#did i thoroughly enjoy what we did get? also yes

[toastytrusty]

"I cannot deny that there were moments in which my direct rival and my direct motivation was you."

[jamil-s-wifey]

I saw the rules that NSFW is fine & things u don't write for the NSFW, soo may i req hcs of Savannaclaw's dorm with gn!s/o (f!s/o is ok too) where s/o asks the boys to breed them? Ummm is my req still alright? do tell me if u feel uncomfortable with this. Thank u!

Yes, of course, your request is perfectly fine! One interesting proposition towards the Savannaclaw dorm coming right up! Thank you for diligently reading the rules! ♥️ I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Nsfw under the cut!

Leona

See, he gets it. You're dating a beastman. Of course you'd want to get a taste of the wild side - the primal urges, the possessive bitemarks, the delicious feeling of being full to the brim, like a good little bitch in heat. He gets it. ...But that doesn't mean he won't have some fun with it.

"Breeding, huh? You think just 'cus I'm a beastman, that we call it breeding, that it comes natural or something? Wanna live out your little creampie fantasies through me, huh?"

Oh that accusatory tone, that sharp glare.

Just as you were about to apologise, he interrupted you.

"You'd stand correct, herbivore."

Oh, that piece of-

And he was on you, pinning you to the nearest surface, which ended up being the bed itself. (Lazy lion be lazing) Sharp canines scraped over the pulse point on your neck, as his hips ground into you.

"You wanna be bred, huh? Filled to the brim, marked and scented, so that everybody will know who you belong to? Careful what you wish for, little herbivore."

"You might just get it. Now spread your legs."

Ruggie

He right about *choked*.

You? With him? Now?!? But he's not prepared for fatherhood. He'd want to have a steady income to provide for his family and - and it's so tempting, and you're pulling him in with those glassy eyes, and delicious lips and-

Oh, you meant in like-. Oh You just really want to be filled, don't you. Okay. He can work with that.

He'd be for sure frazzled at first, but very quickly get into rhythm. The more ye imagines it, the more obsessed he gets with the image of your hole dripping with his cum, reddened, used and thoroughly bred.

He'd have to wait until nighttime, when he's free, but the moment you two were left to your own devices he was quick to shed your clothing, nearly ripping yours from your body.

Surprisingly eager, considering the state of pure panic he was in earlier that day. All teeth, and growls, and breathless moaning, and all just for you.

"Shishishi, and here I thought I was the wild one. Oh doncha worry, I'll fill you plenty~."

Somehow that sounded more like a threat than a promise and you were content with both.

Jack

Every single fiber within Jack's body was screaming at him to take you right then and there. His instincts were going haywire at the prospect. He needed you carnally, viscerally... and you were just offering yourself to him?

His tail was a dead giveaway, as to the whirlwind of emotions coursing through him, as he stared at you. His fingers were twitching, aching to get a hold of you.

"You....do realise what that entails, right? We uh...we mate for life. I know you find it..uhm.....attractive, but I have to warn you."

He figured you were aware, he just couldn't believe it. His breeding also entailed a knot after all. You had to be warned. And you already knew. Of course you knew, you'd been together for years. After hearing your wholehearted confirmation, he felt the thin thread of his self-control snap within him.

A deep guttural growl left his throat, as he stepped towards you, grabbing your face and pulling you in for the kiss of a lifetime. Big, rough hands travelled from your face, to your neck and down your body, only to lift you up, wrapping your legs around his waist.

"I can't wait to paint your insides white. You'd look so good, full and sated, my perfect mate."

Who are you and what did you do to my Jack?

[luvf4ngz]

Til Death Do We Part Brings Us Together

grim reaper! jason todd

Description: Your constant close calls with death first captures the attention of the Grim Reaper, then his heart, and lastly, his devotions.

Contents: Female Reader, Mentions Of Death/Dying, References to Greek Mythology, Possessiveness, You Watch Pretty Woman and Read Pride & Prejudice Together Bc Yeah, Mentions Of Isolation But It’s Okay I Promise, Jason Is Lowkey Lonely And Desperate, Reader Has A Death Wish? Maybe?, Praise Kink, SO MUCH PRAISE, Unprotected Sex, Religious Symbolisms, Sacrilege?, Nipple Play, Jason Calls You Princess, Obviously???, Vaginal Fingering, Oral Sex, (Female Receiving), He’s So In Love, Jason Todd Is Touch Starved, Devotion, Jason Is A Munch, Overstimulation, Vaginal Sex, Yes Greek Gods Wear Boxers, Enthusiastic Consent, “Will it fit?” I’m Sorry Okay, Size Kink, Jason Todd Has A Big Dick, Gentle Dom Jason Todd, Intimate Sex, Slow Sex, Soft Sex, Aftercare, Cuddling

Word Count: 6081

Author’s Note: Jason is loosely based off of Thanatos from Greek Mythology/Hades (the game). It was kind of hard infusing his personality with the literal personification of Death, but I hope I did a good job! Also some details are completely made up or changed for the purpose of the fics, like how dying works in Greek Mythos. Please don’t come for me, I’m just trying to be horny on the internet. Without furthermore, please enjoy :)

Actually one more thing I have a Thanatos/Death playlist and I adore it to bits, please listen if you want.

Thank you @toruslvt for beta-reading!

He’ll do anything for his most devout follower, he’ll worship you twice as much as you ever could him. 

"Yet another brush with death." You heard a husky voice beside you, making you turn your head to look at the figure sheepishly. 

Whether you’re extremely unlucky or just unfathomably reckless, he’s not sure. All he knows is that your soul has been on the edge of being his over and over again - whether it was narrowly missing a car or falling into a river or even just choking on a bone. You always seem to make it out of those situations just fine, which has thoroughly caught his attention. 

 "You should really be more careful, you know." He looked at you and sighed. 

“I am! Or at least I try to be...” You murmur timidly, scratching the back of your neck. “It’s uh, it’s nice to see you again.” You give him a small smile, turning your body to face him. 

As always, he’s in his dark cloak, the hood lifted to conceal some of his hair, casting a shadow over his face. The gold accents adorning his body glint due to the faint sunlight casting through your kitchen window, the same sunlight making his tan skin glow, making him look otherworldly - which he was. 

He raised his eyebrow, “Is it now? Most people are terrified to see me.” He muttered, smirking a bit,

“I guess I’m used to you now.” Your grin gets a bit larger, warmer. “You don’t have your scythe.” You point out.

He lets out a slight chuckle at your observation, “Such a keen eye. I figured I wouldn’t need it, and I was right. What was it this time?”

Your face heats with embarrassment at the question. “I slipped.” You confess, pointing to the puddle of water on the ground. “Almost cracked my head open, I guess. But! I turned my body in time, so I’m fine.”

“Yes, that would explain your wet clothes.” His eyes trail down your body, catching slightly where your nipples peek out against the damp fabric, before looking back up to your face.

He clears his throat, “Haven’t you learned your lesson by now? It’s not even lunch time yet and you were on the brink of death. Aren’t you afraid of dying?” He scolds you.

“I mean, not really.” 

A pause of silence.

“What? You’re joking, right? How can you be so cavalier about this?”

“I don’t know, it doesn't seem so bad. It’s a natural part of life. Should I be scared?” 

“What kind of question is that?!” He raises his voice slightly, eyebrows scrunched as he looks at you. “Of course, you should be. Dying isn’t fun. You’ll be dead, trapped in the underworld for the rest of eternity. You should be trying to preserve your life while you still have it.”

“I am, though. I’m not saying I don’t like being alive, I’m just saying, when it happens, it’ll happen. There’s no use being so pre-cautious and anxious all the time.”

He lets out a huff, “You are… certainly a strange one.”

“In any case, I’d like to think my soul will go to Elysium. I'm a pretty good person, so I think the afterlife won’t be too awful for me.” You continue on, carefree.

"That isn't my point, though. Even if you're guaranteed a place in Elysium, you should still be more vigilant.”

“Why should I be? My end is already predetermined, isn’t it? Don’t the fates know when my time is up?”

“Well… yes, but-”

“Wait, then how come you visit me before I actually die?” You interrupt him, a realization suddenly taking place. “Near death experiences shouldn't summon you right?”

He hesitates a bit, caught. "You’re correct… I visit you on my own accord.”

“Why?” You tilt your head cutely, an innocent and puzzled look in your eyes.

“You’ve just caught my attention, is all.” He looks away. “I like to keep track of you, the Fates are wrong sometimes, and you basically have a death wish so I just… I like to make sure you’re okay.”

You smile slightly at his words, “You don’t want me to die?”

“Of course, I don’t. I like- I like to watch you. You’re interesting to me.” He chooses his words carefully.

“I am?” Your eyes brighten a bit at his words.

He turns back to you and nods, his hood shifting a bit with his movement, revealing a bit more of his hair. The white streak catches your attention. 

“I have to confess it’s… cute the amount of trouble you manage to get yourself into. It’s entertaining to see what you get up to, how you treat others, what you desire out of life.” His eyes move to look into yours. “Your mentality is quite unique, as well. You see dying as natural and not something to be feared, but I think you've accepted it to an… abnormal degree." He paused. "...You're the first person in a very long time to not express fear of me.”

“Why would anyone be afraid? You're only doing your job... and you're quite nice." 

He laughs, the deep rumble of his voice goes straight to your knees. "I think you're the first person to ever call the God of Death ‘nice’. You wouldn't believe the amount of people that fear me, even before their time is up. It's... exhausting, really. I can always hear their prayers, their cries, their pleads.”

"I mean I can’t blame them, I just can't share the same sentiment, especially with all the conversations that we've had."

He smiles at you, “You really are like a breath of fresh air. It’s nice to know that someone doesn’t hate me.” He pauses again, a soft look in his eyes. “But you should still be careful. You're not made of rubber after all. Don’t let me take you earlier than I should.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, though.”

“What?” In such a short time, you’ve shocked him again.

“I wouldn’t mind dying knowing that you'll be the one waiting for me.” You say it so casually, continuing to smile at him, as if it wasn’t the sweetest thing anyone’s ever uttered to him. His heart beats a little faster as he stares down at you, stupefied. 

“You can’t mean that.” He replies after a while. 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He’s speechless, dumb-founded. How could he possibly begin to explain that the idea of anyone liking him enough to allow him to take them from this world so happily was absurd?

“What?” You ask, noticing his sudden silence. “Why’s that so strange? I like talking to you, and when I’m in the afterlife you would keep me company, right?”

He lets out a breath and smiles a bit, the whites of his teeth peeking out behind the pink of his lips. “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sound appealing.”

“Good.” You smile a little wider, your eyes crinkling as it makes his heart begin to race now. 

“I-I should get going, there’s uh- souls I need to get to.” He stutters out.

“Yeah, that sounds important. I should clean up with water. I’ll see you around uh… Mister Grim Reaper, sir.”

He lets out an amused huff. “Jason. Just call me Jason.”

“Will do.” You jokingly salute him, and it makes him let out another chortle. 

“Alright, farewell then.” He nods, before blinking out of your kitchen. 

You stare at the space he used to occupy for a bit, still smiling softly, before leaving to get a mop - and maybe a change of clothes.

“Are you sure it’s okay for you to be here?” You ask him, raising an eyebrow as you stare at him from the couch. 

“Yes.” He replies simply, his eyes and attention focus on the movie playing on your TV.

His visits have been more and more frequent lately, ever since the conversation the both of you shared in your kitchen. Now, Death, who prefers the name Jason, shows up even if you didn’t go through another life-threatening event. 

And right in this moment, Jason is standing in front of your couch, entirely enraptured by Pretty Woman, of all things. 

“Don’t you have to do your duty? I’m sure there’s a lot of lost, wandering souls right now.” You try again, concerned. 

“What? You don’t want me here?”

“I didn’t say that!” You put your hands up in defense. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble or something. Won’t Hades or the Fates or… whoever your superior is get angry?”

“Probably.” He shrugs. “But what are they going to do? Kill me?” He casts you a glance from the corner of his eyes, before going back to the movie. “Besides, souls can’t leave the mortal body without me being there. They’ll just rest for a bit, I can always come get them after.”

“I guess that’s fine then.” You sigh out. “Could you at least sit down?” 

Jason lets out a nod, before moving to the couch, taking a seat beside you but still keeping his distance. 

He watches the rest of the movie in silence beside you, enjoying your company. His eyes flick over to admire you a few times, taking in your immersed gaze and noticing the way you’re clutching a plushie so close to you (cute). When you sniffle, when a few tears trail down your face, when your parted lips form a pout at the ending, his heart pumps hard in his chest. 

This was a much better use of his time. 

“You have so many books.” Jason states, his figure crouched so that he could properly read all the titles. His hood is off, fully revealing his soft, dark hair - the white streak a beautiful contrast. 

“Who’s the observant one, now?” You chuckle from your place on the bed, eyes not leaving the novel in your hands. 

He rolls his eyes, “What are you reading?”

“Pride and Prejudice.” You hum softly, eyes still scanning the page. 

“What’s that about?” Jason asks, walking away from the bookshelf and towards you. 

“Uh, it’s a little complicated.” You murmur, “But basically it’s two people learning to get over their, well, pride and prejudices to fall in love.” 

He lets out a hum, “Read it to me?” 

“Oh my Gods, you’re so lucky, I just got to the best part.” Your eyes watch him as he lays down beside you on your bed, the fabric of his black cloak pooling around his body. 

“Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began: ‘In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression.” 

Jason turned to his side in order to get a better view of you. He watches how your eyes practically light up as you read, a smile gracing your face. He can’t help but think how pretty you look like this. 

“She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her, immediately followed. UGH, it’s so romantic!” You yell out, clutching the book to your chest and rolling back and forth slightly, making him let out a chuckle at your antics. “I mean at this point in the book I still hate Darcy but Gods, the way it’s written is just so good!” 

He falls silent for a bit, his gaze affectionate as he watches you. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

You stop your giddy reactions, looking at him curiously. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Do you remember when you said you wanted to be with me in the afterlife?”

“Hm? Yeah, why?”

He took a deep breath. "Let's say... let's just pretend for a moment, that when you die... I don't guide you to the afterlife. Instead, I take you somewhere else with me."

You sit up slightly, pushing yourself up on your arms, turning your body to face him. “Where would we go?” You set your book aside on the nightstand. 

“To… my home. I have a residence on the outskirts of Tartarus. You would be safe there, I can make sure that nothing would bother you.” He sits up fully, grabbing and holding your hands gently. “Please, I want you to stay with me. I get so lonely, and I just- I like being around you.” His tone is soft, pleading and sincere as he confesses his desires to you.

You smile back at him, eyes crinkling softly in that way that he’s come to adore. “I’d like that.”

“Really?” He gasps out, face mirroring yours as a bright smile overtakes his features.

“Mhm,” You hum, “It’ll take some time, though.”

He shakes his head, hands gripping yours a bit tighter, “I would wait the entire rest of eternity for you, if I had to.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to not make you wait that long.” You giggle out.

“I’d hope not. I want to have you with me, I want to keep you around until the end of time itself.” 

“I think that’s the most romantic thing anyones ever said to me, Jay.” Your tone is light, teasing. 

“There’s a catch though,” He pauses, hesitant to see your reactions. “You won’t be able to leave the house or see anyone else. I can’t risk you getting found. B-but I get you anything you need, I can make you happy.”

“That sounds just fine to me.” 

His eyes glisten in happiness, a bright shine in them. “Then... it's settled. I will take you to my home, and you will stay with me… forever.” His glances down to your lips for a second, before quickly looking back into your eyes. 

You notice the movement, heart beating a bit faster.

“Could I kiss you?” He whispers, his voice low and warm. 

“Yeah,” You mumble back.

He leans in closer, hands releasing yours as one places itself on the small of your back, pulling you closer to his body as the other gently grips your chin. He leans down, tilting your head up until he feels the soft press of his lips to yours. Warmth floods his body as he feels electricity in the air, and he feels his heart pound behind his ribcage when your own arms wrap around his neck.

Your touch, your taste, was addicting. You were tender and sweet, and Jason never wanted this moment to end. He groans when he feels your hand begin to play with his hair, and he presses himself closer to you, both hands moving to grip your waist. 

His grip tightened on you as your kiss intensified, his body started to tremble as it filled with a desire so deep that it was all-consuming. 

Eventually you break apart from him, needing air. He dismays at having to pull away, but allows you to do so.

"If that's what's waiting for me at the end of my life, maybe I do want to die sooner…” You joke, breathless.

He groans again, “Don’t… don’t say that. Don’t tempt me, I can’t take it.” He presses his forehead to yours, both of your breaths mingling together.

You giggle, pulling him in by the back of his neck to kiss him again. He relents easily, his heart skipping when you hum softly against his lips, the desire in his body igniting higher and higher. 

Eventually, he’s the one to pull away, his breath tickling you as he trails his nose against your neck. He can feel the soft tremor in your breath as your body shivers against his. “Can we go further?” He murmurs into the skin.

“Yeah, I want more.” You nod.

“Good, I do too. I want all of you.” He begins to press his lips to your neck, lightly leaving kisses and bites that you have squirming and gasping. 

“You have me.”

“You don’t understand.” He shakes his head. “You... you don't know how much I've been longing for you. Your presence alone gives me joy. Having you touch me… it makes my heart pound and my body melt. The way you talk, the sounds you make... it’s perfect. I want to touch you. I want to hold you. I want to know everything about you. I want all of you.”

“You can have that too…” You sighed out. 

“You drive me crazy.” He groans, leaning close again to kiss you deeply, caressing the sides of your body. He wasn't holding back anymore. He couldn't. He wanted you so much that it ached in his bones. His hands started sliding slowly but surely, caressing your back and waist. He couldn't get enough of you, and your body’s twitching and the sound of your heavy breaths was such a thrilling sensation that he was consumed by it entirely.

“Jason…” You pant out his name as you experimentally grind your body against his, whining when you feel his hard cock rub against your clothed cunt, your hands holding him tighter. 

The sound drove him crazy with arousal, his body wracked with longing. You felt so good and he couldn't help but lean into you more, allowing you to press against him over and over and over. The feeling of heat was flooding his entire being, his cock throbbing beneath his cloak.

He worships the feeling of you grinding against him for a few more moments, his breath coming out in husky pants before he rolls you onto your back, hovering above you. 

"Just be a good girl and let me do all the work, now." His voice is husky, needy, as he leaned down and kissed your neck again, his breath hot and his body trembling with anticipation. 

You whine again, rubbing your thighs together to relieve the sudden ache between them. Your eagerness spurs him on, he presses a peck to your cheek before sitting back on his knees to gaze down at you. 

“Gods, you’re gorgeous.” He mutters, his hand slips up your shirt a little, and he shivers at the instant warmth of your skin. “Can I take this off?”

You nod rapidly, quickly pulling off your top and tossing it aside, revealing yourself to him.

Jason responds by leaning down to litter kisses over your body, a flush on his cheeks. His lips are soft and reverent almost as they softly touch your heated skin. He takes your nipple into his mouth sucking slightly, as a hand comes up to tweak and roll the other one. 

“Jay…” You call out his name, your back arching slightly,  and he never wants to stop hearing your voice. 

“I got you, princess.”

He lowers his mouth, trailing down your body until he reaches the hem of your bottoms. “Can I take this off, too?” 

“Do anything you want, Jay.” You breathe out, head dizzy with your need.

“You sure?” He asks, fingers hooking into both your pajama pants and underwear, dragging them down your body, uncovering inch after inch of your naked body. 

You look like a dream under him, eyes blown with lust, lips parted, body bare for him as you nod. He sets your clothes aside, going back to relishing you. 

You look away softly from embarrassment, “You take off your clothes, too…”

Your shyness got to him and he could help but laugh softly. You were so cute. He took a step back and off the bed, pulling off his cloak. He could feel your eyes watching his every movement, could feel your eyes rake his form as you settled on the bed. 

His gold adornments drop to the floor with a ‘clunk’, quickly followed by his black trousers. 

“You’re so beautiful.” You softly praise. You can’t help but to stare at him, eyes lingering on every sculpted muscle or coloured scar of his frame. 

He couldn't help but feel like you were the beautiful one. The way your eyes traveled over his body made his heart beat fast. He felt like he was on top of the world, knowing you admired him.

He climbs back onto the bed, taking his place between your legs as he lays on his stomach. His hands come to grip around your thighs, pulling you closer to him. 

“Oh.” You gasp slightly at the intimate position, gulping as your blood pumps faster through your veins. 

He slides a hand down towards your cunt, already slick for him. A thumb parts your swollen lips as he gently glides it up and down, before pressing it against your sensitive bud. 

“Ah-” You moan oh so sweetly for him, hips twitching as he starts rubbing your pretty clit. Your body was so responsive to him, and it makes a grin break onto his face. 

He brings his thumb away, making you frown before replacing it with his mouth, lips wrapped around the nub. 

“W-wait!” You cry out, hands flying into his hair as you do your best to not buck into his face. He smirked around you, starting to suck despite your call. Your reaction only added fuel to the fire burning inside him, your writhing body and shaky gasps were too much for him to handle. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart, just let yourself feel good.” He mumbles into your cunt before going back to sucking and lapping at you. He holds you close to his face, his grip firm to keep you as still as he could. 

He groans as you tug at his roots, the sound vibrating around your needy clit. Your desperate moans and whispers drove him crazy. He liked how fast you were breathing, how much you were moving. You were a squirming, twitching mess underneath him as the sensation became too overwhelming.

“Jason, oh my Gods.” You gasp.

“I’m your only God, now, right? Just me…” His hand moves to your fluttering hole, slowly pressing two fingers inside you. They slip in easily with how wet you are, dripping your desire down his wrists. He feels you clamp down on them, slick walls sucking him in further.

“Jason, Jay!” His name slips from your lips like a chant, a prayer wrapped in shallow breaths. 

“Keep saying my name just like that, pretty girl.” He loves the way you make it sound, loves the way you say it. Not Grip Reaper. Not Death. Just Jason. Your Jason. 

“Oh, Jay…” You breathe out his name like you’re struggling to even think.

“You’re such a sensitive thing, aren’t you?” He coos, starting to move his fingers in and out of you. He smirks when you squeal as he curls his fingers up, pressing against that soft, vulnerable spot inside you. His arm moves to keep you down, pinning your hips to the bed as he goes back to tasting you.

“N-not there!”

“Why not? Doesn’t it feel good?”

“It’s too much!” You’re breathless, barely able to gasp out replies as he keeps abusing that spot inside you. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Jason slows his pace, fingers dragging painfully slow against your aching, slick walls, making you let out a needy mewl, clenching on him. 

“No! P-please don’t.” You pout, softly tugging at his head to turn his attention fully on you. 

“Say my name. Tell me what you want.”

You hesitate a bit, pondering your words. “Make me feel good, Jason. Make me cum.” Your tone is so soft and pleading, it’s the best worship he’s ever heard. 

The only prayers he’s ever heard were cries for his absence, beseeching his very being and purpose, but with you - he’s found a new one. You want him, you want him closer, you want him to make you feel bliss. He can do that. He’ll do anything for his most devout follower, he’ll worship you twice as much as you ever could him. 

He dives back down with a fervor, thick fingers working you quickly, the soft squelches increasing in volume and frequency. His tongue traces your clit, sucking and rolling and indulging in the way you writhe and whimper below him. 

He keeps going as you squirm uncontrollably, as your body tenses further and further, as your eyes glaze over and your heart pounds. Your nerves are frayed and begging for relief as the soft warmth of his tongue doesn’t let up. Your grip on his hair tightens, making him grunt low and husky into you. 

“Jason, m’gonna… can I please-?” You can barely make out full sentences, head fuzzy and blood searing as the dam inside you threatens to break. 

“You don’t have to ask, just do it.’ He murmurs; his cock throbs in his garments, waiting for you to release on his tongue. 

The feeling overtakes you, making you choke out a shaky cry as you climax. Your thighs squeezes his head, fingers buried deep into his dark locks as you tremble. You’re lightheaded and breathless and euphoria has settled in every inch of your veins. 

Jason removes his fingers, gripping your thigh as his mouth slots against your leaking cunt as he engulfs his tongue into your taste. He greedily laps up your slick, moaning as it blooms over his tongue - more sweet and addictive than even ambrosia. 

Your cries are so adorable as he continues to seek out every last drop of cum from you, your body pliant and weak below him as you keen and mew. 

“J-Jay…” You stutter out his name as your body twitches, sensitivity kicking in. 

“Yes, love?” He barely pauses to utter out those words, mind set on devouring you whole. 

“C-can’t!” He frowns, giving you one last lick before pulling himself away from you.

His eyes are filled with a feral like need, mouth smeared and shiny with the aftermath of your arousal. “Did that feel good?” He husks out, “You looked so divine, cumming.’

You’re panting hard under him, mind dizzy as you process his words, nodding in reply.

“I want to make you feel that way for the rest of eternity, you’ll let me right? You’ll stay with me?” Now that he’s had you, he doesn’t think he can survive on his own anymore. 

“Y-yeah, Jay.” You nod again, voice small. 

He raises himself up, licking you off his hand before he crawls over your body again. His legs slot between yours, tangling the both of you together. He leans down, sighing out in satisfaction as your damp, warm skin presses into his. 

His lips brush over yours, silently asking for permission to kiss you again. You accept him willingly, hands drifting to hang loose around his neck as you push your lips to his.

He groans, hand gripping your waist and the other running through your hair as he explores your mouth. You can taste yourself on him, spit mixing together as he groans into your lips. 

He pulls back, both your breaths lingering in the small space between your faces. He trails his nose down to the sensitive skin of your neck, teeth dragging lightly across the flesh. 

“I want all of you, so bad.” He groans. “I’ll do anything for you. Can you tell me I’m yours?”

He so desperately wants to belong to you - to know that one day you’ll accompany him in the deepest pits of Tartarus - that you’ll never let him be alone again. 

“You want to be mine?” Your tone is puzzled, words ending in a lilt. 

“Please.”

You smile, hands coming to hold his face, thumbs gently caressing his cheeks. “Who knew the God of Death would be so needy?” You tease.

“You try being alone and hated since the dawn of existence.” He sighs, melting into your touch. His eyes close, leaning into your palms. 

You giggle a bit. “We can be each other's.” Your lips break out into a grin as you bring his face down to yours, pressing pecks all over. 

He relishes your kisses, letting out a deep, happy sigh. His cock is still painfully hard, straining against his boxers, but he tries to ignore it. He opens his eyes and brushes your stray hair behind your ears, slightly damp with your sweat. 

“Jay,” You murmur his name, pulling back to look at him, “I want more.”

“More? You want me to eat you out again?” His mouth salivates at the thought of having your taste on his tongue again. He’ll do anything you ask. 

You shake your head, thumbs rubbing along his cheekbones, “I want you to fuck me, Jay.”  

“You do? Are you sure?” He whispers. 

His breath hitches as you nod, blinking up at him with those pretty eyes of yours. 

“I wanna feel you, Jay. J-just go slow, I’m still sensitive.”

“You’re sensitive?” He huffs out an amused breath, smiling softly. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you. I’ll make sure of it.”

You try to press your thighs together, getting excited by his promises and husky tone. He feels your legs shift around his, smirking as he takes in your desperate body language. 

He shifts back again, tugging his boxers down. Your eyes trail to his now exposed cock, standing proud and flushed and daunting. 

He’s…. big. 

Your jaw drops a little as you take him in, your mind reeling with thoughts of “Will it fit?”.

“Hm? Don’t worry. I said I was going to take care of you.” Jason murmurs, voice adoring. He positions himself back between your legs, hands lifting your legs to encourage them to wrap around his waist. You willingly follow his guidance. 

His hands come to hold your hips steady, hips canting forwards to rub the head of his cock through your folds. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” You reply softly, hands drifting to lay on top of his, gently grabbing his wrists. 

He pushes inside of you, pace steady and measured as he tries his best to let you adapt to him.

“Ohmyfuck…” You slur, words mushing together as you feel him stretch you out. You grip him a bit tighter. 

“Just relax, pretty girl.” He mutters, thumbs rubbing circles into your skin to calm you down. He continues pushing himself inside you, making you feel every ridge and detail and inch. It’s slow and deliberate; he’s savoring watching the way your cunt sucks him in, the way your head tilts back, how shallow and quick your breaths have gotten. “Can you feel it? Am I too big for you?” He teases, eyes shining with both mischief and affection. He pushes forwards again. 

Your pussy flutters around the girth of him, slick pouring out with every second, making the process that much smoother. 

You try to take deep breaths, groaning softly as you feel the way he bullies into you, nestling deep inside. 

“S’it in yet?” You hiccup.

He chuckles softly, you were just so endearing. He was taking his time, enjoying the feeling of you. “It’s not even halfway yet, baby.” He coos. 

“S-still?” Your eyes widen a bit, as he laughs again.

“Just lay down and take it, princess. I’ll do everything, don’t think about a thing.” He leans down and silences your whimpers with a kiss. His lips lock onto yours as he swallows your moans, moving his hips until he feels you flushed against him. 

He pulls back, body once more shadowing over yours. His eyes drift down to where the two of you connect. “Look at that, she took me all in. I told you that you didn’t need to fret, love.” 

“A-ah, it’s so deep…” You mumble. 

“Isn’t it?” He grins. 

He starts to move back and forth, instantly groaning at the intoxicating sensation of you wrapped warm and snug around his pulsing cock. 

He keeps his pace slow, staying true to his promise. He doesn’t mind though, he’s just relishing in every little detail of you, burning the memory of how you look, feel, and sound into his mind - a treasure for eons to come. 

You’re moaning uncontrollably, hands moving to grip at his biceps, nails digging slightly into the skin. He grunts, liking the shark twang of pain that shoots through his body. 

He can feel you clamping around him desperately, like your body needed more. You’re so wet and sloppy, he can feel your slick smearing on his thighs with every thrust. 

“Feels s’good, baby.” He groans, and immediately he feels you clench on him again. “Did you like that?” He grins. 

“Uh-huh,” You nod dumbly, eyes unfocused as whines spill from your throat. 

“My pretty girl likes it when I praise her, huh?” The next words flow from him easily, he’s venerated you so much in his mind already that the flattery comes easy. He wants you to know exactly what you make him feel. “You’re so fucking perfect for me, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted.” 

Everytime he bottoms out you can feel him in your throat.

“J-Jay…”

Your bodies blend together, waves of pleasure overtaking you both with each long stroke. You can feel every inch and vein and crevice of him pushing against your sensitive walls. 

He continues speaking. “You make me fall apart so easily, my love. I want to give you my everything. I’ll be at your disposal from now on, you can do whatever you want with my body, as long as you stay by my side.” His tone is deep, dripping with lust. “Your pretty pussy takes me so well, it’s like you were made for my cock, yeah?”

A shiver of arousal runs through your body at his speech, lower body getting hotter. You feel like you’re surrounded by lava, melting and wound tight all at once. 

“Your body is so beautiful, I don't want anyone else to touch you; I want you only for myself.” His hands lift your hips up a little, his cock pressing inside even deeper than before, making you let out a yelp. 

He’s hitting every good spot inside you, knocking the breath from your lungs even with his sensual pace. You feel constant spurts of warmth pouring out of you, and you notice just how soaked the mattress is beneath your shivering body. 

“Are you enjoying yourself, love?”

“S-so much, Jay,” You whine out, clutching him harder. 

“Good, I want to be the only one that can make you feel like this.”  

Each rock of his hips gets you higher and higher, dangling on the edge of release. The glide of him is so smooth and sweet as he drags against you.

“M’gonna cum, Jay.” You sigh out, voice high and whiny.

“Good girl, go on and soak my cock. Show me just how much you’re enjoying this.” 

A few more more moments and you’re letting go, gripping his biceps hard as elation sinks deep into your bones. A sob of his name escapes your parted lips, body tingly and twitchy as endorphins rush through your veins. He groans as he feels your slick walls convulse around him. His grip on your waist tightens momentarily as he pulls out, his cum instantly spilling onto your stomach. Relief floods his system as he pants hard, chest heaving as he catches his breath. 

The both of you bask in the afterglow of your climaxes, the soft sound of breathing drifting on the heated air. Jason thinks you look divine with your hair spread on the bed, his seed marking your skin as sweat glistens your body. You think the view of him above you, satisfaction prominent on his face, is just as sacred. 

When Jason’s body settles he gently slides out of you, smiling apologetically at your small wince. He goes to your bathroom, having memorized the layout of your house from all the times he’s visited you. He returns with a damp towel, mournfully wiping his traces off of you. He throws the rag into your laundry basket, crawling beside you in bed and pulling you into his chest.

“How ya doing, princess?” He whispers into your hair.

You give him a small, happy hum in return, scooting yourself even closer into him. 

"You're so soft," He mumbles, nuzzling into you. "This is where I want us to stay, for eternity. Nothing else, forever."

“That sounds perfect, Jay.” You reply, yawning slightly. 

Jason’s smile grows even wider, his arms tightening around you. He looks down at you with an adoring gaze, your warm and tender body slotting perfectly against his. "There is nothing, and no one in this world that I want more than you, my dearest."

Thank you so much for reading! A comment or reblog is much appreciated. Have a great day <3

- sumi ☆ミ

ミ☆ masterlist

requested tags: @a-deadbeat-fucking-valentine @in-som-niyah

[runningfrom2am]

Hi, how’s your day been going? Hoping it was amazing. I just saw your post about needing inspo for Coriolanus fics! I’m not sure if you are taking requests but if you are Could you maybe do a touch-starved Coryo fic? Something fluffy/angsty where Coryo can finally fulfill those needs and be himself and vulnerable with the reader. Thanks!

as long as you need me - c.s

pairing: coryo x fem!reader

wc: 1.7k

tags/warnings: fluff, hurt/comfort, he just needs you and you just want to help.

requests (currently closed- feel free to send whatever but it will be a while before I get to them!)

nav / coriolanus snow masterlist

a/n: ahhh thank you for sending this in! it was so fun to write like stopppp i just want to give him a hug omg. also thought i'd post this to hold y'all off until i post the next part of LTPF. anyway, enjoy!

You had a very stable grasp of the limits of your relationship. What was appropriate, and what was not. You were quite shy, and Coryo always carried himself with a high level of decorum. You would eat together at lunch, and he would walk you home most days. The weekends, your study dates, were always your favourite. He was significantly more relaxed, but you could still tell he was just a little tightly wound. By now, you've just learned that's who he is. Not overly affectionate, but he cares for you and you care for him. 

"I can't stay late today, I'm sorry." You said, genuinely feeling bad for having to turn down the request. In your junior year, you started tutoring for younger grades at the academy and it is something you thoroughly enjoyed.

"I have a test tomorrow! Why can't you stay? Just for a few minutes- I just have a couple of questions." The first year, Aelia whined.

"My boyfriend is supposed to walk me home and he has a tight schedule, but I'll tell you what, I can meet you in the library in the morning before class. That way it will still be fresh in your mind, yeah?" You grinned, and she seemed satisfied as you agreed on a time, not knowing that a few of the girls in your grade were listening in.

"Y/N," Clemensia decided to approach you as Aelia walked off, Arachne and Livia following close behind. "Did I catch you telling someone that you have a boyfriend? Did I hear that right?"

"Oh, well, yes." You answered sheepishly, gathering your things to put in your bag before your next class.

"Really?" Livia chimed in, and you just nodded. "Okay, well, spill. Who is it? Do I know him?"

"Um..." You looked around, deciding what to say. You weren't necessarily keeping it a secret, but you just hadn't felt the need to tell anyone you went to school with. "It's Coriolanus. Snow." You cleared your throat, unsure why you even added his last name. It's not like the name Coriolanus was abundantly common.

"Shut up." Clemensia laughed slightly, eyes widening at you. "You're joking, right?"

"No... We've been together for almost seven months now."

"I just... wow. We had no idea. Seven months! I feel like I've never seen the two of you get closer than two feet apart." You weren't sure whether to interpret this response as teasing or genuine shock- so you just gave them an awkward smile and a small nod before walking away.

At the time, you had never considered how your lack of affection in public could be confusing to people- not that it mattered. Rumors had spread quickly after that, which was to be expected when Livia and Arachne were involved. However, PDA just wasn't your thing. General displays of affection weren't really your thing, either. Both of you always had a lot going on, and having been together for almost a year by now, you knew that you loved him and he loved you. You didn't have to prove it to each other or to anyone, there was no pressure for anything to change. On your end, anyway.

Coryo, on the other hand, was feeling something shift. Leading up to the reaping and more importantly, to the prize. You both were in the running, being in the top twenty-four of your class, and you had no doubt that Coryo was a shoo-in, but you didn't know how extremely anxious it was making him. The now constant thrumming of his heartbeat in his chest and his shaky hands were always less around you, and he can only dream of how much better it would be if he could just hold you.

These days, he'd wake up expecting you in his arms due to a particularly calming dream only to be disappointed. He respected you a great amount and wouldn't want to push your boundaries, however unspoken. Still, he wasn't sure how much longer he could go about his day-to-day without testing his theory that holding you could cure his fears, or at least let him forget about them for only a moment. He would happily take just a second of peace.

Coriolanus usually greeted you outside of your unshared classes, seeing that you tended to stay a few minutes late to ask questions or polish off your notes. He couldn't wait to see you, he needed to.

"Coryo." You smile, walking out of your lecture hall to see him waiting.

"Hi, Love. How was class?" Your boyfriend greets you, joining you on your walk towards the exit of the school.

"It was good. Though, I find the topic of the rebellion kind of redundant at this point." You say, books tucked against your chest under folded arms. "Is it not too soon to discuss it in a history class? I mean, I literally remember what it was like to live in a bomb shelter."

Your joke seemingly lands on deaf ears as he just hums, placing a hand on your lower back to guide you out of the building. This wasn't totally unusual, but with the way he was pushing you, albeit gently, was telling you that something was wrong.

"Is everything okay?" You ask him, looking up at the boy next to you as you reach the bottom of the academy's front steps.

"Fine." Coryo nods, attempting a reassuring smile that he isn't aware falls short.

"Okay, well... If you want to talk about anything, I'm here for you, you know. Always."

"I know. Thank you, Love." He drops his hand from your back to hold your free one, turning in the direction of your apartment.

The next afternoon, you're in the same class, one of the rare ones you don't share with Coryo, taking down notes from the lecture when there's a knock on the door, followed by it creaking open. You pay no mind, taking the opportunity to catch up on everything written on the board.

"May I borrow Y/N, please?" Your boyfriend's voice is scratchy and shakey in a way unfamiliar sounding to you, making your head snap up. You'd never seen him cry before. "Only for a moment."

Your teacher dismisses you, likely on account of your and Coriolanus's mutually spotless records and his red-rimmed eyes. Clearly, you were needed urgently. You leave your bag and your books, ignoring the whistles and heckling of some of your classmates as you rush to the door.

Coryo had reached his breaking point. He was writing his third paper of the week, unable to focus on that and get his mind off of how unlikely it was he would get the prize if the Dean had any say. Sitting in the library, the world had started turning around him. People were talking, laughing, even, and he couldn't take it anymore. The floodgates opened and he had rushed out of the room. He couldn't go home, his attendance would be affected and he'd be throwing away the prize most definitely. He had nowhere to go, except for to you.

You close the door behind yourself, thankful that the hallway is completely deserted during class time. "Hey, what's going on?" You ask, and before you can get a good look at him he's pulling you into a crushing hug, shaking around you.

You're shocked for a moment, pulling yourself out of your head to hug him back. Whatever is bothering him must be bad. He'd hugged you before, but never like this. "Hey, it's okay..." You whisper, rubbing his back. "Let's go outside for a second, yeah? Get some air?" You offer, gently prying yourself from his grasp to look at him.

Coryo can't speak, overtaken completely by the tears flowing down his cheeks and the anxiety flooding every inch of his body. He feels like he could be sick, all he knew that he needed was you. He just nods, trying to regain his composure, if only for the couple of minutes it takes to get outside.

"Okay. Let's go." You smile, trying not to show how worried you are as you wrap an arm around his back, still holding him close to you as if he has a broken ankle and you have to carry him. So far, his theory was proving to be correct. Just having you at his side was calming to him, and mentally he's cursing himself for not voicing his fears to you before they broke him.

As soon as the door of the rarely used back exit to the school is closed, he's essentially collapsing onto the ground, tucking his knees up to his chest and crying into his hands. You're quick to join him, draping an arm over his back and trying to grab one of his hands to hold. Your brow is knit with worry, rubbing his shoulder as he allows you to take one of his shaking hands. "Coryo..." You say softly, trying to get him to look at you but he won't. "What's happening? Talk to me, you can trust me. I just want to help."

He sniffles, looking up at you. "What is it?" You ask again, hoping to prompt any kind of information out of him. When he doesn't answer, you curve your approach to yes or no questions, hopefully, to make it easier on him. "Is someone hurt? Is it Grandma'am? Did something happen?"

He shakes his head slightly with every question, once again avoiding your eyes as he looks down at the ground, occasionally trying to cough out the knot in his throat.

"...Do you want to talk? Or do you just need a hug?" You realize, leaning in so he would look at you again.

He pulls you closer, wrapping both his arms around you awkwardly due to the way you are both sitting. "Just need you here." He mumbles, hardly audible as he buries his face in your shoulder and neck.

Relieved to hear his voice again, you place a hand on his hair and on his back, holding him tight. "I'm here, Coryo. As long as you need me."

taglist: @keziahcore, @soulessjourney, @kitscutie, @annaelise, @serrendiipty, @fratboyharrysgf0201, @totallynotkaibiased, @stelleduarte, @klplynn, @secretsicanthideanymore, @bejeweledreverie, @fals3-g0d, @gloryekaterina, @andrewgarfieldsbitch, @queenofspades6, @pepperonipastas, @ladybug0095, @lunamothwrites, @sbrewer21, @mus-tbe-a-weasley, @splxtscreen, @unclecrunkle, @karmaswitch, @rororo06, @coconut-dreamz, @nekee-lilac02, @ooooglymoooogly, @slytherinholland, @riddlerloveb0t, @lovedbalances, @notyourwildestdream, @snowlandson-top, @too-lit-for-fanfic, @utopiakys, @deafeningballoonnacho, @darlingisntit, @roosterschanelslut, @chmpgneprblem, @cosmoetik, @lauravanderbooben20, @dry0campa, @luclue, @lokidala, @urvampgfsworld, @carolanns-world, 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 -   

cdessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[arminsumi]

two freaks

CHOSO ちょうそう

note : choso crack lol. i love him.

synopsis : you and choso have been the weirdest, freakiest, off-beat duo since the very beginning. your chemistry with each other thoroughly confuses the people around you. just two freaks in freaky love with each other.

warnings : 🔞 some suggestive content, mentions weed/getting high, unedited

no one knows how you and choso started dating. it's a mystery of the universe.

because you and him were always like mismatched socks. and yet you ended up together, for some reason. hell, even when you and choso were just friends you made an inside joke with each other;

"i have a type and you're not it." you'd joke.

"yeah i could never date you, either." choso would joke back.

if one of you accidentally flirted with the other, then you'd laugh and accuse each other of being horny.

"you're horny." you'd say.

"no i'm high."

"i thought you were choso?"

"no i'm your man."

"shit alright, let's get married."

your friends would sometimes overhear this and pull a funny face.

("are you guys crazy or high?")

"bitch, we're both."

you and choso met each other one day at an instrument store. you were accompanying a friend, they were choosing a guitar to gift someone — or whatever it was. anyways, so you were there lingering.

"you listen to the smiths?" choso scrunched his nose up.

"what's that face for! the smiths are great!"

so you and choso stood there, arguing about music. your friend just let you two be and snickered with the store's staff, who knew choso well because he practically lived in the store with how much he visited.

you visited that music store a lot and met choso over and over again, probably for a year before even exchanging numbers. neither of you were interested in each other, and you always argued about music... or at least it seemed like that to everyone else.

you and choso had an underlying comedy to each argument — yes obviously the both of you knew it was not that serious. choso just enjoyed debating music with you and was excited that someone finally debated back. sometimes he disagreed with your opinions even if he agreed, it became an inside joke.

"i like... (artist)" you'd say and then choso would shift his shoulders and lift his chin and reply with "oh, well now i can't like them if you like them. i refuse to associate with you." and you two would laugh.

the music store's staff genuinely thought you two were high every time you spoke, but at the time choso had a rule of never getting high and going in public because he'd embarrassed himself too many times.

sometimes you'd have a spontaneous hang out with choso. because he was spontaneous and you aspired to be.

one time, he said something unexpected when he lit up a blunt. you and him were loitering by a fast food restaurant's drive-thru.

"you know, i like the chemistry between our souls. i think we must have known each other in a past life."

"do you think we were also freaks in our past lives?"

he laughed and nodded, rubbing his watery eye when smoke got into it.

"we were definitely freaks."

"well, i also think our souls have got good chemistry. our souls are freaky."

"yeah, freaky souls."

you and him stared at each other. he seemed high but the rush hadn't even kicked in yet, so it must have been just because of your company.

"yo..." he cooed awkwardly. "sorry, didn't mean to stare." he mumbled something like that and looked away.

"eyes are the gateway to the soul. were you trying to perve on my soul?" you joked.

"yeah, i totally just perved on your soul." he laughed.

on that day, you distinctively remember talking to choso about how you two would be the last people to ever date. and he replied with some joke about "what if it were the apocalypse and we had to breed for repopulation purposes?" (how did you reply? he can hardly remember, all he knows is that he blushed at your reply until his cheeks burned.)

and then a year after knowing each other you were making out violently in his car after some friendofafriend's party. maybe you kissed him because he charmed you by playing the guitar earlier that night — he looked hot doing it, with his hair down, plectrum in between his teeth as he tuned it.

too many times have people scrunch up their noses in confusion when you and choso act like a couple.

whenever they ask;

"oh, are you two dating?"

with a weird attitude in their voice, you and choso troll them;

"no, we're partners in crime."

"yeah i do the killing and she gets rid of the evidence then we make out violently in the back seat of my car."

they look like they regret asking anything about you two. clearly you and choso were freaks.

people in your friend group make jokes all the time about how choso's in it for the pussy and you're in it for the weed.

"no actually i've been cutting back on my pussy consumption." choso replies with a face so plain that you could take him seriously.

"oh i been hittin' that blunt from the back lately i just can't get enough of it."

you completely confuse the people around you and troll them just for amusement. but truly you and choso do get fed up sometimes. it's sickeningly repetitive.

sometimes choso gets snappy, especially if it's a guy asking you;

"that's your boyfriend?"

"yeah that's her boyfriend." choso clenches his jaw and steers you into his arms.

ah, and his most classic response;

"are you her boyfriend?"

"no, i'm her wife."

© arminsumi

I do not permit the copying/reposting/translation/plagiarism of my works. Do not steal what I've worked hard to create.

This is fictional work.

[forever-rogue]

Hi! Could we get a Eddie fic where it’s like a timeline throughout their relationship? How they first met, first date, engagement etc? Maybe even the first fight for some angst 👀😂

AN | Please! This idea is so sweet, but also I couldn’t help myself so this is singledad!eddie as well 🥰

Warnings | Language

Pairing | Eddie x Fem!Reader

Word Count | 5.4k

Masterlist | Main, Eddie 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The first time Eddie Munson met you…he didn't exactly like you. You just weren't his type in any sense of the word - not his type of friend, his type of girl, or his type of associate. He never would have thought that the two of you would have any sort of relationship. It would actually have been laughable to him, if someone had told him you’d be anything more than a bi-yearly presence in his life. 

But here you were, the sweet, kind dental assistant that greeted him and his son as they walked into the new dental practice. As soon as Eddie had completed the new patient paperwork and was checked in, you walked up front and called out his son’s name. 

The first thing Eddie had noticed was how pretty you were - he could own up to that but the second thing he noticed was how kind and gentle you were with his little boy. Jamie Munson was a small, shy little boy who had been terrified at the idea of going to the dentist. But you had some sort of magical power because the boy relaxed and came willingly with you, Eddie in tow. He had to hand it to you; you had a way with Jamie…and with him. 

When it turned out that Jamie was having a bit of an issue with some of his permanent teeth that were coming in, he quickly realized that he was going to be seeing more of you. For some odd, unexplainable reason, thrilled and terrified him. There was something so magnetic about you that it made his stomach flutter with butterflies. It didn’t help that Jamie had practically fallen in love with you and thoroughly enjoyed telling anyone and everyone about the nice lady at the dentist.

To top it all off, Eddie found himself drawn to you as well, finding any and every excuse to talk to you whenever he was in the office. And to his surprise - and yours - he asked you out. It was fumbled and awkward and sweet, all Eddie and priceless. When you’d said yes without hesitation, Eddie had been shocked. When you told him that you had thought about asking him out as well, he was sure he was dreaming.

When you showed up to what turned out to be the first date of many, he was convinced he was living in a sweet, lavender haze.

But it was real, and you were real, and before either of you knew it - it had all become a vivid, beautiful reality. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Your stomach was in knots as you waited for Eddie to pick you up for your date. Your first date. You never would have thought the metalhead would have one, felt the same as you did and two, actually ask you out. You were almost polar opposites, but you’d developed your attraction to him rather quickly. So quickly that it was almost scary. When he’d shyly asked you out, fumbling over his words and stammering nervously, as he got ready to leave with Jamie, you’d said yes almost instantly. 

And…now you were anxiously waiting for him. You looked yourself over in the full length mirror, wondering if you were dressed too formally and or too casually. Your dress was light and pretty, perfect for the summer and you slipped on your shoes before you could talk yourself into changing. Before you could worry too much you heard a loud knock at the door. 

“Ugh,” you groaned at your reflection before deciding you looked fine enough and quickly padding to the door. You threw it open without even making sure that it really was Eddie and found yourself breathless as you looked up at him. There was a big, nervous smile on his face and a pretty bouquet of wildflowers in his hand, “Eddie.”

“That’s me,” he chuckled nervously as you slowly stopped yourself from freaking out, “these are for you, sweetheart.”

“They’re beautiful,” you gently took them and clutched them to your chest, “thank you so much.”

“O-of course,” he followed you inside as you walked to the kitchen to put the flowers in a vase. He looked around, trying to get a feel for you who were outside of the scrubs and office, “you look really pretty.”

“Thank you,” your cheeks - your entire face - warmed up under his attention and concentrated your efforts on arranging your flowers, “you clean up nicely yourself, handsome.”

“Figured I had to try if I wanted to stand a chance of looking remotely like I should be taking you out,” you snorted in amusement at his silly antics. There was something about that was relaxing and made you feel like you’d already known him for so long. This was definitely something you could get used to, “but I’m glad I hit the mark.”

“More than,” you promised sweetly, “flowers and handsome? It’s coming up cherries already. Where are we headed tonight?”

“That’s a surprise!” he grinned eagerly, “if that’s okay with you.”

“It’s perfect, Eddie. Really,” your reassurance made him already feel like he had an actual chance with you, “let’s go!”

Eddie had been debating on what to do for your first date since he'd asked last week. He wasn't sure what angle he should take - fancy and formal or casual and fun - eventually he settled on just being himself. Being the fun, dorky Eddie that he was. Which turned out to be the best thing possible.

"No way!" Your eyes lit up when he pulled up to the arcade, and you saw all that it had to offer. He'd been watching your face the entire time, trying to gauge your reaction. He hoped you didn't think it was too much of a single dad move, like it was the only thing he could think of, "I am totally kicking your ass at mini-golf!"

That brought a smile to his face, "you wish, princess. I happen to be a mini-golfing pro - I can beat a five-year-old and I'll beat you too!"

"You're so on," you almost jumped out of the car, motioning for him to hurry up, "and you're going down at air hockey too!"

"You're just a dork too," he reached for your hand without having to think about it, worrying for a moment that he was being too bold, but realized when you laced your fingers with his, "I was thinking after this we could go to that new diner for dinner. I-if that sounds okay, of course."

"It's perfect," you couldn't stop yourself from kissing his cheek excitedly, "I couldn't think of anything better!"

And Eddie was positive he fell in love with you then and there.

When he dropped you off later that night, he could barely manage to keep it together. He hadn’t planned on kissing you, not because he didn’t want to because he really did, but because he had been so nervous. He didn’t want to fuck anything up; but then you went and kissed him of your own initiative and he almost melted into a puddle on your doorstep. 

“I had a good time tonight,” you touched his cheek before kissing him one last time, “I…I’d love to do this again, if you’d like.”

“I’ve love to,” his cheeks pinked as he nodded eagerly, “d-definitely.”

“Cool,” you bit the inside of your cheek, butterflies fluttering all around your stomach, “call me?”

“Of course,” he promised softy, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sweetheart. Have a good night.”

“You too, Eddie,” you whispered, watching as he reluctantly stepped off your porch and towards his van, “good night.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You’d been with Eddie for just over two years now. It was hard to believe it had been that long already but at the same time it felt like it had been forever. The two of you had fallen into each other’s lives so seamlessly. One of the best parts was that the two of you almost never fought. But, like with everything in life, something had to give. 

Eventually you were going to have your first fight. It was inevitable…right? Right.

“Hey sweetheart,” Eddie came home to find you in the kitchen, singing along to whatever record you’d thrown on the vintage player. The kitchen smelled delicious, clear evidence that you’d been baking which also made his stomach grumble, “something smells good.”

“Hey my love,” you grinned as you walked over to him, putting your hands on his shoulders as you leaned up to kiss him, “missed you today.”

“Missed you too,” he stole a few more kisses before eagerly eyeing the pie you had cooling on the counter, “it smells amazing.”

“Nuh uh,” you teased, “these are for the bake sale at Jamie’s school tomorrow. I’ll make us something later, promise.”

“Fine,” he sighed dramatically as you snorted in amusement, “where is the kiddo, anyway?”

“With the Carlstroms,” you turned back to mixing the brownie batter as Eddie raised an eyebrow, “they were going to the theme park and asked if he could go along so I said yes. He really likes Eric so I figured they’d have fun and I’d be able to get all this baking done. They’ll be back tonight.”

“You just let him go?” Edide asked and you could tell from the tone in his voice that something was off, “without even bothering to ask me?”

“Ummm…yeah?” you answered softly, giving him a sheepish shrug, “you were at work, and Jamie’s over at their house a lot so I figured it was okay. We know them, and I didn’t want to bother you with it.”

“He’s my son,” he said quietly and your entire face fell as you realized what he was saying. You're not his mother, “you can’t just go and make decisions without me.”

“I-I’m sorry,” you stammered nervously, feeling tears already well up in your eyes, “I-I didn’t mean to sidestep you or anything, I really didn’t think it was a big deal. I’m sorry, I should have asked you before just saying yes.”

“Didn’t think it was a big deal?” he scoffed, “what if something happened and I had no clue where he was? He’s just a kid!”

“Eddie-”

“Don’t,” he shook his head and started to back out of the kitchen, “I’m going to go outside and cool off.”

You watched him go without a word, tears running down your cheeks. You hastily wiped them away with the sleeve of your sweater, trying to hide your sniffle. If you thought, even remotely, that this would have been a big deal, you would have asked Eddie first. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at all; you loved and adored Jamie as though he was your own son and you’d never do anything to put him even in the smallest bit of danger. You hoped that Eddie would understand that at some point. You loved both of them with your entire heart. 

Eddie came back home a hours later, and while you had been worried, you knew that more than likely he had gone to Wayne’s place. That man could talk sense into him and if nothing else, he often served as a neutral third party.

By the time he got back, Jamie was already home, worn out from playing and being in the warm sun, inadvertently napping on the couch. Eddie relaxed when he saw the small boy, affectionately ruffling his hair before finding you. 

“Hey,” he rapped his knuckles gently against the wall as he found you still baking. You turned to him with a nervous expression, a hesitant smile on your face.

“Hi,” you whispered as you stopped what you were doing and set the tray of cookies down, “listen, Eddie-”

“Hang on,” he gently interrupted you, stepping closer and reached out to gently touch your cheek, “before you say anything else, I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have talked to you the way I did or said what I did. I’m sorry…I hope you can forgive me.”

You softened from his words, leaning into his touch as he brushed his knuckles along your cheek, “I do…of course I do. But I am sorry for not checking in with you. You’re right too, you’re his dad and it wasn’t my place to make that decision.”

“No,” he shook his head, “I shouldn’t have said that either. Not how I did - I am his dad but you’re his mom. And it is your place to make decisions like that. I guess sometimes I still have a little bit of a hard time remembering that I’m not a single dad anymore, especially when I’ve got someone so brilliant and amazing and wonderful by my side.”

“Eddie-”

“I mean it,” he promised and you knew that he was speaking from the heart, “all of it. I love you, baby.”

“I love you too,” you couldn’t stop yourself from throwing your arms around him and hugging onto him like a koala, “so much. You and Jamie.”

“I know it and so does he,” Eddie sighed softly and pressed a kissed to the side of your head, “thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking me back,” he chuckled nervously, “not kicking me right to the curb.”

“One little disagreement isn’t going to break us apart,” you insisted gently, “things like this are normal and they’re going to pop up every now and then. But we love each other and we’re a family, so we’re always going to work it out.”

“Of course,” the part of him that worried you would just leave when things got hard was always going to be there, even if just a little bit. But he knew, more than anything, that you were never going anywhere. You were it, you were his forever.

“Daddy? Mama?” Jamie padded into the kitchen and his sweet little voice made you melt. He started calling you that out of his own volition, and it had made you happier than anything. Eddie had panicked and wanted to make sure it was okay, but when you reassured him that it was more than okay, you both knew that this was it. You were a family, “can I have a cookie?”

You exchanged a look with Eddie and you both playfully rolled your eyes. You grabbed one of the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and broke it in half, handing a piece to both of your boys, “there we are. Good?”

“Mhmm,” Jamie nodded through a mouthful of cookie, crumbs already on his face. The sight was too adorable.

“Perfect,” Eddie whispered as he looked into your eyes, “absolutely perfect.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You’d noticed that Eddie had been acting nervous all day. You wondered if something was wrong, with either him or Jamie, but didn’t say anything. The young boy had seemed fine when Eddie left to drop him off at school in the morning. But Eddie seemed jumpy and off all morning. You’d caught him off guard more than a few times and he looked like he’d committed some sort of crime. When you’d asked him what was wrong, he’d insisted that nothing was wrong but you could tell that he was lying; you knew him well enough by now. Your two-year anniversary was coming up soon and you basically knew him like a book. Which also meant that you knew he would come forward and tell you what was going on eventually. 

But when you got home…things were still off. 

As soon as you walked through the front door you let out a long sigh as you kicked off your shoes and set your purse down. It had been such a long day involving screaming and sick children, irate parents, and malfunctioning tools. All you had been dreaming of doing was coming home and relaxing with your two loves. 

“Eddie?” you softly called out his name as you walked into the kitchen; something smelled delicious already and was practically making your mouth water. You found him standing at the counter, intently cutting up some vegetables. You leaned against the counter and looked at him with starry eyes, as he met your eyes and offered you a small smile in return, “hey handsome.”

“Hey baby,” you could see his shoulders relaxing as he turned to you and leaned in to kiss you. You leaned into his touch, and let him kiss you softly, practically melting into him. When he pulled back, you tenderly took his face in your hands and pressed a few more kisses to his lips. By the time you pulled back he was grinning at you with a pretty pink flush to his cheeks, “missed you today.”

“I missed you too,” you sighed dramatically, causing him to laugh fondly at your silly antics, “lemme take a shower and then I’ll be back to whine all about it.”

“It’s not whining,” he insisted as he often did, “and you know I’ll listen to you talk about anything and everything.”

“You’re a good man,” you bit the inside of your cheek, “hey, where’s Jamie?”

“He’s having a sleepover with Jasmine and Ryan over at the Harrington’s,” he explained and you nodded in understanding. You loved that Eddie and Steve were best friends and that their kids were growing up to be the same, “last minute thing, you know how kids are. It’s just us tonight.”

“Oh?” you raised an amusement as he snorted in amusement, “you know what that means-”

“It means you need to hurry up and shower and come back to me," he flourished his hand, before grabbing the knife and going back to chopping, "because tonight we won't be interrupted by a little visitor."

“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or less!” you practically ran up the stairs to your bedroom, ripping off your clothes as you grabbed a fresh set of pajamas. It wasn't too late into the evening but you weren't about to put real clothes back on; instead you settled on the most comfy pajamas you had, which were a pair of Eddie's boxers and an old, cozy sweater. Definitely not the sexiest outfit but perfect for a quiet evening in. 

By the time you made your way back downstairs over half an hour had passed and Eddie was dishing up dinner. Your eyes widened at the sweet gesture and it was then that you noticed the pretty vase with all of your favorite flowers on the dining table.

"Oh, my love," you were touched that your sweet, adorable goof of a boyfriend had remembered your favorites and done this for you, "this is amazing. You are amazing."

"I…" he trailed off as he looked you over, big brown eyes growing soft, "wow."

"What?" You looked down at yourself in confusion before turning back to him, "what's wrong?"

"You're so fuckin' beautiful,” your entire face felt like it was on fire from his sweet words. You shook your head, wondering what had gotten into him, but he immediately shook his head as though he could hear the words in your head. He reached over and gently took your chin in his hand and turned your face towards his, “I mean it.”

“I’m wearing ratty old pajamas, my hair is wet, and I’m pretty sure I look like I haven’t slept in two weeks,” you wrapped your fingers around his wrist and brought his hand to your lips, pressing a gentle kiss to his knuckles, “but thank you.”

“You’re always beautiful,” he promised as he took your hand and pulled you towards the table. You sat down and watched as he set a plate full of all your favorites in front of you, followed by a freshly opened bottle of beer. He did the same for himself and sat down next to you, motioned for you to dig in, “I hope it’s okay. I know you’re the chef in the family but I tried.”

“Eddie,” he loved the way you said his name, almost like a prayer, so gentle and reverent, “you could have made boxed mac and cheese and I would have loved it. Thank you for this, seriously.”

“Anything for you, baby,” he insisted softly as you nodded, “you know that.”

“What’s the occasion?” you grabbed a forkful and shoved it into your mouth as he paled. You raised an eyebrow and swallowed it quickly, “for making all of my favorites.”

“N-nothing,” he said quickly, his voice climbing an octave. You knew that whatever had been on his mind earlier was clearly still stuck in there, “just wanted to do something special for my girl. Tell me about your day, baby. I’m guessing from your sigh that it was either bad kids or bad parents.”

“Both,” you groaned before launching into a full rundown of your day. Eddie listened intently, making you laugh when you needed it and otherwise providing a listening ear. When you finally got it all off your chest, feeling so much better than you had throughout the day, you asked Eddie about his day and listened just as he had. 

The two of you just worked so well together, meshing into each other's lives as though it was always meant to be. And, you supposed, that’s exactly what it was.

After dinner, you cleaned up the kitchen before deciding that the whole evening called for some ice cream and a movie. Eddie even let you choose the film, and you settled on a romantic comedy that you’d been wanting to see. You knew it wasn’t his favorite, but he always watched them with you and you knew that deep down it wasn’t too bad for him either. You promised to watch a horror movie of his choosing in return, and he eagerly accepted your offer. 

Throughout the movie you could feel his gaze shift back to you. He clearly wasn't paying too much attention and had something on his mind. Once you were finished with your bowl of ice cream, you set it down on the table and turned to him with a sigh.

"Edward," your use of his full name caught his attention and he turned to you with a sheepish smile, "what's going on? Tell me."

"N-nothing-"

"Bullshit," you groaned, "you've been acting off all day. Is it something I did or said? Are you okay?"

He looked at you for a long moment before letting out a heavy sigh and getting off the couch. You looked at him in confusion, hoping you hadn't said something to upset him. You watched as he quickly ran upstairs and you could hear him fumbling around in the bedroom before coming back downstairs.

"Eddie?" You weren't even sure if you should be worried or confused or…something but you were starting to panic.

"Baby," he stood in front of you and you could see his hand trembling with nerves, "I, ugh, this isn't what I planned at all. Not like this but umm, I gotta do it now or I'll never be able to."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"W-what? No," he shook his head fervently, curls bouncing around, "the opposite actually. I-I love you so much. I never expected to meet you or fall in love with you or anything. I just assumed I'd see you twice a year at the dentist's office with my kid. But that obviously changed, and now we're here. And you, you've always been so good to me, and you've been so good to Jamie and I never thought I'd meet someone that loved both me and my son. And we love you so much, and you're just…what I've always been missing and wanting…"

"Eddie?"

"I wasn't planning on doing this tonight but you're just so…everything that I can't not," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, dropping to his knee before he opened it. Oh. This definitely wasn't what you had expected - at all. He opened the blue velvet box and inside sat the prettiest ring you'd ever seen, "will you…will you marry me?"

"Yes," you didn't even hesitate for a moment but then quickly realized the gravity of it all, "wait - you want to marry me? Like for real?"

"For real for real and forever," he grinned as he pulled out the ring and reached for your hand, delicately slipping it on, "the question really is do you want to put up with me forever?"

"It's not putting up with you," you promised, "not with someone you love. And obviously the answer is yes. I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you and Jamie."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he admired how the ring on your hand looked before pulling you in and kissing you sweetly, "I love you, so much. I'm sorry this wasn't the most romantic thing in the world."

"This is perfect," you insisted, "I love you more than anything."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You stared at the stick in your hand and then up at your reflection in the mirror. It was almost like you didn’t know if you should trust either the rest or yourself. But a million emotions started swirling up all at once and with all the other signs that had led you to getting the test in the first place made sense. The little stick exclaiming pregnant wasn’t wrong at all. 

“Holy…fuck,” you whispered to yourself, still in disbelief, “how am I going to tell them?”

“How are you going to tell who and what?” Eddie. Of course your husband had to come home and upstairs at that exact moment. Him and his perfect timing; you could practically curse the universe for it. He was grinning, all big and dopey, at you as he leaned against the door, “what’s wrong, baby? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Y-you’re here…”

“I am here…in my home after work,” he held up his hands and waved them around as you swallowed thickly, “alright, out with it. What’s up?”

“Here!” you practically shoved the white plastic stick into his hand, squeezing your eyes shut as you anticipated his reaction. You were almost positive that it wouldn’t be bad, but your stomach still churned with nerves…baby you supposed.

“What the fuck,” he whispered it so softly that you almost didn’t hear it. He looked at you with wide eyes as he held up the test, “you’re pregnant?”

“Uh huh,” you nodded dumbfoundedly as you shrugged your shoulders, “I-I guess so.”

“Wow,” he opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking like a fish out of water, “you’re pregnant.”

“I’m sorry,” it blurted out before you could even think about; it was just your natural instinct.

“Baby, why are you sorry?” his face fell as he wondered if you didn’t want to have this baby at all. Maybe you were upset at the positive test while he felt exactly the opposite way, “do you not want this?”

“No, no, no - I do,” you promised and he relaxed slightly, “yes, god, yes I do. I just…it’s habit? I feel like a kid right now, pregnant and feeling a hundred different emotions right now.”

“Well, princess, I’m happy to tell you that while you are pregnant, which I am very, very excited for, you’re in our home and we’re married and have things kind of figured out.”

And that was enough to make you feel better and relax…but it also made tears well up in your eyes as you studied your husband, “I’m excited too. Nervous, but excited.”

“C’mere,” he set the test down on the counter and pulled you in for a hug, wrapping his arms tightly around you as you melted into his warm, soft body. Eddie could feel your tears soaking the fabric of his shirt, and he responded by pressing soft kisses to the side of your head and rubbing your back in soothing circles, “I love you so much. I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling, but fuck I’m so in love with you. There’s no one else I could ever imagine doing this with.”

“Really?” you looked at him with wide, teary eyes and he nodded softly before pressing a kiss to your lips. 

“You’re already an amazing mother,” he reminded you, causing your heart to swell. You loved Jamie so much, just as though he was your own, which you knew he basically was. At the beginning you worried if the young boy would ever accept you as his stepmother or even tolerate you. But it was so much more than that - you were his mother and he was your son. And now you were adding another little Munson to the mix, “and you will always be.”

“Thank you,” your lip trembled with effort as you tried not to cry and Eddie couldn’t help but kiss away your pout. He didn’t stop until he felt you smiling against his lips, “you’re an amazing dad, best friend, husband…everything.”

“Flatterer,” he teased as you giggled at him, “we’ll figure it all out together. And if you ever want to kick my ass for knocking you up, I give you full permission.”

“I’m sure - no, I know, I’ll take you up on that offer at some point,” you shook your head at your husband’s silly antics, “no we just gotta figure out how to tell Jamie.”

“You can just tell me,” you heard his small voice as he padded into your bedroom and jumped onto the bed. You and Eddie exchanged a look before he shrugged at you as you sighed softly. These Munson men were going to be the death of you. 

“Should we?” you asked him under your breath as Jamie watched the two of you intently.

“It’s up to you, mama,” he kissed your cheek, “he might just explode if we don’t tell him…or he’ll figure it out in a day or two.”

“He’s too smart,” you agreed before sliding past Eddie out of the ensuite and over to Jamie. You crouched down so you were almost eye level with him and tenderly brushed a few rogue curls out of his face, “oh, my love. Daddy and I…we have some news to share with you.”

“Are we getting a dog?” his big, brown eyes practically glittered with excitement as you chuckled softly at him.

“Not quite buddy,” Jamie looked at Eddie in confusion before turning back to you. You were ready to go out and get this sweet boy his new dog and whatever else you wanted. But…you were pretty sure that was just the hormones talking…no need to get too crazy just yet.

“Oh…what is it then, mama?”

“Umm…well,” you swallowed the lump that had welled up, “we’re having…you’re…you’re going to get a little brother or sister soon.”

He was quiet for a moment and your heart started to hammer in your chest as you worried that he was going to be upset. That would definitely have crushed your soul a little bit. But then, you heard him gasp excitedly before he threw his small arms around you in his best attempt to hug you; you didn’t hesitate to tightly hug him back, “finally! When?!”

“It’s going to be a little while bud,” Eddie answered softly, coming over to sit on the bed next to his son. He leaned over and kissed the top of his head, “mama’s gotta grow them first.”

“Wow,” he looked at you with nothing short of awe as you beamed at him, “I’m gonna tell all my friends! I’ve been wishing for a brother or sister for s’long now. Finally!”

You exchanged a look with Eddie, both of you laughing softly. This was everything you could have dreamed of and more.

“Ahh, I love you both so much,” Eddie pulled you both in for a hug, squeezing you until you and Jamie were giggling wildly, “my three favorite people all in my arms.”

And yeah. This was everything.

[strawheart-pirate]

Oasis

Portgas D. Ace x afab!Reader

Words: 2658 CW: Alabasta Setting (spoilerfree), NSFW, vaginal sex, blowjob, fingering, tongue fucking, consensual, pet names (babe, my love)

You were home safe and sound thanks to Ace. Your feelings we’re a mess ever since and on top your grandmother invited your savior for dinner to thank him properly. As it was time to part ways your feelings were crashing down on you. A steaming hot sequel to Drought.

You woke up to the sun, kissing your face the early morning. You lifted your head and grabbed your pillow tight until you realized that you squished the man below you and not your pillow. A deep red blush crept onto your face as Ace woke up from the pressure around his ribs.

“Ugh, no. Is it already morning?” Ace grumbled, his eyes shut tight, as he stretched beneath you.

“Unfortunately.” You mumbled, still deeply embarrassed.

“Just five more minutes.” He said as he turned towards you and held you in a tight embrace.

If your blush was gone seconds ago, it was now as prominent as ever since his bare chest was right inside your face and his arms secured you in a way that left no room for protest.

“Ace, please, my grandma has worried long enough.” You begged.

“Alright, okay. Let’s get going.” He slowly went up and packed a few things. It was clearly visible that he was not a morning person, and you were impressed that he didn’t fell over, given how much he was swaying.

You checked your place for any package or clothing left, but you were done. Ready to go.

As you both walked side by side through the desert, Ace told you about his pirate life. He was very enthusiastic about his stories and you laughed a lot. The lizard followed you in a good distance.

“Do you know my little brother? His name is Monkey D. Luffy and I’ll meet him soon here in Nanohana.” He shoved the wanted poster right in your face.

“He has a precious smile.” You admit.

“I know, right? See, when we were young, we did everything together…”

Ace was rambling about his brother Luffy until you finally reached the gates of the city and parted ways with the lizard. At this point you thought that you knew Luffy better than Ace, but that didn’t matter. You loved the stories Ace told you and even though they were about Luffy, you could clearly read between the lines and gather information about your travel buddy. You didn’t even notice that you smiled admiringly at him and gave him a few side glances until you were at your house.

“Grandma!” you yelled and rushed towards your grandma, who was sitting in front of your house. You hugged her tight and reassured her, that you were fine as Ace watched you two. Tears flowed down your faces and your grandma was clearly relieved that everything was alright. As you both calmed down, you introduced Ace and your grandma to each other.

“Ace, this is my grandma. Grandma, this is Ace. He saved me yesterday.” You said and your grandma scanned Ace thoroughly before she spoke.

“Thank you for saving my grandchild, young man. Please have dinner with us tonight.”

“Oh, I’d like to, but…”

“No buts, you must come. We want to thank you properly, so you will come. Don’t make me repeat myself.” Your grandma demanded and Ace and you were a bit taken aback.

“O-Okay..” Ace stuttered and the old lady chuckled to herself.

“6pm. Be on time.” She said and Ace took his leave, since he had some things to do.

“Now, Y/N, tell me about this man and what happened to you.” Your grandma said and patted the seat next to her.

You sighed and sat down. “Where shall I start…”

It had been an hour until your grandma knew the whole story. She was now in the kitchen preparing the dinner and you did your chores. Although you were busy, your mind drifted off to Ace quite frequently.  Even though he was a pirate, you were sure he was not the nasty type. You owed him your life, yes. And that alone causes admiration to some degree, but you also enjoyed the talks with him. It was clearly visible, that he loved his little brother and his cocky, but cheerful attitude along with his well-trained body left you longing for more.

Oh my, I really got it bad. You sighed as you thought to yourself but smiled anyway.

Evening came and Ace appeared at the doorstep right on time. He had a nice bouquet of flowers in his hand and handed it to your grandma.

“Thanks for your invitation, madame.” He smiled sheepishly.

“Oh, what a lovely young man you are. And please, just call me grandma. I like the connection that comes with it.” She smiled knowingly.

You rolled your eyes at her antics and led your guest into the living room. There, a small table was set up for the three of you by the window and the evening sun gently illuminated the simply furnished room.

“Here we are.” Your grandma said as she put down the pot in the middle and you all got seated.

The dinner was pleasant. At first you talked about random topics, but now Ace was telling your grandma everything about his brother Luffy. You knew the stories and so you leaned back in your chair and sipped your drink. You haven’t seen your grandmas’ eyes shine that bright in a long time. Something about this man was truly special and you followed the conversation with a gentle smile on your face.

It had been three hours and Ace was about to head off to his lodging. The sun was just setting and your grandma hugged the freckled man goodbye.

“Thanks again for that lovely dinner, grandma.” Ace said and bowed to her.

“Ah, you’re welcome. Come by anytime, okay?” she smiled as she took his face in her hands and slapped his cheek lightly a few times.

“Will do.” He said and turned to you. “I…”

“I’ll walk you home.” You beat him to it. Your offer was a bit unusual and you could clearly see the question marks on his face.

“Then off you go.” Your grandma gave you a knowing smile and waved the both of you off.

You took his hand and started walking. He waved to your grandma one last time and quickly got used to the new situation. No one said a word as you walked hand in hand to the address he had given you. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but you were deep in thought. You felt something for this man and wanted to spend more time with him, but you didn’t know if he felt the same. Before you could even come to a conclusion, Ace stopped.

“Alright, we’re here. This is the inn.” Said Ace, giving you a beaming smile. You couldn’t face him because he would clearly see the hurt in your eyes. You didn’t want to let go but you tried to find the right words.

You started to phrase your emotions. “Yeah, well… Thank you again and maybe we’ll meet…”

Two strong hands grabbed your face and before you knew what was happening, Ace smashed his lips to yours. The kiss was hungry, his lips demanding. He wanted everything from you and you would give it to him without hesitation. You melted in his hands and your lips joined the fiery battle. As you put your arms around his neck, he broke away from you just enough to catch his breath.

“Do you want to…?” – “Yes!” You both smiled as your lips met again and he grabbed your butt to lift you up. A sound of surprise left you and you giggled slightly as he carried you up the stairs and into his room. He set you down and locked the door in one fluid motion, trapping you between him and the door. His lustful gaze traveled over your body from head to toe and back again before he took your face back into his hands and kissed you passionately. You hummed in pleasure and placed your hands around his neck to play with his black strands. His pelvis rubbed against yours in a needy rhythm.

“Ace…” you moaned his name impatiently.

Ace wasted no time and carried you over to the bed and laid you on the soft mattress before removing his hat and coat. The look he had on you was breathtaking, as it looked like there was a fire burning in his brown irises. He slowly approached you, but you stopped him before he could lay on top of you. You slid off the bed and got down on your knees. Your hand wandered over his beautiful abs and you unzipped his pants.

"Let me take care of my savior." You looked at him through half-lidded eyes and stripped him naked.

 A breathless moan escaped the man. His erection was now right in front of your face and you took your time to look at it thoroughly. He had just the right thickness, was long and curved up a little. The tip was a light shade of purple and he had a prominent vein on top. You licked your lips.

"Like what you see?" He teased, though he already knew the answer, and posed a little for you.

You grabbed it gently and let your tongue slide from his shaft to his tip while holding his gaze.

"Oh fuck." He said and looked away for a second as he inhaled sharply. "That’s so hot."

You took his cock all the way into your mouth and gave it a good taste until you hummed in approval. He was delicious. Ace couldn't take his eyes off you and you gave him a glance every now and then as you bobbed your head on his cock. Your hand alternately gently massaged his balls and clasped the lower part of his cock in a firm grip.

Your tongue swirled around his tip and Ace moaned louder and louder. It wasn’t long before he grabbed your head.

"Is it okay if I...?" you hummed in approval and he shoved his cock deep down your throat. You gagged a little, but it was okay, drool pouring down your chin. Your cunt throbbed as Ace used your throat and a few bounces later he painted it white on the inside. You swallowed everything he gave you and licked your lips. He smiled at you, satisfied and a bit exhausted, and you returned his gaze with a perky smile. Ace dropped to his knees and kissed you passionately, his tongue deep inside your mouth, battling for dominance in a demanding kiss until he lifted you up and placed you on the bed.

"It’s payback time."

He peeled you out of your gown, lifted your leg and kissed you on the inside of your thigh. His hands were all over you until he suddenly stopped.

"Let me show you something." He said and you propped yourself up your elbows and watched him hold his finger over your belly. A familiar little flame appeared, and he cautiously ran it over your belly. His touch was warm, but he didn’t burn you. You couldn’t take your eyes off the flame as he approached your nipples. As his fingertip grazed over your bud, the flame flared a little and you gasped at the sensation of his touch and the blazing flame. He smirked at your reaction and you heart skipped a beat. His teasing play continued with the other bud until he let his hand slowly move down until he reached your clit. You moaned his name like a prayer as he traced circles on your clit with his flaming fingertip. Each time the flame slid over your sensitive spot, a crackling warmth coursed through you. You were so fascinated by the flame that you didn't realize what Ace was up to until the flame went out and he slid his finger inside you. You gasped at the sudden intrusion and moved your hips towards him.

"I hope you liked my little trick." he teased just before he placed his lips onto your folds.

He licked a straight line from your entrance to your clit as he slowly pumped his finger in and out of your needy cunt. You tried to move your hips, but he held you back with a strong arm.

"Stay still and let me enjoy my dessert." He demanded and his command increased the tightness of the knot in your belly. He flicked his tongue repeatedly over your clit while he inserted a second finger into your velvety folds.

"Ace…" you whimpered. The pressure was rising inside you. He knew exactly how close you were. The squelching sounds of your soaking cunt and your sweet moans resounded through the room. For the final act, he exchanged his fingers for his tongue. His fingers were rougher and provided more friction on your clit and his tongue penetrated deep into your folds. The vibrations that flowed through you pussy as he hummed with desire send you over the edge.

"Ahh, FUCK!" Your juices gushed all over his face as he tongue fucked you through your orgasm. He licked all your sweet liquids off you before he is looking at you with a pleased smile.

 "You taste like an oasis, babe." he praised, and you blushed. He crawled up on you and gave you a taste of yourself. The kiss was passionate, and your tongues danced lovingly together.

"Wanna ride me, babe, or you want me to rail you into the mattress?" A smug grin on his face. - "Why not both, but I'd like to start riding you while my legs still work.” You suggested.

He smiled devilishly at you and turned you both around so that he was on his back and you were on top of him. You sat up and positioned yourself over him. He held his cock still as you slowly slid yourself down and buried his cock deep inside you.

"You feel sooo good, Ace." You praise him as you put your hands on his abs for more balance.

"Says the one driving me crazy with those needy hot walls."

You chuckled and started riding him at a slow pace. One of his hands was on your hip and the second teased your clit every now and then. Your sweaty bodies moved in harmony and the clashing of your hips filled the room with a sweet symphony that, together with the moans that escaped from both of you in sheer pleasure, created a passionate melody. Your movements became sloppy as the knot in your stomach continued to tighten and Ace placed his second hand on your hips as well, as he began to thrust into you from below.

You gasped as he hit your sweet spot deep inside you and a smirk appeared on his face. Your nails clawed deep into his chest as he hit the same spot over and over, bringing you closer to the edge with every thrust. He hissed in pleasure as your nails dug into his flesh.

“Oh god, you’re so good to me. I don’t deserve you.” – “Ahhh, Ace, please.” You plead as you were about to climax.

“It’s okay babe, cum for me.” He said as he sped up his movements. Your knot snapped and your climax hit you hard. You pressed your shaking legs into Ace’s ribs and clawed into your own breasts as you screamed his name. The sight was breathtaking and your walls squeezed him mercilessly and not a second later Ace was slamming your hips onto his cock, spraying his seed deep inside you.

You took your time to calm your breathing and remained seated on his still twitching cock. You looked down at him through half-lidded eyes, the pleasure clearly visible on both of your faces. He reached for your cheek and you leaned down to capture his lips in a kiss. It was so soft and sweet and full of love that no words were needed.

When you pulled back a little, he looked deep into your eyes. "You are so sweet my love, what do you want to try next?"

All content unless otherwise stated belongs to: ©Strawheart-pirate. Please do not copy / modify / translate / repost my writing, banners or art on other platforms. Comments, reblogs or likes are highly appreciated!

[weministertomonsters]

A Shift In Character- 3

"No hospitals," your husband croaks as you stumble out of your apartment elevator.

"You've said that several times already, Nathan," you gasp, struggling under his weight as he leans against you.

"No hospitals," he mumbles. "M'fine."

"No, you're not!" You shoot back as you fumble with the key to your apartment.

Your nosy neighbor sticks her head out of her door and gasps when she sees the state of the two of you.

"Bar fight," you mutter and push your door open.

You get Nathan on the couch and run to get the first aid kit so you can access the damage. You wrestle his shirt off and he lies there limply, staring at you with foggy eyes. He has a few bruises and scratches, but nothing serious. You sigh in relief when you realize the bite wound isn't too bad either. It just bled a lot.

"What if it gets infected?" You blow out a breath and get to work disinfecting the wound.

"I'll be fine," he winces. "Are you okay? What happened back there?"

You avoid his gaze. "You need to rest. You need to shower too, but lie down for a while, okay?"

He hums, his eyes fluttering shut. "Don't leave me," he murmurs.

You push his hair back from his forehead, going hot and cold. What the heck are you going to say, that you had terrifying but hot sex with a stranger? Your relationship wasn't open to other people, so what you've done is cheating.

So stupid. You see he's asleep, so you get up and stumble into the bathroom.

How had things gone so far? Well, Mystery Man used your weakness against you. But you should have also made more of an effort to say no. Shivering, you step into the shower and rinse dried cum and blood from your body. Every part of you feels thoroughly satisfied, despite your guilt. You're just beginning to soap your body when you feel a presence behind you. You almost slip as you turn, but your husband catches you with an arm around your waist.

He looks far more alert now. His clothes are discarded on the floor outside the shower. Pinkish water runs down his chest as the blood washes away. He blinks at you.

"You know what? I think you liked it."

"W-what?" You squeak.

"You heard me. You've been acting weird ever since I got back. Is it because of him?"

"Can we talk about this later?" You scratch your neck, and he catches your hand and leans in.

"He bit you as well?"

"Yes..."

Your husband says your name in that exasperated tone he uses when he thinks you've made a stupid decision, and even though you have no right to be angry, you feel the heat of it pulsing through you.

"Okay, yeah! I did enjoy it! It was more consensual than he made it look when you arrived. Are you happy now?"

He laughs sharply. "Are you admitting to cheating on me?"

Your anger dissipates and your shoulders hunch. Suddenly you're very aware that you're both naked. Your eyes sting, and not from the soap.

"I'm sorry," you mumble. "I just wanted to feel something. You've always been busy..."

Your husband looks at you. Really looks at you.

"Why are you covering yourself?" He asks, his voice getting a little softer.

You are. You're almost cowering with your arms crossed over your midsection like you want to curl up into a ball. You look at him and finally admit the truth.

"I feel like I'm not good enough. Like I'm not desirable to you any longer."

"That's not true," he says.

"Then why won't you sleep with me?" You sniffle. "It makes me feel so small and hateful and ugly. You always say you're busy with work, and then too tired after work..."

"God, I didn't realize. I've been so wrapped up." He takes both of your wrists and pulls them away from your body, pulling you into a hug. "We're going to fix this," he says firmly.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even looked his way," you murmur. "I deserve whatever punishment you want to give me."

Your husband is silent for a long moment, and then his arms tighten around you.

"Tomorrow I'm going to find that guy and fuck him up," he growls. "For touching my wife."

"But I'm the one who let him touch me," you protest.

"He should have known better because you're mine," your husband replies. "You've got a damn ring on."

You grimace and feel like an even bigger fool.

"I'll deal with you too, don't think I'm letting it slide," he whispers against the top of your head and you simply nod.

You eventually part in order to get clean.

"Something isn't normal about him," you say as you soap yourself up.

"This would be the part where I laugh and don't believe you, but I saw his face when we were fighting," your husband says.

"You did?" You gesture for him to turn around so you can get his back.

"Humans don't have eyes or teeth like that."

"Fuck," you groan. "What if I've been infected?"

"You and me both," He replies, turning back to you. "Check my neck. Is it still bleeding?"

You lean closer. "No... It looks like it healed over."

You exchange looks. It's beginning to dawn on you that you've epically fucked up and dragged your husband into it. Your apologies are plentiful, but he doesn't want to hear them.

"I need time to think," he says as you both settle into bed. "I'm going to buy a gun tomorrow."

"Babe..."

"What? If he's really some freak, I'll need all the help I can get," he replies with a yawn. "I'm going to kill him, that's what."

You clamp your mouth shut, surprised at the protests that want to rise. You're not sure what part of this unsettles you. That your husband, who's always been a gentle person, wants to buy a gun and possibly kill someone. Or that Mystery Man might not be human, or that you don't want either of them to get hurt.

Your husband is out cold within minutes, but it takes you longer to fall asleep. You have nightmarish dreams of fighting and snapping wolf teeth and both men slippery with blood as they wrestle on a forest floor.

A heavy weight thumping against your body wakes you up. You forgot to close the blinds before you went to bed, and the bright morning light is pouring in, piercing your eyes. Your husband's arm is wrapped around you, one of his legs thrown over both of yours, holding you down. That's what woke you up. Sweat glistens on his forehead and he mumbles in his sleep.

"Nathan?" You nudge his shoulder.

One of his eyes slowly cracks open, and his pupil is huge.

"What's wrong?" You ask, leaning over him.

"Bad dreams," he rolls over with a groan, releasing you. "I feel like shit."

"Are you okay?"

"Why do you ask?" He opens both eyes now, squinting painfully at you.

He looks like he's high.

"You're soaked with sweat," you tell him.

The thin shirt he's wearing clings to his body. He frowns and sits up. The bedsheets are damp as well. Ywrinklenke your nose.

"Up, I'm changing the sheets."

He rolls off the bed and plops on the floor, rubbing his face and mumbling to himself. You get out of bed yourself and hiss sharply at the ache between your legs. His head jerks up and he twists around to look at you, narrowing his eyes. You could almost cry of embarrassment as you scamper out of the bedroom, wincing. Another man has you walking weird.

You get fresh sheets from the closet and hesitantly walk back in. He is still sitting on the floor, his head hung low. Silently you begin to tug the sheets off the bed. He hops up to his feet and pads up to you. Without much warning, he tugs the sheets out of your hands drops them on a nearby chair, and kisses you.

He's burning up, his feverish skin hot against yours as he pulls you closer. You try to push him away.

"You're sick, Nathan. Your temperature is sky high."

He ignores you. "I want you," he says.

"What? Now? You're joking. You need to lie down," you tell him. "And I'll get you a cold cloth-"

A muscle in his jaw tightens and he practically throws you on the bed. You squeak as you fall face down.

"Wasn't asking," he mumbles, crawling on top of you and kissing your shoulder.

"Nathan, I'm serious," you begin to say, but he straddles your hips, pinning you to the bed.

His hand scoops your hair away from your neck, his fingers tracing the slight, bumpy scar where you were bitten.

"Nathan? What are you doing?"

He doesn't respond, and that's pretty strange. He hauls you up onto your hands and knees roughly, repeating the motion twice until you obediently hold the position. You look over your shoulder and gasp. His brown eyes are so dark they're almost black. You've seen his eyes get chocolatey and warm in direct sunlight, but this charcoal color doesn't even look natural.

"I can smell him on you, you know," he finally says. "I hate it."

"I took a shower. Don't be ridiculous-" You freeze when he grabs your underwear and pulls it down, smacking your ass.

"Nathan? You're scaring me," you whisper.

His response is a low appreciative groan as he rubs the spot he just smacked. You look back again, only to see he's pulled his cock out of his sweatpants, his stomach flexing as he fists it.

"Are you sure? This is the last thing you should be doing." You argue weakly.

He drapes his body against yours and whispers in your ear,

"I love you so much, but I need you to stop talking."

"What? You're not making any sense!" You protest, and those are the last words you manage to speak as he shoves your face into the pillow.

You feel the blunt head of his cock against your entrance. Despite yourself, you're pretty wet. He's never been like this before. He thrusts into you as far as he can go, and you moan in pain. You're still very sore from yesterday and he's not being gentle.

"You have to smell like me because you're mine. Don't you get it?" He pants as he thrusts into you. "You can't just give your pussy to anyone. You're mine!"

"Yes," you gasp. "I'm yours."

He grunts and squeezes your hips, digging his fingers in hard enough for it to hurt. You let him, figuring this might be his way of punishing you. He uses you like a toy, chasing his pleasure alone. It's been so long since you had sex together that you regret the fact that it's like this, but you're in no position to complain. He comes with a growled curse and flops bonelessly on the bed beside you, his chest heaving.

You let yourself flatten against the bed and blow out a breath. You're turned on and confused.

"I think something's wrong with me," he says. "I feel strange."

"Should I take you to the hospital?"

"No. Just.. Lie with me."

You have to clean yourself up and turn on the air conditioning before you climb back into bed with him. He pulls you closer and sniffs.

"Now you smell like me. That's much better. His scent was making me go crazy."

"Stop being weird," you demand, trying not to feel anxious. "You're having a fever or something. Sleep."

Miraculously, he does fall asleep.

You don't remember dozing off as well, but you wake up to the thud of the refrigerator closing. You're alone in the bed. You stretch and your body zings with soreness. Your breasts feel tender too. You check your calendar and it all lines up. You're going to be ovulating soon. You pad into the kitchen and pause.

It's a mess, the way it always gets when your husband does anything in the kitchen. Nathan turns from the stove with a stack of pancakes.

"Morning."

"Hi. Are you feeling better?"

"Sure am. Sit down, I made breakfast."

You sit cautiously and stare at him. He sets the pancakes down in front of you and sits himself. He's eating scrambled eggs and leftover minced meat that looks like he barely gave it time to get a decent sear.

"Uh..."

"This is all I was craving. Figured I deserve it," he says, scooping it into his mouth. "I've got to go out to the office, but I'll be home early. I thought we could go on a date."

You nod silently and eat the pancakes. Has he forgotten about the gun? You're not going to bring it up just in case. He showers and leaves for work with so much energy that you can't help but worry. He kisses you hard on the mouth and promises to be back as soon as he can. You let him go, nursing that feeling of unease deep inside of you.

You tidy up the kitchen and lock up. You get a sense of deja vu as you step back into the club.

"We're pretty much closed till seven in the evening," the bartender calls over.

He's washing and drying shot glasses. One person is sitting at the bar, devouring a hamburger. It's not your guy, even though he has a similar build.

"Sorry. I'm here to ask about someone," you say.

Before you can begin to describe him, the man eating the hamburger says,

"Green eyes, hasn't-shaved-in-days and slutty open shirts?"

"Yes. Do you know him?" You frown at the man.

He licks grease from his fingers and chortles.

"Helen of Troy, that's what you are."

"Pardon?"

He waves a dismissive hand and then holds it out to you. "Where are my manners? I'm Ulysses."

You don't take his hand. You glance at the bartender, who shrugs.

"Well, I really need to talk to him. Is there any way I can reach him?"

"A careful bitch. I like that," he says.

You raise an eyebrow, refusing to take the bait.

"Can I have his number, maybe?"

"Aha!" The bartender cuts in. "So you're the lady he was talking about! He left a note for you."

You whip your head around. The bartender fumbles in his pockets and then pulls a piece of tissue out. The ink has bled in places, making it hard to read, but you manage to make it out.

Contact me when you have real questions that need answers.

Underneath, there's a phone number. You thank the bartender and leave Ulysses at the bar as you stride outside. You waste no time dialing the number. It goes straight to voicemail, so you try again.

"I thought I told you not to call," his deep voice says.

"Well, I've got questions. What are you?"

You get a scoff in response.

"You're howling at the empty sky, darling. Wait for the real trouble."

"Don't speak in riddles," you protest. "Something is happening and I-"

The bastard hangs up on you. You stare at your phone screen in disbelief and curse.

"You're in a fix," Ulysses says, joining you on the curb.

You take a step away from him, frowning. He's dressed like a homeless person, or a junkie, or both. There's a sly shiftiness to him that you don't like.

"Please leave me alone."

"Ah, you want to be alone?" He crows. "Not for long! You've got yourself a piece of the wild, that's what. Bastard city people, always wiping your noses. Ha!"

You hail a taxi and leave him there. You have no idea what Ulysses has to do with Mystery Man, but the situation is only getting murkier and more confusing. Your phone rings. It's Nathan.

"I, um, fucked up."

"What happened?" You ask.

"Got into a fight and broke a tooth. There's, uh, blood everywhere." He sounds lost and confused.

"Jesus. Send me your location. I'll come and pick you up. Don't move, okay?"

"Yeah, um... I think I'm just going to sit down..."

The line disconnects.

Read the next part here -> Part 4

[jokeroutsubs]

An interview with Bojan Cvjetićanin and Nace Jordan in Jana magazine, published 10.10.2023. Featuring a very special shoutout! 😁

On the couch with Joker Out: about the big changes in their lives

Still good, sober boys

We’ll play this and then we’re off – to switch off

The time we have with them is tightly limited, but that’s appropriate for stars of their kind. They are the most popular musical group right now, and they’ve thoroughly conquered many hearts far beyond both Slovenian and Balkan borders. At sold-out concerts, Finns are swooning because of them, Poles, Serbians, Croatians and Spaniards are fainting, not to mention the girls back home. No one prepared them for this kind of craze, but they’re holding up pretty well – they’re still humble guys with good manners, which can (also) be seen in their polite greeting and relaxed chatting in front of their rehearsal space, a comfortable hideaway somewhere between Ljubljana’s warehouses with an unappealing blue door.

Floating into their sanctuary, you almost hit your head on a collection of hanging bras with various affectionate messages written on them. A few more steps, and we plop down on the couch with Bojan Cvjetićanin and Nace Jordan. Jan Peteh and Kris Guštin (damn, he’s tall!) are busy with another camera, and Jure Maček is nowhere to be seen.

How’s your health doing with your (as it seems if you look at the crazy number of concerts all around Europe) pretty exhausting life? How do you take care of your physical fitness?

Bojan: By working out.

Nace: Well, you and I work out, the others only do it a little.

Bojan: Well yeah, she asked us.

Nace: So: we work out a lot, we play badminton, I run, we go to the gym and hike, Bojan also does mixed martial arts.

You’ve found yourselves at a turbulent stage in your career, and like you’ve said before, you cannot be fully prepared for that. What about mental preparation? Do you have to pay extra attention to that or do anything you've never done before?

Bojan: Yes, we have to rest. We haven't had any rest ever since everything became much more intense. My mind and body are now really begging to switch off.

Nace: I agree. Just the other day, we were talking about how we haven’t truly rested since the pre-Eurovision performances. Two- and three-day trips don’t count.

So you’ll only be able to turn off for a bit, after your big concert in Stožice?

Bojan: That’s right. Well, we maybe planned our break a little poorly, because we’re going on a holiday together. (both start laughing loudly)

Nace: Everyone has the same stunned reaction that you did.

You really have to love each other and have a good time together, that’s all I thought. Can you reveal where you’re going?

Bojan: Far away, somewhere warm. As to whether us going together is smart, we’ll tell you when we come back. If we end up needing another holiday after this holiday, then we didn’t make a very wise decision.

Since you really hang out with each other so much, do you perhaps understand any better why some bands get into fatal quarrels or even break up?

Bojan: We definitely understand it a lot more. In a short time, I’ve realised that this rock and roll lifestyle presented to us by rock legends (myths, stories, Hollywood) is truly something that is untenable in the long term. If we look at all the most famous bands, they actually existed for a very short time.

Nace: And, as an interesting fact, most of them broke up while on tour.

Bojan: You can’t do rock and roll and be devoted to your music, concerts, travels, if you’re constantly under the influence of any substances (drugs, alcohol). You really can’t do that, because neither the human body nor the mind are made to withstand this kind of strain, sleeplessness, pleasure, dopamine. All those legends either died young or the bands broke up. Sure, they did a lot, left a permanent mark, but at what cost? We’ve realised that if we want to enjoy what we’re doing, we have to be sober, and you truly enjoy yourself a lot more if you’re sober and feel physically and mentally ready and cultivate friendships. I think that this way, we’ll remember a lot more after a few tours than many rock legends do in their longer careers. How much can you even remember if your brain isn’t even with you on the same stage?

I see that you’re drinking plenty of water, and we remember you, Bojan, from Eurovision, when you were walking around with a bottle of water and blowing into a straw. What was that for?

Bojan: It’s a technique to warm up your vocal chords, based on the principle of blowing into a slightly wider silicone straw in a water bottle. You blow into it, in the correct way and because of the water in the bottle, a negative pressure is created that puts your vocal chords into the most natural position and it works like a massage for them.

Did you discover this for yourself or was it recommended to you?

Bojan: I had never paid special attention to my voice before that, I’m not a trained vocalist, but luckily I naturally developed the correct technique. Otherwise I would’ve lost my voice long ago. So, on the stage, this mechanism luckily developed in a very positive direction for me, which was also confirmed by singing coaches and the doctor I went to for my vocal chords check-up. A phoniatrics specialist, a wonderful guy, helped me during Eurovision. Before the Eurovision performance, my voice gave in a little due to nerves, so I was constantly in contact with a doctor – and we didn’t even really know each other – who gave me advice over the phone. Then, at the first sound check, everything opened up and sounded like it should. It’s really interesting what happens with your voice, it gets incredibly affected by your mental state. Your vocal chords can be perfectly fine, but if your mind is not in the right place, your voice won’t work either.

I also went to get advice from singing coach Nataša Nahtigal, who really helped me a lot. I especially needed that preparation from a psychological point of view.

Did the other band members also need coaches for anything?

Nace: Me and Kris also visited Nataša, because at the beginning we thought that we’d be singing the backing vocals live on the Eurovision stage. So we also practised with her a few times. We also had rehearsals with a choreographer for the optimum stage performance.

We’re having this conversation five days before your biggest concert yet, in Stožice. Does that require any special preparation?

Bojan: It’s a special concert, because it’s the first time we’re encountering the organisation of something this big; it is, after all, the only arena in the country. It’s a lot for us, Magnifico also told us that he was kind of in the dark the first time, but now they’re acclimatised to it. It’s a different type of preparation: we have to prepare the show, the lights, the stage appearance …

Have you even internalised what you’ve managed to do, all the places and the number of people you’ve played to in the past few months (from Ireland to Great Britain, Finland, Norway, Belgrade, Zagreb, Vienna, and now in December, you've got Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona …)?

Bojan: I think that will be a task for the upcoming holiday. When things just keep happening, you’re in this cycle and don’t even really differentiate between one peak and another, so we need to come down a bit to start retroactively comprehending what really happened. Because it’s really wonderful. We were in cities and countries we’d never been to, and then we were there – to play our own sold-out concerts. We absolutely never thought anything like that would ever happen to us.

Nace: Often it’s only when I come home from this kind of tour that I think to myself: wow, look at where we were! We’re playing on a stage where world legends had played before us! Now, in the club in Helsinki, Foo Fighters and AC/DC had played there, among others. Any musician would wish to play there, let alone sell out that concert.

When you walk around these European cities where you have sold out your concerts, do people already recognise you on the street?

Bojan: It’s pretty bizarre, but now they’ve really started to. I think that on this Nordic tour there truly wasn’t any place we went to without at least someone recognising us – either on a train, on the street, in a restaurant, at the airport. Foreign fan culture is a little different, as they get prepared to meet us, in a way – for example, they know when we’ll be at the airport, and they wait for us with gifts, they don’t just come to take photos with us. They bring along our merch shirts, various things for us to sign, they give us gifts. Fans make a lot of things on their own – bracelets, dolls, there are a lot of drawings, crafts; I have two knitted Joker Out scarves at home.

Nace: In Finland we got a lot of knitted socks, hats …

Hand-knitted socks?

Bojan: Yes, with a Slovenian and Finnish flag, for example.

The Scandinavian youth are clearly well-versed in that.

Bojan: Let’s go, Slovenian youth, start knitting Joker Out stuff too! (laughter)

And what is it like to walk down the streets of Slovenia? Can you go to the store in peace?

Bojan: It’s nice to walk down the streets of Slovenia, but we truly always get recognised, that’s a fact, it’s not as inconvenient in stores as it can be when you’re out for drinks, when you constantly feel like someone is eavesdropping next to you.

How difficult is the rockstar life?

Bojan: It’s really nice – every time we’re on the stage, the audience rewards us with a really nice energy, you can’t compare that to anything else, but like any profession, ours has negative sides as well, with the biggest difference being that you’re constantly in the public eye. Very few things are truly personal – you also have a hard time judging for yourself what’s private and what’s not. It’s more of a mental game with yourself – that’s the hardest part of it all. As well as not sleeping, because you travel a lot.

Are there any big disappointments or unexpected things – perhaps that some fans get “carried away” or that not everyone is as well-intentioned as you thought?

Bojan: Absolutely! You suddenly find yourself not only belonging to a home crowd, but also becoming an internet hashtag. The internet has no limits, people have no reservations there, they hide behind a nickname. Each of us has definitely had a few of these moments that shocked us, that’s why we’ve started to pull back from social media.

That’s probably pretty tricky: for the sake of advertising and contact with fans, you have to be present on social media, but meanwhile you’re aware that you need to take a step back for the sake of your health. How do you stay on the safe side? What’s your strategy?

Nace: Primarily, we’ve all stopped reading Twitter, the comments … We have to maintain a certain distance.

Bojan: To be completely honest, I’d like to find someone who could handle my personal profile on social media. It also bothers me that you really waste a lot of time on social media and subconsciously create a lot of unrealistic expectations, because you’re constantly swiping through people’s perfect lives, faces and situations, it’s all quite absurd.

Do you want to influence teenagers in this area, to pass any important messages on to them?

Bojan: Yes, find some wonderful analogue way to follow us and delete your social media.

So, knit a Joker Out scarf or socks instead and listen to their music – that’s pretty analogue. Then, you can also do a charity auction of your fans’ knitwear.

Bojan: Exactly!

One small revolutionary move would also be if concerts or gigs at various parties started earlier. Us slightly more mature citizens also like to go to concerts, but we also like to go to bed a little earlier.

Bojan: I can say that after our Stožice concert, people will be able to be asleep by midnight. But actually, when we were abroad, we got used to gigs starting very soon – sometime between seven and nine in the evening – and the party is definitely not any worse because of that.

You say that you’re full of creative energy. Does your creative process continue under the covers too, do you have notebooks on your nightstand?

Bojan: All the ideas come to me just before I go to sleep. The most recent song Sunny Side of London also happened on the last day before we went to the studio – I couldn’t sleep and I came up with those base lyrics while in bed.

Even though your latest song is in English, due to most of your songs being in Slovenian, you’ve unintentionally become ambassadors of the Slovenian language as well.

Bojan: It was never our goal to become ambassadors of the Slovenian language, but we consciously decided to sing in Slovenian at Eurovision. It means a lot to us, and we hope that our fans will accept that we want to widen our listener base and that there will be some more songs in English because of that. I think that people all around Europe or even further singing twenty of our songs in Slovenian is already a lot, and shows that we’ve done our job. In the future, we’ll create in foreign languages a lot, but we’ll also stay loyal to Slovenian.

A lot of your TV appearances can be found translated to English on the internet. Is that your doing?

Bojan: No, the credit for that goes to a group of fans from all around the world called “Joker Out Subs”, who follow our videos and concerts and translate into quite a few global languages (recently even into Hebrew). They’ve already translated a huge amount of our content, and they do it voluntarily. They’ve also connected with each other in that way, and they’ve told us that 20 of our fans, who met online because of us, booked a house together for our concert in Amsterdam (in December). They’re all coming to the concert and they will stay there together.

Nace: A lot of people have connected like that because of us, which is very nice.

What’s it like at home? Is everything the same at home despite your stardom?

Bojan: Yes, it’s all the same – go mow the lawn!

Nace: I, for example, still drive my grandmother around to run her errands.

And your grandmother listens to your songs?

Nace: She’s definitely listened to some, but I doubt that she’s playing our entire discography. (laughter)

Bojan: Oooh, mine plays it every day, she goes through everything 150 times!

Have you made any changes to your menus?

Bojan: I’ve started eating vegetables – bowls (various healthy ingredients, served in one bowl), Nace got me into that.

Nace: Isn’t it nice to savour something together that’s healthy and that we all like? (Kris pipes up from the background, saying that Nace has gotten them all into Asian food.)

Translation of the captions on the photos:

1) The special friendship with Finnish Eurovision representative Käärijä continues. Together on Finnish stages in September.

2) Bojan loves Swedish girls, says the writing on his shirt.

Translation cr: Joker Out Subs

EDIT: to celebrate the JokerOutSubs shout-out, we prepared a giveaway for Tumblr! You can read more aboout it here!

[wonwoonlight]

my way to you / jeon wonwoo | together

➝ Wonwoo x Reader

➝ just pure, disgusting fluff // chaebol!au // est relationship // v domestic

➝ notes: literally nothing but fluff. talks about kids??? heheh lots of soft kissing towards the end. my byun baekhyun agenda 🤍 not thoroughly proofread hehehhe

➝ word count: 5.7k~

➝ summary: Wonwoo has always imagined a future with you but is in no rush to talk about it. But, well, the universe decides otherwise and who's he to say no?

➝A/N: hi!!!!!!!!! i've missed this couple and by brain went brrrrrr hope you enjoy🤍 also, today is my last day of working in my office and my feelings all over the place so hopefully posting this would help me relax a bit 😭

series masterlist

“Princess, you ready?” Wonwoo peeks through the door of your closet, looking at you who’s still staring into the mirror as you try to figure out what to wear. The distressed face that greets him is enough answer already; clearly you’re not ready yet. He huffs in amusement as he steps into the closet, his arm circling around your collarbones as he catches your eyes through the mirror. “What are you so nervous for? We're just meeting my cousin."

You look at him unimpressed, making Wonwoo laugh as he presses himself closer to you, his arm pulling you against his front.

"Alright, I know you're a fan of Byun Baekhyun but I promise he's just another hyung."

"Another hyung to you. He's THE Byun Baekhyun for me. How could you never tell me your cousin is dating him?!"

"Mmm, did I tell you they have a kid together already?" He says much too nonchalantly, his laughter echoing through your closet at the way you're gaping in disbelief.

"Jeon Wonwoo!" You turn around and hit him hard, though, really, with how buff he's getting, you're sure it's barely even a hit to him. "How did you forget to mention this kind of thing! You know how much I love that guy!"

He bites his lip to hold back a teasing grin, opting instead to squish your cheeks together and gives you a quick peck on the lips before you complain even further.

"Princess, to be fair, it is his personal life. And Yura is, like, my second cousin so I don't talk to her that much unless we have a big family gathering." He grins sheepishly; he knows you've always liked the singer, but it really goes past his head until recently because: 1. It's been quite some time since you gushed over him. And 2. He’s actually not that amused with you squealing over some man even if it’s a celebrity.

Now, he’s not jealous, but perhaps it doesn’t help that he actually knows Baekhyun so it annoys him more than if it had been some other celebrity. Plus, Baekhyun is your biggest celebrity crush; as much as you would’ve grinned and squealed a little over the other celebrities that you like (like Jung Haein, for example), it doesn’t really bother Wonwoo because that’s about it.

But Baekhyun?

You actually, shamelessly, squeal and grip his arm so tight that it hurts a little everytime Baekhyun performs on TV. Ironically, you’ve never attended his concert because your schedule is always packed everytime he’s holding one; you’ve even considered going abroad when he’s on tour, but it seems that the universe simply isn’t letting you see the singer because something always comes up.

Which is why you’re in your current predicament–because apparently one of his cousins is getting married and they’re throwing a party exclusively for the youngsters in the family. And when you’ve asked Wonwoo about the dress code and if there’s going to be media around, he has let it slip that, as far as he knows, some of his relatives are dating celebrities so you might want to dress a little more because he knows you like dressing up.

“Oh, really?” you had asked mindlessly, not actually curious, though your stance on the thing quickly changed the moment Wonwoo offhandedly mentioned that Yura would probably come with Baekhyun. You even asked for confirmation a hundred times that, yes, it is that Baekhyun.

“What is even the purpose of stressing over it?” He frowns in mock annoyance, squishing your cheeks harder. “He has a girlfriend and you have me.”

You giggle at the possessive tone, and you reach to circle your arms around his neck. Wonwoo has to lean down a little to let you do this because of his height, but what’s a little discomfort if he gets to enjoy your warmth like this?

“Is that jealousy, Mr. Jeon?”

You know it’s not. Wonwoo isn’t that kind of boyfriend and it’s very attractive, to be quite honest, the way he’s very assured with his presence in your life and the relationship between the two of you. So you know this is just him messing around, indulging you in your little game because he knows you like it when he’s acting a little jealous.

You don’t have to know Wonwoo is actually a little jealous, not because he feels threatened but because of how absorbed you get when you watch the singer to the point of ignoring him most of the time. Perhaps annoyance is a little more fitting than jealousy.

“Just wear something and be done already.” He pretends to be annoyed, though he still drops another kiss to your lips before he reminds you that you need to leave in fifteen minutes. He doesn’t give you any room to complain, already walking out of the closet to see if there’s any important call he needs to make before he turns off his work phone for the day.

It’s something that you’ve both promised to each other: to turn off your work phones when you’re out for non business functions or out on a date with each other. Chan and Seungcheol would know to call your private numbers if there’s anything urgent you’d need to attend during those time.

The rule came to be after a fight between you two just last month, one that ended up with you refusing to talk to Wonwoo for a whole night because he kept on glancing at his phone when you were supposed to be having your date after so long. Apparently, he already promised one of his partners that he’d be on standby to discuss something, forgetting that he had promised to go on a date with you that night.

Usually, you wouldn’t have minded, but it had actually been months since you got to go on a proper date with Wonwoo with the two of you being busy. Your dates had been reduced to nights in his penthouse or quick lunches in the middle of the days. Which was why you had been quite giddy that night, because as much as you’re glad that at least you got to be with him all that time, you had missed going out and spending time with Wonwoo outside. Hence the fight and everything that followed after that.

Wonwoo’s about to stand up and remind you again when you finally step into the living room, wrapped beautifully in a summer dress that stops right above your knees. You’ve finally let down whatever that was on your head when he stepped into the closet earlier, and he just can’t help but marvel at how you look despite having seen you dolled up countless times. Your makeup isn’t as bold as it usually is during night parties, and he notices you’ve opted to go for a softer look except for the dark ruby painting your lips.

Gosh. Those lips.

“How do I loo–” you laugh a little when he smothers your mouth with his, amused at how he didn’t even waste a second to stand up and press his lips against yours; he’s always had a thing for this particular shade, and you may or may not put that on for that exact reason. You hum into the kiss, ravel on the soft way his palms are holding your face while yours stay on his shoulders because you really don’t want to mess up his gelled up hair.

“Does that answer you?” He whispers after pulling away, a little out of breath even though the kiss is nowhere near intense.

Pink colors your cheek at the way he’s looking at you, and you instead choose to tease him about the color your lips have transferred unto his. You move away to get some tissue, but he gives you another short kiss because he can’t help himself and he really doesn’t see why he should hold back.

“‘Kay, you dork. You said we need to leave in fifteen minutes.” You pull away to hide the warmth that has made its way to your entire face, though you really don’t know why you’d do that with Wonwoo of all people. He already knows the telltale of your everything.

“Right. Do you think it’s possible to change your lipstick? I don’t want Baekhyun to see you like this.”

He would never get tired of the sound of your laughter.

All things considered, Wonwoo is impressed the only thing you’ve done so far after spotting Byun Baekhyun is grip his arm harder.

He hasn’t even seen the hint of you hiding a grin, and he’s about to tease you about holding yourself back when Yura herself makes her way to you with her boyfriend in tow. At this, he almost winces when your fingers actually dig into his skin.

“Hi Jeon.” She grins at him before greeting you too, and you can’t help but notice how beautiful this relative of Wonwoo is. You’ve only met her twice probably, with this being the third time, but you have nothing but good impressions of the girl because she’s nothing like the snobby part of this family. “A bit late to say this, but, about time you two got together.”

You scrunch your nose at this, a comment that you’d never get used to and have heard one too many times after Jeonghan’s parents’ party–which was already six months ago. And you’re still hearing this comment to this day like you’ve just announced your relationship with the Jeons’ youngest heir last week.

“This is Baekhyun, by the way, you might’ve heard of him,” Yura introduces her boyfriend like he’s not literally one of the best selling singers in the country. But you suppose being around rich businessmen has made Yura aware that a lot of people in this circle aren’t always aware of celebrities.

Wonwoo does the honor of introducing you, and you almost burst into a grin when Baekhyun says he’s seen you in business magazines from time to time, and he’s heard about the foundation you’re currently running; that he admires you for doing it and that he’d be happy if he can take part in it in anyway.

At his words, you finally release your lip from the confinement of your teeth and smile widely; being his fan is one thing, being a part of Daisy Foundation and listening to your idol taking genuine interest in the good cause you’re helping is another. After that, conversation flows easily, because you’re no longer standing there as his fangirl, you’re standing in front of him as one of the founders of Daisy Foundation and you inform him on your upcoming activities that he might be interested in.

Roughly, it’s only been about three months since the foundation was established because preparation takes time and you need to hand over your assignments to your successor in the company. Even so, you and Shua are already flooded with donations because of the announcement that spread through after the party. Plus, it helps that you both are used to this, so you’re really just doing your usual stuff on a bigger scale.

“Look at you, talking confidently with your idol.” Wonwoo whispers once Yura leaves, his breath tickling your ears. You smile abashedly at him, more giddy at the prospect that he’s interested in your foundation. He even leaves you his private number, promises to arrange another schedule to talk about it properly because he really wants to be a part of this good cause. 

“I’m just glad he turns out to be an actually kind person,” you say instead, your soft smile and the way you sigh in relief prompts him to smile too. He doesn’t say anything at that, simply kisses your head and steers you to your assigned table because the party is about to officially start.

It’s about an hour later that you spot Baekhyun and Yura again, this time with an adorable little kid that seems to be two or three years old. You send a questioning glance to Wonwoo, one that he answers with a nod because he knows you’re asking if the child in question is their child–one that he mentioned just a few hours ago.

You didn’t get to ask anything more though, because the family has made their way to where you’re both at and you can’t help the soft grin that made its way to your face at the sight of the small child. You’re not the biggest fan of children; you don’t hate them, but you’re really just indifferent. Yes, some of them are cute, but that’s about it.

“This is Sera, our child.” Yura introduces as she carries her daughter and she hides herself in her mom’s neck and, frankly speaking, this is the first time you ever feel like squealing at the sight of a child. “She’s a bit shy, sorry.”

“It’s okay. How old is she?” You smile, trying to get Sera’s attention by tickling her leg.

“Turning three this year. She’s fairly quiet for her age, though.” It’s Baekhyun who answers, and you can almost hear the pout in his voice–perhaps he wishes she was more talkative than she is now.

“Mmm. Lots of the kids that go to our art classes tend to be that way too. We only have three to four kids around her age though, so what do I know?” You shrug with a grin. “Do you like to color, Sera?”

Something that you said grabs her attention, and you hear Yura giggle when Sera whispers something softly as you melt at the interaction. Wonwoo observes the scene in amusement, having never seen you gush over a kid. He listens to the pair ask you about the course kids her age usually take in Shua’s studio, and you happily answer as you flail your hands here and there to explain the program to them.

Sera seems to warm up to you real quick due to this, and Wonwoo really should know better than to let his guard down because his heart almost bursts when he sees Sera extend her arms to you, asking for you to carry her in her silent way. He thought that was it, but something blooms in his chest and he really almost loses it when you grin and take her in your arms, making the girl giggle at the way you’re bouncing her up and down.

Her giggle eventually turns into laughter, her short arms wrapping around you and Wonwoo thinks he can’t take anymore of this when you turn to him with Sera in your arms, looking at him with eyes reflecting all the stars in the sky and grinning bigger than he’s ever seen.

“You like that, baby?” you say in a small voice, making Sera laugh harder at the way you’re tickling her belly.

Wonwoo decides he’s had enough, so he clears his throat and takes Sera from you, carrying her in his arms and lets her smooch his cheek because she’s always liked to do that. It would be much better for his heart to see you play with Sera in his arms than the whole thing he’s witnessed earlier. He’s loved you enough already, there’s really no reason to make his heart swell even more and fill his head with the image of you carrying your own child.

The thought of starting a family with you has always been something that Wonwoo tries not to dwell too much on. It’s much too dangerous. As much as he believes you’re both are it, your relationship is still pretty new and he doesn’t want to entertain those thoughts for now. Plus, he’s never really talked about it with you for the obvious reason of your relationship having only been going on for less than a year, but he knows you’re pretty much indifferent when it comes to them in general.

Huh. Do you want a child?

Woah.

Back pedal, back pedal.

This is not the time to think about that.

“Maybe we should enroll Sera in your class.” He hears his cousin say, zoning back into the conversation at hand. “She seems to like you a lot. It’s not often that she gets comfortable with someone this fast. Do you teach also or…?”

“Well, not always. But I can tell you when I’d be teaching so Sera can take the class when I’m around,” you offer and tell them that you understand why they might be uncomfortable or more worried if she’s handled by the other teachers though you assure them they’re all good.

After talking some more, the little family decides to go around again to the dessert stall; as Sera has actually just arrived with her babysitter, hence why she wasn’t with them earlier. 

“You really went from not knowing Baekhyun has a child to getting cozy with said child in one day, huh?” Wonwoo nudges you, a little surprised when you simply hug his arm and bury yourself into his shoulder. It’s not often that you’re shy, at least not in front of him, but with the way you’re biting your smile and hiding in his shoulder, it’s clear that you have something in your mind that you don't intend to share with him just yet.

It’s later that night that he finds out by accident. He’s in the bedroom waiting for you, wondering if you forgot you need to wake up early tomorrow because it’s been an hour since you said you’d just call Chaeyoung real quick before you join him for bed. He meant to go down to remind you it’s almost midnight, but he finds himself hovering by the stairs, heart almost stopping at your giddy tone.

“She’s so cute, Chaeng. You know I’m always a little eh with kids, right? But she’s so cute and she hides her face in my neck and stuff? And she kisses Wonwoo too! Gosh, my heart almost goes out of my chest when he holds her–Mmm. What? Not really, no. I’ve… never talked about it yet with Wonwoo, to be honest?”

A pause, and then.

“Mmm. Yeah. Our children, huh?”

You don’t know how Wonwoo barely sleeps that night with you sleeping soundly in his arms, your words followed by your soft laugh replaying in his mind over and over again.

Our children, huh? Never really thought about it before, but it does have a nice ring to it.

Frankly speaking, Wonwoo has never thought he’d find himself in such a predicament.

You haven’t been replying to his texts all day, but he knows you’re packed today with classes and everything. Seungcheol isn’t replying either, but that assistant of yours might’ve simply run out of batteries because it wouldn’t be the first time.

But when he gets home early for once and hears you before he even sees you, he definitely didn’t expect you to be on the sofa with Sera happily snuggled to your chest. 

Nope. He’s definitely not strong enough for this.

“Hi.” You grin, waving Sera’s arm as the little girl babbles his name.

“Not that I’m complaining but… why is she here?” he asks after his heart starts beating again. It’s an exaggeration, but that’s really how it felt like for a second there.

“She’s in class earlier but something came up with her babysitter who usually waits around, and her parents aren’t able to pick her up til dinner so I offered to take care of her?” Your explanation sounds unsure, and Wonwoo presses his lips together at how adorable you look right now with Sera on your lap.

After what he accidentally overheard almost two weeks ago, this really isn’t helping him with his mission to get rid of the thought. He looks down at Sera, safely snuggled into your chest as her short fingers grip the neckline of your shirt. Your arms are wrapped around her, and he can’t help but think how domestic all of this seems to be.

Fuck. How would it feel to come home to you and his child cuddled together like this?

He shakes his head in hope it’ll shake away the thought, and when you ask if he’s okay, he sends you a tight smile and drops a kiss to your cheek, telling you he’s going to wash up and that you should order in for early dinner even if it's barely 6 in the evening. Sera would be famished otherwise and you did mention her parents would only be able to pick her up somewhere after eight, anyway.

He didn't expect you'd let it go that easily. But somehow, that’s enough to satisfy you, and Wonwoo turns to head upstairs, ears red when he hears your pitched up voice talking to Sera, asking if she wants chicken also.

God knows how much he needs fucking shower to cool down before he explodes.

But, apparently, God decides he’s only allowed to cool down for nothing but a short moment because you’re nuzzling into Sera’s cheek when Wonwoo returns to the living room. He’s starting to believe he’ll just die a happy man by the end of the day. He doesn’t even care if he’s exaggerating at this point; he’s seen you with kids before, but he’s never seen you so whipped with one that he doesn’t know how to react.

Is he even being obvious with his staring?

He doesn’t really care either.

“You ordered already?” He asks to get out of his trance, to announce his presence while he’s at it. He needs you to pull away from the child because he’s too young for a heart attack. 

“Yeah. But they say it might take longer because they’re busier than usual.” You stand up from your seat and take Sera into your arms, walking to where he’s at for reasons that he doesn’t understand.

Perhaps you want to see his soul leaving him up close with how domestic you’re looking right now. God, you’re not fair at all.

“She’s been calling for her Uncle Wonwoo.” You scrunch your nose and hand her to him. You melt at the gentle way he takes her from you, at the way Sera quickly wraps her arms around his neck and giggles when he asks if she’s been good.

If you’re to be completely honest, the thought of having kids never really occurred to you even though you’re completely enamored by the man beside you. You’ve imagined getting married to him (yes, you already have even though it’s only been months since you realized you’re romantically invested in your best friend), but it has never crossed your mind that you might want to have a child with him for the sole reason of you’ve never really been fixated at the idea of being a mother–a parent with how yours treated you.

Well, until that talk with Chaeyoung, that is.

Seeing Wonwoo like this makes your inside buzz with something that you’re not familiar with. It’s not unpleasant though, and you welcome it with every fiber of your being. It makes you a little flustered, but you don’t really mind because how can you if you get to see Wonwoo smile softly at Sera and poke his nose into her cheek to make the little girl laugh.

It’s almost two hours later that the both of you end up sprawled on the sofa, with Sera on your lap and your head leaning on Wonwoo’s shoulder. The three of you are pressed against each other, Sera is falling asleep with her head against your chest and the two of you whisper to each other as not to wake her–whatever’s playing on the TV long forgotten and its faint sound serving as nothing but background noise.

“I’ve never seen you like a kid this much,” he says as he presses a kiss on your temple. His eyes travel to the fingers gripping the material of your shirt, and then to your palm that’s rubbing her back up and down to lull her to sleep.

“Me neither.” You grin up at him before your palm moves from her back to her hair. “But she is so cute though. Do you think I might be biased because she’s Baekkhyun’s child?”

The look Wonwoo gives you would’ve made you snort loudly if not for the little angel on your lap, so you settle for a soft laugh before you caught your lip between your teeth to stop yourself from laughing louder.

“Kidding,” you add when you don’t feel like laughing anymore, and then presses your cheek to his shoulder to tell him how she’s probably the most peaceful child you’ve ever seen so that probably helps. “She’s so excited in class, Won! But she tries so much not to be too messy even though we said it’s okay?”

Wonwoo stays silent as you continue to talk about the kids in your classroom, another episode from today’s open class, and then Shua who is still overwhelmed about the sudden responsibility. He’s always liked it when you do this, just go on and on about your day and what’s memorable because you want to share it with him. It makes him feel like he’s a part of your day even though he’s not physically there to witness them all the time.

When the intercom finally beeps, it’s almost ninein the evening and Sera is soundly asleep against your chest, her arms limply stay on her sides. Wonwoo goes to the door as you stay there, not wanting to wake the girl up. Yura almost squeals when she sees the position you’re in, and you smile sheepishly at Yura as you tell her that the girl has been asleep for about 30 minutes.

“I’m so sorry it took me long,” she apologizes as she tries to take Sera from you. “Baek is actually outside the country and my dinner appointment was in Incheon. The traffic to get here… God. I’m never attending dinner meetings anymore if it’s not in Seoul.”

You shake your head and tell her it’s okay and you had fun; that you’re glad you’re able to help. Yura thanks you both once again, Sera now curled in her arms, and promises that she’d treat you both for dinner some time for this favor. She doesn’t forget to thank you also about the class, mentions that it’s obvious now Sera is comfortable with you like with no others.

After Yura leaves the penthouse, you finish what’s left over your dinner and clean up before you take turns to shower. You’re sitting against the headboard when Wonwoo steps out of the bathroom, scrolling something in your phone–an action that you immediately stop once you see him already fresh in his pajamas, then pats the space next to you like that’s not where Wonwoo is heading to already.

He immediately dives into your neck, startling you a little, his arms wrap around your waist as he maneuvers the both of you so his head is laying on your chest as he listens to your erratic heartbeat. Gosh, it’s embarrassing how things like this still get a reaction out of you.

“Long day?” you ask as your fingers start to comb his hair. It’s something that comforts him, you found out only recently, and you’ve been doing it since when you feel like he’s extra tired or he’s simply there on your lap. “Sorry I didn’t get to text you the whole day.”

“Not really. Just feel like holding you.”

It’s not funny the way your breath gets caught on your throat at the obvious tone he’s using; like it’s just a well known fact you should already be aware of. Something blooms across your chest, and you’re sure Wonwoo is just being kind by not addressing the way your heartbeat picks up at his words.

“When did you get so cheesy.” You pretend to grumble even if you know Wonwoo knew how much you like it when he says things like that out of nowhere.

He chuckles softly, and then lets go of you to sit properly and pulls you into his lap instead. You don’t complain at the sudden change of position–why would you?–and you settle into the crook of his neck, sighing in satisfaction at how comfortable this feels to you. How natural too, like you’re meant to be with him this way no matter what.

“Can I ask you something?” You think you know what he’s going to say and you’re not sure you’re ready for it yet, but you nod anyway and trace his kind with mindless patterns. “What do you think about kids?”

Despite knowing the answer already, you’re still unsure how to answer him directly, too shy to say anything. You don’t want to make him awkward though, so you hum as if pretending to think even though the words are already on the tip of your tongue.

“Whose?”

Wonwoo blinks, amused at the way you’re baiting him. He’ll take anything though, and he’s just glad you’re not being weird about it.

“Ours.”

He can hear you take a sharp breath at his answer, feel the way your fingers stop moving and the way you press your head deeper into his neck. He’s not in any place to judge though, because he can feel his ears getting hot too at the topic of this conversation. You haven’t even talked about marriage, but you’re already talking about kids though Wonwoo has no one he’d rather talk this with but you.

After all, he doesn’t think he wants to have any kids if it’s not with you.

“I don’t know,” you whisper honestly, and Wonwoo takes your finger in his because you’re fidgeting a little, perhaps nervous from the topic. “I… have never really thought about it until recently but… I’m not against it… I think?”

Wonwoo almost laughs at your unsure tone, finding you adorable for no reason at all. God, he’s even more whipped now that you’re together and it’s not even funny. On the other hand, he feels himself relaxing at your answer; he knows you, and he knows you would’ve said you don’t want kids if you really don’t. So this means that at least you’re considering it–considering having kids with him. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, Wonwoo thinks, but it still makes him happy to know this is how you feel.

“How about you?” you ask back, your voice tiny.

He hums, his fingers that aren’t holding yours find purchase in your hair as he combs through it.

“I don’t mind anything as long as it's with you.” He answers honestly, his tone so genuine that you don’t even have it in you to tease him once again about being cheesy. You even tear up a little, because what did you do to receive a love this big?

You pull away from him to meet his eyes, and he sends you a soft smile that gets you giddy inside that you can’t not return the smile. The two of you spend a few moments just like that, looking at each other with silly smiles on your faces without words. It’s you who break the silence, though your eyes have moved from his eyes, instead focusing on the way your fingers are intertwined together before you say your next words, almost making Wonwoo combust inside.

“I think I don’t mind kids too if it’s with you,” you say shyly, not able to look at Wonwoo in the eyes as you say this. His heart soars beyond limit, but it's not even a second later that it breaks into pieces when you continue your words. “Though… I… I won’t be like my parents, right?”

“Oh, princess,” he whispers sadly, his palm reaching for your cheek to caress your skin. You close your eyes at the feeling, and you lean into his touch because it’s always the source of your comfort. “You won’t, okay? I promise we won’t. You trust me, right, love?”

You open your eyes as you nod, heart melting at his new favorite nickname to call you.

“You know I will call you out if you do something you’re not supposed to and I know you’d do the same for me,” he reminds you, eyes never leaving yours the whole time. “And that’s why we’re good, okay?”

“Okay.” You return his smile, though after a few moments it turns into a giggle and Wonwoo asks what prompts your laughter. “Isn’t it funny? We’re already talking about this when we haven't even talked about marriage yet."

Wonwoo grins at this, no longer caring that his heart is beating to a very erratic rhythm because this talk is too good to be true. He didn’t expect to talk about kids and marriage this soon with you. It’s something that he keeps to himself because he doesn’t want you to feel like he’s rushing you. He’s happy with keeping it to himself too, as he himself definitely isn't in any rush, he’s content having you by his side, happy that you’re both happy together. That’s already more than he could’ve asked.

“Yet?” he teases despite everything. “So you do think about getting married to me.”

You roll your eyes even though you can feel your face getting hot at his words, but you don’t deny anything and simply mumbles that he’s annoying. Thankfully, he doesn’t want to torture you any longer, and he chuckles a little more before pulling you back into his lap, sighs blissfully when you bury yourself into his neck and your lips graze the skin there.

It’s not long until you end up kissing each other; but just like your relationship, there’s no rush there–only your lips against his over and over again. The way he holds you is gentle, almost like he’s afraid you’ll break if he holds you a tad bit tighter, and your fingers don’t root themselves in his hair like they usually would–they’re simply planted on his shoulder and the back of his neck, playing with the tip of his hair.

No one fights for dominance, and you hum in pure delight when Wonwoo retorts to giving you short pecks over and over again, eventually making you laugh at the ticklish feeling against your lips. In the end, you pull him closer by wrapping your arms around his neck, and he returns the gesture by wrapping his around your waist, the content sound that leaves his lips as he’s kissing you sends shivers down your spine.

“I love you, alright?” he whispers tenderly, his lips touching yours everytime they move even the slightest way. “Always remember that.”

You nod, pressing your lips together to hold yourself back from crying. And even though you don’t say it back with your words, Wonwoo knows exactly what you mean when your lips find their way back to his.

©wonwoonlight – all rights reserved.

A/N: aaaaaaaaaah, i've missed them so much!!! idk if you guys still dig them but anyway heh this is for you @justasoftstan and @sunshinein17 🤍 pls do tell me what you think about it! i actually scheduled the post since a few days ago, and the day after i immediately went into a :// state about writing which is very odd. but, frankly, after going into that mode which essentially roots to me doubting my ability to write, i started to even hesitate to post this work. like.. when is a good time? but as always, i hope you enjoy nevertheless

permanent taglist: @kyeomjjigae @stantrash171819 @sebongmochi @luveveryonewoo @thinkinboutwonu @kpopjackie @ursweetener @lavenderautumnx @itsveronicaxxx @shuahoshiscoups @sunshinein17 @leechanniee @twogyuu @hoe4wonwoo @h3h3tm0n @noraehey @seokshook @rubyhoons @02psh

mwty taglist: @dnylwoo @yslshua @najaemin138 @blueixnie @boowanie @pwettytae @aphrodyteeth @jeoonghann @sdoulc @ru-lin @listxn@yngreid @vynnz @lilactangerine @justasoftstan @amymoonl@02psh@lovelywoo@pusangmamon@yoontaedotin @soonchanshua @fanfic24 @nothingbutadeadesceane @nollixtrml @sweetheart-gs@rjsmochii@dowoonwoodealer

[biscuitblinkeu]

Are you hurt? [5]

Park Chaeyoung x Fem!reader

Word Count: 2314~

ToSumUp: Lots of surprises in one day, yes? You don’t get quite the warm welcome coming home from grocery shopping.

A/N: Chapter dedicated to my anon, happy birthday! I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy the chapter <3 Also, just wanna say thank you guys for being patient and for all the nice comments! P.S this chapter was supposed to be way longer but I had to cut it off because I wasn’t gonna finish the gaps at the end before Anon’s bday ended 😭

Rosie was asleep on the couch when you came home, her hair spread across the cushions like a river of flowing gold. The odd position she was in let you know she tired herself out, she even forgot there was a potato chip still in her hand. Laughing under your breath and highly amused, you fixed the cover over her. 

You felt compelled to get cameras— a recurring thought— to catch her doing something silly or find out whatever it is she does when you’re not home to end up like this. It would be similar to those pets on social media who respond to the talking animal-like object with a secret camera… and they would tilt their head in confusion or bark. 

But, again, Rosie’s not a dog. 

You shook your head, an action you hoped got rid of such thoughts (no matter how many times she reminded you of one), and situated yourself on the ground beside the couch, you stared at her face for a while, admiring her beauty. It’s something you know you’d never get used to. Your gaze dragged across the bit of freckles on her nose and cheeks, to her long eyelashes that were dark against her skin. You watched as they fluttered as she dreamt. 

A sigh left her lips, and she turned to her side, facing you. She had a soft pout shaping her lips, and you found yourself staring at them longer than you should’ve. She was so adorable asleep… What?

You blinked owlishly, heat rising to the back of your neck after realizing how creepy you were being. The last thing you wanted to do was make her uncomfortable. Just as you were about to retreat, you realized the potato chip was still nestled between her fingers, and, worried she’d crush it and make a mess, you reached out to pluck it from her hand, only for her eyes to flutter open. They were bleary, clouded with sleep, and caused a stir in your stomach. She blinked at you, a blush slowly appearing on her cheeks.

Startled, you toppled onto your elbows. “R-Rosie?“ You stammered. 

Crunch.

The crisp sound made you both look at the chip now crushed in her palm. She sat upright, now thoroughly embarrassed and wide awake. 

A smile grew on your face, and you dismissed the apologetic look she was giving you. “Here,” you said, grabbing the empty chip bag on the nightstand. “You can put that in here.”

“Did you sleep well?” You asked when she finished transferring the crumbs into the  chip bag.

Rosie nodded with a yawn, stretching her arms above her head. The action revealed more of her slender stomach and the soft curves of her waist.  It was distracting, and you quickly tore your gaze away from the sight to focus on the chip bag in your hands, thus not noticing the sly smile on her face. You played with the sides of the bag, pinching the aluminum plastic between your finger tips. She tapped your forehead to get your attention again, her brows raised in question, and mouthed How was work?

“Ah,” you said, relieved for a distraction. “It was fine— same old stuff. We have a new worker joining us, and so far she seems nice, a little clumsy though. I’m in charge of helping her out.”

She knew by now you weren’t one to love interacting with people— you would rather stand back and observe, finding interest in the actions of others, how they moved or expressed themselves. She thought that was why you were able to read her so well, how you were able to understand her despite the fact she didn’t have a voice. 

However, she didn’t know why she felt a twang to her heart at the mention of your new coworker, a feeling of unrest growing in her stomach. She felt anxious about today and didn’t know why the feeling still lingered. 

Rosie reached for your hand with a frown, noticing a bandage wrapped around your index finger. 

You looked at it, remembering your little accident earlier. “Oh, it’s nothing serious, just a shallow cut. The stapler nicked me when I was trying to refill it.” 

A staple..er? Rosie stared at you quizzically. 

“It’s a tool used to clip stacks of papers together and it’s sharp in some areas. I was refilling it when it clamped down on my finger,” you explained. 

Her mouth made an ‘O’ shape and she nodded, but you could tell she still didn’t understand. Either way, you were prepared to answer anything she asked you— who were you to deny her curiosity? 

“Are you hungry?” You asked, standing up. It’s been a while since you ate lunch, and knowing she had just woken up, she was probably hungry as well. You opened the fridge and staring back at you was a jar of mayonnaise, a single egg, a half of tomato, and two pieces of cheese. You bit the inside of your cheek, wondering how you didn’t notice the lack thereof earlier. “Looks like I’ll be going grocery shopping,” you murmured, closing the fridge. Your grandmother always told you to buy ingredients, which you took to heart, cooking your meals instead of ordering out. She also insisted you become a chef one day— which obviously didn’t happen. 

Rosie was watching you from over the couch, and when she noticed you were staring back at her she looked away, pretending to be interested in her hands. 

“Do you want to come with me?” You offered tentatively, noting her mannerisms. She definitely wanted you to ask– if the way her head whipped toward you and began to nod rapidly, if the way her eyes brightened and a smile tugged at her lips was any indication. “Then that’s settled, why don’t you put a coat on? And some warm pants.”

…

The doors to the grocery store slid open with a mute whoosh and a bell sounded out as you walked through. Rosie, still holding your hand (to which she insisted on the moment you walked out the door to make your way here), appeared shocked at the technology before staring in awe at the assortments of fruits and veggies that lined the entrance-aisle. You believed it was safe to assume she’d never seen a supermarket before, or seen this much food in one place, and it was evident that she had no idea what to do and looked quite apprehensive. But, she followed you closely behind nevertheless.

You grabbed two large baskets after realizing all the carts were being used (or missing), handing one to Rosie. "Can you hold this for me?... Thanks." You then began your journey of looking for ingredients. For tonight, you planned to fry something, perhaps chicken-- spicy chicken-- and maybe some white rice, vegetables and whatever else you find.  Your eyes fell on an aisle marked "spices," and your eyebrows furrowed, you definitely need to restock (flavorful food comes at a price, after all). Rosie seemed to realize where you were headed because she took the lead, yet peered over her shoulder every once in a while to make sure you were still there.

Every few feet Rosie would hold up an item she plucked off the shelf, and when you nodded she would put it in the basket before walking away with a smile to find something else. You simply shook your head in amusement, glad she was having fun. Figuring she would come back and find you, you moved to the next aisle slowly, so she would still be able to locate you nearby. You did this because you knew how it felt being separated from a parent in the grocery store, lost but trying not to look lost as you searched for your family, a growing sense of dread worming its way into your stomach the longer you looked.

Rosie wandered the aisles with a subtle boldness– she wasn't as uneasy as when she first walked in– looking for something else to find. She liked the smiles you would give her when she found something useful. She liked the smiles you gave her when she found something useless, too. Either way, she was on a mission. Or, maybe it wasn't a highly important mission because the moment she passed an aisle that contained brightly packaged, illustrated items, she swiftly turned and entered it. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the different packaging, with, what she believes is edible, a variety of "foods"-- all shapes and sizes. Everything looked so appealing, and she was simply dying to know what was inside. Maybe you would get it for her?

As Rosie was contemplating which package to get, she was approached by a group of guys– looking like they were in their early adult years or so, unbeknownst to her. One guy who was being jostled around and whispered to was pushed towards her, the others staying behind and snickering behind their hands. He took a deep breath, pulling his phone out his pocket.  “Hi, I think you’re really cute and wondered if I could get your number?”

No answer. 

He tried again, yet still received no answer. He looked back to his friends who merely shrugged. So he waited. They gave her a moment to see if she was just “lagging behind” but she kept staring at the packages—practically burning holes into them. But she was thinking hard. Very, very hard and intensive.  Which one should she choose when they all looked good? She’s never had this type of food, and never had to pick something out for herself, either. The servants in the palace would do it for her, not trusting her ability to pick out something that's not….”human-originated”. Would you like what she got? 

Would you smile at her again for her choice?

She wanted to know. 

Completely absorbed in this new task, Rosie took both of the packages and walked away, leaving the guy standing there dumbfounded.

“What just happened?” He murmured.

Just as you were about to go off and find Rosie, feeling that she was taking longer than usual to come back, she entered the aisle, looking very serious. She stopped in front of you. “Rosie?” You questioned, then the candy packages she held garnered your attention. “ Oh, are you interested in those? Do you want to try them? They're a little sour, but I’ll get them for you.” You smiled at her, relieved nothing bad happened, and found her behavior endearing.

You put them in the basket before informing her you were done shopping, the two of you making your way to the self-checkout. She trailed behind you like a puppy (yes, the reference again), grinning so hard her cheeks began to ache, feeling accomplished and happy beyond belief. She smiled at me again!  And she knew it was something she wanted to see a lot more, a sight that made her heart speed up.

…

You arrive home with arms with multiple bangs strung on them. You unlock the door and let Rosie in first, instructing her to put the bags on the dining table. As she’s doing that you make one trip to the kitchen with bags, put them down, then go back for the last of them. 

You’re just outside your door frame, bending down to reach for the bags, when the wind gets knocked out of you, and your arm is pulled behind your back. “What–” Your leg is swept from under you and you fall to the floor with a thud, a hiss leaving your mouth, a pounding beginning to resonate behind your skull. You groan, feeling pain throbbing where your body made contact with the ground. 

A shiny black shoe invades your vision, and you hear a woman's voice. 

“Where’s Rosé?” She demanded, and you had a feeling it was something you were expected to answer, but you didn’t have it in you to care. 

“What?” You murmured, blinking rapidly, trying to get a grip. There was a weight on your backside, keeping you down, and you figured its whoever is wearing those black shoes. Must be a tough guy.

Hah.

“Don’t play dumb, human,” came a gruff voice. Ah, so there were really two people.

"Aren't we all human here?” you mumbled, finding what he said weird. This smart comment earned you a tug on your arm, which was already pretty far pushed behind your back. You yelped.

You heard a sigh of frustration. The woman spoke again,  “Get off of her, KK.”

Just as he was removing himself off of you, rapidly approaching footsteps were heard, and a body shoved him away, running to your side. “Rosie?” You furrowed your brows. She should go back inside, you didn’t know if these people were dangerous or not. Nonetheless, she helped you sit up, and you did so with a quiet hiss, meeting her frantic eyes. She checked you over, and when she deemed you okay she whipped her head to the side and glared at the woman and her bodyguard. And what a mean glare it was; you’ve never seen that look on her. 

The feline-eyes woman appeared shocked at the action, and in a meek tone called her name. “R-Rosé? What— why are you...?” 

Why is she protecting you? Her captor. You’ve done horrible things to her. 

The woman looked unsure, confused. 

“Um…” Your uncertain voice disrupted Jennie’s train of thought and her eyes flickered to you, something akin to annoyance passing through them. She glared at you with such ferocity you thought you might actually see flames emitting from her eyes. You winced internally; you don’t even know this woman (Rosie seemed to, though) and can tell she already hated you. “You two seem to know each other, right? Why don’t you take this inside?… I don’t want to bother my neighbors.”

[viperwhispered]

New fic idea: Jamil VS the ex

Context: Jamil and s/o have been dating for while. Things are going great and everyone is just happy. There are no real jealousy issues on either side cause they trust each other and Jamil is confident he's the best catch around. If there is any jealousy, they talk it out like mature human beings since being petty doesn't solve anything. Though there is defintley possessiveness, it never leaves the bedroom and they both enjoy it.

Introducing the ex: just a complete toxic dump. As in, shitty romance novels stereotypical male lead toxic dump. Just controlling, verbally/emotionally abusive, physically intimidates people, tries to use sex to fix things, doesn't know when to leave their exes alone, gets physical with love rivals, etc. For reference feel free to look at Christian Grey from 50 Shades, Hardin Scott from After, and Edward Cullen from Twilight. Honestly it didn't last more than a week yet the ex continued to stalk our poor reader and ruin any attempt at a finding a new lover.

Cue them getting to NRC and finally having a chance at a relationship with our boy Jamil. But unfortunately all good things must come to an end when reader invites Jamil home to meet their family. Let's say that if the reader is not from TWST then they have a way to dimension travel and the family is in on it.

Jamil is quickly welcomed into the family and they make it clear that he's the best boyfriend the reader has had so far. The reader and their family are quick to warn Jamil about the ex and the sabotages. He learns the details from his albi's angry rants about all the bullshit this guy did.

At one point the reader turns to him and goes: "you have my permission to be as much of a possessive scheming bastard as you want. Ruin his reputation, frame him, humiliate him, I don't care! He's messed with my life far too much for me to care about him anymore. If we run into him, feel free to shove it in his face that I am yours. Hold me, kiss me, leave hickies, whatever! I trust you to know my boundaries and when to do it. Hell, if you manage to get rid of him, then we might as well skip the formalities and go straight to the alter."

Cue Jamil plotting:

1. Get the ego boost from going PDA in front of your lover’s ex. Note: make sure beloved is wearing his hoodie/jersey for maximum boost.

2. Get rid of the abusive ex who's been harming his beloved for YEARS.

3. Plan the wedding.

Meanwhile, the reader is just enjoying the extra affection while munching popcorn as their dear boyfriend gets rid of the biggest nuisance in their life. Yes they get turned on by it, especially the smirk. They're planning to thoroughly spoil him when this is over, both in and out of the bedroom.

Bonus: in your professional opinion, what route would Jamil take to get rid of the ex and how sadistic does he get?

Hasdkföjask yes just let Jamil loose on the problem and enjoy the fireworks.

Also hasdfads in my professional opinion, huh? I feel honored. 🥺👉👈

Oop this got long so below the cut it goes.

(Also boy am I glad the ex did not get to do too much lasting damage to reader’s ability to have a healthy relationship. Jamil already has enough baggage for both of them to go through. Still, someone get a restraining order on that ex, stat.)

“Yes they get turned on by it, especially the smirk.” Just… too true. Man’s just way too hot when he’s all confident and cocky I swear.

Also ngl this brand of possessive I can definitely get behind.

Also I love that tasklist, just not sure which one I love more, the note to task 1 or just the entirety of task 3. Tho of course, Jamil being Jamil (and I may or may not be projecting here) I’m sure there’d be plenty of subtasks / -steps to each of these.

(Also sidenote yes Jamil definitely would know how to turn up the charm for the in-laws for extra approval points. What a charming well-behaved young man, just delightful 😇)

Now, the options coming to my mind are:

Something “private”: only the ex (and reader) needs to know what happened exactly, but it’s enough to spook the ex and keep him in line. (I mean, getting snake whispered? Should be pretty scary, especially depending on what Jamil does with it. Oh boy, the potential.)

Something public: ruin this guy’s image, future prospects, credit score, everything, make everyone see him for the cretin he is. Might cause backlash depending on just how concerning this guy is, but also long-lasting consequences.

Ignore the gnat, just rub things in his face by just being super sweet and loveydovey wherever he happens to be without ever directly confronting him because he’s not worth the effort (not too likely, Jamil’s definitely way too petty (or incensed) to just leave it at that).

Now, getting information on people may be Azul’s specialty, but I’m sure Jamil won’t have too much trouble finding out enough (like where the ex works, lives, stuff like that. If this is a different world (or even just different country), I’m sure reader can help him with the details of what is possible and all).

And by the sounds of things, this particular jerkwad is bound to turn up anyway. So maybe it’s just a case of waiting and being ready, setting up the favorable circumstances.

So Jamil and s/o would be going out and about. Maybe to the shops, maybe just a walk outside, whatever they know is likely to land them on the ex’s path.

The thing about the hoodie is that it’s not necessarily obvious (to the ex) that it belongs to Jamil, rather than you. So he’d probably go for the jersey (since that name obviously isn’t yours (at least yet)), or weather permitting he’d only loan out his hoodie to you at an opportune time.

Like, as soon as you two realize the ex is around, you’re all oh, it sure is a little chilly isn’t it, have my hoodie my dear, it’ll keep you warm. Cue makeout session (and definitely no smug glances from Jamil to the ex, no siree. Nothing of the sort when he holds you tighter, pulls you closer, lets his hands trail along your back, into your back pockets or perhaps even under your shirt. Definitely.).

When ex comes over, you’re conveniently in a public place (probably conveniently within sight of cameras, too, so there’d be something on record to go to authorities with, if needed, and for extra consequences).

I’m thinking Jamil might be all “innocent”, at least overtly (and as much as he can hold himself back - he’s used to mingling with the high and mighty and keeping face, but this is more personal) - tho there might be some underhanded barbs with plausible deniability, or just all the casual things about how you’re Jamils and how you’ve been together for however long and how Jamil just met your parents etc. Basically just reminding the ex of what he can’t have.

Tho once Jamil distances himself (and you), from the guy, I could see Jamil going to somewhere more secluded (with or without you, depending on how you agreed in advance). And if and when the ex follows, he gets a very different side of Jamil. Sharp tongue, no holds barred, told in no uncertain terms how pathetic and despicable he is, and to keep away from you, your family, and anyone else who has any connection to you. But especially you.

The only problem I have is thinking of just what he’d do to seal the deal. I mean, probably Jamil would make the guy do something bad / unpleasant with snake whisper. Like, make the dude do something humiliating, film it and leave it on his phone for him to find later? Make him go out into the crowds to make a fool out of himself? (Perhaps in a location with his friends / family / whatever around?) Get him to send some very terrible messages to some folks?

I think I’m a bit too nice to think of just how far Jamil could go, and snake whisper does have its limitations, too. Like to really ruin someone, you need to do something more impactful than just one unfortunate action.

(I mean I suppose maybe he could make the dude kill someone and go to prison for that but yeah let’s not.) Robbery, tho? I’m sure there’s some sort of a crime we can squeeze out of the guy that would not be too bad for bystanders (not that Jamil would be that bothered, tbh) but would still be enough of a consequence, and which could still be achieved with snake whisper.

That, or just make the guy walk into a cesspit or something, especially if it’s right before something important.

I’m kinda just spitting this out (and brain’s a bit fried) but also this was such a juicy concept I had to jump on it.

Honestly I feel like there’d be so much more to be said just for the PDA part and the possessiveness and protectiveness Jamil would feel and everything else, and maybe I’ll get back to that another time.

Did you have any particular thoughts of how you think it might go?

[icee133]

Hello! This is part 2 of the series I'm writing! Hope you guys like this part as well. Don't hesitate the leave any comments of any writing errors or issues :) thank you 🤍

(yes dazzle is alive I refuse to separate them. Bite me)

⚠️Warnings: ⚠️ slight mention of death in this part

If you would like to be added to taglist let me know!

The Marionette

Part One, Part Two🤍

Word count for this part: 1590 Enjoy! 👻👻

Synapsis:

A new overlord has manifested in hell seemingly overnight. One that overpowered many if not all of the current overlords in all the right ways. Will this overlord use her powers for good to help the members of the hotel? Will she fall in love with a man and end up in a loving gentle relationship? Or will she get her heart broken and turn against them all, burning each bridge she meticulously made. 

The Marionette is a heart wrenching fic with many turns you won't see coming. Stay tuned for each of the episodes as they are released.

¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯

After the battle had ended all 3 boys slowly approached their “mama” -(as they liked to call her. Now others thought it was weird they called her this as she wasn’t the one who had given birth to them. Not in life or even this afterlife. No, she was the one who had saved them during the last extermination and made deals with them. The agreement being she would protect their lives as if it were her own in exchange for their souls)- As Kai and Alex got closer to her they saw her standing over the body of the attacking overlord, his head thoroughly separated from his body. “Where did the 2 of you run off to in the middle of a battle?” She turned to them questioningly. “There was a group of onlookers from that big building over there standing around, we talked to them for a bit because one of his minions- he gestured to the dead overlord- went towards them” Kai explained solemnly. “They wanted to meet you as well if you were up for it” Alex added onto what his brother had said. “They would like to meet me… for what reason exactly Alex?” The marionette asked her oldest son. “Partially just because but also due to the hole fucker right there blew in the side of their building. They aren’t happy about it by the way” “well I suppose we should meet them after we get cleaned up. It would be best if we do not avoid it as I’m sure you are aware that the building is owned by the princess of hell herself.” She stated seemingly annoyed by the fact she has to clean up the mess the overlord had created. She then untied a string from around her wrist throwing it up, it opened a blue swirling portal leading into their apartment. She walked through the portal first with her boys following behind her. “Told you she’d be mad” Tsu said to the other 2. “Yeah yeah shut up bro” Kai responded. Nette reached through the portal grabbing the boys and pulling them through the portal into their living room. The 4 of them lived rather well despite being relatively new to the area and to being an overlord.

They lived in a spacious 3 bedroom apartment, with 3 bathrooms and quite a bit of space. They tended to hide in plain sight during regular days. Wearing boring clothes and slightly changing their appearances. It was their own way of avoiding the cameras of the stupid tv overlord and the radios of the radio demon. The 4 of them began to get cleaned up with nette going into her room to shower and the 3 boys going into their respective rooms to do so as well. 

As Nette got into the shower she began wondering what was going to happen with the princess of hell. After all there was the whole fiasco that took place during the last extermination with the tiny maid girl killing the first man and her father fighting him as well. It seemed that they had a good relationship, so nette was slightly worried about him being there as well. She stared at the shower wall wondering what she was going to do. after all, she's not one who likes to fight necessarily, but is willing to if it meant staying alive - well as alive as you can be down here- and keeping her kids safe. The issue lies in the devil himself. Meeting him would be something that she would have to do if she was going to go to this building to meet the princess. Repairing the damage done to the building would be easy after all the marionette pulls the strings of things around her. She could easily pull the pieces back together and make it as if the building was never damaged. That was the easy part but having to sit down and speak with royalty is the part that has her slightly worried. Her boys would surely not be used to this kind of thing. And it’s no secret that the king of hell looks down on sinners as though they are nothing but scum. Nette sighed as she turned off the water, she’d have to deal with things as they come and take things in stride. Hopefully nothing gets too out of hand.

After the shower Nette began to get dressed wearing one of her signature overlord outfits. Similar to the one she wore in battle- after all she was on an official outing when they were attacked- but slightly different. She wore black shorts and thigh high tights connected to them with a garter. With knee high black boots laced all the way up. Her top was decorated in beautiful shades of blue with wrist ruffles laid beautifully under a black corset vest. Her bow tie black with a sapphire in the middle of it. She hid away her ears as she did not let them out often or really at all (her boys were the only ones to see what her demon form looked like and live to tell the tale though they never would), but during a shower she liked to clean them up. Grabbing her hat she took one last look at her curly black hair and red eyes in the mirror before setting off the the living room to find her boys fully dressed in matching attire neatly groomed and tidy. Kai was struggling with his bow tie as he usually is one who just wears a normal tie, but wanted to wear a better one after hearing “princess of hell’s building”. Nette approached him and helped him tie his tie with ease. Adjusting his shirt to line up perfectly and smoothing out anything that was out of place. The 3 boys looked similar but different in their own ways. Each boy had hair the same shade of azure blue with their ears having black tips, and their tails adorning different patterns of black. Kai’s looked like a tiger tail, Alex's looked like a lion with a black puff of hair at the end, and Tsu’s looked like a jaguar. They had shining white spiky teeth and their left eye being a bright maya blue eye with a black pupil while the right is black with a blue pupil. They all adorned black suits with blue corsets in different shades that matched the shades of blue on Nette’s shirt. The group always matched as it was a part of their “thing” as they called it. None of them minded as it reminded anybody who attempted to mess with them that it wasn’t just one person you’d be fighting but 4. “Alright that looks good” Nette said after helping Kai. “We should probably be headed out, we’ll portal as it’s a lot faster than attempting to walk from all the way over here, plus allows us to be able to avoid those stupid cameras in town” They all agreed and began to head out.

At the hotel the members were preparing to welcome the overlord. After Charlie found out from the cat demon that the overlord was attacked and did not intentionally cause the damage to the building she was more relaxed about letting her visit. Then again she never got definitive word that she would even be coming, oh well a girl could hope that the cat demons would be true to their word and convince her to come to the hotel. Nifty and Angel were in the kitchen baking cookies, while husk was cleaning the bar with razzle and dazzle sitting on one of the bar stools. Cherry sat at the island in the kitchen talking with the 2 bakers about what had been going on for the past couple of weeks. Charlie and Vaggie were setting up the living room for the guest while waiting on Lucifer to finish up his meeting and make his way to the hotel. Alastor was nowhere to be seen for the moment, but the group figured if he was anywhere he’s probably in his radio tower. They’d call him down when the guest arrived. If he didn’t shadowy appear on his own that is.

After about an hour of waiting there was a knock on the door. Each member of the hotel walked into the main room setting down what they had made and sat on the couches to allow a more comfortable look as Charlie had said. Charlie went to the door to greet the guests, but opened the door to see her father standing there. “Charlie!” He exclaimed “sorry it took me so long to get here I had an unfortunate long day” he said looking at her. “It’s okay dad” she said while closing the door. She turned walking towards the couches and sat down. Then started speaking with him about the guest that they had invited to the hotel. Telling him about the damage that had been down to the side of the building and the fight that had taken place outside of the hotel earlier. He tentatively listened to each word before saying “so that is the damage I need to fix right ?” Charlie turned to him “yes though it wasn’t her fault that it had happened, so I’m not too upset about it as it doesn’t seem as though it is something that could’ve been avoided.” Right as she finished her sentence there was another slightly louder knock on the door.

Figured I should give you guys a template of the colors I'm using in this fic, so this picture demonstrates the different shades of blue I'll be using. So you guys can see (kinda) the exact color I mean in the fic.

[daisynik7]

Heart on a Sleeve

Pairing: Takashi Mitsuya x Original Female Character

Rating: Mature

Word Count: ~6.3k

cw: explicit language, switching POVs (2nd and 3rd person), established relationship, kissing, suggestive touching, sexual tension

Summary: You and Mitsuya make your budding relationship public and things only continue to grow from there. The Tokyo Manji gang successfully absorbs the Leviathans all thanks to the efforts of new captains Tetta Kisaki and Shuji Hanma. Despite Mikey’s praise for them during this month’s meeting, Mitsuya remains wary of the two. His suspicions only increase when he runs into them while on a date with you. 

Author's Note: This took me so long to write, but I did it and I am proud of it. I thoroughly enjoy writing about the honeymoon phases in a relationship, so this was a fun one for me. Thanks for the love and support on this so far and I hope you like where the story is going so far. Thank you for reading.

Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter

Sunday night, still reeling from the glorious high of breakfast with your new boyfriend Takashi Mitsuya, you call your best friends to break the news.

“You’re what?!” Keiko exclaims, her shriek loud through the phone. 

You lower the volume, not wanting to be overheard by your parents downstairs. “I’m dating Takashi Mitsuya,” you repeat. “From homeroom.”

Mei is quiet on the other end while you can practically hear the cogs spinning in overdrive in Keiko’s head. “Takashi Mitsuya, from homeroom?”

Losing patience, and also amused by her reaction, you confirm, “Yes.”

“Mitsuya, who’s in the Tokyo Manji Gang. That Mitsuya?”

“Yes, Keiko, that Mitsuya!”

“He’s in a gang. What is our sweet Hana doing dating a gangster?!”

Defensive now, you reply, “He’s been nothing but kind to me. You know as well as I do that he’s never caused problems for us at school. He’s only ever acted when he knew there was someone he needed to stick up for. I don’t care that he’s in a gang. He’s a good person and I like him.”

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Mei finally speaks. “You’re right, Hana. We know he’s a nice guy. We just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all we’re trying to say. Right, Keiko?”

She clears her throat before muttering, “Yeah.”

“Takashi would never hurt me. I feel safe with him.”

At that, they relent, setting their worries aside to discuss the details on how your budding relationship came to be. They had known since the beginning that you were taking sewing lessons from him, though they didn’t have a clue how you truly felt. It started as a tiny crush, a fantasy that you kept secret because you never considered it’d ever become real. Then, when Takashi admitted his feelings towards you, everything happened so fast. It’s only now that you are able to reveal everything to your friends, who are ultimately excited for you. 

The only obstacle left is your parents. You’re sure that they’ll be in for a shock once you tell them since this is your first boyfriend ever. Naturally, they’ll be protective, as any parent would be. You’re confident that once they get to know Takashi, they’ll see him just as you do. 

Monday morning, you do your usual routine of walking to school with your friends. Takashi offers to pick you up, but until you are ready to inform your parents about him, you figure it’d be best to avoid any cause for suspicion, especially since they are already wary of him to begin with. Instead, you part ways with Mei and Keiko to meet him in the parking lot before school, greeting him with a hug. He smiles, placing his hands at your waist to pull you in closer. “Hi.”

You nuzzle your nose to his, beaming. “Hi.”

He kisses you again, his tongue slipping past your lips this time, surprising you. Heat rushes into your cheeks, flustered and excited. You break apart, burying your face into his shoulder, catching your breath while he massages your back tenderly. “Are you okay?”

You nod, still hiding. “Just…getting used to all this.”

He tips your chin up to meet your gaze, smiling softly. “Me too. If I’m moving too fast, just tell me, okay? We’ll go at the pace you’re comfortable with.” He gives you a quick smooch before locking his fingers with yours. “Ready?”

As new and foreign as all this is for you, having Takashi makes it’s much easier to navigate. He leads you through the hallways of your school, unwavering, the grip on your hand confident, despite the prying eyes and hushed whispers from your passing peers. It’s odd being the center of attention for once, but like most high school relationships, the intrigue from others will eventually fade, and all that will matter is how the two of you feel about each other. And in this moment, you’re happy to be by his side.  

Peh-Yan, one of your classmates and Takashi’s close friend from Toman, approaches you with a respectful bow. “Hello, Shimizu.”

You smile, greeting him back by his surname. “Hello, Hayashi.”

Takashi smirks, giving him a light punch on the arm. “No need to be so formal, Peh-Yan.”

He stands up straight. “Right, sorry. Anyways, I have some intel on Kisaki and Hanma infiltrating the Leviathans. Thought I’d pass on the information to you in case you were interested.”

Your boyfriend rolls his eyes, facing you. “Toman stuff. I’ll see you later in class, okay? Let’s eat lunch together.” He gives you a peck on the cheek, letting you go. 

Part of you wants to stay, to listen in, but you know better than to intrude on topics that don’t pertain to you. You wave goodbye, heading to your classroom alone, your skin tingling with his warmth, already missing it.

~~~

Mitsuya never imagined himself to be a doting boyfriend, but he quickly finds himself adapting to that role almost too easily. In their only shared class, he spends too much time staring at the back of her head, admiring how cute she is. The few times she glances back at him to flash him a grin, his heart swells and he’s itching to hold her again as soon as class is dismissed. Usually, he’d eat lunch with Peh-Yan out in the courtyard or alone inside the home economics room while working on his latest sewing project. However, this entire week, he sits with his girlfriend and her friends. Mei and Keiko are nervous around him at first, unsure how to interact with a delinquent. But with Hana’s help and support, he gradually falls into place with them, finding topics to discuss that all of them can connect on. 

They aren’t able to spend much time together after school, not with the both of them being preoccupied with extracurriculars. So, Friday remains a special day for them. It’s their first sewing lesson since everything changed a week ago. Mitsuya is a bit nervous, wondering if he’ll be able to focus on the actual lesson when he gets so easily distracted by her presence. When she meets him inside the home economics room, cradling her helmet, a pleasant smile on her face, all his worries disappear. Even if he does get distracted, who cares? He’s happy to be spending this time with her, alone.

She drops the helmet onto the usual desk, stepping closer to him. “Hi Takashi.”

“Hi Hana,” he responds, closing the distance between them with a kiss. They’ve gotten more comfortable doing this, their lips brushing seamlessly, his hands always finding the plush curves of her body. He loves the way she feels under his touch, on his mouth, against his chest. All the spaces of him that felt empty before are now full, all thanks to her. 

Before they get carried away any further, he pulls off reluctantly, steadying himself before explaining what they’ll be doing today, eyes flitting back to her lips, now slightly swollen from their kisses. It’s happened several occasions so far this week. Their chaste kisses turning into more, both of them chasing their hunger little by little, teasing that fine line inch by inch. Mitsuya has managed to contain his excitement, though it’s getting more and more difficult, especially with her gradually testing the waters. A soft moan against his lips, her fingers toying with the elastic of his pants, her tongue pushing up against his, mouth open for him to explore and enjoy. He’ll continue to stand by, waiting until she’s ready to take the next steps forward. Despite how eager he is, nothing’s more important to him than making her feel safe. 

Their lesson today results in a heart patch sewn onto the sleeve of her jean jacket. She admires it silently as Mitsuya puts away the sewing machine and the rest of his materials into one of the cabinets. When he’s finished, he returns to her side, draping his arm over her shoulders, pressing a smooch to the side of her head. 

“The machine made this way easier than I thought it would be,” she comments.

“It usually does,” he says, running his finger over the stitching. “Before you know it, you’ll be an expert.”

“I doubt it. But that’s okay because I have you. If this patch here ever comes off, I’ll go straight to you.”

He raises a brow at her, teasing, “And who says I’ll help you?”

She tugs at his collar, peering up at him, smiling. “I guess I just assumed, now that we’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“You’re right. I’ll always be here to stitch your little heart back on.” He leans in, meeting her lips in a passionate kiss, surrounding her in his arms, the fluttering in his belly growing erratic. The door is closed and all the other students have already left for the day to enjoy the weekend. Mitsuya’s favorite spot is an empty classroom after school, and they happen to have this one all to themselves. As if on cue, his phone vibrates in his pocket, and before he checks it, he knows it’s his mother reminding him that she’s leaving for her shift soon. Disappointed, they break apart, gigging as if they were caught doing something naughty while they gather their belongings, heading towards his bike outside in the parking lot. On their way to his house, her grip is snug on his waist, holding him tightly. He’s reminded how good it feels to ride with her behind him, keeping her safe, keeping him safe. 

They behave themselves in front of his sisters, only exchanging subtle glances and grazes when they’re absolutely in the clear. He’s tempted to skip today’s Toman meeting, hoping to spend the rest of the night by her side, but given Peh-Yan’s news from earlier this week, it’s an important one to attend. Begrudgingly, he says his goodbyes, sneaking a kiss to Hana’s cheek before he leaves for the shrine. 

As usual, Draken is waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, leaning against his Zephyr. He smirks as soon as he sees him, giving him a congratulatory pat on the back. “My man. Did you finally get some tonight?”

Mitsuya rolls his eyes, shrugging him off. “I told you, we’re taking things slow. Besides, we were watching the brats. We couldn’t do it even if we wanted to.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t want to do it with her?” he teases.

“No, I definitely want to do it with her. I mean, make love to her,” he corrects himself, blushing. 

Draken snorts, not one to indulge in euphemisms. “So when do you think the two of you will start fucking then?”

He grimaces at his vulgarity before answering, “I don’t know. It hasn’t even been a week yet. We’re taking it one day at a time. It’ll happen when the time is right.”

Draken digs into his pocket to retrieve a lollipop, unwrapping it to stick into his mouth, sucking on it loudly. “Alright, it’s your dick. I’m just here to offer you some moral support, man-to-man. Dragon-to-dragon.”  

Mitsuya chuckles. “I appreciate it.”

They wait a few more minutes, chatting idly about other topics. Emma seems to be doing well so far in her pregnancy. Draken continues to cook whatever she’s craving at the time, from chicken katsu curry to spaghetti and meatballs. They don’t know the gender yet, though they don’t really seem to care; they’re both just ecstatic to be having this baby in the first place. Mikey remains oblivious to the fact that his sister is with child and that his right-hand-man is about to become a father. According to Draken, he continues to be a recluse, despite their efforts to reach out to him. It seems like forever now that Mitsuya has seen Mikey outside of these Toman meetings. He remembers vividly the tears it Takemitchy’s eyes over a month ago now, worried about their friend, their leader. He’s gone. And I don’t know where to find him. Maybe it’s time they finally made a real effort to bring him back. 

From the corner of his eye, Mitsuya spots Kisaki and Hanma, the newly appointed captains, leading a group of unfamiliar faces up the shrine steps. He assumes it’s members of the rival Leviathan gang. The two must have been successful in their mission to infiltrate and absorb them, which doesn’t change Mitsuya’s opinion about them. Peh-Yan warned him about this earlier in the week and anticipates Mikey’s reaction to this recent development. 

Takemitchy eventually arrives with Chifuyu, the two of them still the best of buddies. They greet the others cheerfully, waiting for Hakkai, who is always the last to arrive, fashionably late with a toothy grin on his face as they all berate him playfully, joking about how he was with yet another chick right before this. Draken, who always has a sixth sense about these things, deems it time to begin, leading his brothers up the shrine steps. Mitsuya always gets a swell in his chest when they’re together like this, nostalgic and proud to be in Toman. If only Mikey were here to join them like he used to.

In their usual formation, the men face Mikey, who’s front and center, Draken standing beside him. His eyes are noticeably heavy from either exhaustion or loss of sleep, maybe both. There’s an unsettling lack of emotion in his expression. He used to burn so bright with passion and intensity, something they all admired about him. It’s what got them to form Toman in the first place. Now, it’s as if the fire has dimmed to the tiniest ember, flickering just enough to barely survive. 

After going over standard housekeeping issues, Mikey moves on to the main topic of tonight’s meeting. “Kisaki, Hanma, come forward,” he announces, beckoning them towards the front. They step towards him, smug grins on both their faces. Mitsuya can’t help but roll his eyes, already annoyed.

“I’d like to recognize these two for successfully following through with their mission. The Leviathan gang is no more. We welcome its past members into Toman as one of our own. Show them the respect they deserve.”

There are loud whispers amongst the crowd, everyone turning to look at the new brothers, who are intimidating in terms of numbers. There’s at least twenty of them, most of them built like brick houses. Mitsuya has always felt odd whenever previous rivals gangs join them. There’s always that initial distrust, considering they were just at each other’s throat prior. But he’s learned to accept it for what it is, trusting Mikey to make the right calls. 

“Anything you’d like to share with us?” Mikey opens the floor to the two captains. 

Kisaki, of course, takes the opportunity to speak, his voice as slimy as ever. “Toman welcomes the Leviathans with open arms. All these men will surely make a great addition to our crew. Not only are they abundant in muscle, they are clever and cunning. Exactly what Toman needs to continue its reign over Tokyo.”

Hanma adds, “It was a real bitch to convince them to join us, but it was all worth it. You’ll see soon enough,” he smirks, licking his lips. 

“I’m sure we will,” Mikey says with a small smile, the slightest spark in his eyes. “As far as I know, you two are the only captains that have stepped up recently. I have nothing but the highest respect for you.”

More grumbling from the crowd, especially from the remaining captains. Draken’s brows are tight, clearly offended by the subtle diss. Chifuyu scoffs quietly, nudging Takemitchy, who looks like he’s near tears. Have their personal lives gotten too much in the way of their duties to Toman? Have they all let Mikey down?

When the meeting ends, they break formation to gather into their smaller circles. Chifuyu is still peeved, complaining to them. “Respect? To those two bastards? Has Mikey lost it?”

“Hey, watch it,” Draken warns. “I’ll admit. I’ve been too busy with the baby.”

“And I’ve been busy preparing for university, I’ve totally neglected Toman!” Takemitchy admits. “I don’t blame Mikey for being annoyed with us.”

Chifuyu throws his arms up, frustrated. “What does he expect us to do? He hasn’t reached out to any of us, doesn’t even talk to us anymore. How are we supposed to do anything if he’s completely ghosting us?”

From his peripheral, Mitsuya notices Mikey walking away from whatever private discussion he’s having with the old Leviathan gang. Before he can go anywhere else, Takemitchy calls out for him, waving enthusiastically. “Mikey!”

Chifuyu shakes his head. “Takemitchy, you idiot,” he mutters.

They all turn to their leader, who stares at them, eyes cold, palms in his pockets. He doesn’t move for a couple of seconds, and Mitsuya thinks that he’ll ignore them completely, which wouldn’t be surprising. But then, he takes slow steps towards them, expression unreadable. When he’s there, none of them are sure what to say, until Takemitchy breaks that ice. “Let’s go to Danny’s tonight! Just like old times!” he suggests, desperate.

Late night dinner at Danny’s was routine for them back when they were young, dumb, and broke. The food was mediocre at best, but the memories they shared there is what kept them coming back. Pancake eating contests, where Mikey would always come out victorious. Flirting with their favorite waitresses to get extra French fries. Loading up on the free refills of soda to compete in burping competitions. It’s more nostalgic than anything. Gradually, as they got older and busier with life, Danny’s become less frequent. Maybe this is what they need to get back into the normal swing of things. 

Mikey doesn’t say much, except for giving them a small nod and muttering a quiet, “Sure,” his hands still buried in his pockets. At least it’s something. 

~~~

It’s past midnight by the time Mitsuya arrives back home. You’re half-asleep on the couch with the TV on in the background. The girls are snoring in their room, tired after playing with you all night. He rouses you awake, caressing your cheek sweetly as he kneels on the floor beside you. “Hey cutie, I’m back.”

The pet name catches you off guard. You beam at him, tugging him by the neck to meeting his lips with yours. He smiles into this kiss. “You like that, huh?”

Nodding, you answer, “Yeah, I do.”

He deepens the kiss, running his fingers through your hair, tongue flicking against yours. Soon, you’re both breathing heavily, lips smacking loudly. Before it gets any further, you break away from him, giggling. “Takashi.” 

Pressing his forehead to yours, swallowing hard, he whispers, “Yeah, I know. I know.”

You grin, sitting up on the couch to make room for him, patting the space beside you. “How was the meeting?”

He sits down, holding your hand, resting his head on your shoulder. “It was good. We went out for a bite after and it was really fun. Mikey joined us and it was just like old times.”

“Mikey?” you ask. You’ve heard that name before, but you barely know anything about Toman, simply because you’re too nervous to ask, embarrassed to be so nosy. 

“He’s Toman’s leader. He’s the reason Toman is what it is. He started it all. Recently, it seems like he’s been distant from us. But tonight, I think we finally got him back.”

You squeeze him tight. “I’m happy to hear that.”

He doesn’t explain any further, enjoying the comfortable silence between you. Eventually, he says, “We should go out on a real date tomorrow. My mom doesn’t work until night, so we can spend the day together. What do you think?”

“I’d love that.”

He sits up, grinning at you. “Want to just stay the night?”

You laugh. “I don’t think my parents would like that, considering they have no idea we’re officially dating yet.”

“Then maybe we should tell them soon, over dinner. I really want them to like me.”

“I’m sure they already like you!” you answer, half-heartedly. In all honestly, you have no idea how they feel about him, except for that short conversation you had previously over dinner. You wonder how they will react when you tell them he’s your boyfriend, that you even have a boyfriend. You’d be lying to yourself if you say you aren’t anxious about it. “Let me talk to them first and we can arrange something, okay?”

He smiles brightly, pinching your cheek. “Don’t be nervous! I’ll work my charm on them, you’ll see.”

Mitsuya drives you home after a few more snuggles on the couch. Your parents are asleep by the time you walk through the door, quietly slipping out of your shoes and sneaking up the stairs into your bedroom. You don’t fall asleep right away, staring blankly at the ceiling, excited for tomorrow’s date with your boyfriend. He plans to pick you up at eleven in the morning but doesn’t elaborate on any more details. You wonder what he has in store for the two of you. 

The next morning, you eat breakfast before getting ready for the day ahead of you. You make the brave decision to inform your parents about where you’ll be off to today. Clearing your throat, you brace yourself, confessing, “I’m going on a date today. With Takashi Mitsuya.”

It’s the most jarring silence for the next ten seconds. Your mother gawks at you, dropping her fork onto her plate with a harsh clink. Your father’s face is twisted in an expression akin to him witnessing some sort of apparition or horrible monster. Given their reactions, you almost regret being so honest with them, though a small weight has been lifted off your shoulders.

Your mom is the first to speak, tone unnaturally high-pitched when she responds, “Oh! Is this a study date perhaps? Are you preparing for an upcoming exam?”

You shake your head. “No. We’re just hanging out.”

“Hanging out,” she repeats, slightly breathless now. “You’re hanging out with a boy?”

“Yes,” you answer plainly, maintaining your patience as the cogs in her head start spinning faster, finally understanding. 

“Oh. Okay,” you mother says, at a loss for words. Your dad remains speechless, clearly flabbergasted by the mere idea of you spending time with someone other than them or Keiko and Mei.

Before they can begin a full-fledged interrogation, you quickly scarf down the rest of your breakfast on the plate, standing up and announcing, “I’m going to change now, bye!”, sprinting up the stairs without any further explanation. For now, it seems you’ve dodged a bullet.

For today’s date, you decide to wear a floral sundress that ends just above your knees, something you’re comfortable and confident in. You keep your hair the same, unsure what else to do with it. You stare at your reflection in the mirror a while longer than usual, nervous though you know you shouldn’t be. Takashi has been nothing but kind to you, so you have no reason to believe he’d care so much about your appearance. Still, you want to make a good impression on him, especially since this is your first official date. 

When he texts you that he’s waiting outside, you give yourself one last glance in the mirror, rushing out of your room to slip into your nicest pair of sandals by the doorway. Your mother and father both appear beside you, watching. “Be careful,” your mother comments, crossing her arms over her chest. Your father hums, still incapable of forming words as a response. 

Turning the knob to leave, you smile at them. “I will.” 

To your surprise, Takashi stands on the other side of the door, flashing that signature grin, waving politely. “Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Shimizu.” He has a backpack slung over his shoulders and you notice that his Impulse is nowhere to be seen, so you assume he walked here. 

Your mother returns his smile as best as she can, though she’s obviously still wary about the whole situation. “Hello, Mitsuya. What are your plans today with our daughter?”

Your cheeks get hot, embarrassed by her nosiness, but Takashi takes it in stride. “We’re going to have a picnic at the park. I made sandwiches for our lunch. Then, we’re taking the train to Shibuya to play at the arcade. I’ll have Hana home before dinnertime, since I’ll be babysitting my sisters tonight.” 

Impressed by his answer, you study your mom’s reaction, mentally breathing a sigh of relief when her smiles grows wider, seemingly pleased. “That sounds like a fun time.” She nudges your dad. “Doesn’t that sound like a fun time, sweetheart?”

Your father’s eyes narrow, glaring at your poor boyfriend. “I suppose,” he mutters.

Takashi doesn’t waver, maintaining that easy-going expression while he bows to them. “Thank you for allowing me the honor of spending time with your daughter.”

The two of you manage to leave for your date unscathed. From the doorway, your parents watch you and Takashi walk towards the park, keeping your distance from each other until you’re out of their sight. With the coast clear, Takashi laces his fingers with yours, laughing. “Well, that was scary.”

“You were scared? You were completely cool in front of them,” you reply, surprised by his comment.

“I’m glad it came off that way because I was this close to shitting myself, especially when your dad starting staring daggers at me,” he chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. 

“I’m so sorry about that! He’s been acting weird all morning since I told him I’m going on a date with you.”

“You told them that?” 

“Well, I didn’t want to lie to them,” you explain. “I think they were just shocked at first. I’ve never been out with a boy before, so naturally, they are concerned.”

He nods. “I get that. It’s nice to have parents that are always worried about you,” he muses, a glint of sadness in his eyes. “I love my mom, don’t get me wrong. But she’s always working, so she relies on me a lot to be the man of the house. Nobody ever really worries about me, y’know?”

Your chest swells with emotion, empathizing with him. It can’t be easy being forced to grow up too fast. You squeeze him affectionately. “Well, you have me now. I’ll be here to worry about you and take care of you whenever you need it.”

He pauses in his tracks, staring at you. “You mean it?”

You smile reassuringly at him. “Of course I mean it.”

He gazes at you, pulling you in close to kiss you on the lips. You melt into him, letting his tongue slip inside your mouth, deep and passionate, full of unspoken gratitude for your commitment to him. “Thank you, Hana. I – ” he pauses, swallowing whatever he’s about to admit, instead repeating, “Thank you.” You pretend not to notice it, forcing your mind to forget about it completely. 

A few minutes later, you arrive at the park, finding a good spot to settle in. It’s a beautiful day, perfect for a picnic like this. Bright sun, blue skies, and the ideal breeze. People are gathered all around you, walking along the pathway, jumping on the playground, throwing a ball in a game of fetch with their dogs. Takashi swings his bag towards his front, retrieving a big throw blanket that you lay out on the grass. He unloads his pack, displaying the sandwiches and variety of snacks he prepared, including some of your favorites. You’re dazzled by how charming this all is, how charming he is. Every day you’re together, you grow more and more fond of him. 

The two of you dig in and everything is, of course, delicious. What makes it more special is the company. It’s easy being with Takashi. Conversation flows naturally and you never have to think about occupying any spaces of awkward silence. Even when it is, it’s comfortable, the two of you basking in each other’s presence, marveling at the sights and sounds surrounding you. Children’s laughter ringing from the nearby swings, dogs barking, the gentle wind blowing through the trees. When a leaf falls in your hair, Takashi picks it off, lingering a bit longer to twirl your soft strands between his fingers. After you’ve digested enough, you both lie down, staring up at the sky, pointing out clouds shaped like cotton balls, marshmallows, and bunnies. His hand never leaves yours, always interlaced, his fingers filling in the spaces between yours seamlessly. Time both stops and passes too quickly whenever you’re with him. You’re lost in the moment, savoring each second and before you know it, it’s already time to move on to the next. “We should head to the arcade now,” he suggests, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear, cupping your cheek. 

You nuzzle into his palm, relishing his gentle touch. He gives you a smooch on the forehead. “I could lay here for hours with you. But I want to impress you with all my skills at the arcade so that you think I’m cool,” he teases.

You giggle, sitting up to help him pack. “I already think you’re cool; you don’t have to prove anything to me.”

With everything put away, the two of you take the train towards one of the more popular arcades in Shibuya. It’s teeming with kids and teenagers, typical for a Saturday. You spot several of your classmates here, who greet you with a polite wave. At one of the cashiers, Mitsuya redeems two play cards to last you enough games for the next hour. 

As expected, he suggests starting with a racing game, one where you’re propped on top of a fake motorcycle, riding through the streets of Tokyo. Seems all too fitting for him. What he doesn’t expect is for you to win, whizzing past him at the very last second before crossing the finish line. He’s thoroughly impressed, rewarding you with a proud kiss on the cheek. 

You go through a variety of games, from classics like skee-ball and basketball, to new ones you haven’t tried before, like a zombie invasion simulation that had you screaming at the top of your lungs to your boyfriend’s delight. Eventually, you make your way to the claw machines, where Mitsuya manages to win a Hello Kitty plushie after five tries and you somehow score a squishy shark in only one. You exchange your prizes with each other, both of you cherishing them as your first gifts as a couple.

Time flies as it always does with him. Eventually, you run out of tokens to continue playing, only left now with points to redeem for prizes. On the way to the prize room, you notice Mitsuya staring off into the distance. You find out who he’s looking at; there are a group of boys in the signature Toman jackets gathered on one side of the arcade where the shooting games are located. Most of them are burly and it’s hard for you to believe that they’re your age, maybe even younger. There’s a shorter boy amongst them, blonde hair and glasses that gleam against the bright lights of the arcade. You’ve never seen him before, though something about him gives you an unexplainable chill.

“Are those your friends? Do you want to say hi to them?” you suggest.

Takashi snaps out of it, surprised that you caught him. “No, that’s okay. It’s our day today, remember? No need to drag you into any Toman business.”

You’re tempted to argue with him, not at all minding being introduced to this part of his life. However, he seems determined not to do that in this moment, so you let it be. 

You take your time perusing, making note of what you can afford with the total number of points the two of you managed to accumulate throughout the day. It’s clear that he’s distracted now, not nearly as chatty as he was earlier, the most subtle glint of worry on his face. Halfway through, he announces, “I’m going to use the bathroom. Just stay right here, okay? I’ll be back.” He walks out briskly, leaving you alone. You sigh to yourself, already lonely without him. You dawdle even more as you admire the big prizes on display, contemplating saving your points to redeem one of them someday in the future. 

“Got enough for that?”

The unfamiliar voice startles you. You turn to whoever is speaking, surprised to find a tall, lanky boy standing beside you, grinning. His hair is black, though he’s got a blonde stripe down the middle. A long, golden earring dangles on his left lobe. He’s wearing the recognizable Toman jacket. 

You swallow, suddenly nervous under his gaze. “What?”

“I asked if you have enough points for that.” He points at the giant Pikachu plushie you were just admiring. “Because if you don’t, I can definitely lend you some.”

“That’s very nice of you, but I don’t think my boyfriend would appreciate me accepting things from strangers.”

His smile grows bigger, showing his teeth, amused by your response. He holds his hand out. “Shuji Hanma.”

Hesitant, you end up taking it, introducing yourself. “Hana Shimizu.”

At that, his eyes widen and his grip on you becomes tighter. “I guess we’re not strangers anymore.”

~~~

He should have ignored them completely, Mitsuya knows that. He also definitely shouldn’t have left Hana alone. But seeing Kisaki all buddy-buddy with the old Leviathan gang members gives him an uneasiness that he can’t shake. So, he pretends to need the bathroom to excuse himself, just for a few moments to get some intel on what they might be up to. It’s for the good of Toman, that’s his justification for it. 

Luckily he’s in casual clothes today and not in his Toman jacket, so he blends in with the crowd easily as he maneuvers through the arcade towards Kisaki. Eventually, he finds a spot behind one of the arcade games that gives him coverage to remain hidden while within earshot of the group. 

They watch as one of the bigger guys shoots his toy gun towards the screen, an intense look on his face, the other boys surrounding him cheering him on in the process. Kisaki’s expression remains neutral, as always. They remain like this for a while longer, and Mitsuya starts to believe his efforts are useless. About ready to return to his girlfriend, he pauses when he hears something that piques his interest. 

“I bet Kisaki can’t wait to pull the trigger on Mikey, am I right?” One of the Leviathans nudges him playfully, pointing at the gun. 

Kisaki shoves him away aggressively, glaring at him. “Shut up. Don’t say such stupid things out in public.”

“Hey, there’s no one here but us, man! Chill!”

He grabs him by the scruff, fingers clenched tightly to his collar. “Oh? Is that what you think, you fucking imbecile? For your information, Hanma is greeting a fellow Toman brother right now.”

Struggling to speak with Kisaki’s knuckles against his throat, he croaks, “Who?”

“Takashi Mitsuya.”

At his name, Mitsuya leaves his spot, sprinting back to the prize room in a panic. He’s an absolute idiot to think that they didn’t notice him earlier. An even bigger idiot for leaving Hana alone, vulnerable to Hanma. But he has no idea who she is, right? There’s no way he could know. He vividly recalls the meeting from a few weeks ago. I guess I’ll just have to find out who Shimizu is myself. The subtle threat from his sleazy mouth. What could that asshole possibly want with her? Mitsuya is too afraid to find out. 

On his way, he catches Hanma exiting the prize room with that signature smug smirk. “Little Taka, fancy meeting you here.”

Mitsuya glares at him. “Hanma.”

He points his thumb behind him, over his shoulder. “Finally got a chance to meet your precious Shimizu. I can see why you’ve been hiding her from us. She’s a really good girl.”

Mitsuya’s fists are unbearably tight at his sides, trembling with anger. He’s on the verge of swinging, wanting to see his ugly mug all scrunched up from his fist. However, he manages to control himself. Through gritted teeth, he growls, “Leave her alone.”

Hanma holds both hands up to him in false surrender. “Hey, I was just being polite. Saw you earlier, enjoying your cute date, thought I’d say hello. Oh, and Kisaki sends his warm regards.”

The urge to inflict violence upon the man in front of him is getting more and more difficult to suppress with each slimy word that comes out of his mouth. He’s incapable of formulating a coherent response, body shaking with rage. He always planned to keep Toman away from her as much as possible, thinking that’d be her safest option. Now, she’s become acquainted to it and in the worst way possible. 

Hanma forces a chuckle. “You better get back to sweet Hana, now. Wouldn’t want to keep her waiting any longer or someone else might just come along and take her.” He shoves past him, hitting his shoulder hard with his own.

Before he can walk away, Mitsuya grabs him by the collar, tugging him close, voice low and threatening. “Don’t fucking talk about her. Don’t fucking look at her. Don’t even fucking think about her. Got it?”

Hanma laughs maniacally, clearly enjoying this side of Little Taka. “If you mind your business, we’ll mind ours.”

Mitsuya releases him, watching him disappear into the crowd of people without exchanging anymore words. He’s attempts to collect himself, returning to Hana, who stands at one of the corners, still inspecting the prizes. When she sees him, she smiles, seemingly unfazed. “Everything okay?”

For a moment, Mitsuya believes that all of it was a bluff. He slides his hand around her waist, pulling her in close. “Yeah. You?”

She rests her head on his shoulder. “Yeah. I met one of your Toman brothers. Shuji Hanma. He seems…nice.” There it is. The falter in her voice. The hesitation. The lie. 

Deciding that now is not the time to discuss it, Mitsuya nods, not saying anything else. 

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

The Magnus Archives/ What We Do In the Shadows (Crossover)

gaslight gatekeep girlboss by thepolysyndetonaddictsupportgroup

"Look, believe it or not, I had no intention of killing the Vampiric Council when I came here,” declares Nadja, sitting alone on the couch. “But Guillermo and I arrived at the first council meeting and did the whole, you know, the whole thing, the first day thing. Introductions and all that, yes hello wonderful to meet you, yes this is my bodyguard, yes he has slaughtered a tremendous number of our kind”--she flaps her hand absently--“normal first day things, you know? It was fine.” She pauses. “It got really fucking weird on the second day."

Or: Nadja and Guillermo seize control of vampiric politics, puppeteer world powers, and have the hottest of hot girl summers.

Unfortunately, they also really miss the stupid assholes they're in love with. With no way left to find them, they have no choice but to consult an Archivist.

DC/Danny Phantom Crossover

Teenage Hero Burnout #56: Interview With A Ghost. by STOVE

Red Robin, (aka Tim Drake) decides to host a YouTube series called "Teenage Hero Burnout'' after he makes a video by the same name talking about his own experiences. He interviews current and past heroes who started their careers as teens and discuss how it shaped their outlook on heroing & life in general.

(This fic is a one-shot. Teenage Hero Burnout is a hypothetical series that I will not be writing, but others are welcome to write their own episodes.)

All For the Game

One More Time (With Feeling) by elesary

Andrew Minyard went to sleep next to Neil Josten in their bed in Denver six years after graduation. He woke up on plane to Tucson between Wymack and Kevin, on their way to recruit Neil Josten, striker sub.

boyfriend privileges by mostly_maudlin

Andrew knows he treats Neil different. So why is it so bothersome that everyone else seems to know it, too?

Five times Neil gets boyfriend privileges, and one time it doesn't piss Andrew off.

SVSSS

The Peace Between Divine Pec- ah-hm sorry - uh…Peaks by AceOfDivineChlorophyll

Well, being kidnapped and tied up had to be the worst part of Shen Qingqiu's day right? Surely it couldn't get worse even if he was being presented to some new and upcoming demonic warlord as tribute after all it would all be mote when Luo Binghe escaped the Endless Abyss right? Well... unless the demonic warlord in question WAS Luo Binghe.

Thankfully... it might not end up going at all how he, or the demons, thought it was going to.

invasive blindfold removal surgery by postcardorigami

Part 1 of side effects may include indefinite photosensitivity

Oh, he thought absently, dizzily. Oh. I love him. I really, really love him.

That wasn’t a new thought—Shen Qingqiu had always known that he loved Luo Binghe. Thinking otherwise wasn’t a concept that had occurred to him. He’d loved him as a fictional character, as a sticky and eager-to-please disciple, as a troubled young man. He loved Luo Binghe the same way he loved the world around him: easily, wordlessly, endlessly, and in full acceptance of all faults and flaws.

But this- this felt like-

I think, Shen Qingqiu thought, for the first time in this life or the one he’d left, I think I’m in love with him.

And- and then-

I want to tell him where I come from.

or Shen Qingqiu, in order: hits the ground, pulls himself back up, and comes out. About several things.

Dreaming of Gardens in the Desert Sand by TGP

Huan Hua Palace master Luo Binghe never thought there'd be any reason to worry about the master that threw him away all those years ago. Surely, he was safe and cared for by the martial siblings he'd so thoroughly enamored.

Luo Binghe was wrong.

(Or, the one where the Jinlan City event doesn't happen and Luo Binghe's plan to slowly show he can be a righteous cultivator actually goes as he expected, with consequences he did not)

starry-eyed by shoutowo

"Shi-Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, going cross-eyed in an effort to see what Shen Qingqiu just placed on his forehead. “What is this?”

“A star,” Shen Qingqiu explains, while not explaining at all.

or, Shen Qingqiu has a sticker sheet.

Clone Wars

(you were) meant to save them by cjwritesfanficnow

The building was only five stories. With the gravity on Melida/Daan, it should’ve been over in seconds... but he—

just—

kept—

falling—

And then there was nothing around him, but he was still falling, down down down, infinitely, through space, stretched thin, twisted and pulled and the Force curled so tightly around him that he couldn’t tell where he ended and it began, and then—

And then he was falling straight out of a clear sky and down down down—

Onto another battlefield.

-

In which Obi-Wan is abruptly transported from the civil war on Melida/Daan to the Clone Wars.

(Alternately, in which I noticed how few clones there are in all my other fics, and this wouldn't leave me alone.)

Tactical Engagements by elwenyere

Even before he managed to open his eyes, Obi-Wan felt the tug against the base of his neck, the snarled thread of energy that only ever meant one thing: something had gone very, very wrong.

-----

Or, Cody, Obi-Wan, and the 212th are sent to Ringo Vinda with Anakin and the 501st, and it changes the field of engagement.