#damn i really should just make an actual post about this instead if hiding in the tags

[devondespresso]

the feminine urge to apply my weightlifting knowledge and dark heath buff past to every steddie post i see. one day it'll take over.

(spoiler alert, if you read the tags you'll find that it has, in fact, taken over)

[joocomics]

i don’t like you either

day 3 — hate sex w/ gaon ⌞⌗ kinktober ⌝

𓂃⠀𓈒 coworker!jiseok x fem!reader

genre: smut — mdni! wc: 1.6k

contains: office au, enemies to ??? trope, sub!reader, bratty!reader, rough/angry sex, unprotected sex, pet names, name calling (slut/whore), face slapping (f!rec), facial, dirty talk, degradation (f!rec), dacryphilia, quickies

a/n: inspired by my own ramblings in this post

[ kinktober masterlist | general masterlist ]

Jiseok hates you, but he also hates himself.

Why? Because he spends a ridiculous amount of his time during the day watching you, thinking about you, talking to you (most of the time about things that he doesn’t need to discuss necessarily with you, but he does anyway). And sometimes dreaming about you; on days like that instead of going to work feeling well rested, he feels completely drained from his energy, because he finds your face infuriating even in the wet dreams he has where you actually like him.

Hating you is exhausting, but addictive like a drug he needs to keep taking to stay stable. This bad habit of his only becomes harder to break because of the same high sex drive you both have in common.

“Go through these by the end of the day and send them to me when you’re done.”

You slide the pile of papers back in his direction.

“I’ll do them tomorrow.”

“Did you hear me?” Jiseok frowns upon your calm voice and leans over your desk. “I said by the end of the day.”

You look away from your desktop screen to meet his resentful eyes.

“Or what?”

The mean smile so familiar to Jiseok - and only to Jiseok from this whole company - spreads on your lips; they sparkle distractingly from the gloss you like to wear every day. He's gotten a taste of its fruity flavour so many damn times.

He lets out a sigh. A sigh that sounds like he’s trying to figure out which route to take - should he grab the papers, give up and go to his desk to do the job himself, or, should he keep talking to you despite already knowing this won’t do anything except lead to both of you hiding in an empty room… fucking.

“If you want to make a name for yourself around here you should stop being so pathetically bitter, Jiseok,” you told him the other week after he made a fuss about the coffee stain you left on his white buttoned up shirt, because you weren’t watching where you were going. He thought you won’t dare talk to him like that ever again after the sex you had against the wall of the restroom. It was quick, but intense; his hand was over your mouth the entire time, and he felt a few tears gliding on his fingers from your urge to moan freely.

But he was wrong. No matter how hard he makes you cum each time, you keep running your mouth, just like you do now.

Your egos just keep clashing, making you fight over the most basic, ridiculous things. It was like that during your internships, and it stayed that way after you both remained working in the company.

You really tried to become friendly with Jiseok, you did. But you can’t be friends with someone who constantly wants to remind you that he’s better than you at everything, and who’s always so attractive while doing so, effortlessly making everyone fall for his charm.

“My eyes are up here.” You say before laughing at the way Jiseok’s expression evidently turns from sully to something worse as he slowly traces his dark gaze up your cleavage.

You already know where you’re going to end up in five minutes before any of you gets the chance to say it. The adrenaline rush is too strong to fight.

It thrills him immensely - the fact he brings you a kind of pleasure you never knew before just by hating you, and it thrills you just the same, although you would never admit it.

“You don’t need to try so hard,” you murmur softly while slowly losing the control over your voice, “I’m seeing Jungsu later.”

Jiseok laughs. A sharp, artificial sound that disappears quickly.

“Jungsu?”

“Yeah, mmph—“ you try to suppress an intense sound, causing the mischievous expression on your face to fade. Jiseok’s thrusts are now deeper, stretching you out faster than you’re used to.

“Did you say something?” He raises a brow amused. His smirk is turning more twisted with every passing moment.

“He’s amazing in bed.” You grasp onto his shoulders as if it will help you focus on your train of thought not only on your posture. Each rigid move of his hips causes you to dig your sharp nails deeper into his skin. “So good—“

Do you mean Jungsu or Jiseok right now? You’re not entirely sure. Both, maybe.

“Whore—“ Jiseok spews out.

He continues calling you a whore in his head, again and again, trying not to let his mind suffocate him with images of your colleague’s perfectly carved body on top of you.

The frustration in Jiseok’s tone encourages you to get even closer in his ear. Your hands caress his skin beneath his unbuttoned shirt, and you can almost feel how his body grows hotter the more you speak.

“He’s soo big…” you mewl and his furious grip instantly tightens on your skirt. “Bigger than you. He fills me up—“

You don’t get to finish your sentence from the same quick hand now gripping your face.

Jiseok peers into your eyes, they’re sparkling up at him daringly with lust. He’s done this before and you both grew to love it. Isn’t this why you’re here locked in this small dark cabinet? Hating you in public is one thing, but in private - another.

The slap lands on your cheek, harder than last time.

“Cut the bullshit,” he grunts, trying not to raise his voice. “I know you’ll gladly let every guy here have his way with you.” He sneers, then looks down where your bodies are connected; where you swallow him so nicely, dripping with arousal and squeezing more strongly with each word he says. His fist grabs onto your scrunched skirt for support again and his body starts moving slowly so he can bottom out almost completely before pushing his tip all the way in. “You’re happy to have any cock fill this little cunt, ain’t that right? But I have a question for you,” his lips curl smugly once you look him in the eye, “why do you keep coming back if they're so good?”

“I don't kiss and tell.”

You're not about to say what's really on your mind.

Jiseok laughs in your face again and stops wasting time. He speeds up, causing your figure to move back and forth onto the small table.

Your hands hold onto the surface as your head falls back from the building pleasure.

“Fuck!” A delightful whine crawls out of your throat with a note of shame. What bad thing did you do in your past life to have Kwak Jiseok of all people be the one to fuck you just right?

His hand slaps you again and the sweet pain forces your eyes on him.

“Look at me,” he rubs the stinging spot with his thumb. “You should be fuckin’ grateful that I keep giving you my cock, baby. You’re not the only slut around here.” And just like that the same hand that was caressing your face slaps it again. “Just the prettiest one.”

His eyes shift in the direction of your bouncing breasts spilling out of your bra.

When will he get bored, he wonders… From hearing your moans and seeing your face change in the middle of your orgasm. From feeling you clench around him.

“Say it.”

“Thank you,” you pout before shutting your eyes closed. “Oh, fuck! I hate you.”

Jiseok leans in, your mouths that have gotten so familiar with each other’s taste are inches apart.

“This… is the last time.” You speak out, giving a a final promise to yourself meanwhile your hand sneaks behind his neck to pull him closer. “We’re never doing this— We’re not…”

“Yeah?” He whispers intensely like he wishes to hear that one phrase again. Maybe he does.

Isn’t this why you’re really here locked in this cabinet?

“Say it again.”

“I hate you, I hate y-you so much.” Your fingers grab a handful of his hair and pull as strongly as they can while your words slip in the air more quietly each time.

You’re not mistaken. Hearing this pushes Jiseok to the edge, and his deep husky voice cusses at the crook of your neck as he pulls out in a rush.

He barely manages to tell you to get on your knees. Instead of sounding like a command, the words come out more like a weak mumbling.

“But my makeup—“

“Fuck, do as I say!” This time he speaks louder and firmer.

You kneel, barely able to contain your excitement. Your heart still races for some reason as you flutter up at him with your lashes.

Two of his fingers push through your lips and you let them glide on your tongue, pressing it down as his other hand moves speedily along his cock till he cums.

The moment the rush hits its peak Jiseok glances down to watch his thick essense landing on your pretty face. His arousal covers your features just the way he wanted - there’s ropes of cum on your mouth, nose, eyelashes and somewhere in your hair too.

You breathe in deeply after he pulls out his fingers only to use them to gather some of his fluids before forcing them back in.

Tasting him for the first time almost makes you hum as you stare at his flushed face; it’s contorted in bliss, weakness, in an unexplainable way he looks focused and out of his mind at the same time. Nonetheless, attractive.

Very, very attractive. Beauty that makes it easy to hate.

! please do not repost, copy or translate my works

! please keep in mind english is not my first language. i apologise for any mistakes i’ve might missed

[torimidori2-blog]

Can we please stop preventing ourselves from saying "not all men"? I honestly don't get people who are trying to stop targeted transphobia to transmasc people, yet still say that they're not trying to say "not all men". Trans men are men, right? Not all trans men are terrible right? We also have cis male feminists and allies, right? Are they helping us? So they aren't bad people? Hm.... Well if you said yes to all of these things, lemme tell you something that may surprise you... I know it's gonna be really absurd and you might just freak out about it, but uh... not. all. men.

There. I said it! Not all men! We can't generalize anything about all men, because if we do, trans men will be in that generalization! Then we'll get people posting shit like "omg men are trash especially trans men lmaooo" We shouldn't be blaming men for the way people perceive gendered norms. If we can have a cishet man waving a rainbow flag to support his friends at pride, we can also have women who say that women should stay in the kitchen and live life like a 1900s housewife. People are pretending that the moralities are associated with gender and is black and white, when that isn't the fucking case at all. How about we blame our main offenders: Misogynists? Misogyny can come in many different forms and can be spewed by many different people, even trans people! If we fight against those people instead of blaming one gender for all our problems, we could actually have a chance at making a change and making people have revelations about the reason why they think men are trash. It's like even people within the LGBTQ++ community have a "Girls rule boys drool" attitude towards gender. Damn...

And for the record, I understand why those generalizations are made, because masculine cishet men are the most accepted people in society and their social pressures aren't as bad as everyone else's because men are the ones who made those gendered standards in the first place which caused them to oppress those who were different from them, but times are different and men are being encouraged not to hide how they express or how they feel even if they're cis. Masculinity in society is always expected to be as thick as an eyelash, but men are starting to realize what masculinity means to them on their own without letting society dictate that. Please give those people a chance, and stop making generalizations about them, that way, those stereotypes against them being aggressive, degenerates, airheaded, and egotistical won't be translated into the trans community towards trans men.

[silentghosttimez]

Since everyone's reading comprehension clearly just went out the window when the person in the Epstein documents asked about Michael Jackson. The girl literally said nothing happened. And to go into more detail, this was before anything about Epstein came to light and when Epstein was still fronting as one of those financial businessmen. MJ was LITERALLY THOROUGHLY investigated and HEAVILY survellienced by the government/FBI for over 2 decades BEFORE and AFTER meeting Epstein, the FBI REALLY wanted MJ gone from the public eye, they even tried to use his childhood photos and some playboy magazines to prove he was guilty. In the 2000s MJ was in conflict with Sony and was going broke, some people(we dont know who they were yet) recommended he go to Epstein to solve financial issues. MJ dipped out and Epstein never got his number, his name literally was not in that black book. Y'all keep bringing up those false accusations with the boys when if you actually look up anything on it, the boys came forward and said their parents lied, and the bed thing was false because MJ's room was huge and had two beds, he had the PARENTS AND THEIR KIDS sleeping in the beds in his room while HE slept in his own GUEST ROOM.

Stop making shit up when the people who wanted so badly for him to do something criminal literally couldn't find anything at all in all those years that he was looked at so closely to the point he was literally having mental breakdowns from being watched every where he went, during every call, and so on.

(edit: To add to this, people constantly lie about his skin and how he felt about himself and his body too. When for one, his autopsy was right there and literally says he suffered from lupus and Vitilogo and his hair was literally the way it was due to it being set on fire in that one Pepsi commercial, there are literally graphic images of just how badly his scalp had been damaged. He never hated himself or his blackness, infact he actively tried to hide his white splotches for as long as he could. He used makeup and skincare stuff that he was unaware had any bleaching affects in the ingredients. He was very open and loud about being proud of his African heritage, he even was crowned in an African village.

I made this post cause I started tweaking because the singular black breadtuber I was watching was reading the Epstein documents and when he got to Michael being mentioned he and everyone in chat suddenly became illiterate and he was talking some shit like "it would seem he really was that guy if those documentaries, court stuff and articles didn't already convince you" like WHAT??? And chat was agreeing and someone was like "the Twitter stans are still gonna find a way to defend him after this" mind you, if you weren't bread dead and believed all that slander, all the court stuff declared and pretty much proved his innocence and later one people including his own friends and family came forward saying they were forced and coerced into lying. Those documentaries that came out and so many of those articles were straight up slanderous because they were damn tabloids, I don't get why people are still trying to use tabloids as proof when they were known for spreading rumors that often were not true in the slightest. This shit actually has me genuinely heated. Like, the breadtuber didn't bother reading the rest and was just like "well that proves it" even though it was stated right below that Epstein did not have his contact. Then there's the dumbasses on Twitter too making this shit worse. You'd think that most people at some point would bother to actually use their brains and seek out as much info as possible instead of taking lies and running with it, especially if they have a platform where they literally should be doing such a thing but nope. The guy was iffy about the star wars guy and whether or not he was actually a contact in Epstein's list but that same grace was not afforded to MJ.

Another edit:Oh and also it's wild MJ's false accusations are always brought and people say Elvis and Prince are better than him meanwhile Elvis and Prince were known pedos and abusers. Like are you fucking kidding me!!!)

[uravitypng]

𝐈 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊 𝐓𝐎𝐎 𝐌𝐔𝐂𝐇: 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐄

pairing: kaminari denki x reader, hanta sero x reader

word count: 1.8k

warnings/contents(for part one): angst, petnames (denki calls you babydoll), written with a chubby reader in mind /// minors do not interact (in later chapters there will be smut and explicit content!!) - smut, fluff and more in later chapters !!

a/n: this is my first series! i'm not sure how many parts this will have but if you wanna be updated i could add a taglist! thank you @tsukkisloser, they suggested i post two versions, by saying that gave me hundreds ideas to where the story could go and i decided to combine all the the ending ideas into plot points, making my series more developed! i'm really excited for this fic and i hope you all enjoy it, it's going to fun! <3

summary: it's terrible when you're in love with your best friend. it's terrible that he's in love with someone else.

part two >> | masterlist (check out my poll for this chapter!)

You're Denki's best friend and you've always been since you both were little, you were attached to the hip, and went everywhere together, both of you went to UA together. Everything used to be okay, Denki was just Denki, your best friend, but luck never took a liking to you and years later you've realised you're in love with your best friend, you always have been.

You're in love with your extremely attractive and all around amazing best friend.

Denki has consistently flirted, he's flirtatious in nature, you never had a problem with it until you you both grew up a bit, until UA. Until Jirou. Denki still flirted with everyone but he always spoke about Jirou to you and it grated. Sure he'd find people attractive before and he'd have liked people in the past but with Jirou it felt never ending. Everyday he talked about her, something about how funny or cool she is, half the time you doubt he even realised he was being so obvious when talking to you about her.

You knew it shouldn't upset you, there was no reason why it should but it did. He never flirted with you, and you never cared about it before, but why did he never pay any attention? He hit on every one else. You were always right there and he never spared you a second glance.

You became bitter, and you really tried not to, you tried your hardest to smile through every time Denki gushed about her but it was so god damn hard.

After blowing Denki off one night, out of exasperation, you end up in Sero's room, he's always had a very good read on you, and can tell when you're pissed off and normally he knows what its about too. "Has Kaminari messaged you tonight?" He slips into conversion while briefly looking at you before the next match begins.

"Yeah, but i'd rather be with you," you shrug back, trying to sound as casual as you can. In all actuality you would rather be spending your time with Sero so you're not lying, just hiding your irritation. It's always so easy with Sero. It use to be that way with Denki but not so much recently, you'd prefer to spend your night relaxing instead of getting Denki gushing in your ear about Jirou again.

"Hmm, I'm flattered." He looks up to smile at you. If only you were into Sero instead. You two spend the night together, playing mario kart and watching x-files.

You take notice that the room is really bright, you swear it was dark only a second ago, and you hear yawning behind you. That makes more sense you fell asleep in Sero's room. It's not the first time it's happened, but it's not particularly frequent, Sero does keep a blanket in his room especially for you though, which you always thought was nice. What's nicer is Sero must have laid you down with the blanket after you fell asleep, you're fairly certain you fell asleep propped up against his wall as the last thing you remember is the climax of the episode you were watching, you don't remember how it ended, you'll have to ask.

"Heyo," you say, softly, still waking up.

Sero makes a noise of acknowledgement, as he starts stretching. "We'll probably miss breakfast if we don't get up soon," Sero says gravelly voice from behind you, the contrast between his morning voice and his regular is something that always makes your face heat up a bit.

This time you hum to let him know you've heard him and start getting up. A couple minutes later you're out the room, albeit tired.

You two seem like one of the last ones up and you can tell Bakugou's been up for awhile by the way he's already shouting, how does he always wake up so early?

"I have no idea how that guy has so much energy in the mornings." Thank fuck for Sero who always matches your energy and knows what you're thinking.

"Speak for yourself, he's already made pancakes and man that guy can cook," you hear Denki say from behind you. He's so enthusiastic in the morning and you can practically hear his grin, you just groan in response. You see Sero smirk from the corner of your eye.

"Do you wanna go out today babydoll?" Denki asks, still too tired to engage in full blown conversations you nod and lean back so you're leaning on him. "We can go to the arcade or something, after you've had some caffeine of course." You turn to the side to look at him and stick your tongue out. Even though you were actually waiting to get something to drink so you can properly start your day, Denki knows every little thing about and that's very comforting when you've just woken up. Safe to say you had a good time with Denki that day.

.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·..·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·..·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·..·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.

Seven years later, you're outside that very same arcade after patrol on your way back home. You can't wait to get back and relax, you haven't eaten all day, you slept in late which is no surprise and had to miss breakfast. Even now as an adult you are definitely not a morning person.

"I'm home!" You call out, Denki must not be in due to the fact he hasn't called back to you as loud as he can like normal. He's probably at Kirishima's or something. When people ask why two successful, up and coming heroes are living together, they normally fill in the blanks themselves. 'They have enough money to buy their own place, so they must be dating, they're choosing to live together.' Crappy tabloids and internet sleuths are always jumping to conclusions.

They're technically not completely wrong about the fact that you both are quickly jumping the charts every year and have plenty to spend on your own places but you have chosen to live with Denki in this warm, comfy little flat but you are just friends, even if you wish there were something more.

After graduation it made the most sense for you to live together, according to Denki, and you'd much rather live with Denki than by yourself so you agreed, years flew by and you still lived together. The idea of moving out never crossed your mind, you like living with Denki, you love it, even if sometimes he forgets to take clothes into the bathroom when showering and he walks out with just a towel on or comes into the living room late at night drinking orange juice from the carton, only leaving a drop left and not buying another one.

He's your best friend and you love him, You've matured together and seen each other grow and you're so proud of the people you've become. Whenever you praise Denki too much though it definitely gets to his head.

After leaving UA it's been a hell of a lot harder to keep in contact with everyone, there's a group chat but it's pretty dead, and even then you haven't opened the last three messages that came through last couple weeks, if it was important Denki would mention it, you'll get round to it eventually. He's always been on top of communicating with everyone, he's always been the more sociable one. Now everyone's gone pro it's harder to find time for each other and have schedules that match up with others. That's why you're so lucky you have Denki.

Although it's not just Denki you've stayed in contact, luckily Kirishima lives close by and so does Hanta so that's good. You're fairly certain you and Denki are the only ones from your class who are living together, every other hero you know lives separately that's makes you pretty special in your eyes. It must be pretty lonely having no one to come home at the end of the day, you know you definitely would be lonely if you didn't have Denki.

You make yourself some dinner and message Denki after asking where he is. You're not ready to call it a night yet and it would be nice to spend some time with people after a tiring day. Denki's at Kiri's, so twenty minutes later you're at Kiri's too.

When you get through the door, you're immediately greeted by Denki's voice accompanied with Kirishima's and Hanta's laughing, and in ten more minutes you're all squished together watching some shitty show in the background that you have no interest in, listening to Hanta and Denki passionately argue about what star wars film is better, they're absolute idiots. According to Hanta, Phantom Menace is the best one because Jar Jar Binks makes his first appearance but Denki says its return of the Jedi because it's the one where Leia has the gold bikini on.

Even though it sucks that you don't see all your friends as often as you like, you feel like you, Kiri, Denki and Hanta have grown even closer, which is weird because you honestly didn't think you could grow closer with them. They were both some of the closest friends you made during your time at UA. Half the time you still end up falling asleep next to Hanta even now, years later, when you're shattered after work, with Hanta by the side of you. That's where Sero's been for years, by your side, that's where Kiri's been too. It dawned on you one day that not only do you have Denki right beside you always, they've been there too and you're very thankful for them.

"Anyway, Kirishima can I turn this shit off and put something actually interesting on?" Hanta turns to asks Kirishima, how does this man always know what you're thinking.

"Go for it, dude."

"What's the point, it's just background noise anyway," Denki complains.

"Yes, but highly annoying background noise. I suggest anything other than this," you say back.

Denki shuts up after that and they let you pick something.

You must have fallen asleep for a some time as Denki's crouched down beside you, tucking some hair behind your ear, whispering to you, "let's go babydoll, let's get you home." You mumble something unintelligible and start closing your eyes again. "I know babydoll, you're tired but you gotta get up. You can't sleep on Kiri's floor again, you're going to hurt your back. I would carry you but I don't want to hurt you while climbing any stairs. Can you get up for me?" He helps you up and and wraps his arms around your soft waist. "Good girl, we'll be home soon, I promise." you're too tired too think, and too sleepy, not even acknowledging Ejirou and Hanta on your way out, they're used to your hazy states and find it rather endearing. Walking home is a blur, Denki's got his arms around you, keeping you warm and stable. You trust Denki to get you home safely as you close your eyes again, not looking where you're going, pulling yourself even closer to him and burying yourself in his neck, his warmth and smell keeping you cosy and relaxed.

[nico-di-genova]

In My Mind, You are Safe

Chapter 3

Alternate link to read on A03 Chapter 1 Chapter 2

“He knows?” Lance manages to ask the night after he wakes up, motioning with his head to his dad who slept snoring deeply on a leather couch in the lounge. “About us?”

“I did a bad job of keeping it secret.”

Lance thinks he maybe had too, what with the ass grabbing played as camaraderie and the way he couldn’t stop staring at Fernando during debriefs. His father wasn’t a dumb man, but rather a very observant one. He’d known Lance was smoking pot at fifteen not because of the bloodshot eyes and the smell, though those would have been the obvious giveaways, but because his reaction time during training took a hit.

‘If you’re going to smoke weed, you better do a damn better job of hiding it,’ He’d demanded.

Lance never touched the stuff again, he knew he’d get caught.

But with Fernando he thought he had maybe been a little better. They had rules about it. No kissing in the paddock, the garage, not even their drivers rooms unless it was a special circumstance – the circumstance always ending up being Fernando was needy and Lance was bored. They didn’t go to each other’s hotel rooms until it was late enough that no sane fucker would be wondering the halls. Nothing obvious could be left above the neckline, because Lance had already gotten looks from his father after the weekend on Fernando’s ugly yacht where they spent half the time naked and the other half sipping champagne. All those rules seem to have been thrown out the window the moment Lance ended up in intensive care.

Intensive Care

The word makes him shudder.

Fernando sees the movement and presses a kiss to Lance’s knuckles, “Cold?”

“Kinda.”

It’s not really a lie, the AC is set on Ice Box and he’s got nothing but a thin sheet, a stiff blanket, and bare legs beneath a hospital gown to protect him.

“Here,” Fernando pulls the Aston Martin sweatshirt from the back of his chair and helps work it over Lance’s head. It takes an extreme amount of maneuvering, and gentle tugging, and he can’t put one arm through the sleeve because of the IV in his hand. It kind of sucks at providing any actual warmth, but it smells like Fernando so that’s a comfort all on its own.

“Thanks,” He rasps.

“Of course, Lancito.”

“I missed you,” Lance blurts out, which doesn’t really make sense because he was just with Fernando in the paddock. Just with him in his driver’s room. But Lance also thinks he maybe remembers the dark. The emptiness. The distant voices that sounded like they were right beside him and yet a world away all at once. He thinks he remembers being scared.

“I missed you too. Stop talking, you will irritate your throat.”

Lance wants to make a joke about Fernando not wanting to hear him speak, but that would take too many words and he already kind of feels like he’s breathing around fire. Instead, he accepts the water Fernando offers him and sips slowly through the straw to draw out the soothing effect. He has to be careful with how much he drinks, and he can’t have solid foods yet, which Lance chalks up to normal post coma recovery, but might also have something to do with the abdomen injury as well.

He knows it’s serious because when he’d asked the doctor how long until he could get back to racing she hadn’t given him an answer. And Fernando couldn’t look him in the eye. They don’t lie to each other, brutal honesty has always been their forte. That, or steadfast avoidance.

“Careful,” Fernando chides when Lance sips too quick and chokes on the liquid, some of it escaping his mouth to dribble in a cool line down his chin.

Lance rolls his eyes. Fernando should be used to the sounds of his choking by now, he’s certainly gagged himself on worse than a few drops of water.

“Brat.”

Lance smiles around the straw, all innocence and fluttering eyelashes.

“You are lucky you’re in a hospital bed.”

Which, he isn’t, far from it, but for the moment things feel almost normal so he ignores the remark.

--------

There is an argument about who Lance will go home with.

Lance’s Switzerland apartment is out of the question, his agency being robbed by the injuries his body is still trying to adjust itself to. His dad knows he can afford better around the clock care, people to help Lance with everything from changing his bandages to holding his dick while he pisses. Fernando knows Lance doesn’t want that, knows the humiliation of it would probably kill him faster than his car in the wall should have. They don’t ask for Lance’s opinion on the matter though as he sits silently in the bed between them. Watching them fight for custody of him, it’s familiar, reminds him of being small and wondering if he was going to have to have two bedrooms after his parent’s divorce.

“He needs help Fernando. Doctors, nurses, staff – not just you.”

“I have taken care of him before. I know what he needs.”

Healing from a head wound and a piece of carbon fiber tearing through his body isn’t really the same as a cold, but Lance appreciates Fernando’s commitment. He doesn’t say this of course, because neither one of them seem to really notice he’s there, just continues sipping slowly from the cup in his hands and picking at the starched blanket over his lap. His throat doesn’t hurt anymore, swallowing doesn’t take as much effort.

“You think you know better than me? I’m his father,” his dad states. As if it needs stating. As if Lance wasn’t born with Lawrence’s name over his head and a silver coated thumb in his mouth. As if there were any injury out there that would make him forget who he belongs to, down to the blood and marrow of him, the very making.

“I am his-” Fernando pauses. They never really put a name to it. There hadn’t been much discussion about what he and Lance were before he started bleeding out in Fernando’s arms. Not that he would remember that of course, doesn’t remember much about barreling into the wall at top speed. The doctors say that’s probably for the better.

“Boyfriend?” Lance supplies helpfully around the straw in his mouth. He’s continuing his bad habit of gnawing on the plastic, the taste reminiscent of the tube he had woken up choking on, but also of the bottle he would carry around during race weekends.

Fernando motions at him appreciatively, “Yes. This. I am this.”

His dad’s scowl deepens, “This isn’t a fever and some rest. It’s physical therapy, cognitive therapy. He will need someone 24/7.”

He is sitting right here, and he doesn’t necessarily agree. Lance is needy in the same way a cat is, he craves attention only as long as it is wanted, too much and he will probably begin scratching at you. But there hasn’t been much in his control since he lost the wheel at Silverstone.

“Okay. I will do that.” There’s not a hint of hesitation in Fernando’s tone, when Lance knows there absolutely should be. Whatever unestablished thing is between them, it’s far from stable enough to rest Lance’s entire laundry list of medical issues on, or at least Lance thought it was.

“I can hire someone too, Lawrence,” Fernando pushes, “You are not the only man with money. Lance has not lived with you since he was a child, yes? He needs familiarity. Routine? That is not in your mansion. Let him come home.”

Home.

Is that what Fernando’s place is to him? Most of his memories there are the sort that speak less of a home and more of the flat you wake up in after a one-night stand. Strewn clothes and half-finished bottles of beer on the kitchen counter, The warm press of Fernando’s body along his bare back. Would he be healing on the same sheets they routinely fucked on? Propped up on the pillows that know the shape of his teeth?

Is home where you have a drawer and your PlayStation hooked up in the living room? Or is it the childhood space where you keep a collection of Pokémon cards and karting trophies to collect dust? Lance isn’t sure, mainly because he’s never stayed in one place long enough to really understand the feeling.

His dad throws the last card in his arsenal, the thing they all three have been wondering at.

“And what about the season? You’re done then?”

Fernando bites his lip, thinks on it.

“I go back when he does.”

No one wants to state the obvious, least of all his father. Fernando has played the winning hand, deploying the same dirty tactics he’s fond of utilizing when behind the wheel.

Lance stops chewing on the straw. He stops picking at the blanket. Instead, he just stares blankly at the fabric and tries to tune their bickering out. He’s getting a headache, the kind of stabbing pain that only comes when he tries to think too hard about a memory that has escaped him. It’s easier to blame the pain on the bright fluorescent’s, or the way Fernando’s voice is starting to rise, instead of the crack in his skull.

In the end, he goes with Fernando. He asks to go with Fernando, because as much as he loves his father, he cannot stand the thought of trying to make himself fit in a space that no longer knows the shape of him.

“We did get along, so you know,” Fernando says when Lance is buckled into his passenger seat, groggy from the meds they’d dosed him with. Supposedly, they’re supposed to help Lance with the nausea, manage it during the ride.

“When I was ‘sleep?” Lance slurs, still not calling his coma by its name. He’s got his head resting on the car window even though the nurses had warned him not to do that. He’s supposed to be focusing on stationary things within the car, like the warm weight of Fernando’s hand on his thigh, not watching the trees whip by outside while his skull rattles against the glass.

“Yes,” Fernando says, focused on the road with an intensity Lance has only ever seen him possess when behind the wheel, and therefore does not realize the implication of his answer. That he and Lance’s father could only get along as long as Lance was the unconscious white flag waving between them. He tries to backpedal. “No, that is not-.”

Lance shrugs, lethargic, “S’okay. Go back to sleep for you then.”

“Querido no, that is not what I meant,” Fernando actually sounds pained, the nickname rolling of his tongue with an ease Lance did not realize could be familiar to them. Lance just feels exhausted. Consciousness actually takes a conscious effort these days.

“Lance?”

“Hmm?”

“I did not mean that. You know I did not mean that, yes?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He’ll probably forget the conversation by the time he wakes up anyway, memories leak out of him now the same way his blood had.

--------

Surprisingly, Lance has more at Fernando’s UK home than he remembers. Or, unsurprisingly, depending on how much you take his brain injury into account.

He’s got half a bottle of shampoo in the shower, a razor and toothbrush at the sink, most of his hoodies and a good chunk of his sweatpants. Somehow, his favorite pair of socks has even ended up here, thrown in with Fernando’s dirty clothes and discovered by the cleaners. He takes to padding around the place in the loungewear, hood pulled over his head and keeping his hands tucked into the hoodie pocket – subconsciously splaying a palm along his stomach as he always has, but now pressing at his healing abdomen with newfound curiosity.

Fernando will catch him doing it sometimes, grab him by the arm and then the wrist until he can pull Lance’s probing fingers away from the tender skin and entwine them in his own.

“It won’t heal if you pick at it.”

“Feels weird. Itchy.”

It also sometimes hurts so much that Lance finds himself crying silently into the pillow while Fernando sleeps soundly beside him. The phantom pain of an injury he does not remember. When Fernando checks that the healing is coming along nicely, Lance deliberately does not watch. He hasn’t actually seen the incision since he accidentally looked while a nurse at the hospital was cleaning the wound, and nearly lost his light lunch of applesauce and pudding at the sight. It’s ugly, disgusting, and Fernando seems completely unphased by it.

Fernando squeezes his hand, raises it so he can press a kiss to Lance’s knuckles, a quickly forming new habit for him, “I’m sorry, cariño.”

Apologies flow from him easily now. He apologizes for splashing Lance with water when they’re washing dishes. Apologizes for grabbing Lance when he slips in the shower. Apologizes for the simple way the words seem to flow off his tongue now. It’s strange to Lance, stranger than waking up choking on a plastic tube with your dad on one side and your long-term fuck buddy/partner/boyfriend/mentor on the other. Stranger even that it’s coming from Fernando Alonso of all people, who notoriously does not apologize.

Lance is used to arguments between them ending in mutual silence on either end of the couch, not Fernando pressing a kiss to the furrow between his brow and asking for forgiveness.

“Stop doing that,” Lance grumbles, for what must be the hundredth time.

“Sorry.”

“Fernando.”

“Sor- okay,” and then he kisses Lance’s cheek with the gentleness of atonement anyway. Lance misses when Fernando would just slam him against a wall, crowd him against the marble of the kitchen counters, and talk Lance into sinking to his knees. Not that it ever really took much talking to begin with.

Fernando doesn’t fuck him anymore, which he thinks is maybe the biggest travesty to come out of all of this. Instead, he trails careful fingers down Lance’s side, presses kisses to his neck, his shoulder, his jaw with a tenderness that should be considered foreplay. Then he pulls away, leaves Lance half-hard in his sweatpants, and pretends he doesn’t notice the pout on Lance’s lips. Lance doesn’t beg, at least not before Fernando has gotten him undressed, and he’s not going to ask Fernando to suck his dick while the man is on his knees making sure Lance’s abdomen is still healing properly. So it becomes another thing they just don’t talk about. Lance is worried he’s picked up his father’s habit for avoidance.

--------

Nearly three months after his crash, Lance’s morbid curiosity gets the better of him. His therapy is going well, all three of them. The physical therapy for his legs, because they’d gotten fucked up too, though on a much smaller scale, and for his hands and for – well, for every part of him, is almost familiar. He’d done a few rounds of physio for his wrists after his bike accident, though those had been high intensity because Lance actually had a deadline. The cognitive therapy is more of a challenge, because his memory is still shot to shit, but he can remember Chloe’s birthday again so at least there’s that. The therapy therapy is kind of annoying, only because Lance has never really seen the value of shrinks picking apart his mental state to begin with, but it’s easy. Sometimes they play Jenga, sometimes they talk about how Lance is scared he’ll never be the same again, sometimes Lance excuses himself to the bathroom and screams until his voice is as hoarse as it had been once the intubation tube was removed. It’s all a process.

But he still doesn’t remember the crash.

He can see the reflection of it in Fernando’s eyes sometimes, the fear, the shame. The guilt is the worst, usually brought on when Lance jerks awake from a dream he cannot remember and finds Fernando watching him in the dark with eyes shining.

“You okay?” He will ask, propped up on an elbow and tracing a finger along Lance’s spine. The touch sends shivers through Lance, want and need all bundled up in the foggy confusion as his brain tries to reorient itself.

“Fine.”

“You are sure?”

“Definitely.”

Talking was never their strong suit. But Lance has always been able to read people, an ability fine-tuned after years of rejection. He likes to know when people are planning to turn on him before it happens, doesn’t want to be blindsided by a journalist asking him some probing question only to see if they can get a response. He can see Fernando’s guilt, and eventually he caves and searches for the why.

F1 TV, or his father, or maybe the FIA have made a herculean effort to scrub the full footage of the crash from the internet. But Lance has grown up in the age of the digital, so it doesn’t take him long to find it on YouTube, under a video titled “Canadian Buries it in Wall – ’24”. Inventive.

What he remembers is this, sitting beside Fernando in the pre-race briefing. Both of them trying to listen to Mike explain the stacked pit strategy again, but also occupying themselves with each other. Lance, dick still aching from being teased in his driver’s room, was feeling particularly vindictive. He’d been inching his foot slowly up Fernando’s pants leg, his hand up the inside of Fernando’s clothed thigh.

Fernando hadn’t responded. Sat ramrod straight in his seat and kept his eyes glued ahead. Until Lance just barely brushed his knuckles along the bulge in Fernando’s pants and received a sharp pinch to his own thigh in response.

“Ow!” Lance had yelped, loud enough that a few engineers turned to look at him.

Lance had blushed, “Hit my- hit my knee, sorry.”

And then he’d woken up in the hospital. The irritation to his thigh replaced by the throbbing pain that occupied his entire body.

He wants to remember, and so he hits play. He watches himself drive like he’s analyzing onboards for where he can maybe improve, with the same detached feeling. There’s Fernando behind him, and Russel ahead, and Lance in the middle of it all holding his ground. Fernando’s given the order to back-off, told not to fight because Lance’s tire management has been better, and he’s got the speed and clean air for now. Their fight is with Russel, except that Russel was six ahead and Fernando wanted to play sooner rather than later.

The commentators say Lance is driving surprisingly well, he tries not to grind his teeth.

And then Fernando pulls out of the slipstream, makes a charge to overtake in the straight, and Lance sees himself move. Just a twitch of the car, a fraction of movement in an effort to defend, before Fernando’s front right tire clips his back left and Lance spins. He can see himself try to overcorrect, but then the car goes sideways, the tires leave the track when he skitters across marbles, and he’s flipping until there’s only the wall to stop him.

The red flag is immediate, so is Fernando’s stop when he pulls into the gravel and doesn’t even hesitate to book it to Lance’s on fire car.

“Lance. Lance are you alright? Lance. Respond. Confirm you’re alright,” Andrew’s voice comes through the broadcast, but Lance’s own response does not. It’s eerily quiet, especially in the empty space of Fernando’s house when the man isn’t there to bring life to it.

They play a message from Esteban who drives by, the Frenchman’s voice laced with worry as he asked, pleaded, for Lance to be okay. Lance understands now why Esteban had looked so pale when they’d spoken last. When Lance had been curled up on Fernando’s couch, shrouded in shadow because the lights hurt his head, and Esteban had been sat in the chair across from him. He’d thought it was maybe because they were in Fernando’s house, thought the strangeness of the setting might have just had Esteban on edge. He hadn’t realized it was because his best friend had seen his on fire car and thought for a moment he might not get out.

It's suddenly a little hard to breathe. He blames the tightness in his chest on his ribs, even though those have healed by now.

“Lance?” Fernando’s voice in the doorway, quiet, worried.

Lance jumps, winces when he pulls at something sore, and slams the laptop shut with enough force that he’s a little scared to open it again. His eyes dart to Fernando’s and-

Oh. The guilt. He’s drowning in it.

“Fer, I’m sorry, I- fuck. I just…I didn’t- I’m sorry,” and now he’s the one gushing apologies, wanting so badly to tear his gaze away from the tears building in Fernando’s eyes. He shouldn’t have looked. It was easier when he didn’t know the shape of his body in the wreckage, when he didn’t know it had been Fernando who ran to him, who crashed into him. Pandora’s box and all of its contents are spilling across the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says again, because Fernando still has not moved from the doorway and he’s not sure what else he could do. He can’t walk to him, his leg is still aching from physio, hence the whole curled up in bed watching his own life-threatening crash while Fernando was supposed to be out picking him up a ridiculously overpriced smoothie from his favorite place down the road.

“No,” Fernando chokes, “No. Lance. No. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. I-“ Fernando chokes again and then he’s sobbing. Lance’s spirulina, coconut, gold flaked smoothie still clutched in one hand and his free one wrapping around himself as he doubles over in the doorway.

Lance does go to move then, sore muscles be damned.

But when he grabs Fernando, the man only sobs harder. He doesn’t pull away though, he needs Fernando for the support now. His thigh is killing him.

“Fer, Nano, baby, please. It’s okay. I’m okay.” He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, because Fernando doesn’t cry. He bottles everything up, ghosts Lance for a week, and then comes back as if nothing was ever wrong in the first place. Lance doesn’t know how to comfort him, and he doesn’t think that’s something to be blamed on the memory loss, he’s almost certain this is entirely new to them.

Fernando collapses against his chest, Lance stumbles under the weight of them both. His body protests the sudden movement, something sharp and hot spiking it’s way through him, starting in his leg and moving to the incision scar on his stomach.

He gasps, tries to breathe through the pain. It’s kind of like how his wrists were after a race, before he plunged them into a bowl of ice, he can manage.

“I’m okay,” he says, and hopes it doesn’t sound too tense. There’s sweat breaking out along his brow. He kind of wants his smoothie. “I’m okay, Fer. I promise.”

Fernando’s tears are soaking the fabric of his hoodie. Lance cradles the back of his head, and ignores the damp feel of them against his chest, ignores the warm heat of Fernando’s breath as he tries to find air.

“An accident,” he wails, “I swear, Lance, I swear.”

“I know.”

He saw, just now, could clearly see himself moving and see Fernando slamming the brake to try to stop it. He sees Fernando running. Running to him. People who hurt Lance intentionally are hardly ever concerned enough to check on him afterward, some of them think he deserves the knife twisted inside him simply because he can afford the medical bill. He knows Fernando would never try to hurt him, but he also knows nothing he says could absolve the guilt.

“I know, dude. And I love you, but could we maybe move this to the bed? My leg is killing me.” Fernando, thankfully, lets himself be maneuvered until Lance is sitting on the edge of the bed and Fernando resting solidly in his lap, knees bracketed on either side of his thighs. It’s the most contact they’ve had since Lance woke up, it’s making him a little heady.

Fernando rests his cheek against Lance’s shoulder, cries into the crook of his neck, and Lance tries to soothe him as he takes intermittent sips from his smoothie that he’d pulled from Fernando’s grip before it ended up spilled across the sheets. He rubs a hand along Fernando’s back, a pantomime of how his dad used to calm him down when he had a rough race and had to blow off steam in his driver’s room. It’s not working very well. Lance is maybe bad at this.

“I shouldn’t have watched the stupid video,” he grumbles. Knowing the how has not brought him any peace, only made him realize the true severity of his injuries. His therapist might have been right in saying to stop pressing at the wound, Fernando too for pulling his hand away.

“I could have killed you,” Fernando cries, “I almost killed you. You- you were-“

“I know, Nando, I know. Please, just- just stop. Please.”

It’s too much too fast. Fernando’s guilt, his own brain trying to process it all, the headache forming at his temples and the exhaustion crashing down on him. He’s tired all of the time now. And not in the lazy way he once was, like a big cat stretching in a patch of sunlight, more like someone who’s been crumpled in their car and extracted without all of the pieces smoothed back out.

He wants to sleep. He maybe wants to cry himself.

“Thought I would lose you,” Fernando mumbles, miserable and quiet, his stubble rough against the soft skin of Lance’s neck when he speaks.

“You didn’t. I’m safe. I’m right here.”

Lance hadn’t realized he was Fernando’s to lose, didn’t really put the pieces together until now that he maybe belonged to someone other than his family. He didn’t think anyone would ever actually want him. It’s a weird feeling, makes something beneath the scarring and the healing wound in his gut twist.

“You have me. I’m right here. I’m safe. I’m here.”

I’m okay, he thinks, and he starts to believe that it will be true.

[thepersonperson]

Ngl your post summarises so well why i love sukugo and why im so insane about them

Like of fucking course those two would work together when Sukuna deeply does not care about any social rules to ever exist. Of course they do when Gojo is confronted with someone gay for him and not hiding behind anything. This is not survivable and i love them and care them. I even had written in the notes for my fic about Gojo being the person who generally prefers to keep things as they are but i couldnt actually formulate why i think that. You are so smart your analysis is so wonderful

This is also why I like Sukugo a lot. It's not just that Sukuna matches Gojo's freak, he enables it. Encourages it even. Makes it worse. Sukuna's existence is a twisted opposition to Jujutsu Society. It's very hedonistic, sadistic, and selfish but by golly it is rebellion.

The flattery is also appreciated, but please understand that I am very stupid and am capable of making mistakes. Alternate perspectives like yours are just as valuable. Which is why I'm shoehorning your tags on this post into this ask. (They are great tags and everyone should see them. Also I don't know how to respond to them otherwise.)

#yeah youre right # sorry i got time to think about it #and im kind of writing gojo rhe same but a vit more influenced by sukuna lmao #tbh as the person coming from a post soviet country #i honestly cant like #fully agree with everything due to just #like i understand that what people want from socialism isnt what was in soviet union #but its still very much hard to accept that anyone could want what we went through lol #when i tell you that socialism actually pitted everyone against each other isnt not a joke #but i understand what you lead into and yeah yeah true

#tbf to gojo he really tried even if his method ultimately failed #like he had genuinely tried to do better for the kids that came after him despite the desperate lack of empathy of understanding of others #and himself #like i can appreciate the desperate desire to make change for the better

#and yeah geto was so horribly jealous its insane #of anything really #i also kinda really think geto has the mentality that after toji gojo is different? #that the boy he knew died and this is someone else #and what he does it ultimately for the boy he loved and for the boy who survived through changing #it also may be a bit of a fucked up coping mechanism how to deal with it all and differentiate what gojo was to him and is

#but yeah i was thinkinf about it and talking a lot #they were so badly exploited as children #we know its better with gojo than it was before #but then also if gojo takes on the hardest missions for the students that means he’s not present to teach its a fucked up circle #he doesnt understand enough to be a full leader to make a rebellion but he is trying god damn #but yeah the only way he could articulate what he’s actually feeling is through battle which is sad

#i take the way he stopped looking for exciting battles growing up is him growing up #like sending yuuta for cursed tools. he made his peace that he cant just chase men while he needs to take care of the kids #idk its all deeplt fucked up and im very sad for them

That's a fair criticism and even better commentary. I understand the aversion to some of the words I'm using to describe this. It's just that I don't know how else to effectively communicate what I think is the main issue. I do appreciate you're willing to hear me out on this though! (You're applying Umineko's "Without love, it cannot be seen." which makes me very happy.)

I'm US based which is a hypercapitalist hellscape, so when I talk about socialism it doesn't mean "do exactly what the Soviet Union did" (that would be very bad) but instead some of the ideas behind workers rights are good and desperately needed to curb stomp the type of labor exploitation they're experiencing. (Like unions for better pay, hours, and working conditions.)

Theory is useful because it give you the words to describe exactly what's wrong and the ideas that can guide you towards productive solutions. I can say Jujutsu Society is bad because of labor exploitation from the higher ups and therefore unions would help mitigate their power because I learned about those things.

Gojo and Geto don't have those words or background so they see part of the problem but have no name for it. And because they don't understand why it's happening, their solutions are surface-level treatments that don't address the real source of their suffering.

Toji was a symptom of the problem. Geto saw Toji as the entire problem so he thinks eradicating anything like Toji is the solution. Gojo saw Toji as a symptom and a potential solution to the real problem—Jujutsu Society. He recognized that Toji being strong is what helped him escape this problem so he laser focused on it. If he and his students are strong, they can change things. What things exactly? Gojo doesn't have the knowledge or time to dwell deeper on it. To him strength=revolution. He neglects the need for mutual aid, addressing overwork, and limiting child labor because the words and framework to deal with that are missing.

Gojo can't really do anything other than keep things the sameish because he doesn't know how the better world he's seeking works. (Similar to how you recognized this flaw of his, but couldn't put it into words since you didn't have them.) He both does things better for his students and screws them up in whole new different ways as a result of this. It's very tragic.

And everything wrong with Jujutsu Society is still just a microcosm of Japanese work culture that leads to this exploitation in the first place. Nanami is the only character that makes this connection and he has no idea what to do about it other than work where he feels less bad about it.

It's kind of like knowing a grease fire is dangerous but not knowing how to put it out.

>Gojo throws water on the grease fire trying to put it out and makes it worse before he starts suffocating it with his body instead of a blanket.

>Geto tries to eradicate grease from existence not knowing that other types of fire exist.

>Nanami realizes oxygen and fuel are the source of fires but he has none of the tools to put them out or prevent them.

>Sukuna understands that letting the fire burn everything to ash means there will never be fire again. ...While ignoring this also means there will be nothing left in the aftermath.

If any of these people were taught fire safety (labor theory), their methods of dealing with the fire (labor exploitation) and preventing it in the future would be so much better.

Japan has some of the lowest union memberships and the worst working conditions amongst rich countries. JJK has a lot to say on the topic so I'm being very annoying about it because I don't see others talking about it this way.

[kitthepurplepotato]

MWRMI Part 6

My Weird Roomate, Midoriya Izuku

Week 3 part 2 / Meet the Gang!

~•🥦•~

Summary: Y/N learns about Midoriya’s past and the gang’s secret tattoos. …?!

Also, why is Kirishima half-naked all of the sudden?!

Warnings: Swear words, hints of suggestiveness (they tell “funny” stories, 2 sentences, really.) a tiny hint of platonic (?) jealousy.

First Part Master List

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

“OH MY GOD, THATS RED RIOT THAT’S FUCKING RED RIOT, Midoriya!”

Okay, listen.

Red Riot doesn’t have a fan base; he has a fucking cult.

That guy had the glow up of the century after going through puberty.

Red Riot? More like Red Daddy.

No jokes, people say that quite a lot when they are talking about the hero. He’s so liked for his looks he actually managed to beat Dynamight and Deku on the “best looking bachelor” charts.

Red Riot barely had any presence in the hero world for his first few years; he had no confidence and he really didn’t think he can be a good hero or at least that’s what he’d said in the interviews. Then Dynamight took him under his wings, took him away from his last agency and that’s when the name Red Riot became a phenomenon; he got even more ripped and grew his hair out but still kept it red, just one shade darker; it’s shorter at the front and really long at the back which makes him look like a lion; majestic and frightening when fighting a villain. His close relationship with Dynamight also helped the blonde to get a better reputation, which he definitely needed at the beginning of his career; Dynamight might have been the one who saved the redhead first, but to be honest, they both saved each other from themselves.

Needless to say, the two heroes are constantly shipped by the fandom, and reading Bakugou’s rants on his official social media about it always makes your day better. Once he posted a picture about Red Riot sprawled out on his lap after a night out, drooling like a Rottweiler all over his trousers with the caption “Do you really think I would ever kiss that mouth?”, but people focused on the intimacy of the photo instead of it’s meaning. The blonde got so furious he deleted himself from the internet for two weeks.

Red Riot also admitted that he absolutely lives for Dynamight’s rants, so sometimes he stirs shit up just to get a reaction out of the blonde; he posts domestic pictures of Bakugou making breakfast in nothing but boxers and other shenanigans like that. The picture is usually followed by a selfie of him being beaten up by his best friend for being a menace or a screenshot of him being blocked on every social media when he’s away on a mission (because of course he has a secret stash of domestic pictures hidden in his phone, who wouldn’t?)

Ahh, you can talk about these two for ages, they are the funniest pair, like ever.

Midoriya giggles at your sudden outburst while you try your best to hide behind the sofa out of embarrassment.

“Aww, thank you!” The redhead smirks. “It’s always a pleasure to be adored by a beautiful lady like yourself.”

You don’t have time to really react to his sudden flirting because the air fills with tension for some weird reason; Midoriya stops smiling, black whip caresses your back and wraps around your body protectively. He looks furious and also does Bakugou, but his anger is pointed at you; if looks would kill, you would be dead by now.

“It’s a bit cold, isn’t it, Y/N? You should change into something warm before you catch a cold.” Midoriya smiles, but it’s more frightening than cute this time. Damn, if you would be a villain and he would look at you like that, you’d 100% piss yourself.

“I have no idea what the actual fuck is going on right now but I’m gonna sit down.” A purple haired, tired looking guy sighs and makes his way to the sofa like the time didn’t just freeze for a second. Honestly, you have no idea what’s going on either.

“Let me explain!” Chargebolt claps his hands happily. “Bakugou’s being a a possessive dick over his best friend, and Midoriya is the same with his roommate. Why? Don’t ask me.” He gives you a reassuring smile.

“This is why I’ll be single forever, Y/N. Don’t be like me.” The redhead sighs, also sitting down. Midoriya lets you go while mumbling ‘sorry’ but he doesn’t look sorry at all.

“What do you mean, Eijirou? Is Katsuki’s marvelous presence not enough for you to be happy? Aww, poor boy.” Pinky speaks up, clearly enjoying the drama. She looks even prettier in real life.

“Say another word, you pink bitch, and I’ll mount your stupid horny head on my wall.” Bakugou snaps, his face a lovely shade of red. Chargebolt blurts out a quiet ‘damn’ and hides behind the sofa, right behind the purple dude who just sighs at Kaminari’s shenanigans.

“Aww, is my face is so pretty you want to see it every day? That’s so cute, Bakubro!” Mina coos and that’s when shit hits the fan; you quietly leave the room to change as per Midoriya’s advice (what the fuck was that about? Yeah, you are wearing comfy shorts but so is he.) while Red Riot hardens between his two friends, acting like a shield to stop them from killing each other. After a few minutes, the yelling stops; apparently, their pizza order is more important than an impromptu mass murder.

It takes you a while before you have the guts to go back so you can properly meet Midoriya’s chaotic friends; you still have no idea what made the two friends so mad, but to be fair, Bakugou is known to blow up for no reason at all, so maybe you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Hey.” Midoriya’s green head pops in through the door. He looks a bit flushed and a little bit guilty. He’s absolutely adorable. “Can I come in?”

“I was just about to go out, but yeah.” You mumble, your voice strained from the stress. Deku closes the door and leans back to it; his face is contorted into a frown but he tries his best to give you a smile.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you. I had no right to treat you that way.” The greenette is clearly beating himself up for his actions and it brakes your heart.

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not.” Midoriya jumps in. “Eijirou is a nice guy, he talks like that to everyone. Bakugou is a possessive asshole over all his friends, especially him. I was so excited for you to meet my closest friends yet I fucked it up.”

Oh no, not the teary eyes. You can’t handle the teary eyes right now.

“Midoriya…” you move closer to the slumped greenette, taking his hand into yours. He looks at you with the cutest lovelorn expression. “Stop looking at me like that. I really want to hug you tight when you do that.”

You really didn’t mean to say that. You really didn’t.

“Then hug me, Y/N.” Midoriya says, a new kind of emotion swirling in his beautiful eyes. Your body moves on its own as you embrace your favorite hero with such passion that Midoriya’s back hits the door with a loud bang from the force of it. You can hear his heart beating loud and fast when your face hits his chest as you squeeze the shit out of the poor guy. The hero’s hand ends up in your hair, slowly massaging your scalp while he takes a deep breath to calm his racing heart. Midoriya lets your hand go and pulls you even closer by the small of your back; your bodies clash with each other completely as Midoriya melts into your touch; his muscles feel amazing under your cheeks. You’ve never felt so content in your life.

Okay, this hug is way too passionate to be called “friendly”. You are about to pass out. He smells so amazing, like pine and sea salt with a hint of spice, masculine and earthy. The world stops for a second, Midoriya’s friends on the other side completely forgotten as the two of you embrace each other, your true feelings showing without you even saying them out loud.

This is when reality really hits you; you don’t just have a crush on this guy; you are absolutely fucking smitten with him already.

Ahh, you are so fucked.

“STOP MAKING OUT, YOU FUCKERS!” Bakugou ruins the moment with his yelling. When you two realize the situation you are in, you jump away from each other with a “sorry”, like two emotionally constipated teenagers.

“Maybe they are just having a fight.” A tired voice mumbles, probably the purple haired guy you don’t know yet.

“With their mouths, yeah.” Pinky giggles mischievously. If your face wasn’t red enough before, now it is.

“I mean, can you blame him? Y/N is cute as hell.” Motherfucking Red Riot comments and that’s when Midoriya opens the door with a flushed face.

“Can we start this all over?” Midoriya yelps. His friends try their best to not comment on their disheveled appearance for the sake of you and nod in unison. “This is Y/N, my FLATMATE. She takes care of the flat when I’m not around.”

“She takes care of more than that by the look of it…” Chargebolt whispers into Jirou’s ears, who slaps the guy on his head to shut him up. Jirou is a great friend. You love her. “You know Kacchan and Jirou already, then you have Kirishima Eijirou, but you also know that, Kaminari Denki, Ashido Mina, Shouto Todoroki who doesn’t speak too much but he’s one of my closest friends and Shinsou Hitoshi who you might remember from the sports festival. He works with Aizawa-sensei as an underground hero so his face isn’t well known but he’s amazing.”

“I still don’t know why am I here today” Shinsou mumbles, clearly hating the fact that he was forced to come over. He doesn’t look like a guy who enjoys being in a large group.

“You are here because you are important to us, and I can’t believe I need to have this conversation with you after all these years.” Kaminari sighs, looking at the purple haired hero with disappointment in his eyes. Shinsou looks back at him with a guilty expression, showing the yellow haired man with his shoulder in a silent sorry.

Wow, you ship them. So much.

Damn, you really need to stop reading gay fanfictions when Midoriya is not home.

“Now that we all said hi, it’s time to embarrass Midoriya!” Chargebolt speaks up energetically. “Which story should we start with?”

“Guys, please!” Midoriya pulls you to the sofa while hiding his face with his other hand in embarrassment. You sit down next to each other while the group fights over which story should they tell.

“His first almost-kiss!”

“What about the time when Katsuki saw him doing nasty things in his room?”

“That’s not an embarrassing story, I literally thought he’s not into that shit until that moment. I was proud of him.”

“KACCHAN!” Midoriya hides his face in your neck in embarrassment and you try your best to not explode. Jirou looks at you with pity in her eyes.

“What about his secret tattoo?” Kirishima chimes in, and you perk up; you really like tattoos and you always wanted one. “Ahh, she likes that! So it happened on Katsuki’s 21st birthday…”

“Oh my god…” Deku mumbles, still hiding in your neck. “You might not like me that much after tonight, Y/N” he sighs, making your whole body tingle with his hot breath caressing your sensitive skin.

“I’m a loyal fan.” You deadpan. It’s really hard to concentrate on the story right now to be honest.

“So we were really drunk when Tetsutetsu and his gang came over and challenged us to a fight. The loser gang had to get a tattoo. The fuckers knew we are too drunk to realize they are all sober so they beat us to pulp. We woke up the next day with new tattoos. On our… bottoms.” Kirishima looks down with a flushed face. “I have a rock, you wanna see?” Kirishima excitedly jumps up, ready to show you his sick tattoo, but Bakugou is having non of it.

“Eijirou, if you pull your pants down in front of everyone I’ll absolutely kick you out of my house.” He whispers threateningly, his hands ready to block the view. Kirishima sits down with a sad puppy look.

“It’s not that far down!” The redhead whines, but gives up anyway. “Please, don’t kick me out, I fucking love the sauna and I also own the half of the flat.”

So Red Riot and Dynamight bought a flat together. Interesting.

Would it be weird to write a fanfiction about that, now that you know them in person? Probably.

The life of a hero fangirl is really hard sometimes.

“I have a Pikachu!” Kaminari chimes in proudly.

“I have a Hypno. Thanks for that, Denki…” Shinsou mumbles, clearly hating his teen self for being so stupid.

“I wanted us to match!”

“You have no reason to moan, Hitoshi, I have a fucking pinky tattooed on my bum.” Mina admits shamefully. The whole team bursts out laughing at the old memory.

“I have a picture of soba noodles. That’s my favorite food.” Todoroki declares with a straight face, like it’s a pretty normal thing to have your favorite food tattooed on your bottom.

“I have headphones! Like the ones I use when I fight the bad guys!”

“Mine was a small explosion but it was too boring so I made it into a massive one.” Bakugou pulls his shirt up, showing off a massive tattoo on his side. Wow, it’s really hot in here. Like, really really hot. Damn. You can’t believe no one ever realized that Dynamight has so many tattoos hidden under his shirt. The other side of him is also full of ink, but you can’t see enough of it to be able to decipher what it is exactly.

“Why can you show yours but I can’t show mine? It’s not fair!” Kirishima grumbles. “You know what, you can’t tell me what to do.” Kirishima slowly unbuttons his shirt and shows you a massive black and red dragon on his chest. So this is why the hero changed his costume into something less revealing. He’s hiding a fucking beast under it.

You might die tonight.

There is no way your heart can take more of this shit.

Where is the water? You are kind of thirsty. Respectfully… thirsty. For water.

Yeah.

“Can you guys stop stripping? I have a broccoli by the way. Not like anyone cares at this point.” Midoriya pouts and it’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen.

“Midoriya, that’s so fucking cute!” You yell, the two stripping heroes long forgotten. “Colored or black and white?”

Midoriya perks up now that your attention is back on him, a shy smile decorating his face.

“Colored. It matches my hair. I know most of us are ashamed of these tattoos but I really like it. It reminds me of my friends. It reminds me that I’m not alone anymore.” Midoriya smiles into the distance. “It reminds me that whatever happens, there will be someone there to catch me when I fall. We are a family.”

“That was so manly, goddamn it!” Kirishima cries, tears falling down his cheeks.

“What the fuck, shitty Deku, this was supposed to be fun, now I want to throw myself off a cliff!” Katsuki rolls his eyes aggressively but he can’t hide the fond smile when he looks at his crying flatmate.

“No worries buddy, Midoriya will be there to catch you!” Mina giggles, clearly having the time of her life as she looks at the three boys.

“Now you ruined it.” Midoriya mumbles, unimpressed. You really tried not to laugh, but seeing all these people taking the piss out of each other made you laugh out loud. You’ll never forget tonight, that’s for sure. These people are truly amazing.

After a few more minutes of banter the pizza arrives; Midoriya puts in a DVD with some old interviews and they all laugh at their awkward faces on the screen. The whole situation is so intimate, everyone is so close to the other, limbs and arms intertwined with each other while fond smiles are being exchanged when someone new appears on the screen. The guys tell you about Ingenium’s matching bum tattoo - he has a pair of glasses -, and about the time Jirou fell on the stage; you hear a bunch of stories the public have never heard about while Midoriya snuggles closer and closer as the night turns into an early morning… your heart swells from the happiness to be able to be a part of something so private without feeling like an intruder. The group welcomes you with open arms, letting you in without a question.

“Can I tell the story about Katsuki almost exploding his dick of when he tried to…” Denki mumbles half asleep, but Katsuki gives him a massive slap before he can finish the sentence.

“Midoriya had a girlfriend in high school for a few weeks but he was so wind up about their first kiss he threw up right in front of the poor girl. We haven’t seen her since. She changed schools.” Another half asleep mumble, this time from Kirishima, who somehow ended up sprawled out on everyone’s laps on the sofa.

“I think Denki’s bisexual awakening is a good story to tell. It was the first time I actually laughed in front of everyone. He’s helpless.” Todoroki chimes in, probably the only one still fully awake from the team.

“Says the guy who wanted to call an ambulance on a girl who blushed and didn’t even realize she was trying to ask him out.”

You have no idea who’s talking anymore. It’s almost 5 AM and Midoriya is so warm next to you, you can’t help but hide your face in his arms. You can feel Midoriya’s hands stroking your hair, the affectionate caress slowly lulling you to sleep.

“I’ll put Y/N to bed, you guys get comfortable. You know where to find the spare bedding, yeah?” Midoriya takes you in his arms, moving you towards your bedroom. The group mumbles incoherently, clearly ready to sleep as the hero puts you down on the soft sheets, tugging you in like a child. Something soft touches your forehead but you are too sleepy to react; it feels nice and warm like the sun on a breezy afternoon.

“Sleep tight, sweet pea. See you tomorrow.”Someone whispers. The nickname makes you smile subconsciously. “I don’t want to leave, to be honest. I always want to be around you, I wonder why.” You can still hear the mumbles but you can’t understand the words anymore; it’s too late and you are too tired to keep listening.

You dream about green curls and soft touches, about the stars and the moon, so close yet so far away, you dream about touching the sky, about reaching out for the brightest star only to fall back down on Earth, but you stand up and try again, until your hand reaches the one with the scars, until your fingers intertwine and you never let go again.

~•🥦•~

“Maybe it’s the cold of the night. Such a drastic change compared to the warmth of the day… I’ve never felt cold before but I probably didn’t even know how the warmth felt like on my skin until I’ve met you. Now that I know, I’m craving it. So much. You are like the sun, Y/N. Please, never change; and stay by my side for a bit longer, until I’m strong enough to let you go. I hope you’re sleeping. It will be really awkward if you’re not.” Midoriya giggles and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

Midoriya Izuku really needs to get a grip, he thinks as he makes his way to his own bedroom, already hating the cold feeling of his sheets.

… Next Chapter!

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Potato ramble:

Damn, that ending. DAMN.

Fun fact, that bit wasn’t planned. At all. It just happened. The hug wasn’t planned either. It’s all Midoriya’s fault.

- I also feel like I owe you guys an explanation for the iffy jealousy scene: in Midoriya’s case it was 50% jealousy and 50% protectiveness. He doesn’t really understand his own feelings yet and he couldn’t really handle that situation very well. He’ll get much better at it in the future. Midoriya was never a possessive person but Y/N told him he can be a bit selfish sometimes and he listened. He’s growing as a person it’s just really hard to tell. He’s such a weirdo I love him 🥦

- Ao3 is down and I want to cry.

Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated as always 🥦💚

Taglist: @porusuniverse @stickygumchewer @sixxze @mily-moo @momothemasocist

[aannonn]

★ ─。colorful text , strong colors , bold text , brief mention of suicide , implied/referenced grief , swearing

okay i know we are all excited about the actual short that just came out but let me ramble a bit about Red cause im getting emotional about this stick ... ( before my motivation to type all of this ends and i dont feel emotional anymore lol )

Red in season 3 went through so much istg ;; not only did he and Sec went through a very tense (and needed) fight which almost caused the end of their friendship (+ Sec was clearly in the winning side here, or Red was just really terrified of her at that moment given to how he tried to run away from her - of which i will probably talk about it in a later post maybe), but he was also really fucking tormented in monster school (i felt so bad for him in this episode i legit wanted to cry)

+ after all of this fiasco he really went ahead and carried this thing (of which, given to how he hit it on the ground and it made a soft thump, it must have been heavy asf) all the way to the other side and??? fucking smashed King's chin which made him fly to so fucking far ;; which means he literally used all of his strenght to carry this staff, and dropkick King with it, even if it was so hard he almost even dropped it at first

AND THEN HE JUST. PROCEEDS TO PASS OUT ON THE FLOOR CAUSE HES SO FRICKING TIRED AND EXHAUSTED AAWRGHWS

there are also other moments where i think he really deserves a break tbh ;;

he lost a pet. i have a pet myself and just the thought of ever losing him hurts so fucking much to the point i can feel my oof'ing urges coming back.

;; granted; it was a minecraft pig and it was high with all the potions, and also tried to kill all of them, but he clearly atleast had some care for that pig ... (the fact that he immediately stood up and spawned another animal makes me think about that one post/tiktok (i dont remember the user) i've seen ; which talked about Red possibly hiding/bottling up his sadness from others , in order to stay happy and positive or because he doesn't think his struggles are important enough compared to the others' - which i think it make alot of sense since you rarely see him cry or something, just going numb and/or looking down in despair - the only ever time we ever saw him cry was when Green supposedly died.)

i haven't talked about this actual short before since i had no desire to , but damn bro the way i felt bad for Red in this(っ °Д °;)っ he just wanted to have red stuff for him aswell, since apparently it wasn't dropping for him for some reason???? okay he should have included green and blue stuff aswell instead of possibly removing them but. still. Green and Blue were so fricking wrong in this

and !! his and Sec's tense relationship in the past seasons ... i love Sec he's literally my fav out of them all but i cannot defend xem on this. i know she had her reasons and im not saying Red was in the right either but, gosh ... pretty ironic given he's the one who inspired xem to break in in their site and join them in their battle

... i dont even need to explain do i

he lost a pet ... again. and because of his own fault aswell ! he knew the possible dangers of fusing the command block and the staff together , given how he almost got possessed alongside his friends the first time something like this happened , and yet ... he did it anyway . and beeper died as a consequence . i cant imagine how much guilt he must have felt .. (probably one of the main reasons why he didnt put up a fight when they put him in the timeout box)

i think he wanted to cry at this scene ngl ,,,

thinking about this ; they are all really tragic characters tbh ,,, stepping away from the heavy angsty all of c!Alan's stickfigures go through , rygb goes through a lot of shit aswell , and tbh i just feel bad for all of them ; they are all such tragic characters that deserve a very well-needed break break/_ \

since we are in this topic aswell , i would like to mention how i really love Blue and his immediate rush in being a comfort for the others<3

i used to think Yellow was the therapist friend but we only ever saw him comfort Blue lolll ( i love him anyway ;; i think Blue is more of a therapist friend than he is though )

[according2thelore]

I just saw a writing prompt that I HAVE to share with you when we talk about the Codependent Brothers(tm) because it'd be hilarious.

A reversal of the "there was only one bed" trope. Instead, I offer: too many beds

I just love the idea of Sam and dean, maybe post getting together, not knowing how to function when having to sleep separately. They're so used to cramped motel rooms with single beds, and after becoming official(read: declaring their love to each other in the moonlight and then fucking nasty in the impala) they feel even LESS able to handle this dilemma.

Maybe they have to put up an act for someone, maybe they are forced to eb separated by outside forces, or maybe they just forgot that that was an option. Either way I just think it would be hilarious watching them fumble their way through realizing they have to sleep in separate beds for once.

(This would also fit in the LS/ES Verse because LS! Sam and Dean would have to hide their relationship from their younger selves, who make it a point, and take great effort to actively Not Be Too Weird Or Clingy around their brother who they're secretly desperately in love with.)

"there's two beds."

dean looks up at sam's flat tone, and his stomach sinks as he realizes, oh shit. there are two beds.

the clerk at the counter must've given them a key to the wrong room.

they'd been carefully "accidentally"ing themselves into rooms with kings since that night a few months ago, dean's blood soaking underneath sam's nails and sam finally kissing the fuck out of dean--the absolute hell out of him--as he'd slipped into hypovolemic unconsciousness.

since then, dean had talked sam into sleeping in his room in the bunker. it started as sam sleeping over after sex, but they weren't twenty anymore, and after the sixth night of marathon acrobatic fucking, dean had said "maybe we could watch a few episodes of game of thrones" and tried very hard to strategically fall asleep on top of sam so he couldn't get up and leave.

after that, the convincing got less...well, convincing, but sam stayed anyway. somehow, his clothes migrated over to dean's dresser. his toothbrush sat next to his on the sink. his house shoes stayed next to the bed.

that's it. just the one bed. but now...

"i could," dean clears his throat. "i could go ask him to switch us."

sam tears his eyes away from the damning beds in question.

"huh? i mean. no."

dean blinks. sam shrugs, looking unsure.

"nah, it should be fine, right? it's just for a night."

dean nods.

"yeah. i mean we've slept in separate beds for thirty years." dean agrees, a factual statement. they stare at each other. they stare at the beds.

just two red-blooded american guys staring at two separate beds.

like god intended.

dean is in front of the clerk thirty-nine seconds later, being told that there's a boxcar rally in town. he won't find a king bed this side of the river.

or the next river. dean asked.

dean has been sleeping in a bed by himself--he does the math--for almost thirty-six years of his life. he knocked off three cumulative years for how often he and sam shared beds as kids and that year with lisa.

so he's used to sleeping in his own bed. never mind that dean has never been sleeping better than the past few months. he thought he just slept poorly, but he dares any person alive or dead to not sleep like a goddamn baby when sam has his hulk-hogan arm wrapped around your torso. you can't. it's a scientific impossibility.

it turns out that the regular soothing effect of hearing sam breathe that could get dean to sleep for the first forty years of his life (minus the first four for obvious reasons, dean doesn't really count those anyway) worked exponentially better when sam was actually exhaling against dean's sternum. who knew?

dean was getting a full six, a full eight, a full nine hours of sleep tucked up behind sam, and the hair in his mouth--while a trade off that deserved consideration--could be overlooked.

dean is sitting in his bed later that night, unsure of where to put his arms. or his legs. or his body. sam is standing next to his own bed, looking confused.

dean looks at him, and damn. this room is huge. he's like...really far away.

"so." dean says, voice a little louder so sam can hear him all the way over there, "we should get up at seven. to get to montana by tomorrow afternoon."

sam nods.

"yeah, okay." he says. he sits down on his bed. dean realizes that because he's used to sleeping on the side closest to the door, and sam is used to sleeping on the opposite side, that they're pressed to opposite sides of their separate beds, giving the maximum amount of space between them.

dean frowns. he turns the light off.

he can barely hear sam breathe in the dark. how the hell did he hear him before? he scoots over, and finds that sam has already done the same. they stare at each other across the three foot space between beds.

dean is hot. like he's...really hot. he kicks the blankets off.

sam has pulled his blankets up to his chin. how the hell is he cold right now?

minutes tick by. they build up on top of each other like snowflakes on a drift.

dean has his eyes closed, and thinks he's probably close to something, but just as he's maybe getting somewhere, sam turns over, and dean loses the sound of his breathing.

dean blinks up at the ceiling, wide awake.

"hey. hm. hey sammy. can you. uh. can you turn back over?" dean whisper-calls.

sam turns back over.

dean looks at the clock. it's thirty two minutes past when they laid down.

"what the hell?" dean smacks the clock a few times. it stays the same. he watches for over thirty minutes as it turns from 11:23 to 11:24. dean flops back against the bed. this is a fucking nightmare.

sam sneezes.

"gesundheit." dean says. sam thanks him. dean starts counting cars that go by on the interstate. he makes it to forty-seven when sam sighs heavily.

"okay," he says, firm, and he stands up. dean whirls back around to look at him, and watches as sam crosses the chasm between their beds, and kicks dean's body with his knee. "move."

dean rolls over immediately, tangling in his blankets in his fervor to get over.

sam wraps his humungo he-man arm around dean's waist as he crawls into his bed.

dean is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

in the morning, dean's left arm and leg are cold and numb, sam having squished all the blood and feeling out of it. they sleep through their alarm, they sleep so well. dean is pulling sam's hairs out of his mouth for the rest of the day. sam has a crick in his neck that dean sees him wincing about every time he turns his head.

"next time," sam says, folding himself into the passenger seat of the impala as they get ready to drive away, "we'll go to the next state if we have to."

dean nods.

it would be easier. it's not like they need it, though, or anything.

~~~

ES/LS BONUS!

"yes, it's time to go sleep in my bed," dean says, standing up. his teeth are clenched. "by myself."

his younger self looks at him like he's speaking a different language. dean glares at him. it's his fucking fault he's not getting any goddamn sleep around here.

"yeah." sammy says, hauling himself up. he sounds defeated. "a night of 'sleep' will do me good."

"why did you say it like that?" sam says, brushing his bangs out of his face, and looking up at his older self. "i heard those air quotes. what was that about?"

"because we sleep normally." sammy says, bitterly. "like regular people."

"do y'all hang from the ceiling or something?" younger dean asks. "what the fuck is happening right now?" "we're going to bed!" dean snaps. "because we're regular people, who treat each other regularly!"

"i have never felt more normal in my life," sammy agrees solemnly. "good night."

dean and sammy don't see the baffled what the fuck sam mouths at younger dean, or the way younger dean makes sure he has his silver knife in his pocket. maybe things aren't all they seem around here. bc what the hell was that?

but their younger selves don't see the forlorn look dean shoots sammy before he closes his door. sammy sighs ten minutes later, thunking his head on his own closed door. he forgot his toothbrush in dean's room.

~~~

this ask was DELIGHTFUL!!!!!!!

this was SUCH a fun prompt, and i had such a great time writing it, thank you sm bestie 🥹

trust that i have seen your other ask! i have been in a ES/LS rut for the past few weeks as i work on my big bang piece (an ES!Dean/LS!Sam fic that i'm excited for y'all to see later this year!). but i shall answer! i promise!

thank you for this ask, animangalover! mwah <3 hope you're doing well!

-lizzy

[lurkingshan]

Shan’s Confession Corner: Minato’s Laundromat

I’ve just finished the second episode of Minato’s Laundromat 2, and I absolutely loved it. I love the clear intent behind this new season, and I love where the story is headed. And it made me think this might be a good time for me to unpack my complicated feelings about the first season. All gifs used in this post are by the wonderful @wanderlust-in-my-soul.

So here’s the confession: I didn’t love Minato’s Laundromat as much as a lot of you did. I respect it, of course. I recognize it as a very well-executed show that fulfilled its vision with smart writing and filming techniques and an excellent cast. I recognize that the characterization of Shin and Minato was very much based in yaoi tropes and that Shin being the pursuer while Minato resisted was a necessary construct to make the age gap palatable. 

But despite understanding all of that I didn’t love it, and Minato is the reason why. I always have a hard time connecting with emotionally immature adult characters. I struggle mightily with romances that feel too one-sided. I cringe away from the blushing maiden trope. I dislike it when I can’t quite understand what one character sees in another. And all of this came up for me in the romance between Shin and Minato.

Now before @bengiyo comes through with his bat let me just say that I get it. I get that Minato is this way because he is a lonely gay man who has been repressing his sexuality since adolescence. I get that he never had the chance to mature because he was hiding who he was. I get that he is defensive around Shin at first because he is being responsible, and then because he is so unused to physical affection and attention that he doesn’t know how to handle it. Minato strikes me as someone who is both, as Ben sometimes says, touch-starved and touch-repulsed. And all of that is rooted in his experiences with internalized homophobia and a life lived in the closet.

While I can understand and empathize with all of that, I didn’t understand how that was meant to work in the context of a relationship with someone like Shin. Shin who is so honest, and so brave, and so smart, and so responsible, and so damn all around desirable. In my meanest moments, I would think to myself that Shin should really just go to school and meet new guys, guys who are his own age with less hang ups who could return his affections. And while I enjoyed the finale of the first season, I was not really satisfied with where we left them because it still didn’t feel like Minato had worked through his issues enough to be a good partner to Shin.

Which brings me to Minato’s Laundromat 2, and my love for what it’s doing. Because y’all, this is exactly what season 2 is about! And it’s interesting to me that this season is not based on the manga, and instead features brand new material. It says to me that the creators of this show had some of the same questions I did about how these characters would actually function together in a relationship, and decided to explore it and figure out how it could work. And that is my absolute favorite kind of season 2, because I am always interested in how a couple stays together, not just in the getting together itself.

So in these first two episodes of the second season, we have seen that after their initial getting together, Minato retreated into his usual patterns. He is still holding Shin at a distance. He is still doling out affection sparingly. He is still struggling to verbalize his feelings and he is still cringing away from physical intimacy. And Shin is, as ever, being patient and giving him space to work through it while sometimes expressing frustration and continuing to ask for and sometimes scheme his way into the things he wants. 

I love that we are already starting to see the subtle changes in Minato. He is, internally, able to recognize now that he loves Shin even if he won’t say it out loud. He is starting to notice and unpack his own reactions—I love him so much I can’t look him in the eye—and trying to push through them to return affection to Shin in the ways he is comfortable with. He is engaging in acts of service like cooking as a means to communicate his feelings. He is giving Shin some of what he wants, like living in the same place and handing over his spare key. Is he still doing it all with a grimace and many verbal protestations? Of course, he didn’t change his whole personality overnight. But he’s doing it, and Shin knows him well enough to understand how meaningful that is. 

I am excited to see how far the show intends to take this growth arc for Minato. Shin is patient but he’s not a saint; he will sometimes feel unsatisfied and push for more than what Minato wants to give, and seeing them work through that is exactly what we need to feel secure in their future as a couple. I am so glad we’re getting this season 2, both for the sake of the characters and for those of us in the audience who really needed it.

[misshorrorotaku]

Really should be ignoring this, but- @beesproperty1

Israel engaged in a ceasefire with Hamas (one Hamas kept attacking them through, I might add) in order to exchange hostages and there was a new deal on the table to extend the ceasefire, possibly permanently, so long as Hamas kept giving hostages back. I haven't looked into the state of that deal, but this kinda disproves "they aren't stopping and have no plan to."

And they aren't displacing anyone. Warning people to evacuate areas they are going to attack because terrorists who attacked their country in the worst terror attack since 9/11 are stationed there, hiding behind civilian loan buildings is not "displacing" the populace. The manipulation y'all engage in is RIDICULOUS.

Ah yes, Gaza, the country that has been (at least supposedly) posting videos of the conflict the entire time it's happened has no cell service and is just entirely rubble now. Please ignore all the videos pro-palestine people spread that they claim come from inside Gaza and please ignore that the vast majority of Gazans are still alive (they wouldn't be if the entire country was rubble).

Also, here's a hostage testifying to the fact Hamas forced her to lie, not once but twice. As well as all the shit suffered, including the sub-par healthcare and torment at the hands of her captor's children (I didn't provide this before because I was in a comment section).

And you're damn fucking right I don't trust Gazan sources. XD Why would I trust sources that would be killed if they didn't say what Hamas wanted??? Literally the only truthful thing they ever reported was the old Palestinian woman saying Hamas steals their supplies.

No, they are not actually killing one person each. XD If you look at how many bombs were used versus how many people Hamas CLAIMS died, they killed, at most, .5 people per bomb. Odd for someone intending to "devastate the area," but okay hun.

And no, Hamas formed from the Muslim Brotherhood. Their formation had nothing to do with Israel. And frankly, it wouldn't matter if it did, killing innocent people is not justified because you say "oh, but we're oppressed." And it's really fucking telling that you think it does. Something tells me the other person in the notes there calling me a psycho should instead be calling you that.

They don't kidnap anyone. Most of the "kids" Israel imprisons are between 15 and 18 and most often than not they are arrested for violent crimes. Being a "kid" does not mean you get to stab your neighbor.

"Despite the fact Israel pulled out of Gaza 20 years ago, Israel occupies Gaza so it's not a country, just an occupied territory."

Cool. They still elected Hamas. They still consider themselves a separate country and so does a good portion of the world. They are still committing war crimes (which none of y'all care about) and quite frankly Israel did a damn good job "maintaining" this "occupied territory." Literally over 500 trucks daily before this war, they provided water, food, AND Gaza got billions in foreign aid. Hamas stole the food and the money and destroyed water infrastructure (something y'all also don't care about).

Except it was not actually blockaded. People called it a blockade, but that wasn't the reality. XD People spreading misinformation for decades does not make that misinformation true.

And it's funny you accuse me of being ignorant but clearly do not know anything beyond what Hamas has spoonfed you.

Actually the IDF did not kill Israeli's on the ground on October 7th, that is a blatant lie I've never seen y'all even TRY to back up.

And yeah, Israel also publicly declared the mistake and punished the people responsible. The individual soldiers disobeying their orders is not some evil act by the entirety of Israel.

And again, very funny you call me dumb when you trust the literal terrorist group to tell you the truth.

@row666 Wow, you really tried with that didn't you? XD Hun, sweetie pie, sugar-lump, please use that useless lump of gray matter between your ears. I was literally listing the massive fucking differences between the NAZIS STARTING THE HOLOCAUST and Israel retaliating to terrorists who have attacked them for decades. There is a really big fucking difference between these two events and the absolute AUDACITY y'all have to have to call me stupid and a psycho while you try to equate the Jews to the fucking Nazis for daring to defend themselves from terrorists trying to kill them all is insane.

[libertineangel]

I've talked about this general thing before but really that "christ you people can't do anything" Twitter screenshot I've often seen added to posts a very clear signifier of a truly horrible attitude toward mental illness and neurodivergence on this site

Like sure there's a subset of people who hold up a list of diagnoses like a shield whenever they're criticised for anything, but an awful lot of people seem to use that as an excuse to take any earnest discussion of someone's struggles in bad faith and dismiss genuine difficulties to the point where much of their rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of my conservative grandparents

It seems to me especially prevalent with autism, like so many people call this "the autism website" or whatever but it's very clear that their concept of autism is "really likes cartoons" or "writes long posts about niche topics" or "can reliably identify very specific cars in pictures" - when confronted with autism manifesting as severely limited social capability the reaction is always "just go outside and talk to people and learn social skills", if a person can't tolerate a wide variety of foods it's "you have to eat these things, grow up", I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture, the moment anyone describes autistic traits that aren't fun internet-palatable quirks the reaction is as ableist as you're ever likely to hear.

This is clearly atrocious behaviour in itself but importantly it also shows just how callous and self-centred this approach is, because surely just a modicum of thought spent on imagining a life like that would make clear that nobody would fucking choose these traits, that whatever mild annoyance you might feel for some bizarre reason at hearing about it is nothing compared to the difficulty of actually living like that. Nobody wants to spend their life unable to form or maintain social connection because of their inability to navigate basic conversation, nobody wants to only eat the same limited rotation of foods every damn day because few other affordable things are palatable, yet instead of recognising that this must be a deeply unhappy way to live and having any sympathy so many people here would rather react with scorn and derision, often justifying it by hiding behind the fact that they're autistic too and they manage so clearly it's possible and those worse off just haven't really tried, as if every autistic person has the same experiences and they specifically are the metric by which everyone should be measured.

[thebottomfromhell]

Reading the reunion of the upper moons with their partners was sweet and kind of sad... I loved it. Do you think you could write a similar one for the kids (Daki, Kaigaku and Ume) from your father figure post? Since you wrote to both a demon and a human parent, I would say do a version of each, but it's up to you. I'll love to read it anyway. Uah, writing about it also made me think of Rui's ending t-t

Technically Gyutaro is also Daki's, since I'm too deep into the co-parenting her with him HC. I will make one for human reader, demon reader is the x Gyutaro one, it would only need to replace the Y/N with "Otou-chan". Also demon parent is far more aware of demon's nature than humam parent. Sorry it took me a while.

Demon Kids meeting their father figure Reader in the underworld. Post of father figure here.

Warnings: A bit of ansgt (ok, a hella lot, the human parent of Daki got me crying), Mentioned reader's death (explain in Kaigaku's demon parent), Mentioned child character's death,

Demon Reader:

Zohakuten:

{You didn't say anything to Hantengu when you saw him and he doesn't notice you are there. What were you supposed to say? It's not him the one you had such a bond with, but the strongest clone. Clones, not their own individual, so none of them should have an existence besides Hantengu's Blood Demon Art. But he was not just a clone for you, he was your son. The main body shrieks and cries, trying to hug the ground or whatever this is, not wanting to move on the same way you don't. The black smoke starts to cover him as you only think about your child, then you notice said smoke is actually covering him instead of passing as air. When you can hear Hantengu anymore you go where he was and manage to grab his arm to pull him up, only to find him instead.}

You didn't want to go to hell, so you stayed here. It's boring, numb, at times stressful to the point of pain, but you are stubborn. But you would never want this for the child in front of you. "Are you ok, kiddo?" He lunges into you to hug you tight, angry face as always as you also hold him in your arms. "Those ruin villians... how dare they touch something so small. I hate them... I really hate slayers, humans are the worst." You can only chuckle, he is slightly affected by dying, but besides that he is the same as always. You pat his back, this boy has always been troblesome. "Papa... why are you here?" You lie a bit.

"I was staying around just in case you might appear." Ok, maybe that was a big lie, but still. Zohakuten looks at you as if you were stupid before scolding you "What do you mean by that?! I am the strongest form of the Uppermoon Four! You had no reason to believe I would ever arrive here you stupid old man! The villians ganged up on the main body, that's all! Damn! I should have protected the little guy better." Yup, his death barely affected him. Just fuming and resenting slayers as always. "Sorry, sorry. And don't worry, I'm sure you did all you could."

You want to stay like this forever, the same as always. You are not sure that by the time you cross the voy will just be... gone. Like all those times the clones defused and joined together into Hantengu. You don't want this existence, one into the nothing, for Zohakuten... but hell shouldn't be any better. You hide the best you can your inner conflict and ruffle the kid's head. "Tell me about it, kiddo. Let's stay here for a while, as long as you want. Ok, Zohakuten?" It's the best you can do as he starts to complain. You shall do your best.

Kaigaku:

Fucking Kokushibou, taking your child to that battle. All the other Uppermoons would have been there, he didn't need to cut you in enough pieces for sunrise to arrive before you finish to heal to the point that you can move again. You have stayed here fuming for who knows how long, also worrying. Kaigaku was afraid, so he went with Kokushibou after you reassured him it would be fine. Damn it! You are worried of what will happens once the kid realizes you are "Oyaji?" dead.... Fucking Kokushibou!

"Kaigaku? What are you doing here? Why are you here?!" Ok, now you are fuming, damn brat should be alive! Why is he dead?! Bet this is Kokushibou's fault "I swear I will wait for that mother-... how are you feeling?" Right, the boy just died, the last thing he needs is... this. What he needs is you, his oyaji. He explains the whole situation, and you just knew he should not have gone to the Infinity Castle, Kaigaku must be feeling like shit. He throws himself at you and you know that he does. "I'm sorry... for leaving you." He murmurs, face burried in your chest, so you pat his head. "Don't be silly, anyone would have done what you did if having to choose to defy Kokushibou. There may be exceptions, but nobody should blame you for trying to survive with the tools you have."

Ok, he started crying. He definetely feels like shit, and you can bately do more than try to comfort him. But then what? You know you can't keep him here forever, nobody is meant to just stay here. But you are demons, you are meant to go to hell if you die, but aren't even meant to die in the frist place. You are not like humans, who die at the slightlest things as a broken neck or a hit in the head, your only natural predator is the sun. This boy was promised to live at the least a very, very, long life. More than other humans could... and he didn't. Right now he is just a dead demon, a dead kid.

"Tell me when you are ready to keep going." Is the only thing you say as you pat the back of his head softly, "your oyaji is going to stay here with you until you are, kiddo. Just take it all out." This... only makes him cry harder, and you really don't know what to do. You can see flames at the distance and you can only hug the boy tight as you know that is the only way to go. This time someone will protect him, this time you will. "Stay by my side, son." You really hope Kokushibou dies with shame for forcing this into your kid.

Human Reader:

Zohakuten:

You are waiting... but for what? Perphabs for the boy? He was gone for those long periods of time when you died, and... you wish you could speak to him again. At least to say goodbye properly. (You didn't think it wouldn't make sense for him to appear, that as a demon, as Uppermoon Four's clone, he would never come around. You have hope, faith into something you don't really finished to understand.) "Papa?" You expected to hear that word again, but not that voice. You were hoping it would be... older (again, a proof of your willing ignorance).

You turn around to see the boy, still a boy, from the past. That little gremblin you took home and came back the same way he left, as if he was a stray cat. "Zohakuten... what-" you can't even finish as he wraps his arms around you tightly, he probably found you death some while ago, so you pet the back of his head as you hug him back. "Hey, calm down kiddo. I am here now." He just hold you tigher as he burries his face in you, refusing to say anything or let go. "Hey, it's ok." Is it? You are dead. Your kid is dead. And... there is something scary behind you, the path Zohakuten should take... hell.

You don't want him to go that way, but you know there is not much you should be able to do. No matter how you can only register him as your kid, he is a demon. You should know by now what that means, and you do, but... Zohakuten takes a deep breath before pulling apart and making eye contact as he frowns. "You were dead. I came back and you were dead... I don't.... I don't regret finding you again. I should not have lost, but I don't regret it. I am already in terms with my destiny." He seems ok with it, and that scares you even more as you turn around to see the flames the child would have to cross alone. "Then I will go with you." You decide, making the boy frown even more by the time you see him. "I am a demon, I can manage. You are a weak and old human, do you think you stand a chance? I appreciate you waiting for me, but this is only our chance to say goodbye." This brat... "Now that was just rude. Don't you trust your papa?" You laugh it off, but you can see that... he is hesitating.

He actually looks afraid as you offer your hand and smile wanting to reasure him, instead of taking it he just grabs his wrist and hold it against his chest. "I'm here for you." [But Zohakuten is afraid he will dissapear the second he steps on hell, carrying you there for no reason...] "Can.... can we stay here a little longer... talk? How have you been?" Yeah, you can do that. For as long as he needs. "Where should I start with?"

Daki + Gyutaro:

"Otou-chan! What is this place?! It's awful! Where is onii-chan?!" You turn around to the voice of the girl, and... you knew Daki was young, still a girl, but this? She can't be older than fourteen. She looks so similar, and yet so different. The thought that this was an courtesan for long enough to be an Oiran.... "Otou-chan, wake up! We need to find onii-chan!" She scolds you before taking your hand and pull you into searching Gyutaro, "ONII-CHAN!" you can feel the light that has presentes to you from day one following you, warming the space, tempting you to cross. You have no idea why you didn't before, but now... "Gyutaro, where are you?!" Thankfully, it doesn't take you that long to find him."Onii-chan!" She runs strait to him, pulling you while doing so, to start complaining again.

Gyutaro only looks at her, and by that you can't help but wonder if he is as disgusted as you with... everything. A child being a prostitute, a child being dead, a child being forced into a monster, a child going to hell, a child... you don't evenknow what else to think. Gyutaro looks at you, eyes sad but strong before turning away and walk. "The exit is there?" Says the hopeful girl, but her brother stops again and tells her to... to not follow him? He screams her protests away and you by reflex shield her with your arms. Gyutaro gives a bitter look before going away as Daki begins crying and apologizing for... not fighting better? What even happened? "You and I are not siblings anymore, you are nothing to me. Go with you dad towards the light, I will go the other way."

You realize what is happening, what Gyutaro wants, and you take the girl before she can lunge to him. "I will take care of her." He stays still for a while as Daki tries to fight your grip. She is just a girl, she can go to heaven, and doesn't have to be alone as she does. You can take care of her, this is for her best. "ONII-CHAN! DON'T YOU REMEMBER YOUR PROMISE?! YOU PROMISED WE WOULD ALWAYS BE TOGETHER! REMEMBER YOUR PROMISE!" That is what you tell yourself, it's a tough choice, but one you and her big brother took. Gyutaro gasps as in pain before he turns around, exhausted eyes, bulging more than usual and shining with tears in the right one and bloodied red on the left one, he looks at you and then to her as the red liquid fall through the red cheek. "I love you Ume, live a good life this time, ne... Goodbye."

He turns around and leaves as you hold her. "NO! I WON'T FORGIVE YOU! I WON'T FORGIVE YOU! OTOU-CHAN, LET ME GO!" You don't, you don't until the light reaches both of you... Ume... "Plum"... that will be a pretty name for her. "ONII-CHAN! ONII-CHAN, DON'T YOU DARE LEAVING ME! ONII-CHAN!!" And then there is only light with the sobs and cries of a child, a little girl, calling her big brother.

Kaigaku:

Ok, Kaigaku did expect you to die before him, obviously, he was basically a new-born demon and you an old man (not really, but he always made it clear that he was young and staying that way while you were not.) He just... didn't expect you to die so soon, both your death and the final battle came too soon. Kaigaku's death came too soon. "Is.... this can't be hell... surely this can't be hell...." Is the first thing you have heard anyone say in a while, and the voice is so scared and young the same way it's way too familiar for your liking. Because you heard it again too soon.

You could have gone to heaven, you only stayed here because... you don't know. Maybe it was that youdr stubborn mind haven't fully realized that because of Kaigaku's nature, he should have never arrived here. Maybe your human mind still thought "wait for your son, he will be here sooner than expected" and the fact that it was right hurts. It hurts to see a child so afraid and lonely like this, and your human brain denies that if Kaigaku died, no matter how many time passed, he would die as a child. You can only wrap tightly your arms around him and ask "What happened?" (Not a "Are you ok?" because something like this would never be ok.)

He explains what happened, the final battle, how he found the Zenitsu boy again, how they fought, how Kaigaku lost... "... against him of all slayers! Not even a Hashira but pathetic Zenitsu alone, who only knows one move, decapitated me!" He tells you angry, frustrated, with tears forming in his eyes. "Damn it! After everything-! He-! I-!" Kaigaku interrupts himself, not knowing what to say, so you just hug him. "I'm sorry, kiddo." There is nothing more you can say as he begins to cry in your shoulder, rubbing circles in his back as you hold him tight. "It's not fair! I always did what I had to! I had to! Why did I have to die?! I died as nothing more than an orphan and a demon, replacement of Uppermoon Six!"

You let him cry, watching hell. You really have no reason to believe you should go there, you never had, until now. "You didn't die an orphan." You tell him as you stand and offer your hand. "Let's go together from now on, son." And he takes your hand as you lead the way to the darkness, to the flames. You stay close, not knowing what will happen. "Don't worry Kaigaku. I will stay with you."

[pedroshotwifey]

Favorite Bounty Chapter 4

Series masterlist

Pairing: Din Djarin x Reader

Chapter W/C: 7.3k

Chapter tags/warings: angst, ouchy, no use of y/n, reader being a horny cuss, canon-typical violence, PLEASE READ AUTHOR'S NOTE

Summary: All it takes is a beskar-covered bounty hunter and his little green child to transform your life completely. Settling into life on the Razor Crest is easy enough, but what happens once the tension between you and the Mandalorian gets to be too much? Will you be able to handle the conflict that keeps getting thrown your way?

A/N: Hey, I'm going to go ahead and put it out there that these first few chapters will not be the best. Favorite Bounty was the first thing I ever wrote, so please keep that in mind. I have gone through and edited the small things so there is a bit of improvement from when it was originally posted to ao3. After chapter 4 is out, every chapter after that will be brand new and will have better grammar/writing. Thanks for reading! :)

***

The first thought in your head, when you woke, was that it was fucking cold. 

The second, coming in right after the first is that you are alone in Mandos empty bunk — that hit you like a ton of bricks. Ignoring the chill racking over your body, you look around the dark cot, trying — and failing — to spot a gleam of Beskar. The tears that suddenly well up in your eyes are involuntary, and you shake your head, trying to will them away quickly so you can pretend like it never happened. 

You really shouldn't be disappointed, but you can't help but feel upset, and the freezing temperature is not doing much to help your case. To be honest, you don't know whether to focus your anger on Mando for not being able to decide how he feels, or at yourself, for convincing yourself the man can choose a side. Turns out, you are both fools. 

You find that you are able to get the tears to stop almost as soon as they came, though that might be because they turned to fucking ice on your cheeks. The cold makes you want to bundle up in the thin blanket wrapped around your shoulders and hide in the bunk all day to conserve body heat, but you know that's not an option. At the very least, you are going to have to find Helmet Head to ask him when he plans on fixing that particular issue. Fuck.

You take a deep breath and close your eyes to try to calm the sudden buzz inside of you. Whether it stems from anxiety, anger, or disappointment, well, that's anyone's guess. Kriff, it’s probably some twisted combination of all three. Before Mando, nobody had ever caused you to have to think like this, to have to rack through your brain for answers on how you are feeling. 

Sighing, you sit up, tugging the blanket further around you as you start to pry the bunk door open. The damned thing is about a million times harder to open than it used to be now that the control panel is busted and the edges are iced shut. Soft curses slip out through your grinding teeth as your muscles strain to pull the hunk of metal up and open. 

You are actually starting to warm up from all the movement by the time it flies open, surprisingly just giving away all at once, causing you to lose your footing and be knocked onto your back. You mutter another curse as you stare at the sliding door that now rests in place on the ceiling. Maybe you should just leave it open so it can mold there instead, fuck whatever Mando has to say about it.

You only lay there for a few seconds before you lift yourself back up to get out of this icebox, and when you do, you suddenly forget about the cold, because the heat that rises to your cheeks is enough to melt you almost completely. As you peer out of the opening and into the hull, you lock your gaze on Mando, who is standing right outside. He probably heard your pathetic attempts to get the door open and took pity on you by lifting it himself. That would explain why it just unjammed so suddenly. You can feel your face growing red with embarrassment. 

Neither of you say a thing as you stare at each other, the silent battle only broken when Mando turns around and starts to walk away. You can hear a voice in your head screaming to stop him, but you find yourself unable to act on the command, glued to the spot where you still sit on the bunk. You thought at the very least that he would have the decency to say hello to you, but you've landed yourself all the way back at square one. Complete fucking strangers. 

You aren't sure how much of this back-and-forth you are going to be able to take. For a second, you consider the possibility that The Mandalorian may quite literally be two different people, and you almost laugh at how silly that thought is. Your brain is trying to make excuses in any way possible to rule out the truth — that Mando is genuinely just an asshole. What kind of guy decides it is any kind of okay to flirt with you when he’s bored and then cast you away as soon as he gets his fill? All of a sudden, a new line of thought brings itself to light, one that you wish would have stayed away. What if it was you?

What if you're the reason he decides not to acknowledge you? What if he finds you annoying, or clingy, or rude? What if he doesn't find you attractive? What if he thinks that you went too far last night? What if he thought of you as no more than stress relief? What if he regrets keeping you on his ship in the first place? You try to shake the ideas from your head, but they just keep coming, pulling you down until you feel like you can't escape them.  

You close your eyes in concentration, trying to push the thoughts away. You decide at this moment that you aren't going to let that bastard get to you. No matter what, you won't let him see how he makes you feel. It takes you a second, but once you feel like you will be able to keep a level head, you push yourself out of the bunk. Your shaking resumes as soon as your bare feet hit the cold durasteel floor of the hull.

****

You find Mando up in the cockpit, laying on his back with his helm set under the dash, seemingly working with some wiring. He has one leg kicked straight out and the other is bent with his boot flat on the ground. You can see the child sitting on his torso, his back resting on Mando’s bent knee, distracting himself with a small metal ball. If you weren't so determined to be upset right now, you would probably smile at the domestic sight. 

Before you move any further, the child peeks his head around Mando’s thigh and catches you standing in the doorway. The shiny ball falls forgotten onto the floor as the kid coos excitedly and pushes himself up to half-waddle, half-run to you. He throws his tiny arms in the air and extends his fingers, wiggling them up at you expectantly. Okay, now you’re smiling. You at least manage to hold in a laugh out of spite as you respond to the kid's grabby hands and pick him up, settling him on your hip.

When you look back up you see that Mando has pushed himself out from under the dash and is now sitting up against it, watching you interact with the kid. You will yourself not to blush when you find yourself at a loss for words. On the way up here, you had planned out a conversation so that it wouldn't be awkward when you inevitably had to talk to him — clearly, that didn't work out how you had hoped it would. 

“Hey,” you say, averting your eyes back to the kid. Really, that's the best you’ve got? The Mandalorian just nods back at you and sets the tool that was previously in his hand down. You watch him as he gets up and walks over to you, stopping somehow both closer and farther away than you would like. There is a moment of silence before you look back at him, tilting your head so that you can stare into his visor. 

He says nothing as you stare, but he shifts in a way that suggests he is getting ready to speak. You’ve noticed that he does that a lot — gives away when he wants to say something. When he does so, you usually find yourself trying to predict what he’s going to say, and you’re quite good at your little game, if you do say so yourself. However, this time, you have no idea what might come out of his mouth. It may be selfish, but you find yourself hoping that whatever is said, is in the form of an apology. Actually, you would take a simple hello, maybe a good morning, possibly a question of how you slept — any form of fucking acknowledgment will do. 

You want to slap yourself for thinking like that, for lowering your standards to the dirt below your feet in hopes that this man might make up his mind and take you for his own. Maybe it's the fact that you’ve been without company for so long, or maybe it’s that you simply had missed general intimacy, but whatever it may be, you’ve realized that you miss belonging to someone, and them belonging to you in return. You swallow down a lump in your throat as you try not to let your feelings show in your expression. The last thing you need is for the Mandalorian to see how pathetic you are when you feel alone. 

“I have to leave again,” the Mandaorian tells you as he stops shifting. Now, you do feel your face fall, and you can’t even find it in you to care. His voice seems colder than usual, and it feels like an extra punch to the gut. He almost sounds pained to have to talk to you, and you suddenly feel the urge to throw up. You messed up that bad, huh? 

“What do you mean, why do you have to leave?” you try not to sound panicked as you question him. 

“The town that I went out to find yesterday was deserted. They had close to nothing in terms of food, let alone fuel,” he pauses as he searches your expression, waiting for you to butt back in again, but you stay silent. “I should have better luck with this one, but it is farther away,” he finishes. By the way he says it, you have a feeling you aren't going to like the answer to your next line of question. 

“How far?” you ask him, your voice quieter now. He looks at you, and then at the ground before answering, like he doesn't want to have to look you in the eye anymore. 

“About two days there, and two back if I choose not to stop and rest.” He turns around and starts to collect his tools into a bag, leaving you with a worried expression. How does he suppose you’re supposed to refrain from freezing to death while he goes out again? And to add to that, how does he expect to stay warm outside for so long? You swear the man just doesn’t fucking think sometimes. 

“Mando,” you say when you are able to form a coherent thought in the fog of your mind. It comes out a little harsher than you intended, and you see the Mandalorian flinch ever so slightly in response, but you do nothing to correct your tone. “How in kriff do you expect any of us to not freeze our fucking asses off while-”

“I have a backup generator,” he says simply, cutting you off. You continue to gape at him, waiting until he turns back around to face you before you roll your eyes and put your free hand on your hip. At this point, you don't even care if you seem childish — he really plans on leaving you and the child on the Crest with this supposed “backup generator” that is probably older than the ship itself, in the middle of this icebox planet while he runs off to some town that probably doesn’t even kriffing exist. Great, just fucking great.

“You’ll be fine,” he says with a finality that makes you flinch. Yea, you probably deserve that. He keeps talking as he resumes his cleanup. “There should be enough food to last you and the kid at least a week, and I'll be back before then no matter what.” You just watch him with slanted eyes as he continues to answer all of your unspoken concerns. The air of confidence in his voice as he speaks is so apparent that it makes you want to punch that stupid bucket right off his stupid head. 

“The generator should last just as long, if not longer, and the kid tends to want to sleep more when he’s cold, so you won’t have to worry about him causing too much trouble,” he finishes up his cleaning and walks back to you, stopping just as close as last time. “You’ll be fine.” Again, he says it in a tone that makes you wish you had never confronted him in the first place. You have nothing more to say to him, so you nod and turn on your heel, taking the child down to the kitchenette for his breakfast. You notice as you leave how silent the kid had been during the whole interaction between you and Mando, as if he could sense the tension between the two of you, and it almost makes you laugh… almost. 

****

Less than two hours later, Mando is walking back down the ramp of the crest after setting up the generator — which is doing little to warm the ship, much to your chagrin. There were no words spoken since you left the cockpit other than Mando telling you to shut the ramp behind him and to stay on the ship. You had simply nodded and followed to watch his descent back into the snowy abyss. So now you’re a prisoner? Great. 

Once you could no longer see the gleam of beskar through the flurries, you did as he asked and made your way back to your own makeshift cot for some much-needed alone time. The kid is asleep in his pram, and with Mando gone, the Crest is almost eerily silent, save for the quiet buzz of the generator coming from somewhere above you. You are thankful for the strange comfort that it brings, the soft hum just enough to lull you to sleep. As your eyelids slip close, you register the fact that you probably shouldn’t be sleeping this much, but at the moment, you can't find it in you to care. 

****

You are only able to sleep for about an hour before you are woken by the kid. His soft coos and yawns make their way to your cot and you can't help but smile as you get up and go lift him out of his pram. You can immediately tell that he's hungry, his big eyes boring into yours, begging you for food as if he hadn't eaten for days. You tuck him into the crease of your arm as you make your way to the kitchenette. 

“Oh, you poor thing,” you play into his game. “I bet you must be starving.” He looks up at you and gives you a pitiful nod, and you have to bite your lip to hold back your smile. After you set the kid down, you turn to the cabinet and reach for the top shelf, struggling to reach the desired package as you stand on your tip-toes. Eventually, you are able to maneuver your fingers enough to grab onto it and pull it down. Your nose scrunches as you read the label; Carrots and Frog. The child seems to have the opposite reaction, suddenly squirming in his seat and reaching out for the box.

You laugh as you pour about half of the package out into a bowl, heating it up before setting it in front of the kid. “Here you go, honey,” you give him a knowing look. “I’ll have to talk with your daddy,” you laugh again as he immediately lifts the bowl to his mouth and starts to slurp it down, some of the broth trailing down his little chin. “Clearly, he’s neglecting you,” your tone is playful as you sit down next to him and wait for him to finish. As you sit in silence and watch the kid slurp up his meal, you realize how much you have come to care for him. If anything ever happened, you would break you to have to leave him.

You frown as you think about that even being a possibility. You know that Mando has been acting a little differently lately, and your stomach drops as the thought again comes to mind that he is sick of you. Surprisingly, it doesn't bother you in the sense that it makes you insecure, but instead, you find yourself panicked at the thought of being kicked off the ship. If he makes you leave, you would likely never see the little womp rat again. You realize that you have become way too comfortable living on the Crest, to the point where you consider it home. You quickly shake that thought off before it can consume your thoughts and further ruin your day.

After the kid finishes up his breakfast you introduce him to hide and seek, which he likes a little too much. You end up playing the game nonstop until dinner time rolls around. He ran out of new places to hide after about an hour, so it was pretty much just a guessing game between the same handful of spots. You drew it out of course, but it was repetitive enough to wear you out more than it would have if you had a bigger space to work with. The kid finds it absolutely amazing that you keep finding him, and the toothy smile he rewards you with each time is enough to keep you playing. 

He only stops to eat dinner that night after you promise you can pick the game up first thing the next morning — which you do, of course. This ends up being the routine for the entirety of the time Mando is gone, and by that time you almost find yourself regretting telling the child about it. You know deep down that you’ll do anything to keep him happy though, so of course that's a lie. 

Well, until you can’t find him, at least. Of course, it’s on the day that Mando is scheduled to return that the kid finally finds somewhere new to hide. You had checked all of the usual spots with no results — twice. You didn’t panic at first, using the logic that he was probably just moving around at the same time as you. But after about an hour and a half without so much as a giggle, you start to worry. There's no way he could have gotten off of the ship without the ramp alerting you, and you’re pretty sure he can’t fit inside the walls — but that doesn’t stop you from unscrewing a few panels just in case. 

You waste another thirty minutes like that, looking in places you never would have thought he could reach. Even though the Crest is still cooler than usual, you find yourself sweating when you realize you honestly have no idea where he could be. Mando should be back likely within the next few hours, and he’s going to come back to his missing child. He’s going to fucking kill you. He trusts you with one kriffing thing and you somehow screw it up. How do you manage to lose a whole ass child?

Just as you’re about to go up to the cockpit and com for Mando — which is probably a bad idea in retrospect — you hear a soft pang come from behind you. You spin on your heel and walk slowly towards where it came from, trying to open your ears in search of another. 

“Kid?” You call out softly and get a coo in response. The relief that washes over you is as if someone dumped a bucket of water on you. You call for him a few more times, inching toward his responding sounds every time he giggles or bangs against something. You feel like a kriffing idiot when you end up at the door or Mando’s bunk. You never even thought to check here. You made a habit of keeping out of there when he’s out, and you didn’t realize the kid had enough strength to open the still-broken door on his own. 

You quickly spring into action, putting all your weight into lifting the door and sliding it back, watching as big eyes are slowly revealed to the hull. He doesn’t seem to have hurt himself, but you do notice that there are quite a few drawers and cabinets open. The kid had clearly been digging around, likely looking for something else to play with. You sigh as you take in the small mess he made, knowing you’re going to have to clean it before Mando gets back. For now, though, you need to get the child to bed.

“Oh, honey,” you tell him as you climb into the bunk. “We can’t be in here, sweetie, this is your daddy’s space and I don't think he would appreciate us looking through his things.” You lean down to scoop the kid up, ignoring his adorable babbles of protest. He always gets extra grumpy this time of day, though that's usually a good sign. If he’s grumpy, he’s worn out, and if he’s worn out, he’s tired — making your job of getting him to sleep much easier. You giggle and plant a kiss on his wrinkly little head. “Oh, don’t be mad at me, little man,” you say, stroking one of his comically large ears. “It’s your bedtime anyway.” 

Before you leave, you let yourself glance around Mando’s room — the kid isn’t the only one curious about the Mandalorian, and you didn’t get a chance to look around since it was so dark when you had been inside it. You’re almost surprised to see little trinkets linking the shelves above the cot and small signs of wear and tear on the cabinets that tell you the room has been lived in. It's like you had expected everything in the bunk to be completely sterile and unpersonalized — much like the shiny armor he dons 99% of the time. You don’t know why you thought that, it’s kind of a silly assumption. Mando may be a warrior, but he is still a man after all. You shake your head and flip the light off as you retreat back to the hull with the child starting to fall asleep in your arms. Now that you're sure the door won't freeze again, you slide it back down into place. 

You only take a few steps into the hull before you hear the kid snoring. He shifts in your arms and you make a point to move as carefully and quietly as you can towards his pram. Thank the maker for the way too hard-core hide-and-seek sessions, this might be the quickest you’ve ever been able to put him to bed. Normally, you have to sit for him for a minute and hum softly or tell him a story before he starts to drift off. Opening the pram, you gently unravel the snoring kid from your arms before placing him into the crib, covering him with a blanket up to his tiny chin. He looks so peaceful that you have the urge to stand there and watch him for a minute, but that plan is surrendered as a shrill pinging noise makes its way through the Crest. 

You initially jump as the sound breaks the silence, but quickly calm yourself as you recognize that it’s not a noise the Crest would make. At least you know that there's nothing wrong with the ship itself, but what he actually kriff could that be otherwise? You hit the button to close the kid’s pram before you start to follow the noise. It takes you a moment, but eventually, it starts to get a little louder when you begin retracing your steps to Mando’s cot. For some reason, it almost sounds like the pings are picking up speed with every step you take, each noise coming in faster than the last. 

The rapid beeping brings you to a stop in front of Mando’s closed bunk, and you hesitate before lifting the door again. The blaring noise seems to get ten times louder by the time you get rid of the barrier to the room. You push yourself onto the cot and immediately spot the source — a small round object laying by the head of it near where the kid had been rifling through the top drawer. The trinket looked to be too flat to have much wiring involved, so you ruled out the possibility of it being a bomb, Plus, why in Mustafar would Mando ever keep something like that where the kid could reach it — he’s far too careful to do something like that. You know he has a weapons locker, if he ever had a need for an explosive, he would keep it there with his blasters. 

You quickly snatch it up and examine it, trying to find some kind of a button. The noise is almost ear-splittingly loud now and the small red light coming from it is blinking in rapid succession. When you can’t find a way to turn it off, you start to panic. Mando told you that the kid’s pram is soundproof, but he didn’t tell you how much it could withstand before sound started to leak through. The last thing you need right now is to have the child crying on your hip as you fumble with the ridiculously loud object. The thought to set it on the ground and crush it beneath your boot crosses your mind, but you shove that idea aside when you think about the fact that it – whatever it may be — belongs to Mando. 

You, for one, don’t want to damage any of his property, and, for two, don’t want him to think that it was you snooping through his things when he discovers that it’s missing. Your second idea is to find something to smother it with to dull the sound. Your makeshift cot jumps to mind, the blankets you had stacked on top of each other should work perfectly. You quickly scramble out of the bunk and run over to the corner of the hull where you had set up your space. In your rush to gather the various blankets and sheets, you knock the screaming object out of your grasp, swearing as it hits the ground with a loud thud. But after that — nothing. The kriffing thing finally shut up. You laugh with relief as the usual quiet of the Crest returns, and after a minute your ears slowly stop ringing. The silence is almost biting after having that thing going off for the past five minutes, if not for the generator still working its magic on the floor above you, there would be no sound left at all. 

Exasperated after your long day and from the rush of that whole ordeal, you lean back against the wall behind you and let yourself slide down to the floor. You sit staring at the durasteel between your legs for a moment, allowing yourself to bask in the feeling that comes from finally having a moment to yourself. When you look up again, you come face to face with, well, you. You bite back a shout as you slam yourself further into the wall at your back. You are almost nose to nose with what looks to be a holographic picture of your face and upper body. Your confusion only intensifies when you look at the bottom of the holograph, the end tapering into a point that seems to be coming out of the small device from Mando’s room. You quickly scramble to your feet, standing so you can look at the back and sides of the image, which are — as expected — a perfect still of you. You look maybe a few years younger, but there is no mistaking who it was. 

Stopping at the back, you reach your hand out and watch, bewildered, as it passes through the back of your head. The questions start to flood your mind, each one causing you to grow more perplexed as you search for an answer. First off, why the fuck did the Mandalorian have a holograph of you hidden in a drawer in his bunk? Second, why did it have to be so kriffing noisy? And why did it get louder and — flashier? — the closer you came to it? You circled the image one more time before you stopped and everything suddenly clicked. You are frozen in place as millions of emotions flood you at once. The anger that pulses through your veins seems to warm your entire body, overwhelming and completely taking over your confusion. The dominant emotion, however, had to be the betrayal that rushes into you and settles hard in your gut. Sure, you might not have known Mando for very long, but you trusted him enough to think that he wouldn’t cause you any harm, or rather, bring you to it. 

The object that lay below you is a bounty puck. Your bounty puck. 

You feel the blood drain from your face as it really hits you what this means. You need to get out of here, away from Mando. You can feel the panic setting in and you have to make an effort to keep calm when you realize that’s not going to happen anytime soon. You wouldn’t have a chance on your own on this planet, and since Mando is still out, you wouldn’t dare leave the kid — you would let any bounty hunter turn you in before you ever left the child without a guardian. There’s nowhere to run right now, as soon as Mando gets back, you have no doubt that’s exactly what he will do. He’ll set the course to Nevarro and hand you over for some credits. 

It’s smart on his part, you’ll give him that. He lets you aboard his ship and quickly earns your trust, letting you watch his kid and have free roam while he picks up a few more bounties. You made it so fucking easy too — so completely oblivious, even throwing in a quick sexual release for him. How could you be so kriffing stupid? It's not your brightest move, trusting a bounty hunter, but he never gave you any reason to mistrust him. Tears begin to blur your vision and you shake your head in an attempt to will them away, but you only succeed in allowing them to fall. No. You can’t cry right now, there's no time. You need to take action before it’s too late. Mando should be back soon and by the time he gets here, you will have to be able to look and act presentable. If he suspects that you know why you’re really here he will probably lock you in carbonite, and if that happens you’ll have no chance at all. Wiping your tears, you take a deep breath and sit back down, staring into your own unmoving eyes as you start to think up a plan.

****

It takes a few hours, but you eventually decide on what you think is the best course of action to ensure your freedom — and survival. The only way you’re possibly going to get out of this situation is to act like everything is normal until Mando lands on a planet with a spaceport. Even if that means waiting for Nevarro, which you know is probably your best bet. As soon as he turns his back, you’ll run for it and hope he doesn’t notice your absence long enough for you to take a ship off-world. As much as you hate it, you will need to know that Mando is on the Crest. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you left the kid behind without knowing if he is being looked after or not. Your heart clenches at the thought of leaving him behind at all, but you can’t just stay around and allow yourself to be sold off to whoever seemed to have wanted you enough to put a bounty on your head in the first place.

You try to think about who might have done such a thing, but you come up empty-handed. You’ve always been a good citizen, never stolen or gotten into a fight. There's not a single reason anybody should be after you, but that’s almost the scariest part. If Mando succeeds in turning you in, what would happen to you? You shudder as you think about living out the rest of your life in a cell or as a slave, likely being beaten and starved. 

A sudden noise sounds through the ship for the second time tonight, thankfully not coming from the puck this time. It sounds like the com in the cockpit has been activated, likely Mando calling to tell you he’s close. You freeze up as you think about having to be around him and be normal. Sure, it scares you that he has you right where he wanted you, an easy target. The sting of betrayal, however, easily surpasses the fear. You think back to less than a week ago when you had been so hurt over the fact that he had been ignoring you, and it almost makes you laugh as you think about how fucking pitiful that was compared to how you feel now. This man has caused you nothing but harm and yet you still have a scrap of hope that he’s not who you think he is, that he really didn’t mean any of it. Even though you have the evidence right in front of you, you want to believe that he is a good person. 

You may be naive, but you can’t deny the nagging part of your brain that wants you to confront him. You won’t of course, you can’t risk your life over the pathetic part of you that wishes this is all just a misunderstanding. When the ringing in the cockpit picks up again, you stand and walk over to the ladder, climbing until you reach the top floor. Taking a deep breath, you situate yourself in the pilot’s chair, only hesitating a moment before answering the call. A holovid of Mando’s helmet comes into view and you straighten in your seat, your mouth clamped shut, not trusting yourself not to say something stupid that will give you away. Fortunately, you don't have to wait long before he starts talking.

“I have the fuel,” he says, his voice a bit ragged from hiking through the snow non-stop. A stupid part of you feels a pang of worry at the sound of it, wishing you could provide him water to ease his sore throat. You curse yourself and choose to nod instead of verbally responding, knowing that his vambrace is projecting a clear picture of you in front of him. The tension begins to build up the longer you sit on call with him, and you pray to the make that it will be over soon. How in Mustafar do you expect to face this man in person? “I should be back in less than ten minutes, I need you to open up the ramp.” Again, you choose to nod. Thankfully, he doesn’t say any longer than that and ends the call. You don’t realize you had been holding in a breath until it forces itself out of your lungs as soon as his helm is out of sight. 

You get right to work with what he asked you to do because that’s what you would do if you didn’t know you were a prisoner, definitely not because you wanted to be helpful. You quickly clamber back down to the hull and rush to the ramp. You had to tie knots with rope in six different places to ensure there was no way for it to come open from the outside since the locking mechanism is still busted after the pirates. You undo the first five without a thought — and then you get to the last one and realize something. The bounty puck is still sitting where you left it, out in the open for anybody to see. Panicked, you leave the last knot secure and bolt to your disheveled cot. You scoop it up and slam your palm over the top, hoping that the holograph will go away — it does, thank the maker. Now you just need to put it back in place before Mando gets back. Of course, though, not everything can go your way.

Halfway to Mando’s bunk, you hear your name called from behind you. Your blood turns to ice in your veins and you freeze into place, expecting to feel Mando come up behind you, unable to get yourself to move. You are still stuck on the spot when you hear your name called again, and that seems to snap you out of your trance. It sounds like Mando is on the ship, he must have pulled the ramp down and snapped the last knot. Thankfully, you seem to come to your senses when you realize that he hasn’t caught you yet, and you make a mad dash to his bunk. It feels like your heart is beating in your throat as you climb in and find the drawer that had been left open. You haphazardly toss the puck in, praying it won’t go off again as you slam the drawer shut and scramble back to the edge of the bunk. 

Without looking where you’re going, you throw yourself out of the doorway expecting to feel your feet touch the floor of the hull. What you don't expect is to hit what feels like a brick wall blocking your path. Your eyes widen as you immediately realize that the brick wall you ran into is Mando’s chest plate. It seems like a century goes by before you see him step aside to allow you to climb out of the small room. For now, you decide you will keep your composure. You’re not sure if Mando knew what you were doing or not, but if it’s the latter, you intend to keep it that way. Your ears are ringing with apprehension by the time you plant your feet on the ground and look up at Mando. 

“I-i was just,” your mouth starts anxiously blabbing before you can stop it. You feel your face turn red as you find yourself at a loss for words. Mando says nothing but tilts his helmet as if urging you to continue. “I was just looking for the kid's ball,” the lie falls off your tongue fairly smoothly. There is no reason for you to be in Mando’s bunk right now, and you need to cover your tracks however you can. He still doesn’t say anything and you shift your feet, unsure of what to do now. 

“You know, t-the little metal one he’s always playing with,” clearly continuing to explain yourself was the wrong move because you’re greeted with silence once again. “Right, well I didn’t find it, obviously, so I'm just going to, uh, go back to my cot,” you point your thumb over your shoulder to the rumpled pile of blankets. Nothing, again. “Okay, um, goodnight, Mando,” you’re sweating by the time you turn to go back to your cot. Smooth. Nice going, fucknut. 

That was fucking rough, but it could have been worse. You take it as a sign that Mando is likely still oblivious to the fact that you know about the puck. Your shoulders sag in relief when you hear the sound of his bunk door shutting into place. Fuck that was close. You unfurl your blankets and set them back into place like you were getting ready to go to sleep, though you know there will be one of those until you reach Nevarro. Sure, you might not have much of a chance against Mando, but it increases at least a little bit if you’re awake if he decides the middle of the night would be a good time to cuff you and toss you in carbonite. You shiver at the thought. When the blankets are all in place, you lay down on top of them and turn to face the wall. This way, Mando will assume you’re asleep as per usual, and you will be able to hear if he tries to sneak up on you. A few minutes later, you hear Mando come out of his bunk and mumble something about ‘fueling up’ before exiting the Crest once again.

About ten minutes after that, you feel a gust of cold wind as Mando comes back inside. You listen as he makes his way up the ladder and then turns the generator off in favor of the actual heat. It gets warmer almost immediately, and it makes it a little easier to relax. Before you know it, you feel the Crest being suspended into the air and then a slight dip in temperature, letting you know that you’re finally back in hyperspace. You allow yourself to cry as you get settled in. 

****

When Mando finally comes back down from the cockpit the sound of him jumping off the last rung startles you. You hadn’t realized you had almost fallen asleep, but you’re glad the sound snapped you out of it before it was too late. When he starts walking, his footsteps sound like they're coming your way, and you turn around to face him. His pace falters when you move, clearly not expecting it — which is exactly what you had hoped for. He stops a few feet from where you lay, and you look up at him, your heart racing. You sit up slowly and glance at his hands to make sure they’re empty. When you look back up at his helmet, you notice that his body language seems different.

Maybe this is it, he knows that you know, and he’s going to lock you away. You probably left something out of place in the bunk and gave yourself away, that’s the end of that. You’ll wake up in a cell, alone for the rest of your life. You try to quell the panic that swells in your chest and remain calm. Maybe he doesn’t really know and he just came to tell you something insignificant. Fuck, he wouldn’t do that. You’re screwed. You want to trust him so badly, but you know you can’t. You need to hold your ground whatever happens. 

He takes another step toward you and you lean back a bit, subconsciously trying to stay as far away from him as possible — though half of you still wants to fling yourself into his arms. You wait for him to say something, averting your gaze as you fiddle with a frayed edge on one of your blankets, but he never does. Assuming he’s waiting for eye contact, you look back up, but he only looks at you for a few seconds before nodding once and turning around. You watch in stunned silence until he disappears back into his bunk.

****

The three days it took to get to Nevarro went by surprisingly fast. You had managed somehow to avoid Mando pretty much the entire time, though that might have something to do with the fact that he stayed locked in his bunk for most of the trip. If you didn’t know any better, you would say that he was trying to avoid you just as much as you were trying to avoid him, but that doesn’t make any sense when you think about it. If anything, he should be trying to keep a better eye on you, with you being his bounty and all. You honestly have no idea why you’re still roaming the ship. If it were you, you would have locked the bounty up at the first opportunity you got. It seems like it would be so much easier to know that the target is secured. Whatever, you aren’t tied up or frozen in carbonite, so nobody’s going to hear you complain.

At least this way you get to play with the kid. You haven’t let him out of your sight since he had gotten into Mando’s bunk and revealed the puck. This way, you get to spend as much time as you can with him before you have to inevitably say goodbye — and you can be sure that he won’t dig up the puck again. You figure if Mando figured out that you knew about it, he would have you in cuffs before you could blink. So far though, you haven’t given him a good reason, or opportunity for that matter, to do so. You have been pretty good about that, at the very least. You had kept up your plan of not sleeping surprisingly well. You go to your cot every night like you would normally, but instead of resting your eyes, you would think of something to keep your brain busy. 

Most of the time you would use the time to continue plotting your escape. The safest way to do things, little improvements, how you would get off-world, where you would go when you did, things like that. Sometimes, when you got bored of that,  you would think about a memory from your childhood or make up a story in your head. Once you even let yourself indulge in imagining a fantasy where Mando had you locked in cuffs under different circumstances.

 That was when you really realized how exhausted you were. How could you still be attracted to the man who is planning on turning you in? Ignorantly, that's how. You keep scolding yourself for the way your stomach flutters every time you see him but it never seems to help. It's almost like your heart hasn’t caught up with the situation at hand. You keep unintentionally holding on to the scrap of hope that this is all just some misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the rational part of you knows that it’s not. You want to hate that part but you listen to it nonetheless. 

You’re lying on your cot when you feel the Crest touch down on Nevarro. Upon feeling the jolt, you scramble to your feet and begin checking your belongings. You had collected a good amount of stuff since boarding the Crest, but you only had room for a few articles of clothing and a couple of ration packs. You quickly stuff the clothes into your bag and run to the kitchenette to grab a few packs, determined to get it all done before Mando comes back down from the cockpit. You don’t look at what you're grabbing as you put them into your sack, only making sure that you leave enough for it not to look suspicious if Mando decides to check the stash before leaving. 

You’re back on your cot, thank the maker, by the time he comes back down to the hull. Your heart is pounding and you can barely hear through the rush in your ears, but you manage to look calm — as calm as you can anyway. It seems good enough for Mando because he ignores you, as usual, and goes to his cot to retrieve the kid. Once he is out of sight, you look at the ramp, wondering if you should chance it now. If you opened it, it would be loud enough to alert Mando and there is no way he won’t catch you if he realizes what you’re doing so soon. You don’t get much of a chance to consider it anyway because he’s back out in the hull before you can properly plan an out. 

“I’m going to go meet with Karga.” You nod at him, watching as he hands the kit a piece of dried Bantha meat. “I need you to stay on the ship while I’m gone, there will be a crew coming to retrieve the bounties from the carbonite chambers, but nobody else should bother you.” You nod again, slightly confused by the fact that he’s practically giving you a warning. “I need to hear you say it, it’s important that you understand that you have to stay here.” 

“Okay, Mando, I’ll stay on the ship.” You hope to the maker that your voice sounds convincing enough for him to leave it alone. It does. Mando nods before pressing a button on his vambrace to open the ramp. He doesn’t spare you a last glance as he walks down the gangway and closes it behind him. The breath of relief you let out when you’re left alone is almost loud enough to make you jump. You only wait until you can be sure Mando is far enough away from the ship to not be able to hear you open the ramp before you slip away.

**** Thank you for reading!!

[teiasviago]

hey I'm the previous anon!

I kinda logged off for a while but seeing your answer made me want to ask so really, I'd love to hear about it from a screenwriter pov.

hope you don't mind all these questions!

as per the hot takes of this season, how do you feel about them? so fa the ones I've seen are:

pen not deserving forgiveness and being the villain of the show

the queen and the ton being too easy on pen

colin needing to grovel more

eloise having to be kinder to cressida and have her become besties with penelope by saving cressida together

eloise and cressida having to be endgame and eloise being the queer bridgerton instead of francesca

benedict having to be w a man or w a crossdressing sophie because he's bi

and, what do you think of the choices made by the team this season?

what do you think of franchaela? was it a fun twist or should they have avoided giving francesca the gay storyline?

what about benedict? his gay storyline this season and why just this season?

why do you think the mondrich are so important? could it be (like some people speculate) because lord kent is gonna be hyacinths gareth?

how you feel about the very modern twist on makeup and style this season?

what do you think of penelope continuing as lw and using her name and potentially putting herself in danger?

I've tried to ask as much as possible but if there's anything else you want to elaborate on feel free!

I don’t mind the stack of questions at all! It’s very exciting to dissect it all and answer them. Honestly, I have a whole document dedicated to unpacking and debunking lots of the hot takes I’ve seen because it’s so annoying to see people type with their brains off. Like, no shame if you don’t think while watching stuff—lord knows I watch something for the first time without much in the way of higher thought happening. But I also recognize that and take the time to organize my thoughts before I speak on anything. (Although that might just be a bit of a coping mechanism I developed because of my anxiety disorder that serves a good purpose generally.) This post will also be spoilery because I reference events from the books a lot.

Pen doesn’t deserve forgiveness/Pen’s the real villain of the show/QC & the ton were too easy on her.

There is no “actual” villain of the show. It’s fucking Bridgerton, like, be honest! That claim just makes me laugh because it’s like... You can’t fool me. I know a lot of people who say that are just indulging their internalized fatphobia. And in the instances when they’re not, it’s still plain old misogyny. On the topic of forgiveness, I personally did not read what happened as anybody forgiving Pen for what she wrote in Whistledown. I think, just like when Colin said he would never court Pen, though he had a change of heart, he never did forgive her.

The people that matter to Pen—the Bridgertons and the Featheringtons, her family—accept what she did and understand that Pen recognizes that she was wrong, would do things differently if she could, and not only resolves to do better but already in season three has demonstrated that effort to do better numerous times. Pen never asked for forgiveness, she requested clemency from the queen.

She gave her speech in front of the ton because hiding that she’s Whistledown implied that some of her best qualities—her cleverness, her passion for writing, her humor—were things to be ashamed of. But they’re not and in embracing her full potential, Pen defied the misogynistic idea pervasive in the ton—which her mother repeats throughout the show but especially in season three—that all women are meant for is bearing children. No, women don’t just have to be mothers and gossips, they’re full human beings.

Pen continuing the column is a good outcome for the ton because they eat her writing up. I remember how, at the beginning of episode six, everyone’s upset that she hasn’t published! They love her writing so damn much. And as Genevieve explains to Alice in “How Bright the Moon,” they all “feed off the nouveau.” They love having new information to gossip about, and what is better than the reveal of who Lady Whistledown is? They probably talked about that reveal all the way through Pen’s maternity leave (or as they called it: confinement) until she published her next issue of Whistledown as Penelope Bridgerton.

Some people just hate to see a woman succeeding. “I don’t care that your spouse worships the ground you walk upon and that the job you love is very lucrative, that should’ve happened to me instead,” sorta attitude is what I’m getting from Pen’s haters, lol. Anyways, all that to get to the screenwriting part of this: Pen becomes Whistledown as an outlet for her frustrations with society. All of her mistakes are reflections of the terrible treatment she gets because she doesn’t fit the ton’s ideal. As Colin said, it makes sense that Whistledown would reflect, at times, the cruelty around Pen.

It’s part of the mirror motif of the season because Pen as a character is a mirror for society. She reflects people’s best and worst qualities. She wants to be more than a wife and mother like Eloise, she shares Colin’s loyalty and kindness (someone has to specifically do her dirty for her to not be kind to them), and she is also deeply critical of herself like her mother, sisters, mamas, and debutantes. She also amplifies all those qualities; for example, when she writes about Colin adopting his rake persona, she’s taking the cruelty of him declaring that he’d never court Pen and turning it back on him but with a megaphone.

I mean, I completely understand why (and I can’t remember where exactly I learned this but I think it was in a live interview she gave during season three promo but I could be wrong) Shonda Rhimes wanted to adapt the Bridgerton books because of Penelope. Obviously she saw something in the other aspects of the series, but Whistledown/Pen is a captivating way of conveying information and examining the ton. Putting Colin and Pen’s season before Benedict and Sophie’s (and, of course, all the other siblings) allows the writers to even more thoroughly use Whistledown to examine and criticize the ton, which will go hand in hand with Benedict marrying Sophie in spite of her being a bastard.

Colin needed to grovel more.

I completely understand where this idea comes from but at the same time... Please give it some actual thought if you believe this. 😭 Not knocking Kate and Anthony, as an oldest sibling I have no choice but to stan them, but it is greatly to Colin’s credit that he approaches Pen the the very first episode of the season with an apology. Anthony isn’t able to do that until the last episode of season two because he’s spent every day since Edmund died repressing his feelings in order to effectively carry out his duties as viscount.

Colin never had any of that sort of pressure and because he’s also significantly younger than both Anthony and Benedict, he’s one of what I call the “sibling-kids.” They’re Ant and Ben’s siblings, yes, but in many ways they are also Anthony and Benedict’s children. It’s kind of like a teen parent relationship with C through H. Anthony, Benedict, and Violet are very much the parents: Anthony nurtures their minds, Benedict nurtures their souls, and Violet nurtures their hearts. Anthony preaches logic (advising Colin to straight up tell Pen he loves her, going on a second honeymoon with Kate since the estate is in good hands and love is important), Benedict preaches freedom (encouraging El’s rebellious pursuits and trying Colin’s drug tea), and Violet preaches wisdom (advising her children to follow their hearts).

Kind of a tangent but as a screenwriter I greatly appreciate the careful construction of the interplaying relationships in this show. With all that, Colin has the benefit of having three advisors in his life and is able to be a very sensitive person, so he doesn’t completely freak out and not know how to approach the situation. Therefore, he doesn’t go overboard with the groveling, which would end up making it Pen’s responsibility to lift him up and set him straight. Instead, he calmly approaches Pen and offers a very thought out apology. The onus is entirely on him and earning Pen’s forgiveness requires no emotional labor on her part. (And this is forgiveness because Colin doesn’t stand by what he said, whereas Pen does, she simply regrets the way she said things.)

It’s such a beautiful scene when he apologizes, partly because it shows the true nature of their relationship: when Colin’s hero complex, his rake persona, Pen’s wallflower persona, and her Whistledown persona are set aside, they are complete equals. They are their truest selves around each other with no need for duplicity or grandstanding. Colin doesn’t need to grovel before Pen for her forgiveness because he takes a mature route where he says his piece and gives her the space to accept his apology or reject it. He truly listens to Pen when she speaks and, as proof of his regret and dedication to their friendship, he offers to help her catch a husband—something she obviously seeks to do but which he didn’t previously know about her.

Honestly, if Colin had just done a bunch of groveling, it would’ve been boring because it means we wouldn’t have the Colin who took Pen’s silence to mean that even the person who was most interested in his travels no longer found them—and therefore him—interesting or worthy of her time. Because he came to that conclusion, he changed everything about himself in the hopes that both Pen and the ton would like the new him better and would take him seriously. The ton certainly does but Pen, who matters more than anybody else, doesn’t.

Colin has always been the type of person who thinks before he acts. The times when he doesn’t are in opposition and that’s on purpose. When Marina seduces him into proposing and agreeing to run off to Gretna Green, she’s manipulating him by using his hero complex to override his thoughtful nature. But we see Colin in his natural state with Pen a lot in season two, especially “The Choice” when they have their conversations about purpose.

Colin and Penelope have also known each other since they were kids, which is why they’re able to be their truest selves around each other. It’s why Colin picks up on Pen’s melancholy and probes her on it, and it’s why Pen immediately understands that Colin isn’t simply growing up when he returns in season three but is putting on a persona. They bypass needing Colin to grovel over his comment in season two because they don’t need grand gestures between them to convey that they’re being earnest.

Eloise should’ve been kinder to Cressida and should’ve worked with Pen to get Cressida a better ending.

If Eloise actually developed the maturity to recognize that Cressida simply wanted to escape her unhappy and tragically doomed life and went about achieving that with unsavory efforts, El wouldn’t have much of a character arc left for her season. As for Pen, she doesn’t owe Cressida shit after all that bullying, and she still didn’t decide to be vengeful. She didn’t disparage Cressida in her column, despite very clearly wanting to. Cressida not getting an HEA serves the same purpose as the Mondriches having to sell their club: only Bridgertons get happy endings. We see this concept even more in Queen Charlotte where there are no Bridgertons and none of the main characters’ situations are happy endings. We know how Charlotte and George’s story turns out, Lady Danbury and Lord Ledger cannot be together, and Violet’s home life is a far cry from the abundance of love she nurtures amongst her children.

Creloise should be endgame and Eloise should be the queer Bridgerton instead of Francesca.

All this nonsense about “the queer Bridgerton” is annoying at this point and I’m so glad that I haven’t had to see it personally surrounding season three. Now, aside from Phillip already being in the show, Creloise was never going to be endgame because neither of them are mature enough for that. Eloise is too focused on how different she feels from everyone else and trying to reconcile that with the idea of everyone having interiority and not being automatically lesser for wanting to get married and have kids. Cressida is too focused on finding a solid marriage and then escaping society for good. Eloise may not like society, but she loves her family and could never leave them behind. However, I do very much read their friendship as queer and think it was probably on purpose that it read that way to us. It’s just that it could never work out in this universe. (There’s always Creloise fics on AO3, it’s fine.)

Frannie’s story is perfect for a sapphic romance, which I’ll talk more about later, and Benedict is obviously also queer, which I will also talk about later. Additionally, from season one, both Benedict and Eloise have been thought of as queer, so I honestly have no idea where people are getting this idea of El being the only queer Bridgerton from. As if we don’t have multiple!

Benedict needs to end up with a man/Sophie should cross dress.

Every person I see saying that Ben needed to end up with a man gets blocked. I don’t need that in my life, especially not when Benedict is representation for me. I don’t think Sophie needs to cross dress in season four because the show has already dedicated a lot of time to Benedict going to little parties and experimenting. Benedict meets Sophie as the Lady in Silver at the masquerade ball at the beginning of An Offer from a Gentleman, yes, but he meets Sophie the maid while he’s leaving a house party. I imagine that he’ll start off the season having a pretty grand time hooking up with people, embracing his sexuality, and then he’ll be hit with the Bridgerton lovesick-itis where he won’t be able to stop thinking about his Lady in Silver. Sophie doesn’t need to dress up as a man to incorporate Benedict’s queerness into the season; he’s queer regardless, and there are much more tasteful—and likely—ways we’ll see that in the show.

Is Franchaela a good change?

I’m so excited for Franchaela I don’t even know how to express it. Like, yes, Polin is my favorite ship and they’ll never be topped for me, but Franchaela is a very close second. I was on board with the gender swap from the get-go because after the first two seasons and Queen Charlotte, it was clear to me that the people making these shows know what they’re doing and aren’t in danger of fucking up the stories they’re telling (despite what some may think). But it was reading When He Was Wicked that I really got excited for Frannie’s season. It’s the perfect book to genderswap because Michael and Francesca spend most of the book dealing with their grief for John and their guilt for falling in love with each other; they perceive that as a slight against John. Using all that guilt in the book and adding in all the emotions that come with discovering that you’re queer—for Francesca, because I assume that Michaela already knows and embraces that about herself. In the book, Michael accepts his feelings for Frannie a lot earlier than she accepts her feelings for him, and I think that translates well into a sapphic version of the story—then Michaela has to deal with Frannie not accepting her queer feelings for her. It’s delicious and we’re not even there yet!

I will say, though, that I understand the worry some people have that the writers may be mishandling Fran and John’s relationship by having Fran immediately have feelings for Michaela and seemingly display some doubts when she kisses John at their wedding. Personally, I think it’s too early to go around decrying the way Fran, Michaela, and John’s story is going. I don’t think Fran and John’s dynamic will be ruined, I think it’s simply a matter of taste when it comes to the book. Francesca and Michael are at the park together in London when Frannie very suddenly starts to view Michael in a sexual light and she gets very flustered, which is obviously brought to the show. But I felt that it was very random and not constructed very well; there was no reason given as to why specifically at this point in their lives, at this moment, Francesca started to view Michael differently. I’ll be happy with how it turns out in the show as long as Francesca isn’t secretly pining for Michaela. I think it’s for the best if she’s immediately attracted to Michaela, so then it doesn’t feel sudden later, but that she doesn’t actually fall in love with Michaela until after John dies and we get to their season.

What is the point of the Mondriches?

I talked earlier about how the Mondriches serve as contrasts to the Bridgertons, where the leads get HEAs but no one else does. In season one, while Daphne and Simon have their issues within their relationship, they ultimately solve their issues without completely compromising their morals. Meanwhile, Will has to completely compromise his morals in order to provide for his family. In season two, Kate and Anthony are struggling to meet their expectations for themselves, just as Will is struggling with expectations vs reality for his club’s success. Where Kate and Anthony are able to step back, accept that they were going about everything wrong, and have their HEA together, it’s only through Colin’s kindness that the club is successful. Although, in both cases, those outcomes are dependent on spokespeople using their influence to rectify the situation: the queen for Kate and Anthony, and Colin for Will and Alice. In season three, while Colin and Penelope don’t have to give up their literary pursuits to have success as the parents of a titled son, Will and Alice have to give up the club.

How do you feel about the very modern twist on makeup and style this season?

I don’t mind it at all. Some of the costumes are irksome (mostly when it comes to minor characters) but for the most part I liked them or at least understood their purpose. I mean, Cressida and her mother’s looks were insane but it fits the fact that they’re trying really hard. I heard somewhere that it’s not so much trying to find the perfect look for Bridgerton but that each season purposefully has a different look that fits with the story being told through the lead romance. So for season three, they take a page out of Portia’s lookbook and the ton goes a little OTT—even Charlotte goes for it (I don’t think she should have but my opinion doesn’t much matter lol).

What do you think of Penelope continuing as LW and using her name, potentially putting herself in danger?

I went into the season expecting Pen to continue writing the column and that’s the outcome I wanted. In Romancing Mister Bridgerton, she simply retires it, but I think it means way too much in the show and also has too many uses as a screenwriter for her to stop writing it. But it’s important that she starts writing it using her real name instead of the moniker. She’s claiming her writings and not hiding from herself anymore. In terms of danger, I think people are very much going overboard. Firstly, nobody is in danger of being beheaded, because in Queen Charlotte, Charlotte melodramatically wishes that she could still behead people because a servant had her woken up in the middle of the night. Secondly, the worst punishment would be imprisonment, but this is Bridgerton, and the queen’s rivalry with Whistledown is a fun game of wits, not a game of “how fast can Charlotte unearth this treasonous snake?”

As for everyone else, they don’t have enough power to actually threaten Pen. She hasn’t written about anyone in a way that would make them want to put her in physical danger, just efforts to stain her reputation, which is why she offers Colin an annulment. What Pen doesn’t know—and what we do know, alongside Lady Danbury—is that the queen wasn’t just in a good mood when she went to the Butterfly Ball, she went with a plan. She wanted to display her power in front of everyone to keep the ton in line but also preserve her rivalry with Pen so that she has something to occupy her time with.

It’s Bridgerton. The romantic leads aren’t actually at risk of death.

I hope I answered all of your questions satisfactorily! I had so much fun dissecting everything!!!