#cherry writes

[cosmicalily]

"pilates princess" a changbin oneshot by @cosmicalily

author's note: i was talking to @thevampywolf this morning about how there's a proper lack of changbin fluff fics on tumblr atm and i decided to make it my mission of the day to change that! i absolutely love binnie, he's the silliest, sweetest guy and i was thinking of how to blend his gym obsession with his adorable personality, and a (very much so in love) pilates princess was born!!

Seo Changbin did not have time for girls.

According to his roommate, Han Jisung, his one and only true love was the gym, where he spent almost every spare second of his day. His diet consisted of protein powder, chicken breasts, green smoothies and instant ramen. He only drank cold brews with absolutely no sugar, because he couldn’t stand sweet things. 

He was pretty quiet and some would say intimidating. Didn’t say a lot, didn’t do a lot.

But now, watching you, he felt something different. He felt strange. He felt soft.

Changbin looked over at you curiously from the bench press, pausing to catch his breath for a moment as you stretched your body like a cat, toes pointed, shoulders straight.

Dressed in a pale pink sports bra with a matching long-sleeved ballet wrap and black leggings, to say you looked a little out of place in a predominantly male gym was an understatement. Your hair was pulled back with a ribbon, a sticker-decorated drink bottle by the side of your mat and an iced milky-green drink beside it.

You breathed slowly, stretching your arms forward and touching your toes before sitting straight, cocking your head at your one-man audience.

“Why are you watching me?” you wrinkled your nose in disgust, self-consciously placing a hand over your chest. “I’m here for the exact same reason as you, it’s not my fault the girls’ dorms don’t have a gym.”

Changbin flushed. “I’m sorry. It probably seemed creepy, fuck, it’s not, I promise. I’m just . . . curious. What were you doing? I’ve never seen anyone exercise like that. Everyone who comes in either beats the shit out of the boxing bag or lifts.”

“Pilates,” you smiled, looking less uncomfortable. “I got my instructing licence a bit ago, but the place I teach at is only open in the mornings. So if I’ve had an early class or lecture and want to work out in the afternoon, I have to come here. Trust me, I wouldn’t be here voluntarily. You guys are gross.”

He pouted. “I’m not. I’m cute.” 

“Yeah, sure you are, princess,” you chuckled, taking a sip from the green drink. You noticed him looking at it. “It’s matcha, do you want some?”

“Fuck no, my friend said that tastes like grass,” Changbin shook his head furiously.

You laughed at him, inching the cup closer to him. “C’mon, try a sip. You’ll like this one, it’s sweet. I always get vanilla in it since I can’t stand bitter drinks.”

He very cautiously leaned forward, looking at you carefully in case you recoiled when he pressed his lips on the straw. You didn’t, seeming less and less shy by the second, watching him eagerly as he swallowed.

“...and the verdict is?” you prompted.

“Where can I get my own?”

Jisung looked around Changbin’s room in shock, eyes comically wide as he took in his surroundings. Sure, it had been a week while he’d been staying with his parents, but surely Changbin’s life hadn’t changed so . . . drastically? Or had he somehow been invaded by some kind of pink fairy?

A pale pink sports bra lay strewn on Changbin’s bed, accompanied by a pair of soft grey flared leggings and a drink bottle. There was a handbag too, with ribbons and cute fluffy keychains, all belongings that most certainly were not his. But there were slightly more permanent looking changes, too. A pink MyMelody sticker on Changbin’s previously pristine laptop. A little beaded bow charm on his duffle bag. Two polaroids pinned above his bed; one of a girl making a kissy face, another of her with Changbin, pinching his cheek as he beamed at her adoringly.

Did Seo Changbin have a girlfriend?

And why wasn’t she a black-donning, gym obsessed weirdo like he was?

“Oh hi, Ji, you’re back!” Changbin smiled wide, something that Jisung swore he had never seen in all his time being his roommate. Or at least, not for a very long time. But Changbin had a whole different air about him; his body, although still buff, didn’t seem as tense as it usually was. His brow wasn’t furrowed and there was colour in his cheeks. And, for the love of God, had he blow dried his hair?

Jisung smiled back. “Hey, Bin. What are you drinking? New protein powder?”

“It’s a vanilla matcha, you should try it,” he handed it to Jisung, who took a tentative sip then stared, open-mouthed in shock.

“That’s . . . sweet.”

“No shit,” Changbin laughed at him, thumping his friend on the back. “It’s good, right? Y/N introduced me to them.”

Jisung handed it back, still suspicious that the real Seo Changbin had been abducted and that the man in front of him was a secret twin. “Oh, nice. Is that her stuff in your room?”

“Sure is,” a sweet voice chuckled from behind Changbin. A petite girl flew through the door, wrapping her arms tight around Changbin’s waist. “I’m Y/N, Jisung. It’s nice to finally meet you! Binnie’s told me so much about you two.”

Jisung raised an eyebrow. “And you’re . . . ?”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Changbin said proudly, wrapping an arm around your shoulder and pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“Yeah, but he’s the babygirl. Everyone knows that,” you rolled your eyes playfully. “He’s a pilates princess now, Jisung, I’ve converted him. Surprised he wasn’t doing it earlier; it’s very him, you know.”

Jisung blinked slowly, taking in the sight in front of him.

“Seo Changbin? A princess?” he mumbled.

“Sure I am,” Changbin shrugged, and Jisung promptly fainted in shock.

[weewoo911]

So I wrote a little something loosely based on this post I made about Eddie subconsciously associating his future wedding as being with Buck- I haven't written for ages but I thought if I was gonna make it into a fic I'd also have an accidental drunk confession to Buck in there- and this is that. If I ever wrote a whole fic of this there'd be no cheating so dw dw

"It must be nice," Buck says from the floor, "Marr-Marriaging, -having a wedding. I want that, I'd want-"

"I know what you want," Eddie laughs confidently from the empty tub. It feels very zen, lying here with his legs hooked over the circular tub, like lying inside a big cereal bowl. He is so drunk, and giddy and totally at peace with everything, "You want a spring wedding because you want a frankly ridiculous amount of flowers. You want it far enough away from the city that you can see the stars at night, but not so far that it'd cost too much for everyone to travel there. You like the idea of releasing lanterns but you're worried about the environment so you'd probably want - like- doves or butterflies instead-"

"Butterflies," Buck says from the floor, his voice thick, "Eddie, what-"

"M'not finished," Eddie continues with the gravitas of someone so hammered they cant feel their legs but who is nevertheless making an Important Point, "Butterflies, then. You want a light coloured suit, something that breathes well because you'll worry about sweating. Bobby would be doing the ceremony, so maybe Athena to walk you down the aisle? And of course Maddie as your best man. Woman. Person."

"… Maddie?"

"Well yeah," Eddie shrugs, transfixed by how the ceiling seems to be slowly tilting to the side, "Because Chris would be mine, and that way they can both be involved."

There's a frantic shuffling noise from the floor, and Buck's voice is much clearer when he speaks again, "Eddie. Eddie are you talking about- me and you getting married?"

"Who else?" And in his alcohol-soaked state, it's as simple as that- who else. God knows he's tried to fit other people into that role and they just never fit right because the void in his life is so decisively Buck-shaped. Haha, God knows, his chest begins to shake with silent laughter, it's funny, right? Because of the Catholicism.

"And that's-" Buck sounds kind of upset, which makes Eddie pause, why would Buck be upset when there's good booze and the ceiling is tilting and they're getting married? "That's something you want- the-the spring wedding and the butterflies and the-"

Oh, Buck's simply misunderstood, that's easy.

"I just wanna be the guy standing next to you."

[ch3rryjampi3]

═════════•°•⚠️•°•═════════

"Katsuki, let's break up."

"Hah? Hell no. Not happening."

"What do you mean 'hell no'? I wanna break up with you cuz I can't stand you anymore."

"Then sit. Why were you standing anyways?"

"This is why!! You aren't taking my words seriously!!And our relationship...It's just- It's not working for me anymore..."

"Then I'll fucking fix it, I'll make it work."

"I don't know if you can... I don't even feel the chemistry we once had anymore."

"Then I'll use my fucking ass quirk to spark it up."

"...I can't face you no more what the actual fuck."

"Then turn around then dumbass."

"I hate you."

"I love you too."

"What is wrong with you."

"There's nothing wrong with me baby, I'm just obsessed with you."

"Your insane..."

"You make me insane. Everything you have, everything you do, just everything about you make me insane."

"Your ridiculous."

"And you love it."

▬▬ι══════════════ι▬▬

A/N: Hihi!! Sorry for suddenly disappearing, lifes tough lolss Anyways this was inspired by an ai text story in tiktok that came up to my fyp lmfaoo It gave me motivation to write another oneshot! Might edit this😓‼️

[chereus]

Save a Horse, ride a cowboy | JJ. Maybank

Summary; Reader gets back from a trip to the mainlands and just wants to make sweet sweet love to her boyfriend.

Pairings; JJ Maybank x Fem!Reader

Warnings; Somnophilia!!, DUBCON!!, pegging, slight mommy kink, best friends sister, usage of a v!brator, (kinda) established secret relationship, P IN V contact with no protection *I’M UNWELL, OK.*, very minimal editing —lemme know if I missed any please!

Cherries Notes; y’all. What in the hell is this? I just imagine John B waking up to absolutely violent moaning and thinking, “what the fuck?” Because honestly, he’s not wrong.

Cherries Notes PT2; don’t bully me ok, this work is literally from months ago. I barley recognize my own writing.

Word count; 2.1k

JJ has been extremely horny all this past week. To the point where he could just think about his girlfriend and get hard. Unfortunately she was on a trip to the mainlands with her friends. It was extremely frustrating to not be able to talk to his best friend about his girl troubles considering this girl in particular was his sister.

Ever since their dad got lost at sea John B became her father figure and would absolutely flip if he found out that they were together. JJ wasn’t too concerned about it since he knew that even though John B would be absolutely furious in the beginning, there’s no way he could stay mad at his lifelong best friend and someone he considered to be his brother.

So here he laid, in the humid dark room of the chateau thinking of how he was going to nail his little sister when she got back. In this very room. He was thinking about how first he’d teasingly kiss her plump lips and wrap his hand delicately around her throat as their tongues messily tangled together. About every time she’s pull back for air he’d smile into her kiss and pull her back in further.

About how he would move his hands up and down her body in a way they both know only he could do to her. About how he’d smush their entangled bodies together by the widest part of her hips. About how he’d fall back on the bed and take her with him by her thighs and have her straddle him. And most of all he was thinking about how much he missed her.

How while he explicitly missed her touch and deep romantic kisses and the hidden desire in her eyes he also missed the way she’d snort when she laughed. Or when she got angry and she’d pout. Or when she would take care of him when he she knew he had a bad day. Or when she knew he just needed comfort.

The thought of her not coming back was sending JJ into a mindset that he wasn’t equipped to deal with when she wasn’t here, ironically enough. So he decided that going to sleep would be the best option right now.

It was the wee hours of the morning by the time that you got back to find JJ curled up in your bed sleeping. You smiled softly and thought about how last week before your trip you had talked about wake up sex. JJ was more than happy to indulge in that fantasy. In fact he more than begged and pleaded for you to start the gracious level of kinky shit you guys were into right away. You had slept the entire car ride home so you were energized just enough to mount your boyfriend like a horse and ride him into the sunrise.

You knew how heavy of a sleeper JJ was so there was no need to be extremely quiet. You did however take caution in the fact that he looked harder than a rock and hadn’t been touched by anyone other than himself in a a little over a week so he’d be extremely sensitive when you tried to touch him. You knew exactly what the man liked. And what he liked was to not be in control all the time. He absolutely adored when you’d boss him around in bed. And even more so he enjoyed being the brat everyone knew he was. You had been teasing him on the phone all week just getting him riled up so you could go for hours when you got back.

Setting your bags in her closet you pull out a medium sized black box with all of your favorite sexual related things. You scan the box looking for four bundles of rope and your strap on harness. Deciding to be nice you take out your and JJ’s favorite attachment. An 7 inch long duel ended vibrating dildo. You love it because fits perfectly snug inside you while you giving the best performance of your life.

As you move to tie JJ to the bed you could help but smile at the sight of him cuddling the pillow in place of you. Continuing with the task at hand you slowly remove the pillow from JJ’s death grip. He turns and groans at this action which you find equally as cute. Even in his sleeping form he always has to be touching you in some way. When you successfully get both of his wrists tied to the headboard you move on to his ankles. You notice how he’s starting to stir a little from his restricted movement so you take that as a sign to move faster.

A few minutes later you have successfully tied your boyfriend to the bed and we’re beginning to quickly strip your clothes off. The quicker you went the hornier you got. JJ always slept practically naked anyways. It seemed that his horniness got the best of him tonight and he was completely naked. But usually anything short of just his boxers was too hot. You definitely didn’t complain. Easy access.

As you moved to approach the bed you stopped by your nightstand and grabbed the bottle of lube that occupied the tight space of the upper drawer. Also easy access.

Crawling over JJ you sat directly in the middle of his thighs so when he woke up he would see you pounding into him. Luckily you’d tied his legs far enough apart that you didn’t have to worry about wiggle room as there was plenty.

You started by kissing his hip bones and then working your way up his perfectly chiseled abs kissing one after the other. He softly moaned in his sleep from your feathery kisses. Once you made your way up through his stomach and chest you quietly nudged your face with his, brushing your lips over his own. He groaned with the sudden attention not wanting it to stop. You quietly pulled away and sat down on your calves. Lubing up the toy adequately and lubing the rim of his anus. His cock twitched and he deeply groaned at the cool sensation.

Lining up the toy and his delicate hole you slowly start to push in. JJ let’s out a loud moan and his eyes shoot open. You ignore him and speed up gently. Your thrusts were beginning to get deeper and JJ is still half asleep moaning his heart out.

“What the fu—” he groggily starts but the words soon die on his lips as you thrust a particularly rough thrust. You lean forward and kiss him on the lips and mutter an ‘I love you’.

As your thrusts begin to get deeper and faster the other end that had currently resided up your vagina begins to hit every nook and cranny of your vaginal cavity. You couldn’t hold the moan that was brewing in your throat and certainly not when you heard JJ mutter “harder”, along with a strangled moan.

The deeper he moaned the harder you went. At some point you remembered that this toy had a remote that made it vibrate and you took full advantage of that. Grabbing the remote from the right side of the bed you don’t hesitate in quickly cranking it up.

You could tell that JJ was doing more than stellar as he couldn’t even form complete sentences out of pure pleasure. This created a massive grin to spread across your face in euphoria. JJ was right, you should’ve done this so much sooner.

As you thrusted in the deepest, most sensitive parts of your boyfriend, you couldn’t help but just put your hands anywhere and everywhere. JJ seemed to appreciate the warmth of your petite hands as your nails dug into him wherever they could find a spot. He was getting close you could tell by the slight arch in his back and the furrow of his brows. One last time your hands slid down his inner thighs scraping with your nails before you gently grabbed his swollen cock.

As you started to rub up and down JJ’s face twisted in fiery bliss. He was so close but so far. Watching him get absolutely demolished by something he did to you on a weekly basis had something deep in you stirring. As you came up on your high you started to rub harder and faster on him. His moans were unrecognizable at this point. You’d never heard him make those sounds before. They were deep and husk like. It would’ve sent you over the edge if you weren’t so focused on giving your boyfriend the time of his life.

One sharp trust later and JJ was spurring hot cum all over your hand and his stomach. Before your you removed your hand from his sensitive member and lifted it to your mouth and licked it all up you made sure to turn the vibrator on low as to not cause too much overstimulation. He attentively watched you preform all your actions as he was sure to get hard again after not having a proper orgasm in over a week.

His eyes widened as you resumed your thrust. “W-what are you doing?” He finally spoke.

“Good morning sunshine. How’d you sleep?” You menacingly taunted. If he wasn’t too fucked out to come up with a response he’d demand that you untie him immediately and let him maul you like a bear.

He whined as your slow speed made him feel like he was about to explode. You just laughed in his face as he would do to you.

“Baby, you wanna make mommy feel good don’t you? Hmm?” You asked reaching down to kiss him everywhere but the lips.

His submissive side was showing and you couldn’t savor enough of it. He mumbled a quiet, “yes.” That made your heart clench in awe.

You were careful not to cause too much overstimulation for him as it made him physically uncomfortable but just enough for you both to start sweating like bitches in heat.

You cranked the volume back up to full speed and everything was buzzing. Your head flew back in pleasure. You wanted, no needed JJ to be touching you. You rested deep inside of him while you untied his arms from the bed frame.

“Touch me JJ I need to feel your hands on me.” You eagerly demanded. JJ wasted no time in pulling you down to his level and kissing you like his life depended on it.

Your thrusts became sloppy at this angle so JJ hoisted you in place so the vibrator inside you was hitting directly the right spots. Your kisses mended with his to insure that neither of you knew who was breathing who’s air. Your hands hadn’t left JJ’s hips since your turn to finish and it was driving him crazy.

Just before you tipped over the edge JJ lifts up his head and says, “fuck, your so gorgeous.” And you were sent spiraling and cursing as your thrusts almost completely stopped and you realized JJ had came again without you even touching him or even acknowledging that he was there other than for your pleasure the second round.

You quickly shut all the vibrating devices off and removed your strap on. The thin layer of sweat covering your entire body was enough to make you chuckle at what just happened.

“I don’t think I give you enough credit J, that’s a lot harder than it looks.” You say lifting yourself from the bed.

“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna take all the credit,” he sarcastically murmured from his same spot as you untied his ankles.

“Oh ya, come on. Let’s go get you cleaned up.” You said dragging him from his middle of the bed antics.

When he finally tried to stand up from the side of the bed he immediately sat back down with widened eyes, “I don’t think I give you enough credit y/n, that’s a lot harder than it looks.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna take all the credit,” you laughed back helping him up.

As you were cleaning each other up and washing each other in the shower he bent down and gave you a long slow kiss and clearly said, “I love you more.” With a smile on his face.

[cherrrydomme]

some thoughts on my mind today-

it’s important to remember you can be healthy AND fat. fatness or gaining doesn’t have to be unhealthy and a lot of fat people are way healthier than underweight people!!!

i know in fantasy a lot of us talk about unhealthy effects but i also don’t want people to feel like you need to punish yourself or hurt your heart to gain how you want or that by being fat you will be making yourself inherently unhealthier!!!

fat phobia is preached to us from the time we are children but it’s so important (ESP in this fetish/kink) that we are constantly checking our own biases. taking care of yourself can and does happen at any weight.

i get a lot of messages where people seem to think that gaining here means only eating absolute trash and never working out again. That is so valid if that’s how you want to do things but you can also grow a beautiful body while eating a variety of foods and still taking care of your cardio.

(but of course it doesn’t make anyone better or worse if they are heathy, just hate how people in and outside the community view fatness as just a product of pure gluttony and not also as something beautiful and natural)

anyways. ramble over. hope that made any sense.

[moriohpissky]

HAPPY 4/20 EVERYONE 🍃

barging in with a new comic based on an AU @chickycherrycola and I have been working on FOR MONTHS so excited to finally start releasing it! It’s like our degenerate stoner son has all grown up :’)

Here’s the link to Cherry’s fic!!

pages 1-2, pages 3-4, pages 5-6

[cherrynojutsu]

Full offense but tumblr fucking the formatting of literally all of my past fic posts without protection is my last straw at trying to post my writing directly to this hellsite so from here on out imma literally just post a link here to AO3/FF.net because I ain't the one to constantly have to update stuff on their behalf ✨

Like Gold - Chapter 18: Correlations is posted!

AO3 Link | FF.net Link

[btsugarush]

Some of y’all clearly don’t write, or have never written a day in your life. You rush us writers, expecting us to put out work so fast as if it’s easy. I do proofreads, and change things in my stories constantly to make sure I put out good chapters. So if y’all want short, lazily written chapters with grammatical errors I’m not the right page for you.

[cosmicalily]

9:22pm with kim seungmin - a @cosmicalily timestamp

author’s note: every single time i see one of those roblox videos of those people with horror avatars scaring people and hiding in their houses (pls get the reference) i immediately think ‘that’s def kim seungmin’. and it is, i’m sure of it. this is my proof. also i'm sorry about how short this is lols, it goes out to @thevampywolf and @hyunjiiza

warnings: seungmin is an actual cyberbully towards children on roblox but it’s literally for the funnies so it’s barely a warning

“You just pushed that child off that platform,” you remarked, glancing up from your phone. The two of you were sprawled on your bed, his back against the headboard and yours against his chest, Seungmin’s arms around your waist and on the keyboard of his laptop. You’d been like this for a while, bodies warm, silent apart from his occasional curses and groans at the game.

“He’s not going to beat me,” Seungmin huffed in retaliation. “He doesn’t know what he’s up against, challenging me to an obby.”

You giggled. “Can I?” you asked, resting your phone on his thigh and reaching towards his laptop. He nodded, head resting against your shoulder, and you began to type in the chat. Hashtags filled the message section, and Seungmin’s eyes widened. To top it all off, you managed to knock the kid off the last step of the obstacle just before the timer for the game went off, and he rage quit, leaving the game and leaving you in a position of victory.

“What do you think?” you asked, exiting the game and setting his laptop down on the bed.

“That was really hot,” he breathed, then burst into manic laughter. “I can’t believe you did that. You absolutely destroyed him.”

You smiled smugly. “I wasn’t letting that little idiot win. Did you see how fucking stuck up he was being, taunting you like that?”

Seungmin nodded. “He had it coming for him. Although we were a bit mean.”

“It’s fun though.”

“It is fun.”

You turned yourself around and clambered onto his lap, wrapping your legs around his waist and pressing your chests together. His arms pulled you in close and he kissed you, lips soft and tongue gentle against yours. You ran a hand through his hair and used the other to cup his cheek, pulling yourself closer.

“We’re such a badass couple,” Seungmin remarked, and you snorted with laughter, lightly slapping his cheek before hauling yourself back on top of him, kissing him deeper.

[weewoo911]

Agh I'm actually writing again 🫣, a little something based on this post by @bidisasterevankinard - Tommy being haunted by Billy Boils

Buck ends up spilling the whole thing to Billy Boils' grave. It feels good to vent to a truly neutral party. His friends and family are trying, that much is obvious, but they've almost too supportive. Like they're encouraging him to start healing while he's still trying to understand how deep the wound goes.

"So, uh,- I hope I'm not interrupting your rest too much here, partner. I dunno," Buck lifts a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, ignoring the tears welling up in his eyes, "I just thought you'd understand. I mean, we have that in common. Being left behind. That and the fact that-" his voice cracks, "that Tommy never believed in either one of us."

---

Tommy always knew his house was a fixer-upper- that's why he could afford to buy it in the first place. Plus he liked having a long term goal, something to slowly chip away at and improve. He's lived in his house for six years now, and he's used to its little quirks and eccentricities.

So when the lightbulb above his head flickers and blows with an angry pop, all he does is make a mental note to check the wiring and to grab a new bulb from the junk drawer.

[ch3rryjampi3]

Piercing.

Can't get Katsuki having a tongue piercing out of my head like LAWDDD warnings: mildly suggestive (??)

You pulled away from the heated kiss as you looked up at him. "Is that metal on your tongue?" You say between your panting, Katsuki chuckled. "Yeah, forgot to tell ya, I got a tongue piercing." He says as he shows you it. "Ya like it babe?" You smiled, pulling him into another kiss. "Yeah... Looks pretty hot on you 'Suki...suits you alot.." He smirked, picking you up and sat you down on the counter as he got on his knees while spreading your legs open. "Then let me show you how good it'll feel more.."

[cherrycola27]

Just wanted to give a little life update, loves. It is the end of the school year, and I am going to be teaching summer school in addition to working part-time at my summer job because my district only pays teachers for 10 months out of the school year instead of year round like many other places. Unfortunately, I have bills to pay and can not go 2 months without a paycheck.

I know that I have several series that I need to work on and things that you guys have been waiting on.

My ADHD, anxiety, and depression sometimes make it hard for me to focus on what I feel like I need to focus on. I end up jumping around from idea to idea. Right now, my plan (I say that loosely because the ones who have ADHD get it) is to devote my time right now to "afterglow" and "All Too Well"

(I'm in my toxic era, idk what to say)

Once I get those knocked out, I'm going to turn back towards "Elementary" and "Star Spangled Seresin" and maybe something new for the "Red, White, and Rooster" universe

Please remember that I write as a form of expression, and while I love your feedback, I write for me first and foremost.

Writing gives me a way to channel creative energy and escape from the mundane day to day.

I, like many other creators in here, have a job and a life outside of Tumblr, and I am doing my best. Please make sure you are showing grace and being patient with all of the creators on here. We do this for fun.

I love each and every one of you who have been on this journey with me.

p.s. please remember you are responsible for the content you consume, and if you don't like something I post, scroll, unfollow, or block 😉

[cherrrydomme]

hot feederism irl situation i’ve been living-

at my new job, i’m in charge of ordering lunches, keeping the drinks and snacks stocked, and buying new things for all the employees to eat. something that may seem annoying to other people…… but incredibly interesting to me. i literally get to be in charge of what a whole office full of people is eating.

i’ve found too that they are more likely to order more food when it’s on the companies dime.

i don’t think they understand quite what they’ve done putting me in charge of all this. i’d love nothing more than to fatten up a whole office :,)

[g0ry-gh0ul]

Hungry are the Damned

As promised, here's the gross and fucked up Mary fic lmao. Thanks to everyone who wanted me to post it, y'all are sweet! I haven't written anything in 10 months so I hope it isn't too shabby.

Tags/warnings: Necromancy, zombies, graphic depictions of violence, blood & gore, body horror, cannibalism, major character death, pov character death. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

Read on AO3 if you like:

Fic under the cut.

Night has fallen over the forest as Mary’s boots crunch through the underbrush, loud amidst the quiet of the evening. It’s nearing midnight, and darkness clings to the landscape, broken only by moonlight filtering through the dense trees. A light breeze barely rustles the leaves overhead, deepening the chill of early autumn.

A relatively new recruit of the Ministry, Mary has come into a somewhat unusual occupation—necromancy. Or rather, he will come into the occupation if he manages not to fuck up his first real assignment. They’ve read plenty of theory, and practiced on chickens and goats, so really, how much harder can it be to revive a human corpse? Much harder, Sister Imperator’s voice echoes in Mary’s head. She’d warned them (looking not at all confident in Mary’s necromantic abilities) that humans prove much more difficult to handle once resurrected than simpler animals—volatile, she’d said. Dangerous. A brief flash of nervousness turns Mary’s stomach, but they ignore it, cranking up the volume on the old Nihilist demo blasting through their janky headphones.

Finally, the forest grows sparser and the graveyard comes into view, nestled behind a quaint Victorian-era church. Hopping the rusty fence surrounding the mismatched array of headstones, Mary makes their way through the overgrown yard, scanning headstones until they find the one they’re looking for. It’s no more ornate than any of the others, and nothing about it stands out as unique or important—no pentagrams or Baphomets or anything. Mary kneels next to the headstone and squints at the engravings, trying to discern any clues as to why this particular corpse is worth the Ministry’s trouble, but to no avail. Shrugging, he pulls his headphones down around his neck and gets to work.

Mary rifles around in his numerous pockets for the materials required for the ritual: a lighter, a bundle of herbs, and a small, scuffed-up book containing the necessary Latin incantations (his cheat sheet, Mary calls it).

The lighter clicks as he sets fire to the herbs and sets them on the ground in front of the headstone. Reaching under their jacket, Mary draws a wickedly sharp bowie knife from a holster at their lower back. The silver blade glints in the moonlight, and Mary wastes no time in slicing it across their left palm, letting the blood drip onto the burning herbs. They wipe the leftover blood on their already filthy jeans and re-sheath the knife. Now for the fun part.

Mary picks up the book and starts flipping through the pages, searching for the right spell. “Ah shit, where was it…?” he mumbles, flipping past the spells for goat and chicken resurrection. “Okay, yeah. Right here. Got it.”

Squinting at his own nearly-illegible handwriting to make sure he isn’t about to revive any farm animals, Mary begins to recite the Latin incantation from the book, stumbling over some of the words. Hopefully flawless pronunciation isn’t required.

A gust of wind extinguishes the burning herbs as Mary finishes reading, and they glance around apprehensively. Everything is very still and silent for a long moment, and they start to worry they’ve fucked the spell up. Right as Mary is about to try reading the spell again to see if it works better the second time around, a hand shoots up from under the ground, dirt crunching around it. Mary yelps and scrambles backward, nearly smacking his head on another gravestone.

The hand is gray and bony, with long, dirty fingernails and peeling skin. It is (as expected) connected to the rest of a corpse, which slowly drags itself up from beneath the ground. The zombie is desiccated, what remains of its moldering skin stretched taut over its bones. Its eyeballs have rotted out of its skull and its lips are pulled back to reveal discolored teeth. Its joints creak and pop loudly as it pulls itself the rest of the way above ground, chunks of dirt and tufts of grass falling off it with every move. Mary scrambles to their feet and stares, wide-eyed in both horror and fascination.

“Hey, so, uh… I hate to disturb you, but—”

The zombie makes a horrible screeching, growling sound. Mary swallows nervously and forges on.

“Listen, I’m just the messenger. It wasn’t my idea to dig up your old bones. And I sympathize, man, I really do. One time my friend woke me up before 10 when I was hungover, I clocked her in the face and broke her nose. Payed the hospital bills though, don’t worry, I’m not a complete asshole. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I’ll make this real easy for you. All ya gotta do is–”

The zombie takes a step towards them, rumbling in a distinctly displeased manner. Mary glances over their shoulder, very much wishing at this moment that he’d brought backup. A ghoul would be very helpful right now. Preferably a particularly vicious one. With giant teeth. Mary sighs, resigned to his plight of trying to reason with a corpse, and continues.

“-All ya gotta do is come with me, meet the higher-ups, and do whatever it is they want. They all seem to think you’re real important. Once they’re done with ya you’ll be back six feet under. Scout’s honor.” Mary holds up three fingers in a Boy Scout’s salute.

The zombie tilts its head to the side with a crackling sound, seemingly considering. Then it lunges forward, latching its teeth onto Mary’s shoulder.

“JESUS CHRIST!!” Mary shrieks, tripping and falling backward over a headstone and taking the zombie with him. The zombie doesn’t let go, and Mary attempts to pry its jaws open, to no avail. They kick the zombie in the ribcage, their heavy steel-toed boot connecting noisily with the zombie’s emaciated chest, and it goes flying, taking a sizable chunk of flesh from Mary’s shoulder with it.

The zombie stands back up, blood now dripping from its teeth down its rotting chin. It levels its nonexistent gaze on Mary, who is staggering to their feet, glaring back at it.

“Dude,” Mary pants. “What the fuck.”

This assignment is not going at all the way he’d hoped. He draws his knife again and brandishes it at the zombie with a sigh. He really does not have time for this shit.

“Look, can we maybe not do this? My band’s got a gig Saturday, and they’ll be royally pissed if their vocalist gets eaten by a goddamn zombie before then.”

The zombie, unsympathetic to Mary’s musical endeavors, lunges forward—directly into his knife, which makes contact with a wet crunch. Mary drags the knife upward, snapping several of the zombie’s ribs until its torso is nearly split in half. The zombie makes a rattling, gurgling sound somewhat akin to a laugh. Mary’s blood runs cold and he attempts to yank his knife back, but finds it stuck.

The zombie shoves Mary back onto the ground, gnashing its teeth. Mary grabs it by its neck and tries to keep it at arms length so it can’t bite their face off, but instead it rakes its long nails down Mary’s face, leaving several bloody gashes. Mary screams and manages to snap the zombie’s neck.

The zombie falls to the ground next to him, where it lays still. Mary thinks—rather ridiculously, given the circumstances—how embarrassing it’s going to be to face Imperator after this. He’s barely finished the thought when the zombie—because of fucking course a broken neck wouldn’t slow it down—grabs Mary by the throat and lifts him off the ground.

The zombie’s neck is bent at a full 90 degree angle, and the moonlight illuminates the blood smeared across its mouth in a gleefully macabre imitation of a smile. Mary chokes helplessly and tries in vain to pry the zombie’s hands away from their neck. Don’t panic! he thinks to himself, but he’s starting to get a really sick feeling about this whole thing, their heart pounding like it’s trying to bust out of their ribcage.

The zombie throws Mary onto the ground like a ragdoll and their head smacks against the dirt hard enough that they black out for a couple seconds. When they come to, every nerve in their body is exploding with pain and for a moment they can’t figure out what’s happening; it feels like they’re being burned alive. The zombie gurgles and Mary realizes with nauseating horror that its teeth are sunk into his stomach, ravenously tearing into flesh. Its teeth make wet, crunching sounds as it feeds. Mary screams in agony, tears mixing with the blood streaming down their face and obscuring their vision. They kick weakly at the zombie, but to no avail—any movement sends the pain in their abdomen coursing from head to toe and threatening to knock them unconscious, and the zombie was more than a match for Mary even before they were bleeding out on the dirt.

Mary chokes on a sob and blood fills his mouth, thick and metallic. He coughs and gasps for air, blood splattering over his lips, and fumbles in his jacket pocket for his lighter. He can’t die like this, this is so fucking lame. Pathetic. All his own fault, really. Shaky fingers close around the lighter, and Mary brings it up over the preoccupied zombie’s head. It takes several clumsy attempts before they manage to turn the flame on, and as their clammy, trembling fingers scramble with the lighter Mary prays earnestly to Satan below—please, please, please don’t let me die like this. Please.

It takes a horrible few moments before the fire catches, and Mary’s head pounds as they try to focus on anything but the zombie’s head disappearing further and further into their stomach, teeth scraping against bone and slurping up pooling blood.

Slowly, finally, the flame begins to lick over the zombie’s decaying skin. Every millisecond that the zombie doesn’t notice and continues tearing into Mary’s insides is fucking biblically hellish and they realize they’re screaming, their own voice sounding very far away. Maybe he’s been screaming this whole time.

The zombie finally takes notice of the fire as its face begins to be consumed by it, and roars in confusion, finally pulling away from Mary’s decimated stomach. For a split second, before its head is fully ignited and the fire begins to take over the rest of its body, Mary notes with no panic left inside him that its jaws are full of meat. The zombie falls backward in a cacophony of inhuman shrieks, the smoke from the burning corpse drifting up into the starry sky.

The pain isn’t so bad anymore. Mary’s arms and legs are tingling, and mostly he just feels woozy. Everything is wet, warm and wet and sticky, and he doesn’t try lifting a hand to touch the gaping wound in his abdomen. Doesn’t know if he could move if he wanted to. Mary stares up at the inky sky and wonders vaguely if he’s seeing double or if there were always that many stars.

A crow caws twice in the distance, and everything is dark.

[miss-mallory]

THIS MAN.

i love him so much , ugh.

Definitely going to write some things for him at some point, maybe be selfish and make it be with my inquisitor.

[cherrynojutsu]

Title: Like Gold

Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M

AO3 Link - includes author's notes

______________________________________________________________

It feels as though the earth has ceased its tireless turning for a smear of seconds as Sakura returns to awareness slowly, lashes sparking. Her eyes catch gold, too, once they open; there’s just enough light streaming in through the thin curtains to skew her irises warm, though her pupils are unfocused as of yet. 

He tries to resist the urge to snort when she immediately squints as if said light has personally offended her, expression the utter picture of someone who is being assailed by a hangover; she must have been out pretty good. Her hand in his twitches as if to rise to her head in reflex, not remembering that their fingers remain intertwined between them.

That prompts her to open her eyes fully in clear befuddlement, though her brows are still sort of furrowing. Jade eyes then widen, rapidly shifting to his to make contact. 

Her cheeks redden. It’s fascinating to watch, he finds. He barely manages to catch the stupid smile threatening the curvature of his mouth when she raises her left hand to her head instead, choosing to keep her dominant hand right where it is, intertwined with his in an orphic edict for hereafter. It’s as real and as tangible as gravity exacts its will on rock and crag, or perhaps as five calloused digits re-crease years-old letters, the reaffirmed slide of pell against parchment laden with meaning on sleepless nights.

“...Hi,” Sakura breaks the hush by saying, voice cracking a little from disuse and possibly dehydration as her fingers begin to glow green and the earth resumes its revolutions.

At that, he can’t help but exhale a tired, breathy wisp of a laugh, humor and something else warming his chest.

“...Hi.”

A long pause fills the air, and her expression relaxes as the minute passes, as whatever headache she must be experiencing fades with the aid of chakra. It’s rather impressive how little time it takes. He wonders absent-mindedly if it requires similar focus as ocular healing does; he imagines threading chakra into one’s own head must take a lot of practice, yet her ease indicates that she’s done this hundreds of times. 

“The power’s back on,” she remarks, likely in reaction to hearing the vent currently pushing air in the otherwise soundless room. It started back up a couple of hours ago.

Not too inebriated to remember, then, he thinks to himself, recollecting their conversation before she drifted to sleep. Somehow it still doesn’t feel like an overly enormous admission, now that all’s said and done. Conceivably it’s the mutuality of it that’s granting him enough repose to be okay with it.

“Came back on a couple of hours ago,” he offers quietly. His own voice comes out a bit hoarse from disuse, too, and he realizes that his own throat is slightly parched. 

Must be the alcohol. Duly noted, though he’s going to avoid losing to Naruto in the ensuing months at all costs. He has little desire to give himself additional headaches; his lack of a coherent sleeping schedule forces him to contend with the affliction fairly often.

Sakura nods after a moment as if this makes sense, gaze dropping momentarily to their intertwined fingers.

“...The storm kept you up?” She asks tentatively, gaze rising to his steadily.

Sasuke blinks, then nods, as it’s an easy excuse for the reality of his disturbed sleep patterns and a good way to proceed. He probably will need to sleep at some point today, which means he won’t make the best company for part of it. Best to be honest about that, at least.

Sakura examines their hands once more, as if his response has prompted some variance of study there. Sleep is edging at the corner of her eyes, he sees now that the light appears to be bothering her less. Eventually her green chakra dissipates, and her left hand drifts back to her side, the action seeming almost… listless.

She then says the most severely nonsensical thing she could ever come up with, jade eyes still cast downward at the space between them. There’s something in her expression that screams of disquiet, lips pursed sideways.

“I’m sorry.”

His brows knit together in puzzlement, mouth contorting into a hard frown.

“For what?” He asks in bewilderment, because she’s done absolutely nothing wrong. He could write pages upon pages of all of the reasons why she never needs to apologize to him. She’s never-

“For pushing you,” Sakura’s voice cuts through the speculatives invading his brain at a mile a minute. Her mouth is pulling to the other side at present, as if in dismay. “I didn’t mean to… Or, well… I just would have worried, is all-”

“You didn’t push me,” he cuts in, clearly enunciating every syllable. His issues have nothing to do with her. If he was just normal, it wouldn’t have been a question if he wanted to stay at all. He would have greedily jumped at any chance to get closer to her, to be invited into her bed, as innocent as it was.

It’s his own stupid issues that cause all the problems, without exception; she has nothing to do with his sins. He’ll tell her again if he needs to.

Green eyes stewing with guilt meet his and pink brows jump closer together.

“I think I did,” she insists. “I mean,” her gaze pitter patters to the side again, as if she’s suddenly very interested in studying the exact hue of her pillowcases. “Or, well… I know it hasn’t been very long, and I… Well, it was maybe moving too fast, and I really didn’t mean to… to…”

Her vocal train of thought comes to a screeching halt when he very gently squeezes her hand, fingers still interlocked with his. 

“Sakura,” he says quietly, insistently, because he urgently needs to squash this line of thinking. While he appreciates the unending evidence that she cares deeply for him, Sakura has also always had a way of somehow interpreting that his exigencies are her problem, that some sort of fault lies with her, when that has never been the case. His choices are his causatum to bear, as are all of the rest of his shortcomings. 

Doesn’t she know that she’s the paramount jewel of his life?

“You didn’t push me.”

Her mouth stubbornly stays set in a solid line, worry evident as she searches his gaze. He stares right back, unusually so, as his left eye remains uninhibited by the shield of his hair as it typically is, still positioned such as to capture her sleeping form with both Sharingan eyes; he didn’t move much throughout the night in the hopes of not waking her.

She exhales slowly, face relaxing; it’s calmness he finds there now, as if she’s satisfied that he's told her the truth. The eaves above their heads settle with it, the maxim that follows a squall.

“Okay,” she says finally, pupils flashing from him to the pillowcase again. She then flushes darker for some reason, and her gaze drops to their hands once more.

“Um,” she says, shifting her shoulder slightly. Her cheekbone catches the sunbeam cradled through the parting of her curtains, freckled cheek on perfect display. She really is beet red; he wonders what she’s thinking about, a lone dark eyebrow raising in curiosity. 

“Well. Should I…”

She seems to struggle for words, as if the same gravity afflicting him earlier has snatched them out of her lungs. Maybe she can heal the headache itself but not the scattered thought processes that he’s heard tend to accompany a hangover; it’s hard for him to gauge, considering he himself has never had one.

“Well, do you want… breakfast, maybe? Before you go back to your place, I mean. I assume you need to sleep? Um. We could have okonomiyaki, ochazuke, or… Or, maybe just tea? Decaf, of course, so you can… Or, you don’t need to stay for breakfast, if you’re too tired or if you don’t want to-”

He squeezes her hand once further, as gentle as he is capable, because there is little he wants more.

“...I would. I’ll help.” 

It takes a handful of minutes to plan out the morning and rest of the day from there, plans made for evening tea and a sweet smile that he will never tire of being the cause of. Despite his fatigue, he is loath to untwine his fingers from hers, and he thinks she is perhaps of the same mind. He’s not sure if she notices - he doubts she’s doing it on purpose - but her thumb twitches slightly against his at irregular intervals, as if she’s checking to ensure he’s still there, and it feels eerily like she’s pressing a sort of poem into his skin, alliterated by the soft cadence of her voice.

When they finally do rise, he helps make his side of the bed as she makes hers, adjusting the pillow at its conclusion; it was off kilter from lying on his side the majority of the night.

For some reason, Sakura stares at him openly as he reshapes it to a typical pillow shape, and her cheeks stain incarnadine nearly immediately as he catches her gaze questioningly, wondering what about the action is odd. Sporadically he wishes he was capable of reading her mind, uncovering what she’s thinking; he often wishes to know just what exactly she’s preventing herself from saying, as most of it is probably for his benefit when it needn’t be.

Give it time, he thinks as she metaphorically curls in on herself again, green eyes gradually realizing that he’s looking at her inquisitively.

“Right. Um, I’m going to, uh. Use the bathroom. But if you want to start the water to boil, you can!” She squeaks the tail end of the words more than she speaks them, turning rather abruptly in pursuit of said bathroom. 

He reasons it is a little strange to see an ex-rogue ninja doing something as inane as making the bed; presumably it’s that, he thinks as the bathroom door creaks slightly: open, then closed.

His focus wanders to the ornamental fan displayed atop her vanity, where it lingers. He watches as the iridescent thread catches the light, twinkling atop aged wood unaffected, as if eagerly soaking up every last drop of metaphorical adage.

It fills him with an odd feeling. Something numinous and presaging, but also… complicated.

He shakes it off in favor of proceeding to the kitchen to start the water to boil, resolving to reflect on the why of it later on. He has better things to focus on at present than the drowned memories of the past.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Following an hour of tossing and turning in his own bed, Sasuke manages to find rest; it seems his brain has seen fit to reward him with a break, which is good, because there are other things that it’s decidedly not offering respite from: namely, the fact that his own bed does not smell like Sakura, and also the cavillous sense that he is metaphorically standing atop the precipice of a rather important realization, obscured by the mist of morning much like fogged or frosted glass.

Later, he urges his brain resolutely, banishing the thought of freshly-watered soil and drenched paper boats, giving in to sleep.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The mission summons arrives just as he’s finishing up the preparation of a simple dinner: onigiri with plain broiled salmon, making use of leftover rice. He covers the pan for the time being, removing it from the burner to temporarily cool before making his way to the Hokage’s Office. He’ll eat it later.

“Sasuke,” Kakashi greets as he pushes the door open, greeted by an otherwise empty room. Naruto’s not there, and Sasuke supposes that makes sense; this is likely to be an assignment for guard duty in anticipated absences for the Chunin Exams. Security coverage is the foremost concern for Shinobi villages during such events.

“...Kakashi,” he acknowledges quietly, shutting the aged wood door behind him.

“How are you feeling?” The copy ninja asks, smiling jovially in a manner that is entirely too knowing. “A little birdy told me you were forced out to the bar last night.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes, exhaling a quiet sigh through his nostrils.

“...Two drinks.”

His old sensei’s smile only grows more exponential.

“Ah. Had fun?”

Sasuke holds his sensei’s gaze disparagingly, frowning and refusing to give in to the twitch. While it wasn’t really so bad, he has short regard for a repeat situation in which he’s forced to consume more than the two drinks. He doesn’t intend to lose to the dobe again anytime soon; he’ll drag it out for months if he has his way of things.

“So, you don’t intend to lose to him again anytime soon,” Kakashi beats him to the punch by saying, Cheshire grin wrinkling the edges of his mask. Sasuke, in turn, betrays nothing, deeming the frown encapsulating his iwn mouth confutation enough.

“At least you have Sakura,” Kakashi continues, at which Sasuke’s neck warms and his brows furrow. “Word on the street is she can heal a hangover like nobody’s business.”

“...I’m not hung over,” he concedes after a moment of pause. Best to pummel that implication into the ground, truth of it set aside.

The Hokage waits a beat to respond, as if he’s carefully assessing him. But no, that’s not right; Sasuke’s pretty sure he is assessing him. He has the faintest sense of sharing commonality with an artifact being looked over, like sand slipping through one’s fingers on the beach, falling away to reveal tiny nacreous slivers of shell and rocks weathered smooth.

“...I know,” the copy ninja finally says, dark mask twitching in the manner that suggests additional ribbing is imminent. “But…” 

His voice trails off, dark eyes evaluating him as if waiting for him to speak, and Sasuke knows that his sensei isn’t actually spying on him now that he’s been back for the better part of two or three months, but the manner in which he can read Sasuke like an open book is eerie, so he chooses to not be baited in the slightest.

Apparently gathering that Sasuke isn’t going to gift him any supplemental information, Kakashi looks to his desk, rifling through a stack of papers and looking entirely too pleased with himself despite the fact that he provoked no rejoinder.

“Well... Maybe next time, yeah?” 

Sasuke’s ears redden and his left eye twitches in annoyance, but Kakashi doesn’t look up once. 

Damn copy ninja. He supposes he wasn’t exactly subtle, all things considered, but he finds himself wishing now that he had said that goodbye privately; it may have earned him less importunateness in the long run.

“Well, not particularly exciting, again,” the Hokage elucidates further, pulling out two sheets stapled together, one of which clearly has Sasuke’s name inscribed at the top. “Given we’re taking a large number of our ranks to the Chunin Exams, I want to play our remaining forces rather close to the vest. I didn’t have any bigger tickets come in, so…”

As expected.  

“Guard duty?” He questions, already perceiving the answer and still internally fighting down the warmth licking at his neck. In confirmation, Kakashi nods, not looking up from the array of papers littering his desk.

“Yes. We’re spreading the shifts out a bit more; two instead of three like usual. Kotetsu and Izumo are coming with to help with staff and security. Shino, too. I’m afraid you’ll be pretty busy; six to six, day shift indefinitely beginning tomorrow, though you’ll still be able to make our team dinner on Tuesday, of course. Length of assignment pends on how long the first round of exams take; obviously once that’s concluded, we’ll be back for a month, so you’ll get some time off then, should nothing bigger come up.”

Sasuke’s brow furrows, briefly wondering why Shino’s presence would be necessary at the exams prior to realizing he’s likely going to watch past students and also that his insects would be an excellent safeguard for all involved. He’s caught off guard once again at the different roles everyone he attended the Academy with are playing now. He anticipates, then, that both Kiba and his sister will be rounding out the night duties; if Aburame's insects are absent from the village, canines are the logical next best defense. 

His brow furrows further, wondering who will be assigned with him, as the dobe will be out of the village. Shikamaru is out, too, as the coordinator of the Shinobi Union. He still isn’t sure if Sai or Choji are attending the exams, come to think of it.

As if on cue, heavy footsteps resound from down the hall.

Ah. Not so bad, then; at least it’s someone he’s familiar with. The shifts will be free from any sort of disdain. They might even be… enjoyable. Free from teasing, most notably.

“Hokage-sama,” Choji greets genially, laughing as he pushes the door open, then closes it behind him. “Just when I thought I might’ve escaped guard duty…” 

Kakashi simply smiles through the mask. “Sorry to disappoint, Choji… though I’m told you bring quite the spread for lunches while on duty. I’ll make sure to say hi to Karui for you while we’re away, anyways.”

A hearty laugh escapes the ninja’s chest as he grins, coming to stand within a few feet of Sasuke to accept the paperwork Kakashi’s offering him.

“Well,” Choji begins at the tail end of a chuckle. “Karui’s not likely to focus on anything but work during all this Exams stuff, but you can attempt it if you want.”

A ninja, then, and likely high-ranking. A Chunin or Jonin, he expects, based on the comment he recalls about her right hook. He briefly finds himself wondering if she’s instrumental to inter-village politics, given she’s attending the exams.

“And anyways, it’s hard to beat fresh roast duck, but I’ll always give it the ol’ Akimichi try!” 

Sasuke exhales something near a snort in response to that. It meanwhile earns a chuckle out of Kakashi that implies he understands exactly what an Akimichi try entails, at which point Sasuke realizes that his old sensei gives orders to the elder ninja in addition to the younger, inclusive of Choji’s father. 

How strange that must be. He rarely remembers that most people have living parents, and also that, in the grand scheme of things, Kakashi is still fairly young: only a few years into his thirties. Yet he is charged with the difficulty of governing an entire village, giving orders to ninja who are decades his senior, an instrumental piece of the puzzle that is the Shinobi state.

It’s a monumental task. He doesn't always consider that Kakashi is holed up in this office more than Naruto is.

“I’m pretty sure I read a report from the Fourth once, actually, that heralded that as a family tradition,” Kakashi says as he passes Choji his paperwork of assignment. “Perhaps I’ll have to stop by sometime. When the exams break, maybe… I have it on good authority that your family makes incredible barbecue.”

It also must be difficult, Sasuke reasons on the walk home to his apartment, to read through old reports of your former sensei who is now deceased, let alone the huge ask it is to train his son to become Hokage in his stead nearly every day.

He supposes he can take the teasing. It’s not much, in the grand scheme of things, especially given what Kakashi has done on his behalf. Their sensei deserves a bit of happiness, too.

He carefully avoids any further thoughts of family and the dead much like he avoids the small collection of puddles percolating in the street, back in his kitchen at a flash of residual gray and green from what must have been a midday rain. He resumes quick preparation of his dinner, fastidiously examining the salmon as it sizzles in the pan. It’s the perfect distraction for thoughts he is unwilling to reckon with at this particular hour, bland unseasoned sight and smell and taste cajoling him to a more docile state of mind. He counts the grooves he’s managed to carve into the specialized cutting board, too; they add up over the weeks. Maybe he’ll examine the one at Sakura’s the next time they cook together at her apartment. There are bound to be many more shared meals in the coming month or two.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sakura is kind.

There is no avoiding that thought, no running away like a coward; it washes over him suddenly, remnant spring raindrops in the thick of summer as he calls her name, slipping off his sandals in a threshold he entered without knocking. He finds her submerged in a sea of paperwork, ebbing tides of documents surrounding her every which way on the couch.

She works on her day off, tireless in pursuit of goals that he’s sure, whatever they are, will help others far more than they will help herself. She's altruistic, affable, caring, and far too intelligent for him. She may well be developing a cure for cancer for all he knows.

Yet she also piles it up without so much as a second thought, beaming at him with jade eyes refulgent as if she's delighted to see him, even though he’s here far earlier than the agreed-upon time. He dragged out the process of doing the dishes, trying to ditch the melancholy in an exsiccate of clarifying lemon-scented dish soap that he definitely didn’t buy just because it’s the same scent she uses, but even that wasn’t lengthy enough. There’s only so much one can scrub away one-handed. Clean and shining to the eye, certainly, but to the other senses…

“Tea?” Her voice is soft. It shimmers in a way no other sound does, glitters like sea glass in a lamp-lit apartment with shoal floors, a kind budding breeze afore a hard evening.

He can only nod, struck dumb and voice ensnared in his throat at the disarming dichotomy of what he’s just realized, the last intenerating puzzle piece of the past twenty-four hours sliding into place.

He doesn’t say much the rest of the evening - thankfully, he doesn’t have to, with her - but he does choose to sit serried by her side on the couch, his thigh a scant inch from hers. His bad shoulder bumps hers once, twice, thrice, and the contact helps him feel less emotionally numb, less like he’s going into shock after a grievous injury.

It helps even more when Sakura returns from her trip to the kitchen, alone at her insistence: “No, it’s okay, Sasuke-kun; I’ve got it.” She shatters their routine completely, taking up residence on his other side, just as close as they were previously whilst interlocking her clement fingers with his.

She doesn’t say much then either, but she rests her head against his good shoulder after they’re halfway through another movie that he’s barely processing. He basks in it, the way the weight feels against his bicep, the way her digits smooth patterns against his.

It’s nice to have her closer than ever. That helps the most, really, but he still tries not to stay too late, to put it off for too long. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He spends the better portion of an hour, then two, sitting at the memorial stone, gazing at lily sprouts and trying to determine if they've drowned, reaching for childhood optimism and failing in the attempt to reconcile what the storm has stirred up.

It is freshly-watered anger, and it is directed at his brother.

He is angry with his brother. 

It’s not necessarily a new emotion. He was angry with his brother for years, prior to learning the truth; he’s no stranger to it. 

He has not, however, been quite this enraged in the after , since learning the provocation. But no, that’s not quite honest, either. He was angry afterwards. He directed that anger many times, fought for it, killed for it. He's the textbook epitome of a quick study in it, for all he stewed, not knowing how to put it down as weaponry needs to be put aside in exchange for a meaningful life.

But seldom directly consolidated at Itachi. 

Until now.

Sasuke is aware that his feelings in regards to his family are complicated. He is also cognizant of the fact that everything Itachi did, everything he gave up, was out of love for him.

So why is he livid ? 

How can he be so infuriated? 

He wants to scream, overwhelmed with the feral urge to dig up all he’s planted, blotted with rain, and throw it to the wind in some misguided attempt at gaining his brother’s attention, at having his ire recognized in some way. 

It still never feels like Itachi’s here, no spirit from beyond touching stone or soil. And Sasuke supposes that makes sense, because his brother died later, separately from the others, but…

Didn’t a part of him die when he murdered their family, too? 

How could one emerge from that unscathed? 

Sasuke's earliest memories are hazy, half-recollected minutiae pleasantries stained with the positivity of jejune childhood. Most of what he recalls of his clan, his family, are the few short years prior to the massacre. Sure, his father’s favoritism for Itachi over him colored it less sunny, but he had his mother and his brother and all the rest. There were shared sweets at the bakery, shuriken practice in the backwoods behind the clan compound, evening treks back from the pond through grove and brushwood, clutching freshly caught flowers or a pail of perch as he learned a new distant cousin’s name and how they were related.

But when he was twelve or thirteen? His memories were well developed by then, which means Itachi's were, too; double the recollections that Sasuke had at the point of the massacre, at least. Itachi would have known what he was about to give up, what he was about to rip away from Sasuke, that it would scar him for life and leave him alone in their family home to cook dinner in the dark, because the kitchen light had a string pull system on the ceiling and their mother used to scold him when he climbed up furniture to reach things-

"You could fall and hit your head, Sasuke. Just ask me or your brother to get it for you; you'll be taller in a few years-”

-and Itachi did it anyway.

Complicated as their past is, Sakura is willing to set aside her work for him in a heartbeat, to choose kindness over and over and over when he deserves anything but, when he's not good at words or explanation or conversation, when he left her on a fucking bench , when he tried to kill her. She didn’t give up on him, even when she wanted to, even though by all divine rights in existence she should have; he's certain that he's been the cause of her tears countless times. 

But Itachi? Itachi was thirteen when he killed their family, a prodigy with devastating outside influence, sure, but capable of at least some level of higher reasoning. Sasuke had memories at thirteen. He loved his team at thirteen, he loved Sakura at thirteen, messy and scattered and covert as that love was.

Itachi saw the effects wrought and continued the charade that got their family killed with barely so much as a glance back at him. 

Did I make it that easy? He questions inwardly, bitterly, heirloom frown overtaking his being, lone remaining fist tightening at his side as he realizes he's never going to fully move beyond this feeling: the unalloyed abandonment , the feeling that his soul has been sliced by the gilt of a razor. It's just as fresh as it was on that night, years ago, exposed to the light and raw . 

Was I that easy to walk away from?

Maybe that's why he loves his team so much. No matter what he did, they didn't abandon him like his kin did. Even Sakura couldn’t. She tried, but couldn’t, burst into tears, and he-

And maybe that's part of it, too: his attempts to be alone. If he chooses to be alone, it stands to reason that he won't lose anyone. No one can leave you alone in the dark if you leave them first.

But no, that's… not quite true either. He isn't making any sense. He seldom does, not when he's like this. He's briefly overcome by the desperate urge to visit the pond - to do what he's not sure; to scream at abandoned air, perhaps, for all the good that will do, toss excess confessionals to the wind that have already been thought a million times over - but he doesn't, because he's pretty sure that would break him on this particular day. 

In lieu of ripping the buds from the soused soil, he shoves his lone hand into his pocket and begins to turn a pair of keys, soft onomatopoeia gambit clinking over and over and over.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ultimately he lets them be, angry as he is, for his mother and his aunt and the woman in the alley with her newborn and all the rest who might like them. 

For his past self, too, maybe. If the green grows tall enough, it might grasp the mnesic stardust that slipped through his fingers.

He returns to his apartment, examining empty walls and thinking about the photos that would have lined their houses were they all given the chance to age instead of ash. They would surely be more formal pictures than Hanako’s are, given clan traditions: formally posed for major events and wrapped in traditional garb for weddings and Shogatsu and Kodomo no Hi and Tanabata. He tries to imagine what their yukatas would look like, Uchiha emblems blazed upon their backs. All of his own family’s pictures, he recalls, were old-fashioned, solely black and white or sepia toned, so it’s difficult to place what colors they were wearing in retrospect. Their relatives’ pictures were much the same, he’d seen on any occasion he was taken elsewhere for dinner as a child, kept under foot and at his mother’s watchful side. 

Mikoto Uchiha had a navy blue kimono she reserved for such occasions, emblazoned with finely stitched shooting stars. It just looked plain in the pictures, washed out from multidimensional blue to a dark swath of gray; he was just a baby in her arms in the most recent one of her wearing it he can recall, long lost to time and neglect. But he remembers it, the fabric of her sleeve billowing at eye level as she led him through Konoha’s streets by hand during festivals so he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, his father and brother nowhere in sight. Cataclysmic lantern glow arched across Konoha’s streets, seeping between each booth and crowd intermingled with the rich aroma of roasting nuts and the warm spice of fried rice.

He realizes, sitting at the kitchen table and staring and thinking, that his father disliked festivals; he was not present in a single one he can remember. He must have disliked having his picture taken, too. He appeared enormously unhappy in all of them he can recollect, even in the last one Sasuke has left.

That is another thing Sasuke inherited from his father, he realizes as he finally reaches out to swipe his sole thumb across the aged photo, dug from its grave beneath Sakura’s stack of letters; he also dislikes having his picture taken, though he recognizes now that such things are… rather important, in retrospect. He’s clutched onto their team photo from years ago on countless nights.

He is like his father, though he doesn’t wish to be.

He then stares at the eyes that are encased currently in his own sockets, frowning at his brother. And this has consistently been Sasuke's problem: setting down his anger, abiding injustice. There are stages to grief, he's been told dozens of times, though he's rarely experienced them in any sort of coherent order. 

His gaze inches away, frown tugging at his mouth, until he's looking at the lamp. 

The details of the picture aren't as clear after he's shut off the overhead, an echo of a perpetually dark kitchen an age ago. He can barely see his father at the edge of the aged paper if he holds it just right, his face a shifting shadow in the mirk. 

But he looks at the four of them, studies them catalyzed in the subtleties of lamplight, easier to bear when the colors are less saturated. He looks at himself and his brother a lifetime ago. He stares even as it feels like his insides are being scraped clean with a rusted kunai.

Take notice of what light does, to everything. 

It still doesn't feel like he’s found what he’s truly searching for, but he manages to endure the elegy for nearly ten minutes before deciding he's not yet ready to confront this particular demon. He buries it beneath Sakura's letters with the rest of his good sense, anger to be confronted another day.

Because did he really need to toss him into Infinite Tsukuyomi again when he was thirteen? A simple genjutsu would have been plenty to stoke his hatred. He didn't need to make him relive the entire ordeal, to drag him back to hell as if he hadn't relived it hundreds of times by then in his own nightmares.

He's remembering the names again, a salient group autopsy carved in concrete and lost to history. 

He's also remembering that he put Sakura in a similar genjutsu in a misguided attempt to protect her, too, so perhaps he and his brother aren't that dissimilar, because he didn't have to do that, yet he did. He always hurts her, loving her from afar without telling her a damn thing about it, while his lost hand burns with the phantom pain effort of pushing her away, of holding her forever at arm’s length, of aiming his Chidori at the blurred pink of her head where he knows it will wreak the most drastic damage, at- 

He is like his brother, cruelly, horrifically so, just as he wished to be when he was little, though now he-

His arm hurts-

He doesn’t know a thing about love, really. He never has, has he? That part of him is stunted, twisted, cleaved off, cut from the same bark as the rest of his ilk. He always-

His arm hurts, the pain radiating up nerve endings that are no longer there, and he always-

Sasuke chooses to do what he unfailingly does when it feels a bit like he’s losing it, like he’s forgotten how to breathe or exist.

He trains and trains and trains in the grounds at the furthest edge of the village, far from anyone’s home. He repeats sword formations until they feel like a second skin, as if that will protect him, swiping at imaginary foes and endlessly wondering if he’s made one fucking bit of headway in the years since the war.

He then gulps caffeinated sencha, barely tasting it before reporting to guard duty at six, plain onigiri shoved half-assed into a container for lunch. He’ll eat dinner with Sakura after as they planned, so it’s not like he needs anything more than that to make it until six. He’ll endure his arm’s surging pains, too, until she can look at it. If he spends a day contributing to a greater good, perhaps it will feel more like he earned it.

They take over for both Inuzukas, as he expected. Hana Inuzuka says little, still studying him warily and maintaining a healthy distance, to which Sasuke can take no offense. Kiba acknowledges them both, at least, though he seems tired. It makes sense; guard duty is invariably an uninspired endeavor, and less so when the shifts are lengthened.

They’re two hours into duty when Sasuke arrives at the conclusion that Choji talks less than he remembers he did in their youth.

It’s not that Sasuke isn’t aware of this. People change. He’s been on two missions with the man now; obviously people develop beyond the time that they were school children. Gods know he has, to everyone’s unfortunate detriment.

But, it still surprises him. He’s not sure if it’s out of politeness for the fact that Sasuke has always been lackluster at best as a conversationalist or if it’s out of simple contentedness, as guard duty in an era of peace is uniquely suited to allow a snack here and there. Missions in the field don’t frequently allow such a privilege; Choji is as cheerful as he’s always been, chomping away at a bag of chips and for all intents and purposes seeming as if he’s enjoying this assignment, even without the aid of any conversation to help the time pass.

What doesn’t surprise him one bit is when his partner for the day creates a shadow clone prior to pulling out a miniature iron griddle, kindling, another container of signature spices, and all of the fixings needed to make teppanyaki in the umbra of the gates, save a lighter.

“Say, could you…?” 

Serpent, ram, monkey, boar, horse, tiger.

The real Choji continues his rounds opposite Sasuke as the clone prepares what he gathers must be the standard Akimichi lunch. The fire is small, but it doesn’t take long for the pan to begin its sizzling.

Another surprise arrives in the form of the clone handing him a fair clutching of neat kebabs. Sasuke stares at them in absolute fucking bewilderment.

“You can eat first,” his old classmate of a lifetime ago tells him cheerfully. “It’s tradition.”

The clone then sidles back to the grill to rotate a mass of remaining skewers in the shade, as if the kindness cost him absolutely nothing.

It’s significantly more substance than onigiri, that’s for sure; it basically melts off the stick and into his mouth, fragrant and filling and way higher quality meat than he typically buys for himself. It helps with his tiredness at the very least. It makes the light of day bearable, too; less grating on the eyes and his arm’s phantom pain.

“...Thanks.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you could only keep one sense, which would you choose?  

Sasuke finds himself reflective on past conversations following an evening well-spent with Sakura, throbbing phantom pain freshly healed in his bad arm and eyelids drooping with the didactic endeavors of the past day and then some.

Perhaps losing his sight wouldn't be the worst option after all. Like any Uchiha, he relies on it far too much, has worn it thin. He thinks of revolving keys passing between his remaining fingers. He thinks of Sakura’s hand intertwined with his, of the sound of a storm roaring overhead and the poetry of her berry scent and soft breaths beside him, the pumping of her heart akin to the ticking of a clock, concatenation all within his grasp.

He walks, tethered to a shaky impetus and contemplating the nature of smell as he tries to avoid peeling back his own skin in his urgency to get to the fucking point. Did his own kin smell like fire, smoky yet with enough bite to sear sustenance? He must have been so used to it that he never noticed. 

And he needs groceries, anyway. Not that he remembers that once he’s there. 

Taste is a good sense, as Choji said. Maybe Sasuke hasn't fully appreciated it. It seems a safer alternative than shaking down the sky.

There are many varieties of jasmine tea at the market, he learns, even at the handful of places that linger open after the pitch has swallowed the last trace of the sun, stars twinkling into existence stretched across a lacquered navy sky. He picks the one that seems the most traditional, because of course he does.

Sasuke then reaps the smell of summer, the twinkling of green grass and azaleas and fresh drizzle saturating everything once more, intermingling in the street as he wanders at a snail’s pace back to his apartment, trying to summon an appetite or further mettle for what he’s about to do. 

It's easier, he finds, if he doesn't look at the puddles for too long, if he passes beneath the cherry blossom tree across the street on his way home, ramified branches flourishing emerald and juniper.

His eyes prick at the smell alone, steeped in wistful memory contained within a steaming cup anew. It's been years since he cried at the simple smell of it - you’re fucking hopeless, it’s just tea - and that's a shame, because he was really hoping that his journey had helped him get somewhere, broached common ground in the form of miles marked and exchanged endearments. Instead he’s still blistering with the same old wounds, scarred and bruised black, smearing the metaphorical ink before it’s even dried.

Sasuke manages two assiduous sips. Corrosion, he reflects.

The first is alchemic, transcendental, synodic threaded memories hooking scattered stars across a navy blue kimono sleeve that was once the scope of his entire world, come alive from where they reside trapped in his every neuron, tucked away for safekeeping.

The second sears his insides with demise, croons down his capillaries and trickles into every cell like the sweetest poison, violently dissolving brittle bones and haunted flesh and reminding him of things that are no longer his. Things that will never be his. And he is lacking, lacking-

The taste is good: fragrant and salt of the earth. 

The memory is not: always bitter, always biting, exposing his turpitude for all to see.

The problem is him, always him. He is not like his mother, but he wants to be. He wants to be worthy of it, all of the love and smeared sacrifice and the chronic weight of expectation.

Instead he is himself.

He dumps the remainder of the cup unceremoniously down the sink. The remaining box of tea is shoved to the very back corner of the lower cupboard in short order, hidden behind his meager collection of pots and pans to be forgotten before heading to his bedroom and slamming the door shut to lie in the dark alone. He plummets beneath the weight of dark bedding and the dispiritingly neutral aroma of clean laundry.

And memories. Memories burning at the windows, memories snarling and tugging at his eyes in saturnine demand, colossal bleeding mazarine blue just waiting to be let in with the summer air and the distant susurrus of night herons and crickets counting time against their fresh wings and swishing grass. One small step, then another. It takes a century on little legs, wisps of the past haunting the present: wildflowers clutched in both tiny hands, utterly oblivious to the damage it would cause, far worse than a stray thorn or the tender sting of a bee. And how could he emerge unscathed, when he was plucking away their sustenance?

He can’t hear anything currently, save his own heart, beating incessantly on. 

He shuts his eyes. He relies on seeing far too much, apotheosizes it beyond everything else. His sight and his propinquity for anger and running and beating something bloody never got him anywhere. He needs to feel.

He can imagine it: natant sunshine atop tide rolling in, how it would feel to trace the lineament of her face with touch rather than his brother’s vision. He could leave something tangible behind, something that doesn’t hurt, a careful but purposeful fingerprint or ten across the caress of her cheek instead of simply stealing his mementoes while she’s asleep like a coward.

The empty spaces between his fingers ache like loss, like liminal longing, like the border between land and seafoam, palpable with resolved desire to close the distance.