#but they would all make each other worse actually

[softaestluv]

Three’s A Crowd

Ghoap x Neighbor! Reader

Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5 (final part!)

There is explicit smut in this chapter! 18+ content! I can’t emphasize the derange media ahead enough!

Tags: Smut, vaginal fingering, anal fingering, sex toys, butt plug, lingerie, double penetration, anal sex, vaginal sex, oral sex, creampie, dirty talk, pet names, multiple orgasms, overstimulation

Summary: When you moved into your new apartment complex you thought your biggest concern would be something practical such as mold in the shower or weak water pressure. Maybe even the smell of lingering cigarette smoke or marijuana from previous tenants.

You never expected it to be your neighbors who seemed to have a sex drive that rivaled any succubus or horned college teenager.

You weren’t disappointed.

It’s not like you were expecting John and Simon to knock on your front door after the fact and carry you to your bedroom Cinderella-style. Fuck you into oblivion and become the new neighborhood disturbance.

But you also didn’t expect them to pretend as if nothing happened.

You saw them in the hallway and lobby, outside your apartment doors, but all they did was greet you. John gave you a bright smile and Simon a curt nod. Which wasn’t weird considering you were neighbors, but it was strange for them.

They had tormented you for weeks, took every opportunity they could to tease you, and make sexual comments to you at every turn.

And now they just stopped.

Stopped teasing you.

Stopped having loud sex across the wall.

You should’ve been grateful; you weren’t waken up to their loud moans or put in awkward situations that left your cheeks warm and your heart racing. Except you weren’t; they heard you moaning and knew that you were sexually interested in their invites after that night.

However, they did nothing, left you with dainty lingerie, a butt plug, and a burning reminder of the embarrassing way you had willingly let them hear your moans.

It was like they were waiting for you to make the first move, waiting for you to actually accept their invitation before it turned into something you regretted. As if now that you actually reciprocated it became more than flirtatious teasing. Stared at your ceiling for days, laid awake at night for reasons other than their loud moaning.

So begrudgingly, you took matters into your own hands. You don’t exactly know why you were waiting outside their apartment door.

Maybe it was the two glasses of wine you chugged coursing through your veins. Maybe it was because you hated not having their attention anymore. Curious to find out if all their insufferable noises were warranted.

But there you were: a long silk robe covering the matching set you wore under. Stupid skull butt plug pressed to your rim.

When Simon opened the door, you second-guessed every choice you’ve ever made. Swallowing thickly as he traced his eyes over your robe. Took all your courage to push past him, slip under his arm, and barge into their apartment. He closed the door behind you, moving to stand in front of you so you were closest to the door.

You don’t know if it was worse that he didn’t say any words, didn’t even call for John. Just stood there and peered down at you, eyes sharp as they ever were. It was silent, each gulp of saliva practically shattering off the walls, clenching and unclenching your fists nervously. Rocked side to side on your feet as the room became impossibly suffocating.

“Think you have somethin’ to show me.”

His voice was deep and controlled. Knew what was under the robe without having to ask, knew why you were standing in their apartment. Almost made you want to run away because he was too cocky for his own good. Like he had just been waiting patiently for your arrival as if he knew you would succumb to him eventually.

You nodded, taking a deep breath as you untied the robe, letting it fall to the floor slowly, pooling at your feet. Left you standing in the pink babydoll he bought you, thong and thigh highs hardly covering any of your skin. You barely had the strength to find his gaze, watched him outline your figure hungrily, and take his time to examine every part of your body like he was mesmerized.

“Turn around.”

You hesitated slightly; it wouldn’t be too late to stop. You could leave now; neither of you would mention it again. Forget it ever happened because at least you calmed your nerves long enough to try, but the look in his eyes had you spinning in an instant.

Swallowing all your pride as you obeyed, facing the door as his figure approached. Could feel the ghost of his palms on your hips, his mouth above your ear. Goosebumps bursted along your shoulders where you could feel his breath.

“Show me.” Two taps on your left ass cheek.

You fluttered your eyes shut, leaning forward to bend your ass farther out. Spread yourself open with a shaking hand and presented the stupid butt plug to him in all its glory. Hummed lowly, approvingly, at the sight. Heard him take a step backwards to get a better view, enraptured by the sight.

It was hot. Unbearably hot.

Felt as if your skin was melting off, pooling on the floor with your robe and dignity. Sweat collecting on your skin almost causing your grip to slip. Heartbeat drowned out any other noise in your ears, but you could still hear everything. Could still hear his breaths, each creak of the floorboard, the TV playing in the other room.

You jolted forward in shock when his thumb pressed against the butt plug, pushing it forward slightly. Had you yelping out in surprise as he returned his head to your neck.

“Didn’t think you’d actually accept,” He drawled, “Should we show Johnny, huh?”

You nodded quickly. Despite how humiliating it would be to have two pairs of eyes on you, at least John was tolerable as a person. Wasn’t hidden behind a mask as you stood bare and open for them.

“Eager to answer,” He teased, fingers still pressed to the butt plug, had you shifting anxiously, “Seems you like being shown off.”

You opened your mouth to retaliate, irritation strumming your temples, but he spoke before you could, calling John from the other room. Though, it’s not like he would’ve listened to anything you had to say in the first place.

“Johnny, think our birdie came to give us a present.”

You could hear the sounds of his feet approaching, anxiety building in your chest with each new step. Let your hands fall from your ass, didn’t want him to see you with a butt plug buried in your ass as a first greeting.

“What are ya— steamin’ Jesus.”

You rested your forehead against the door, squeezing your eyes tightly together in embarrassment.

“Go on.” Simon demanded, “Let him see.”

Your hands returned, presenting the plug once again with a huff of annoyance. Filling your lungs with shallow breaths as you felt incredibly bare under their stare. Mortified as your roles were reversed, half-naked in front of them when they were fully dressed— for the first time ever.

“Bloody fuckin’ hell,” John groaned, kneeling between your legs, incredibly close to your core.

You looked down at his face, his eyes focused, fixed on your hole. Wonder filled his irises as he drank it all in like you were heaven reincarnated. Couldn’t pry his eyes away if you tried. His reverence, the fact that he was so close, had you dropping your grip, burying your face in your arms, and pressing them against the door. Flustered from his proximity, hadn’t expected him to get on his knees.

A movement that had Simon tutting in disapproval. “Lass.”

“Nae, It’s alright, Si. Don’t worry lass, yeah?” John said, reassuring you softly, “Don’t gotta do anythin’ you don’t want.”

His hand cupped your right ass cheek, rough palms scratching your skin deliciously, “I can do it for you, yeah? Wanna see how pretty you are.”

Cup turned into a grip, squishing the swell of your ass in his grasp, and spread them apart. Fingers hovered over the butt plug, fear swelling in your throat as you anticipated his next move, couldn’t see what he was fucking doing.

Where Simon pushed, John pulled; slid the metal plug out just enough for your rim to catch on the bulb. Made you whine at the sensation, pushed to your tippy toes in shock.

“Sensitive little thing ain’t she?” John said, but he wasn���t saying it to you. He spoke the words to Simon, openly talking about you like you weren’t standing there like he wasn’t tugging on the plug in your ass.

Pulled on the metal until the bulb slid out with a wet pop, keeping the slender tip snug inside. You cried out, digging your fingers into the door, knuckles gone white. You had used the plug several more times since the first night, had gotten used to the feeling, but the fact that it was John, his larger fingers teasing your rim had your nerves alive. Burning every fiber in your body.

Pushed it back in to the hilt, had your already shaking legs almost buckling under you. Repeated the movements until your walls were quivering around the metal. Cherishing the sight of your greedy hole sucking it back in with each thrust, enjoyed toying with you for his own pleasure. Could hear his breath speed up the longer he played with your walls, cascading warm air over your hole.

John turned you around swiftly; for the first time the entire night, you two made eye contact, a warm smile on his lips as if he wasn’t just tormenting you. “Hi there.”

You chuckled softly, “Hi, John.”

He hummed, placing his hand out for you to take, slender fingers swallowed whole by his thick palms, “Let's get ya in the bedroom, yeah?”

You nodded and allowed him to guide you down the hallway, Simon’s figure looming behind you as he followed.

“You look bonnie,” John complimented, eyes sweet as ever, “Where’d ya get somethin’ like that?”

They sat you down on the bed, John standing in front of you, Simon against the wall, watching. Like they had done this before, knew where they belonged, falling into place like chess pieces.

You were sure they had done this before, but you weren’t sure if you were grateful or remorseful about that fact. They weren’t awkward, their confidence eased your nerves. If they were jittery, just as scared as you were, you probably wouldn’t be sitting on their bed, lace adorning your skin so willingly. Though you couldn’t help but feel a little tinge of jealousy knowing you weren’t the first woman they shared.

“Simon bought it for me.”

“Did he?” John chuckled, “Surprise tae me.”

He positioned himself between your thighs, resting his hands on your hips.

“Feel bad, would’ve shaved for you had I known.”

You snickered, thanking the gods above that John was here, so seamlessly confident. Playful demeanor put your racing heart at ease, diminishing the intensity of Simon’s presence.

“It’s okay,” You reassured, “I like your beard.”

“Do ya?”

“Uh huh,” You reached up, scratching under his chin, “Tickles.”

You gripped his chin, pinching the bone between your thumb and index finger, and pulled him closer. Hovered your lips over his, faint breaths flowing over your cheeks. You flickered your eyes to Simon’s dark figure, the whites of his eyes striking through yours. Possessive. Protective, but not over you. Of John, warning you.

Your focus dipped back to John, wetting your lips before leaning forward. Slotting them against his in a tease of a kiss. It was subtle, soft, testing the waters wearily as you slid your mouths together. Sweeter than you expected for a man of his stature. Contrasted the way you were just standing on their doorstep, fucking you with the butt plug.

The both of you separated, staring at each other for a mere second before he surged forward. Large palms cupping your jaw, pressed his lips against yours with the urgency you had imagined him to. Threw the sweet kiss away, forgotten and dull.

Devoured you whole.

Pushed you to your back before crawling over your frame, lips conjoined the entire time. Elbows on either side of your head, beard scratching against your chin. Sure it would leave a mark.

Hoped it would.

A reminder of the way he was kissing you like he intended to make your breaths his own. Keep you lightheaded enough that you would have no choice but to seek his lips, melt under his touch.

When he pulled away you almost whimpered, head embarrassingly following his lips. He chuckled, stopping your movements with a stiff hand on your shoulder.

“Be patient, love.”

Lips found your jaw, wandering hands scrunched the baby doll up, slipping under the material. His hands were cold on your warm flesh, had you taking a sharp breath between your teeth. Clinging to his shoulder as he sucked the flesh of your neck into his lips. Littered ghost of bites against your skin, softer than the marks that decorated Simon.

Determined hands explored your body, pinched and squeezed any fat he could get his grasp on. Greedy and hungry, like there wasn’t a part of you he wanted to leave untouched. Sliding lower, hooking the seams of your dress under your breasts. Pert buds revealed, hardening in the cold air. Capturing a nipple in his lips, suctioning around it harshly, made you arch into his mouth, moaning loudly into the quiet room.

The bed above you dipped, creaking as Simon crawled onto it. Banding his hands under your arms before hoisting you against his chest, leaned back against the bed frame. Clothes since stripped, cloth fabric of his boxers the only barrier between you and his hard cock. Practically had your eyes widening as it rubbed against your back, thick and long. Baffled by the size of him, wondering how you were going to fit any of him inside you.

John whined as your breast slipped from his mouth; Simon adjusted you so you rested between his thighs, palms on either side of your knees. The other man mirrors Simon’s actions, peeling the unnecessary layers of clothing off. Felt a bit of sadness that neither of them gave you adequate time to truly admire their frames. Had spent several occasions avoiding slipping your eyes lower, gawking at their brawn, and the one time it was appropriate, you couldn’t.

Simon separated your legs, left your barely covered cunt on display to John at the opposite end of the bed. Though as if this was his cue from Simon, he crawled across the bed like he was approaching his prey. Had your mouth drying nervously, squirming in Simon’s grasp in suspense. John rested flat between your thighs, running his hands over the lace of your stockings.

Simon’s bare lips pressed to your ear, balaclava shoved up so he could taste you, “Knew you’d look pretty in this.”

You whimpered at his words, laying your head on his shoulder. Low drone so close to your ear that it had your core tightening uncomfortably, could feel every vibration straight through your toes.

“Go on, Johnny. Give our birdie a reward for being so good for us,” His hand cupped your breasts, “Came over all pretty and dolled up for us.”

John hummed in agreement, pressing his lips to the insides of your thighs. Fluttering your eyes shut as he edged closer to your warmth. Compliments and praise from Simon, who was normally ordering you around, combined with John leaving a trail of wet kisses in his wake, searing your sensitive flesh in bites and nibbles had your mind puddling.

It’s not like your breasts were that small, but Simon’s hands engulfed them whole, making them look tiny as he kneaded them between thick fingers. Not like you were a fucking virgin either, but John’s soft touches made you twitch. Had your pussy weeping like it had been touch starved and desperate for years.

Your legs snapped shut when John rubbed his thumb over your clothed cunt without warning, both of them clicking their tongues in their mouth disapprovingly. Had you whimpering at their disappointment, but it was overwhelming, suffocating, wrapped between them. Couldn’t catch a break when both of their hands were on your body, lips branding your skin in their saliva and markings. Trapped; nowhere for you to run.

When one stopped their ministrations, the other started, didn’t leave a second with you untouched. The sensations tenfold shared between a pair.

John forced your legs open with a sudden strength that left you speechless, digging his grip into your flesh so harshly it was going to bruise. Wanted it to bruise, so when this was all over, and you were alone in your room, you could press them, remember the way they peeled you apart layer by layer.

“Can’t tear these now, can we?” He remarked, a wolffish smirk on his lips.

“Don’t worry, we’ll just buy her a new set,” Simon responded, hated the way it made you want John to rip them. Split the fabric in two so you would have an excuse to find yourself between them again.

Gasped when he did.

Tore the lace right off your body, and threw it carelessly across the room. Shredded and insignificant on the floor just like your previous pair that got you in this situation in the first place. Couldn’t help but mourn the loss of another thong, even through what it promised.

Simon hooked your feet either side of his, legs bent in half as he forced you to display your bare pussy to John. You shrieked, hands flying down to cover yourself, but they didn’t allow you to hide for long. Simon pulled them away, tangling his fingers in yours. A motion that seemed too intimate for strangers, his larger hand enveloping yours.

“None of that.” Simon cooed, “Johnny’s a good boy; he’ll treat you well.”

You didn’t even have time to register his words, John’s thumb brushing a breath of stimulation to your clit. Buried your face in Simon’s neck, the arch slightly uncomfortable, but John made you forget about anything else. Had you breathing a hot moan against Simon’s skin as he stamped more pressure against the bead.

God, it was humiliating.

Spread between the two, both of them intently watching you, listening to you. Drank every reaction you gave them eagerly as you writhed under John’s fingers. Made your body ten times hotter, burning excruciatingly.

It was barely any stimulation, repeated rubs against your clit, but the situation alone had you particularly sensitive. Two pairs of eyes, two sets of hands, two mouths all for you. Dedicated to your pleasure made you more hypersensitive to every touch against your body.

You were pathetically close to finishing, clenching your fingers tightly around Simon’s as your core constricted. You didn’t want to finish, didn’t want them to tease you for orgasming so quickly— especially Simon’s cocky ass.

Until John slid lower, lower, lower, dipping his index finger into your pussy. Your breaths stuttered in your lungs, hiccuping over the air as you cried out. You knew they were bigger than you, but the width of his finger was still shocking. Even through all the slick you knew drenched your entrance, his finger faced resistance.

Your moans apparently weren’t good enough for them because John slid a second finger in after several thrusts. Simon wringing a hand free from your grip and pressed three fingers to your clit. That had you thrashing in their arms, John’s fingers fucking in and out of your walls. Stretched thin around his thick digits, curled against every ridge of your spongy flesh. Simon’s fingers swiped swiftly against your swollen clit, managing to match Johnny’s pace.

“Come on, doll,” Simon whispered, “Quit holdin’ it in. Want you to cum for us.”

You nodded your head frantically in his neck, brows furrowed as you clenched down around John’s fingers— humility be damned.

You didn’t care if they teased you, if it only made them that much more smug. Not when it felt so mind-numbingly good. Succumbed to the pleasure, washing away any of your concerns.

Snapping your hips down to bury John’s fingers deep within your walls before arching into Simon’s touch. Moaning broken chimes of their names as you came undone. Spasmed your walls around their fingers as they fucked you through it, pussy squelching wetly with each stroke, each drag of their fingers in your puffy walls. Both of their hands soaked in your cum.

They didn’t even give you time to be embarrassed; Simon cupped your jaw and tilted your head to pull your lips against his. Kissing you harsher than John did, whereas John’s was sweet and passionate. Simon’s was primal, aggressive. Bruising his lips against yours, didn’t give you room to breathe after an intense orgasm. Deliriously trying your best to reciprocate Simon’s movements.

John’s tongue replaced their fingers, lapping between your swollen folds eagerly. Made you cry out in shock, Simon taking the opportunity to lick into your mouth, swiping his tongue in your mouth possessively. Made you his as John’s tongue broke through your walls. Licked up all your cum, buried his nose against your pussy, and swallowed it all down as his. Stained his throat, tongue, and lips in your taste.

You were lightheaded, mind buzzing and numb, barely managed to move your lips against Simon’s. Both of their tongues pleasuring you at once, mewling into Simon’s mouth with each swipe of John’s tongue.

Simon slipped his fingers in your mouth, fingers that were drenched in your cum.

“Suck.”

So you did.

Eyes bleary as you tried your best to focus on his. Slurped your cum off his fingers and licked his digits clean. His eyes followed every movement, every lick, pupils dilating as he pushed them flat against your tongue. Whimpers vibrating his fingers as John suctioned his lips around your clit and sucked. Hard.

You were beginning to understand why you heard John crying through the wall so often. The tears were beading in your eyes before you realized, streaking down your cheeks as Simon moved his grip around your neck. John’s stimulation didn’t halt for a second, lapping at your pussy like it was fucking heaven on earth. Moaning happily between your thighs as he rutted his hips against the bed.

“Drove us crazy for months, you know that?”Simon spat out through clenched teeth, grip tightening around your neck, “Made me lose my mind when I saw you in my shirt. Wanted to fuck you against the door right then and there.”

You shook your head in his palms helplessly, couldn’t even respond if you wanted.

“Had to keep fuckin’ Johnny here because we couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you across the wall.” His voice was hoarse like he was fucking angry at you, “But you kept denyin’ our invitations.”

You mewled weakly, “W-Was scared.”

He chuckled, but it wasn’t anywhere near friendly. It was dark, had nerves spiking at your chest, but you didn’t even hear his response. Vision going white, arching painfully between the two of them, grinding against John’s face as you came on his tongue.

Screamed so loudly you didn’t recognize it as your own voice. Walls convulsed uncontrollably, legs shaking from the intensity. Hadn’t even known you were on the brink of a second orgasm. Never had a lover make you finish so quickly back to back.

They were rubbing their palms over your body, petting you tenderly as they repeated praises to you. Eyes heavy and half-lidded as they graciously let you catch your breath this time. Slowly drifting back down to reality, felt as if your last orgasm was ripped straight from your core. Legs still shaking. Hips rutting sporadically through the comedown.

John’s lips glimmered in your cum, smeared down his chin as he sat back up. Simon switched his grip from your throat to John’s, pulling him harshly to his lips. Watched as Simon licked into John’s mouth ravenously, flicked his tongue over his lips and down his chin. Cleaned all your cum from his face. Had your core fluttering, mind blanking as you watched them swap your cum, like neither of them could get enough.

Your fingers tugged on John’s shirt, whining quietly at the sight, wanted them to kiss you too.

John pulled away as much as Simon’s tight grip on his chin would allow, smirking knowingly at you caught between their chest, “Gettin’ jealous, Bonnie?”

You shook your head weakly, not convincing anyone in the room as you tugged at John’s shoulder this time.

“Needy little thing.”

Simon’s grip loosened on John, allowing him to lean in to capture your lips. Could taste your expense on his tongue, moaning tiredly and softly into his mouth. Though Simon seemed just as desperate to kiss you, pulled you away from John to smash his mouth against yours.

Spent god knows how long like that, both of them fighting over your lips, pressing into Simon’s smaller mouth as he pinched and bit at yours harshly just to be pulled into John’s plump lips, sucking and licking at your swollen lips to ease Simon’s torment.

Pushing them together every time you became too lightheaded, every time your mind began to whirl, dizzy, and drunk off their kisses, off your previous orgasms. Watched them make out with each other as you regulated your breath.

“Jesus, yer fuckin’ perfect,” John groaned as you pushed them apart again, swiping your lips against his as he pulled you into his lap.

Simon brushed his palms down your back, exploring lower until his fingers nudged at the butt plug. Whimpered into Johnny’s mouth as Simon pulled it completely out, excess lube dripping out of your hole. Had Simon cursing under his breath at the sight, pushing his index finger slowly into your loosened walls.

You had anticipated this moment since he gave you the butt plug and had tried your best to stretch yourself with your fingers and toy in preparation for the burn. The first finger, despite how fucking thick it was, didn’t hurt. Walls already accustomed to a slight girth.

Simon seemed to enjoy this fact; impatiently pressed a second finger to your rim to test the stretch. Your walls gave away to the intrusion easily, burrowed to the knuckle. Buried your face into John’s neck as you clung onto his shoulders tightly.

Simon leaned his forehead onto your back, groaning as he slowly began a rhythm, dragging his fingers against your sensitive flesh, “Bloody fuckin— you’re tight, birdie.”

You mewled into Johnny’s skin, “T-Tried to stretch myself out as much as I could.”

This had both men tightening their hold on you, digging their fingers into your flesh harshly, “Yeah, Bonnie? Stretched yourself nice an’ pretty fo’ us?”

You nodded earnestly, canting your hips back down onto Simon’s fingers, “Wanted to be ready for you two.”

Simon bullied a third finger in at that, John taking your lips in his aggressively like all their restraint slipped through their control from your confession. Hand snaking between your legs to rub at your clit, both of them sharing your mouth, taking turns taking your breath as their own. Rambling your praises when their lips weren’t on yours, as Simon stretched your walls loose and lax.

They turned you around so you faced Simon, hoisting you into both of their laps when Simon deemed you stretched out enough. Snickering at the apprehension on your face, the way your body tensed under their touch when both of their cocks sprung free.

It was Johnny’s turn to press his lips against your ear, “If it’s too much we’ll stop. Won’t do anythin’ you don’t want to, okay?”

You nodded wearily, arching your head as far back as you could to find his eyes. Didn’t think you had it in you to look in Simon’s, not when they were so sharp, had the hair standing on your neck. Needed the warmth in Johnny’s to regulate the tension burning your throat.

“Don’t worry,” John whispered, flickering his eyes to Simon like you two were sharing a secret, “He won’t eat ya; I won’t let him.”

You chuckled, the stress in your body dissolving at his words.

“Si’s gonna go first, okay?” He continued, “Then when ya tell us you’re ready, I’ll try.”

“Okay.”

Simon lifted you to your knees, pressing the fat of his cockhead against your pussy. Choked on your breath as he broke through your walls. Slowly pulling you back down into his lap until your ass rested against his hips. You jolted forward once he bottomed out, digging your nails into the muscles on his shoulders because fuck, was he massive.

Filled you out in ways you never thought possible. Gasping for breath as you felt him in your stomach snug against your cervix. Couldn’t even breathe, each time you gulped air your stomach clenched, squeezed him tightly between your walls.

“F-Fuck, doll,” He gritted through clenched teeth, banding his arm around your waist, “Gonna need you to relax.”

You whined high-pitched, stumbling through your words, “T-Trying to, but you’re too fucking big.”

Dug your teeth into his skin as he began a slow grind, rutting his hips against yours gently. Until you were gyrating back, fucking yourself onto his shaft, matching his motions as a signal. Showing him that you were ready for more.

“There we go,” Simon hummed, tightening his grip on your waist, “Just like that.”

Lifted you to the tip, had your eyes widening because you didn’t mean that much more, “Simon, wait. No, I can’t-“

But he was dropping you back down anyway, ass smacking against his thighs. You practically cried out, felt as if he punched right through your walls. Squeezing your thighs around his hips as if to stop him from doing it again. Though it was no use, ignored your protests as he lifted you over his shaft before slamming you back down on his cock.

“Yes, you can,” He tutted, “And you will.”

Another one of his demands. Uttered harsh and direct. Made you want to listen to him, please him.

So, you did, let him guide you on his dick. Bullied his length into your puffy walls, made you take it, moaning wet and hot into his neck. Pressed open-mouthed to his skin as you keened out with each thrust. Had your pussy squelching loudly around him, drenching him in so much fluid that he practically slipped in and out.

Made you so fucked out and delirious, clinging to him like he was your last lifeline that you barely noticed Johnny’s head pressed to your ass. Almost forgot that he was even there in the first place in your Simon-infused daze. Pushed the tip in slowly, tensing around it as it had your vision blurring.

“John, oh— fuck, I—,” You babbled pathetically, couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t even form a complete sentence as he plunged deeper.

Tears burned your cheeks as he bottomed out, hiccuping over your breaths as you heard your heartbeat pulse in your ears. Both of them pressed praises to your skin, but you couldn’t even understand what they were saying. Too full to think about anything else, to feel anything else but fucking stuffed. Like you were being torn in fucking two on their dicks.

“You’re okay,” Simon said, reassuring tone surprising from how he usually snapped at you, “We got you. You can take it, pretty girl. So good for us, spread so well around us.”

His fingers were on your clit, brushing against it slowly with each word, Johnny’s lips on your neck, sucking hard marks on your unblemished skin. Distracting you from the pain radiating your body.

Simon’s grip on your thighs, Johnny on your breasts. Or maybe it was the other way around, you couldn’t tell, couldn’t fucking care. Every sense overwhelmed as you rutted your hips against them. Had them both cursing loudly as you fucked yourself frantically back down on their cocks. Desperate for the burning sting to disappear, needed it to melt away into pleasure.

Your mind was buzzing, blank, static, numb. Everything and nothing at once. Couldn’t do anything else but move your hips and paw powerlessly at Simon’s chest. Pant moist into their necks, bodies slipping on each other with your sweat.

Until they took over for you, held you in place as they slammed into you in sync. Bottomed out at the same time, made your body swell with their fat cocks. Had no choice but to let them use you, lolling helplessly between them.

John banded his arm around your abdomen and pressed his palm against your core, making the pressure from Simon’s thrust more intense.

“Can fuckin’ feel you inside her, Si.”

“Yeah?” Simon breathed, leaning forward to bruise his lips against the other man’s, but managed to keep their pace despite it all, “How does she feel? Tell me, Johnny.”

“So fuckin’ warm,” John groaned, voice gruff like he was slowly losing control, “Squeezin’ the life outta me.”

“She’s takin’ us so well, ain’t she, Johnny?” Simon grunted, watching you try your best to meet their thrusts, “So desperate and pretty for more.”

“Simon, I’m gonna cum soon,” John said, hips stuttering inside your walls.

“No. She’s going to finish first.” Simon commanded, gripping John’s hip tightly to make him continue his onslaught.

They pistoned their hips faster, fucking into you with all their might. Breath punched straight out of your lungs. Pain dissipated into complete bliss, clenching your walls around them as if to keep them inside you. Felt so full you were afraid you were constantly going to feel empty now. Only feel complete once they were both stuffing you with their cocks.

Fucking you so rough you didn’t know where John started and Simon ended. Didn’t know what hands were on your hips, on your jaw, squishing your ass, pinching your nipples. Didn’t know whose mouth was on your neck, whose was on your mouth, suffocating you completely with them. Felt as if you were fusing as one, your breaths and overstimulated walls theirs, their saliva and praises yours.

“Simon, John. Gonna, gonna cum,” You croaked, every nerve in your body ripped to shreds, both of them forcing you to morph your body to them, “P-Please, so close.”

“Please, lass,” John gritted, “One more time, yeah? Give us one more.”

You were sobbing, choking on your tears as you came so hard your voice was torn from your throat. Gaping at the ceiling as you threw your head back on John’s shoulder. Tightening around them with such a strong grip they could barely move. Tried to fuck you through it the best you would allow.

You couldn’t even remember the next few seconds, body going completely limp as John came inside your ass, buried to the hilt as he filled you to the brim. Pulsating walls coaxing his cum out of him, swollen flesh fluttering around him, taking each drop with eager acceptance.

Thrashing as they continued to thrust in your walls, John fucking his cum into your ass. Strokes stuttered and broken from the overstimulation, not quite managing to match Simon’s thrusts anymore. But Simon didn’t force him to for much longer, buried himself deep within your pussy, and came with a feral groan. Pumped ropes in your puffy walls, pulsating balls pressed to your ass and cunt as they both emptied their desires inside you.

You were limp, collapsing onto Simon’s chest as every muscle in your body tensed. Convulsed. Rippled. Shaking as you came down from three orgasms, tears streaming down your face as your body was spent. Exhausted, worn out, and overused. However, your veins were drowning every painful sensation away, tingling and washed away to bliss.

Both of their hands were petting you, once again cooing praises and soft words into your skin. Wiping your tears away, kissing and licking the salty beads of your sweat and tears clean. Warning you before they slid out of your walls, their cum dripping down your legs. Left you painfully empty, almost made you sob harder at the lack of pressure inside you.

They didn’t leave you alone for long, running you a warm bath before carrying you to their bathroom. Johnny joined you, somehow the both of you fitting into the tub like puzzle pieces. Simon sat on the counter, watching the two of you.

The warm water soothed the ache slowly beginning to build in your limbs and muscles. Knew you were going to be agonizingly sore in a few hours, probably barely be able to move or pee for that matter, but you didn’t even mind, it would be worth it all.

“Were we too rough, Bonnie?” Johnny asked, palms brushing up your arms and shoulders.

Flesh that was bruised and stained in their hickeys. Red splotches, teeth marks, and purple bruises adorning every piece of skin you could see.

You shook your head, voice coming out hoarse and scratchy, “No, no. Felt amazing; don’t think I’ll be able to do a round two anytime soon, though.”

Both men chuckled, “Well, we owe you a new pair of panties anyway, don’t we?”

The set they bought you, thigh highs and all torn and stained in all your fluids. Ruined and destroyed on their bedroom floor, but you didn’t even care. Pleased to know that whatever it was between the three of you wouldn’t end there.

Tag list: @avatar-lover @cheese-pull @entityunbound @theheartcollecter @leon-thot-kennedy @yunho-leeknow @star-buck-barnes @bluebarrybubblez @codeseven @other-fandoms-reblogs

Thank you for all the love & support everyone has given me for this fic! I’m so happy you guys have liked it thus far! 🩷🍒🎀

Cross posted in my ao3 here!

[downbad4sylus]

“Did you…mean to do that?”

synopsis: Caleb spends the weekend at your apartment while you both wrestle with how you feel about the other.

content: caleb x afab!reader; use of Y/N; pre-relationship; angst but it ends in fluff, don’t worry; i do use pip-squeak, im so sorry but it is kinda cute; caleb acts like caleb; mostly proofread

word count: ~3.1k

a/n: ….so this fuckin happened i guess

After Caleb left to attend the Aerospace Academy, you were forced to weather thunderstorms on your own. He would come home to visit of course, but he was no longer a constant in your life, a safe haven for you to turn to. Then you went to college, and seeing Caleb became few and far between, your schedules never really aligning for visits at Gran’s. It should’ve gotten easier as the years went by, as you joined the Hunter’s Association and he went to work for the DAA. But it didn’t, it never did.

It got worse, actually, after the explosion, when you thought Caleb was dead.

Every storm was like a knife to your heart, the blade twisting with each clap of thunder, sinking deeper as lightning lit up the sky. How you ached for Caleb’s warm reassurance, his solid presence at your side, his arms wrapped around you.

Then, against all odds, Caleb returned. He was alive.

But despite this, your childhood best friend wasn’t the same person he used to be. Where once he was warm and kind, he was now cold, mean.

You longed for the old Caleb, and as time went on, he showed hints of the man you knew. But would it ever be like it used to? Or would you have to accept that the past was the past, and focus on the future? Focus on accepting the Caleb in front of you now?

“Pip-squeak?”

“Hm?” You looked up at him, as he really was in front of you, arms braced on the island in your kitchen while you sat on one of the stools across from him.

“You okay? You seem…distracted,” said Caleb, his brow furrowing.

You shook your head, your lips curling into what you hoped was a reassuring smile. “Sorry, yes, I’m okay.” You pointed to the stove behind him. “Is our dinner almost ready?”

You had invited Caleb over to your apartment for the weekend and the two of you had spent the day around Linkon after you’d picked him up at the train station. Rather than going out to dinner, Caleb had insisted you return to your apartment so he could make you a proper, home-cooked meal.

Caleb straightened, a smile of his own adorning his face. “You that hungry?”

You nodded.

He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s almost done. Why don’t you start setting up for us to eat?”

You hopped off the stool and rounded the island, skirting around Caleb’s massive frame to grab plates, cutlery, and napkins. As you made your way to the coffee table in the living room, your thoughts wandered once more.

You felt guilty, honestly, for your continued, pervasive doubt. Caleb was trying his best, he really was, and yet all you did was dissect every word, every action. It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to yourself either. But this was just so hard.

Especially when there was a different kind of longing in your heart.

You could hardly admit it to yourself, these feelings you had toward Caleb. How, perhaps, you might want more with him (and maybe you always had).

Your heart and mind were in total chaos what felt like all the time. With Caleb. Without Caleb. Being with him made it worse, and being away from him did you no favors either.

“Aaand, dinner is served.”

Your head snapped up to find Caleb placing a serving dish on the coffee table, a wide grin stretched across his face.

You mirrored his expression. “Thank you, Caleb.”

His eyes softened as he sat beside you, taking your plate to serve you before himself.

“So, tell me again about this reality show you’re making me watch,” Caleb said, the two of you digging in to another one of his delicious meals.

You perked up, sitting up a little straighter as you swallowed. “It’s a dating competition, there’s challenges and dates and stuff, and they’re all competing to be the ‘best’ couple as voted for by the public.”

“Okay, okay, I can see how you find this entertaining,” Caleb mused. “Give me the run down since we’re in the middle of the season.”

You launched into an information dump, describing both the men and women on the show, who was with who, who you liked and didn’t like, which couples you were rooting for and which ones you wanted to break up. Caleb hung on to your every word, giving you his full and undivided attention.

Once you started watching, you continued to explain what was going on and who everyone was. Caleb, for his part, made sure to point out every single red flag for each guy you said you favored.

“You like that guy?” he asked as the TV showed the guy in question working out in front of a mirror.

“Yeah, he’s super sweet and actually listens to what the women have to say,” you said.

Caleb scoffed.

“What?” you demanded, pointing your fork at him. “What’s wrong with him?”

Caleb grinned something wicked. “He’s clearly full of himself.”

Your head whipped between the screen and Caleb. “How?”

“Workin’ out in front of the mirror like that? Flexin’ his muscles for no one but himself? Come on, pip-squeak, it’s so obvious.”

“Oh like you’ve never flexed in front of a mirror before?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t, thank you very much.”

You held out your hand.

Caleb slapped your palm.

You frowned.

“What?” he questioned.

“Give me your phone,” you said.

His brows raised. “Why?”

“I want to go through your pictures and see if you have any of you flexing your muscles.”

Caleb’s eyes widened, and he laughed to hide his shock. “Is that really necessary?”

You knew you’d caught him red handed, and he knew it too, his smile growing sheepish. So maybe his plan of convincing you to hate every guy on the show wasn’t going as planned, but Caleb was nothing if able to adapt to any situation.

He switched tactics.

“Are you saying you want to see me shirtless, Y/N?” he teased, crossing his arms so his biceps bulged.

Your gaze betrayed you, flicking toward his stupid muscles, your cheeks turning pink. “You know that’s not what I meant.” You gestured to the TV. “Why don’t you join the cast and show off how all the men should be acting, since you have so many opinions about it?”

Caleb snorted. “Like I’d give any of those women the time of day.”

Something flared in your chest at that—a sense of satisfaction maybe, or possessiveness—knowing the beautiful women on the show wouldn’t so much as turn his head. But who, then, would? Were you delusional in thinking, hoping, that it would be you?

Caleb was watching you intently, noticing every micro-expression that flitted across your face. He wanted to know what you were thinking. What it meant to you when he said the women on your silly little show were of no interest to him. Did you know it was because you were the only woman he would ever look at?

It was getting harder for him to ignore his feelings for you as time went on. The love he felt near overwhelming where it burned bright and constant in his chest. How desperately he wanted to call you his, and only his. For you two to exist in your own world, together, where he could keep you safe and take care of you. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out, if he was being honest with himself.

“Why don’t we watch something else?” you suggested, breaking him and yourself free of your respective thoughts.

“Sure, pip-squeak, whatever you want,” Caleb said with a genuine smile, because he meant it, he would do whatever you wanted.

—

You stared at the couch, now made for Caleb to sleep on for the night, guilt raging within. Surely it was cruel to keep expecting him to sleep there when he stayed over. He couldn’t possibly be comfortable.

“I really don’t mind,” Caleb said, as if reading your thoughts.

You looked up into his reassuring smile. “Are you sure? You can barely fit on the damn thing.”

“I’ve slept in worse places, trust me.” He patted your head. “Go off to bed now, text me if you need anything, yeah?”

“You should be texting me if you need anything,” you grumbled. “It’s my apartment.”

“What was that pip-squeak?” he teased.

“I said goodnight, Caleb,” you declared loudly.

“Goodnight,” he chuckled.

Throwing Caleb one last—admittedly longing—glance, you spun on your heel and stalked into your bedroom, closing the door behind you. Already changed into your pajamas, you crawled into bed and nestled under the covers where sleep mercifully found you quickly, despite clutching your phone to your chest, wishing Caleb to text you.

—

It was the lightning that woke you first, only to then be startled by the booming thunder.

Summer nights in Linkon were always unpredictable in terms of weather, thunderstorms cropping up whenever they felt like it seemed. This night, apparently, was no different.

The lightning lit up the sky, brightening your room with each flash. You were trembling beneath the blankets, too frozen with fear to move.

Until your phone buzzed against your chest and you managed to bring it up to read the text that had come through.

are you okay???

A sob escaped your throat seeing Caleb’s message.

No. Can you come in here, please?

Caleb was through your door within seconds.

“Y/N?” he called out.

“Caleb,” you whimpered.

You heard his muted footsteps on the carpet as he strode over to the bed. Then he was joining you under the covers, wrapping his arms tight around you as he pulled you against his body. You clung to him, your hands fisting in his shirt so tightly your knuckles were white.

“Shh, it’s okay, I’m right here,” he cooed, one hand rubbing your back.

Another crash of thunder had you clinging to him, your bodies impossibly close now.

“I would’ve thought you’d gotten over this while I was…away,” Caleb murmured, teasing, but there was concern hidden within his tone too.

You shook your head. “It got worse after you left,” you confessed. “When we were apart it was still hard, but you weren’t gone, just away, so it was easier to deal with. But after the explosion…”

“You thought I was gone, gone,” Caleb finished for you.

“Every time there was a storm, it reminded me of that,” you said.

Caleb tucked your head under his chin. “You don’t have to worry anymore, I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere this time.” He kissed the top of your head and you nearly wept. “I’ll hold you through every thunderstorm if you need me to. Even if I’m in Skyhaven, I’ll come as fast as I can, you only need to say the word.”

The thunder outside your window was nothing compared to the roar of your heart.

Maybe it didn’t matter that Caleb had changed since the explosion, because honestly, you had changed too. You had both gone through your own journeys in the past year and came out the other side as different people.

Maybe what mattered was what had stayed the same. Caleb was still your best friend. He was still the one person in your life who knew you better than anyone.

He was still the only man you had truly ever loved.

You drew back, a movement Caleb tried to prevent until you placed a gentle hand on his cheek.

“What’s wrong?” he breathed.

“I’m sorry, Caleb,” you whispered.

His brows knit. “For…what?”

“For the way I’ve acted since you came back. I didn’t mean to cause you so much distress, it’s just been…hard, adjusting.”

Caleb shook his head, placing a hand atop yours. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m sorry for making this so hard for you.” His violet eyes darted between yours. “All I’ve ever wanted is to keep you safe, I never wanted to hurt you. I would never hurt you, Y/N. I—“

He stopped himself short, before he could blurt out the three words he’d been holding back for years.

But you knew what he was going to say. You knew because you wanted to say it too.

You steeled your nerves before you could second guess yourself, and surged forward, your lips colliding with Caleb’s.

The kiss lasted for only a second, just a peck. You were too scared to linger any longer, afraid he might not reciprocate despite almost making a love confession.

Caleb’s eyes were wide, his chest heaving into yours. “Did you…mean to do that?”

Your cheeks blushed bright red as you nodded.

And then he was kissing you again.

Caleb took full advantage of your surprised gasp, his tongue plunging into your mouth and sliding along your own. His hand found its way to the back of your head, cradling it as his fingers wove into your hair.

His kiss was desperate, all-consuming, years of love and longing poured into each stroke of his tongue, each slide of his lips.

You met him with equal fervor, looping your arms around his neck to pull him closer. The thunderstorm long forgotten now as you lost yourself in this kiss. In Caleb.

Caleb, despite being on cloud nine, was trembling with restraint. He wanted nothing more to unleash himself on you, to tear off every layer of clothing and prove to you just how much he loved you. How much he worshipped you. But he didn’t want to push you before you were ready lest he risk whatever wall he’d finally broken down to be immediately put back up again. He could live with the taste of your lips, your tongue, for now at least.

You were the one to break away first, your lungs burning and in desperate need of air. Caleb was undeterred, however, and rolled you onto your back before trailing open-mouthed kisses down your neck. He wouldn’t stop until he marked you as his.

“Caleb,” you half-moaned as he sucked your skin.

Satisfied with the various hickeys already blooming on your neck, Caleb was finally able to tear his lips away.

Only to be struck stupid by your disheveled appearance.

Your lips were swollen, cheeks flushed a brilliant shade of red, and oh the way you were looking at him, it would spell his demise. Your eyes were hooded with pupils blown wide, but it was the desire in your gaze that really threatened Caleb’s fraying self-control.

“Did you leave marks?” you asked him, breathless.

Caleb nodded, still consumed in the daze of you.

You punched him square in the chest. “Caleb!”

He blinked rapidly, confused as to why you were suddenly so upset. “What? Did I hurt you?” Did he do something wrong? Were you regretting kissing him already?

“No, dummy!” you exclaimed. “I have work on Monday!”

“What does…?”

You hit his chest again. “I’m going to have to wear turtlenecks for at least a week! In the middle of summer!”

Caleb barked a laugh as relief flooded through him. “Who says you need to cover them up?” He traced the marks with a fingertip, causing you to shiver. “I would prefer you didn’t.”

You frowned. “Strutting around the Association covered in hickeys isn’t exactly professional. How would you like it if you had to walk around the Fleet with bruises all over your neck?”

A positively wicked smile stretched across Caleb’s face. “Is that a threat?” he drawled, leaning in so close your lips brushed. “I would wear any mark you left on me like a badge of honor.”

You pushed him off you with a scoff and he fell onto his back beside you with a dramatic oof. “Of course you would.”

Caleb turned on his side to look at you, really look at you. “Hey,” he murmured.

“Yeah?” you breathed, feeling the shift in his demeanor to something far more serious.

“You don’t regret it, right?” he asked.

“No, Caleb,” you said. You captured his face in your hands, emphatic as you continued, “I don’t regret it all, it’s time we stopped dancing around what’s going on between us.”

Caleb swallowed. “And what, exactly, is going on?”

He needed you to say it.

So you did, but not without teasing him first.

“Well I’m assuming this is more than just a friends-with-benefits thing,” you giggled.

Caleb wrapped a hand around your wrist. “Y/N, please.”

You grinned. “Isn’t the guy supposed to ask the girl to date him? This is a little backwards, don’t you think?”

Caleb’s breath caught, his heart swelling with so much love he was sure it would burst. “Y/N, do you…want to be my girlfriend?”

“Yeah, Caleb, I’d love to.”

He huffed a disbelieving laugh then captured your lips in another impassioned kiss. It was all worth it, the years he endured and suffered in silence as his love for you grew. Years spent hopelessly praying one day you’d return his affections. And sure, maybe he made it difficult at every turn for you to even entertain being with someone else, but that was for your own good. He was the only one capable of actually taking care of you, and he’d be damned if he let some other idiot hurt you because they couldn’t measure up.

But Caleb didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Not when you melted into his kiss. Not when your body pressed against his. Not when he could finally call you his.

He drew back, needing to say what he couldn’t before. “Y/N.”

You met his steadfast gaze.

“I love you,” said Caleb. “I’m in love with you.”

Once more that brilliant smile lit up your beautiful face, the moment as a flash of lightning brightened the room.

“I love you too, Caleb.” He didn’t dare exhale until you repeated his own words back to him. “I’m in love with you too.”

For the first time in a long while, Caleb thought he might have a chance at real happiness.

—

Bonus:

“Hey Y/N, did you and Xavier get in a fight or something?” Tara asked, shielding her mouth with her hand.

“No, why?” you questioned, glancing over at the Hunter and making eye contact. Xavier smiled warmly at you until you looked away.

“He’s been glaring at you all morning,” whispered Tara. “Or more like your neck.”

You had done your best to hide the hickeys Caleb had given you, covering them with the thickest concealer you had as well as wearing a cowl-necked long sleeve (despite it being blistering outside). There was no way Xavier could see them from across the room, and even if he could, why would he be mad about it?

Xavier, however, could absolutely see the hickeys adorning your neck. He’d broken three pens already from clenching them so hard whenever he thought of the piece of shit who’d marked you.

He was going to do unspeakable things when he found out who it was, and you, of course, would be none the wiser.

[girlsworldillusion]

Your polished hatred flatters me

Slytherin!Aemond - Fem!Reader

HARRY POTTER AU ⚡️🐍

arranged marriage x enemies to lovers

Summary: If there was anything worse than being forced into an arranged marriage with someone you didn't even know, it was that that someone would become your greatest enemy.

Rated: Explicit (+18)

Word count: 12k

Dividers: @allbutthreads

Author's Note: This story is entirely based on the Harry Potter franchise and its spin-offs, but I may also have added a thing or two of my own.

There are some topics that may be sensitive, such as: blood purity, verbal marriage contracts made at an early age, and young children practicing curses on each other - but overall, this is just a spicy and fun story.

Enjoy!

English is not my first language, I apologize for any mistakes you may find.

“Merlin!” You jump as a huge, translucent green bubble bursts from within your cauldron, the scalding spray nearly reaching your eyes and blinding you in the process.

From across the potions station, Jace sends you a wide-eyed look, his silky, dark curls now frizzy and unruly around his flushed face.

With a frustrated sigh and restless fingers you push the straggly strands of hair behind your ears; the humid, smoky environment making your own hair puff up almost comically, your cheeks pink and skin sticky from all the exposure to the heat and steam.

"That doesn't make any sense, I did exactly what the recipe said-" You mumble, wrinkling your nose at the foul smell of mold and dirty socks that rises in disgusting spirals from your brewing potion, where the swampy goo bubbles almost angrily. "There must be something wrong with this book."

"Umm, is the smoke supposed to be that color?" Your fellow Gryffindor, always oblivious to subtleties, asks, the two of you blinking like idiots at the charcoal-colored smokescreen that at that exact moment leaps out of the cauldron with a loud 'poof' that could not be considered anything less than theatrical. You both explode into a indiscreet coughing fit, the thick, abrupt appearance of the black smoke bomb leaving your faces slightly streaked with soot.

Even though you already know the answer, you still look sadly at the open book on the potions table when you finally manage to stop coughing, holding on to a single remaining fragment of hope that a miracle has happened so that your work won't be considered completely useless in the end.

"Actually, it says here that it should be silver."

Luck isn't something you usually have in abundance, for the record.

"Maybe Snape won't notice. Merlin knows he's had that huge hooked nose stuck in the same book since the class started. Something is clearly keeping him distracted today, much to the general relief and protection of Gryffindor's points. Maybe it's your lucky day after all." The boy smiles brightly at you, all flushed and soot-stained, trying to sound positive despite the chaotic results unfolding right before his eyes.

Of course, since his survival depends solely on breaking other people's expectations and frustrations, Professor Snape decides that this is the perfect time to abandon his reading and wander around the potions stations. You have about two seconds to send Jace a sharp glare before the man in question is making a dramatic turn towards you - no doubt guided by the admittedly quite detectable cloud of smoke exhaling right in front of you.

Jace pales a few shades before ducking his head, fumbling awkwardly with the wooden spoon before dipping it into the bubbling (and, to your shameless envy, much closer to the correct colour) mixture in his cauldron, pretending very poorly to find his own potion extremely interesting.

Arms crossed behind him and head held proudly high, Professor Snape floats across the floor like an ominous kelpie in his long black robes billowing - only breaking his scenic gliding when he’s hovering right next to you.

You swallow, throat suddenly dry at the unwelcome presence, staring at the bubbling disaster inside your cauldron as lace your fingers together in front of you.

"Tell me, Miss Fawley," he begins in his dull, gravelly voice, making you sway on your feet in nervous apprehension, "what is the Draught of Peace potion for?"

You splutter before answering.

"The Draught of Peace potion is a calming potion, Professor. Commonly used to alleviate anxiety and agitation."

If he is pleased with your answer, he doesn't show it at all, still shadowing your body with his sour aura.

"What are the main ingredients in this potion?"

"Huh, moonstone, syrup of hellebore, powdered porcupine quills and powdered unicorn horn, Professor." You are quicker to answer this time, noticing out of the corner of your eye the proud smile that Jace hides very poorly as he continues to unnecessarily mix his own potion as a form of disguise.

"Hmm. Now tell me, Miss Fawley..." Somehow your correct answers only seem to make the man more and more dissatisfied. "What color should the potion be once it's ready?"

"Turquoise blue, sir." You mutter with an embarrassed sigh, knowing full well where he was leading with this.

"And what's inside the cauldron appears to be turquoise blue to you, Miss Fawley?"

You feel your cheeks darken, looking sheepishly at the steaming, greenish mess inside your cauldron, murky and thick like the swamp waters in the deepest part of the Forbidden Forest - a large bubble rising to the festering surface to burst with a 'pop' that only adds another whiff of stench to the surroundings.

"No, sir."

"No, indeed."

He immediately emphasizes, sending you a sharp, cold look before lowering his gaze to the bubbling mixture with an exorbitant amount of disgust on his face as wrinkles his nose.

"I must say I'm impressed, in a way. It takes some talent to ruin a potion so spectacularly." His frown deepens as he sees the mossy goo threaten to spill out of the sides of the cauldron, moving almost like a living thing at this point.

"Maybe with ten points less for your house you'll find some inspiration to try to use this supposed talent and do it right next time."

He doesn't wait for your answer, abruptly turning his body to leave, as if you've exhausted his patience for the day, the movement making his black cloak flutter exaggeratedly as he walks away.

At the potions station next door, a pair of Hufflepuffs do a very poor job of hiding their giggles at what had just happened, which only makes your cheeks burn more intensely in embarrassment and your mood sour to critical levels.

As if to cement his position as the most happily absorbed person in the school, Jace decides to open his mouth.

"Isn't it hilarious how a potion that should, in theory, relieve anxiety and agitation has caused so much stress?" He breathes in amusement, biting his lip to contain a more exaggerated burst of laughter, as if he had told the biggest joke of all. The amusement, however, abruptly fades the moment he lifts his head to find your narrow, sharp eyes staring at him. "Uh, I mean - actually - forget what I said, you know, it's not hilarious at all..." he pauses between the endless babbling to take a breath. "Godric, is this lesson ever going to end?"

With a roll of your eyes, you turn away from him, glaring at the other potions stations with a resentful scowl as you slump onto the stool next to the table, propping your elbow on the wooden surface with a defeated thud, chin resting in your palm.

A few more students whisper and snigger behind their fingers as they glance sideways at you. You glare back at them with your best expression of silent outrage, daring them to say something to your face.

Honestly, so what if you’re not a natural at Potions? So what if your Draught of Peace didn’t turn out exactly as planned? It was an extremely complex potion, even for seventh years — and anyone with eyes could tell that half the class was struggling with the same thing you were. So why was it that you were the only one getting all this special treatment?

Be average at one thing and count on the rest of the school to ignore all the other things you excel at. Talk about unfair.

A silvery spiral of hissing smoke swirls across your line of vision, drawing your grumpy attention to the potions station on the other side of the classroom.

Before you know who it belongs to, you make sure to take about three seconds to part your lips and admire with a certain amount of distinct envy the clearly flawless result of the potion. At least until your eyes lock with his gaze from behind the cauldron and your expression wilts like a trampled flower. As if on cue, the very lighting in the room seems to change, casting an almost ethereal glow over the figure standing beyond the silver veil.

And if having visual proof that Aemond Targaryen was doing astronomically better than you at something wasn’t bad enough, it was even more despairing to realize that he was already looking at you.

He wasn't making any fuss about it, something that couldn't be said for the other students in the room. In fact, some might not even notice any change in his usual stoic and arrogant attitude. But to you, it was clear. He was there, with the sleeves of his white dress shirt carefully rolled up to his elbows as he stirred the spoon in his potion, staring intently at you from behind that veil of silvery shine, with an almost imperceptible playful tug on the left side of his lips, the only visible eye shining with silent provocation.

He saw everything.

The blush runs down your neck like a bucket of scalding water, but you quickly try to cover up your disgrace with an icy glare and a proud turn of your nose, meeting his gaze with a defiance that you, theoretically, would have no morals to uphold in this particular case. But Merlin curse you before you let this platinum weasel humiliate you in any way.

Not anymore.

Your reaction unfortunately only makes him more confident in his passive aggressive teasing, which almost elicits a heated snarl from your lips. And for a moment of guilty pleasure, you slyly entertain the idea of ​​throwing an accio at his hideously green tie and pulling his face, along with that cold smirk, into the perfectly bubbling cauldron below.

The thought does a good job of dispelling some of the sourness in your mood, and you manage to keep yourself mostly under control, even when he raises an eyebrow and looks appraisingly at the chaos of smoke and stench unfolding just behind your body.

Giving due credit to your hunch that Aemond is, in fact, more annoying and insufferable than any living Cornish pixies, you sigh impatiently, shifting your body in front of your potion as if you could hide it from his judgmental gaze - which, of course, is a futile effort, since the toxic and very evident smoke is already spreading throughout the classroom.

It’s impossible not to find it terribly unfair how you appear to have barely survived a catastrophic encounter with a forest troll while he remains as aristocratic and composed as the Slytherin Prince everyone fawningly claims he is. It’s truly an inconvenience that someone as despicable as him can look so good without even trying — even with his long hair slightly disheveled around his face and shoulders, his porcelain-smooth skin flushed with sweat. If anything, these unusual details only add a touch of disorder to his otherwise immaculate beauty that makes him all the more captivating to the eye.

Good heavens, if someone’s going to be as much of a jerk as he is, at least have the decency to not be so easy on the eyes.

Which is only proven when you look away for a second and catch a few girls sighing and smiling shyly in his direction, the steam and humidity making their own hair look as bristly as rats’ nests on their heads.

You suppose you should feel grateful to any higher creature that your fiancé is someone so attractive. But it turns out you don’t.

Yes. Aemond Targaryen would be your future husband. And yes, that is the bane of your existence.

As one of the families of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, your parents decided your love story long ago, making a magical contract with Viserys Targaryen around the time you were about six years old and believed that marriage was when a boy and a girl held hands and walked together in the park. Even before that, you had been raised and molded to be the perfect bride; immaculate and uncultivated time and again with elegant manners and a perfectly controlled temper to propagate the impeccable reputation of your family as an endless legacy.

The only relief you had came from the very selfish pleasure in repeatedly frustrating your parents' expectations with your naturally hot-tempered and bold personality.

But that was all the rebellion you could achieve. Unfortunately, the right to choose your own destiny did not belong to you. It never did.

The arrangement between you was a deal neither of you could escape, a mutual benefit that both families would never give up, a difficult means to a grand end: your family would have the immense honor of being linked to the ancient and very influential name of the Targaryens and they, in return, would finally have the golden key to bring their influence into the Ministry, since your family had always been involved in politics - a fact that only solidified when your father was elected the new Minister of Magic.

Aemond, your arranged fiancé, was a pure-blood Targaryen, the crown of wizarding royalty, along with the Velaryons and the Blacks. By all accounts, it should have been a source of immense honor and joy to be the glue that would bind your family to his in such a fortunate arrangement. And your fiancé was a good match, all in all: handsome, charming, and obscenely wealthy.

But he was also cold, indifferent, and even mean at times.

And, of course, he hated you.

Aemond had always been so cruel, so harsh with his words on the few, isolated occasions when any verbal interaction had occurred. You knew he was as unhappy as you were about the marriage arrangement, but you had at least made some effort to be polite about the inevitable future that hung over your heads. You had known from the beginning that this was not a romantic arrangement and probably never would be. There was no need for a good prior acquaintance. In fact, the two of you had never met in person until both entered Hogwarts at the age of eleven. But your childish and innocent heart nurtured the hope that the two of you could at least get along and perhaps cultivate some sort of friendship over the years.

He, contrary to any hope you might have had, decided that he would make your life an even bigger hell than it already was since your first meeting in the Great Hall, where he mocked your friendly smile and called you a weird bucktooth in front of the entire school. You could have mocked him back then, laughed at the eye patch he wore on the left side of his face, the grotesque and poorly healed scar on his cheek and forehead from some sort of advanced spell cast against him. But even at that age you knew about limits, unlike the insufferable boy.

Later that night, you learned from Jace that that garish scar was caused by his brother, Lucerys Velaryon, another future Gryffindor who became your friend two years later. A common wand dueling challenge that went horribly wrong for Aemond and created another rift in their already volatile relationship. The advanced curse proved unbreakable, even for the most skilled healers, resulting in the permanent loss of his left eye and a scar that is nearly impossible to heal.

It was surprising enough that this Lucerys, even without having been enrolled at Hogwarts yet, already knew how to use this type of curse. And even more surprising was to discover that the Targaryen and Velaryon children had the habit of challenging each other to wand duels at such a young age, as if it were something normal. It scared you, but it only solidified for you the long-standing reputation of both families as highly talented and fearsome wizards.

That was the first time you felt sad for Aemond Targaryen, ruminating on the mental picture of how difficult his childhood could have been. But you quickly covered the softened feeling with the hurt memory of what he made you go through in front of all those people that very day.

Even after that burning humiliation, however, you made an effort to approach him cautiously at times, but the almost hateful coldness with which he looked at you since that first meet did not change much over time. And yes, maybe you were an inconvenience in general. A part of his life that he couldn’t shake off and it frustrated him. But he was exactly like that to you too and that didn’t make you act like had a shoe up your ass.

Eventually, and fueled by the sheer outrage of being so blatantly blocked and ridiculed for no logical reason, since you were as much a slave to this contract as he was, you decided that Aemond Targaryen could go fuck himself for what concerns you.

And so, a heated rivalry was born.

True, over time, that overt hatred and the obvious grimaces of revulsion on his boyish features gave way to a softer kind of icy indifference on his face; now decidedly more masculine and grown-up. He learned to be more discreet about his feelings for you (the lack thereof, to be more precise), with more elegant and aristocratic manners - but you never let your guard down around him again.

And you hated how much you thought about him sometimes, especially after the sudden growth spurt he’d gone through, spending hours late into the night remembering the sharp curve of his jaw or how piercing his gaze was when focused.

Aemond wasn’t thinking about you, not in the same way you thought about him. He probably only thought about you when he wanted to practice an attack, imagining it was your face on the training dummy as he threw diffindo after diffindo at the poor thing.

Merlin knew you did that sometimes too, always ending your private training with a tired but satisfied smile after imagining him taking all those spells to the chest instead of the ridiculous mental replay of your fingers sliding along the dagger-sharp line of his jaw as you kissed him breathlessly.

Heavens, you despised him so much.

Determined not to let this man get any more reaction out of you, you hold his gaze for just a few seconds longer - long enough to let out an elegant puff of air through your nose and a tedious flutter of your eyelashes before turning your head away from him.

Bracing your mind (and stopping yourself from casting a hex on the man instead) you focus your magic and all your attention on the cauldron, putting a definitive end to the steaming mess inside it with a whispered charm only in your mind.

"Wow! You're getting better at nonverbal and wandless spells every day, that's incredible!" A curly-haired Jace, electrified around his face, gasps in front of you, genuinely impressed by your feat, even though he himself (as well as your annoyingly talented future husband) already mastered nonverbal and wandless spells before you even learned how to master them decently verbally and with a wand. You feel your face heat up at the compliment anyway, pleased that someone admires the colossal effort you’ve been putting into perfecting your technique.

Although students learn some nonverbal spells from sixth year onwards, wandless spells weren’t officially taught at the school, and you had to raid the restricted section of the library once or twice to find the very few books that contained some information and ways to master the technique. And it was a challenging and exhausting technique, to say the least.

“Come on, be useful and tell me how you made your potion instead of just standing there fawning over me.” You wave your hand at him indifferently, as if it were no big deal, even though a smug smile is twitching your lips.

Jace smiles back at you, bright and looking even prouder than you, picking up his own notes to begin explaining.

-----

“Dear fiancée,” a voice hums behind you as you reach for the book high on the shelf, the word fiancée rolling off his tongue with such melodramatic emphasis that it almost makes you roll your eyes to the back of your head in response. Merlin bless your exquisite upbringing for keeping you calm when it really matters.

“Oh, it’s you.” You don’t even try to hide the disdain in your tone, as any good lady would, casually pulling the book out as you turn to him. He wouldn’t buy your lies anyway. It’s well known how shrewd and perceptive the damn man can be, after all.

“It seems so. Disappointed?” Aemond asks, a sharp, subtle smile gracing his lips, looking far too pleased for someone whose presence is so blatantly unwelcome. He knows perfectly well that yes, you’re disappointed.

It’s late now, and besides the two of you now, there are only a small handful of Ravenclaw students on the other side of the library — even Madam Irma Pince is more lethargic from the day’s fatigue, sitting near her desk as she reviews some papers. You definitely don’t have the patience to deal with Aemond.

“Never. To what do I owe the pleasure?” You ask with a sweet smile that does nothing to hide your displeasure at seeing him. After the fiasco of your performance in Potions Class, you had the privilege of not hearing from him for a few days. But of course, your luck wouldn’t last forever. “It’s not often that you grace me with your presence.” He’s approaching you slowly, arms crossed behind him, all his glorious, imposing self, and you make the mistake of taking a nervous step back to a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

Damn. What did he want now?

“What?” He asks simply, completely calm, and something flickers behind his gaze at the words. “Can’t I check on my fiancée without it looking suspicious?”

“I see,” you say as you take another step back, your heart skipping a beat when you feel the bookshelf at your back. His proximity makes your breathing quicken slightly, but you swallow and hold his gaze. “Well, I’m perfectly fine, as you can see. So if that’s all it is…”

“Not really. You see, I don’t want to be described as a negligent partner.”

The sheer audacity of his statement makes you drop your carefully crafted facade, a wry laugh falling from your lips.

“Oh of course, because you’re always so attentive, aren’t you?” you ask teasingly, the sour smile still stretching your mouth. “The polite way you can barely stand me is especially endearing, I might add.”

"I suppose so,” he retorts unaffectedly, enjoying pushing your buttons — though he’s letting the tension that always builds when you’re around each other get the better of him. “We’re engaged, after all. And that’s my duty, as a son. Your duty as a daughter.”

“Oh, but it’s a heavy duty indeed,” you say as raise your nose in affront, ignoring the butterflies in your stomach as you notice the glaring height difference between the two of you. “But someone who makes such a point of bragging about the elegance and good manners with which he was raised should do better at carrying that burden, don’t you agree? He should be able to at least fake it without much effort.” The last words were more of a hiss than anything else, and he chuckled in response.

“Oh, yes,” he mused casually as closed the distance between you. “The upbringing part really grates on your nerves, doesn’t it? Or is it the similarity to the practices of the Dark Arts thing now? Forgive me, my dear, but I’ve lost count of all the things you openly despise about me.”

Something tightens in your chest. Something dreadful and expectant at the same time, anxiety and anticipation at the prospect of a point of confusion. What did he mean, anyway? Trust Aemond, of course, to resort to riddles and fog when it comes to open conversation.

“Consider marrying you one more thing I despise,” you say quietly. There’s an endless supply of comments to throw at him. It’s incredibly easy to conjure up reasons to dislike this man. But it’s made all the more real by the way he makes you feel, all burning and needy for something that will never truly be yours.

Aemond has the audacity to look almost offended when you say this, his expression falling dangerously close to somber.

What the hell is wrong with him?

His usual stoicism and cold demeanor make any display of emotion beyond that a rare occurrence. And you feel unequipped to understand the complexity of what’s going on.

“I’m afraid that, despise or not, this needs to be done,” he says, as icy as ever, even with his expression dark as it is. “And wouldn’t you say it’s past time we started this pretense?” His question is unsettling on so many levels that even as he rests his forearm on the shelf above your head and leans his face close to yours, all you can do is blink up at him.

He couldn’t possibly be implying what you think, right? But when he smiles condescendingly at your alarmed expression and uses his other hand to grip your waist, you know he is.

“T-there’s no need at all,” you say quickly, dazed by the feel of his long fingers on you, his face leaning close to yours. “This is just a duty we can learn to deal with in the future.”

He hums thoughtfully at your answer, that dangerous shadow still in his one good eye, the silky silver curtain of his hair brushing the side of your face. You subtly inhale his scent; green apples, leather and heat, something refreshing and warming at the same time.

“Should I be worried about you fulfilling such duties with someone else?”

Your eyes narrow at him, the fingers tightening the book in response.

“What do you mean?” Your voice is equal parts curious and a warning.

“What is Cregan Stark to you?”

At the mention of the other man, your stomach sinks a little. It doesn’t take much investigation to understand why he’s suddenly interested in this.

“Cregan? He’s…a good friend.” You struggle to answer, though you feel like you should just leave him alone here in this secluded hallway of the library, avoid the uncomfortable topic of this conversation.

“Just a good friend?” He asks, his cold, hard gaze locked with yours, his grip on your waist tightening.

“What?”

It was clear that Aemond was carefully considering his next words, expression thoughtful as he crafting his answer to you.

“The portraits gossip.”

Yes, you knew.

A few days ago, after a Gryffindor Quidditch victory, the common room was filled with students celebrating. It was the biggest party you had attended in a long time. There was drinking, music, shouting, kissing, and even a few students crowding into a corner for a rather indiscreet sex session.

It was a such mess.

It didn’t take long for your own drinking to take effect, making you more uninhibited and reckless than usual. Cregan, the captain of the team, whose interest in you had always been obvious to everyone, even with your well known arrangement with Aemond, was there when you felt the vibration of alcohol in your veins - that fire that tells you that you are capable of doing anything and, before you could think better of it, you were already making out with him in a small alcove in the common room.

Despite the alcohol, Cregan guided you with passion and desire, biting your neck and lips as he told you how much had waited for this. You didn't love him, nor did you even have any romantic feelings for him. But those words along with the needy touches inevitably made you think of your future husband, the one who so vehemently hated you. And that was the last straw. Before the night was over, you had Cregan Stark buried deep in your pussy until then untouched by any man. It hurt at first, but you don't even think he realized that you were a virgin, as drunk as you both were, reciting hoarse words of praise in your ear while holding you as if he never wanted to let you go.

The next morning, in addition to a splitting headache, you were weighed down by the crushing weight of regret. Not only had you given your first time to someone you had no real feelings for, but you had also deceived a good man in the process. It had been the hardest conversation of your life, and seeing the disappointment on Cregan’s handsome, hopeful face had devastated you so much that you had to take the day off to lock yourself in dormitory and cry with guilt.

And to make matters worse, when you finally emerged into the world, you learned that the entire school already knew about your one-night stand with Cregan Stark. Apparently Muldoon Cragg’s portrait, one of the former Gryffindor Headmasters, wasted no time in leaving his post and gossiping about seeing the House Captain and the renowned Miss Fawley clinging like roots of the same tree in the hallways, stripping each other of their clothes as they ran to the man's dormitory.

Now, see, although you would have preferred to keep such matters private, your shame was not because they had discovered that you had had sex. Your only regret was that, in your moment of emotional weakness and hatred for having Aemond Targaryen as your fiancé, you had hurt someone as incredible as Cregan.

Merlin knows how common it was for students to be having sex at your age, even those who already had an established marital commitment, as you have with Aemond.

In the wizarding world, it was common to be promised to another person from a young age within the great pure-blood families and Hogwarts had some cases like these. Despite the verbal magical contract made between the heads of the families, the bond between the couple itself would only be made official after graduation, when a magical vow between them would be made and their magics linked to each other forever - the magic of the vow preventing them from being with anyone other than their spouse.

But until that day came, it wasn't uncommon for a mutual understanding to be established between the young couple, freeing both of them to 'enjoy' their single moments while they could. There was usually no hard feelings or big fuss about it, especially since, most of the time, there were no real feelings on either side. Therefore, there was also no jealousy.

Aemond himself, according to the gossip of some students, was no exception to this rule.

And that's why you stare at him, open-mouthed, trying hard not to interpret anything the wrong way. Because, heavens, he couldn't possibly be thinking of judging you, could he?

"I didn't anything wrong," you begin cautiously, but Aemond frustrates you with an ironic snort. "But whatever happened, it doesn't concern you, Targaryen."

He laughs humorlessly, his thumb stroking your waist slowly, his face hovering above yours as you both practically breathe the same air.

“For what it’s worth, this concerns me more than anyone else, princess.” Though he remains calm and casual, there’s a sharp bite in his voice, in his gaze. “After all, it’s my reputation that’s being tarnished by your promiscuous behavior.”

You stare at him in bewilderment, unable to believe his audacity. The blood begins to boil in your veins, heating your cheeks and neck with both anger and shame at his words, the magic in your veins reacting to emotional turmoil.

“Promiscuous behavior? Oh, how dare you?” You practically hiss at him, clutching the book between your fingers so tightly that the cover creaks. “That’s rich coming from someone with your notoriety.”

You’re furious, and he’s so close and your breath mingles with his, the smug bastard, his gaze glowing with the same fire you feel…

“It’s just whispers in the hallways.” He exhales with a disinterested shrug, invading your personal space as if he had any right to do so, so close that you can smell the leather eye patch he wears.

"What the hell do you mean it's just whispers in the halls? A few days ago Alys Rivers was singing loud and clear to the entire castle about the sexual exploits you two did after Quidditch practice, don't act like I'm an idiot or something!"

"And what's the proof that this actually happened?" He asks you so casually that for a good minute you just stare at him with your mouth open, not having an immediate answer to his indifferent question. "It's just rumors, princess. In the end, it's going to be her word against mine."

"More like the word of half the female population of the castle against yours, you hypocrite." You growl when you recover, looking at him as if you could set him on fire with just that. Your nonverbal magic isn't all that great yet, but maybe...

"And there's still no proof. Other than words, none of them have any evidence that I was actually there. I've made sure of that." Aside from the burning gaze on yours, Aemond shows little emotion in his argument, crumpling your uniform shirt to caress your belly with his open palm, as if this weren't at all shocking. "But you, you let yourself be caught. You let them have proof of your filthy deeds with that mutt Stark. I must say, your standards are critical low, sweetheart."

The comment, delivered so easily, leaves you breathless. You try to ignore the pangs of anxious curiosity that run through you at his touching your body in favor of the unnerving accusations he’s making. He remains impassive in the face of your volcanic attitude, waiting patiently above you.

“Merlin, you’re so annoying! Understand that you have no right to berate me! And don’t you dare talk about my standards, you don’t know me, you asshole!” You growl in exasperation, squirming under his strong grip, finally trying to escape the strategic hold. But Aemond must have some sort of Whomping Willow ancestry, because the man simply won’t back down.

“I wonder how you could have allowed a dim witted troll like Stark to put those filthy hands on your body.” Contrary to the absurd weight behind his statement, he seems almost possessive as he speaks, insane as the concept was, restraining your efforts by gripping your wrists between the fingers of one hand, using the other to push you against the tall bookshelf by the shoulder. The two of you, caught up in this confrontation as you are, barely hear the loud thud of the book falling to the floor as it slips from your fingers.

Ignoring the unnerving restraint and the open insult to Cregan, this time you actually laugh at his words, amused by their stupid and uncalled-for implication.

"And should I allow you to put your hands on me, Targaryen? Tell me how exactly that would be better?"

He breathes close, staring at you with steely eye and tight lips, the knuckles on your shoulder sliding to caress the throbbing pulse at the side of your neck in an almost unconscious gesture. Something turbulent bubbles in that single visible eye, the peculiar purple color that is inherent to Targaryens appearing darker than usual as he maps every inch of your face. When he finally speaks, you already feel like your heart might leap out of your chest, such is the tension between the two of you.

“You may hate me, beautiful, but I am still your fiancé,” he murmurs with measured slowness, the menacing timbre of his voice making you shiver with the suspicious prelude of what is to come. “Soon we'll be married and united forever and then I'll have you as many times as it takes.” As if to prove his point, he slowly pushes your joined hands to the bookshelf above your head, pressing his body against yours until you feel every heated, hard inch of him. “I will fill you every day and every night until it sink into that pretty head that you're mine. I should have started doing that already."

There's a slight huskiness to his voice and heat pulses through your core and the back of your neck at the explicit picture he's painting with his words. Your cheeks burn and your eyes flutter wide at the boldness of him, the sheer audacity of saying something so lewd to you when he's barely taken time to have any kind of interaction with you before tonight.

And yet, it takes a grueling mental battle to try, and lose, not to imagine him doing exactly what he's saying — taking your body night after night, filling your pussy with his seed until you're leaking from it.

And then you hear Madam Pince's delicate footsteps approaching.

"Kids, it's time to go, we're closing for the night."

And as if waking from some strange dream, you blink rapidly, giving Aemond a rude shove — and this time, mercifully, he complies.

Madam Pince rounds the corner of bookshelf you’re both in at the same time he takes a few steps back, though he still stubbornly holds your gaze.

When you refuse to maintain eye contact any longer, chest rising and falling faster than you’d like, you can feel the fingers trembling as push a strand of hair behind your ear.

You barely hear what Madam Pince says, staggering toward the library exit with hurried steps, bumping into a few students who are taking the same route as you.

“Hey, watch out!” one of them yells when you basically push him as try to climb the stairs, but you, in an uncharacteristic display of rudeness, don’t even register the complaint. All you can think about is how embarrassed and small you feel right now; how you allowed Aemond to put you in a situation where you looked so weak, so exposed.

All those years of hardening your feelings and expectations for that horrible creature and he puts it all in check in one night.

"Idiot, idiot, idiot..." You mumble over and over, walking through corridors and pillars without having the slightest idea of ​​where you're trying to go. "Such an idiot." Who? You, him, both of you - it doesn't matter.

You hate him. So much. The smug, arrogant way he does literally everything; from his penchant for brilliance in absolutely every class, to the discreet smiles he displays when he's showing off in the air during Quidditch matches - even the way he breathes.

You hate him.

And you especially hate how hot he's doing these things.

Amidst the hurried footsteps, you hear another one approaching quickly; quieter, feline - and you don't even need to turn around to know who it is.

"Leave me alone, Targaryen! I've already exhausted my patience quota for you tonight." You huff, practically running down the hallway now.

He remains silent and you almost think he's going to do exactly as you asked, until a scream leaves your lips as feel your elbow suddenly being grabbed by a strong hand, pulling you inside one of the hallway doors.

"What your fucking problem?! Let me go!" Your voice is sharp as you try to pull away from his grip.

"You." He answers sullenly, pushing your back against the door with a heavy thud, slapping both hands on it, one on either side of your face, to prevent you from escaping. You stare at him in surprise, both of you breathing quickly. "You're my fucking problem. You and your annoying, inconvenient stubbornness."

"I told you to stop talking like you know anything about me." You hiss at him, resentment and emotional turmoil guiding your actions until you stand on your tiptoes and almost touch the nose to his as you speak. "You. Don't. Know. Me."

"Yes, I do." He amends instantly and you fall silent only at the unsettling dose of confidence in his voice. "I know you wake up earlier than the other girls in the dorm so you have time to stroll along the shores of the Black Lake while it's still completely empty - because it gives you a feeling of calm and prepares you to face the rest of the day. I know you like dancing in the rain, despite McGonagall’s constant disapproval. I know you love Care of Magical Creatures, even though it’s an elective class, and you’re considering a future career in that department, despite your family’s vehement political expectations.”

You swallow hard, releasing the pressure on your feet to sag back down against the floor and the door with a surprised gasp, but Aemond is quick to lean closer to you, chasing proximity like a Niffler chasing shiny things.

“I know, and you know that you’re an absolute disaster at Potions, but you’re too stubborn to admit it. You're addicted to chocolate frogs, but you're also strangely sensitive to them, so you always wait for the charm end and they stop jumping before eat them - which, of course, makes no sense, since the part where they jump on belly is the most fun." He sighs a laugh and steps even closer, practically trapping you in the doorway with his own body.

And, Merlin help you, he's so close.

His breath, warm and pleasantly sweet, as if he'd recently eaten licorice wands, blows across your face with each ragged breath. His pale, smooth skin is highlighted by a single moonbeam from the opposite stone wall, which also bathes the icy blond of his hair in a mythical way that makes the silky strands shine like silver threads running down his broad shoulders. His eye, a deep, appraising purple, don't leave your eyes for even a second. His scent, citrusy and masculine, invades your senses until all you can feel is him. Only him.

Not even now having a clear, detailed look at that barely healed scar for the first time, could you describe him in any other way than charming. Ethereal, like a creature from a fairy tale or beautiful songs.

“I know you like the pumpkin pie they serve for breakfast, but you think Pixie Puffs are an overrated cereal, whatever that means. And even if no one else noticed, I know you were the one who cast that Tarantallegra on Martyn Reyne just as he was about to turn Oscar Tully into a pulp during the last Quidditch match. And with a wandless charm, to boot. The man was tap-dancing uncontrollably in the Slytherin common room for a whole day after that, princess. It was infuriating to watch.”

“Aemond -” You’ve never heard him speak so much - not to anyone and certainly not to you. You can’t help but sigh, chest heaving at both the words and the resigned weight of admiration in them. And the shock of hearing the name, his name, leave your lips for the first time in your life makes you blush to the roots of hair. But Aemond only feels emboldened by this, his gaze darkening and a muscle jumping in his jaw before he continues.

“I know you’ve despised this marriage contract since you were six and was forced into it, but you still want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you now.” He hovers over you, reaching down with his open hand on the door to brush a few strands of hair out of your eyes; long, cold fingers brushing the delicate curve of your ear.

You choke out a surprised sound and feel your eyes widen, caught off guard exactly like a student caught wandering around the castle after bedtime by some prefect. Aemond’s eyebrows rise, his own gaze burning in silent challenge as he waits for your answer. You open your mouth, but no matter how much you want to, and know you should be denying his outrageous insinuations, no words escape your suddenly dry throat.

“I dare you to deny it,” he murmurs in a voice like heated molasses when you still don’t say anything, leaning his face down to brush his lips against your ear. “Come on baby. If you dare, do it."

And then, in a lapse of judgment and sanity (and instinctively reacting to a challenge he has issued), you do.

There are no glares or scathing retorts to the question raised. There is just you acting impulsively.

You are jumping in Aemond immediately, tugging his green tie down to urge him into a bruising kiss. For a moment he smiles hatefully smugly against your mouth, but before you can regret what you have done and pull away, he pushes you back against the door with more force, slamming you into the aged wood as if to fuse you to it.

You release his tie in favor of desperately grabbing a handful of his shirt, the fingers of other hand digging into the soft flesh of his neck to bring him deeper into your lips. As he ravages your mouth with fervent desire, the world around you seems to deflate and disappear in the shadows, leaving only the electrifying connection between the two of you. Every brush of his lips against yours sets a firestorm of sensation, each touch crawling through your soul with an insatiable hunger for more.

There are no gentle, tender, or exploratory kisses; he kisses you assertively, surely, with ownership. As if he’s imagined doing this for a lifetime. He sinks both hands into the sides of your face, tilting your head back as runs his tongue over your lips, asking for entrance, and you welcome him.

And, unsurprisingly, kissing Aemond is like every other interaction you’ve ever had with him. Heated, intense, filled with tension. He sucks on your tongue and licks it right after, his teeth even brushing lightly yours sometimes - not in an awkward, painful way; but in a way that conveys his hunger for it, his possessiveness.

As you’d imagined, he tastes like the crystallized sugar of licorice wands; a perfectly balanced contrast to his citrusy scent of green apples and crackling wood from a fireplace. It’s an addictive balance that makes you shiver and grip him tighter between your fingers.

He pulls back a little to nibble on your bottom lip, teasing it between his teeth before sucking it in too. Then he fits his lips fully against yours once more, swallowing the wet, heated sound that leaves your throat.

It’s like you’re floating and sinking at the same time, feeling his hands leave your face to pull you closer by the hips, the kisses becoming more and more heated.

With a low, frustrated growl, he suddenly releases you, but not for long. Gripping your hips tighter, he lifts you up, and with a small yelp of surprise, your legs instinctively wrap around him. He cranes his head to continue the kiss as he spins you toward a table in the corner of the room, slipping between your legs as soon as he sits you down.

His mouth moves to your neck, heated and wet, sucking the sensitive flesh to leave marks you would be resenting if you were in your full mental capacity. But as it is, your eyes only flutter in response as you half watch the dust particles shimmer in the air in that small crack of moonlight, small involuntary sighs falling from your lips. His hand slides down your spine to belly, rising to tease the rise of your breast and the delicate slope of neck, the rings spread on his cold fingers poking the skin as he presses your throat lightly and you shiver.

Teeth rise to graze languidly against your ear and lips burn against your skin. How could he be so intense and yet remain so calm?

"Let me show you how it should be. Do it better for you than he did, leave you truly satisfied." He whispers like a lewd secret and even you're though sitting you feel the knees trembling, your heart fluttering at the speed of the delicate wings of a golden snitch.

"And who said he couldn't satisfy me?" You bluff breathlessly, barely able to admit the truth to yourself - much less to him. Not because Cregan didn't actually make it good for you. He did, you suppose. Caring for your pleasure as best he could. But any sense of satisfaction was drowned out by the weight of guilt and the unsettling feeling that it just didn't feel right...not with him.

"Oh, my treasure. With the raw way I crave you, I find it very unlikely that anyone could be as eager to please you as I am - much less a common mutt like Cregan Stark." The rough timbre of his voice vibrates through you and the air grows tense, your skin crawling at the feel of his other hand sliding down your thigh. "Just say yes and I'll prove it to you."

You don't answer him, not with words. But you think your round, needy eyes might have told him something, because he leans in until his mouth is a hair’s breadth from yours, staring at you as if he’s very pleased with what sees. He closes the distance to lick your mouth slowly and, after moving to put enough space between your bodies, uses the hand on your waist to pull you to the edge of the table.

The hand on your thigh moves to slide under your skirt until it plays with the side of the waistband of your panties. You suck in a ragged breath, nervously bracing both hands on the table as you bite your lip.

Those fingers, long and cold, curl into the elastic at your crotch, bunching the fabric to make it brush against your clit once, twice, three times, before you fix him with a drunken, narrowed gaze — a signal to stop teasing, and he chuckles close to your lips.

He takes the hint, though, and dips his thumb into your entrance. The violation of just one digit is surprising and not enough at the same time, and you writhe to make that point clear as you throw your head back, gasping a sound of pleasure. He takes his time, pressing his thumb in and out at the slowest pace imaginable, his signet ring tickling your entrance with each thrust. You moan a little louder and can feel, even without seeing, the infuriating smile of triumph he wears in response.

“You look like want something, hmm?” he drawls, molding his lips to the soft curve of your throat. Your hand releases its death grip on the table to push at his shoulders, even though the thrust is too weak to be taken seriously. When he chuckles in amusement at your action, you lift the head to look at him, noticing how swollen his lips are from kissing you so damn much.

“Come on, ask nicely for what you need from me, beautiful.” He whispers and instead of giving what you want so much, moves his thumb inside you with movements so light that only serve to increase the flame of desire, but never quench it.

But two can play that game, you realize, pursing your lips and huffing elegantly before looking across the room.

Aemond clucks his tongue in disapproval.

“Everything has to be a fight with you, doesn’t it?” His thumb drifts lazily away from your folds, leaving you feeling unbearably empty. You whimper at the loss, but he doesn’t give you a chance to protest. Aemond grips your chin, forcing you to tilt your head toward him again. Looking so close, you’re forced to face the fact of how small you are compared to his tall, defined frame, the width of his shoulders casting shadows over your smaller body. Your chin slips from his grip and instead he takes your hand in his to guide it down between your legs - a confident, strong grip that leaves no room for resistance.

“Feel this,” his words are harsh as he stares down at you, that single eye flashing in wicked amusement as your body twitches in response. Your mouth falls open in a sharp gasp of surprise as he doesn’t hesitate to guide your own finger and his inside your pussy, not bothering to do it slowly, “Feel how wet you are for me, princess.”

Your finger, delicate and smaller, dips in alongside his longer, wider one, going as deep as it will go — and to your growing humiliation, there actually is a wet mess helping; your trembling, tight walls drooling around the intrusion.

“T-that doesn’t mean…” You sob, widening and contracting around both fingers, “nothing.”

“That means everything, baby.” He smiles in an unnervingly knowing way, fucking your walls with slow, deep strokes, curling your fingers so you feel the difference between them perfectly.

“We shouldn’t — not here of all places. Merlin, d-don’t you have an ounce of decency in your being?” you continue, whimpering pathetically, writhing on the table: "Someone could hear us...a prefect could-"

"You'll have to be very quiet then." He interrupts you casually, although he's panting softly against your lips.

"Heavens, you're so annoying! A-at least cast a silencing charm, idiot!"

"And where's the fun in that? What about the danger, the adrenaline rush of avoiding being caught?" He pretends to ponder, sadistically pleased with your desperate arguments. "Take it as another challenge, princess. Especially after how spectacularly you failed the last one." He hums teasingly and you would growl back at him if you weren't too busy riding your fingers. "Can you be quiet?" He says in that soft, teasing way of his. Like he knows perfectly well that you can't. 

And he's right. 

You have to stifle a moan into his neck as he lifts his thumb to swirl your clit, both fingers working you slowly.

“For all your horrible biting, princess, you are a lovely creature when properly tamed.” His voice is a sigh of awe and hunger, like a worshipper before some masterpiece. You blush several shades, burying your face further into his neck to hide your shame.

“Y-you are even crazier than I imagined, Targaryen. You're sorely mistaken if think you have tam—oh!”

He curls your fingers up suddenly and you gasp, legs twitching and tightening around his waist with undignified desperation. You're beginning to see through blurry lenses, your other hand tangling in his hair for something to anchor yourself to, pulling him closer and closer as the pressure builds with each wet rub against your clit—

And then he’s pulling his fingers out, lifting your joined hands to his mouth, smiling at you as he sucks the both fingers into his mouth like they’re a sweet treat he’s been waiting all day to taste. 

Merlin, what must it be like to know you’re the hottest man in the world?

The irritation at having your near orgasm interrupted is overshadowed by the sinful sight ahead of you, your parted lips and lazy gaze.

You catch a glimpse of his pink tongue licking between your upraised fingers and your legs tighten around him, unconsciously trying to ease the sensual pressure between them.

“You’re the most insufferable creature I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting in my life and I-” You start grumpily but breathlessly, stopping slowly when he slides his fingers from his mouth to straighten himself in front of you, tugging at the button on his pants. You sit up straighter on the table, wide eyes fixed on the broad hand undoing his pants. Veiny hand. Long pale fingers adorned with gold and silver rings, the Targaryen insignia gleaming from the signet ring on his thumb.

“A-and I hate you so much. Ardently." You sigh mechanically and vaguely, noting with heated embarrassment a wet spot on the crotch of his pants.

“Me too, princess…” he hums smugly, taking his sweet time to unzip his pants and pull them down slightly, along with his boxer briefs, just enough to free his straining cock. “Ardently.”

Your shoulders slump and your tongue darts out to wet your lips at the sight of his aching, weeping cock. It’s long — much longer than you expected, anyway — and thick. Pre-cum drips from the flushed tip and his cock bobs under your shy scrutiny.

"I-I," you try, humiliatingly lacking the sarcastic words to ridicule him at this moment, and Aemond - bathed in masculine pride and arrogance - drags his palm over the moisture pooling on the head of his cock and spreads it along the veiny shaft. "Fuck, don't you dare say anything now."

He doesn't need to, though - just his smirk tells you enough - and almost a little too spitefully, you grab the tails of his dress shirt, tugging at the fabric until the sound of ripping is heard, the poor buttons rudely ripped from its places to fall bouncing on the stone floor.

Moonlight bathes the soft, marble skin of his throat, chest and abdomen, an endless, sinful expanse of lean, defined muscle covered in a few paler scars - some larger and more evident than others.

The dazzling scene before you pauses for a second as you focus on them, the almost worrying amount.

Where did he get them? How? In duels? Or some kind of archaic and horrific method of punishment?

He doesn’t let you dwell on it too much, though, striding confidently towards you until your attention returns to where it belongs; and while Cregan was all about thick muscles and an intimidating body, Aemond towered over all the other students with his majestic height and lean muscles, with broad shoulders and an elegantly tapered waist. He truly looked the epitome of pure-blood royalty — not that you’d let him know that.

With silver hair falling disheveledly over his shoulders, the shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the flaps open on either side of his chest and abdomen, and green tie hanging loosely around his neck, he looked undone in the best possible way. And of course, that air of hungry elegance surrounding him, like a man who knows he’s about to get what he wants.

Aemond, still holding his cock between his fingers, rubs against the wetness between your legs for a few seconds, then uses his thumb to spread your entrance, your panties barely pushed aside. You squeeze around nothing, and he practically sighs in awe at the sight.

“Such a pretty little hole, sweetheart.”

You blush at the vulgarity, holding onto the tail of his shirt for dear life, the other hand latching onto the back of his neck.

With the hand that’s not between your bodies, and much more calmly than you’ve done previously, he unbuttons your dress shirt. He’s skilled at it, much to your silent annoyance — taking each button out of its place with easy precision. And all the while, he doesn’t stop gently thrusting himself between your legs.

And, Merlin, you’re so wet — literally dripping between your legs — so sore, and fuck, you want him so, so bad. But Aemond just rubs the tip of his cock against your clit as he holds your entrance open with his thumb, his gaze intent on the skin that reveals itself when the flaps of your shirt finally part.

“Aemond,” you whimper and he hums questioningly at you, but doesn’t move to do anything other than grind himself against you more, stroking the lacy details of your bra with a cold, hungry gaze.

You make a disgruntled noise and move your hips against him, trying desperately to get him inside you. 

“Ah-ah,” your teeth sink into your bottom lip as he completely covers one of your breasts with his palm in a greedy grip. “Come on, stop teasing me, you idiot insensitive…”

He blithely ignores you, kneading your breast like a cat with a ball of yarn, thrusting at your clit with shallow strokes that only make you hotter and needier, his thumb sliding in to breach the barrier of your entrance once more, just to the first knuckle. You let your upper body fall dramatically backwards, barely supporting yourself on forearms, your head rolling from side to side as you groan in frustration.

“Aemond, fuck. This is the worst time for you to be the most annoying person to ever walk this planet. Don’t make me beg.” 

You can hear the laughter in his voice as he responds. 

“Really?” His tone is proud and playful, as if he doesn’t already have his cock against your clit and a thumb inside you. 

You look up to meet his gaze, and the wry smile that tugs at the corner of his lips infuriates you to no end, because suddenly you realize that this is exactly what he wants.

You swallow your growing pride, temporarily deciding to forgo it in favor of satisfying the erupting volcano that resides in your lower belly. Aemond knows exactly which buttons to push with you, and no matter what you do here, there is no winning. Either you give him the satisfaction of hearing what he wants or the satisfaction of continuing to argue. He lives happily for both. It’s a question of knowing which wars are worth fighting and what the benefits of each are.

“Please, Aemond,” you finally whisper, letting your eyes grow rounder and waterier, giving him your best innocent, needy look, legs spreading wider as you rest your body fully on the table. It’s just your luck that with that movement the moonlight falls entirely on you, on the hair spread across the surface of the dark wood, the redness on your cheeks and heaving chest. “Please, just take me. I-I need this.”

It’s worth giving up your pride just for the wild, unsuspecting look Aemond gives you, lips parted in a husky growl that runs through your body like the most intimate magic.

Almost immediately he withdraws his thumb and lines himself up with your entrance and you cry out in surprise when his palms land on your waist, pulling your ass up to better meet his hips, your smaller hands darting to grip his wrists. He presses his tip into you at an excruciatingly slow pace, his gaze burning into yours with the unstoppable violence of a fiendfyre.

The discomfort of the welcome intrusion burning deliciously when he finally pushes in and — oh. You feel so stretched, and he hasn’t even started. Your lips part in a breathless half-scream, brows furrowing. He pushes a little further and you tense, a glorious, painful kind of pressure searing every nerve. You don’t remember it being like this with Cregan — but maybe that was just another consequence of how drunk you both were that night.

“Is — is it all in?” You ask weakly after what feels like an eternity, your nails destroying his wrists as you struggle for something to hold on to.

“Almost there, baby.” Aemond gasps, stroking your hips as he slowly but steadily drills into you. “You’re doing so good for me.” His lips meet yours in a sloppy, wet kiss that leaves you both breathless and your lips bruised. His own exhales start to end with a moan, and you writhe beneath him. It’s an unfamiliar pleasure to you, the kind where you weren’t sure if it was too much or too little, and Aemond hadn’t even started moving yet.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking tight.” He groans into your mouth, grinding himself into you a little more, a half-maniacal and proud grin stretching his lips. “That mutt Stark didn’t do a very good job here, did he?”

“S-shut up!” You snarl, skin burning with embarrassment and anger at his words. “Don’t talk about him like that!”

“Shhh, I’m just kidding.” He smiles and kisses the tip of your nose soothingly, though he doesn’t seem the least bit remorseful.

“You’re doing so well, baby, taking me so fucking well,” he whispers, the words stirring in your stomach and making you forget the irritation immediately, clenching even tighter around him. He stifles a growl, dipping his fingers back between your legs, lightly stroking your swollen clit to ease the sting, and one inch at a time, he finally slides inside until he bottoms out inside you.

Meanwhile, you’re tottering on the fine line between too much and not enough. Aemond is long and solid and thick inside you, and the heat is beyond satisfying. You lie there, breathing rapidly, face flushed and eyelashes fluttering, brows furrowed and mouth open and panting. Nails digging into his wrists, legs shaking as they rise to wrap tightly around his waist.

“Please…” Is all you need to say before he’s making his move, his own face stained with lust and blush. He pulls out halfway before sinking back in, groaning hoarsely at the sensation. You’re already making inelegant gagging noises from deep inside, louder and more embarrassing than you could have imagined yourself capable of.

“Feels good, baby?” he pants, pulling out his cock before slamming it back into you as you sob, the pull of him inside you hitting every nerve and setting them on fire. “My cock feels good to you, love?”

“So good!” You moan more than speak, rocking your hips against his as best you can.

“Hmmm…better than him?”

“Aemond—”

“Answer me.”

You bite your lip, knowing there’s no way you should encourage him to do this kind of behavior. But between the overwhelming sensations he makes you feel and the intense gaze he’s giving you, all that have left is the truth.

“Y-yes. Merlin, yes. So much better...”

“Fuck, princess,” Aemond grunts, changing the angle and grinning wildly when it makes you moan louder. He targets that particular spot, watching the way you arch a little higher with each thrust. The sounds of your skin slapping together make you flush even more, though you barely hear it over Aemond’s ragged breathing and your own moans.

“Aemond—oh,” you gasp desperately, throwing your head back. “I-it feels so good,” you drawl, clawing at his wrists. “Please, please, I can’t take it.”

Then he’s reaching down, fingers twisting the front of your bra, pulling it down so his tongue slowly sweeps over one nipple, enveloping it in the warm, wet blanket of his mouth. The hand between your legs gains momentum and his thumb rolls over your clit as he latches onto your nipple and sucks. A high-pitched scream barely escapes your lips before his hand covers your mouth, continuing his merciless assault.

His hand cups the lower half of your face completely and that only makes your eyes roll back, the weight of his body on yours, his wet mouth on your breast, the restraint of your sounds, his deep thrusts, his thumb on your clit...

Your fingers sink into the silvery roots of his hair in a sharp tug, and the pain makes him gasp against your chest, and you chant his name mindlessly behind his broad palm. Static sizzles through your body, your orgasm building at an insane pace, and you meet him thrust for thrust.

When he looks up, a string of saliva connecting his lips to your nipple, he stares at you so intently it makes you shiver, his thumb in your folds quickening. You run your own trembling thumb along his drooling bottom lip and watch him suck it into his wet, swollen mouth. You linger, touching the sharp tips of his canines, sliding across the softness of his tongue and gums before pulling your hand away. Aemond chases your thumb a little as he leans forward, but stops when you grab the leather strap of his eye patch.

The palm over your lips slowly pulls away, and you breathe in sharply, but don’t flinch. Holding his intense, drunken gaze, you push the thing away from his face, letting it fall to the floor with a thud neither of you cares about.

“Don’t stop, please — I’m so close,” you moan, pushing a few icy-white strands away from his face, wanting to see all of him as you shatters below. Aemond, with one missing eye and a cursed scar; that’s how you first saw him in the Great Hall, and that’s how you want to see him now, too.

If he’s shocked by your actions, he doesn’t show it. He’s still staring at you with a lazy expression, sweat starting to break out on his slightly flushed skin, his thrusts becoming more unbalanced, the rhythm faltering a little.

"Fuck, I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna fill you so fucking much, my wife—” he groans suddenly, the husky sound of his voice completely destroyed, and then he’s down to lock your mouths in a searing kiss, thrusting so hard into your pussy that the table creaks and slides a few inches across the floor.

But it’s the weight of that statement, his wife, spoken so brokenly and stunned, that finally makes you lose control, and your climax hits you.

“Cumming, cumming,” you cry into the tiny gap between your mouths as his rhythm quickens. His name leaves your lips again — muffled and choked — and your back arches off the table. You can feel his cock throb as the walls of your pussy clench and pulse around him with your orgasm.

And then he’s spilling himself into you, heated cum filling you as he still kisses you deeply, mouth wet and insistent. He makes a few rough, breathless noises into your mouth as he comes and you suck his tongue into your mouth, the climax rippling and lingering deliciously through you.

He relaxes the arm that was between your legs as you both lie there panting, coming down from your intense orgasms. Shifting his body slightly to support himself on forearms, he runs lazy, gentle kisses down your neck.

You stay like that for a while, his weight pressing down on you. Silence, except for the sound of each other’s breathing. You haven’t really allowed yourself to process the fact that he’s here; that Aemond, your future husband and sworn enemy, has cornered you tonight and confessed to wanting you despite strong evidence to the contrary. After years of not having a trace of him, he’s here, in the most intimate way possible. You tilt your head to the side to look at him again, to commit his features to memory in case he disappears from you once more.

Feeling your gaze, he does the same, humming contentedly; one calm, soft lavender eye, almost hidden beneath a thick layer of long lashes, the vibrant blue relic in the other eye, brows furrowed in contemplation for a brief moment. His fingers brush against your still flushed cheek, as if mapping out a secret that exists only for him. It doesn’t escape you that he makes no move to leave the wet heat between your legs — his member, still hard somehow, nestled comfortably within your silken walls.

“I’d really rather we didn’t wait until the wedding to do this again.”

His words, almost hesitant at their core, fill you with a kind of cautious anxiety, some foolish, ancient hope, long forgotten and locked away, surfacing once more. Your face burns with heat as you do your best to keep a expression neutral and collected, choosing the usual path when it comes to the two of you:

“If you wanted some kind of serious commitment you should have just said so, Targaryen. I wouldn’t mock your feelings.” You smile softly, blinking teasingly despite your trembling nerves. “Not much.”

He scoffs and roll his eye, though it’s obvious to both of you that you’re not necessarily saying no.

“I was thinking of it more for your own benefit, insufferable girl,” he grumbles sullenly. “You clearly didn’t have a good first experience and I just think it would be really tragic if you had to wait months to experience something so heavenly good as what I just offered you.”

You huff and press your face into his neck, failing miserably to suppress a laugh.

He’s so full of shit.

“I thought you hated me, anyway.”

“And I did.” He hums nonchalantly, making you part your lips in offense. He smiles at your shocked expression, tilting his face to brush his nose against yours.

“I hated you before I even met you, and I hated you even more the first time we met in the Great Hall and I realized there was absolutely nothing to hate about you. I hated that you were so captivating. I still hate that, I think.”

Your cheeks burn at the depth of his words and you look up at the ceiling, pursing your bottom lip in a sullen pout to cover the fluttering in your stomach.

“You made me feel insecure about my teeth for years after that day, you know?”

He huffs out a short laugh at the memory, cupping your jaw to guide your face to his again.

"Well, they were a little out of proportion..." He taps his thumb gently across the top of your lips until it pokes at your two front teeth, a strangely fond glint in his gaze and a small, amused smile. "Right here."

With a slight, offended swat and blushing even more, you struggle to pull his hand away.

"Of course they were out of proportion, you big insensitive! I was only eleven, still in the growth phase."

"That sounds like an excuse to me. I was eleven too and I wasn't like that."

He sounds smug now, and you hate that he's right. Even at the young age when, inevitably, almost everyone was gangly and awkward in one way or another, Aemond was still an irritatingly beautiful child - even brutally scarred with the loss of his eye and the scar. With pale, delicate features and chubby but perfectly proportioned cheeks, he looked like a spoiled little prince at the time.

He still looks like a spoiled prince now.

“No more pretending,” he confesses reluctantly after a while of poorly hidden laughter, as if it hurts him to be so honest about his feelings. “I’m not sure I can keep denying how much I crave for this. For you.” 

A quiet surprise spreads across your features at the admission and you reach out to him, intertwining your fingers. You hadn’t realized that everything had been so…mutual — the forced hatred and provocations, for sure, but not the feelings either. 

“Mmm,” you hum softly after a while, hope flickering through you brighter as Aemond’s steady gaze lingers on yours, your bodies still intimately joined over this table in an abandoned classroom. “I suppose it’s probably time we faced head on this despicable fate that awaits us.” 

Aemond’s answering smile is rare and absolutely breathtaking.

--

[gayestsimp]

Decaying life: Chapter 2

words used 3.2k

Tag list: @randomlyappearingartist @ryuushou @rowannin @s0ggyrats @maybeethan69 @0-candlecove-0

I’ve made #Decaying life so if you wish to find post only related to Decaying life, you will!

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(Name) was seventeen. It had been a few days after he first met Damian. His half “brother” and so far- the one out of the few that were mostly in the mansion that interacted with him. A few small scars and bruises present over his face and body from some of these interactions, but most didn’t end in violence but instead many aggressive words being yelled at him, like being called a ‘half breed’ or a ‘bastard son’ and a ‘whore’s son’ that last one being the most painful… the brat daring to comment on (Name)’s mother this way? That was what angered the boy the most- but thankfully, he had plans, when Jason arrives in two days, he’s going to ask his older brother if he can move in with him for a while.

It brought (Name) some joy to know he could be somewhere more… freeing- and actually hangout with his most beloved brother. Right now though, all he had to do was wait and go through life like normal, like school. (Name) could get a ride to get to Gotham Academy from Alfred, god knows the butler has insisted that the boy should due to how long the walk was and getting a bus as well wouldn’t be needed than- but to also interact with his other two brothers, Tim and Damian more. However (Name) didn’t want that, so he always refused and turn down the offer, and anyways, the walk to the bus stop was nice, with fresh air- well fresh as Gotham could get and a brief talk to the elderly women and men waiting for their rides, they were decent to talk to and some even had interesting life stories. But either way, (Name) would take his usual route and path to the school, enjoying his ride… well not enjoy but liking it a lot more than having to be in a car next to those two.

Regardless, (Name) would arrive at the bus stop and continue to walk towards Gotham Academy, arriving a little earlier than his supposed brothers, his own journey taking longer than the car ride, so an earlier bus had to be taken to fully avoid the boys, but still arrive on time, causing some bags under his eyes, having to get up more early to get prepared for the day. The academy life that (Name) experienced wasn’t the worse or best- he wasn’t easily noticed by most, his own surname being kept the same as it was before he ever moved in with the Wayne family- that being (Last Name). Not using the Wayne name or being widely known like his supposed brothers did help- most people that wanted and are his friends were legitimate with their interest being in (Name), maybe one or two interest in just using him for small schemes, but most were decent people… well as decent as some Gothamites can be, but regardless- (Name)’s academy life was rather nice, better than most as he preferred it over his own…

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After each second that ticked away on the clock, the seconds into minutes and those minutes into hours. A partially gloved hand holding a pencil and tapping it against a desk- just waiting for the final hour of the day to pass. (Name) was waiting to finally get out of building and go to his job. In order to get some real experience as soon as he leaves and not act like a burden for Jason- if his older brother would be willing to let the younger stay with him, which does seem likely to be fair on his end, he could make some extra money to take care of himself- he also just couldn’t become a vigilante, as the matter of fact, nobody in the family knows that he’s aware of their secret double lives, even Jason, but also the fact that he can destroy anything with the touch of one hand. He also just wanted to live a normal life, to go with his own dreams and ambitions like his Momma would have wanted him to do so… the mere thought of her would bring some tears to (Name)’s eyes, it’s been so long since he’s seen her face, so much of it was a blur to him now, the only thing he can remember clearly was her hands- how soft and warm they were, how they wiped away his tears and covered him with love.

Soon enough, the clock would tick by until it reached the ending hour, and with one last bell, everyone could stand up and start walking away- with (Name) quickly making his way through to avoid both Damian and Tim, with him hastily making way through the hall and out at the front, before Alfred could arrive and insist that (Name) enters the car- he was already out and turning to his place of work- it was a small business in a rather decent place of town, his boss was just a nice man, up their in his age, but a welcoming and inviting person- often helping those of a lower class or needing the support, he was Mr. Evan’s, a man that has been running this business for about twenty years- and a strong pillar for the community. The man sold all sorts of things, from food and drinks to toys and books. And the people that visited the place were just as pleasant to be around, even sometimes- after a good days work, (Name) could take back a book or two for free, often reading them with Jason in his room.

(Name) would quickly get inside the building, seeing the elderly man in front of him, waving towards Mr. Evans, quickly making his way behind the counter. “Hey, Mr. Evans- how are you doing today?” He asked, holding a bright smile for the man that gave him a job.

“I’m doing fine (Name), think you can close up for me today? I have to go see my daughter in the hospital, she’s close to giving birth now.” The old man spoke, having picked up his coat and a hat, putting them on while handing the key over to the younger male, with his partially gloved hand taking it and nodding back at the elder.

“Sure, have fun seeing Lauren, have fun being a proper old man now!” He spoke in slight teasing tone to Mr. Evans, allowing the older man chuckle at (Name)’s words before leaving the building, allowing the seventeen year old take over for the rest of the day. Customers going in and out regularly, with some familiar face popping in to buy something and holding small conversations with (Name), before buying what they wanted and bidding the boy a farewell.

Soon enough, (Name)’s shift would come to an end, the closing time for the store popping up and leaving the boy to close it up, ensuring to lock the door once he left after turning off everything inside. All that was left was for (Name) to check for a bus- pulling out his phone and looking for the next available bus at his regular stop would reveal that… they were all cancelled- this wasn’t the first time this happened, it happened a few weeks before for a couple of days, leading the boy to call Jason up for a ride- he would have gone with Alfred… but the butler having to leave the house for a while might pick up some unwanted attention. So (Name) changes to his contacts, preparing to call Jason, his thumb hovering just over the name… but he couldn’t bring himself to call his older brother right now… what if he’s seeming just like a leach? What if Jason starts to find him annoying as well?- not interact with him any more afterwards… no- he shouldn’t think like that… but that feeling is always there… what if he could just get another bus instead?- not bothering his older brother would be good… so with shaking hands and slightly heavy heart would instead check for buses once more- and thankfully, there was one he could catch, though there was only one issue- it was in the east end… further than Mr. Evan’s business is in- should he really go through this- surely Jason wouldn’t mind one call again… No, he shouldn’t bother the only family member that doesn’t seem annoyed or ignores him- he can make it on his own to get back to Wayne manor- maybe Jason would be able to see that (Name) can actually look after himself, especially if the boy does live with him in the end- and Jason wouldn’t have to worry for (Name) being alone at nights.

So, (Name) decided to start taking off, tomorrow was a Saturday- so he could return early and help Mr. Evans with running the place and hand the keys back to the elder, quickly trying to get to the bus stop as he got further and further into the East End- ears picking up on all the crime, some screams, at least a violent voice ordering a person to give them money, and two gunshots in the further distance- even some glass breaking. Though not all of it was bad. (Name) saw some children playing games together, having fun, another group of older boys also talking about ‘How cool Red Hood is’ which only brought a smile to the boy’s face- his big brother- his only brother- was admired by so many here… Jason deserves it, he’s kind to (Name) and has been more effective at stopping crime than the rest- but also inspiring to the younger boys and even girls around the East End, letting them breathe life into once completely crime filled streets.

(Name) was now half way to the bus stop, he hadn’t realised how far along he has come- sorting out his uniform as his heart rate slowly rose up, he was… unsure if he should even be down here… there’s too many chance he could be jumped, robbed or worse even killed for no reason… but than… he could feel a sensation down his back, something making him shiver, as though eyes lingered onto his body, turning his head back slightly, he could notice a man behind him, not that close, but somewhat near… ‘Maybe we’re just going in the same direction?’ Is what (Name) questioned in his head, wanting to just… make sure- (Name) made a small turn around a corner, planning to just walk down the sidewalk until he can cross the road, wanting to keep an eye out for the man behind him.

So (Name) took the turn, and walking down for a little while, he saw the man do the same- but with a more clear look at him, (Name) could notice he hand one hand in his pant’s pocket. In Gotham, that could usually mean he has a… gun. But than again, many people have guns- even Alfred, the old man teaching the boy about them slightly on one of (Name)’s birthdays, but after crossing the road- the boy could notice a slight jolt in his actions before the man did the same- and once more, walking straight to (Name). That meant this man likely had some… intentions with the boy- what are they?- well (Name) isn’t sticking around to find out, going further down the path, keeping his eyes out behind him, picking up his pace slowly, not wanting this stranger to catch on and either pull out his weapon or run after him. Gloved hand clutching at straps on the schoolbag on his back, his grip like iron, blood pumping around his body faster and faster- trying to get away from the man. And ahead would be another corner he could turn and hopefully run away- well that is what (Name) originally planned, only to suddenly see another man there- that could be his salvation! But, the feeling in his gut? It said otherwise, unable to trust that either have pleasant intentions for him, it resulted in (Name) making the quickest exit he could, with a quick look around- it was an alleyway right next to him- so as fast as (Name)’s legs could carry him, he had bolted down the alleyway. The boy could hear the sounds of two more pairs of feet picking up in pace, causing his heart to beat faster than it ever has. “Fuck- fuck!- w-who the hell a-are they- shit!-“ He yelled, tripping and twisting his ankle, letting out a small yelp, and a hiss afterwards- falling to the ground and landing on his right thigh, the pant pocket pushing against the ground and a small crack being heard. “Fuck! M-my phone, s-should’ve used it earlier-“ he spoke while trying to get his phone out of his pocket, attempting to stand up, only to hiss out in pain as stepped on his right foot, a shooting pain going up his body and leaning against the wall, but his body forced him to push past the pain and continue running forward while opening his cracked phone with one hand, his other one scratching away at his neck. His phone new exterior causing small cuts on his finger as it also struggled to open an app or respond to his finger, taking it longer to do anything. “C’mon, c-c’mon!- work you stupid piece of-“ and before (Name) knew it, his face planted against a wall- looking up from his phone- he’d realise that he it a dead end, no more turns or hope in running, only now in his slow responding phone, with his fingers desperately trying to call ‘911’ or even ‘Only Brother’ but he couldn’t… he could hear the two pairs of footsteps approaching him, getting closer and closer to him, leading to the boy to shiver, what could he do?- how could he defends himself- his hands…

(Name) stared down at them, they were still gloved… but they had dirt on them from his trip and falling, and one finger had blood from the broken glass he tried to use. He didn’t want to use them… not again, every time he’s accidentally used his power… he couldn’t help but think of… her… his Momma, and what he had done to her- but it a possible matter between life and death- a-and he could just use them to destroy their weapons and make them run off… yes!- or destroy the wall! But he could barely run anymore- the pain of his foot making itself clear now, he had to stand his ground. So with panted breaths, (Name) would start to remove his gloves, letting his hands free. “S-shit… p-please let this work…” he softly spoke to himself as he saw the men approaching, the one with a hand in his pocket slowly taking. Out his gun- oh, it was a knife… perhaps they wanted to be more silent about it. Regardless, the one with the weapon spoke. “Hey, what’s a GA brat like you doing out here? Don’t you have a butler to carry you around, or does Daddy not give a shit?” He asked, as they both got closer- the other man speaking instead now. “Hey… wait a minute- I recognise this brat- he’s one of Bruce Wayne’s children… they don’t appear much in public, but I remember that face.” He explained to the other criminal- causing (Name) to take some deeper breaths, not only did they now just know he was a Goth Academy student, but they knew he was related to Bruce… but being called that man’s child?- it only boiled (Name)’s blood, mixing both his fear and anger into one, still scratching at his neck slightly. “Really? Oh we’re definitely gonna make a fortune out of this brat- one ransom and we’ll be loving like kings!” He yelled, approaching the frightened boy. “Now kid, come along with me, and I won’t be forced to cut that ugly face of yours.” The wanna be kidnapper spoke, approaching the boy with the knife. (Name) couldn’t help himself with how much fear he felt, seeing something sharp that threatened to stab or cut him wasn’t new- but these strangers- they could do anything, at least Damian has some form of restraint with murder now, mostly because of Jason and Alfred… but these men, they could do anything- especially if Bruce doesn’t pay them, he probably doesn’t even remember that he has five sons.

So (Name) would lunge forward, startling the man with a knife as the boy’s hand went for his face, laughing softly, about to speak about who knows what- only to to break apart into pieces, the light in his eyes flickering like a failing bulb, the other unarmed man was left shock- confused and not sure on what to do, his legs locking in place, as (Name) pushed himself forward on his good foot in the heat of the moment, hand grabbing the older man’s throat, destroying it first, as skin and muscle broke- causing him to struggle to breath at first, than choke on his own blood, before the rest of his body also broke down. Leaving just a panting (Name) with a bloodied hand and panting heavily. “I just… k-killed them… o-oh… I’m-“ before (Name) can properly process this situation and what he had done, he could feel himself nearly throwing up, though he was able to hold it down, nearly gagging a few time, but still could keep his vomit down. Leaving him alone to pant and process everything again. Sitting in silence. His own hands furiously attacking his own neck, small amount of tears leaving the boy’s eyes.

He just bawled his eyes out and sat there for a few minutes, before slowly rising up and reaching back for his phone, not even realising he had dropped it. Putting it inside his pocket for a moment as he went to grab his fallen glove, putting it back on carefully to not destroy it. Than (Name) would shakily pull his phone out, slowly making his way out of the alleyway and back onto the sidewalk as he used his phone, swiping the screen to where his contacts were again, opening the app, and than finally calling Jason. It rings for only four seconds before his older brother picked up the phone. “Hey little wing, you alright? Need me to pick you- I’m guessing the buses got cancelled.” Jason spoke, sounding gentle and relaxed, allowing for (Name) to destress a little, his shoulders sinking slightly while still taking in heavy breaths. “Y-yeah… I… J- I n-need you to… to pick me up.” Though he still softly sobbed in between his words, struggled to properly speak, leading to Jason’s growing concerns. “Hey, little wing, you doing fine? What’s got you sobbing? Did the Demon spawn do something?” He asked, now annoyed and angry that Damian could have hurt you again. “N-no… no, I… I, I was about to…. Ki-kidnapped by two men… th-than I k…killed them… p-please c-come h-here Jason…” Jason remained silent for a moment, not entirely sure on what to say, it was hard to tell what he was thinking at the moment, but than he spoke in a much softer tone, one he’d used to comfort some of the crying children of the east end. “Alright, just tell me where you are, and I’ll pick you up, alright?” And just like that, (Name) told his brother why was around him, the older male staying on the phone with the boy until he got on his motorbike, leaving (Name) alone for a moment- just himself and his memories of the passing moment, sotting on the sidewalk in the cold… wishing for her warm hands again, but also for Jason…

———————————————————————

[avelera]

(Writing Advice) Tips for Writing Dialogue

I would never, ever give unsolicited critique on a fic and I would never, ever out a fic I'm reading as being the one I want to critique.

But it gets so much harder when the edits I want to offer are really simple ones. Like, when I know where the author stands in their growth and I can see so clearly what their next step would be and I just aoiruoairoiariowaurwouARGH want to point out one little concept that will elevate their story by lightyears but since I do not know this person I don't dare because you never know what advice is going to be absolutely crushing to someone and entirely unwanted.

SO, before I explode, I want to give the advice I would offer.

This is specifically for people who find themselves writing really long paragraphs of dialogue between two characters that feel sort of unnatural when read aloud. Dialogue that is very "on the nose" ie, characters say what they mean and they say EVERYTHING they mean in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination. It's open, clear communication to a fault and sounds very unnatural as a result.

The thing is, I don't want to tell people not to do that. Actually, writing out EVERYTHING the character could say is a GREAT first step! But the second draft should involve whittling down all of that into the most powerful or gripping parts of that paragraph. And I want to discuss how:

(Note, sometimes that is the pleasure of the genre that the author is going for! Sometimes in fic, the canon characters are so bad at communicating that it can be pleasurable just to write them fucking talking to each other for once.)

But, if your goal is to eventually write more naturalistic dialogue and also dialogue with a bit more tension and momentum to it that really pulls the reader along and makes them feel immersed in the world, you should keep in mind that most people don't say everything they mean in conversation. Even when people are being carefully, deliberately, perhaps even drunkenly entirely open with each other, they often speak in fragments or need to backtrack to clarify a point.

However, most people don't say everything they're thinking, especially if it's very vulnerable, because of things like fear of rejection, or pride, or even because they have their own goals that might be disrupted if the other person knew everything. Sometimes, there just isn't time for a big sit-down where all the feelings come out!

However, this isn't about small-talk, which is a bit more self-evident that it shouldn't be paragraphs long for every exchange. Fiction tends to thrive in momentous moments, moments that tend to be a bit rare in real life but that stick out in our minds forever.

For example, fiction revolves around couples realizing their feelings for each other far more often than any one person would experience that moment in their life. So in fiction we heighten and elevate these really powerful moments and we love exploring them as readers.

SO, when I'm stuck on ALLL the things characters could say to each other in a really charged moment, but I'm not sure what the best thing would be, I don't hold myself back. I just let it all out. I open a pair of brackets and say:

Bill says, [I love you. I don't know how to say it because I'm 20 years old and scared and I've never been in a relationship before, but I do. You've been my best friend my whole life. I think you're the most beautiful and amazing person I've ever met. If you reject me, it would destroy me. But losing you as a friend would destroy me even worse. So I feel like I have to play it cool for a variety of societal pressure reasons but also to protect my heart and my pride. I want to open the door a bit, I want to hint that I like you, but I don't want to risk it if I overstep. I'm not ready to take the leap yet if there's even the slightest chance it won't work. Maybe we could try getting coffee?]

Then I'll go back through and bold the lines that are most powerful to me, the ones I really want to keep, as seen above. Then I mull over that for a bit and try to put it into more naturalistic speech. Something like,

Bill says, "Yeah, well... you're pretty cool too, I guess. Maybe we could grab coffee sometime. Try that new place that just opened."

^^^ Obviously this isn't award winning dialogue but what I would hope to capture with it is a young, insecure person who is leaving a lot of openings for plausible deniability, who isn't overcommitting to a love confession that could get their heart stomped on but is tentatively advancing a compliment and a desire to spend more time together at a plausible location for either a date or just friends hanging out.

The rest of what's deleted from the paragraph is now a secret that they're trying to hide. And secrets tend to be very powerful in fiction and performance. It makes the audience mentally engage with what they think is hidden behind those words. It leaves space too for more conversations between the characters.

Maybe over coffee a bit more of that entire paragraph comes out, which pulls the reader along through the story. Maybe each time they hang out, a little more comes out after that, because most people don't give their love confessions in one huge block the minute they realize they have feelings. And the anticipation of getting to the moment where the whole hidden paragraph is revealed also pulls the reader along and makes them excited (hopefully) for that moment. It makes them keep reading your story to reach that moment.

Anyway, TL;DR: writing out a whole paragraph of everything your character is thinking for each line of dialogue, everything they could possibly say, is GREAT for the first draft! You don't want to lose a potentially juicy and powerful line just because you edited yourself too soon.

But in the SECOND draft, before you publish, dialogue gets a lot more powerful and compelling if you whittle it down to be more naturalistic, to hold a bit back, to allow a bit of mystery, especially with big emotions and confessions that would be hard or scary for a person to reveal, that might encompass the actual plot or subplot of your story (for example, getting to a love confession could be the plot or subplot of a slowburn romance, so you want to sort of piece that build-up out and not just dump a whole confession on the first page, unless that IS your goal!).

Trimming down a huge paragraph to one line of dialogue also makes for snappier, more dynamic dialogue overall, even if the content isn't as emotionally charged as a one-in-a-lifetime love confession.

[ficsinhistory]

Yes, I saw that scene! I don't blame Maddie, it's a very sweet gesture, I would fall for it. Not only that, judging by the way Tom reacted, he has his share of times he did this to calm Maddie down. Not many, but hey, like father like son. I really want to see more of these two and Maddie in particular.

And yes, Amy would definitely be delighted with grand romantic gestures, she's a hopeless romantic lol

And your thoughts on Amy? Immaculate op. Your mind is incredible!

I also believe Amy's history with the Metal Army is probably old and very personal. I theorize that Ivo stole one of her quills too in an invasion of her home - Little Planet - which would lead her to always approach problems thinking of the worst-case scenario. What would explain why the energy of the metal blow would be both blue and pink.

And yes, I see Amy even with all her empathy, altruism and kindness...being terrible at working in a team. Although I ser her not knowing how to work in a group is more like Amy being incredibly controlling and restrictive, a symptom of her desperately trying to keep the circumstances under control and not getting worse. Something that someone as chaotic and freedom-loving as Sonic wouldn't like.

And I begging this will be the situation.

Amy and Sonic have disagreed several times, from the oldest games to Frontiers. Amy is temperamental and has a strong personality and Sonic hates being ordered around. There will be a lot of friction and both jeopardizing each other's plans before a balance is established.

Perfect opportunity for Sonic to finally feel first-hand what it's like when a loved one throws themselves into danger without thinking twice. And on the other hand, Amy would learn that she hurts the one she wants to protect by being so reckless and daredevil.

Now, about coming from the future is an interesting theory and top tier angst. It's still too early to say anything, so every shot is valid.

My personal opinion is that Amy is actually from the present. The explosion took Ivo to the past, where he made his Metal Army, dominated Litlle Planet, and Amy was sent to live on Earth, a little after Sonic - of course, both would have no idea about each other because I love dramatic irony. She would fight with the metals from then on to prevent further interference.

And what would make her attachment issues come would be - and hear me out now - Amy knowing she won't get out of the mission alive.

My theory is that her chaos powers manifest as visions of possible futures, like a computer that calculates probabilities. However, the trauma messed up this ability of hers, always showing worst-case scenarios and basically what happens when someone functions solely on anxiety. Amy would take it at face value because of trauma and belief in fate (possibly coming from her upbringing on Little Planet).

After all, Chaos energy comes from emotions and hers would be in tatters.

This would culminate in her seeing a possible future where everything is saved but she would die. And Amy... accept it. She would live her life to the fullest based on her belief in unconditional love for all living creatures without ever forming attachments because she doesn't want the future to be harder for her or the people she would get close to.

That's where Sonic and the Wachowskis would come in. They would be a family to her and now she's devastated because she doesn't know how to tell them that there won't be a happy ending for her. That she hasn't had one for a long time. Because, as you mentioned, saving thousands of lives is more important than her and any desires she might have.

But it would be too hard to deny her own feelings. The fact that she doesn't want to die because she finally has love and family and has managed for the first time in years to not think about the imminent death that looms over her.

Tldr -> Amy's conflict is basically this part of Andor.

With Amy coming along, I can't stop thinking about the Amy-Sonic/Tom-Maddie parallels.

You know, the pink and blue scheme, Tom having a similar personality to Sonic and Amy possibly having some similarities to Maddie, Amy and Maddie possibly being two big city girls with Amy being from New York and Maddie from San Francisco while Tom and Sonic are both from Green Hills, the setup of Amy plus 3 Wachowski siblings as well as Maddie and Tom, who canonically have siblings too.

They've been foreshadowing this couple since the second movie, fight me!!

(and Tom x Maddie are the parents and couple ever, I love them!)

(Also, please give Maddie more prominence. She's awesome!)

[elliewrites77]

Uncle!Sukuna Part 6

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

masterlist

Uncle!Sukuna who puts his plan for a second date on temporary hold. The day after the incident with Yuji, you sat him and Sukuna down for that "talk" about why they shouldn't resort to violence, and what other methods they could use to get their emotions out. He hated every second of it. But he did enjoy watching you in your professional element. You were stern and serious, but still had a gentleness about you that showed you actually cared.

Uncle!Sukuna who was falling, real hard, real fast.

But he pushed that aside, instead offering to take Choso out for the day that weekend. He could tell the boy needed some cheering up, and your worry was only getting worse, so he offered to take Choso to some "kid-appropriate guy stuff", and asked you to help Yuji with the finishing touches on his project. Both boys were up for it, and when Saturday hit, you and Yuji waved Choso and him goodbye.

Uncle!Sukuna who couldn't deny that the car ride was a little awkward. He still wasn't very good with kids, and honestly, he was starting to wonder what he was thinking when he offered to do this. He liked the kid, sure, but he knew very little about him. One thing he did know was that Choso and himself were very bad with people, and general socialization wasn't really their thing. So from the house to the mall, the car was silent.

It wasn't until he parked, turning the car off, that Choso spoke.

"I know you like my mom."

Sukuna is silent, stunned by the sudden call-out. He stares out the windshield blankly before his eyes move to the rearview mirror, meeting Choso's. Th boy looks calm and sure.

"You don't have be friendly with me just to get on her good side. She already likes you too." Choso added after a short period of silence.

His words make Sukuna's brow furrow. He ignores the part about you liking him back, turning his head to glare straight at the boy.

"Listen, brat. You're here with me because I wanted you to be, not so I could get brownie points with your mom. Now say something like that again, and I'll throw you in the mall fountain." He quickly got out of the front, leaving Choso to blush at his words. He has a small smile on his face when he climbs out.

Nothing more was said as they walked into the mall. Sukuna took him to the comic store first, that being the whole reason they were there. He watched as the kids eyes lit up, looking around at all the images of his favorite superhero's . It made Sukuna smirk.

"Get what you want. If you see something you think Yuji would like too, let me know." He said before they split up. Choso went to look for his favorites, making sure to keep an eye out for Yuji's too.

Sukuna kept his eye on the kid as he browsed, not caring much about looking at the selection. But his eyes caught on one of the covers, making him pause as a memory surfaces from the pits of his brain.

A young Sukuna is approached by his twin, the younger of the two having his usual grin on his face, while his older brother had nothing but a scowl. Sukuna barely acknowledged his brother until he is standing in front of him, looking far to excited for no reason at all.

"What?"

"It's our birthday tomorrow!" Jin replied. Sukuna rolled his eyes.

"I know that, idiot. Like you said, it's our birthday."

"Well I wanted to give you your present early."

Sukuna looked at his younger twin, confused. They never got each other gifts.

He doesn't get a chance to ask before Jin pulls out a flat, wrapped gift from behind his back. He holds it out to Sukuna, his grin never wavering. Sukuna slowly takes it, holding it in his hand for a second with a skeptical look on his young face.

"Open it." Jin encouraged.

Sukuna listened, tearing off the wrapping paper slowly to reveal a comic book still preserved in the plastic. Sukuna examines the cover, recognizing it as one he's seen Jin read before, one that Sukuna had actually been interested in reading (though he never said that).

"I know you've wanted to read it, so i thought I'd get you a copy. That way, it's something we can enjoy together." Jin admits, practically bouncing up and down with his excitement for Sukuna's reaction.

The older twin is surprised by the thoughtfulness of the gift, and his twins desire to have something they can share. It makes his chest feel full, but he clears his throat in an attempt to appear unaffected. Even at 10, he preferred appearing reserved.

"Uh..thanks, loser." He says after a second, ignoring his brothers grin. Jin can see right through him. "I didn't get you anything." He adds.

"That's okay. Just make sure to tell me what you think once you've read it."

Jin leaves, and Sukuna is left looking down at the colorful cover.

That comic was one of the few things Sukuna ever shared with his brother. It was one of the few things they could talk about and enjoy, finally having a common ground. Sukuna would never had said it before, but he could admit, at least to himself, now that this one comic brought him and Jin a little bit closer.

Which is why he picks it up, not bothering to look at anything else when he moves toward Choso. The kid had already picked out a few comics, some for him, some for Yuji (though he couldn't read that well yet). The two checked out, before making their way through the rest of the mall.

They walked through a few stores, Sukuna buying whatever Choso wanted without complaint. The kid was grateful each time, not expecting Sukuna to do so. But eventually, Sukuna was tired of hearing "are you sure? thank you" over and over.

"Say thank you again and I'll take it all back." He threatened. Choso laughed, nodding in agreement. Sukuna wasn't as intimidating when you got to know him.

They finished their afternoon with some food in the food court, before leaving with plenty of bags and two full bellies.

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

The care ride back was far less awkward, but the two still didn't talk much. They simply enjoyed the low music playing through the radio, and the easy ride home.

When they were close to the neighborhood, Choso spoke up.

"If you and my mom get married, would that make Yuji my brother?"

Sukuna blinked in surprise, glancing at the boy in the mirror. Choso had a curious look on his face, genuinely wondering.

"Yuji isn't my son." Sukuna answered after a moment, ignoring the feeling he gets at the idea of marrying you.

"So he'd be my..cousin?" Choso asked. That wasn't as cool as 'brother' but it wouldn't be too bad.

"I...I guess. Technically, yeah." Sukuna answered, trying to brush it off with a shrug. He didn't know why they were talking about this. "But your mom and I aren't even dating, so don't worry about shit like that."

"But you both want to date. Don't you?"

"Don't you have other things to worry about, brat? Since when are you so damn nosey?"

"Mom says it's good to be curious and ask questions."

"Yeah well, not about this. Just worry about your comics and your ma and I will worry about..all the other stuff."

Choso huffed, not happy with his question going unanswered, but figured it didn't make sense to push it. Not right now, at least.

"Well, I like you. And Yuji. So I hope, even if you don't date my mom, you both stick around." Choso admits. Sukuna looks back at him again.

"Yeah?" He sees Choso nod. "Well I...we like you too kid." He says, his voice a lot quieter and soft. His eyes return to the road, right as they turn down the street to your house.

Neither of them say anything more, but both feel a little bit lighter at the confession.

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

Uncle!Sukuna who walked into your house a few minutes later, to the sound of upbeat music playing and two voices, very off tune, singing along. He shares a look with Choso, before they walk further in. They stop at the kitchen, seeing you and Yuji dancing around together while seemingly baking. There's a sheet of cookies already laid on the counter to cool, telling Sukuna you both have probably been at this for a bit. He smirks as the smell finally catches up with Choso, who rushes forwards towards the two of you. The sound of his steps catches your attention.

Once again, Sukuna is sure his heart stops when you give your son a large grin, hugging him tightly. It gets worse when you look up, giving Sukuna the exact same beautiful smile.

You turn down the music as he walks into the room fully, Yuji immediately running towards his uncle to be picked up. His bright grin is in place as he starts to ramble about the things the two of you did. He's talking so fast that Sukuna can't understand but a few words, but he doesn't bother interrupting the boy. He simply holds him with one arm, staring at him with a raised, unamused brow. He sees you and Choso talking out of the corner of his eye.

Once Yuji has calmed down a little, you turn to look at them with another smile, handing Choso a cookie while you do.

"Did you get me anything, Uncle Kuna?" Yuji asks, staring at the man expectedly. Sukuna scoffs, wanting to call the boy spoiled for thinking he got him something. But he couldn't, because Sukuna did in fact get his gremlin of a nephew stuff.

"Yeah, but don't expect me to every time. I'm not gonna let you get spoiled." He glares slightly. Yuji ignores that completely, clapping happily at his uncle's words. He wiggled, wanting to be put down to go play. "tch. can't ever stay still." Sukuna mumbled as he set Yuji down. The kid immediately took off, grabbing Choso's hand on his way and dragging the surprised boy to another room of the house.

"Don't know where he's going. The shit's still in the car." Sukuna says with a smirk. His words make you laugh, bringing his attention back to you. "How was he?"

"He was lovely. We finished the project, I think it will score good, and then he wanted to bake some. Said his mom used to make cookies all the time, so I thought it would be a nice treat and help cheer him up." You answered. Sukuna was a little surprised at the mention of his late sister-in-law. Yuji didn't really talk about his parents much. But he didn't think much of it.

"They smell good. Surprised you let him have any before dinner." Sukuna smirked, knowing how strict you usually are about desserts before supper. He moved closer, leaning on the counter as you took the last back of cookies out of the oven.

You huffed playfully, setting the cookies down to cool.

"Well I'm not a monster. Finishing the project was a little emotional for him, so I wasn't gonna be strict with him about something as little as this." You replied. Sukuna frowned slightly at that, but he could understand why. "Also, I don't think I've ever heard of a pair of twins who are so totally opposites, I honestly wouldn't have known you were both related in any other situation." You teased.

"Wait, how'd you know Jin was my twin?" Sukuna asked, thrown back by your knowing something that he definitely never told you. Sure, you saw pictures, but him and Jin looked nothing alike, so surely the twin thing wouldn't be easy to assess. It was your turn to be confused, and you gave him a look as though the answer was obvious.

"Yuji, of course. He mentioned it a while ago. Did you not think that would ever come up?"

"Yuji talks about his parents that often?"

"Of course he does. He talks about them all the time. His dad apparently told him a lot about you, so he talks about that too."

Sukuna was shocked. Yuji hardly ever talked about his parents to him. He thought the kid was just a silent griever, like him, but apparently that wasn't the case. Sukuna frowned as he tried to understand why Yuji wouldn't want to talk about them with his own uncle.

You see this, understanding immediately where his confusion was coming from.

"Does he...not talk about them with you?" You ask softly.

"..No. not really. I figured he just..didn't like talking about them. Figured it might be hard for him." Sukuna answers. His frown turns to a slight scowl at the feeling that he might be doing something wrong. If Yuji wasn't coming to him to talk, didn't that mean he wasn't doing what he needed to in order to show the kid he could be there for him?

His thoughts are interrupted by your hand on his arm, and his eyes snap to meet yours.

"I don't think Yuji is the one who has trouble with it." You said gently. He got what you meant. "If you want to know why he doesn't, I think you should ask him." You added, just as the boys ran back into the room.

Sukuna watched as they excitedly showed you something they drew, contemplating your words. He knew you were right, you always were. He just didn't know how the hell to go about it. Talking wasn't his forte, none of this was, but especially not that.

But he remembered he told himself he would be better, and wanted Yuji to be open with him, even if he struggled with that himself. So he knew he'd have to figure out a way to talk to the brat, sooner rather than later.

He decided to save that for later tonight, though, when you turned to him with another pretty smile, as Yuji runs towards him to shove his drawing into the mans face.

Uncle!Sukuna who gets offended when you offer to pay him back for everything he got Choso, simply walking away without dignifying you with a response. He basically pouted as he helped you make dinner, making it seem like you has actually insulted him. It made you laugh.

Uncle!Sukuna who isn't surprised when he finds Yuji and Choso passed out on the couch once more. In the short time after dinner, while Sukuna help you clean up, they had gone to watch some TV. He will never understand how they can go from so energetic to snoring and halfway falling off of the couch.

Uncle!Sukuna who smirks when Yuji actually does fall off of the couch. He still didn't wake up, making Sukuna shake his head in disbelief. He was pretty sure the kid could sleep through anything.

Uncle!Sukuna who approached your bed room, knocking on the door softly. He couldn't help but admire you when you opened the door, obviously getting ready to go to bed soon. You smiled again, opening the door to allow him inside.

"They're asleep aren't they?" You assumed with a chuckle. He smirked, nodding as he examined your room.

"Knocked out." He confirmed.

"Yuji can stay here tonight, if you don't want to carry him back to yours." You offered, looking at him through your mirror. His brow raised, smirk growing.

"What about me? Can't I stay too?" He teased, giving you a flirty smile. You flushed, breaking eye contact and shaking you head fondly.

"You can if you'd like." You replied after a moment, looking back at him. You see his smile drop in surprise, making you smirk. "Plenty of room on the couch for you." You added, teasing him.

His shoulders dropped, a scoff leaving him as he shook his head. His reaction made you chuckle. He moves closer and you turn to face him fully.

Sukuna remembers he had a plan, to ask you out on another date. And while this wasn't how he intended to do it, it feels like the perfect time.

"Tease," He grumbled. His hands settled on your waste, holding you just like he did when he kissed you. "What are you doing next weekend?" He asked.

You flushed, hands going to his chest because you weren't sure when else to put them. This was the closest you two has been since your date.

"Um, nothing specifically. Choso won't be here, so I was just gonna get some stuff done around the house. Why?" You replied. You could guess why he asked, but you wanted to be sure before getting your hopes up.

"How about we get to that second date?" He asked, doing his best to appear confident in his questioning. He hoped you were on the same page.

Your instant smile reassured him that you did.

"Oh yeah? I don't know, the house could really use a deep clean." You teased. He scoffed, glaring at you with no heat behind it.

"Don't be a brat." He replied, making your smile grow. His jaw clenched as he hesitated. "You..do wanna go on another one, right?" He forced himself to ask. He wanted to be clear with you, straightforward to the best of his ability.

Your smile softened.

"Yes, Sukuna. I'd love to go on another date with you." You said. The look of relief on his face made you want to tease him more, but you decided to give him a break.

He smirked softly, pulling you closer. He didn't say anything more, and neither did you. You ended the night with a soft, sweet kiss, before he left your bedroom. He took Choso and Yuji to bed in Choso's room, before actually laying on your couch. Both of you fell asleep with little smiles, feeling more secure in whatever it was between the two of you than before.

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

let me know what you think! also, would ppl like to see a snippet that's about reader and Yuji's afternoon together while sukuna and choso aren't there? I realize sometimes i focus too much on one dynamic and might leave another out a bit. I assure you guys there will be plenty more about sukuna and reader in the next part! I just think it's important to build their relationships with Yuji and Choso.

I'm thankful for any constructive criticism! Thank you for reading, and all the support <3333

barely proofread

[jiniretracha]

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠? - 𝐥𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐱 (𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬)

pairing: lee felix x fem!reader

warnings: fluff, smut, angst!!!

summary: You worked at Kim Publishing, a place you could call home since the very start. But when it faced bankruptcy, your beloved company was forced to merge with Bang Editorials an evil empire with no vision on anything that Kim Publishing represented. And that's how you met your nemesis: Felix Lee. The bane of your existence. But everything fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle when your bosses had a marvellous idea: a new position as manager director, who had to submit their report in order to be chosen for the job. And your archenemy had the same purpose as you did: get that job one way or another.

word count: 3.7k

ps: I came with a new series totally and utterly inspired/based on The Hating Game. Pls feel free to let me know if you wanna be on this series taglist !

masterlist // series masterlist // ko-fi

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 - 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥

After what felt like a day, but it was actually only two hours, your eyes blinked open. Your head was still pounding and you sat up slowly to prevent the headache coming back.

When you looked up, you saw Felix standing next to a man who you didn’t know. For a minute you thought you were still inside your dream, or probably the fever was making you hallucinate. 

“Oh, God. Am I dreaming or am I fucked up enough that I’m hallucinating two men standing in front of me?” 

The other guy next to Felix laughed. “Y/N?” he asked. You hummed. “I’m a doctor, how are you feeling?” he asked you, with a strong australian accent just like Felix.

“Like shit” you sighed. 

“She had a fever of 103 approximately” Felix told him. 

“Okay, let’s sit you up so I can check you” the man said, coming to sit down next to you as you pressed your back against the wall with a groan. 

The man pressed two fingers from each hand over the sides of your neck and started rubbing. You looked at him and exhaled. “You are very handsome” you slurred out, your eyes doing quick blinks. 

He chuckled. “Thank you, people always gravitate towards Felix, though” he told you.

You frowned and looked at Felix who was frowning at you. “Huh?” you asked the man.

“I’m his stepbrother. I’m Christopher” he told you. “You can call me Chris, though” 

You laughed. “I bet you wanted to beat him up so bad when you were kids” you told him, making Chris laugh. 

“I like her” he told Felix over his shoulder.

Felix sighed. “She’s very special” he admitted and you rolled your eyes. 

You looked away to your hands over your lap and your lips couldn’t help but twitch a little as your heart started beating even quicker. 

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

In your living room, Felix was sitting with Chris by the table as they let you rest. Chris was scribbling a prescription for the medicine you had to take.

“You did all the right things, Lix. You would’ve been good at this” Chris pointed out. 

Felix looked at him and glared with narrowed eyes. 

Chris rolled his eyes and smiled at him. “I’m not trying to be a dick, I promise, man” he said, raising his hands up in the air. “I’m just saying. You did everything right” 

The freckled man nodded and looked down.

“So… did you get the invite? I’m assuming you did, but the real question would be if you’re coming” he asked him slowly. “It’s just that… well, Sana and I need to count down the people who are coming and all” 

Felix sighed. “It’s just that… nothing, I’ve just been slammed with work. My boss is just a pain in the ass, you know him” he told him. 

Chris sighed. “Felix, I know it’s awkward. It’s weird. I get it, I really do” he nodded his head. “But when your brother gets married, you show up. Bring someone with you”

Felix scoffed. “Yeah, right. Because that’s exactly what we need. More witnesses to our absurd family drama” he rolled his eyes. 

Chris let out a chuckle and handed him the prescription. “Keep her fluids high and call me if the fever gets worse. I doubt it, though” 

Felix nodded. “Thank you, Chris” he told his stepbrother. 

Meanwhile, you could hear part of the conversation and when you heard the door of your house being opened and then shut closed, you quickly closed your eyes and faked being asleep once the footsteps towards your bedroom started getting closer. 

Felix opened your door and smiled as soon as he saw you. “Hey, how are we doing?” he asked you, sitting next to you.

You sighed and lazily stretched. “Hey, I’m feeling better” you said to him.

“That’s good, I brought you some water. Figured you’d want some” he said to you, handing you a small bottle. 

You grabbed it and smiled at him warily. “Thank you” you said quietly and opened it, taking a small sip. You left it by the nightstand and sighed. “My mom always gave me strawberry juice when I was sick” you told him with a little smile. 

Felix smiled at that and nodded. 

“What did yours do when you were sick?” you asked him, trying to get some conversation out of him. 

He just sighed. “Well… they were always busy treating other people, so…” he shrugged, like he was not affected by that. “If you didn’t have some kind of cardiac arrest then your illness didn’t count”

You pressed your lips together in a tight lipped smile. “Is everyone in your family a doctor?” 

He nodded. “Yeah, all of them. All surgeons. Except for me” he gave you a smile. 

You trailed your eyes all over his face and he got nervous, feeling your cheeks getting redder. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like a fairy?” you asked him and then immediately frowned. 

Did you really say that?

You sighed. 

Must be the fever. 

He let out a chuckle and pressed the back of his hand to your forehead. “I think it’s time to take your temperature again, Cupcake” Felix said. 

“No, stop calling me that” you groaned, pushing his hand away from you. 

He scoffed. “Not a chance” Felix smirked. “Watching you pretend you hate that nickname it’s the best part of my day” he chuckled. 

Your eyes went down to his shirt and you frowned. “You changed your shirt” you said, your fingers touching the fabric. 

He looked down and nodded. “yeah, my brother brought it for me. It would’ve been really uncomfortable to wear a dress shirt for this long” 

“Light grey, white, baby blue, sky blue, royal blue” you said. 

He frowned. “What does that mean?” he asked, confused. 

“Your shirt pattern” you told him quietly, like it was obvious. “Always in the same order”

Felix pressed his tongue to his inner cheek and laughed airly. “I guess I am predictable” he admitted. 

“Yeah, you only surprised me once” you told him, licking your lips nervously. 

“When was it?” he asked.

“The elevator”

The response was immediate from your part. There was no hesitation and no lie to it. He really did surprise you when he kissed you a couple of days ago. 

Felix was clearly taken aback by what you said.

“And… what did you think of that?” he asked in a whisper. 

You sighed and pressed your lips into a thin line. “I think… it was out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting that, at all” you said and he chuckled. “But… it was very hot”

He smiled at you and his eyes searched yours. 

You bit your lip and smiled. “Are we doing a staring contest right now?” you asked him with a chuckle. 

“you bet” he said, laughing slightly.

You smiled at the sound. 

“What?”

“I like the way you look at me” you simply said. 

He caressed your shoulder for a few moments and tugged a little on the bed cover, making sure it was over your shoulder. “You should get some rest” he said, standing up from the bed. 

“Okay” you said, your voice small.

“You’ll call me if anything happens?” he asked you.

You looked at him and smiled. “You wish”

He just chuckled. 

And your heart doubled its size.

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

The day after, you woke up and heard commotion in the kitchen, making you sit up with a gasp. You were so startled that you didn’t even notice how your headache was long gone now. 

“What the fuck is that noise?” you whispered to yourself.

Your feet found your fluffy slippers and ran towards the kitchen, thinking the worst. A killer, a thief, your mother, anything. Your eyes widened when you saw Felix making breakfast there.

“Felix?” you wondered out loud. 

“Oh, she lives!” he exclaimed, turning around.

“What are you doing in my apartment?” you asked him, blinking rapidly, trying to check if you weren’t inside a dream, which you weren’t.

He pulled his face back in shock. “I took you here after you almost fain-”

“No, I know that. I thought you left, you said I could call you if anything happened” you said to him.

He blinked. “Yeah, and I meant that because I crashed on your couch. I slept there” he said, pointing at it. “I said you could call me… with your voice, and I’d go there, you know, to your bedroom” he said with sarcasm.

You scoffed. “Okay, um what are you doing?” you asked him, demandingly, taking Felix by surprise once again. 

“I’m making breakfast?”

“No, I mean… everything. Why are you doing this?” you asked him, placing your hands on the kitchen island.

He chuckled and grabbed a dishcloth to wipe his hands. “That does not sound like a thank you to me, but you’re very welcome” Felix replied. 

“No! Thank you, seriously” you nodded. “I’m truly thanking you, you’ve been… weirdly nice to me, but I need you to stop. Okay?” you said angrily. “This is- like I said- weird, it’s too weird” you repeated your words nervously. 

Felix sighed and left the dishcloth on the counter. 

“Oh, and if you use any of this stuff against me-”

“Genuinely, why would I use this against you?” he asked you with a serious face. “It wouldn’t give me any advantage to our competition whatsoever”

“Felix, come on” you whined.

“No, it’s fine. I get it. Chris left a prescription for you, it’s on the table over there” he said, pointing at it while grabbing his coat. 

You sighed as you followed him to the door, your feet dragging over the floor.

“I’ll see you at the office” he said before opening the door and shutting it behind him.

You closed your eyes and clenched them. With an irritated sigh, you turned on your heel and went back to sulk in your misery back to your room. 

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

At the office, you walked inside quickly, running a little late. 

“Hey, Y/N!” you heard Wooyoung’s voice behind you as you walked through the walls of Kim Publishing. 

You turned around and your eyes widened at the small bouquet of white flowers he had in hand. “Hello, what are you doing here?” you asked him, biting back rolling your eyes. 

“I got you these” he said with a smile, handing you the flowers.

You smiled at him, trying to seem as nice as possible. “Always with the flowers, Woo. You’re so sweet” you said as you smelt them.

Weird. They were white and very small. Nothing compared to the pink tulips that you had received a couple of days before. But you weren’t about to get picky on that, so you simply grabbed them and smiled. 

“Where have you been by the way?” he asked as he watched you press the elevator button.

“I’ve survived a day of raging headaches and a fever that’s been a pain in my ass. But I’m all good now” you replied. 

You stepped into the elevator and your eyes widened a little when he stepped in with you. 

He doesn’t work upstairs with me, what is he even doing?

When you reached the floor you worked at, Wooyoung was still talking to you, rambling about… well, you didn’t even know what the hell he was talking about. You just pretended to listen while your mind was blank. 

“After you” he said and you smiled curtly, stepping out of the elevator. “So, as I was saying. When we finished the game, it was like 7 AM and we didn’t notice cause the blinds were closed” he continued. 

God! What the hell is he talking about?

When you reached your office, you saw Felix who gave you a slight smile that quickly fell when he saw the bouquet in your hand. 

“Well, that’s crazy, Woo” you told him, standing by the door. “I gotta get to work ASAP, but I’ll-”

“Wait, um… do you want to have dinner tonight? WIth me?” Wooyoung asked you, shifting on his heels, a clear sign of nervousness. 

You pulled your face back and pursed your lips. “Uh- i-it could be. It depends on how I’m feeling. I literally just shoved like three bottles of Advil up my ass, so” you chuckled nervously.

Wooyoung nodded with a chuckle and then looked at Felix. “Hey, Felix” he said politely.

Felix turned his head around and plastered on a fake smile that you recognised immediately. “You don’t work on this floor” he said and then went back to typing away on his computer.

Wooyoung’s eyes widened and you scoffed. “I just came to see my girl, little old Y/N” he smirked and elbowed your side slightly. You then saw his smile faltering, his eyes trained on something on your desk.

You turned your head to see what he was looking at and then you felt your heart drop to the pit of your stomach.

There was a tulip. A single tulip. A pink one. Sitting on your desk, pretilly. 

Your eyes widened and then looked back at Wooyoung.

“Wow, no vibe, huh?” Wooyoung asked. You tried to articulate words but nothing was coming out. You looked back at Felix, who was too busy trying to seem like he was paying attention to his computer. 

“Y/N! Can you come see me in a minute, please?” you heard Hwayoung calling you from her office.

“Yeah, one second” you replied over your shoulder. “Um, I gotta go” you told Wooyoung. 

“Yeah, sure” he nodded with a smile. He pressed a kiss to your cheek and you gave him a sympathetic smile. 

You went to your desk and left the flowers on the desk. You smiled as you saw that next to the tulip was a bottle of strawberry juice with a note that said Cupcake with a heart drawn around it.

“Strawberry juice-” you were about to say something else when you re-read the note. 

Cupcake.

Wait… that handwriting. It’s oddly familiar. Could it be? No… but it’s-

He-

“You sent the tulips” you said. 

It wasn’t a question. 

It was a statement. 

Felix looked up but he didn’t look happy, he seemed… annoyed about something. He was about to say something when the phone on his desk rang. 

“Felix Lee… yeah, I’ll be right there” he said and hung up. He stood up and let out a sigh. “I’m glad you feel better” he said curtly and walked away, out of the office. 

You just stood there, shocked to your core. Yes, he did send those flowers. 

You’re always beautiful.

As much as you hated to admit, your stomach had erupted in butterflies, fluttering around the insides. 

You’re always beautiful. 

You closed your eyes and let out a deep breath. “Fuck…”

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

You knocked on Hwayoung’s office and walked inside when you heard the soft come in. 

She smiled at you from her desk. “I saw you submitted your application” Hwayoung commented with a little smirk. 

“Yeah… I know, it’s a shot in the dark” you told her with a shrug as you sat down in front of her. 

“Are you kidding me? I’m counting on you getting this job, it was excellent” she told you with sincerity. “We can’t let Bang Seojun transform this place again… especially if he doesn’t appreciate books enough given that this is an editorial and all” 

“Yeah” you chuckled. 

“Felix also submitted his application” Hwayoung told you and you nodded, feeling a pang in your chest at the mention of his name. 

“I know…”

“He literally has a degree and that won’t hurt his chances” she grumbled.

“Hey, I do too” you said with a frown, making Hwayoung let out a little chuckle.

“I know sweetie. But we live in a man’s world”

“Right” you grumbled. Because of course. You let out a frustrated huff and placed your hands on the table. “Can you be honest with me? How much of a shot do I have? Because I really, really want that job. Okay? I need to prepare myself more? Done, I’m-”

“Y/N. Don’t underestimate yourself” Hwayoung smiled softly. “You already do and are everything that the job requires to, and you do it perfectly. You know this company through and through, you have fantastic instincts. Frankly, I should have promoted you to publishing years ago” she said.

Your eyes widened. “Why didn’t you do that?” you asked slowly. 

Hwayoung sighed. “You manage every single aspect of my job that I hate doing” she said with a grimace. “And well… at the time, I thought you needed more preparation. But I was wrong. I admit that”

You pressed your lips together. 

“I want to do things right, Y/N. And if I have a say in whoever ends up getting the job, then I’m gonna go full on you” she promised. 

You nodded with a smile, but at the same time, you were hurting inside. 

You didn’t know what you were going to do if you didn’t get the job.

⠈⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

Felix was typing on his macbook when he saw that you stood in front of his desk with a smile.

“What?” he asked, frowning. 

“I’m trying to say thank you” you replied. 

He sighed and stood up, grabbing a folder with files. “No need”

You huffed and followed him. “You helped me, and I owe you a favour” you stood next to him as he placed the folder inside the drawer. “What can I do for you? I can clean your apartment from A to Z, I can bake you- no, wait. I will go with you to your stepbrother’s wedding. I can be your designated driver, you can get shit faced drunk and I will clean up your vomit”

Felix looked at you and narrowed his eyes, grabbing his coat and walking out of the office with you following him suit. “How do you know about that?” he muttered. 

“I overheard you in my kitchen and I know you need a plus one” you told him. “Are you mad at me?” 

He sighed as he continued walking. “I’m not mad at you, Y/N. I’m just busy” he said but you continued walking next to him. “My God, Y/N, can you give me some time alone?”

“No! Not until you say we’re even!” you said, shaking your head. 

He stopped in his tracks and looked at you. “What do you mean ‘even’?”

You looked behind him and saw that there was a storage room. Your brain didn’t think it through as you pushed him inside the room while he looked at you like you had grown two heads. 

You closed the door behind you as his back almost slammed against a shelf. “Okay… now this is on another level of-”

“just say that I can take you to the wedding. End of story” you told him, standing in front of him, your chests almost touching each other’s. 

“Is that what you want?” he asked you.

“No, what I want is for us to stop fighting” you told him angrily. “I just want a freaking little ounce of peace in my daily life, thank you very much”

“And I’ll just die of boredom” he said to you.

“No, you and I won’t be bored because I’ll enjoy a fantastic new job to keep me busy while you’re busy hunting for one” you stated simply with a fake friendly smile. 

“You’re not getting the job-”

“No!” you said as he went to move but you were quick to press your hands on his chest, pushing him against the shelf once again. 

Your breath became ragged as you noticed how little the distance between the two of you had become. His nose was very close to yours, and it made you angry how his face was unreadable. 

You looked him in the eyes and bit your lip. “Put your hands on me” you whispered to him.

He let out a little chuckle with a side smirk. “You can put them on yourself” he whispered. 

You breathed out and grabbed his hands, slowly placing them on the sides of your waist. He gently moved them so they were resting on the curve of your ass, his fingers digging into your asscheeks. 

He bit his lip slightly and slowly released it, making you press your face close to his, your lips brushing against each other.

“Kiss me” you spoke directly on them. 

He smiled and brushed them a couple more before pulling his face away. “Will you do me a favour?” he asked in a whisper. 

You looked up to his eyes and swallowed. “What?”

He licked his lips in a nervous habit. “Go to dinner with Wooyoung and kiss him” he told you.

You frowned immediately and pulled your whole body back from him. “What? Why would I do that?”

He sighed. “If it’s better than our kiss a couple of days ago at the elevator, then that’s fine. But if it’s not then-”

“What is your problem, Felix Lee?” you asked him angrily as you clenched your fists at your sides. 

“Look…” Felix sighed. “I don’t want to be an experiment before you settle down with Mr. Nice Guy. Alright?” he told you. “And I’m not gonna put my hands on you again unless you tell me that no one kisses you like I do”

He nodded one last time and left the storage room, leaving you standing there, eyes strained on the shelf in front of you.

Before you could say something to him, he shut the door. 

You blinked a couple of times and then let out a huff.

What the actual fuck is wrong with me?, you thought. 

-

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: @lattyjiji   @jeonginsleftcheek    @alrm02   @skzjiiiii   @lixies-favorite-cookie    @victoriaaf   @st4rv3lly   @noirvedette   @velvetmoonlght

i apologize if i can't tag you

[bcksbarnes]

time's never been on our side - chapter one

pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader

summary: you and bucky happen to meet by chance one night, and it feels like there is a spark between the two of you - but he has to leave. was this destiny? or cruel fate?

word count: 3K

a/n: ahhhh first chapter of my new fic! i can't wait to write more and explore this plot. thank you all who voted in my poll! this was the fic i was leaning towards so i hope you all enjoy reading as much as i did writing :)

there’s nothing that bucky enjoyed more after months undercover than a dive bar in the greatest city in the world – the city he was lucky to call home. new york had been there to wish him farewell when he left for the war and had welcomed him back with open arms after his deprogramming over seven decades later. 

that’s why he loved the city; it changed rapidly but it never felt different. 

he had a list of bars he’d like to frequent, most of them small and quiet, the sound of some 90s rock band coming from the speaker and the smell of smoke lingering in the air. he liked places that didn’t ask questions. places that felt like he could blend in seamlessly.  

his life as the winter soldier was so far removed now, a life where he had been both infamous and a ghost. they never saw the winter soldier, but they knew of his stories. 

now, he was just happy to be bucky. though, and he’d never admit it to steve, he was tired. tired of fighting. tired of missions. there was always something new, though there was hope in the back of his mind that one day he could quit, settle down, start a new life. but that’s all it was, wasn’t it? hope, not something he was capable of actually doing. 

bucky felty an immense amount of guilt about his time as the winter soldier, but he felt even worse when he thought about steve. the man had done so much for him, he believed in him, he found him, he fought for him – when he called for another mission how was bucky supposed to say no? 

his thoughts are interrupted when he hears the door of the bar open, his ears perking up and his attention brought back to reality. that was how he was conditioned. there was always a threat, he always needed to be on guard.

he hadn’t been there long when you walked in, the ice in his whiskey had barely begun to sweat. his head turns to look at the front door, eyes watching as you sit down next to him at the barstool, not even sparing him a passing glance. 

bucky turns his head back to his drink, his brain working in overdrive to drown out the memories of his last mission. his therapist – ugh, he hated that – had suggested that continuing to fight might not be great for his stress but he couldn’t slow down. that’s when he felt like he would let steve down and, honestly, that’s when the thoughts were worse. 

“what’s good here?” your voice hits him before he has a chance to realize you’re talking to him, his grasp on his glass clenches for a moment before he slowly turns his head, your gazes catching. it feels like ice is pumping through his veins as you two look at each other, a shiver running down his spine that he does his best to ignore. 

your eyes watch him carefully, this stranger is looking at you like you had just asked the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. 

“nothing.” his voice is gruff and unwavering, a hint of humor in it if you were to listen close enough. 

you smirk a bit at his response, unphased by his disgruntled attitude towards you. 

“good to know.” you hum to yourself a bit, squinting your eyes as you look at the alcohol selection behind the bar, eventually just settling on a beer that seems safe as the bartender serves you. 

you have buckly’s attention now, he watches as you bring the bottle to your lips, your brows furrowed together as you wonder how a bar can get away with selling such stale beer. 

“not up to your tastes?” he asks, seeing the face you make after you sip. 

“try about five years past its expiration.” you say, head turning to look at the man next to you. 

he’s watching you intently and you would normally feel exposed under such a gaze, as if he’s trying to read your every thought with just a look. but, there’s something warm and inviting underneath the cold stare, something that makes you relax a bit.

“i’ll give you some advice – when in doubt, always go with whiskey.” his metal hand picks up his glass, tipping it towards you before bringing it up to his lips. 

you chuckle a bit as you hang your head, shaking it. what an asshole.

“you couldn’t have told me that like two minutes ago when i asked?” 

he smirks for a quick moment; it fades as soon as it appears. 

“you asked what was good. i said nothing. i didn’t lie.” he quips back. “i just didn’t think it was necessary to go into all the details.” 

you rake your eyes over this stranger as he speaks. despite being seated you can tell he’s tall, well built – no doubt. he looks like he hasn’t seen sleep in a few days, and the dark hair on his face is between scruff and a beard. and despite it all, handsome. 

“thanks.” you mumble sarcastically before tipping the bottle of beer again, taking another sip. 

“you don’t seem like someone who frequents these places.” bucky’s not entirely sure why he continues to engage with you. he visits these bars to get away from people, to not be disturbed, not to talk to some random woman who had just sat down. though it’s very out of character for him, he continues nonetheless. 

“that’s a bit presumptuous.” though he’s not wrong, you make no effort to correct him. “and what do you mean by these places?” 

“you know ...” he shrugs a bit, searching around the room.

you know exactly what he means. the bar is small, cramped actually, you two are one of five people in the place including the bartender. the walls were dark and uninviting, behind the smell of cigarettes was a deep rooted hint of musk. beer signs hung on the wall, all which were slightly off centered, and the tv that hung, which was in fact muted, had been flickering for quite some time. it wasn’t a place that you would come to, but you had stormed out of another bar and this was the first place you landed on, and you needed a drink badly.

“places where you don’t have to ask what to get.” he’s teasing, there’s a soft sparkle in his eye for a moment as he takes in your features. you roll your eyes at him, feeling your hand grip the bottle of your beer tighter.

“i was looking for a change of scenery.” you say. “and my ex is at the bar i usually hang out at.”

you had been broken up for months, actually, he had moved on at this point. new girlfriend, new apartment, and there was no malice there, or jealousy. sometimes it felt like you were stuck. like you couldn’t move forward or find someone new. you stayed at your old job, in your old apartment, single. it wasn’t that you wanted him, it’s that it was too difficult to feel happy for someone when you weren’t happy in your own life.

“ah, classic.” bucky says, nodding empathetically.

“yeah,” you shrug as you take another sip of your beer, it’s starting to go down a lot smoother now. “i didn’t get your name.”

you can see the hesitation in his eyes, like he doesn’t want to tell you, but it’s quickly replaced with something more meaningful, something you can’t really read.

“bucky.” 

“bucky.” it rolls off your tongue easily as you repeat it, and it also fits him perfectly. he looked like a ‘bucky’. you say your name back and you can see he makes a mental note of it. “it’s nice to meet you.” 

he grunts a bit in response as he takes another sip of his drink, the liquor burning but he shows no change in his facial features.  

“are you someone who frequents these places?” you ask. 

“you could say that.” he responds, his glass now resting on the wood bar, though he makes no attempts to clarify. “are you from around here?”

“yes and no.” you say with a shrug. “grew up across the river, moved into the city once i was able to get a full time job. now i live around the corner in the east village in my shitty one bedroom that costs way too much.” he laughs at that. “what about you?”

“i was born and raised in brooklyn.” bucky explains, looking down at his drink. “joined the army, did some things here and there, and now i’m what most would consider a nomad.”

“yeah? why’s that?”

“haven’t settled down … my work requires me to travel a lot for extended periods of time. if i find myself with downtime in a city i just usually book a hotel for a few days until i need to leave.”

bucky cannot, for the life of him, figure out why he is telling you all this information. it’s like his brain is in some sort of fog and he can’t stop himself from speaking. he was leaving tomorrow for another mission, he didn’t need you, a random stranger, knowing all this about him. bucky didn’t like to get attached, or feeling like he left any loose ends. 

when he had finished his mission upstate earlier that day he was excited about some time off, being in new york was few and far between now for him so he wanted to make the most of his time. but, when steve had called and said that he needed help on a month-long mission - how could bucky refuse?

“what do you do for work?”

you can tell the question makes him shift a little in his seat, uncomfortable by whatever he does and the need to always be moving.

“i’m a soldier, of sorts.” he says, though he doesn’t elaborate. “actually, i’m only in town for the night. i have a flight out in the morning.”

“where to?” 

“that’s classified.”

the response makes you chuckle a bit, feeling your cheeks heat up slightly. of course it was. you were just enthralled by this enigma of a man that you couldn’t help but ask, it was worth a shot.

you and bucky spend a few more drinks together, the night passing by quickly as the two of you talk. you pick up that he eyes his watch a few times, knowing that the hours are ticking by and it’s getting later, he had an early flight in the morning but he makes no attempts to stop your conversation, as if he’s just making a mental note of when he needs to leave.

it’s a little after midnight now, about two hours had passed since you had made your way into the bar. somehow you two were huddled a little closer than what would normally be considered friendly, your elbows touching as you both lean on the bar. it feels like the universe is pulling you together, like magnets slowly inching their way towards one another.

bucky’s in the middle of telling you a story about a friend of his, he makes no mention that it’s steve rogers, and the both of you are laughing at the absurdity of it. 

“and then he says to me,” bucky clears his throat before lowering his voice an octave to do an impression. “now, buck, if i could have a word with you. have you ever thought of … smiling a bit more?”

“he said that?!” you ask, your eyes a bit hazy from the alcohol. you had made the switch over to whiskey per bucky’s earlier recommendation. “in front of everyone?”

“in front of everyone!” he says, his eyes wide slightly. he’s glad you found the story just as absurd as he did. “not that i care, but also why right at that moment?”

“your friend sounds like something else.”

“you can definitely say that about …” he trails off, remembering that he didn’t want to mention steve’s name. “... him. we’ve been buddies for a long time, i know he means well, but sometimes i wish he would just shut his mouth.”

the two of you laugh again, filling the otherwise silent bar with some much needed warmth.

“hey,” you say after the laughter dies down and there’s a moment of silence between the two of you. “i’m sure you probably have to get out of here soon, but do you wanna stop and get a slice of pizza together?”

drunk food sounded like heaven to both of you. bucky hadn’t realized he was starving until you mentioned it, he actually wasn’t even sure he had eaten that day. the hours post missions tended to blend together most of the time until he was able to either sleep, or find some alcohol to down. and you didn’t realize how badly you were craving anything that wasn’t whiskey, you weren’t sure how this man drank this at all. you felt like your whole body was on a fire - though the more you thought about it, it could also be the scent of bucky’s cologne that’s making you feel that way - but, the whiskey was definitely hard to stomach.

he nods his head over to the door, the two of you standing up from the barstools. both of your tabs are paid by the time you make it out to the street, the cool air hitting you like a slap in the face. bucky is behind you, shrugging on his leather jacket as you both begin to walk in the direction of the pizzeria.

“i’m surprised you’re not in brooklyn.” you say to him, your head turning in his direction, watching as he puts his hands inside his jacket pockets. “you only have one night in the city and you decided to stay in manhattan.”

“yeah.” he shrugs a bit, not meeting your gaze. what he doesn’t tell you is how hard it is to go back to brooklyn, to walk the streets he grew up on and know that everyone he’s ever loved had passed on, how all the memories he had were all just distant, haunting reminders of the life he wasn’t able to have. “thought i’d change it up a bit.” he lies easily, wishing to drop the conversation.

a few minutes pass, and two slices are secured, both of you standing on the sidewalk outside the pizzeria trying to down them as you talk about everything and nothing. now, in the streets of the city, the two of you are just one of hundreds of people enjoying their night, unlike the private, secluded nature of the bar. although he doesn’t show it, bucky is on alert, watching every person who passes by and treating them as a threat, all while maintaining a light conversation with you … and eating his pizza. he was a good multi-tasker.

it’s when the two of you are finished and were walking back in the direction towards bucky’s hotel that the weight of realization hits both of you. this was the first and last time either of you would see each other. a one night only, ships passing in the night, hello and goodbye. 

“i had fun.” you whisper softly, the quiet around the both of you suddenly feeling suffocating. bucky doesn’t respond back, his eyes on the ground ahead of him, his thoughts of not wanting this to end weighing heavily on his mind. “when’s the next time you’re going to be in new york?”

“i’m not … i’m not sure.”

your shoulder accidentally brushes against his as you walk and you’re sure that your whole body is on fire now. how unfair was this? meeting someone new and exciting for the first time in months, someone who made you forget about the empty, lonely feeling bubbling deep in your gut? it was all a cruel joke set up by the universe. of course he would be off tomorrow and you would most likely never see him again.

“this is me.” he says, as the two of you stand outside of his hotel.

neither of you want to meet the other's eyes, neither want to make the first move to say goodbye. you barely knew him, yet something inside of you felt like you did, or at least wanted to find out in the future.

“you could text me some time?” you ask.

you watch his face and how he hesitates to say anything. his metal hand grips and releases into fists at his side. he’s thinking of all the ways he wants to tell you no. that he can’t let a loose end exist in his world.

“sure.” his voice betrays his mind, he digs into his coat to grab his phone handing it over to you. you quickly type in your number and send yourself a text.

bucky’s number.

he reads the text you sent when you hand him his phone back and he smirks to himself.

“how original.”

 “it seemed like something you’d say.”

the both of you stand there for a moment, searching each other's faces, before bucky takes a step back, the sound of his leather boot hitting the concrete snapping you back into reality.

“it was nice meeting you.” he whispers.

“you too, bucky.”

he gives you one last glance over before he turns on his heel, briskly walking into the hotel and leaving you to the dark streets of the city. a gust of wind hits you and you pull your jacket closer to yourself as you head off in the direction of your apartment. had it always been this cold? or did the distraction of bucky have you so far removed from reality you hadn’t realized?

it’s me :)

you text back as you stand in the elevator to your apartment. three dots appear on your screen and quickly fade. it’s late. he had an early flight. surely you’d hear from him soon enough. you hoped.

[ushkoo]

your headcanons are so cute!!!!!

I am a major fan of throwing these guys around like that one naked Barbie doll every girl has had at some point so it’s nice to see some sweet stuff

that being said, headcanons on the mercs taking care of the reader when they are sick (you choose if it’s dating or not)

TF2 MERCS COMFORTING YOU WHEN YOUR SICK 🏥💉

and aaa ty you’re so sweet! (๑•́ ω •̀๑)

For this, the sickness is vomiting and stuff so don’t read if you don’t feel comfortable!

And I’m choosing to say its dating headcanons too :)

Scout:

Scout is a little clueless on what to do to help you, so he tries to remember what his mother would do for him when he was sick as a kid! He would poorly attempt to make you food (stuff thats easy to digest, of course) and would constantly check up on you make sure you’re doing okay. He might even call his mother a few times to ask for advice as he’s afraid of messing up and making it worse. He’d even help hold your hair back if you needed to throw up. Once he’s sure that it’s not contagious, he’ll sit with you in bed and keep you nice and warm with blankets <3. You’re not lifting a finger on his watch! He’d feel awful about having to leave you when he had to go and fight and would practically sprint back to your room as soon as the team got back.

Soldier:

Unfortunately, Soldier would seem a lot less caring than Scout. He’d insist that you just need fresh air, open all the windows and drag you outside in the freezing cold. Of course he’s sympathetic, he knows how crappy it feels to be sick! In his eyes, he’s helping you! If you did genuinely seem worse after that, he’d let you go back to bed and bring you apology soup afterwards. He knows there’s not much he can do other than wait for your body to fight off the illness, so he’ll bring you a few newspapers to read or maybe even bring some war tapes to watch with you!

Pyro:

As always, Pyro is an angel. They’re looking after you 24/7, even staying in your room at night in case you need to throw up at 3AM. They have a gas mask on, they aren’t worried about catching anything! They just want to be there for you. They won’t pressure you to eat if you don’t feel well enough but might just bring you breadsticks to keep you going. They’ll borrow a few movies from around the base and watch them with you until you feel better <3. They’d probably end up falling asleep in your room a few times but would wake up anytime you need them.

Demo:

Demo wouldn’t be the best person to go to when you’re unwell. He’d first suggest drinking until you forget about it but would regret telling you to do that when it makes you vomit even more. After that, he’d have to accept that he needs to actually take care of you better, so he’d temporarily try and stop his own drinking to take care of you. He still wouldn’t be great, but he’d check up on you frequently and hold your hair back when you need it! If you’re lucky, he might bring you a newspaper or magazine that he found lying around in the base. He cares about you, he’s just bad at expressing it like this!

Heavy:

Heavy is very motherly when taking care of you. He’ll scold you a bit for getting sick but also make you soup and take your temperature all the time <3. He remembers how his own mother used to take care of him and his siblings and how safe he felt with her and wants you to feel the same way! He will open the windows and let all the cold air in, but he knows that fresh air will make you feel better in the end. He’ll bring you some good books to read and maybe even translate a few of his favourite Russian ones for you! However, he will test you on them afterwards and expect a full analysis of each. Being sick isn’t an excuse for missing the point of the novel.

Engineer:

Sadly, Engineer is similar to Soldier and will drag you outside and make you continue as normal until you genuinely can’t stop vomiting on the floor, then he’ll finally accept that you’re sick. Until then, expect many “you’re being dramatic, you just need exercise.” and “its because you don’t eat healthy enough”. When he finally accepts that you can’t live like this, he’ll visit you in your room and check up on you often (he feels guilty for doubting you before). If you’re lucky, he might even bring you a crossword! He’s not the best at taking care of people but he’ll certainly try! At night, he’ll stay with you until you fall asleep and frequently check on you in the night to make sure you’re still sleeping peacefully. <3 he cares a lot but doesn’t know what he can do to help.

Medic:

Naturally, Medic is one of the best people to be taking care of you when you’re sick. He’ll instantly recognise what’s wrong and take care of you accordingly! Lots of bed rest, you’re not allowed to lift a finger with him around. As long as you’re not contagious, he’ll cuddle with you as well, he knows how awful you’re feeling and wants to make you feel better <3. He’ll bring you lots of water and he will make sure you drink every drop of it. He’ll also sit and chat with you (talk at you until you can’t stay awake) for hours so you never get bored! You’ll definitely recover the fastest in his care.

Sniper:

Sadly, Sniper is rather unsympathetic to begin with as well. He’ll tell you that it’s probably just something you ate and that you’re being dramatic. That is until you throw up in front of him and he realises that he might actually have to take care of you now. He won’t go near you until he’s sure it’s not contagious, then he’ll dare to give you a kiss on the head occasionally whilst bringing you soup. Despite how he acts, he cares a lot and feels bad about being dismissive at first. He’ll let you stay in his van whilst you recover, it’s away from the noise of the base and he wants you to get as much rest as possible. He’ll also hold you close at night, he’s ready to get up at any time if you need to go outside to throw up. <3

Spy:

Spy is probably the worst person to take care of you when you’re sick. If you even mention having a stomach ache around him, he’s instantly moving a few meters away from you. He’ll interrogate Medic until he knows whats wrong with you and will be relieved when he learns that it’s not contagious. Sadly, he’ll still be a bit of an ass about it. He’ll shut you in your room and occasionally poke his head around the door to make sure you’re still alive, shove some water down your throat then move on. He believes that you’ll recover best in your own anyway. He’s distant because he cares!

��———————————————————— 🩻

Aaa ty for reading! I hope these are okay >o<

Sorry for being dead recrntly ive been rlly tired nd busy w college.. i promise ti try nd be mire active!

[dramaticallytotal]

For Your Entertainment Headcanons: Part One

Idea Post

• Chaos Gremlin Noah, my beloved! Chris purposefully starts drama in the show to entertain Noah because, as mentioned before, a bored Noah is a scary Noah. This is why he was so mad at Duncan for quitting. Noah was looking forward to the love triangle drama! Now what was Chris supposed to play on?

• Noah getting Harold kicked off was more brutal than any of my other aus. Bro compared Harold to Chris, and Harold took that personally. This happened after the challenge in Egypt was over, and they settled into the hotel they would be staying at for a while. A lot of people were chilling by the pool, and Noah was one of them. Noah really liked pools despite the crowds they attracted. Plus, he promised Izzy he would watch her do a handstand and walk the entire length of the pool while doing so. He had been doing so until he got bored and started reading Construire avec le peuple (Architecture For The Poor) by Hassan Fathy when Harold decided that he absolutely had to interrupt Noah to start a debate.

He had done this four times previously, and Noah was done.

Apparently, Harold could not let go of all the cultural insensitivities they encountered today and just had to tell the 50th person around so. All the while wearing that stupid tinfoil hat he made. Actually...that gave Noah an idea. An awful idea. It gave Noah a wonderful, awful idea!

• He laid into Harold about wearing the tinfoil hat and that by wearing it, he was being culturally insensitive. "You're basically stating that you don't believe in their history. You wearing that...thing...is a statement that you agree with erasing people's hard work and labor for a brain-dead conspiracy theory. Hard work and labor that was significantly important to not only their history but their culture.

You keep harping on about Chris and the Network but are just as bad as them. Maybe even worse, too, considering you keep telling everyone you know everything about Egypt. If you're so well read and educated about it, that makes your fashion choice all the more insulting. And all the worse because I'm pretty sure Chris's knowledge of Egypt is purely from The Mummy, Cleopatra, Gods of Egypt, and other movies.

Do better."

• Absolutely destroyed Harold. This made Harold determined to prove Noah wrong and to maybe appease himself of guilt. Which cultivated in him having to point out everything that could be seen as culturally insensitive.

• Each time Harold annoyed someone, Noah had to hide his widening smile. Especially if the someone was Chris, his annoyed expression was just too funny!

• Alejandro flirting with Leshawna and Bridgette was also really entertaining to Noah because of how the others reacted. Especially Harold! He was so mad and sad, and it was hilarious because he kept trying harder to seem cool and good, and it was failing spectacularly!

• Like I said before, Noah is pretty apathetic and only cares about Team E-Scope and Owen. He also holds little grudges against some competitors! Like, noticeably, Harold. Another one that may come as a surprise is Bridgette, which is why he found such joy in her predicament in the Yukon. Before he got eliminated on Island Noah, he didn't like many people there, but he thought Bridgette was pretty cool and nice, and he did think she was pretty. It was a small crush, one he knew he wasn't going to pursue but that didn't mean he couldn't be her friend.

Apparently, this must have given something away, though he had no idea how, and instead of talking to him, she joked about it to some of the girls knowing damn well that Geoff and his "bros" were listening in. It was most likely to see if the guy would get jealous, considering everyone knew the two were crushing on each other. That somehow made it worse to Noah because from then on, he started getting the Harold treatment from Geoff, Duncan, and DJ.

That pissed him right the hell off. He had done nothing, and all of a sudden, he was getting shoulder checked when walking to the mess hall. His books would go missing from time to time if he didn't hide them first. Just small shit like that, and he was over it.

It was one of the reasons he got himself voted off. He was not about to stick it out in a shitty summer camp while these dude bros wanted to act like high school movie bullies instead of focusing on the competition.

• He had no remorse. He had more fun watching the competition from the luxury of his resort room or the game room.

• So he has little grudges against Bridgette, Geoff, DJ, and Duncan because of that whole mess. Everyone else he just doesn't care about. He tried to get to know some of them on Island and in Aftermath, but it was like they were humoring him. And he knew some only interacted with him because he was Owen's best friends. He was content with that, though, because the way he saw it, he at least tried, and that's more than he can say for the others.

So yeah, he doesn't really care what happens to everyone else.

• Izzy and him are chaos siblings, and Eva is terrified that they are on the same team without her being there to keep an eye on them and be their stern voice of reason. She should be.

• The number of times that Chef has had to carry them under his arms away from areas they weren't allowed is too much. All the while, the two are giggling maniacally.

• When Noah told Alejandro "Good Work," about Bridgette in the Yukon. Alejandro was afraid his teammate had found him out and went on the offense, which was flirting. He figured he could distract Noah with the flirting, and they could forget the whole mess.

It seemed to work if the blushing was anything to go by. Or the way Noah looked away if he complimented him and smiled a little. He was a little surprised when Noah would compliment him back of whisper snide comments to him, and he figured that was the snark's way of flirting back.

He assumed his plan worked and didn't pay any more close attention to his teammate. Which was a mistake he later learned.

• Noah knew he shot himself in the foot when he complimented Alejandro on a job well done with Bridgette, but he didn't care because it led to more entertainment for him! Alejandro started flirting with him, and the expressions of the females were delicious! So he acted shy and coy and would reciprocate the flirting here in there in his own way, and the way Alejandro fell for it was also hilarious. It took everything in him not to cackle.

• The crew and interns love their gremlin boss, which is why they have a code for if they think he's getting bored and they really can't have that! So if they see even an inkling of boredom, they call a Code B-72 and rush to find something that will entertain him. Most of the time, it's helping sneak him to Chris and Chef's room so Chris and Noah can watch Love Island together with excuse that Chris misses his trash TV buddy.

Or they sneak him books!

• After the confrontation in the cargo hold, Alejandro is always close by Noah looking at him with absolute moon eyes. Noah thinks this is still Alejandro flirting with him because he caught him, but no....Alejandro is just a simp now.

• Before their next challenge, Noah makes sure to get Alejandro alone so he can tug him down by his necklace again. He doesn't notice that the guy doesn't seem bothered by this in the least. "You're going to try today. That's not a question. You are going to actually try and win with the rest of us, and if we lose. We lose. But at least we lost when putting in effort. If we win? All the better. Understand?"

Alejandro, breathless, "Si."

"Good boy." After making his point, Noah once more patted Alejandro on the cheek before walking away again. And again, he left Alejandro absolutely flustered and heart eyed.

• Next challenge was the Amazon, and Alejandro did still get punched by Owen, but Noah thought it would be funny to fuss over the hunk of a guy in front of everyone, especially the girls. Alejandro could die happy with the attention he was getting from his zorro.

• Alejandro went down the zipline with Noah, and Noah let it happen because there was no way he was doing that himself. He just went along for the ride and clung to Alejandro, who swore he was in heaven the entire ride down.

• When they stopped to make camp, Noah made sure to act like he wasn't doing much besides indulging Izzy and Owen in their shenanigans, but he was also telling them to go get firewood while Alejandro told Trent, Tyler, and Justin set up their sleeping bags and such while he and Noah went to find some food.

Thank goodness Noah was in the Boy Guides of Canada when he was younger even though he didn't stay long. Plus, he read those survival handbooks, and his sister was studying to be a horticulturist, and she had a phase where she wanted to harvest her own food or take trips into the forest to find "hidden snacks" and of course he got dragged along.

• No Owen being taken by the giant caterpillars. Alejandro is a simp, and he knew Noah would be angry. Of course, Noah noticed his anger with the oaf and how he didn't let him be taken, so he rewarded Alejandro with a smile and pat to the head. It had Alejandro on cloud nine.

• Noah's all about reward systems.

• Thankfully, his friends respond to them, too! And so does Alejandro! Win win.

• They don't win the challenge, but Noah still gives Alejandro a smile because he knew the guy was actually trying. Noah may or may not start being fond of Alejandro more than he was before. But according to his observation, Alejandro seems fond of him, too.

• Alejandro starts to let Noah see the real him behind the masks and feels so relieved when the guy doesn't hate him or finds him weird. He feels accepted, and he doesn't fail to notice how Noah opens up to him in return or the way they both get closer, and Noah gets more touchy feel-y.

Noah finds the real Alejandro worlds more interesting than his mask and realizes that he's starting to get a crush on the guy.

• Chris and Chef also notice this development and are thankful that Alejandro is keeping their little gremlin entertained, but also, how dare that charmer make goo-goo eyes at their gremlin!?

Next

[linddzz]

I feel like literally the only way to get Viktor into therapy sessions would be to 1) make it a mandatory condition of being able to continue studying Hextech (Heimerdinger's logic is "if I can't get them to stop making it maybe I can at least make sure the hands it is in are relatively stable?") or 2) make Jayce the therapist...

Both of these options are nightmares from a therapeutic perspective and very, *very* funny from a fic-writing perspective.

Option two would make them so much hilariously worse omg. Encouraging Viktor to open up to Jayce more?? Bringing them CLOSER and INCREASING their emotional intimacy?? With them both already being each other's number one enablers??? That's definitely one of the doomed timelines.

Jayce comes back from being asked to check in on Viktor his only report is "he's perfect and brilliant and is always right all the time actually ❤️"

The other hurdle that just occurred to me is that Viktor comes across so self assured and focused that by the time everyone realizes he needs therapy, he's already trying to hivemind the planet.

[ilikekidsshows]

You know, this is definitely old news, but to this day I'm -still- so bothered by Marinette's behavior in Ephemeral. Not even the part where she conspired to secretly expose Chat Noir's identity to a third party without his knowledge or consent (cute). It's what she said to him during, to convince him to reveal himself; she tricks him into thinking it was something they were doing together, and thus takes advantage of his trust in her and how much their bond means to him (transcript below for context):

Ladybug: Well... actually, it's kind of linked to what happened today. I've given it a lot of thought ever since I became guardian, you know? (leans on the fence) And, I've realized that... you were right after all. (turns to Cat Noir) We should tell each other our secret identities. Cat Noir: But, aren't the secrets supposed to protect us? Ladybug: I thought so. But when you didn't show up today, I didn't know how to locate you because we can't communicate when we're not transformed. If something bad happened to one of us when we're not heroes, we could know about it. It would make us stronger. We'd be able to defeat Shadow Moth quicker! Cat Noir: (walks towards Ladybug's side) So, we're doing this, for real? Ladybug: Yes. Cat Noir: Wow. Okay. You go ahead, m'lady. Guardians first! Ladybug: No, you first. Cat Noir: Let's do it together. (Viperion listens to their conversation while he's in the sewers.) Ladybug: No, I mean it. You go first. I'm... feeling kind of... awkward.

Is it just me, or is this not one of the most blatantly manipulative things she's ever done? To honest, I find it disgusting. She says all these things she knows he wants to hear, and doesn't mean one word of it. I've seen damage control interpretations that she did mean it, actually, that it's what she secretly wants herself but...that just feels like copium at this stage. There's no direct evidence for this interpretation beyond wishful thinking. On the other hand, it's blatant that she doesn't "feel awkward" as much as she's making an excuse to get him to reveal without having to herself (she doesn't want Viperion to know her identity, too, after all). Meanwhile Adrien is being put into a vulnerable position and arguably actually feeling awkward himself (seriously, when you watch the episode you can hear it in his voice). It's just...gross. And for what?

This is Lila levels of manipulation, but worse, because it's our supposed "heroine" who's acting this way (and I hold her to higher standards, yes, because hello, actual superhero and intended role model here?). Which is fine if it's treated as an actual flaw she learns from, but no. Of course not. She will never face real repercussions, or learn from this, because oh hey, turns out this never happened (and no, her realizing something went wrong with her plan in the end does not automatically mean she regrets her plan to betray his trust, or that she even realizes she was doing so). And our one saving grace, the one chance of this being addressed in any meaningful way, was Chat Noir's expression at the end of the episode, where it's clear he knows she's keeping something from him (he saw Viperion in the sewers, after all). But this never go anywhere, actually. They'll let him be frustrated at the secrets for one brief moment in Strikeback, before she has a panic attack and he drops it all, never to be brought up again.

And so many people seem to gloss over that she never actually apologized. All she did was berate herself for being the worst guardian ever, and then immediately accept Chat's pep talk, which includes a bit about how she's the "best superhero there ever was." At this point, I'm starting to think she has a point about being the worst, actually. Maybe she should lose her memories, transfer the guardianship to Alya, and get therapy. I'm not even mad at her, I'm mad at the writers for constantly pushing it in my face that she's the "best" when she's demonstrably...not, multiple times over. She doesn't need to be the best! It's not like she can't be impressive without being The Best TM, my god. But anyways. She could put her money where her mouth is and come clean about Ephemeral and other things, but no. Of course she hasn't.

And now as of season 6 we have him genuinely praising her as 'the best version of herself,' so no, his expression at the end of Ephemeral meant nothing in the end, actually, and she got away scot-free, being disgustingly manipulative without having to make amends or apologize or anything. All she had to do was cry.

I'm currently drinking major copium myself, hoping all or some of her secrets come to light (including her plan in Ephemeral, which, oh yeah, he still doesn't know about), wherein he rethinks the whole 'best version of yourself' thing and feels rightfully betrayed.

Because what the fuck, Marinette.

So yeah, I'm still bothered by Ephemeral.

---

Maybe Ephemeral wouldn't keep being so topical if Marinette's utter moral failures in that episode didn't keep getting ignored by the show. It's like the writers are counting on people to forget about it ever happening so that they can pretend Marinette isn't ready to shamelessly manipulate Cat Noir with every vulnerability he’s ever revealed to her. Until she, of course, does it again and the fandom will act like it's completely new and out of character, and the writers will take advantage of that to act like it's not a pattern of behavior by now and really is just a single, momentary lapse of judgement she shouldn't be judged for. But, like, those of us who remember know that all Marinette needs to manipulate Cat Noir with no hesitation is 1) a reason to do so 2) an assurance that she won’t get caught.

Marinette is a dishonest person. I remember reading someone talking about ‘Reverser’ and they said that, in that episode, Marinette couldn’t even help another person approach someone without her plan having an element of deceit to it. That just stuck with me. And now she’s being pitted against Lila, the person the fandom dubbed “Liar-la” because they thought she was the bigger liar based on very little. They’ve really amped up Lila’s liar game since with her multiple mother scams and such, but, like, considering how unironironically they have Marinette acting just like Gabriel, I don’t think the “liar versus liar, whose lies will bite them harder” parallel is going to amount to anything in the show.

[taeaura]

Do you think if say you self insert yourself into tcm 2006 maybye reader actually looking after Tommy he woud not loose his nose etc like if reader was there to look after Tommy tcm 2003 would go diffrent and her readers role would most likely be in most films, as she got captured before Chrissies group idk if this is too similar to what y wrote b4

Hi !! I hope I understood this right - If I didn't, please let me know🫀

Thomas Hewitt x Caring Reader - How Thomas' Outcome Would Differ From the 2006/2003 Remakes

TW: Self-harm, mental breakdowns, cannibalism, murder, TCM-Canon-Related Topics This isn't spell/grammar checked lol

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･.

First of all, I think Thomas would have a different outcome with his nose. Hear me out - If he had someone who not only encouraged, but actively took place in caring for his health, he'd have wayyy less of a chance to develop a deadly infection, or necrosis.

Continuing on that note; He'd take way better care of himself!! With positive feedback, productive routines, and someone to bond with, his mental health would begin to regenerate. He'd actually look forward to coming home from the slaughterhouse instead of dreading it.

..Pack him a lunch, please {and add a note :)}

--

Following the closing of the slaughterhouse, you'll need to be very, very patient with Thomas. He just lost his job, his purpose, and the main source of income for the family. PLUS the family just incorporated cannibalism/murder - which is no easy task.

Give him his space whilst providing opportunities to vent out his frustrations and anxieties. This really is the part where you either make or break your relationship {by 'you' I mean the reader as well as Thomas.} You two will need to care for each other more than ever in this time of need, and continuing this as the years progress.

--

If we follow the events of the 2003 remake's timeline, Thomas gets more manic and less restricted with his movements and overall presentation. Could this have been prevented? I'm not sure. Stalled, maybe, but this definitely seems like the result of multiple stressful events eating away at a man with little support or emotional regulation skills.

It would take a lot for someone to prevent this, but even then, one of you is gonna lose it. Taking care of someone with as much detail that would be needed in this situation would result in you going mad. You lose yourself, which is exactly what happened to Thomas.

That being said, he hasn't lost himself completely. When it's just the family, he's okay - When it's just the two of you, he's even better. Much calmer, relaxed, and open.

I envision Thomas having mental breakdowns every few months, maybe even more. During these breakdowns, it gets bad.

He's destructive, hysterical, and unpredictable. Tons more vocal, by that I mean lots more grunts, yelling, crying out. It's a lot of pent up anger and repressed emotions that not even he knew he had. Once he comes down, he'll be even worse {to himself}. Thomas feels terrible afterward; Guilty and extremely overstimulated which leads to lots of overflowing, hysterical crying and tendencies of self-harm {probably lots of hitting his head with his fist, though not punching}.

Essentially lots of this:

Sorry, I know this section sounds a lot like Bubba {Sawyer}...oops

When he's experiencing breakdowns like this, he needs space whilst also being 'supervised.' By supervised I mean making sure he's not being extremely destructive of other people OR himself {especially}. Don't worry about the items, worry about him. Thomas is never violent to the family {including you} during these episodes, but he most definitely is to the victims.

He just needs something simple, nothing too demanding or overstimulating - Even if it's just you sitting with him and assuring him no one's upset, that's enough for him to start coming down. He might need some rest after this :(

--

Other potential changes {in his outcome}:

He'd wear masks less {around family}

His creativity would flourish earlier-on

Thomas would have an easier time adjusting to the cannibalistic lifestyle {if you were there to suffer through it beside him}

His confidence would grow :)

His emotional regulation skills would strengthen

_____

Im never gonna leave you, baby - Even if you lose what's left of your mind

[emetophobic1]

TODAYS TOPIC : Unsympathetic!Patton.

AAUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I love Unsympathetic!Patton, do NOT get me wrong. But the way people portray him leaves me wanting to make my own fanfics for him atp… it always tend to be the same in my personal opinion. Patton is either straight up evil with not an ounce of remorse & he split the twins apart?… or he’s just rude for no good reason. Patton represents Morality, Feelings, and overall nice things. BUT! Uns.. I’ll just say U!Patton, is not the opposite of Patton, he’s simply not sympathetic. Which means he might not care how others feel but that doesn’t make him rude for no good reason… and I don’t even know where U!Patton splitting the twins came from so I won’t touch on that one much.

Again, in at least 80% of anything U!Patton related I’ve seen, they make him rude for no good reason and without an explanation. So, how would I do it? Well, there’s a lot of reasons why he could be acting rude towards the other sides, and oh baby do I have a list! I’ve made up my own little image and idea for an U!Patton AU, to which I would love to share.

Hear this. God-Complex. Yes, yes! Bear with me friends. I don’t mean God-complex as in he thinks he’s untouchable, I mean god-complex in a religiously traumatised type of way. I can imagine this idea: Patton notices how horrid Thomas’ health is, his own esteem and overall good feelings dropping due to lack of self-care, praying to whoever’s out there to give him a hand and help Thomas, but he does this prayer again, and again, and again. He’s in his room most of the time now, thinking, pondering, and praying. What could he possibly do to fix things? And why aren’t the others helping?… the others. That’s what’s wrong! They aren’t helping Thomas being how they are now, but how can he possibly try and get them to change their ways?… he needs to assert authority, like he knows everything and can do anything, show that he’s trying to help Thomas. Trying his hardest to subtly change them won’t work, shouting won’t work, so he needs to make it happen instead of asking.

He makes one last prayer as a thank you as if someone actually helped him so he could help everyone else. He’s not exactly in his right mind here, changing his outfit to seem more… worthy, his own morality shifting from what he thought was white to a dark grey. But, he still thinks he’s correct, that he’s right in doing this! In forcing certain sides to seperate from each other, in being meaner than usual, in forcing them to change - both in outfit and personality. He isn’t, but he thinks this is the only way to get Thomas to feel better even if in reality it’s making things worse. Janus knows exactly how Patton is thinking in this situation, like it’s some last resort, a defence mechanism from all that negativity, but can he help stop Patton? Perhaps he’s the only one who can.

You see what I’m saying here? All you need to make a good U!Patton AU is a REASON as to why he’s acting that way! Plus I think him acting like some god in order to change the others for the “better” of Thomas is really neat and I’d 100% love to explore that further! But all-and-all… anyone got some good U!Patton fics they could recommend me? :3 - and uh… take this little art I made. :) (yes that’s lyrics from New God by Moon Walker, that song lowkey inspired this idea and art)

[philosophicalparadox]

You are right 👍

And honestly it is SO refreshing to see someone explain this better than I ever could. Zabuza/Haku gave me the HC about Wakashudo-esque relationships being a Thing in Kiri, (as opposed to just being a thing between them) which when looking at the presented culture overall makes complete sense.

And honestly it’s one of the things that reallly frustrates me about not only Naruto, but anime/manga in the west in general. WE ARE NOT THE INTENDED AUDIENCE. At best we are a by-catch, except in some rare exceptions.

As someone in the Berserk fandom where there is an absolutely terrible deficit of people who have any cross-cultural understanding of the work at all, (maybe because it’s taking place in a pseudo-1420’s Europe, reasonably reliably at that, and DOES include references to a lot of western history and media, because Miura was a global literature professor) it’s just sooooooooooo frustrating to see western centric takes that completely ignore the fact that these series were not made for a western audience and don’t draw from the same well most of the time.

Mind, Shonen over the years has definitely made alterations to its tropes and modality to be more western-receptive, which is how we got My Hero and other very americanised “baby Shonen”, but Naruto ain’t one of them.

It’s also refreshing to see the authors own frustration, which is palpable in the work itself — Naruto really SHOULD have been a seinen, and it comes SO close at times that it blurs the lines a little. (Tree of death anyone?) But because of how media laws and other media related things work in Japan it’s not actually that easy to just dive in from one to the other; plus manga that have, in precedent, made that dramatic shift in genre don’t tend to do well, JoJo’s notwithstanding. In general, switching up your target audience is not a wise decision and no publisher will back you unless you’ve got serious clout. JoJo’s is such a long running manga/light novel series that there was less pushback on that, plus Araki just flat out didn’t give a shit.

Kishi couldn’t have been that flexible if he tried.

But besides that, Naruto came out right at the beginning of a counterculture movement in Japan, a renewed “westernization” that sought to bring feminism and equality notions into Japan which hadn’t been there prior. Social justice progress wise, Japan is about 20-30 years behind the US, which puts it about 50 years behind most other “developed” western nations. (See, Western Europe).

Unfortunately homosexuality is not very accepted in Japan; yes their attitude is different, but that’s not acceptance, just a different kind of prejudice. Japan is exceptionally xenophobic (racist) especially towards other Asians, but their idea of treating others differently looks more like indifference to a westerner, and indifference looks a lot like tolerance when violence is your primary frame of reference. Homophobia is the same.

(It’s not indifference at all, just a kind of passive aggression, which is really common in Asia at large, because of how the Shame/Honour culture thing works).

Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved for Kishi to go whole hog in a more modernish way, but as OP said 1. That’s not the reference material he was using and 2. He would almost certainly have been eaten alive by his fans and publisher for trying anything too obviously “Gay”.

I mean ffs have y’all ever looked in on the Japanese forums around this show? Or twitter? (Back when it existed in Japan). There’s always the Japanese version of a pearl clutcher in there whenever Naruto and Sasuke do anything remotely gay, and I remember perusing the internet after the anime added a filler arc in which Naruto and Sasuke end up “accidentally” kissing Again, (and get stuck to each other while needing to pee, which was arguably the worse infraction because “omg they have to look at each other’s peens????” ) and the Japanese fans went insane. Some in a good way, but man, some of those people were just mean. Homophobia on full display in there.

Nowadays it seems to be not as bad, but Japan still has a long ways to go before they’ll be as accepting as some of the 2020’s west. (Though with America running backwards that notion of overall western tolerance probably won’t last too long).

I get annoyed with the series and Kishimoto too, mainly because the worldbuilding in Naruto is objectively a hot dumpster fire of contradictions, but I also acknowledge that part of the reason for that is because Kishimoto got stuck trying to continue making a shonen series about some VERY not shonen topics, which limited his ability to be expansive, and that he was also working between the culture he grew up in (the 70’s-80’s) and the culture he was making the series in, AND trying to incorporate references that made a lot more sense to use in the 80’s when he was developing, which is when TV came to Japan as a household commodity and EVERYONE was working historical fiction and memoirs into TV dramas, making the entire notion of Samurai very popular, which additionally makes those references more obscure to a western audience, AND also trying to “disguise”, sort of, behind an acceptable, if slightly homophonic lens, the homosexual tendencies so his publishers could stay happy. (Which is why gay shenanigans are usually a source of comedic effect in Japanese media if they happen at all, because it’s safe as long as you’re making fun of it. Or they go the typical US route and only make the villains gay. Kishi arguably does this to Itachi and definitely presents that vibe with Orochimaru, though he comes across significantly more deranged and perverse, as does Kabuto, who is implied to be somewhat necrophilic, and even gets a “ew, but you do you” look from orochimaru himself about his habit of collecting bodies)

Point being, as I’ve said before, it’s very disingenuous to ignore the background and context behind the media you are consuming if you’re going to criticize or even analyze it. Mind you, I accept that not everyone had access to references to help understand any of this (I didn’t know about the references to Saikaku, though now that I see them presented like this it should have hit me in the face because I’m familiar with his works!), plus Naruto as a series looks VERY different to someone in its intended age audience than it does to adults with more experience and context for its contents, but still. Consider the angles. I see that crap ALL the time in the Berserk fandom, even the good non-dudebro side that acknowledges exactly how gay it actually is, because they miss the fact it was written in the 80’s by a man who grew up in the postwar period of the 50’s and 60’s, where attitudes towards homosexuality, women, war and other things I’ve seen fans tie themselves in knots about was very different than today.

(Not an excuse for the blatant sexism, but for its time berserk was actually quite progressive in a lot of ways.)

Thank you for the insight and letting me rant lol.

https://www.tumblr.com/weepingnightmarenaruto/775649233787387904/the-way-kishimoto-handles-narutos-trauma-is-so

What are your thoughts on this?

Hello anon!

Ngl this is one of my favorite ask I've ever received because it allows me to discuss something I've been meaning to for quite some time now.

Before I get into the topic that interests me the most, I'll give my observations on this:

Honestly Narutos childhood before the start of the manga needed to be explored more and Kishimoto should’ve given a bigger focus to how Naruto is because of it.

It was explored. Since chapter 1 and throughout flashbacks over the next chapters of the series, Kishimoto efficiently established and explored Naruto's childhood which explained why Naruto behaves the way he does. Kishimoto does not need to grab the readers hand and explain exhaustively so people understand Naruto's character. This manga is not hard to get to need all that.

But the way Kishimoto constantly shows how okay Naruto is with being mistreated as long as he feels they acknowledged him, is so sad. And I wish Kishimoto awknowledged how unhealthy this is.

This is where it gets interesting. It is true that Naruto isn't allowed to get angry at Konoha and is quickly resolved in the manga (although that particular paragraph was in reference to Sasuke). However, this has more to do w/ the fact that Naruto is a shonen and the power of friendship and loyalty overcomes everything, even Kishimoto himself expressed frustration at how naive the resolution of problems in shonen manga is, maybe if the series was a seinen he would've written with more nuanced about Konoha as a political and military entity that also happens to be the home of the child soldiers.

This is also part of the reason why the Kage summit arc pisses me off so much. Naruto lets himself be beat up by Karui over Sasuke, has a panick attack, rejects Gaara, gets on his knees to beg the raikage to pardon Sasuke etc. Like he should be able to emphatize with the Kumo ninjas over what happened to Killer Bee and he should value his friendship with Gaara more. Honestly Sasuke joining the akatsuki and trying to capture Killer Bee should have been a deal breaker to Naruto. And to top that off Naruto witnessing Sasuke trying to Murder Sakura should at least be one. Naruto forgiving people who mistreats him makes sense, but people mistreating the people he cares for should not be. The way Naruto treats so many of his friends over his obsession with Sasuke is so disappointing.

And this is what I wanted to tackle the most. Naruto fans do not understand Kishimoto's writing AT ALL. Idk if the op of that post is Asian or not, but it's become clear to me that Naruto fans don't know and have shown zero interest in getting to know Kishimoto's writing influences. And no, I'm not talking about Dragon Ball.

Kishimoto has shared with fans his interest in Samurai and the Edo period Japan several times, to the point the first manga he wanted to write when he was a highschooler, before he even won an award at Shonen Jump, was about Samurai but scrapped the idea because at the time mangas like Rurouni Kenshin and Blade of the Immortal came out and he felt there was no longer space for him in the highly popular sub-genre and also that he's own writing wasn't as good compared to the aforementioned works.

But that does not mean that we don't see Kishimoto's nerdy side come out in Naruto about Samurai even if it's a manga about ninjas. There's the obvious, we see during the 4th war arc an actual battle between two samurai warriors, we also know Naruto is established in a fantasy universe of feudal Japan with damyos (feudal lords) and all. The themes of honor and loyalty, quests for revenge, the overall kinship is present as well.

But for those who have read Japanese literature works from the 17th century, you would have noticed that Kishimoto borrows A LOT from them when he's writing his manga, especially for Naruto and Sasuke.

It's funny because SS and NH shippers, as well as Naruto stans who hate Sasuke and Sasuke stans who hate Naruto and even fujoshis who are used to cookie-cutter stories where seme and uke do nothing but fuck after a couple of meetings in a corporate setting or high school or whatever boring shit they like to read, use the following examples to show how toxic and unhealthy Naruto and Sasuke's relationship is, not caring about Kishimoto's literary references as usual.

Kishimoto writes a love story the way they used to be written centuries ago. He draws a lot of inspiration from at least two writers from this period Ihara Saikaku and Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

The first example is Haku and Zabuza's relationship, I'll speak about them before moving to Naruto and Sasuke to give more context on how homosexual love stories were written around the time. Although Zabuza is not a samurai but rather a ninja on the run, the relationship is clearly inspired on the wakashudo practices where an older man would take a child from ages 11-16 as his protégé to train him, feed him, give him shelter and take him as his lover until the child came of age and became a warrior at the service of the lord of the land himself. Those young boys must be of great beauty, Saikaku is constantly writing about how their beauty is what grants them the better masters over the ugly boys.

This is what Zabuza and Haku do. Zabuza takes Haku as an apprentice and they swear loyalty to each other till the death, because that's the other thing, if the circumstance presented, both master and apprentice would fight alongside each other, kill for each other and if necessary die for each other.

Many Naruto fans feel uncomfortable about the real nature of Zabuza and Haku's relationship and delude themselves into believing their relationship is actually one of father and son, lol how stupid.

Because Naruto is a shonen, we never see sexual acts being performed so Kishimoto instead shows us the attraction these characters feel for one another through suggestive dialogue and flushed faces.

Even Haku's sacrifice and Zabuza's final words are totally inspired in the works of Saikaku, where both lovers hope to meet each other in another world. Foer exambple, in one of Saikaku's stories The Boy who Sacrificed his Life in the Robes of his lover, the boy, Senjuro, who had pledged to love Sazen in this world and the next and knowing his lover was at risk of being ambushed and killed, disguises himself as Sazen sacrificing his life for him getting slashed from the back, after learning about Senjuro's death Sazen kills himself as well.

Very dramatic right? This other post also discusses briefly Haku and Zabuza and Kishimoto drawing inspiration from literary works from the Edo period [LINK]

Let's move onto Naruto and Sasuke. Is their relationship toxic and unhealthy? By today's standards it sure is. But by the standards of the 17th century is one of the greatest stories of male love ever told, I'm certain if Saikaku could read Naruto he would commend Kishimoto on his work. But this is something Naruto fans don't know and quite frankly most don't care about.

In the post you linked, OP expresses the arc that pisses them off the most (and most Naruto fans hate as well) is the Kage Summit arc where Naruto states his fierce loyalty to Sasuke no matter what, and I must laugh because if there's any arc that resembles the male love stories of the Edo period the most, it's that one.

It bothers most fans Naruto wanted to commit double suicide so he and Sasuke escape the burdens of their world and be free of them in the next one. This is a common theme in literature of 17th century Japan. Two lovers making up for their Confucian failings in this world seeking redemption in a Buddhist paradise (at the time Buddhism had made its way into Japan and it was very different from China and India's Buddhism, you can read more about it here).

Kishimoto has referenced Chikamatsu in Naruto, so he is familiar with his plays where lovers commit double suicide as the ultimate showcase of love. I believe Kishimoto felt more comfortable and had more freedom to reference Chikamatsu and not Saikaku because the former wrote heterosexual romances whereas the latter focused more in homosexual romances and Kishimoto was already walking on a fine line by this point.

These other blogs have written great posts on how Kishimoto incorporated the double suicide trope for Naruto and Sasuke [LINK], [LINK], [LINK]. So I don't think I need to delve any deeper into it, they did a great job themselves.

But this is what OP doesn't understand. Kishimoto is writing an epic, a love story for the ancient times. Sasuke doing all that and all this is kind of like a test, Naruto's devotion is being put through highs and lows and they must overcome them. It'd be good fanservice to some if Naruto would give up on Sasuke but that'd be pretty boring and writers of the Edo period would be rolling over their graves if Kishimoto did that, HA!

Another element Kishimoto borrowed from Saikaku's literary works is the willingness to commit seppuku for your loved one. We see this with Madara and Hashirama.

In Saikaku's story Nightingale in the Snow two young boys, Naiki and Dannosuke, seek to become the lovers of the samurai Tonai. When Tonai demands proof of their love for him the boys show themselves willing to commit seppuku in front of him, Tonai shocked by their devotion accepts them as lovers.

The scene is similar to Hashirama also being willing to kill himself in front of Madara per his request, hoping Madara would accept him and trust him and his clan. Madara just like Tonai, is shocked by Hashirama's actions and stops him just in time, accepting him and joining his clan with Hashirama's, just like Tonai accepted the boys.

Which leads me to Kishimoto's *actual* finale for the Naruto series, the chapter he had planned and envisioned for 15 years, chapter 698. It's also been discussed by another blog how the theme of the battle Love vs. Power and the panels are a homage to Devilman's own final battle [LINK]. But what interests me in particular about chapter 698 in relation to Saikaku's work is how mutilation of your own body has also been a common trope in Japanese male love literature as proof your devotion.

Kinda like Naruto willing to lose his arm to Sasuke hoping to finally reach his heart (and did!). Sasuke would also go on to refuse a new arm, keeping himself mutilated as a reminder of Naruto's devotion for him.

Something that surprised me at first but then it made total sense to me is the brotherly troth found in Saikaku's works. Usually when a Samurai took a young apprentice, the samurai was old as shit (40-60 years old) and the young boy would be anything between 11-17 years. But there were times when a younger man would engage in a relationship with another man close in age, (although for us in modern times a lot of them would still be considerable age-gaps).

Saikaku for example, wrote the love story between Sazen, a 28 year old and Senjuro, a 17 year old, because of their not so big age-gap, these two lovers considered each other "brothers". They formalize their relationship by having sex, considering it the consummation of their brotherly troth.

When Sazen believes Senjuro had betrayed him for another man he's heartbroken Senjuro might had broken his vows of brotherly love.

So in Edo Japan homosexual relationships between two men close in age were considered similar to that of brothers, or at least brought the men so close they would consider one another brothers. Something very important to keep in mind is that none of these men are actually blood related.

In another of Saikaku's stories They Waited Three Years to Die, Kikui the younger man, considers his lover, Uhei to be his elder brother.

It seems that in this period of time there wasn't a clear divide in the type of love a man might profess another man with whom he is in love and has sex with, and the type of love two blood-related brothers felt for each other. Again, this is not condoning incest, it's more so how they saw male-male romantic relationships as deeply intimate they rivaled the bonds of blood-related people.

I had already made a post on what I believed Kishimoto meant with his whole "more brothers than blood-brothers" deal he has going on with Naruto and Sasuke [LINK]. But now I understand where it comes from. It really has nothing to do with actual incest (or pseudo-incest or spiritual-incest or whatever the fuck antis come up with) but him drawing inspiration from centuries old literary works on homosexual relationships. After all Naruto being set in what's clearly fantasy Edo feudal Japan, it makes sense Naruto the character would have a similar view on his feelings for Sasuke.

Finally, another thing I found very interesting is how in Saikaku's works he always makes sure to let the readers know how beautiful a man (usually the bottom of the relationship) is by comparing his looks to those of a girl. For example, in his story Implicated by his Diamond Crest, Saikaku writes Tannosuke is so beautiful people thought he was a girl when he was seven years old.

So funny how Kishimoto does the same with Haku and Sasuke, such pretty beautiful boys people think they're girls.

Kishimoto is so insane, this old man really thought he could get away with all this, uh? or maybe he was hoping people would notice.

So going back to OP's post linked, what they and most Naruto fans complain about is that Kishimoto writes seeking to emulate the writing of 17th century authors rather than a 21st century one. So a lot of things that for us are toxic and unhealthy, were symbols of passion and loyalty back then and that's how Kishimoto sees them and seeks to express them in his own work. This is why it's so important to keep in mind author's intentionality when engaging with some art or media work. What is Kishimoto trying to say with his manga? what are his references, influences and inspiration? which works parallel his own? There's a reason why every creative is always telling us the media they consume and their favorite art, because we are seeing pieces of them reimagined in their own new work.

I'm really proud that I managed to make this post only considering Japanese works and not adding Western ones for direct parallels between Naruto and other pieces of literature. But this sentiment of wanting to fight alongside your loved one, killing for them and dying by their side is pretty much universal in homosexual literature, especially from the ancient times. You can also find this celebration of homosexual love in Ancient Greek and Roman literature too, Achilles and Patroclus being the most famous example.

The lyrics of Taylor Swift's song You Are In Love, fit pretty well this same sentiment those men centuries ago were trying to describe as well.

Like yeah, imagine you've been sent off war, women stayed in the city and you're left with nothing but the company of the men you're gonna fight alongside and quite possibly die alongside too. Of course you'd love them, in every way a person could possibly love another one, because those men are your brothers.

The screenshots I used for this post are from Ihara Saikaku's book The Great Mirror of Male Love.