Well, not technically, no. But I have all the necessary paperwork to argue to the contrary.” Eames shrugged. “I mean, it’s all forged of course, but as far as the US government is aware, you and I were legally married three years ago in England.” He gave Arthur an unimpressed look. “I know you don’t think highly of me, love, but you should at least give me enough credit to know I wouldn’t try pulling something like this off without the necessary paperwork backing it up.”

“Eames, we’re not married.”

“You and I know that but according to the authorities we are, so let’s try to keep it that way, yes? It’ll be better for both of us if we do.” Arthur continued to stare at Eames, trying desperately to think of something, anything, to say but drawing a blank instead. After a moment, Eames’ expression shifted to amusement. “Close your mouth, darling, or you’ll catch flies.”

Arthur snapped his mouth shut, pinching the bridge of his nose again. The beginnings of his headache came rushing back full force and he groaned. “I really hate you sometimes, you know that?”

Eames frowned. “Well that’s not a very nice way to talk to your very loving husband who just bailed you out of jail.”

“Eames, I swear to god…”

“Alright, alright, calm down, don’t have an aneurysm. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of all of this before we really have to play that up. In the meantime, though,” Eames gave Arthur a somewhat sheepish smile, “I’m hoping you have a place here in Chicago, because I don’t and it might look a bit odd if we’re staying in separate hotels.”

Arthur sighed. “Yeah, I know a place.” It was technically one of Cobb’s apartments, but it would work well enough for them. It certainly wasn’t like Cobb was currently using it. He set off down the sidewalk. “I can’t believe you got us into this.”

“Technically it was Cobb who got us both into this lovely situation, darling, not me. I’m just trying to keep us both out of prison.”

Arthur groaned again. Christ, this was going to be a fucking mess.