#even try and edge the bad kids out of the picture earlier

[voxmilia]

You know what's kind of impressive, retroactively

Sophomore year, Fig paid Riz to tail Porter and admittedly, sure, he was in the car with Sklonda driving him around but like. Porter either never clocked it or never did anything about it, while also giving Riz absolutely no insight that he's been juicing up for godhood. Riz literally only does it as a favor for Fig and gets nothing of interest out of it.

And Brennan KNEW Porter was up to some shit because the clip of Ragh talking about Porter doing Lay On Hands is like, what, 5 episodes later?

So like, in-universe, a little impressive for this wannabe new god of war and rage to bid his time when he knows incredibly capable people find him suspicious

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 3,881 Pairing: Negan x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: Alexandria, after the war, Negan is imprisoned Warnings: language (duh), allusions to past violence and flashbacks Summary: Y/N decides Negan has earned just a little bit more freedom. A/N: This is part 2 of a miniseries... lol or maybe not so mini? I'm not sure yet! Slow burn takes time to do well... anyway, first part is linked below! HAPPY WICKED WEDNESDAY! Bad Medicine - Part 1

You came in late that evening. Negan looked up from his book. Something he thought was maybe relief washed over him to see you again, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe he just didn’t want another tense exchange with Daryl… Maybe he was just glad not to be alone.

You slid his tray through the slot and watched curiously as he carefully tucked a torn scrap of paper into the pages of his book to mark his place. “What’re you reading?” you asked.

“Some book Gabriel left me,” he said. “I think I’ve read it five times.”

“What is it?” you asked again.

“Some nautical whaling adventure bullshit,” Negan said, bending to pick up his tray.

“Is it any good?” you asked.

“It was the first time. Maybe a bit the second. But not anymore,” he said with a dry laugh, sinking back down on his cot to settle into his dinner.

“I can bring you some other things to read. What do you like?” you offered.

His hazel eyes shot up to you, his expression unreadable for a moment. “Now, why would do that, doll?”

You ignored his use of the pet name and simply shrugged. “Because I’d hate to have to read the same thing over and over and over with no choice.”

“Isn’t that what me bein’ in here is all about? No choice?”

You paused reflectively. “Maybe at first, as a punishment for everything you did. But now—I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’m not gonna fuckin’ turn down some new reading material if you’re offerin’.” A mischievous glint grew in his eyes. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any naughty stuff layin’ around, do you?” he laughed.

You rolled your eyes. “Negan…”

“Honestly, homemade pictures would be even better if you have the means—”

“I’m leaving,” you growled, turning to go.

He laughed heartily and you were surprised that your steps faltered at the sound. “Come on! I’m only kidding! Ish…”

You turned back around and shot him a look.

“Here’s a question: what’s the deal with you and Daryl?” he asked, taking an exploratory bite out of his sandwich.

Your eyebrows lifted. “Seriously? That’s what you want to talk about?”

He shrugged. “Well, this whole Gabe-Siddiq-Rosita love triangle has me on the edge of my seat. Can you blame me for hoping to scrounge up another such juicy morsel? You know I love a bit of drama. It’s a real-life telenovela.”

You rolled your eyes but paced back toward his cell and took a seat in the wooden chair outside it. “Daryl is… I consider him my brother,” you said. “And I’d die for him. He’s family.”

“You sure he knows about this bein’ ‘brotherly’ love?” Negan laughed. “He gave me quite a talking to about you earlier…”

“Considering your past, can you blame him?”

“No,” Negan admitted. “No, I can’t… So, no hanky-panky there, huh?” Negan asked, leaning forward to study your face as if trying to confirm what you’d just told him, still smiling. “Too bad for him… Guy could probably use some, right? Help chill him the fuck out,” he laughed.

You shot him a disapproving stare and he tried to look apologetic with only some success. “Are you through?” you asked, your tone bored.

“Yeah, I guess so. Thanks for the meal,” he said. You climbed to your feet, nodding.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? We’ll do the same thing. There’s more to do over there.”

“You got it, boss,” Negan acknowledged. “Hey—Y/N—I know I can be an asshole, but I really meant what I said earlier. Thank you.”

You only nodded and gave him a tight smile.

And that was how you and Negan continued, for quite some time. It took you over a week to get the area completely cleared and the rescued medicinal plants transplanted. After that, you ended up having Negan build the new raised beds and help you install them. He could be surprisingly handy when he wasn’t busy cracking jokes and he seemed genuinely grateful for something to do to pass the time. It was surprising how easily the two of you got into an almost comfortable routine. You often were reminding yourself that all you were doing was building rapport so you could help Negan make progress, whatever that meant… It still seemed to be some vague, shapeless idea in your mind, but the thought of Carl and Rick and your loyalty and sense of duty to help Michonne kept you going.

Finally, with that project done, you decided it was time to start venturing outside the walls. Considering how well things had been going, Daryl couldn’t disagree with you anymore, though he did continually feel the need to remind you not to let your guard down. He also requested that you stay close to Alexandria when you ventured out, something you agreed to as sensible, at least to start.

Afterall, if Negan really was to someday assimilate back into this weird version of “society,” this step-by-step, gradual building of trust and rapport seemed like the way to do it.

_ _ _ _ _ _

You lightly tossed a canvas pack at him after swinging the cell door open and he caught it against his chest, giving you a curious look.

“Think you can handle going outside the walls today?” you asked him.

Negan looked surprised. “With careful supervision, I’m assuming?”

“Obviously,” you said.

He nodded, still looking a little stunned. “You trust me enough to take me outside the walls?”

“Enough,” you agreed, cocking one eyebrow.

Negan let out a low laugh. “Alright… What’s the plan then for today, warden?”

You rolled your eyes. He’d taken to calling you that since you’d given him a few stern looks in response to his usual pet names. “Foraging,” you said simply. “We running low on a few things.”

Negan stepped out of his cell with the bag slung over his shoulder, his canteen now stored inside alongside the smaller bags you’d tossed in for keeping gathered ingredients separated. “And I’m serving mostly as the pack mule?” he asked, watching you brush past him closely to swing his cell shut behind him. Was he imagining it or had your hand brushed his arm? Probably imagining it…

“Pack mule?” you repeated. You held up your own pack to show him. “No. I’m gonna collect mine into my bag, and you’re gonna store whatever you find in your own. I’ve been teaching you plants for a couple weeks now. I thought we’d see what you’ve learned,” you explained. “Unless, you’d rather stay here and—”

“No,” Negan interrupted you, almost a little too eagerly. He laughed a little nervously and the sound was deep and had a slightly gruff edge to it. “No,” he repeated, less eager. He ran a hand back through his hair and shrugged. “I’d rather not sit in my cell doing fuck-all, thanks.”

You smiled at him a little and he tried to ignore the way his heart jumped in his chest. Uh oh. What was that? Surely that was just because you were the only woman who’d smiled at him in maybe… six years?

“That’s what I thought,” you said. “Come on.”

Negan followed you through town toward the gate and you both tried your hardest to ignore the not-so-subtle stares. You should have been used to it by now, but whenever you stepped out with Negan beside you, you felt as if you were on display. The man may as well have been wearing a sign advertising his past crimes. There would never be any complete escape from his reputation and past. All you could hope for was a tiny seed of redemption… and some days even that seemed hard.

As you approached the gate, Negan cleared his throat and glanced over at you.

“Hmm?” you hummed, absently waving to Rosita who was on the guard platform.

“So, Daryl was okay with this?” Negan asked and you shot him a weird look.

“What does Daryl have to do with anything? What is your obsession with him?” you asked.

“Uhh—he fuckin’ hates me and threatened to kill me if I tried to hurt you or—do anything he perceives as being out of line,” Negan admitted. “You can see why that’s of slight concern to me,” he finished.

“Makes sense,” you said, not at all surprised. “But Daryl trusts my judgement, so when I told him I thought you were ready for slightly more freedom he was fine with it and so was Michonne. And if we aren’t back by dark, they’ll come looking. They know exactly where we’ll be,” you explained, stepping out past the gate with Negan just behind you. The metallic rattle continued until you heard the familiar slam and clunk of the latch, indicating you were firmly outside the walls. You looked over at Negan and he had a queer expression on his face, his eyes flitting over the scenery ahead. “It’s been a minute, hmm, since you’ve seen outside,” you commented.

He nodded, his hazel eyes finally landing back on you. “Yeah,” he said. He pulled in a deep breath, filling his lungs to the brim and then let it out slowly.

You thought he almost seemed emotional and you again marked the vulnerability you were seeing in him. This Negan seemed far different from the one who had brandished the baseball bat… “Come on,” you said, nodding your head toward the tree line.

Negan hesitated. “Hey, uhh… What if—” he stopped, breaking off abruptly and you gave him a curious look. “Just—I can’t exactly defend myself if shit goes sideways out here, can I? You’re certainly not gonna hand me a knife,” he laughed dryly.

You smiled vaguely. “I’ll protect you, Negan,” you said. For some reason, this made him laugh and your eyes shot over to him. “What? You don’t think I can?”

“No, it’s not that. Not at all. It’s just—bit of a role reversal from my Savior days, isn’t it?”

Your face grew sad, the smile fading, and the look in your eyes grew more distant. “You weren’t a savior, Negan. The only person you were really saving was yourself,” you said decisively.

“I kept a lot of people alive in the Sanctuary before your group showed up,” he retorted.

“Alive?” you repeated, rounding on him. “Alive in the same way we’ve been keeping you alive in that cell. Maybe alive, but not living. How often did you even think about what the lowest of the workers were going through? Scraping for points, wondering if they’d have enough to feed their kids, let alone themselves. I bet you didn’t think of them even once a day. You were too busy indulging in whatever the fuck you wanted.”

Negan’s brow dropped low over his hazel eyes and he looked reflective, as if truly considering the weight of your words. When you started walking again, he followed behind you in silence and you could feel a tension between the two of you for several long minutes. But by the time you started pointing out plants to him, it had diminished.

Negan was a fast learner and it wasn’t long before you both had a few of the small foraging bags full of herbs and mushrooms. You’d only had to correct him a couple times on his identification. (“Not those unless you want to go back to being in your cell all the time, Negan,” you’d said. You scraped your nail down the stem and it suddenly bruised bright yellow before your eyes. He’d flinched and dropped the poisonous mushroom, an easy to make mistake for a new learner. “Fuck me! No, I sure as shit do not,” he’d said, casting an apologetic look at you. You’d given him an encouraging smile and told him it was alright.)

He found himself laughing and shaking his head suddenly, tucking another small bag into the canvas pack.

“What?” you prompted him.

“Just—look at me? I’m out here following you around in the woods picking mushrooms and leaves like a fucking Disney princess. Life is wild,” he said. His hazel eyes were crinkled in a smile and you took in the sparking nature of the light in them and the genuine ease of him just existing in that moment. The salt and pepper in his beard was more noticeable now that he’d been keeping it neat and trimmed again and it wasn’t lost on you that the somewhat slumped posture of his shoulders seemed to have lessened lately.

You sighed and nodded your agreement. “It sure it,” you agreed. “If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be out here with you, I’d have taken it as a threat.” You turned back to the plant in front of you and plucked a few more leaves before glancing over at him again. You were surprised to see that his eyes were still on you. “Do you miss it?” you asked him suddenly. You were still down on one knee on the leaf litter and he was standing above you, his tall, lean frame stretching upwards. An involuntary flash of the line-up suddenly burst in your mind, hot and red, and you nearly fell over, all your breath leaving in a rush. You put a hand down to steady yourself and Negan watched your head drop and your eyes squeeze closed. Your other hand drifted to the handle of your gun, as if you were reassuring yourself it was still there.

“Hey—” Negan said, concern thick in his voice. “You okay, doll?”

You gathered yourself, gulping at the sudden tightness in your throat, and then stood up quickly, nodding. “Yeah. I’m fine. And don’t call me that… I think—I think we’re about done for today,” you said hurriedly, tucking the supplies back into your own pack.

He nodded, his brow still heavily furrowed. “Okay,” he said, his voice unsure. But he fell into step beside you again. The tension in the air had returned. Negan let it stretch for a minute before he broke the silence, genuinely feeling his concern like a tightness across his chest. “You aren’t gonna tell me what that was about back there?”

You didn’t turn to look at him, but you could feel his eyes on you. You focused straight ahead instead, and navigated stepping over some fallen wood while you answered. “No,” you said simply.

“Okay.” Negan forced himself to pull his eyes away from you, nodding, and fell silent again. Neither of you spoke on the short walk back to the gate nor all the way back to the cell. You finally looked up and met his eyes again as he handed you the pack he’d had slung over his shoulder, now full of foraged tidbits that would make life just a little bit better or a little bit more enjoyable for many residents.

Negan studied your expression, and he thought you looked sad. There was really no other word for it. His hands slipped into his pockets and he stepped back into his cell just far enough to allow you to close the door, not taking his eyes off you. The bolt locking him in echoed in the space.

“Thanks for your help today,” you said, meeting his eyes one more time.

His brow furrowed even more heavily over his eyes. “Sure,” he said, nodding. “Not sure you should be thankin’ me, though. Probably should go the other way around.”

You didn’t really acknowledge his response, just added his canvas bag to your shoulder and licked your lips nervously. “I’ll make sure you get lunch soon,” you said.

Negan watched you turn and leave, puzzled and frankly a little worried. His fingers curled around the cold iron bars of his cell as the outside door slammed behind you.

Once you were back in the sunshine, you made your way toward the pantry with the bags, with a detour to find Daryl at Aaron’s house. He was just where you expected he’d be, working in the garage.

He turned at the sound of your footsteps and straightened up hurriedly when he realized it was you and perhaps because he sensed something or read it on your face. “Hey,” he drawled, wiping his hands absently on the bandana from his back pocket. “How’d it go out there?” he asked eagerly.

You nodded thoughtfully, chewing on your bottom lip for a moment. “Good,” you said. “Pretty good…”

His eyes narrowed. “Ya sure?” he prodded you. “Somethin’ happen?” He was already bristling, ready to go punch Negan across the jaw if he needed to.

“Not exactly,” you said hesitantly, fiddling with the strap of your bag.

Daryl frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“I mean—he didn’t do anything. I just—I had a flashback,” you said, your eyes growing a bit distant. “To back then. At the line-up,” you murmured, ducking your head and blinking fast to clear away the tears in your eyes. “I was kneeling down, picking tea leaves off this plant and I looked up and he was sort of standing over me and it just—it triggered something,” you admitted.

Daryl looked deeply concerned, the line between his eyebrows deepening. “Was it somethin’ in yer gut? Did ya feel… unsafe?”

“No,” you said, almost urgently, looking up at him and catching his blue eyes again. There was a touch of faint disbelief in your own voice. “That’s the thing. I don’t feel unsafe around him now. It was just something about the angle. I looked up and he was standing there and—” You broke off and sighed again. “I don’t know…”

Daryl leaned forward on his hands on the workbench between you. “Well, it ain’t like all that past shit just goes away,” he said. “I couldn’t do what yer doin’,” Daryl admitted. You gave him a curious look and he nodded. “If I walked him out into the woods, he wouldn’t be comin’ back.”

You let out a dry laugh. “Yeah… Anyway, I just—I hate to ask you…” you hesitated again.

“Ask me,” he said. “It’s alrigh’.”

“Would you mind just getting lunch together and taking it to him? I think I just need a break for a little bit. Or I can ask Michonne,” you added.

“S’alrigh’. I’ve got it. Michonne is busy with the kids. Soon as I finish up in here, I’ll pull somethin’ together.”

You look relieved. “Thank you,” you sighed.

“S’nothin’,” he said. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment and you could tell he was on the edge of saying something. “Ya dun have to do this, ya know. If it’s too much—he can rot in that cell for everythin’ he did. Fuck him,” Daryl said pointedly, throwing in a small smirk as he said the last two words.

You had to laugh a little at that. “Yeah, I know. It’s okay. I don’t give up that easily. I’ll be good by the time he needs his evening meal. Thanks, Daryl.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

Negan looked up, hesitant, as he heard the outside door open. He was expecting to see Daryl coming in again. He couldn’t stop turning what had happened outside the walls in the morning over and over in his head. He scrutinized his own behavior and yours. He thought through all the conversations… but he’d come up empty as far as any reason as to why you’d abruptly ended the field trip or why Daryl had brought him lunch instead of you. He was annoyed by the tight pit in his stomach. His lunch sat untouched still, right where Daryl had pushed it through the slot into his cell.

But it wasn’t Daryl coming in with his dinner. It was you.

Negan had nearly jumped to his feet before he could stop himself. “Hey,” he said, the same novel dangling at his side. You stopped at the bars of his cell.

“Hi,” you greeted him. You looked down at the still full tray just inside the slot and then back up to meet his hazel eyes. “Not hungry today?” you asked, cocking one eyebrow at him.

He shrugged and took a few steps toward you. “Honestly? I was a little worried I wasn’t gonna see you again,” Negan admitted. His tone wasn’t jesting or sarcastic. “After this morning, you know… outside the walls.”

“Mmm,” you hummed, nodding. “I see.”

He laughed a little and shook his head. “There’s that therapist response again.”

“Well, do you want this? Or should I save it for tomorrow,” you asked him, looking down at his still full tray on the floor.

“You can save it. I’ll eat my lunch. Less work for you tomorrow,” he said.

You nodded and set the tray aside on the chair outside his cell for a moment. “I have something else for you,” you said, digging into the bag hanging from your shoulder. Negan watched curiously as you withdrew several books. “I raided the library. I tried to pick some things I thought you’d like but—I realized I have no idea what you’d actually like… So. I guessed,” you said.

You gave him an expectant look and he came to the cell door. You passed each book through the bars to him one by one. Negan was highly aware of your fingers being only inches from his. He could have brushed your hand with his if he’d wanted to.

“Thanks,” he said, new books in hand. “You didn’t have to do that.”

You nodded. “I know.” Your response drew another gruff laugh from him.

“I’ll go put this aside,” you said, collecting the tray again. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Negan.”

He hesitated just a moment, gulping at the lump in his throat. “You don’t need to tell me what happened out there… Of course you don’t. You don’t owe me anything. But right before, you were asking me if I missed it,” Negan said. You’d turned back to look at him again, curious. “Do I miss being the fucking King of the Castle?” He paused and his tongue swept out over his bottom lip. “Yeah. I do,” he admitted. “I miss the freedom. I miss people paying attention to me, listening when I fucking talk, getting me whatever the hell I want… But I don’t miss all the bullshit that came with it and what I had to do to maintain that power.”

There was a strange expression on your face and then you sighed. “I guess that’s something,” you said softly. “See you tomorrow, Negan.”

[pharawee]

Welcome to the second part of my Pit Babe novel commentary aka "hey this isn't so ba---wait where's Babe's sudden daddy kink even coming from??"

And I try (oh my god do I try). 🤡

I'm now at chapter 10, trying to pace myself because the (auto-translated) translation I'm reading is apparently a WIP. I'm on the edge of my seat. The plot is beginning to thicken.

Previously, Charlie was being sus and Babe was catching feelings, but most importantly there was a lot of pwp and very little racing.

Now there's more racing. Babe even brings Charlie (he still has to wear a mask and a hat) but gets too distracted by his presence (he's apparently addicting enough to kiss through the mask) and promptly forgets to check his car before the race (even though Charlie warns him against it but such is the power of scent - or lack of scent in this case. I don't even know anymore - neither does Babe but at some point Charlie states that's he's now in an alpha rut which I suppose means exactly what it says on the tin).

But, oh no! Babe runs into trouble during the race. He loses the lead and his car gets increasingly difficult to control until it crashes and bursts into flames. But it's okay, Babe jumps out of the driving car just in the nick of time (have you ever seen a supercar outfitted for racing? It's difficult enough to climb into one - funny how I'm apparently okay with omegaverse shenanigans but I draw the line at wonky motorsports physics 🤣).

Anyway, the track marshals are doing a really shit job because somehow they 1. let Charlie on the track to singlehandedly try and rescue Babe and 2. they also completely miss that Babe has literally jumped ship car and is lying on the track. He ends up with a broken wrist and a sprained knee (or was it the other way around? anyway, he's wearing several casts) which means he won't be able to finish the season and lose the title of King (all because he was too horny to check his car... but yeah also apparently it was sabotage  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So much for the racing part.

Babe needs weeks to heal so naturally he needs Charlie to pamper and feed him and dick him down several times a day but what else is new. No offence to the the dicking down part but ugh I hate this trope. Maybe it's just because I dislike the dynamics but I don't like the way Babe is taking on more and more cliché omega traits. If I have to read one more time about how much smaller he is (or about his "rounded" hips... are you ok google translate?)...

Oh, and btw. There are omegas in this! Charlie gets flirted at by one (which Babe absolutely hates) and he does have a scent and all. Later, when Charlie is busy being extremely sus again he meets up with a childhood friend, Jeff (Pon's character in the series is called Jeff - oh. oh no...), and if I'm not mistaken he's an omega as well. Jeff cautions Charlie against being with Babe and displeasing his father (which also seems to be Jeff's father? Dude sure has a lots of adoptive kids...) but Charlie argues that he knows what he's doing and he doesn't want to stop anyway.

Later on he tells the exact same thing to his (adoptive?) father, and why do I get the feeling that this might be the same father Babe mentioned earlier when he was telling a feverish Charlie a story to get him to sleep:

In his story, Babe mentions how when he was very small he used to go hungry every day because his mum was out of the picture and his father didn't even make enough money bring food to the table. One day the hunger was so bad that he passed out and woke up in the hospital where a stranger told him he'd be his new family. With little choice in the matter, Babe accepted and went on to spend the rest of his childhood well-cared for and in elite schools etc. That is, until he turned (presumably...) 18 and discovered that his father didn't adopt him out of the kindness of his heart but for ulterior motives that Babe doesn't explain any further because at that point Charlie has fallen asleep.

So yeah, what are the odds that Babe's "father" and Charlie's father are the same person (no spoilers, please)? Because if so then... that's disturbing, especially since Charlie's father seems to want Charlie to lure Babe back home. I mean, Charlie seems to have his own plans but it's not like his father throws him out after their secret meeting. Sus, very sus.

Meanwhile, Babe is slowly losing his heightened senses (the novel doesn't mention it yet but I'm pretty sure this is Charlie's doing) but he doesn't seem to mind because he's too busy falling in love. There's a lovely scene where Charlie and he spend the night stargazing, and this is when Babe realises that something's different because usually his heart only beats this fast when he thinks about racing (lmao).

Cue to them not having sex for a week because Babe feels like he's going crazy.

Meanwhile, it's been decided that Charlie will finish Babe's racing season for him because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I'm sure he'll win the title too because he's Charlie, alphaest of alphas. Or something.

So one night Babe officially introduces him to the rest of team X-Hunter (and curiously Sonic and North seem to be racers in the novel as well) but things go awry when Babe is too busy fooling around with Way (no you cannot be affectionate with a male friend in a BL novel it is forbidden!!). Charlie and Babe argue and proceed to ignore each other for the rest of the night until they make up (and out) during the official X-Hunter sleepover (with Way and another poor dude sleeping in the same room).

They're polite enough to seek out the indoor pool (this isn't even their house - have you no shame?) and talk it out. And by talk it out I mean there's an inappropriate amount of daddy-calling and Little Mermaid jokes. This is where Charlie claims Babe. Yes, there's knotting (I think? like I said, I'm not axactly an expert and auto-translate is a bit vague, bless its little AI heart). Charlie threatens (I'm sure it's all meant very lovingly 🤡) to impregnate Babe if there's no other way to show others that he's his. To which Babe replies that that's impossible anway.

It's impossible, right? Right??

[friendlylocalwhumper]

“Daddy is sick.”

Penelope’s jam-smeared face sets in a displeased frown, chubby arms crossing over her chest. “But, but - but, but, but! But we’re s’posed to - big park, go to the big park today, he said.”

Hands planted on the edge of the kitchen counter, Emory keeps himself anchored against pacing around the room. “I know, baby.” At her expression souring worse, he shakes his head at himself. “Sorry. Not a baby. I know, Penny. Listen…” A smooth crouch down to be on her level, and sullenly, the six year old approaches, tugging on her dress like she means to subtly indicate that she looks pretty today so her dads should do what she says.

As if he can sense something silently going wrong in the other room, Emory glances back at the closed bedroom door and worries at the thermometer in his pocket. “We both know how Daddy gets when he’s sick. You remember last time? The sadness fort?”

Penelope groans and tosses her head toward the living room, picturing the pillows and blankets that made a fort there, inside of which there was a Lux pretending not to cry every time someone came to check on him.

“Today, he’s feeling even worse. He’ll be okay, but when you’re too sick, sometimes it’s hard to believe that. And we know sometimes these…” He points to his arm where one of Lux’s more prominent knife scars lies. “Are on the inside, too. Right?”

~

It’s terrible. He’s been… he’s been terrible. So, so bad.

He’s been bad, and he’s not supposed to feel like he’s been bad. It’s embarrassing. Lux can’t pinpoint why, can’t figure out who he’s disappointing by being afraid… but it feels like a death sentence to not be scared out of his mind.

At some point, his shoulders must have stopped being shoulders. When do joints stop being joints, if they don’t move how they should anymore? If they creak, and swell, and need hours of stretching and soaking each morning just so he can get through the day? They haven’t felt like working shoulders ever since the first time they were broken.

He is not in the cellar. He knows, and he knows he should believe… this is a bed. He is confused, but not a kid anymore. Lux can feel the pillows under his back and a blanket under his legs. But that doesn’t mean he can’t feel the concrete floor, too. Feel warm metal around his wrists, his arms draped up at the angle they were kept at for years. Every time he returns to this place, in his memory or dreams or hallucinations… it feels right. Scary, painful, hope-crushing… but right. Like he belongs here. Lux can’t quite look around the cellar, because the persistent reality of his bedroom keeps on leaking through. But if he tips his head back until it is stopped by the headboard, blurry vision and the fever wracking his body work together to let him see the top of the staircase, a glow of distant light.

He is not in the cellar, he has a home and he is safe. It is not really cold in here, his skin is just too hot. He is not hungry, Emory spoon fed him chicken broth earlier.

But he remembers, and the physical ache of remembering feels more real than anything else, right now. Blinking bleary tears from his lashes until they slide heavily down his cheeks, Lux stares up at the ceiling and thinks of loneliness so deep that he never fully believes it ended. Hours, days and days alone in the dark, hearing things, trying to remember friends or family, anything at all… the spider that he watched, when it skittered in the faint light. How hard he cried when the spider found its way up the stairs and escaped under the door. His only friend, gone and gone and gone.

His feverish mind skitters around the peripheries of the tall, broad frame he doesn’t want to imagine directly. It might summon his attention, somehow. Might make him appear. Lux doesn’t have to think about the Hunter to ache. The worst of the pain, of the mind-breaking loneliness, happened when he wasn’t down there, anyway. When there was no new pain, no taunting or cooing, no punishments. Lux longed for the punishments, sometimes, because there was nothing else. No way to tell how much time was passing, when food would come, if he was the only person left alive in the world…

Jolted from the cellar that will always live on in his mind, Lux pictures a bland gray carpet with blue stripes. A couch with stiff pillows, glass side tables, a kind face that is never half-hidden by a clipboard anymore. His therapist, an older woman with squishy cheeks and wisps of gray around kind eyes.

She says that minds do funny things, even if they haven’t been twisted up on purpose. That sometimes people in prison lose their mind after a couple hours in isolation, and Lux was in it for months and months. Minds aren’t made for the dark and the quiet, she says. They come up with thoughts and memories to survive it, and if you’re stuck alone too long, they make up new things, unreal things, too.

So it’s not really that scary that Lux feels hands on his shoulders. Pressing in at aches, pulling. It just happens sometimes. His face twists with miserable discomfort, but what can he do? Whine for it to stop? Somewhere behind all of the terror and miserable defeat, he knows that Penny is out there. The need to protect her from seeing her father in an awful state keeps him from crying out. Under the shivering and silent crying, there is a cool determination to never let her know how afraid he is.

It’s fragile, her sense of safety. He thinks it is, at least. His therapist says that children are resilient and fearless, if you’ve kept them safe long enough, and that Penny won’t flip over to being a terrified, obedient child at the first hint of fear that she sees. But every time that it comes up, Lux locks himself down. He doesn’t mean to, he just… remembers, in his whole body, trying not to be noticed. Trying to be good, even though still breathing was a bad enough offense, sometimes. And he imagines Penny feeling that way, and then blood rushes in his ears, and his therapist has to call in Emory to help, because no one else can get through to Lux in panicking dad mode, not even someone with a doctorate in these things.

Terrible feverish thoughts have taken over. Lux watches in horror, tear-flooded eyes aimed up toward the ceiling, as Penny is tossed down the stairs. Tumbling across the steps, crashing into the concrete floor, scrambling to cower against a wall as a much bigger form descends into the darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Croaks Lux, fingers skittering nervously over the covers as he panics. “Please, please plea-, please I can’t - you can’t, y-you can’t you can’t… I-I-I can take it, I can take it I can, please…” Penny isn’t in full detail, more a small blob that he just knows is precious. And the Hunter is coming, coming down to loom over her. His shoulders hurt, he can’t move, been stuck for so long… Lux weeps, chest hitching with congested sobs, quiet and mortified.

A hand brushing across his forehead, sliding in sweat to unstick curls from his skin. Lux shudders and waits until the hand cups at his cheek, then leans into it on cue. He can, he will do anything, anything to keep his attention. While he is being good and leaning into the touch, the Hunter isn’t looming over Penny anymore. He isn’t anywhere, really - Lux can’t see him right now, and the cellar is unfocused again… but he feels the hand on his cheek.

And one on his chest, now. Lux chokes on a ragged breath in. If the touch to his chest is that gentle, and sweeping a thumb back and forth as if to soothe, then it’s probably going to drain his lungs of air. He will sink, will sag down, floppy and breathless, weak with fever. He will be praised, his hair will be petted, and it will go on for hours.

Fresh tears sink from his lashes and wet his face, smearing when the hand lifts from his cheek to wipe them away. Lux leans into it, eyes closed, following that hand like an oxygen mask. He should, he has to. He wants to, because if he doesn’t, he might be left alone.

He’s doing a good job, he thinks he hears. It comes in as more of a hum than words. Sobs wrack his body, and he is shushed, not unkindly. The hand on his chest rubs back and forth in slow swoops.

“I can be good. I, I, I can… please…” Desperation clogs his voice and makes the pleading almost impossible to decipher. “I want, I-I, I want…”

“What do you want?” Comes the answer, and his hair is brushed back some more, a tissue swiped under his nose. Lux sniffles and waits until the hand is back on his cheek as an anchor, a guide to indicate that it is time to be sweet.

“Want… wan’... wanna be good.” It’s the right thing to say. It always is. A shiver tears through him, and Lux’s brow furrows with the throbbing of his shoulders as the shudder awakens them. “Please, please… anything, I can… please don’ hurt… ple-, I, don’t hurt, an-nyone else…”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knows it instantly, a second before the hands are yanked away. Lux’s throat is stuffed with despair, a sob lurching out of him, mortified tears spilling quicker as soon as he’s done something wrong. It’s palpable in the air. Did he just secure a punishment for Penelope? Will her first lesson, her first time with the whip, be because he was begging wrong?

~

“Pen is safe. Pen is safe.” The bathroom door is pulled shut, and locked, and no one can get in to interrupt his self-soothing. Emory paces, back and forth across the tile floor, flexing his hands. “Pen is safe, it’s okay. It’s okay to leave my kid in a safe room for a minute. She’s a big girl. It’s okay, you don’t hold a baby when you’re mad, you… don’t talk to your kid when you might yell, you, aw fuck… okay, you don’t - don’t have hands on him when he’s trying to be good.” Emory pivots, suddenly, to yank the sink on and shove his hands under the cold water. “You don’t hold a baby when you’re mad. You put it down. You don’t… you pull over when you’re crying.” He isn’t crying, right now, and it’s infuriating. He has to whisper all of this because it would sound angry, to anyone else, but he isn’t angry, he’s scared. He’s scared.

“Pen is safe, Lux is safe.” His hands get a good, panicked scrub, and then his face. The cold is doing something, helping. “He’s survived, fuck… nightmares, flashbacks, fevers.” They had to skip shoulder rotations this morning, with the fever setting in, and now those shoulders have to feel like crushed up concrete grinding against gravel. The sheets are soaked with sweat out there, and he needs water, and to get his temperature taken again… “But you don’t hold a baby when you’re mad. You don’t drive when you’re crying. Don’t… just… it’s fine. It’s fine, he knows. He knows he’s safe. I’m not… I don’t…” The Emory in the mirror finally gets a glance, which turns into a glare.

“He needs help,” Emory scolds. “You know that? Like, real help. Somebody else could be okay, freaking out with a fever. But it’s real to him. In his head, what he’s seeing… it’s real to him. A fucking - a veteran, with flashbacks at fireworks, and stuff, he’d get help. This is Lux’s fireworks, this is… he sees it, he feels it, he’s… he’s back there.” Knees wobbling, Emory sinks down to sit on the floor with a huff. “Okay. Fuck, okay, guess we’re sitting.”

His therapist would say… what would he say? He’d say the oxygen mask thing. God, he hates the oxygen mask thing. Because like hell he wouldn’t put an oxygen mask on Penny first, then Lux, then himself, if they were in a crashing plane. How could he not make sure his little girl got saved first? How could he try to breathe before Lux, knowing what he’s been through?

Knuckles rubbing anxiously over the seams between the tiles, Emory sighs, frustrated. “I get it first.” He hates saying it. It doesn’t make sense, when he feels this worked up. “I get it first. So they get theirs. So stupid…” His palms press to his eyes, and Emory sighs. If he focuses, he can smell the air freshener that needs replacing in here. He should crack the window open sometime, to smell the summer air, too. “...He’s not a kid.” It’s annoying to have to explain to himself, but it’s all that works against the drive to rush back out there and scoop up his husband. “Thirty-four, paying taxes, PTA meetings… we’re not kids. He knows, he knows… he’ll know, he’s safe.”

[silvr-skreen]

I wanna hear about the reboot's season 1 finale, I'm actually quite interested

(MFN)

*big smile of insanity* ok!!! So this one is a 2-parter! Sorry for misspellings I am on my phone it’s 5am and I just woke up and I don’t have my glasses on.

Look out. HUGE POST INCOMING!!!

It talks about bigotry and is really kind of dark at points. Like the first half starts kind of funny but slowly loses the jokes, and part 2 only contains 2 jokes at all.

So some stuff that builds up before this includes “Ray has been getting less work” and “on of the human kid characters has a mechanic dad.”

The implication is that he’s been poaching Ray’s customers. Why is a not-so-nice person in the neighborhood? Well the reboot posits that the puppets are moving back in, and realized people aren’t so friendly so they’re trying to bring friendliness back!

So over the course of the first season it’s all pretty lighthearted and silly, with a few consistent moments where you can see the father being short with Ray. You can also slowly see as he manages to cause most of the puppets and other human actors to follow suit.

Now apparently Ray overcharges, talks funny, doesn’t know what he’s talking ABOUT. At first it wasn’t that bad, he still got work, but by the end of the season it’s obvious he hasn’t got any.

So he wasn’t able to keep the deed to his shop.

The human kid character who shall henceforth be known as Marcy has been getting apprenticeships from him (basically he’s been training and teaching her since he’s got nothing else to do and he enjoys it) and she’s distraught. That’s her friend and he’s leaving? It’s not fair!

She goes home to dinner with her dad and he mentions some land investment he made, and it comes out. He took Ray’s customers, made everyone more judgmental and harsh to him, and lo and behold, it’s out of bigotry.

The specific form of bigotry for this one is the kind shown against th Irish, as Ray is Scottish/Irish. The “he talks funny” is derogatory towards his accent and Ray knows it. He knew the whole time.

So she realizes what her dad did and why and she’s horrified and she tries to call it out but he yells at her for not seeing the bigger picture and she’s so distressed she runs out of their house and she ends up crying on the steps outside one of the neighborhood buildings. (The one with the mailbox you know the one.)

Part one ends.

Part twos got a darker tone and a bit more edge to it in an impactful way, so one of the main things in part two is we’re only ever shown the left side of Marcy’s face until way later on.

Another big thing that I didn’t mention is, her dad is a good speaker, he can convince you of a lot, so he’d previously (like in an episode earlier in the season) gotten the puppets to write down negative thoughts so “nobody needs to hear them.”

The message of that one had been about how it’s not good to bottle up your feelings.

However lo and behold he’d taken those papers and gone and dumped them in Ray’s workshop for him to find. Of course, after he removed any information that would help Ray realize it’s not about him.

So Pearl comes over and spots Marcy crying at the start of part 2, asks what’s wrong and Marcy tells her that her friend is getting kicked out because he doesn’t have enough money to keep working and everyone here hates him.

Pearl is sad, and Marcy even offers her one of those sheets of paper to prove it because “look at what they’re saying about him!” Turns out the one she gives Pearl is the one Pearl wrote, and Pearl is confused.

“How did he get this? I was told it was going in a safe, because nobody needs to see it.”

“Well there were like… ten of these!”

At which point Pearl realizes something is afoot, and asks for more info like “well who is it?”

Big reveal, Ray’s Fix is kind of over now. He’s gotta go, he can’t stay because he’s got no house or job or anything - well legally he could but he doesn’t want to.

So Pearl squawks out a distress signal and all the puppets come running to see what’s up, confused.

Marcy gives a much more concise explanation with a lot of tears and crying, the group takes off, hoping maybe he’s at the shop and they can talk to him, but he’s not.

It’s her dad, some contractors, and the mayor. They’re discussing the remodel or possibly taking it all down and starting over. That’s when they try to confront him and the dad feigns ignorance, there was no bigotry, Ray just wasn’t as talented.

A train whistle sounds and they realize there’s a train station nearby and so yet again the group rushes over and Ray is there.

And while in the old show apologies and forgiveness were easily earned/shown this one doesn’t have that. Sure they make up but there the undertone of some upset hurt feelings even after. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So Ricky tries to extend the branch first, only for Ray to get very angry with him because he wasn’t immune to the “being tricked into believing bigoted talking points and acting on them” thing.

At one point Ricky tries to minimize it by saying that maybe Ray does talk a *little* funny. And ray is. He doesn’t like it.

“Funny to you! Because to you its an accent, you can put it on and take it off whenever it suits your tastes. This is my life! I can’t change who I am and I don’t want to! I just… I want people to like him.” <- almost 100% direct quote

Marcy tugs on his sleeve and he looks down at her, still mad (not at her specifically), but then horrified into silence.

We see her entire face for the first time and the right side of her face has a split lip and bloody nose. The implication being her father hit her.

There’s silence for multiple long minutes as they stare at each other. I can imagine the framing in the back of my mind. It’s the right side of her face and the left side of his, just the two of them front and center, only the soft ambient wind sounds.

She apologizes for not stopping him and Ray crouches down and gently brushes her hair away and tells her he forgives her. “Marcy. You’re nine, you’re not supposed to save the world yet. It’s okay.”

Obviously signaling how while children are the future they need to have their childhood to become the people they can be, and how children aren’t as capable of holding responsibility for something like this as an adult may be due to reasons like family, not being old enough to understand, etc.

The puppets do all apologize again, with real apologies that don’t minimize the situation or imply Ray is overreacting, and he forgives them but says he’s “gonna keep an eye out.” For any bad behavior.

The train goes by and Ray doesn’t get on it, but Ricky mentions a rule he learned never got changed when they left the neighborhood the first time, “If 2/3 of residents believes a building to have been of exemplary service the deed can be reassigned to the owner at the time of service, regardless of current condition, location, or status of life.”

Basically the short is. If they can get 2/3 people to agree Ray’s Fix was a good place, they can get it back. So they’ve got to get a petition. I mean the mayor is already on site. They can do it!

Which they do. It takes a while since they also have to inform a few people “yeah it was bigotry that chased him out the other guy is not so nice.”

Marcy gets the most because who’s going to say no to a nine year old who’s hurt?

Ultimately they present the petition to the mayor and he’s about to grant the deed back and return the shop to Ray, but the dad throws a fit about how “you’re giving this place back to someone like him?!”

Then the phones ring… and keep ringing a lot.

Ultimately as it turns out some of his work was shitty and rushed. He was undercharging people to make it seem like Ray was overcharging them, then when he got rid of Ray he could raise prices all he wanted and there’d be no other repairman to go to.

However his work ethic included “they’re not paying industry standard so I’ll just cut a few corners who’ll know?”

As it turns out? Everyone. As now there’s a couple of issues with lights flickering or turning off, showers spraying like hoses etc.

Guys arrested for a couple of safety violations due to the low quality of work. Ray gets his shop back but it’s been kinda trashed and so he’s gotta put it back the way it was but it’s HIS AGAIN!

End.

It’s. A lot.

Season 2 ep 1 begins with him putting stuff back in its place.

Also funny enough I’ve been typing this for an hour on my phone and I’m so tired man. Ray.

Can you tell he’s my favorite? I hope I’m his favorite.

[maddiehu7]

Do I wanna know? | lalo Salamanca |

Chapter 1

I wake up to my alarm clock ringing

"Ugh" I groan reaching over and hitting it off my side table silencing it, time to get up I guess I rise groggily from my bed going over to the kitchen grabbing a water from the fridge chugging go it I walk over to my window pulling the curtain back a little looking outside

"Another glorious morning" I sigh to myself I've been a little...on edge lately with the whole looking for my dad thing but I'm powering through it, I walk over to my closet picking out an outfit for this hot summer weather I decide on blue jean shorts with a see through black long sleeve and a black tube top underneath and of course my signature black heeled boots

I look in mirror adjusting my top

"Not bad" I say looking at the outfit I created, I don't eat breakfast makes me nauseous so instead I pull out the files I have so far on my dad I have a couple friends in the police department so I've managed to gather quite a bit being here these past few weeks

"Mike Ehrmantraut" I whisper looking at his picture I can't believe I finally know who my father is I thought it'd feel great but...something feels wrong...off and I can't put my finger on it as I look at the picture longer I decide todays the day I take action I've been sitting on this information for a while to...scared to do anything about it but fuck it what do I have to be ashamed of he's the one who gave up his kid, I close the file putting it away grabbing my gun hiding it in my jean shorts flipping my shirt over it

"Here goes nothing" I say taking a deep breath heading out the door.

I pull up to a brown house with white on top it's nice I think, I put my car in park I don't even know what I'm gonna do now that I'm here I have a urge to run...hide but I take a deep breath ignoring it squeezing the wheel

"I can't do this" I run my hands through my hair going to pull away when a hand slams on my window I jump looking out to see my dad

"Shit" I sigh rolling down the window

"Who are you and why are you sitting outside my house" he says harshly

"Um sorry I thought this was someone else's house" I say acting more nervous than I am in hopes he believes me and lets me go

"You didn't answer me who are you" he says putting his hand on my window I quickly think of a fake name which is easy scince I always make them up being a bounty hunter

"Elena smith nice to meet you...?" I look at him questioningly pretending to not know his name he looks at me for a minute before heading back into his house I sigh loudly thank god I got out of that I think to myself putting the car in drive I just want to distract myself from this new awful feeling that I can't describe so I decide to eat my feelings and head to los pollos hermanos to try it out.

I walk in smelling the grease of delicious fried food and inhale smiling I look around at all the people when two men stand out to me one is shorter with a bald head an a blank look on his face the other one has black hair with a grey streak running through it and a handsome face with chocolate brown eyes I stare at him a little longer than normal thinking how hot he is I think he sensing someone looking at him as he looks around with a questioningly look on his face when he spots me he looks into my eyes trying to read me I quickly look away after being caught i still feel his eyes following me when I go up to the counter to order food I order a number 9 and bring it to a table across from that guy to eat i try the chicken and it's not bad which is nice sense it's cheap and close to me I'm enjoying my food when the guy from earlier slides into my booth I look up surprised sitting up straighter

"Hello" he says smiling

"Um hi" I say back awkwardly

"Oh sorry I'm Eduardo Salamanca but you can call me Lalo" he says reaching his hand out grabbing a fry from my plate popping it into his mouth looking at me

"Oh we'll help yourself Eduardo" I say pushing my plate forward rolling my eyes at him

"Your funny" he laughs sitting back his knees brushing against mine under the table I back up a little looking at him suspiciously, a guy comes over smiling at us

"Is everything to your liking" he asks folding his hands behind him Lalo perks up turning towards the man

"Are you kidding me, this is the best chicken I've ever had" he says smiling brightly

"I'm delighted to hear that" the man I'm assuming owns the place says laughing but it feels fake

"No really I'm serious it's crispy but not dried out and the seasoning it's so...flavorful!" he says overdramatized

"Well thank you, is there anything else I can do for you?" He questions there's something off about him I think to myself

"Is there any chance and I know the answers probably no...but is it possible to meet the owner" he says looking towards the counter for a second

"I am the owner" the man says calmly

"Really! How lucky for me" he says but I think he already knew who he was so why ask?

"Would you be interested in franchising because I'm eager to invest" he says like he's in a really bad play

"Well perhaps we should go to my office where we can discuss it further" the owner says

"Excellent, see you later princessa" he gets up to follow the owner winking at me

"Don't call me that" I yell after him to which he laughs, what the f just happened I think when the other man with Lalo slides into my booth

"Oh great another one" I say flopping my arms up towards him

"Who are you" he demands

"Nice to meet you to" I roll my eyes at him he just gets more angry

"Answer me" he says flashing his gun in his pants on purpose to scare me

"Oh the big guns literally" I say laughing he just looks confused that his intimidation tactic didn't work

"Look I don't know what you and your friend are involved in but leave me out of it ok" I say getting up from the booth walking away but he grabs my arm I turn around and he look me in the eyes seriously

"Stay away from Lalo Salamanca" he says letting my arm go

"No problem dude" I say putting my hands up walking away I walk outside still feeling eyes on me but I get in my car and drive around the block a couple times to make sure no one sees that I live right across the street, after a couple rounds I drive into my apartment parking lot

"What a day" I sigh out exhausted turning the car off getting out when all of a sudden I get pushed against the car hard I hit my head on the top of the car window stumbling I reach for my gun but someone grabs it first

"Fuck" I grumble when eveything goes black something being put over my head

(To be continued, let me know what you think of this new story! )

[dirtyvulture]

😎 I had cut my finger on the knuckle at work last night ( nothing too bad, it just got a grazing chunk of my finger) and Mama didn’t rise a little bicth so I finished my shift but it brought about a thought or two. I am also going to try and include some SB AU in this post too . Also Vulture you absolutely cracked me up with the whole Nat refusing to sleep on the edge as much as possible because she is afraid of the grey wolf ( the whole point of this song was to make it so that children wouldn’t sleep on the edge of the bed because they could fall off it and hurt themselves, hence the grey wolf who will bite painfully your side if you sleep on the bed’s edges) 🤣🤣🤣 that and her being afraid of the “ Baba Yaga” of not only her birth country’s folk lore but the stories of her ( R ) that the RR would tell to threaten and scare the black widows with . Russia and Eastern European countries are full of more superstitions folklore , songs and cultural influences like that ( I am by no means an expert and I don’t know all of them nor the culture tie to them), I think that even though she will adamantly deny it deep deep deep down Nat holds all of her birth country’s folklore, songs, superstitions and cultural influences very closely to her heart and beliefs.

R was born in and is from the 19th century so was there for the PEAK of the Grimm Brothers Fairytales and the darkass children stories that had the  purpose and function to teach children lessons, morals and the potential dangers of the world. R was born in 1832 and the Grimm Brothers Fairytales ( a book of collected fairytales from world wide but mostly Eastern European countries/ cultures. And the inspiration for most if not all of the OLD DISNEY movies. Such as Snow White,  cinderella , sleeping beauty, The little mermaid and you get the idea ) came out in 1812 so R probably got the book as a gift for her birthday or Christmas . She absolutely loved that book and misses it ( while she doesn’t fully remember her childhood or her parents/ what happened to them she does remember getting that book and loving it) , it also means she isn’t a stranger to the old and darker children stories of Eastern Europe or in general. Plus she was VERY CONFUSED by the older Disney movies because that isn’t HOW SHE REMEMBERED the story going ( the original fairytales that the Old Disney movies are based on is sooooo fucking dark and twisted, I am not even kidding) but she enjoyed/ enjoys them nonetheless.

As I mentioned earlier I believe that R does use the journal that Rogue got her just not as a journal , I think that she writes down the bits and pieces that she can remember from her past and also the things that were dug up on by herself, Jean, professor x or any of the others . She has multiple notebooks, journals and other things but the journal that Rogue gave her is especially important because well rogue gave it to her and R uses it to write down her notes about what R remembered of / pieced together about Esther Hudson. I also think that R was a avid writer in her journals / diaries when she was younger ( because A ,there wasn’t much to do back then especially when she was sick / is a sickly frail child and B , that was the only way she had a outlet for her true thoughts , feelings and her true self. Nothing was fake or pretend within the pages of her diary/ journal.) but she stopped writing when her mutation hit ( she had finished the book she was writing in the night that everything went down before going to sleep) because it was hard to write a journal/diary on the run / even getting her hands on one and the utensils to write with and two she didn’t want it found and have people found out that R was really Jane Howlett . Later on when R found out that she stopped aging she wanted to keep lasting records of her to a minimum ( one of the reasons she didn’t want her pictures taken) .

I will close off this post with the thought that occurred to me when I cut my hand . I have decided not to put my SB thoughts here because it might make this too long and those thoughts  deserve their own post so they can be really flushed out . But I think that it would be hilarious if the grumpy badass Sergeant Romanoff is the same way of being scared to sleep anywhere but the middle/ center of the bed because she is terrified of the grey wolf and scared of the Baba Yaga . That she and Yelena take the superstitions , fork lore, songs and cultural influences of their Eastern European roots very seriously even if they adamantly deny it out loud. Before SB Nat didn’t have the people she was with stay in bed with her and didn’t give a shit if they were on the edge or not . But when she let SB stay the first time ( after she fucked their brains out ) and on wards she was adamant that they were on the middle/ center of the bed with her ( this was the first subconscious sign that she cares about SB ) . SB has never question why she is so adamant about that , always figuring that Nat didn’t want them to fall out of bed.

Ok Now for the last thought brought on by my injured hand, I got lost on a train of thought. R was just in the school after the students came back and R was helping them bring in all their overstuffed luggage. R was talking with and was surrounded by a gaggle of the youngest students and while R was working with the luggage her the knuckle of one of her fingers bushed against some metal and it cuts a grazing chunk of her finger ( that was generally what happened to me at work and that shit hurts like hell) . So R puts down the luggage and grabs something to stop her finger from bleeding ( also trying hard not to swear in front of the little kids but she does say ow ) Nat is watching on with Jean as they were talking and with a wide smile Jean tells Nat to watch what happens next. A little kid comes running in with bandaids ( R has already healed) but as R bends down with a smile taking and putting on the bandage ( it is one of the little kids type bandaid , the cartoon ones) thanking the little kid and telling them they are a lifesaver. All the little kids emphasize that R CANNOT TAKE OFF the bandaid until the boo-boo is healed and they all took turns kissing it better. Jean then explained to Nat that the little kids don’t know about R’s abilities and think that the quick and flawless way that R heals is because of “ ✨Healing magic ✨” Jean  gestures to the scene before them at this . She explains that whenever R hurts self or yells “ Ow” this happens, and R has walked around all covered in bandages before. R also lets the little ones play nurse ( R is the school nurse and the kids love and look up to her so the play nurse instead of playing doctor)on her. Jean asks Nat not say anything to them because that would break their hearts. R heard Jean and Nat and she heard Nat promise not to say anything and with a content smile went back to work bringing the kids overstuffed luggage back in with a child bandaid on her finger .

PS I am adding this to the end of this post because I am pissed at the fact one of the  sections I wrote was just lost . It was a thought / image of Wolvie and Nat being in bed together and R sleeping on the edge of the bed falling out of it clutching her side because she landed on it ( in the song the wolf bites your side) and she is pain . A half asleep Nat yells out “it’s the grey wolf”🐺🐺🐺 in Russian and R just looks at her like “ Girl SERIOUSLY 😒 😒😒” . It was just all about Nat’s fear of the grey wolf and it was really good to. * VERY HEAVY SIGH 😔 😔😔* I will just rewrite it on a different post . Also Wolverines aren’t wolves but a small and vicious breed of animals that can and will square off with ANY THING , especially when that thing is bigger then them . They are cousins with the  honey badger  , I know that wasn’t the point you were trying to make Vulture but I thought it would be a cool fact to share .

Oh no I hope your finger is okay �� Last week I punctured my thumb pretty bad and not being able to use it was so annoying lol

I wonder at what point Nat will realize the legend behind all these lullabies and folklore tales is literally the same person she's in love with lol

I remember reading some of those fairytales as a kid! And as morbid as most of them were, they are very iconic. I love the idea that R is very into Disney. Imagine how she would react if Nat finds out and takes her on a trip to Disneyland one day.

I have to give it to you anon, I really like your idea that R uses her journal more as a memory keep for her past, but not so much for her current times. Sometimes, Nat sees R writing in her notebook and is very tempted to read it (because R does not take any liberties to hide or lock up her journal), but Nat respects R too much to sneak a peek and is happy to wait for R to tell her what she's been writing instead.

(I bet Sergeant Romanoff would purposely push her bad partners towards the edge of the bed lmao. But once she gets with SB, she happily lets them take up as much space as they want in the middle.)

R wearing a bandaid that has Looney Tunes characters on it or something, I absolutely love it 😂

I don't think I've ever used R's "Wolverine" title in the actual fic yet. Perhaps when I finally do, Nat assumes a wolverine is related to wolves and then is told by Scott that wolverines are just grungy little animals, and she thinks Scott is just being mean about R (as usual) and then is shocked when she finds out...he's kind of right 😂

[into-the-center-of-things]

day five: looking at local chicago southside sights part TWO!!!

After we left the co-op bookstore we went to Powell's, which is a used bookstore off of 54th Street. It has the same name as the one in Portland, Oregon, but apparently there is no relation between the two of them.

It was a lot bigger on the inside than I suspected. I ducked into the second room in the back and that was where I found the poems! Not as much variety as the co-op but I saw Harryette Mullen's newest book there, so that's cool. They also had The Cow by Ariana Reines which I did end up buying, because it was cheap and I really liked how bizarre it was. Not to mention the purple typeface on the inside.

We walked back to the apartment and @germfreeadulthood made me a little immunity drink (using the immune suport stuff and ginger powder), and then took a shower. I drank it while looking through the Chicago Reader—I don't really look at newspapers so it was cute to see some passionate write ups about new and well known underground heavy music (since I guess The Rumble is coming up, so the were writing about bands particpating or bands in similar genres)...suuuuuper cool, will be looking into the band Torture when I have time.

I accidentally fell asleep for a good 30-40 minutes—I guess I was a lot more tired than I thought, but maybe that means I needed the rest? Was I just feeling weak from that damn train ride still? Is the way back gonna knock me on my ass too? Argh.

We walked to "The Point" afterwards, which is I believe Promotory Point, where Chicago kisses the edge of Lake Michigan. We had to walk through this tunnel beneath the road to get there and people had done a mural of "things they want to do before they die", which was cool, ad well as different encouraging phrases or things they liked about Chicago. Someone wrote something about not liking the cicadas which was funny.

Honestly I actually I kind of love cicadas, I think they are cute and I like the droning noise they make. I am going to try to catch it on video tomorrow or something so I can listen to it when I am home. I would prefer that sound over the clanging of trash trucks or construction any day. We saw a dead cicada earlier today and I wish I had like, been able to keep it and take it home with me. I wonder if its possible to preserve it if I grab one and put it in a Ziploc baggy. I would worry about it getting squished in my luggage though.

Anyways. Lake Michigan is fucking huge.

You can see as far as Indiana from the coast—super fucking cool! There were some sandy beachy areas and some rocky areas, the latter was where @germfreeadulthood and I sat. We put our feet in the water and the water actually felt really good. I wish we bad gone swimming but we didn't have our swimsuits and the sun was setting so it probably wasn't going to be a good idea to get totally drenched when the sun wouldn't be out long enough to dry us. We'll probably come back again before I leave for a proper swim.

There were also some seagulls circling fhis kid throwing crackers at them—they like totally came to him as if summoned and then all perched at his feet. It was lowkey kind of magical and I wish I had taken a picture..

I walked closer to the sand to get a better scope of the area. The beach area was crowded with families and there even was what I think was a wedding happening? They were moving to a dance between the daughter/bride and the father and he got all weepy and I felt weird watching so I left.

After that we took the bus to Saucy Porka, which is like an Asian Latin fusion sort of food place, for dinner. We both got a banh mi and shared sweet potato fries.

The banh mi was kind of meh honestly but the sweet potato fries were absolutely delicious. I had a teeny little cup of Cherry Pepsi because I never drink soda and wanted to try it and it tasted good, but I know it has caffeine in it so I am hoping it doesn't keep me up too late.

We walked back and I showered and I think tomorrow we are going to go to the Art Institute of Chicago!!! Yippee!!

[scarletooyoroi]

"It isn't often to see people seeking out Aaru Village who aren't desert fold or aren't up for no good, I'll give that to ya." Though Thoma looks like a good fella, Candace's concern that he may have ulterior motives for being here is completely valid and understandable. Reason why upon further deliberation she asked Dehya to do her the favor of giving the Inazuman man a tour around the village, to test the waters and confirm or prove wrong her suspicions. "I've heard a thing or two about Inazuma. Hard not to when things had been complicated, right? I take that you being in Sumeru means that the travelling restrictions were lifted?"

There is nothing that isn't genuine and heartfelt curiosity to learn more but also from a personal perspective to see what this guy is about. Everyone who steps a foot in Aaru Village is for a reason, most of the visitors know their business. What about him? In their walk they find a young kid sitting on a carpet outside wearing ragged clothes and reading a book that must've seen better days. Her light blue, sharp eyes narrow at the poor sight. "...I wonder if the hardship Inazuma faced these past years can be comparable to the hardships of us desert folk. Being closed while being guaranteed a decent life doesn't sound half bad."

Just hearing about Inazuma within this moment leads him to a slew of heavy thoughts. Pleasant, but as of the most recent days, difficult, the kind of heaviness that only a taste of life within Teyvat in large could truly sort out.

Any ends of their more amiable part of the conversation finds itself edging down to a more focused calm. For the endless vitality in terms of people, the arts and might it could cultivate, there was a share of glaring wounds also gained and endured as a price.

Lightning flashes. Cutting through all and only allowing those that can rise above to be worthy. A cruel form of beauty.

"You're correct." His voice matches before looking over the mercenary. Just the sight of her vigor compels him to draw from his pool of calm as the oasis known as Aaru now being crossed. Even then, a more perceptive eye could show that despite the changes, struggle remains an underlying current to balance with success. Each step found themselves curious as much as they did thoughtful, accepting the situation with firm eyes that couldn't cast away their softness. Gripping at his cloak to keep it settled proper, Thoma's eyes would focus ahead once more.

As they find themselves situated underneath a small series of trees, giving them prize witness to the boons of Ajilenakh Nuts, he nearly pauses at the curious note that's drawn in the verbal sand. "....Dehya." His voice sounds strained at the notion, when in truth, just picturing the pain of others, witnessing it firsthand despite their vigor allowing them to claw through it by any means, it just hurts.

Within Thoma's eyes, there was no glory or graces to be found in pain like this.

"I'm afraid it's not that easy. Despite the change in scenery, culture and life, there's a cruel lining that stays adamant in persisting." Try as he might, the bitterness of being a firsthand witness, active in the waged war between Watatsumi and Inazuma's mainlands, over those who don Visions, it was a conflict that nurtures strife, newly made young without parents, the chaos that allows a heinous poison to settle with acidic, burning edges within.

"People get hurt, some can manage to fight against it, others are unfortunate to not get those particular means.. Suffering as a result." Licking at his dried lips, it's clear a more sensitive topic was broached to the traveling warrior, the sort that has him looking with a singular eye towards the past, one kept in the present.

"You've caught wind of the decrees I imagine, to be frank, there was a war that cost many their lives. No short thanks to the remnants of a god being used as part of a war effort.. and advantage for other dangerous powers, on top of the earlier made strife." Stepping over to a nearby edge, he's facing away for a moment, more focused on just.. processing it all.

"There are no comparisons when it comes to facing some form of Hell. I wouldn't want to dishonor those that even now, could be going through something we can't even imagine."

@mantichorae

[moonshine-nightlight]

Free Piano: Haunted - Part 2

When you drive by the piano on the way home from a job across town, you almost don’t stop. But your kid’s been wanting to learn how to play—a desire that’s stuck around for the last few months, a rarity—and this one’s free. It needs some TLC and while you’ve no experience with instruments, you’re good with your hands. On impulse, you pull over. Soon enough, you’re loading the free piano into the back of your truck. You barely give a passing thought to the “haunted” part of the sign.

Perhaps you should have.

Inspiration post: Haunted Free Piano Pic

Modern, enemies to friends to lovers, ghosts/spirits/specters, male monster x male reader, M/M, Part 2 of 8

[Part One] Part Two

As you wash your dishes, your shed catches your eye through the window into the backyard. You’ve been busy the last couple weeks, since you picked up that piano and then stuck it in your shed so your kid didn’t see it, but maybe this weekend is the time to see if it's salvageable. 

You’ve done some research online and mostly you’ve figured out that paying to have it restored is definitely not on the table. You’re not broke, but between having your savings wiped out from the divorce and the move and the house and having to save for Kit’s college—you still feel too close to being one month of no work away from panic. And you know if it gets too bad, your ex might try to be petty and go for full custody. So that’s really not an option.

You’ve got time so hopefully, you can take the thing apart, polish it up, fix it up, and then put it all back together well enough that it's playable—then you can spend money on the actual lessons rather than just the instrument.

You stopped at the library earlier in the week between clients and printed out some of the information you need—wifi doesn’t reach to the shed and you didn’t like having your laptop out there. Iit always seemed like putting it down next to powertools was an unnecessarily risky move. 

Today the plan is to assess the damage, see if you have the right tools—drawing up a list of people you’ve worked with who might and might be willing to let you borrow them if you don’t—and make a list of what materials you might need to buy. Tomorrow or maybe even this afternoon you can head into town and start to budget how much all that might cost. You’re hoping spreading all this out over a few months will help minimize the impact on your wallet.

You get all the way to the shed when you realize you’re left your keys in the house. Putting down your papers and some of the tools from your truck at the entrance, you jog back to the house to grab them.

When you come back, you have to put a foot down on the folder with your research in it because the wind has just managed to blow it out from under the edge of the toolbox you’d put on top of it. As you lean down to pick it up, you swear you hear a faint echo of a voice saying, “…stuck in this truly awful little building for weeks…”

Frowning, you look around, but no one else seems to be in their yards. Shaking your head, you unlock the door. Peering inside, it's easy to tell no strange, snotty children have broken in. It must have been the strong wind blowing the sound of the TV from your neighbor’s house—you know Mrs. Mical’s AC is broken and she likes those PBS British shows that are always on. You’ve tried to tell her that the problem isn’t her with her air conditioning unit but rather with the woodchuck that lives under her deck constantly breaking it, but she won’t hear of it.

Setting everything down once inside, you decide to open the shutters for now—the wind’s been kicking up a lot today, but you’d appreciate the extra light. 

First, you survey the wood that makes up the outside of the piano, taking notes on what appears to be superficial damage and what appears warped enough that it might need replacement. You also take down all the measurements and some pictures with your phone, just so you have a record of what you started with. If this goes horribly wrong, maybe you’ll at least be able to track where it all went off the rails.

Eventually though, there’s no delaying having to push on to the actual piano inner workings—the part of this you have the least confidence about actually being able to do.  You flip up the fallboard to reveal the keys and try to take pictures of their condition—try because the fallboard keeps falling back down whenever you get your phone into position. You jump each time it does so, the bang somehow echoing in the small shed.

It always seems to be sitting securely when you flip it up, but eventually you resort to jamming some spare pieces of cardboard under the join to make it stay up. Wanting petty revenge against a piece of wood is stupid, no matter how much it seems like it’s out to annoy you—so the fact that you decide the next step is to unscrew and remove it entirely is just a coincidence.

You know you’ll be needing to deep clean the whole thing anyways so it just makes sense. After struggling for a few minutes and having to reconsult your printed out research and diagrams, you realize you have unscrew the bookend wood pieces on either end of the keyboard first and then you can take them and the fallboard off together. The screwdriver skids out more than it should—or so it seems to you—but soon enough you’re able to remove the whole thing entirely. Once those are off, you carefully put them to the side, sticky noting the three pieces in the process and then taking a picture of them all—the last thing you want to do is get confused over which piece is what. 

With that taken off, maybe it’s best to remove the entire top now too. You’re able to remove the hinges, but not before getting your fingers pinched. You even swear you got some sort of static shock from it which makes no sense whatsoever. Lifting the lid makes you nearly growl with effort, it's not even terribly thick and yet it feels so heavy.

To cap it off, the lid nearly lands on your foot when you try to lean it against the wall. You may not try to take apart a piano everyday, but you haven’t felt like such a newbie since you first became a contractor—no, since you were a kid helping Grandpa. It's kinda infuriating, how many little things seem to keep going wrong. Not to mention how sweaty you are given it's only been like an hour or so since you started. 

You take a deep breath, wipe off some sweat from your forehead, and turn to survey the piano. The inside is grimy—plenty of dust and cobwebs and lint. It looks worse than what had been under your grandparents couch when you first moved it. Maybe you should just be relieved nothing looks like it once was food and that there’s no actual bugs in it. 

At least that you’ve seen so far.

As you removed those other pieces, you noticed it seemed wobbly on its legs. You give it a bit of a shake and realize the legs will either have to be replaced or at least more securely reattached. Between that and needing good access to the pedals, you’ll need to jack the piano up—probably with two jacks. You frown as you make a mental note to borrow Jaime’s since you only have a small one. 

Time to bite the bullet and see if you can remove the keyboard with the hammers from the keybed as easily as some of the videos made it look. You pull on some gloves, not wanting any more pinches or cuts on your fingers. The keyslip is the first thing to remove if you wanna get at the keys and while it starts off a bit stuck, it slides up and out without you needing any tools so that’s something at least.

After at least five minutes of trying to carefully, but futilely, maneuver it out of the rest of the piano, a chill goes down your spine. Cold enough that goosebumps spread across your skin, and you look around as if trying to find the source. It seems to be the wind, which kicks up with surprising strength to blast cold air into your face along with a significant amount of dust from the opened piano.

You let go of the stuck keyboard—you’ve only managed to move it about half an inch out of the keybed—with a cry of annoyance, raising your hands to your eyes only to remember you’re wearing gloves covered in grime at the last second. With a rumble, you head out to go inside your house to clean off.

As soon as you step outside the shed, heat washes over you. You want to look to see if the sun just came out from behind a cloud or something, but your eyes are so watery from whatever just blew into them that you just focus on heading for your blurry backdoor.

You strip off your gloves and wash your hands in the sink before carefully wiping your streaming eyes. After a splash of water, they seem a little itchy but fine. You absentmindedly grab your phone and check the weather app, wondering if there’s some sort of cold front or storm rolling in, but to your bewilderment, there’s nothing of the sort.

You’re annoyed to find yourself frowning at your shed through the window again, just like this morning. And you feel like you havent actually accomplished that much since this morning. You pull your gloves back on decisively—you’re taking this first big step today even if it feels like the universe is against you. You’re nothing if not determined, willing to dig your heels in the second someone tries to shove you in the opposite direction. Spite might not be the best reason to lean into something—certainly not against something as amorphous and uncaring as a little breeze—but it's all you’ve got.

Marching back across your yard, you see the door, which you’d propped open with a rock, has somehow swung shut. You pull it back open, determined to wedge the rock in more securely only to curse under your breath when you see that all your papers are strewn all over the shed—likely by that same big burst of wind.

“Fuckin’ shit,” you mutter under your breath as you let the door close behind you. No more open doors, no more—you close the shutters of the closest windows rather violently—no more open windows. No wind allowed, you don’t care how hot it gets. 

You walk around brusquely, picking up papers and shoving them into the folder they should be in. You gather up the post-its too—blown off from the fallboard and lid, but you don’t bother putting them back on. There’s no chance they’d stick to anything anymore, not after landing on the dirty ground. You’re glad you took pictures and haven’t actually removed anything else yet.

By the time you’ve done that, you’re only mildly frustrated. You’re finally able to look at the piano and find that despite dust and dirt being blown into your face, it looks as dirty if not dirtier than before because of course it does. 

This time, you carefully check to make sure all the hammers are down—remembering that tip from a video you watched earlier in the week, and lift the keyframe with the keyboard, methodically wiggling it back and forth to pull it out. You heave a sigh of relief when it finally unsticks and grin triumphantly back at the piano, as if gloating about winning a game of tug of war. Deflating slightly when you realize how weirdly petty you’re acting to an inanimate object, survey the dirt and dust in the cavity left behind.

You grab a flashlight to see better since you no longer have much natural light and survey the strings. You frown as you run along each one. Unfortunately, keeping in line with the water damage on the wood of the lid, a number of the strings appear to have rusted in multiple places. Some have even snapped—it's likely a miracle that you didn’t manage to press the key for any of the broken ones and hear the damage in the first place. 

You feel some of your remaining hope dissipate as you survey the strings. Restringing an entire piano is without a doubt the most challenging—and therefore expensive—part of restoring a piano per your research. The material cost is not the problem—it's all about the skill and time needed to restring multiple strings without breaking anything.

You pull out your phone to begin taking pictures while you think. Maybe you shouldn’t try to restring the entire instrument. First figure out how many strings would need to be completely replaced, if any of the pins on the ends need replacement, if any can just be retied for the moment.

You have months and the kid doesn’t need a perfect piano to start with, right? If you can replace or retie enough of the main strings, then you can still get it in working order enough that any of the others you can replace as time goes by. This is probably still the cheapest way to give him a piano, it just might not be as functional as you’d hoped. 

After all that, you head over to your tools and pick up one that you think should help you remove a pin—you want to test out your equipment to see if you’ll need to get specialty tools, and how much those might cost if you do.  After checking your gloves and goggles, you select a pin to try. Following a particularly rusty string you know will have to go—and which is also already broken at the end—you start trying to loosen it.

It doesn’t seem to be working at first, unable to grip the pin correctly, so you discard it for a pair of pliers. Eventually that seems to work, but the string snaps in another place, causing your heart to race at the sound, and the pin you’re left with is deformed. You barely have a second or two to notice all that when a roar seems to come from the piano.

A violent burst of wind blows you back against the door with a thud while the lights flicker dramatically. You feel like your heart’s stopped beating entirely, your breath caught in your throat as a rushing, static-y sound builds, the air tight with pressure or repressed energy.

Before your eyes a silvery outline of a person defines itself, with white blue spots of lights where eyes might be. The final sputter of the lightbulb overhead lets them start out more as it opens its mouth to say, “How dare you defile this magnificent instrument!”

It swops closer and as it yells, the sound has a high-pitched re-verb to it like something sharp and cold has been drawn down your spine. It's enough of a jolt to get you moving though as your hand frantically feels along the door for the knob.

“I do not know where these vile machinations might lead,” it continues, seeming to get larger and more jagged as it grows more furious, “but I shall not suffer them quietly!”

It rears back as you’re finally able to turn the knob. It swoops down as you stumble and fall back onto the ground, bellowing, “BEGONE!” before it dissipates in the afternoon sunlight.

The door slams behind it, the click of the lock audible in the silence of your backyard.

You stay where you are, heart thundering your ears, breath coming in pants—pliers still clutched in your hand.

“Fuck.”

You’ve heard ghost stories all your life, but you hadn’t actually believed one way or another. You also aren’t the type to lie to yourself. And that had definitely been one angry ghost.

For some reason, that stupid sign taped to the piano came to mind and you can’t stop laughing. They’d even tried to warn you. Haunted, indeed. God, and you thought this project had been getting out of hand before. 

Because now you need to figure out how to deal with a ghost. 

Great.

[jadequeen88]

Incel Tomura

I couldn’t think of a good title for this, so... I just went with something real blunt. Anyway, this was inspired by a friend and how she actually met her IRL boyfriend.

PAIRING: Incel!Shigaraki x egirl!reader

TW: face sitting, degradation, mommy kink, reader basically bullying Tomura (he deserves it)

3.2k~

AS ALWAYS MY FICS ARE STRICTLY 18+

“TCH!”

Tomura scoffed at the screen of his laptop. The Discord server he helped admin had gone to shit since he let that idiot Dabi loosen the requirements to join. It was one thing when Toga joined. He knew she was a decent gamer. But you? With those stereotypical cat-ear headsets, perfectly done make-up and short skirts? Please… He saw right through you. Just another fake ~uwu~ e-girl trying to pretend they knew what they were talking about.

It didn’t end with you being annoyingly informed in the gaming chat, either. You were always in the anime and manga chats, too… Suggesting different ones that there’s no way you actually enjoyed.

But the WORST part of you being in the server? Spamming the picture chat with selfies and outfit pics. No, it wasn’t against the guidelines and yes, you got lots of compliments (of course, you were clearly hot), but it made Tomura livid. Where there used to be pics of half-built PCs and screenshots of character upgrades, now there were endless pictures meant to tease and bait the guys in the server.

Today’s picture is what sent him completely over the edge. Your hair was put up in two messy space buns, signature pink cat-eared headset perched on your head. Your black, mesh top was straining against your tight, hot pink bra, barely hiding your cleavage and your slender neck was adorned with a chunky, black collar with a large, silver ring hanging from the front. The icing on the cake, though… the thing that broke him, was the face you were making. Eyes crossed, little pink tongue lolling past your perfect hot-pink lips, it was an obvious ahegao face. The caption read:

“New collar! Thank you for da gift @XxXknifey_wifeyXxX”

Followed by a bunch of annoying ass emojis.

Tomura shifted in his gaming chair, his growing bulge making his sweats tight. He gritted his teeth and opened his DMs…

******

You snickered as you opened your text chat with Dabi. Poor Tomura… He had no clue his friend was an old high school buddy of yours and sent screenshots every single time he bitched about your presence on the server. At first, it was just a couple of snide comments, but you quickly decided to turn it into a game. You’d add more emojis than you normally would, flirt shamelessly with Toga in the chat, and be very vocal with your opinions. Then it progressed with more and more selfies, pics showing off your new skirts, and pics of your pink, girly gaming setup. Today you pushed it with the ahegao face, you’ll admit. It was pretty out of character for you, but you couldn’t wait to hear about Tomura’s reaction from Dabi.

It was everything you hoped it would be:

Decay_666_

So can we give those bitches their own chat or what? Seriously, I’m sick of seeing their shit everywhere. Did you see her ahegao face selfie? This server was supposed to be for ACTUAL gamers, not fake e-girl sluts spamming the chat with their bullshit…

Cremation_Daddy

Lol, damn dude, calm down… we can make a separate chat. You’re the only one on the server complaining. Y/N really fucking you up that bad?

Decay_666_

Oh, fuck off… she’s just being an attention whore and it’s getting on my nerves.

Cremation_Daddy

Yeah, whatever you say. Prolly jerkin it to that selfie right now

You didn’t know why, but you kinda had a crush on the skinny loser. Knowing how worked up he’d get over the smallest things you did thrilled you. You wanted to know just how badly you affected him and today was the day you’d find out.

*****

Tomura heard a ping from his monitor alerting him to a new DM. expecting it to be Dabi giving him more shit, he scowled and clicked over to his Discord tab. When he saw that it was you DMing him, it was like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over his head. He could barely type he was so nervous.

Y/N

Hey :)

Decay_666_

Hi

Y/N

How did you like my new collar?

Tomura panicked. Had Dabi said something? There’s no way he’d do that. How did he even respond to that? He decided to feign ignorance.

Decay_666_

What collar?

Y/N

*image*

He audibly gasped. You sent him the selfie you’d posted in the chat earlier. Somehow, it was even hotter than the first time he’d seen it. Probably because you had sent it to him. You wanted to make sure he saw it. The thought alone made him painfully hard. He typed out a shaky response:

Decay_666_

Yeah… you look really pretty :)

He grimaced. He couldn’t think of anything clever when he was put on the spot like that. Plus, how long had it been since he’d spoken to a girl one on one? Much less a hot one? Never. That’s when.

Y/N

Aww, you’re so sweet :) wanna see it in person?

Now Tomura was wondering if he’d died and gone to heaven. Did she want to meet up? Wearing that fucking collar? There’s no way… He stared at the screen for a good ten minutes before another ping brought him back to reality.

Y/N

I’m free now if you are. Plus, there’s a new episode of *insert favorite anime* out and I didn’t wanna watch it alone.

Decay_666_

Yeah. Sure.

His response was almost uninterested but inside he was panicking. When was the last time he showered? How much time did he have to get ready? Did he even have any clean clothes? He leaped from his chair and ran to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Another ping rang out and he raced to check his DMs to see that you’d sent your address. To his surprise, you only lived a short walk from him. Another jolt of excitement shot through his spine as he quickly responded.

Decay_666_

Be over in 30 :)

He turned on the shower then started picking through his pile of clothes finding the ones that smelled the least offensive. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous and excited at the same time.

*****

 Tomura shifted from one foot to the other, nervously scratching at the side of his neck. He caught himself before the skin there broke and he ended up having to deal with a bloody neck on top of already being a nervous wreck. He’d only been standing outside your apartment for a minute or two, but it felt like an eternity. He kept checking his phone to distract himself. Just as he was starting to question if this had been a good idea, the door flung open.

His eyes widened and his mouth turned into a thin line. You answered the door in a fucking towel. He began opening and closing his mouth like a fish that had been plucked from the water. You giggled innocently like it was perfectly normal to answer the door nearly naked.

“You’re here a little earlier than I expected! I just got out of the shower. Come on in,” you moved to the side to give him room to walk through the door into your small apartment. You were sure to not move completely out of the way so he’d have to almost brush against your chest. You could feel him stiffen and hold his breath as he passed by.

This was going to be so much fun…

*****

Tomura’s dick had been painfully hard the moment he’d seen you in that towel. Luckily, when you’d gone into your bedroom to get dressed, he was able to position it in his waistband so he wouldn’t be pitching a tent in front of you. The thought of you noticing him popping a boner just by looking at you in a towel was mortifying. 

However, what you decided to change into didn’t help his situation. Your baby pink terry cloth shorts would have shown the curve of your ass had it not been for the little row of ruffles around the bottom. Your tank top, the same baby pink color as your shorts, was pulled tight across your chest (holy shit, were you not wearing a bra?!). A fleeting glance at your chest proved to Tomura that you definitely were not wearing a bra.

“You can come on back,” you beckoned from the doorway of your bedroom, “I thought we’d be more comfortable in here…”

He gulped and rubbed his sweaty palms on his jeans before nodding and rising to walk towards you. Your room was foreign to him. Decorated with all shades of pink and purple, soft, plush bedding, and a soft pink glow emanated from the LED strip lights that lined the walls. Tomura stood awkwardly, looking around for a chair to sit in when you flopped onto your bed and began pulling up the streaming app on your tv. 

You looked up at him sweetly and patted the spot on the plush comforter next to you. “Come sit, Tomu! You don’t have to stand way over there. I don’t stink, ya know,” the wink you gave him made his knees buckle.

“Umm,” he chuckled nervously, “No, of course not. You, uhh… you smell…”

No, you were way too close. This was bad. There’s no way he would be able to string together a coherent thought, much less hold an actual conversation with you. You pout and lean in even closer to him.

“Tomuuuuu!” fuck, he hated that he loved that stupid nickname, “You think I smell?!”

“What?! N-no, not at all. I was trying to say that-”

Before he could finish his sentence, you tilted your head to the side offering up your neck for him to smell and he swears his eyes crossed as he tried to absorb what was happening.

“I even wore my new perfume! Go on, smell. Tell me what you think,” you smirk looking out of the corner of your eye.

Fuck.

You were teasing him, he knew you were, but his dick was so hard that he was completely at your mercy. He leaned in to take a tentative sniff and his eyes wandered lower. His breath hitched when he noticed the outline of your hardened nipples peeking through the thin material of your tank top. Before he knew what was happening, you turned your face forward and put your mouth next to his ear.

“Are you looking down my shirt, you pervert?” you purred. Tomura made some sort of incoherent noise and pulled away.

You laughed and pushed his shoulder playfully, “Geeze, I’m just kidding! You’re wound so tight.” you pause making a thoughtful face.

“Oh, I know how to help! Come on, over here,” you pulled him between your spread thighs and proceeded to rub his shoulders, working out all of the knots in his lean back.

After a few seconds, Tomura began to relax into your touch, slumping slightly and letting out a tiny sigh. He was deathly still the entire time you massaged him. He was terrified if he moved too much that his raging boner would free itself from his waistband. When your hands left his shoulders, he started to move away just to be pulled back into your lap. His head landed in your cleavage as your hands trailed down his chest. 

“Hmm, so tense, Tomu,” you whispered into the crown of his hair, “Is my massage not working?”

He wanted to yell that of course he was tensed up. That his dick is the hardest it’s ever been in his life and if he doesn’t hold as still as possible, he’s scared he might start humping the air like a pathetic dog. Before he can answer, your hand trails down to the waistband of his jeans, and he freezes. The tips of your fingers brush across his leaking tip and Tomura lets out a low, needy moan before he can stop himself.

“Just what I thought,” you purred as you began to trail your fingers up and down the hard bulge in his jeans, “Pathetic. Look at you, so fucking hard for me. And all I did was rub your shoulders.” He wanted to defend himself, but all he could do was whine as his eyes rolled in the back of his head while you continued touching him through his jeans.

“And to think, I never thought you’d want anything to do with some fake bimbo like me. Because I only game and watch anime for attention, right?” you squeeze his cock through his jeans, causing him to yelp. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself, incel? Wanna tell me why your dick is this hard for me if I’m so annoying to you?”

The realization that Dabi had told you everything flitted through the back of his mind, but he didn’t have room in his brain right then to be mad at him. He had to do whatever he needed to do to keep you touching him.

“I, ahh... I’m s-sorry,” he stuttered pathetically. The front of his jeans was wet from your teasing and the denim was rubbing him raw through his thin boxers, “D-didn’t, fuck, didn’t mean it like… ahh, l-like th-that.”

You loved how easily you could wreck him. You pet his hair back from his sweaty brow as you cooed at him lovingly.

“You know,” you removed your hand from the front of his jeans and he whined from the lack of friction, “You really hurt my feelings, baby. I thought you were so cool and the whole time, behind my back, you said just mean things about me.”

He sat up and turned to face you. His pathetic, needy gaze shot straight to your core. The power you held made you drunk and you desperately wanted more.

“No, no no no…” he grabbed your hands and you realized how clammy they were, “I’m-I’m so sorry. Please! Please…”

“Hmm,” you studied him for a moment, “Well… There might be a way you could make me feel a little better.” you tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, “You were so mean to me.”

“Anything! Please! I-I’ll do anything for you!” desperation started creeping in, thinking you’d leave him hanging with no relief. Little did he know, you had no intention of letting him go any time soon. Your plush lips curled into a devious smile. A soft hand reached up cupping his jaw.

“What a good boy, Tomu,” a tremor passed through his body. You reached over to your nightstand and pulled out the collar you’d taken the selfie in. 

“You know,” the collar danced between your painted nails, “This also came with a leash. I was thinking,” your lust-filled eyes meet his, “If you wanted to be a good boy for me… You’d let me see how pretty it looks around your neck.”

Tomura hesitated, his eyes rapidly moving between your eyes and the collar you held. After a moment of consideration, he nodded. You giggled and clapped your hands together excitedly leaping off the bed. You returned with a short, chain-link leash.

“Now,” you leaned in and fastened the collar around his neck. Your bodies were centimeters apart and Tomura thought he might pass out, “When you’re wearing your collar, you don’t call me Y/N,” you nudge his ear with your nose and whisper, “You call me ‘Mommy.’ Do you understand?” you feel him nod against your face.

“That’s not how good boys answer their Mommy. When you answer me, you say, ‘Yes Mommy’ or ‘No Mommy.’ Is that clear?”

“Y-yes… Mommy.”

“Mmm, what a good boy,” you placed a soft kiss on his neck and he let out the most delicious whimper. You hooked a finger through the ring on the front of the collar, “You’re gonna go sit in Mommy’s gaming chair and let her use you as a toy. Okay?” 

Tomura’s head was spinning and he almost couldn’t answer until you jerked him by his collar, “Y-yes, Mommy. Please, please make me your toy.”

You stood and dragged him over to your chair and made him sit, “What a polite boy you are! Saying ‘please’ without being asked. If you keep that up, you just might get a reward,” his belt buckle rattled as you worked his jeans down his narrow hips. 

A ragged breath escaped his chapped lips as you removed your tiny shorts revealing a black, lace thong. You straddled his lap, your dripping slit hovering a centimeter over the angry, leaking head of his cock. His hands shook as you placed them on your hips and slowly moved your thong to the side. Descending an inch at a time, only teasing his tip, was causing him to come undone underneath you.

“You’re already so close and I’ve only put the tip in. You better be a good boy and not come until I tell you to or you’re going to be punished,” you pushed another couple of inches inside and he nearly wept.

“I-I’m trying, M-mommy! I wanna be a good boy!”

“Mmm, I know, baby. You’re doing so,” another inch, “So…” and another, “Well.” you were fully seated on his cock now. Tomura knew he wouldn’t last. Your velvet walls were sucking him down harder than anything ever had before. It made his fleshlight feel like it was made of sandpaper. You had ruined him for anything else. 

With a few rolls of your hips and some high, airy moans, he was about to bust. “Mommy! Mommy, please! I-I’m g-gonna…”

“Tomu,” your voice was authoritative now, “If you come in Mommy’s pussy, I’m going to make you clean it out with your tongue then I’m going to sit on your face until I come as many times as I want.” your hand wrapped around his throat and you started bouncing on his cock. Your filthy words and aggressive motions catapulted him into an orgasm.

“You bad, BAD boy,” a smack to his cheek broke off his moans, “You disobeyed me! Did you do that on purpose?” your hand around his neck flexes, “Are you just a dirty incel that wants Mommy to get mean with you? Answer, Tomu!”

“Yes, Mommy!”

“Tell Mommy what you are…”

“I-I’m a-a… dirty incel.”

“And what do you want?”

“W-want… want Mommy to b-be mean to me…”

You lift him by the collar and attach the leash. He’s thrown onto the bed and you waste no time hovering your dripping slit over his face.

“Now,” you jerk the leash, “Clean up your mess.”

Tomura knew he should be disgusted right now, but his dick was getting harder by the second. With each lick inside your sloppy hole, he shamelessly moaned against your skin. The vibrations were going straight to your clit, causing you to ride his face harder. This went on until you’d almost reached your peak.

“Oh, baby,” you’re making Mommy feel so, so good, “I-I’m gonna…”

Tomura grabbed your ass and moved you back and forth on his face as he sucked your clit into his mouth. Your orgasm hit hard and fast. You lifted your body giving him a moment to breathe before sitting back down, earning a startled mumble from him.

“Don’t think that’s all,” you laughed and humped his face, making his eyes roll into the back of his head, “Be a good boy and mommy might even let you come…”

Tomura only nodded as he began to eat you again like he was starved. Maybe all the stuff you posted in the Discord server wasn’t so annoying anymore...

[the-bau-quinjet]

Trending

Summary: Steve thinks you’re too young to like him despite the obvious hints you’re dropping.

Warnings: unspecified age gap

Word count: 2246

a/n: I’ve clearly spent too much time on TikTok recently, but inspired me to write something so that's good. It was loosely based on a request for a young reader x Steve, but I forgot part of the request so I'm gonna write something else for that one! Also, I wrote this on my phone so please excuse any typos I missed when trying to edit it lol

Masterlist

Messing with Steve is one of your favorite things to do. Tiny pranks, over the top flirting, poking fun at his lack of understanding of technology. Anything you can do to get him to roll his eyes and chuckle.

Nat would say it’s because of your feelings for him. She would be correct. Not that you’d ever admit that to anyone. Nope. So instead, you have your fun, and enjoy the way his eyes crinkle and his cheeks redden.

Your newest method of hearing the sweet sound of Steve’s laugh? TikTok. It’s a double whammy. One because he doesn’t understand the app and two because a lot of the trends make him blush.

It started as a fun way to blow off steam. Sometimes, being one of the younger and newer team members made you feel like an outsider. Of course, Peter was younger than you, but he had his own friends outside of the team. You didn’t have anyone else. When Tony found you and invited you to join, it was you against the world. Now you have this makeshift family.

Having your account on TikTok helped you when you hadn’t really become a part of the group yet. You bonded with Peter because of his account, and you found a new way to make Steve blush.

Anyway, you’ve learned way more TikTok dances than you ever would have thought just to see his pink cheeks. It’s not even always over the top dances that have him chuckling. The last trend you did had him laughing the entire day. It was that sound about Wednesday Adams having one thing on her mind. Only when it said homicide, instead of a deadpan expression you panned the camera to show Bucky and Sam arguing over who got the last donut.

Of course, you knew when you made the video it would appeal to Steve’s sense of humor. Sam and Bucky feature in a lot of your videos for that exact reason.

In general, you make a lot of videos featuring the Avengers just to keep Tony happy. He likes to be the center of attention, plus the only way he would approve of your account was if it could also feature as PR for the team. You agreed, as long as you had final say over what you posted. There’s nothing scripted or designed for a specific reason, you just feature the team sometimes.

Like when that sound from the Big Bang theory was popular amongst Avengers fans, you made a video confessing to Pepper that you’d been thinking about the Avengers, panning to show the team during training.

Of course, the text on the screen said “you are an Avenger” instead of “I believe that”, allowing you to play off the joke. But still, it was fun to include the team.

One of your favorite videos features none other than Scott Lang, mostly because nobody else would do it. Scott thought it was hilarious though.

Using the sound from New Girl, Scott played Schmidt and you Jess. The text on the screen read as follows:

Scott: You just walk around all day thinking about America’s Ass?

You: Yeah, don’t you?

Scott: No! How do you get anything done?

You: It’s hard…

Steve blushed like crazy when everyone cornered him to watch it. Bucky, Sam, and Tony wouldn’t stop bringing it up for at least a month. A part of you hoped he might make a move after that video, seeing as you put yourself out there, but he just assumed it was a joke and laughed it off.

Honestly, you were running out of trends that you could use to get him to understand your feelings. You only had two ideas left, and one of them would be mortifying if it didn’t work out…

-

“Steve. You’ve got to be kidding me.” Bucky sighed, exasperated with Steve for the umpteenth time that month. “You’ve been pining for forever, just make a move!” he whisper yelled, doing his best not to throttle his lifelong friend.

Steve rolled his eyes, purposefully ignoring Bucky’s pointed glare. The two men had spent the last hour looking through your TikTok account. Bucky was adamant that you liked Steve, but the blonde didn’t believe it, despite the so called proof Bucky kept forcing him to watch.

“Buck, would you please just back off? We’re friends. She’s too young to want to be with me like that.” Steve blushed, thinking about the context of his words.

Before Bucky could say anything about how repressing his feelings is bad for him, a new video popped up on your account. Bucky smirked when he saw the thumbnail was once again a picture of Steve, this time with a beard. Steve took the silence as an opportunity to escape, walking into his closet to change.

The video opened with a video of you and Natasha just hanging out, you lip syncing to the words “I like you have a cupcake.” You repeated the words as the video cut to you and Tony.

Bucky nearly dropped the phone when “smack my ass like a drum” blared from the speaker. He cackled bending over in a fit of laughter when he realized that’s what Steve’s picture was used for- and one where he had a beard to boot.

“What is it now, jerk?” Steve emerged from his closet, having changed into loungewear. The sight of Bucky fully cackling had him nervous.

Bucky tossed him the phone, doing his best to stop laughing long enough to tell him to watch the most recent video. With a hesitant sigh, Steve obliged.

Again, Bucky rolled his eyes at how obvious Steve’s feelings were. The second he saw you on the screen, he smiled. And not one of those half hearted polite smiles, a full on happy smile.

Steve’s eyes widened, nearly bulging out of his head when he got to the end of the video.

“‘She doesn’t want to be with me like that.’” Bucky mocked his friends earlier words, grabbing his phone back. “Punk, I don’t know how much more obvious she could be.”

With one more glare in Steve’s direction, Bucky finally left him to his own thoughts. Okay, so you made a lot of videos about how you find him attractive. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’d want to be in a relationship with him. Leave it to Steve to talk himself out of everything Bucky had spent so long trying to convince him of.

-

You were desperate at this point. You honestly thought the cupcake one would send him over the edge, but it didn’t work either. It has been three days, and you know Steve’s seen the video because everyone likes to tease him about it.

“Naaaaaat, it’s not working,” you whined, dramatically throwing yourself onto her bed. She laughed at your antics, briefly looking up at you before deciding to stop what she was going and give you her full attention.

“Look, not only is Steve one of the most clueless people I’ve ever met when it comes to women, but he can also talk himself out of believing someone’s interested in him. Especially you.” Nat watched as you lifted your head from her comforter, slowly turning to stare at her with narrowed eyes.

“Especially me?” you questioned. Why would you have a different standard?

“Y/N, Steve’s from the 40s. He’s super old fashioned. You're a hot young thing, super up to date on modern trends. He thinks you're just messing around as friends because he doesn’t believe someone as young as you would be interested in actually having a relationship with him,” she spelt it out for you, sick of trying to get you to figure it out on your own.

You took a minute to fully understand what she was saying, but then sat up when a new idea struck. “So you’re saying I need to be more direct?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded nonetheless.

“I’ve got an idea. Thanks Nat!” you ran from the room before she could question your newest plan, instead checking to make sure her notifications were on for posts from your TikTok account.

-

“Steve!” you shouted when you saw him down the hall, about to turn a corner. He immediately stopped, turning back to see you running at him. “I need your help!”

You pulled him into the gym, briefly glancing around the room to make sure it was empty. Confirming nobody else was present, you set up your phone on one of the weight racks to record the two of you. It was already open to the recording section of TikTok, the sound you needed queued and ready to begin.

“What’s going on?” Steve looked between you and the phone, nerves heightening as he realized what you were doing. All of your videos about him thus far hasn’t actually involved him filming anything.

“I just need you to react to this trend, okay? It’s kind of old, but that doesn’t really matter,” you spoke quickly, trying to start the video before he could decline.

The music started playing instantly, with Steve awkwardly looking between the screen and you. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was reacting to, and it had him on edge. Just as the song reached the chorus, you turned and grabbed his face. Throwing caution to the wind, you followed through with your plan before you could back out, kissing him with all the passion and emotion you’d been holding back.

Steve froze, clearly surprised by your actions. Before you could pull away, he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you closer. He kissed you with equal passion and emotion, no longer paying attention to your phone recording the moment.

Neither of you noticed when the music cut off, too wrapped up in each other. When the need for air overpowered the desire to keep kissing him, you pulled back to gasp in a few breaths. Steve leaned his forehead against yours, eyes closed and breathing erratic.

The two do you spent the next few moments just breathing, trying to come to terms with what just happened. You gasped when his hands moved, one resting on your waist and the other cupping your cheek. His eyes were still closed when you chanced a glance at him.

“What was the trend?” he breathily whispered the words, still coming down from the high of kissing you.

“Huh?” you mumbled, unable to comprehend the question when he was still touching you like this.

“The TikTok trend? What was it?” his grip on your hip tightened, but his hand framing your face remained gentle.

“Oh, uh, it was- it was kissing your best friend/crush.” You whispered, heart still racing from his proximity. Your nerves had never been greater. Yeah, Nat always tells you that Steve has feelings for you, but what if he was just being polite? Maybe he didn’t know how to reject you when you kissed him out of nowhere, and now he’s trying to find a way to turn you down gently. What if-

“Was my reaction good enough to post?” he broke your train of thought with another question. You took a minute to think about the question, your brain still moving like molasses

“Um, that depends…” you froze when his eyes opened and stared into yours.

“On?” he prompted you to continue.

“Which caption I can use.” you finished the thought, finally remembering the two most common outcomes of the trend.

“What are the choices?” Steve smirked when you looked flustered, clearly not expecting this conversation.

“Uh, the two-” he began rubbing small circles into your hip with his thumb, effectively cutting off your train of thought again. It wasn’t until he lightly squeezed your hip again that you remember you were answering his question.

“Right! The two most common captions are some variation of ‘this was so awkward’ or ‘we’re dating now’,” you managed to blurt out the choices, blushing when he smiled at you.

“Well, I know which I prefer…” you waited with bated breath as he prolonged the silence, enjoying seeing you so on edge. You nearly whined when he let you go, moving to pick up your phone from the weight rack.

You watched in silence as he typed out a caption, tapping each letter with his pointer finger. A small smile formed on your lips at his adorable old man behavior. He then managed to find the post button, adding the video to your account before handing you the phone to see what he chose.

Your smile only grew after you read the caption, dropping the phone and immediately kissing him again.

-

Meanwhile, Nat had gathered the rest of the team that happened to be around to wait for whatever video you had planned to be posted.

Tony, Sam, Bucky, Wanda, Vision, Peter, and Clint all watched as the new video popped up on the screen. Peter bounced with excitement when he heard the song, instantly recognizing the trend. The rest of the group watched as you kissed Steve, mouths gaping open when he actually kissed you back.

Fans were already commenting about how long it took for the two of you to get together, but the team was too focused on laughing at the caption to pay any mind to the comments.

She said the trend was kind of old, but that fits because I’ve got a habit of waiting too long anyways.

Permanent taglist: @averyhotchner @jesuswasnotawhiteman @strawberryspence @sebastnstn @jswessie187 @ellobruv

Marvel: @leyannrae @livstilinski @oceaniamaddness @justreadingficsdontmindme

[charlie-charlton]

Todd Anderson: an analysis

As someone who studies psychology and education/ pedagogy I will now try to analyse Todd Anderson.

I'm very tired and won't go into heavy detail and I will use some theories/headcanons I have

Todd Anderson

You may mistake his anxiety for being shy but this boy has such anxiety that I am indeed concerned.

What can we say about his parents? Well, not much. Especially from the movie so I will focus on the book since his parents and Jeffrey were mentioned quite a lot and not in a good way.

First of all, Todd did not want to go to Welton but his parents forced him to, if his grades would have been better he would have been at Welton earlier.

His mother literally forces him to participate in the social-confirm bullsit at the beginning where everyone stood up and says the stupid 4 pillars in union.

Nevermind, that is not the point.

After that, they left Todd alone to talk to other parents and while our anxious little boy was playing with a stone oldie Nolan came to talk to him but Todd and socializing? No.

Todd was anxious and angry, even frustrated during the ceremony at the beginning.

Then THEN the scene about Mr. Nolan and extracurricular activities: Todd couldn't talk, his anxiety was just too much and he was overwhelmed at the time being, being described as faintly, on the edge of tears. I don't remember if he wanted to play soccer or do rowing but Nolan denied his request anyway.

Mr. Keating’s class probably terrified him. Especially after he not really provokes Todd but also kinda, he just overwhelmes him, goes too far sometimes.

This is not a Keating slander ok. I think @inahallucination wrote something about Todd's anxiety and Mr. Keating's behavior.

His parents. We don't know much about them. What we know is that at the beginning when Todd packed out his things Neil spotted a picture of him with his brother and parents. Todd stood quite away from them, as if he isn't part of the family.

Then the deskset scene, in the book it made me cry so damn hard because it's just so sad.

Yes, they gifted their son the same thing as the year before but Todd opens up a bit to Neil.

When he was a kid he thought that every parent loves their child, at least his teachers and books told him so but he learnt that that isn't the case because first of all he got the same gift and Jeffrey's birthday is always a big thing and important. His father also said that he's not worth as much as he thinks because he isn't like his brother, the perfect Jeffrey. He is only as much worth as all the chemicals in his body, nothing more. He even said how much but I don't remember how much it was, I don't have the book with me now to look for it.

Todd did not sign the paper that it's mr. Keating fault. He didn't sign. His parents yelled at him, quite embarrassed as I remember. His father was VERY DOMINANT and I think that he wanted to punch Todd. Even Mr. Nolan got quite mad and told todd to sign or the consequences will be worse and Todd didn't sign, he took the consequences.

He called Mr. Perry a bastard :)

Literally.

I'm not joking.

He also said that even if he didn't pull the trigger, he killed Neil and that everyone needs to know that.

And he said at the beginning that he would choose Neil's father over his own.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

But considering everything I just wrote and maybe a bit of exaggeration, Todd's parents are horrible. I don't know but for me, looking at how bad Todd's anxiety is and him feeling completely worthless and just what his dad said about his worth and that he would choose Mr. Perry over his own father seems like emotional abuse. I may be exaggerating. But his parents are garbage. They don't care about him, they only care about Jeffrey. They force him to participate in things he's afraid of and legit leave him alone as soon as the ceremony is over. Todd doesn't feel loved at all by them. They don't support him. They ignore his wishes and mental health. I know we are talking about the 50' but please that is not how you treat your child.

They don't listen to him, they don't give him attention (see Neil being his barbaric yawp) and he does not think that he will ever be loved by them.

He has to take care of himself because his parents don't do that.

Neil probably was the first person ever he opened up to, who actually made the effort to help him and include him in activities, to care about him but still respecting his boundaries and helping him overcome his anxiety.

At the smallest critic Todd already thought that Neil will abandon him, that he doesn't want to be friends anymore which is just him thinking that nobody loves him anyway because he's worthless. But that is not true.

He ovethinks everything. As an example the scene where Neil yells at him after he was a little anxious about the consequences of Neil hiding the play from his father.

After Neil yelled, he immediately shut down and didn't dare to speak against him, that's when Neil asks him if he will be at the meeting later and he isn't sure. Neil even gets more upset and that's when Todd thinks that Neil doesn't want him in the club (see critics I just mentioned).

I think that Todd's dad yelles at him a lot at home for not being as good as his brother, that could be why he immediately shut down and said to Neil well- I wrote that already about the attention and him bit being loved...

Maybe I will analyse it again with Freud, Erickson or Piqget, idk yet. Freud would be so much fun tho-

I already wrote about the barbaric yawp thing lol.

This is A MESS but it's as I said not detailed. Also I'm sorry for changing times, it's just in the middle of the night and I can't sleep, so count this as a brainstorm.

Not proof read

I will write a part 2.

I also need to check some things as for example of his dad was as dominant as I remember or if it's just me kinning him.

But he called Mr. Perry a bastard :)

[babybluebex]

Now a real question

What kind of kinks Daniel's characters would have?

oh boy THIS is a pandora’s box

hmm i guess i’ll go down my list of my favs of The Danny Bunch™ lmao

alex kerner (goodbye lenin) has a thing for smoking. he likes to watch you smoke, and he HAS to smoke after sex. god forbid you go to a party with him and someone passes you a joint, because homie is Erect Instantly. he also likes for you to be on top, so most of your fucks are like he’s on the couch and just looking up at you. i also feel like he has a thing for, like, your hips, and he’ll always grab at them/bite them. there’s been more than one occasion where he’s left teeth marks on your hip. he likes to eat you out. he likes the way your thighs quiver around his head when you’re close. he loves to have you suck him off too, and his favorite is when you choke and gag on his cock and his precum dribbles down your chin. just the thought of THAT alone is enough to get him off.

andrea marowski (ladies in lavender) is a sub, so THATS something we have to talk about. this boy is a sub and a bottom, and he has the worst mommy/daddy kink ever. he just wants to be good for his partner and hear how he’s such a good boy. praise kink. praise kink AS HELL. if he EVER has to dom/top, he is a service top. if his partner has breasts, boy he is ALL OVER THEM. he likes to hold your tits and roll your nipple between his fingers, he likes to rest his head on them when cuddling, and man oh man he is forever on a quest to have a titty in his mouth. he also likes for you to be on top, and he’s sucking your tits the entire time (my breastfeeding kink goes brrr). baby man. that’s all.

niki lauda (rush)... where do i start with this guy. maybe it’s not so much a kink, but he’s into quick fucks. right before/after a race, he’ll shove his partner against a wall and just Go To Town. i also feel like he likes bareback/creampie, but not breeding. he just wants to own his partner. degradation as hell— “god, you’re such a whore on your knees like this, bet you wanna suck off every racer here, huh?” and i touched on this earlier but it bears repeating: he Can and Will take pictures of you and keep them in his wallet/pocket/sun visor, anywhere he can possibly have them. just a picture of his fist in your hair and you can sorta see his cock buried in you in the corner of the picture, and if someone sees the polaroid, he’s just Proud. i also feel like he likes to overstimulate you, so he’ll fuck you until you’re so close that you can taste it, and he’ll pull out and do whatever the fuck. and teasing AS HELL. “if i place first, i’ll come back and fuck you stupid, how does that sound?”

laszlo kreizler (the alienist), like niki, is into quick fucks. like, pushing your skirt up and just fucking you hard and fast, then returning to work like nothing ever happened. (he likes to see your weak legs, and he’s proud of himself if you have to sit down). he also likes really slow stuff too, though, and he’ll take his time laying you down and undressing you and will kiss your neck and it’s the definition of Making Love. although, unlike niki, las is ALL about that breeding kink. he doesn’t really want kids, but he’s in love with the idea of seeing his partner all big and pregnant and barefoot around the house. it’s all part of staking his claim on you. he also really likes giving his partner hickies, because the clothing of the period allowed for shit like that (high collars on shirts, long sleeves with coats, etc). i feel like there’s a hint of choking in there too; he just grabs at your cravat when fucking you and won’t stop until he sees tears in your eyes.

zemo (tfatws) just... again, he is worthy of his own post, but i’ll make this quick: choking. spanking. pulling your hair. spitting (on your tits, in your mouth, on your cunt before he slides into you). a little tiny bit of slapping too (just Smack A Clit and hear a bitch whimper, i agree). he also has SUCH a thing for like, buying you nice jewelry and fucking you while you’re wearing it. bonus points if it’s a necklace and he gets to watch it bounce off your tits while you fuck yourself on his cock. and buying you nice makeup and edging you until you’re crying and that expensive mascara is running in rivulets down your cheeks.

padre domingo (MY MF MANS)... i literally have no idea where to start with this guy. he DEF is all about what’s bad and sinful and looked down upon, so he likes forbidden rendezvous, which include railing you over the alter. he’s into bondage, but in the way that he’ll wrap his rosary around your wrists and keep count of how many orgasms he’d given you (or, alternatively, how many times he’s edged you). bonus points if he has access to your rosary, so he has TWO rosaries and DOUBLE the number yknow. also... i haven’t really talked ab this before... but... anal. he likes it. he buys into the idea of like “god’s back door” or whatever the fuck, so he’ll be in your ass and like fingering your cunt and pinching your clit WOW i am actually turning red here. he also likes eating you out, mainly for the moment where you squeal when he sucks on your clit and your thighs try to close around his head. he likes for you to be loud. he likes to hear how much pleasure he’s giving you.

hmmm... i think i’ll end this with someone i haven’t touched on before: checo from paradise mall (or, as i call him, emo baby boy who DEFINITELY listens to three cheers for sweet revenge on a fuckn loop)

he just. he. he likes to have his hair pulled. he loves his long hair and, even when y’all aren’t fucking, he likes to have his hair played with. he also likes quick fucks; like, the picture above gives me very “we’re out with friends but you look delicious, come with me to the bathroom and let me rail you”. and he has you leaned over the sink and is fucking you from behind, and he shoves his fingers in your mouth and forced you to watch yourself in the mirror, and he’s in your ear the entire time “you’re squeezing the shit outta me, honey. ya like watching yourself get fucked like the dumb little slut you are? yeah, you fucking like it, i can feel your little cunt getting wetter by the second.” size kink as HELL too, like, he’ll press his hand to your belly as he fucks you and he’ll go harder and faster until he feels himself through you against his hand. he likes to mark you up too, so like hickies on your neck, collarbones, shoulders, thighs, stomach, hips. if he knows that you’ll be wearing a specific item of clothing in the coming days, he will make the darkest, most obscene marks in places that he KNOWS will show.

feel free to add onto this

[hargrove-mayfields]

Back when things were still easy, Billy and Max used to have sibling days on the weekends when Neil wouldn’t be home, setting aside their issues to have just one day that was meant for doing something fun together.

The tradition had been dropped after the move to Hawkins, and Max thinks that’s where a lot of the strain on their relationship comes from. Without those designated times to let go of some of the tension building between them, they fall to pieces.

There’s one day in particular where it’s just Max at home all by herself, her mother and Neil having gone on a trip to the city she opted out of, when Billy shows up much earlier than he said he would be back, ruining the calm when he slammed the front door so hard a picture frame fell off the wall.

Neither of them say a word to the other, all she gets is an apologetic and glossy looking glance for the noise as he storms past her like she isn’t even there.

She doesn’t see Billy again for a long time after that, just hears the angry music blaring in his room. By now, she’s wisened up enough to know that meant he was probably crying in there, and though she doesn’t know what happened, she feels bad.

It’d been far too long since they acted anything like real siblings, not that they were actually related, but they used to be just as close, so after her brother’s been brooding for literal hours, she knows she wants to do something.

Her opportunity to bring it up comes when Billy makes his grand appearance at her door, stopping by to ask if she ate dinner just so he, quote ‘wouldn’t get any shit for it.’ She nods in agreement and asks, “Do you know what day it is, Billy?”

He shrugs, “28th of June.”

“Well, doy, but it’s also Friday.” Billy raises an eyebrow, missing the point, and Max rolls her eyes. “Friday. You know, like, the one day we get to hang out.”

Too cool for that stuff anymore apparently, he scoffs and leans against the doorframe, and she just knows he’s going to say something snarky, so she turns the puppy dog eyes up a notch, “Please? It’ll be fun.”

It works, Billy sighs way over dramatic and steps into her room, throwing himself down onto her beanbag chair. She can’t contain the smile on her face when he asks with fake defeat, “What did you want, shitbird?”

“I want a makeover day. Like we used to do.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Why?” She crosses her arms, “Just because that’s what I want to do?”

He fixes her with a look that says ‘seriously?’, and explains, an edge of frustration to his voice, “No, because you know what’ll happen if I’m struttin’ around in nail polish and shit when Neil gets back.”

“They’re not supposed to come back until like, Monday though,” in response to her excuses, he mimics her in crossing his arms over his chest, so she tries harder to reason with him, “And we can always just take it off when we’re done.”

“That’s just a waste of your stuff, then.”

“Come on, Billy, please?” she’s out of actual arguments and he’s winning, so she brings out the big guns, the little sister privilege, the one surefire way she knows will always knock her brother off guard, “I miss you.”

He squints at her, seeing through the attempted guilt trip, but he can’t muster a frown, and he must know it wasn’t all fake, because he says, “Whatever.”

She knows that’s his version of a yes and he’s just too proud to admit he caved, so she squeals and claps her hands together, taking off like a shot to dig under her bed for the stowed away beauty kit. It’s a little wicker basket filled to the brim with nail polish and makeup, the same one they’d used years ago before everything went wrong, and it makes her happy, bringing the old thing back out.

She stops to put a record in her player, choosing Queen as the closest thing to a middle ground between their respective music tastes, they at least both weren’t supposed to listen to it, and drops down into the other chair beside Billy.

On the latch-hook rug in front of them, she starts to empty the basket, lining up all her brightly colored bottles of nail polish, slightly dried out after months of not using them. “What color?”

“Why do I have to go first?” Billy asks. All Max has to say in response is a know-it-all “Because I said so.”

“Fine. You pick.” The moment he says it he looks like he regrets it, Max is notoriously bad at making decisions, but she ignores him and starts holding up bottles anyways.

First, after few minutes deliberation, she chooses a pretty dark green, and he scrunches his nose and doesn’t say anything. She picks a purplish color, which he tosses away on the bed, a very firm ‘no’ that makes Max giggle. Then she gives him a bright orange bottle, and he holds in front of his face, studying it before turning that one down too.

“God, if I knew you’d be so annoying I would’ve just painted them all the colors.” She remarks, lining up her polishes so she could do just that.

“That’s actually probably not a very good idea, kiddo.” Looking a little panicked, he digs through the bottles himself, settling on one he pulls away and stares at for a second before handing it to her and telling her, “Just do ‘em red.”

It confuses her, but she agrees regardless, and makes him turn in his seat so he’s facing her and his hands are flat on the floor. His hands are a little shaky, so her paint job isn’t the best, she even drips some on the carpet, which she hopes her mother won’t notice, but Billy doesn’t say anything about the mess.

With his nails done she moves onto his hair, she wants to do double braids like how he taught her to do in her own hair, so she shoves his arm to get him to turn around. “Scoot.”

He lets her push him around until he’s in the right place that she can reach his hair, but once he’s facing the far wall he tells her, “Don’t you dare use that brush on my hair, Maxine.”

“Jeez, relax. I’m not gonna mess up your princess curls.” She mocked, but she still went for the comb to run through his hair instead.

She waited until she could get it through without catching on any tangles before bothering trying to talk to him. When Billy was upset, he tended to clam up, but she didn’t particularly like feeling awkward in the silence, leaving all the talking to the record player. “Can we talk about why you were mad earlier?”

“Nope.”

“Would you tell me if I told you about my day?” She tries, but he shuts it down again with an “Unlikely.”

“I’ll tell you anyways.” Max didn’t know what had happened with Billy, but she knew she hadn’t had the greatest morning herself either. “I had to ask Lucas to bring me home early because me and Mike got in a fight.”

Billy snorted, and spoke with just as much sarcasm as Max had used on him. She learned that from him anyways. “You and Mike? No.”

“Yeah. He was being a total ass about El, trying to like, own her or something, so I told him to lay off ‘cause that’s totally not fair.”

She knew that Billy, having graduated and turned 18 now, was probably getting a little old for this type of drama, but he was a good listener, no matter how much he pretended not to care, always giving little bits of insight and saying things to make her laugh.

She continues, “Well, anyways he like, totally bit my head off for sticking up for her, so then I told him he was just a miserable mouth breather who’s jealous of El being happy, and he tried to kick me out.”

Billy laughed at that, muttering a little ‘ow’ when the action made Max pull his hair, “But you left before he could kick you out right?”

“Duh.” She sighs a little, the fun part of the story over. “Then when we pulled up outside, Lucas said something stupid about it being my fault or whatever, so I dumped him again.”

“Good. I told you not to take any shit from them anymore.” Billy had been less than happy with her friends a lot recently, when she’d come home from school or from hanging out upset over something they said. They never meant to hurt her feelings, but Billy didn’t like it all the same, and made her promise she’d stand up for herself a little more. Like she did to him.

“Yeah, I guess.” It makes her feel light on the inside, to know Billy was proud of her for following his advice, in his own way at least. “So? What happened to you?”

He shrugs again, and blows her off, “It’s nothing.”

“You were crying.”

“Yeah, and it’s none of your business.”

“Maybe not,” she fumbles with the braid and loses it, Billy’s stupid uneven mullet making it way too hard to braid so many different lengths of hair, “But I’m like, an expert now. El says she likes my advice.”

Under his breath, Billy mutters, “‘Course she does.”

Max purses her lips and pretends she didn’t hear that before continuing her offer, “Anyways, I can always try to help.”

“Listen, it’s just stupid dating stuff. Nothin’ you need to be worrying about.”

“But I’m a girl. I can give advice about that.” She thinks about it for a second, “I mean, I know more about being a girlfriend than having one, but it’s probably about the same.”

“Maybe.” Billy mumbles, focusing all his attention on picking at the nail polish that had missed the edges of his nails, and just from the way he tensed up she can tell she’d overstepped Billy’s boundaries in some way or another.

She finishes of the braid she had already started over twice now and puts a blue scrunchie on the end of it, giving him a minute.

When she starts combing out the rest of his hair is when Billy speaks again, not a drop of his distinctly Billy attitude in his words as he admitted softly, “You know, shitbird, I never said anything ‘bout having a girlfriend.”

That’s confusing to her at first, because he had just told her it was a dating thing, but Max’d been hearing all the nasty things Neil said about Billy for years now, and while she might just be a kid, might be the clueless and annoying little sister, she still knew the weight of what he’d just admitted to her.

It had always made her sad, to know Neil didn’t really like Billy, all the mean words he used, ones she wouldn’t dare repeat, to describe Billy and his friends, all the lies he told about him behind his back. But she doesn’t buy it, what her asshole step-dad had to say.

Her brother was cool, and she liked hanging out with him, when he wasn’t being such a jerk. The fact that he had a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend didn’t change that in the least bit.

She hums, trying to gather words and, her voice strained against the outburst of happiness, says “See? I can totally help with boy stuff.”

[k-llama-llama]

Going Higher

Stray Kids AU: 9th member

Tori x Stray Kids

Stray Kids during the vault jump on Kingdom.

A/N:Please check out my PATREON (patreon.com/kllamallama) for exclusive posts you can’t get anywhere else, as well as lots of other cool benefits!

Requests are OPEN and your feedback is still greatly appreciated!

Masterlist and other Follow Me links in bio!

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Chan asked her.

“What is that, your catchphrase?” Tori scoffed. “Come on, Chan, you know I’ll be fine.”

Chan gestured wildly at the field. “You’re trying to vault jump something that’s way taller than you are with an injured hand. I feel like this is a bad idea.”

They were at the field day for Kingdom, and Tori was staunchly refusing to sit out despite her injury and the fact that she was the only girl in the competition. This was in spite of the fact that both the managers, the producers, and Chan were trying to convince her to sit out. She’d already beaten the first two groups, and now Chan was the only one standing in her way.

“I danced ballet for years, I can jump high enough to get over that thing.” She stretched out her calf.

“What if you hit your hand?” He continued trying to reason with her.

“I’ll keep my pain to myself.” She grinned. “I’m not sitting out when I’m the only girl. It won’t look good.”

He sighed. “But you’re already injured.”

“And I won’t hold the team back.”

“Do you two feel like you’re having the same argument? Because I feel like you’re both talking about different things.” Minho looked up from where he was tying his shoe.

“We’re not having an argument at all.” Tori nudged him with her foot. “I’m going to jump the vault, set a record and live the rest of my life as a legend.”

“Possible a legend with one hand, but sure.” Minho nodded. “But, sure, give it a shot.”

“I’ll get a hook.”

“Tori!” Someone shouted.

Tori looked away from where she was stretching to see Seonghwa walking over from his own tent. She was sure her cheeks went beet red, as soon as he stepped towards her.

“Hey. You guys ready for this?” She gestured out to the field where the staff were setting up the vault to the first height.

“Probably not.” He gestured to his clothes. Ateez were the only ones who hadn’t turned up in full sporting outfits. “Are you jumping or are you sitting this one out because of your hand?”

“She should be sitting out!” Chan came up beside her.

“But he’s not the boss of me.” Tori grinned. “So I’m jumping anyways.”

“Stray Kids to the field!” The announcement came through the speakers.

“That’s us.” Chan sighed, stepping away.

Tori didn’t follow, still smiling at Seonghwa.

“Good luck.” He offered his hand for a fist bump. “Do it for the team.”

“I’ll win us a medal.” She beamed.

“If you do, smoothies are on me tonight.”

Tori blushed. She’d been out with Seonghwa a few times now, but it still took her by surprise every time she realized that he wanted to spend time with her. Neither of them were rushing to put a label on it, especially with Kingdom breathing down their necks, but they always had an amazing time. They just got each other and it was so easy to be together.

“Tori? Are you coming?” Chan called.

Tori shook out of her thoughts. “Cheer for me?”

“Of course.” Seonghwa coughed. “We all will.”

Tori smiled weakly and turned to hurry after her group.

“What was that about?” Chan asked when she reached him.

“Hm?” Tori asked cluelessly.

“You and Seonghwa. You’re going out for smoothies?”

Tori winced. She hadn’t exactly broached the topic with Chan about her kinda sorta maybe considering dating someone. It wasn’t that she thought he’d have a problem with it, she just didn’t know how he would take it. She certainly wasn’t going to lie to him…but now maybe wasn’t the time to fully explore the topic.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I promised to show him that place that does boba smoothies.”

“I love that place.” He sighed happily. Tori showed up seemingly every week with smoothies from a new place that she had discovered. It probably didn’t sound that weird for her to be taking their mutual friend out for smoothies.

“It’s great.” She nodded, before trying to quickly change the subject. “So…should I jump first to get it over with?”

“No.” He chuckled. “You should wait until a few of us have jumped so that you have time to change your mind.”

“Not changing my mind.” She winked.

She went to stand beside Jeongin, adjusting the knot in the front of her shirt. She had it tied up to reveal a little bit of her stomach, as the pink sweatpants were not necessarily flattering.

Jeongin was bouncing on his heels. He’d been getting a lot of attention as the maknae of the competition, and he was very pepped-up.

“Careful, or you’ll bounce right out of your shoes.” Tori teased.

“Noona, I was worried they weren’t going to let you jump!” He exclaimed. “How’s your hand?”

Tori held up her bandaged hand. They’d wrapped a few extra layers of gauze around it just to give it some cushioning, so she looked like she was wearing an over mitt on her hand. “Never better.”

The announcement came over that they were beginning, and Tori quickly began to cheer as the vault started.

She had to be honest, she’d been confident about the jump before they started, when they’d watched the other teams go. But now that she was up close, it seemed a lot higher. And as she watched her teammates fail (even if Jeongin did fail on purpose), she grew increasingly nervous for her turn.

“And now we have the final runner for Stray Kids! The only girl competing today, the Princess of Kingdom…Tori!” Changmin shouted over the mic.

Despite her nerves, Tori did a playful curtsy as she walked over to the starting position.

“Let’s go Tori!” She could hear cheers from the rest of the teams.

“Don’t fall!” Felix roared.

“Right.” She rolled her eyes, before waving at the camera. “Tori, ready to go!”

Tori took a deep breath, sizing up the vault, and the sprinted forward. She was athletic enough that speed wasn’t an issue, but she had to focus on making sure she would hit the vault at the right speed.

She stepped onto it, springing up onto the springboard, and vaulting as high as she could. She lifted her legs wide out to the side to clear the vault, and then landed unceremoniously on the ground.

She rolled to a stop, hands still held above her head.

“Did I do it?” She looked around wildly.

She was tackled to the side, and barely had time to suck in a breath before she found herself buried under a Stray Kids dog pile.

“You did so good!” Someone – she thought it might be Seungmin – was shouting.

“And now I’m suffocating!” Her voice was muffled.  She had no idea if their mics would even be picking this up, considering how smothered she was.

“Off before you break her.” Chan started hauling people off of her.

Tori sprung to her feet as soon as she was free, bowing enthusiastically to the other teams and the announcer’s tent.

“She made that look easy.” Changmin announced with a laugh. “That’s another point for Stray Kids.”

Tori practically skipped over to the tent, absolutely beaming.

“Told ya.” She linked arms with Chan. “And you said I couldn’t do it.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t do it. I said you shouldn’t because you might hurt your hand.” He patted her back. “But fine. You did a good job. Now you just need to get through the next like six rounds.”

“Easy.” She winked at him.

When they reached their tent, Tori purposefully took the seat on the edge, closest to Ateez’s tent. Seonghwa was sitting on the end at their table, and he held out a hand for a fist bump.

“You killed it.” He declared.

“I try not to disappoint.”

“There’s no way you could.” He laughed.

Tori didn’t really know how to respond to that, so she just chuckled awkwardly and looked back out to the field. “So uh…did you guys already do that voting thing for the visual?”

“Yeah, we did it earlier.” Seonghwa nodded. “Took the pictures too.”

“Who’d you vote for?” Tori asked teasingly.

Seonghwa looked down at his feet. “I don’t think we’re supposed to tell.”

Tori laughed. “It was Felix, wasn’t it? I feel like everyone voted for Felix.”

Seonghwa just shrugged. “You’ll see.”