#fractured foundation

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The true, tactical significance of Project 2025

TODAY (July 14), I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Like you, I have heard a lot about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for the actions that Trump should take if he wins the presidency. Given the Heritage Foundation's centrality to the American authoritarian project, it's about as awful and frightening as you might expect:

https://www.project2025.org/

But (nearly) all the reporting and commentary on Project 2025 badly misses the point. I've only read a single writer who immediately grasped the true significance of Project 2025: The American Prospect's Rick Perlstein, which is unsurprising, given Perlstein's stature as one of the left's most important historians of right wing movements:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

As Perlstein points out, Project 2025 isn't new. The Heritage Foundation and its allies have prepared documents like this, with many identical policy prescriptions, in the run-up to many presidential elections. Perlstein argues that Warren G Harding's 1921 inaugural address captures much of its spirit, as did the Nixon campaign's 1973 vow to "move the country so far to the right 'you won’t even recognize it.'"

The threats to democracy and its institutions aren't new. The right has been bent on their destruction for more than a century. As Perlstein says, the point of taking note of this isn't to minimize the danger, rather, it's to contextualize it. The American right has, since the founding of the Republic, been bent on creating a system of hereditary aristocrats, who govern without "interference" from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself is checked only by rivalries with other aristocrats. The project of the right is grounded in a belief in Providence: that God's favor shines on His best creations and elevates them to wealth and power. Elite status is proof of merit, and merit is "that which leads to elite status."

When a wealthy person founds an intergenerational dynasty of wealth and power, this is merely a hereditary meritocracy: a bloodline infused with God's favor. Sometimes, this belief is dressed up in caliper-wielding pseudoscience, with the "good bloodline" reflecting superior genetics and not the favor of the Almighty. Of course, a true American aristocrat gussies up his "race realism" with mystical nonsense: "God favored me with superior genes." The corollary, of course, is that you are poor because God doesn't favor you, or because your genes are bad, or because God punished you with bad genes.

So we should be alarmed by the right's agenda. We should be alarmed at how much ground it has gained, and how the right has stolen elections and Supreme Court seats to enshrine antimajoritarianism as a seemingly permanent fact of life, giving extremist minorities the power to impose their will on the rest of us, dooming us to a roasting planet, forced births, racist immiseration, and most expensive, worst-performing health industry in the world.

But for all that the right has bombed so many of the roads to a prosperous, humane future, it's a huge mistake to think of the right as a stable, unified force, marching to victory after inevitable victory. The American right is a brittle coalition led by a handful of plutocrats who have convinced a large number of turkeys to vote for Christmas.

The right wing coalition needs to pander to forced-birth extremists, racist extremist, Christian Dominionist extremists (of several types), frothing anti-Communist cranks, vicious homophobes and transphobes, etc, etc. Pandering to all these groups isn't easy: for one thing, they often want opposite things – the post-Roe forced birth policies that followed the Dobbs decision are wildly unpopular among conservatives, with the exception of a clutch of totally unhinged maniacs that the party relies on as part of a much larger coalition. Even more unpopular are policies banning birth control, like the ones laid out in Project 2025. Less popular still: the proposed ban on no-fault divorce. Each of these policies have different constituencies to whom they are very popular, but when you put them together, you get Dan Savage's "Husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office":

https://twitter.com/fakedansavage/status/1805680183065854083

The constituency for "husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office" is very small. Almost no one in the GOP coalition is voting for all of this, they're voting for one or two of these things and holding their noses when it comes to the rest.

Take the "libertarian" wing of the GOP: its members do favor personal liberty…it's just that they favor low taxes for them more than personal liberty for you. The kind of lunatic who'd vote for a dead gopher if it would knock a quarter off his tax bill will happily allow his coalition partners to rape pregnant women with unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds and force them to carry unwanted fetuses to term if that's the price he has to pay to save a nickel in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

And, of course, the religious maniacs who profess a total commitment to Biblical virtue but worship Trump, Gaetz, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Reagan, and the whole panoply of cheating, lying, kid-fiddling, dope-addled refugees from a Jack Chick tract know that these men never gave a shit about Jesus, the Apostles or the Ten Commandments – but they'll vote for 'em because it will get them school prayer, total abortion bans, and unregulated "home schooling" so they can brainwash a generation of Biblical literalists who think the Earth is 5,000 years old and that Jesus was white and super into rich people.

Time and again, the leaders of the conservative movement prove themselves capable of acts of breathtaking cruelty, and undoubtedly many of them are depraved sadists who genuinely enjoy the suffering of their enemies (think of Trump lickspittle Steven Miller's undisguised glee at the thought of parents who would never be reunited with children after being separated at the border). But it's a mistake to think that "the cruelty is the point." The point of the cruelty is to assemble and maintain the coalition. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the point:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

The right has assembled a lot of power. They did so by maintaining unity among people who have irreconcilable ethics and goals. Think of the pro-genocide coalition that includes far-right Jewish ethno-nationalists, antisemitic apocalyptic Christians who believe they are hastening the end-times, and Islamophobes of every description, from War On Terror relics to Hindu nationalists.

This is quite an improbable coalition, and while I deplore its goals, I can't help but be impressed by its cohesion. Can you imagine the kind of behind-the-scenes work it takes to get antisemites who think Jews secretly control the world to lobby with Zionists? Or to get Zionists to work alongside of Holocaust-denying pencilneck Hitler wannabes whose biggest regret is not bringing their armbands to Charlottesville?

Which brings me back to Project 2025 and its true significance. As Perlstein writes, Project 2025 is a mess. Clocking in an 900 pages, large sections of Project 2025 flatly contradict each other, while other sections contain subtle contradictions that you wouldn't notice unless you were schooled in the specialized argot of the far right's jargon and history.

For example, Project 2025 calls for defunding government agencies and repurposing the same agencies to carry out various spectacular atrocities. Both actions are deplorable, but they're also mutually exclusive. Project 2025 demands four different, completely irreconcilable versions of US trade policy. But at least that's better than Project 2025's chapter on monetary policy, which simply lays out every right wing theory of money and then throws up its hands and recommends none of them.

Perlstein says that these conflicts, blank spots and contradictions are the most important parts of Project 2025. They are the fracture lines in the coalition: the conflicting ideas that have enough support that neither side can triumph over the other. These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking "LOOK AT ME" sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

The right is really good at this. Perlstein points to Nixon's expansion of affirmative action, undertaken to sow division between Black and white workers. We need to get better at it.

So far, we've lavished attention on the clearest and most emphatic proposals in Project 2025 – for understandable reasons. These are the things they say they want to do. It would be reckless to ignore them. But they've been saying things like this for a century. These demands constitute a compelling argument for fighting them as a matter of urgency, with the intention of winning. And to win, we need to split apart their coalition.

Perlstein calls on us to dissect Project 2025, to cleave it at its joints. To do so, he says we need to understand its antecedents, like Nixon's "Malek Manual," a roadmap for destroying the lives of civil servants who failed to show sufficient loyalty to Nixon. For example, the Malek Manual lays out a "Traveling Salesman Technique" whereby a government employee would be given duties "criss-crossing him across the country to towns (hopefully with the worst accommodations possible) of a population of 20,000 or under. Until his wife threatens him with divorce unless he quits, you have him out of town and out of the way":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Final_Report_on_Violations_and_Abuses_of/0dRLO9vzQF0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22organization+of+a+political+personnel+office+and+program%22&pg=PA161&printsec=frontcover

It's no coincidence that leftist historians of the right are getting a lot of attention. Trumpism didn't come out of nowhere – Trump is way too stupid and undisciplined to be a cause – he's an effect. In his excellent, bestselling new history of the right in the early 1990s, When the Clock Broke, Josh Ganz shows us the swamp that bred Trump, with such main characters as the fascist eugenicist Sam Francis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke

Ganz joins the likes of the Know Your Enemy podcast, an indispensable history of reactionary movements that does excellent work in tracing the fracture lines in the right coalition:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/when-clock-broke-106803105

Progressives are also an uneasy coalition that is easily splintered. As Naomi Klein argues in her essential Doppelganger, the liberal-left coalition is inherently unstable and contains the seeds of its own destruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Liberals have been the senior partner in that coalition, and their commitment to preserving institutions for their own sake (rather than because of what they can do to advance human thriving) has produced generations of weak and ineffectual responses to the crises of terminal-stage capitalism, like the idea that student-debt cancellation should be means-tested:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

The last bid for an American aristocracy was repelled by rejecting institutions, not preserving them. When the Supreme Court thwarted the New Deal, FDR announced his intention to pack the court, and then began the process of doing so (which included no-holds-barred attacks on foot-draggers in his own party). Not for nothing, this is more-or-less what Lincoln did when SCOTUS blocked Reconstruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

But the liberals who lead the progressive movement dismiss packing the court as unserious and impractical – notwithstanding the fact that they have no plan for rescuing America from the bribe-taking extremists, the credibly accused rapist, and the three who stole their robes. Ultimately, liberals defend SCOTUS because it is the Supreme Court. I defended SCOTUS, too – while it was still a vestigial organ of the rights revolution, which improved the lives of millions of Americans. Human rights are worth defending, SCOTUS isn't. If SCOTUS gets in the way of human rights, then screw SCOTUS. Sideline it. Pack it. Make it a joke.

Fuck it.

This isn't to argue for left seccession from the progressive coalition. As we just saw in France, splitting at this moment is an invitation to literal fascist takeover:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner

But if there's one thing that the rise of Trumpism has proven, it's that parties are not immune to being wrestled away from their establishment leaderships by radical groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

What's more, there's a much stronger natural coalition that the left can mobilize: workers. Being a worker – that is, paying your bills from wages, instead of profits – isn't an ideology you can change, it's a fact. A Christian nationalist can change their beliefs and then they will no longer be a Christian nationalist. But no matter what a worker believes, they are still a worker – they still have a irreconcilable conflict with people whose money comes from profits, speculation, or rents. There is no objectively fair way to divide the profits a worker's labor generates – your boss will always pay you as little of that surplus as he can. The more wages you take home, the less profit there is for your boss, the fewer dividends there are for his shareholders, and the less there is to pay to rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Reviving the role of workers in their unions, and of unions in the Democratic party, is the key to building the in-party power we need to drag the party to real solutions – strong antimonopoly action, urgent climate action, protections for gender, racial and sexual minorities, and decent housing, education and health care.

The alternative to a worker-led Democratic Party is a Democratic Party run by its elites, whose dictates and policies are inescapably illegitimate. As Hamilton Nolan writes, the completely reasonable (and extremely urgent) discussion about Biden's capacity to defeat Trump has been derailed by the Democrats' undemocratic structure. Ultimately, the decision to have an open convention or to double down on a candidate whose campaign has been marred by significant deficits is down to a clutch of party officials who operate without any formal limits or authority:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-the-democratic

Jettisoning Biden because George Clooney (or Nancy Pelosi) told us to is never going to feel legitimate to his supporters in the party. But if the movement for an open convention came from grassroots-dominated unions who themselves dominated the party – as was the case, until the Reagan revolution – then there'd be a sense that the party had constituents, and it was acting on its behalf.

Reviving the labor movement after 40 years of Reaganomic war on workers may sound like a tall order, but we are living through a labor renaissance, and the long-banked embers of labor radicalism are reigniting. What's more, repelling fascism is what workers' movements do. The business community will always sell you out to the Nazis in exchange for low taxes, cheap labor and loose regulation.

But workers, organized around their class interests, stand strong. Last week, we lost one of labor's brightest flames. Jane McAlevey, a virtuoso labor organizer and trainer of labor organizers, died of cancer at 57:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

McAlevey fought to win. She was skeptical of platitudes like "speaking truth to power," always demanding an explanation for how the speech would become action. In her classic book A Collective Bargain, she describes how she built worker power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey helped organize a string of successful strikes, including the 2019 LA teachers' strike. Her method was straightforward: all you have to do to win a strike or a union drive is figure out how to convince every single worker in the shop to back the union. That's all.

Of course, it's harder than it sounds. All the problems that plague every coalition – especially the progressive liberal/left coalition – are present on the shop floor. Some workers don't like each other. Some don't see their interests aligned with others. Some are ornery. Some are convinced that victory is impossible.

McAlevey laid out a program for organizing that involved figuring out how to reach every single worker, to converse with them, listen to them, understand them, and win them over. I've never read or heard anyone speak more clearly, practically and inspirationally about coalition building.

Biden was never my candidate. I supported three other candidates ahead of him in 2020. When he got into office and started doing a small number of things I really liked, it didn't make me like him. I knew who he was: the Senator from MBNA, whose long political career was full of bills, votes and speeches that proved that while we might have some common goals, we didn't want the same America or the same world.

My interest in Biden over the past four years has had two areas of focus: how can I get him to do more of the things that will make us all better off, and do less of the things that make the world worse. When I think about the next four years, I'm thinking about the same things. A Trump presidency will contain far more bad things and far fewer good ones.

Many people I like and trust have pointed out that they don't like Biden and think he will be a bad president, but they think Trump will be much worse. To limit Biden's harms, leftists have to take over the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, so that he's hemmed in by his power base. To limit Trump's harms, leftists have to identify the fracture lines in the right coalition and drive deep wedges into them, shattering his power base.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

[superm4ks]

i am the girl who hates change who sent that ask in june when i was like there's no way max holds onto this title. i cannot believe my meowie continues to surpass my expectations because of course he would win this year. there was no other alternative.

Wow ... And like I told u back then bbygirl .. Max is also a girl who hates change. Max hates change SO much he clinched his 4th in an ice cold pig wid Monza type characteristics that lend themselves to every t0p team except the car wid the suspension of a jeep Wrangler and the top speed of me doing the mile in hs still drunk and on 3 hours of sleep and a mcmuffin. Vegas had a lil something for everybody that wasnt based in Milton Keynes. Unholy temperatures for the ((extremely confused)) merc baddies, slow corners + long straights for the ragazzi, moderate graining for the Woking dolls so Lando cud hit the slay button in low fuel ((an unexpected flop gotta say)). AND nothing for rbr. Not the right wing, not the right balance, not the best tires, not the fresh engine. Imagine being faced wid all that and still feeling fairly confident Max wud be crowned the best driver in the world that weekend, because he's Max Verstappen and for as long as theres a chance I know he'll take it. I know that because I know him. All Max had to do was out qualify Lando in a car that never once got anywhere close to papaya times during practice sessions. I swear they fitted him wid a new wheel and shit came off like three times. So obvi Max out qualifies Lando, then come Sunday, Max manages the gap like the rb20 never been better fit for a circuit, he lets the lil ponies go around and off into the distance to create drama of their own and thats all he wrote. 'there was no alternative' . Say that again. No alternative. No choice. The illusion of choice was broken in Brazil. The definition of insanity was reaffirmed in Vegas. They called an ambulance but not for him. 💎

[protoslacker]

Perlstein says that these conflicts, blank spots and contradictions are the most important parts of Project 2025. They are the fracture lines in the coalition: the conflicting ideas that have enough support that neither side can triumph over the other. These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking "LOOK AT ME" sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic. The true, tactical significance of Project 2025 (14 Jul 2024)

A pertinant essay well worth reading. You may also want to follow Coctorow on here.

[possible-raccoon]

Cringetober day 4: Angel + Demon

This one is a platonic relationship rather than a romantic ship but i still thought it worked with them.

(Silver thought she was too good for the label “Angel” and jumped straight into godhood for the sake of this image)

And day 5: ms paint.

You killed Dr. Fracture!

Congrats..?

[the-halloween-jack]

DC ✢ When he admitted he loved you

Characters: Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian and Clark. This is a companion piece to another headcanon called 'When he realised he loved you' linked here. Though, you can still read it independently.

B R U C E⠀W A Y N E

Bruce did not say it in a quiet moment — for such moments were rare. Though, when they did find him, he spent them with you in silence. Not with words but simply by being near, by existing in your presence.

No. It came during an argument. One of those arguments that shakes the very foundations of a relationship — not because of what was said, but because of what had never been, what was expected.

You had asked him — raw, wounded — what you meant to him. What all this was. Why he kept forming barriers between you, when all you had ever wanted to do was break through.

His answer had been frigid. Precise. Calculated and sharpened. A blade forged from old habits, Bruce wielded it with an unconscious mastery, a last-ditch defence mechanism perfected over decades.

You left. Not in fury, but in heartbreak, disappointment — the kind that does not cry, does not scream, but simply broods into silence. Your absence rang louder than a slammed door, louder than any yell you could have mustered.

Alfred did not speak. Just passed Bruce in the hallway with the kind of look that had once made him sit straighter as a boy. And now, it made him feel small once more, as though he were still a child.

Time passed and still, silence.

He found you in the garden, beneath a sky now thick with stars, the sun had still been gleaming when you had hurried away. You had not been crying. You were still. And in that stillness, he saw the damage he had inflicted upon you.

‘I can’t seem to protect what I love,’ he said, words fractured, conflicted. ‘Not my parents. Not Jason… Not you —’ 

You turned. Not startled by the confession, but by the break in his voice. You had never seen him like this before, never so fragile. 

‘But I do. I love you. I want… I need you to know that.’

It was not cinematic. No kiss. No arms thrown around shoulders. Just him, standing before you, hollowed by an atypical honesty, praying you would believe him — even if he was undeserving of that trust.

And you did. You believed him. Bruce could see it in the ease of your countenance, in the smile that now warmed your face. But even so, he apologised as though he had committed a most heinous crime.

You pulled yourself to your feet, still wordless. And enveloped him in your arms.

‘I love you too, Bruce.’

D I C K⠀G R A Y S O N

Dick meant to say it casually — with that charming nonchalance that usually came so naturally to him. He had rehearsed it, even. Smiled in the mirror once or twice. But it never felt right, never felt adequate. It was too simple a word to describe what he felt for you. 

But love, he discovered, should not wait for perfect timing.

It came unexpectedly late one evening, while a movie played in the background — some low-budget film neither of you had been truly watching. Your head was on his shoulder. His thumb was tracing invisible shapes into your side.

And then — suddenly breathless, it had grown too large to contain, he could not hold it any longer,

‘You know I love you, right?’

You blinked like someone newly roused from a dream, and looked at him as though he had spoken in a foreign language. Dick was not confident he had not. 

When you remained quiet, he chuckled, uneasy. And brought his hand to the back of his neck, in a nervous, boyish manner. 

‘I mean — I have. For a while. I just didn’t want to ruin it by...’ He trailed off, not quite sure what he was saying. 

You remained quiet for a few moments more, contemplating. The juncture of silence stretched taut, he held his breath. And then you smiled. 

As soft as the moonlight now shining through the curtains, you whispered, ‘I love you, too.’

He kissed you gently, as though he were trying to make up for all the times he had not said it sooner. In that moment, he was not Dick Grayson, he was not Nightwing or the Boy Wonder — he was simply someone lucky enough to be loved by you.

To this day, he cannot for the life of him remember the movie that had been playing. All he could remember was that smile — the way it had already lit up your eyes by the time it reached your mouth and the enthralling, glowing warmth that had flooded his system.

J A S O N⠀T O D D

You were stitching him up again — hands steady, breath shallow, a routine so familiar it hurt. Nothing fatal. Nothing new. His form was half-draped in shadow, skin cold under your touch. You sat cross-legged before him. 

‘You’ve got to stop doing this,’ you murmured, not for the first time and certainly not the last. 

He did not answer. Because what would he tell you? Not the truth, you would not want to hear it. Every stitched-up wound felt like proof that you cared; he could not resist the temptation. He did not believe you could love a man like him, but when he felt your gentle fingers work over his skin, he let himself consider it; he let himself yearn. 

‘I’d die for you, you know?’ he muttered. Off-handed. As though it were the most obvious thing, as though it were as easy as breathing.

A frown turned your face. ‘That’s not comforting, Jason.’

And then — something unspooled. A thread that had been pulled too tight for too long. Jason sighed.

‘What I was trying to say… What I meant was… I love you —’ He looked into your eyes, gaze piercing, willing you to see the truth of it. 

The words had flooded out like a barrage breaking open. ‘That’s all I’m trying to say. I’d die for you because… I can’t picture a world without you in it. I wouldn’t want to.’ He shivered at this, at the concept of a sphere you did not grace, the very notion made him ill. 

You stilled. Hands held suspended above him, pausing their work.

He was not looking for a response — only a release; he had needed this off his chest. But you gave him one anyway.

‘I love you, too.’ You had uttered it so softly, had Jason not already been watching your lips, he may have missed it. His breath caught — not in fear, but in awe — as though his lungs had momentarily forgotten their most natural function.

Your words felt like electricity brimming beneath his skin — like every nerve had been awoken at once. A new fullness bloomed within his chest, as though the ribs could no longer host his heart; as if it had suddenly grown too large to contain.

He spoke up again, softer this time,  ‘I’ll try to live for you too. That part’s harder. But believe me when I say I want it. More than anything.’ He gave you one of his rare smiles, and your heart jolted.

You silently placed the first aid materials to the side and leaned in, placing your head against his shoulder. After a short while you shifted, leaving scattered kisses across his fading scars, lingering on each for a moment, he felt that same electricity once more. 

Your hands ghosted over him like he were something precious, as though the ruin of him was worth loving, and that was the message you were trying to convey, what you were trying to have him understand.

Jason did not sleep that night. Not out of pain or panic, but because he was afraid it had been a dream. That peace, for someone like him, was more fragile, more fleeting than any reverie; and he could not stand the idea of waking up.

T I M⠀D R A K E

You both had been working late, each focused on your own tasks, yet relishing in the silent company of one another; the peace of it. Tim sat at his desk, while you lay across his bed, legs swinging behind you with a pen in hand.

Tim had asked you to stay at the manor for the night, but you had gently refused, reminding him you had work in the morning. You got up and walked over, placing both hands on either shoulder. You then pressed a kiss to his temple and whispered in his ear.

‘I better head off now.’ He leaned his head back into you, and his eyes met yours, smiling.

And then — too casually, too instinctively — he said, ‘Okay, love you.’

The words had flowed out like a torrent. A sudden, unexpected failure in his system.

Then a silence dropped like a stone in deep water — sudden, heavy, and irreversible; absolute.

He froze. His eyes were wide, as though the phrase had been spoken by an imposter, by someone else within his skin. He had known this fact for a long time, it had only been a matter of time.

‘I didn’t — I mean — that wasn’t—well, it was, but —’ He stopped. His words crashed over each other, panicked and sputtered.

You tilted your head. Shock the dominant expression on your face.

‘You love me?’

He nodded, slowly, it would be silly to deny it; to lie. Shame crept into the corners of his expression. What if he had said it too soon? What if the word drew you away?  Then suddenly you smiled, as though you had been waiting for this exact failure, this exact slip-up.

‘Well… that’s good,’ your whisper was tender. ‘Because I love you too.’

And just like that, his spiralling mind halted. His thoughts — so often a storm of what-ifs and whys — were suddenly still.

And in that stillness, something shifted.

The tension in his shoulders eased and melted away. He let out a breath he had not realised he had been holding — shaky, but smiling. It was not his usual tight-lipped smirk, nor the polite upward curve he would give strangers — this one was real. Quiet, disbelieving and full.

You leaned downward and rested your forehead against his, your hand moving to cradle his cheek. Tim leaned into it like he had been starved of its softness. You spoke through a grin.

‘Maybe I should stick around. Was that your plan all along?’

D A M I A N⠀W A Y N E⠀(Aged up as Batman)

Damian did not like the word love. Not at first. The word felt paltry. Trite. A flippant syllable never built to hold the sheer weight of what he carried for you.

You had just bested him in sparring. You always did, but only because he allowed it — Damian would sooner impale himself on his training blade than admit it, but it was not as though you were unaware. You had thought it cute, an adjective you would never dare utter to his face. 

Damian had no shortage of self-pride. The fact he was willing to sacrifice it, simply to please you, always left you breathless. 

You extended your hand to guide him up, but he simply stared at it from his place on the mat, his gaze shifting upward. You were standing over him, a barely contained smirk donning your features. 

‘You do not understand what you mean to me,’ he said, voice low and filled with a thousand ulterior meanings, though they bled through, his tone turning earnest.

You did not speak. You simply waited.

‘This feeling,’ he tried again, ‘it disrupts everything. My training. My thoughts. My plans. Everything. It… it…’ He trailed off, not sure how to finish what he was saying, not confident that the words capable of conveying these feelings were extant across any vernacular, it seemed too implausible. 

You smiled, faintly. ‘You mean love?’

He flinched like you had cursed. But then — after a moment — he nodded.

‘Yes. That.’ It was not enough, but he figured he would concede. ‘I feel it. Unwillingly. But truthfully.’

You laughed, it was warm and bell-like. It struck something tender in him, something still learning to hope.

‘I love you too, Damian.’

How was it, that word he had held with such contempt, such scrutiny and scepticism, was suddenly so weighted, so gorgeous uttered from your lips? How was it so impactful now it was directed towards him? 

He looked away, not from shame, but from overwhelm. He had fought assassins, atrocious criminals, and the weight of his father’s legacy — but never had he felt something as all-consuming as being wanted, as overwhelming as the thought of your love.

C L A R K⠀K E N T

He had told you on a rooftop. Not because it was histrionic, but because it was distant — far above the world’s inescapable noise, yet still beneath its stars. 

You were talking about something entirely ordinary. Rent, perhaps. The cost of your water bill.

But he was not listening, not truly. He watched as your lips moved and thought only of how he yearned to kiss them, to wake up to them each and every morning. 

And then he looked at you. Really looked. And the words came like wind through the ether — soft, inevitable.

‘I love you.’ He had cut you off, but it needed to be said. He could not have lived another moment without these words held suspended between you. 

You smiled, easy. ‘I know.’

But he shook his head. Shifting closer. There was an ache in his voice, a gravity to it.

‘No. I love you. Not in the way people say when they’re hanging up the phone. Or when they leave for work in the morning. I love you like… like…’ He paused, eyebrows furrowed, ‘I’m not sure I can put it into words —’ He places his hands on either side of your cheeks. 

You stopped breathing.

‘You’ve given me something no one else has,’ he said, his voice near breaking. ‘Not because you wanted a hero. But because you saw me — as nothing more than a man. The farmboy. The one who still forgets to fold his laundry, after you’ve already asked him five times…’

You let out a sudden laugh, but it was not for his joke, your joy at his admission could not be contained; it surged out. You kissed him.

‘I love you, too.’ You murmured, Clark could hear the smile within your voice. Then he thought of the stars glimmering upon them, they shone bright, yet still somehow paled in your comparison. 

I was thinking of expanding upon the Jason Todd section and turning it into its own one-shot, would anyone be interested in that? Every comment and piece of advice is welcomed and appreciated <3

[thesophistiicate]

small shifts that helped me enjoy daily life more

stopped breaking promises to myself. and stopped making promises i wouldn't keep. every time you betray yourself by not following through on an intention, you fracture your ability to trust yourself. (your ability to trust yourself is foundational to living in calm confidence.)

stopped orienting my life around judgement and outrage. instead, i began spending more time focusing on positives and people/things i admire. the more i did this, the more goodness seemed to flow into my life, while also creating healthier space to productively (!) engage with issues i care about.

wrote morning pages and learned to listen to myself. morning pages in particular have a way of highlighting obstacles and recurring patterns that need addressing. i also found in the course of writing, i'd effortlessly come up with solutions which have so far had a 100% success rate at solving my problems.

ruthlessly edited my online experience. personally, getting off social media entirely is not for me. i love community and connection and seeing all the cool and creative things people are doing. i just make sure to only follow accounts that truly inspire and uplift me.

stopped focusing on being 'realistic' and leaned into my vision and creativity. being 'realistic' and 'rational' can feel intelligent, and there's certainly a place for it (balance is key), but i started to feel so much happier when i allowed myself to romanticise and dream a little, too.

[4linos]

fractured silence 2.

yang jeongin x idol!reader

synopsis: when your pregnancy complicates your secret relationship, the emotional distance between you and your boyfriend grows, leaving you unsure of where you stand and what the future holds.

warnings: pregnancy, angst, hurt/comfort, miscommunication.

wc: 9747

[fractured silence part 1, fractured silence part 3]

The morning light filtered through the windows of the makeup room, casting a soft glow on your reflection as a stylist carefully applied foundation to your skin. But despite the gentle hum of conversation between staff members and the usual pre-interview preparations, your mind was stuck on the night before.

Jeongin’s words still echoed in your head, playing on an endless loop.

You’re being really annoying lately.

Just leave me alone for a bit.

You don’t need to keep asking about everything.

No matter how many times you tried to push them away, the weight of his frustration sat heavily on your chest. The way he had snapped at you, the sudden shift in his behavior, it didn’t make sense.

He had been so sweet, so supportive. He had promised to stand by your side. But now?

Now, he was shutting you out, and you didn’t understand why.

You wanted to call him again, to demand an explanation, to ask if he really meant what he said. But a part of you was scared of the answer.

What if he did mean it?

What if he was regretting everything?

You swallowed hard, trying to focus on the present. You had a long day ahead, interviews, schedules, promotions. You couldn’t let yourself break down right now.

You could deal with Jeongin later.

But then, your manager, Jinhee walked in.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” she said, her voice neutral, but something about the way she looked at you made your stomach twist.

You barely hesitated before nodding, carefully getting up from the chair. “Of course.”

You excused yourself from the stylists, smoothing down your outfit as you followed Jinhee out of the room and down the hall.

She didn’t speak right away, just kept walking, and with every silent second, the tension in your body grew.

She led you into an empty practice room, the door clicking shut behind you. The room was dim, the large mirrors reflecting your nervous expression as you turned to face her.

And then, she finally spoke.

“Is it true?”

Your breath hitched.

She didn’t need to clarify. You knew exactly what she was asking.

Your stomach dropped.

Your lips parted slightly, but no words came out. You couldn’t lie, not to her. But you also didn’t know how to answer.

“I—” you started, your voice barely above a whisper, but she cut you off with a sigh.

“Just tell me the truth.”

She wasn’t angry. That was what scared you the most. If she had come in screaming, furious, maybe it would have been easier to handle. But the disappointment in her eyes, the quiet weight in her tone, it felt so much worse.

You swallowed hard, feeling your body go rigid. Your heartbeat pounded in your ears, and suddenly, the room felt too small.

How did she know?

You had been so careful. You had only told the people you trusted the most your members, and Jeongin.

So how?

Your silence must have been answer enough because Jinhee, sighed again, crossing her arms.

“The company knows.”

The words hit you like a freight train.

Your hands clenched at your sides. “What?”

“JYP reached out to us,” she explained, her voice still calm but firm. “They said they received the information and wanted to confirm it with HYBE. I don’t know who told them, but someone did.”

Your breath caught in your throat.

Someone… told them?

Your mind raced, grasping for answers, but there was only one name flashing in your head, one person who had been acting off ever since he told you he had spoken to Chan.

Jeongin.

You felt like the ground had been ripped out from beneath you.

Had he told them?

No, that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Right?

Your pulse quickened as you struggled to breathe, to think, to make sense of it all.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” you admitted, your voice shaky.

Jinhee studied you carefully. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. But I wanted to warn you before things get worse. HYBE is upset, JYP even more so. You need to be prepared.”

Prepared?

For what?

For the company to scold you? To make you hide even more? To tell you what you already knew that you had just risked everything you worked for?

Your hands trembled, and you clenched them into fists to steady yourself.

Jinhee took a step closer, her voice softening. “Are you okay?”

You wanted to say yes.

You wanted to say that you had everything under control, that you were handling it, that you weren’t standing on the verge of breaking.

But you couldn’t.

Because at that moment, it felt like everything was falling apart.

You shook your head, your voice barely above a whisper. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t ready to tell them yet.”

Jinhee’s expression remained calm, but there was something almost pitying in her eyes. “I know,” she said gently. “But the reality is, they already know. And I don’t know when or how this is going to unfold.”

Her words sent a fresh wave of panic crashing over you.

This wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

You had been preparing yourself, trying to gather the courage to tell the company when the time felt right. When you had a plan. When you and Jeongin figured things out. But now, it was out of your hands.

You bit your lip hard to stop the tears from forming, inhaling sharply as you fought against the lump in your throat.

Jinhee sighed, her tone softer now. “I’ll try to find out more. Who reported it, what the company plans to do, but for now, just focus on today’s schedules. Alright?”

You nodded stiffly, even though you knew, deep down you wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else. This was going to cloud your mind for the rest of the day, no matter how hard you tried to push it down.

With a weak “thank you,” you turned on your heel and left the practice room, your mind racing as you made your way back to the makeup room.

The moment you stepped inside, the other girls turned to you, their faces filled with quiet concern.

Jinae gave you a soft smile. “Everything okay?”

You forced a smile back, even though your chest felt tight. “Yeah. Just… manager stuff.”

They didn’t push, but you could tell they knew something was wrong. You could see it in the way Chae watched you closely, in how Minsu subtly reached out and gave your arm a reassuring squeeze. They weren’t fooled, but they weren’t going to force you to talk.

You appreciated that.

Taking a deep breath, you reached into your bag, fingers scrambling as you searched for your phone. Your hands were trembling slightly, but you ignored it.

You needed to talk to Jeongin.

You needed to hear him tell you that this was a mistake that your company somehow got the information wrong. That he hadn’t done this. That someone else had leaked it.

You tugged your phone out and barely mumbled a rushed “I’ll be right back” before slipping out of the room again.

Your heart was pounding as you rushed down the hall, gripping your phone tightly as you dialed his number.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Four.

He wasn’t answering.

You pressed your back against the cool wall, closing your eyes briefly as the call continued ringing.

Pick up. Please.

On the very last ring, just when you thought it would go to voicemail, the call connected.

Jeongin’s voice came through, but it wasn’t the warm, concerned tone you were used to.

It was irritated. Bothered.

“What is it?” he asked, exhaling heavily like he had just been interrupted from something important.

Your stomach twisted, but you pushed past the hurt.

“They know.”

There was a long pause.

Too long.

You could hear your own heartbeat in the silence.

Then, barely above a whisper, you asked the question you were dreading.

“…Did you tell them?”

More silence.

And then before he could even say anything, he sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

Your breath hitched.

That was all the confirmation you needed.

Your grip on your phone tightened as you stared blankly at the tiled floor, your entire body going rigid.

“Why?” Your voice came out shaky, raw. “Why would you do that?”

Jeongin exhaled again, but it wasn’t frustrated this time. It was tired.

“Because—” He hesitated. “Because they were going to find out eventually.”

You blinked rapidly, your vision blurring. “So what? You decided to throw me under the bus first? Were you..were you trying to save yourself?”

Jeongin’s breath hitched at your accusation. “No—”

“Then why?” you asked again, your voice cracking. “Why would you go behind my back like this? We were supposed to handle this together.”

“I was handling it,” he argued, but there was something defensive in his tone. “I told Chan. And he—he lost it. He said this could ruin everything. He was scared, and I—” He cut himself off, like he didn’t know how to explain. “I thought if I told them first, it would be better than them finding out through rumors or scandals.”

You let out a bitter laugh, one that held no amusement. “Better?”

Jeongin didn’t answer.

You wiped at your face harshly, even though the tears hadn’t fallen yet. Your chest ached, your throat felt tight, and suddenly, you felt so small.

So alone.

“You promised me,” you whispered. “You promised you’d stand by me.”

“I am—”

“No, Jeongin,” you cut him off. “You’re not.”

Another silence.

The longer it stretched, the more your heart shattered.

You waited, waited for him to say something, to tell you that he was still here, that he hadn’t just broken the trust you had in him.

But nothing came.

And suddenly, the weight of everything, the pregnancy, the company knowing, the overwhelming sense of betrayal became too much.

You couldn’t do this. Not right now.

You swallowed down the sob threatening to escape and exhaled shakily. “I have to go.”

Jeongin must have heard the shift in your tone because his voice softened immediately. “Wait—”

But you didn’t wait.

You hung up before he could say another word.

And this time, you didn’t call back.

The moment you hung up, your phone lit up again, Jeongin’s name flashing across the screen.

He was calling you back.

You clenched your jaw, gripping the phone so tightly your knuckles turned white. You weren’t ready to hear whatever excuses he had. You didn’t want to listen to his apologies, not when the damage had already been done.

Before you could second-guess yourself, you pressed down on his contact, tapped Block Number, and shoved your phone back into your bag.

You didn’t want to cry. Not now. Not here.

But the weight of everything pressed down on you, threatening to crush you. You were upset with Jeongin, for going behind your back, for making such a huge decision without you. But you were also upset with yourself, for trusting him so blindly, for believing he would never do something like this.

And, most of all, you were upset at the situation itself.

If you weren’t an idol, would things be different? Would you and Jeongin be able to celebrate this pregnancy instead of hiding it in fear? Instead of worrying about your careers, your fans, your companies?

Would he have told you first? Would he have stood by you like he promised?

You swallowed back the lump in your throat and forced your feet to move, step after step, back toward the makeup room.

You had to keep it together.

The moment you walked in, the makeup artists called you over for touch-ups, their chatter filling the room. You sat down in your chair, trying to school your expression into something neutral, something presentable. But your hands were still trembling in your lap.

Jinae, who was seated in the chair next to you, noticed immediately. She turned to face you, her expression careful but concerned.

“Okay,” she said softly, just loud enough for you to hear. “What’s going on?”

You opened your mouth, ready to tell her it was nothing, that you were fine, but the words wouldn’t come.

Because you weren’t fine.

You were barely holding yourself together.

Jinae saw the hesitation in your eyes and reached over, placing a gentle hand on your arm. She didn’t push, didn’t demand answers, just let you know she was there.

You let out a shaky breath, but before you could even begin to explain, Jinhee walked in.

She scanned the room before her eyes landed on you. “It’s time. Let’s go.”

You forced yourself to nod, swallowing down the emotions threatening to spill over.

As you stood up, Jinae did too, falling into step beside you as you followed Jinhee down the hallway. The quiet hum of conversation from other staff members, the distant sounds of rehearsals from different rooms, it all felt muted compared to the storm raging inside your head.

And then, finally, you found your voice.

Still staring straight ahead, you spoke, your voice barely above a whisper. “Jeongin told JYP.”

Jinae froze mid-step, her head snapping toward you. “What?”

You hesitated, then nodded. “They know. HYBE knows. Jinhee just told me.”

Jinae’s expression darkened, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.

“He told them?” she repeated, anger lacing her voice.

You nodded again, your throat tightening. “Without telling me first.”

Jinae let out a slow, controlled breath through her nose. You could tell she was trying to keep her emotions in check, but the way her jaw tensed, the way her eyes flashed with barely-contained fury, it was clear she was pissed.

“How could he do that?” she muttered under her breath.

You didn’t have an answer.

You had asked yourself the same question over and over since you hung up on him.

The worst part was you wanted to understand. You wanted to believe that he had done it for a reason, that he wasn’t just thinking about himself.

But right now?

All you could feel was betrayal.

Jinae clenched her jaw, shaking her head. “He should’ve told you first. He should’ve talked to you before running to his company.”

You exhaled shakily. “I know.”

Jinae looked like she wanted to say more, to do more, but she held back. Instead, she just reached over, giving your hand a quick, reassuring squeeze.

“We’ll figure this out,” she murmured. ��Together.”

You nodded, even though the fear in your chest hadn’t lessened.

Because now, the secret was out.

And you had no idea what would happen next.

You forced yourself to smile, to laugh, to nod along to every question thrown your way during the interviews. You kept your posture straight, your voice steady, and your expressions perfect.

Like nothing was wrong.

Like you weren’t falling apart inside.

Jinae, Minsu, and Chae played along, keeping the energy high, subtly guiding the conversation whenever they noticed you slipping. They had your back.

And finally, finally the interviews ended.

As soon as the cameras shut off and the lights dimmed, you let out a quiet breath, exhaustion settling deep into your bones. You just wanted to go home. To crawl into bed and shut everything out.

-

Back in the dressing room, you changed into your regular clothes, tugging on your hoodie in an attempt to disappear into yourself. The girls were still chatting softly amongst themselves, Minsu occasionally glancing your way with concern.

You knew they wanted to talk, to ask if you were okay, but before they could

The door opened.

Jinhee, stepped in, followed by a man who immediately made the room go silent.

Jun.

Everyone knew Jun.

He was one of the higher-ups at HYBE, one of the kinder ones. He wasn’t the type to belittle idols, wasn’t unnecessarily cruel, but he was serious about his job. If he was here, now, looking this upset

It wasn’t good.

The door shut behind them with a soft click.

Jun crossed his arms, his jaw tight. He exhaled sharply, his expression unreadable, but the tension in the room grew thicker by the second.

Then, finally, he spoke.

“Why did nobody tell the company about what was going on?”

The weight of his words sank in, pressing down on your shoulders like bricks.

You opened your mouth, scrambling for something to say an excuse, an explanation, anything. But before you could, Jinae stepped forward, her arms crossed, her stance firm.

Her tone was sharp, filled with an almost practiced defiance.

“What exactly was there to tell?”

Jun exhaled through his nose, his lips pressing into a thin line.

Jinhee, stepped in before he could respond. “The tip-off didn’t come from Jeongin himself.”

Your eyes widened slightly, surprise flickering in your chest.

“What?” you asked.

She sighed. “It came from his team, from his management.”

Silence.

The realization settled over you like a cold wave.

It wasn’t Jeongin who had run to JYP.

It was the people around him.

The same people who managed his schedules, his appearances, his career. The people who saw him as an investment before they saw him as a person.

You swallowed hard. “Why?”

Jinhee’s expression darkened slightly. “Because they’re angry. And because they want to make sure he isn’t mentioned in any articles if this ever gets out.”

Your heart dropped.

They wanted to keep him safe.

They wanted to leave you out to dry.

Your mouth felt dry, and you turned toward Jun. “What’s going to happen?” you asked, your voice quieter than before. “Is the company really that angry with me?”

Jun sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment before meeting your eyes.

“Yes,” he admitted. “But more than that… they’re angry that JYP wants to throw you under the bus while keeping Jeongin completely out of it.”

Your breath caught in your throat.

Of course. Of course JYP wouldn’t want their idol wrapped up in a scandal.

You knew how these things worked.

A dating scandal was already risky enough. But a pregnancy? That could end careers.

And HYBE wasn’t exactly known for handling these situations with kindness, either.

Your hands curled into fists at your sides.

“So what?” Minsu cut in, her voice sharper than usual. “They want to act like Jeongin had nothing to do with this? Like she just what? Got pregnant on her own?”

Jun didn’t answer.

Because that was exactly what JYP was trying to do.

Erase Jeongin from the narrative. Make it seem like this was your burden alone. Let you take the backlash, while he walked away unscathed.

Jinae scoffed. “That’s bullshit.”

Jun let out another breath, his expression softening just slightly. “I agree,” he admitted. “Which is why I fought back on it.”

You blinked in surprise.

He continued, “I told them that if Jeongin is involved, then he is involved. If this goes public, we’re not going to pretend otherwise.”

Your chest tightened.

This was it.

The reality you had been dreading was now in motion.

It was out of your hands now.

You weren’t just scared anymore.

You were terrified.

The air in the room was thick with tension, the weight of Jun’s words settling heavily over everyone.

You felt frozen in place, your fingers clenched tightly into your hoodie sleeves as your mind tried to process everything at once.

It wasn’t Jeongin who had told. It was his management.

And now, JYP was working to wipe his name from the situation entirely.

Your company was angry, not just at you, but at them, for trying to shield Jeongin while leaving you and your group to take the fall.

This wasn’t just about you anymore. It was about Jinae. Minsu. Chae. It was about everything the four of you had built together, all the sacrifices you had made to get where you were now.

And the idea that it could all crumble around you because of this? Because of something you didn’t even do alone?

It made you feel sick.

Jinae, standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, was the first to speak up.

“What happens if this gets out?” she asked, her voice firm but controlled. “What if Jeongin’s name ends up in the articles anyway?”

Jun sighed, rubbing a hand over his face before answering. “JYP is serious about this. If his name is mentioned, they’re prepared to deny everything.”

The words hit you like a slap.

They would deny it.

Act like it wasn’t true.

Act like you were lying.

Your stomach twisted painfully, and your fingers curled into fists at your sides. You didn’t know why you felt surprised, this was the industry, after all. This was how things worked.

But still, after everything, after how Jeongin had promised to stand by you, after how he had told you over and over again that you weren’t alone..

The thought of him standing back while his company erased his involvement made your chest ache in a way you couldn’t explain.

Jun continued, his voice softer this time. “But I don’t want that to happen.” He looked at you then, his eyes steady. “Because like Minsu said, you didn’t make this baby on your own. It’s unfair for you to be the only one taking the fall while they get to walk away untouched.”

Jinae scoffed under her breath, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”

Minsu, who had been quiet until now, finally spoke, her voice laced with frustration. “So what happens now? What are we supposed to do?”

Jun exhaled, his expression unreadable. “For now, we wait. HYBE is still discussing how to handle this. We don’t want this leaking before we can control the narrative.”

Control the narrative.

Of course.

This wasn’t just about you, it was about the company’s image. About how they could twist the situation to protect themselves.

Even if Jun had good intentions, even if he seemed to be fighting for you, you knew at the end of the day,

You were just another idol.

And idols were replaceable.

Your hands trembled at your sides, and you felt Chae gently brush against you, a small, silent reminder that you weren’t alone.

But it didn’t feel like enough.

Because even with all of them here, even with their support

You had never felt more alone in your life.

The weight of the conversation bore down on you like an avalanche, suffocating and inescapable. You could feel your heart pounding in your chest, your thoughts spiraling as you struggled to grasp what this all meant for you, what it meant for your future, for your career, for everything you had worked so hard for.

Your voice felt small when you finally spoke. “What should I do?” you asked, eyes locked onto Jun, the only person in the room who could give you a clear answer. “What does the company want me to do?”

Jun sighed, his expression unreadable. “I know you’re not going to like this idea,” he said carefully, measuring his words. “But this is your best option.”

You held your breath.

“A long hiatus.”

The room felt impossibly still.

Jun continued, “You could take time to rest, have the baby, get through postpartum, and then come back completely recovered and fully rested.”

A long hiatus.

You felt the words settle into your bones, heavy and suffocating.

Your gaze flickered to the girls, searching their faces for any sort of reaction. Jinae looked torn, her brows furrowed in concern. Minsu shifted uneasily, arms crossed as if she was holding herself together. Chae’s lips were pressed into a thin line, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

They didn’t want you to go.

But they also knew it was your only choice.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, forcing yourself to nod. “I don’t want to ruin this for the group,” you said, your voice quiet but firm. “So I’ll go.”

You weren’t just doing this for yourself, you were doing it for them.

Because soon, you’d be showing.

Soon, no amount of oversized clothes or careful angles would be able to hide the truth.

And even if you could push through the exhaustion, the nausea, the constant changes happening in your body,

You couldn’t keep performing like you used to.

Dancing, training, long hours of travel, non-stop schedules, none of it was safe for you or the baby.

So this was your only option.

You tried to lighten the mood, offering a small, tired smile. “At least I’ll get to see my family after so long.”

Jinhee, who had been quietly observing, nodded in agreement. “Honestly, this is your best option. You’re lucky the company is being this understanding.”

You nodded again, but there was a part of you that knew

This wasn’t just understanding.

This was damage control.

This was them taking you out of the public eye before the situation could spiral out of their control.

Jun shifted, ready to leave now that the decision had been made.

But before he could take a step, you reached out, gripping his sleeve and pulling him aside, away from Jinhee, away from the girls.

His brow furrowed in slight confusion, but he stayed put, waiting for you to speak.

Your voice was barely above a whisper, raw and desperate.

“Please,” you begged. “Don’t let them drag Jeongin into this.”

Jun’s jaw tightened.

You knew he didn’t like hearing that.

You knew how unfair this was that Jeongin should be held accountable too.

But you couldn’t bring yourself to let that happen.

“I don’t want to ruin his career,” you continued, eyes pleading. “Please.”

Jun exhaled sharply, clearly irritated, but after a long moment, he gave you a brief nod.

Your shoulders sagged with relief, but deep down, you knew

This wasn’t over yet.

-

The days following that conversation were a blur of forced smiles, quiet panic, and the weight of uncertainty pressing down on you.

You continued attending schedules as if nothing had changed, knowing that soon, you’d have to step away from it all. The company hadn’t made an official statement yet, but the decision was final. You’d be going on hiatus. You just didn’t know when or how they would announce it.

Your members were glued to your side now more than ever. Jinae, Minsu, and Chae hardly let you out of their sight, as if they were afraid you’d disappear before they were ready. Jinae, in particular, was fuming about the way JYP had handled things, but you kept telling her to let it go.

What else could you do?

The hardest part, however, was Jeongin.

You had blocked his number that day, but that didn’t stop him from trying to reach you. Calls from unknown numbers. Messages from Chan. Even handwritten notes delivered through a mutual friend.

All of them said the same thing.

I’m sorry. Please, talk to me.

But you couldn’t.

Not yet.

Not when your entire world was already crashing down around you.

It wasn’t until a few nights later, when you were back at your dorm, that everything truly hit you. You had been holding it together all day, smiling through meetings, pushing through rehearsals, pretending that nothing was wrong, but the moment you were alone in your room, the weight of it all became unbearable.

You curled up on your bed, pressing your face into your pillow as silent tears streamed down your cheeks.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

You had always known being an idol meant sacrificing a normal life. You had accepted that. But now, it felt like you were losing everything, your career, your relationship, your sense of security piece by piece.

A soft knock on your door startled you.

“Hey,” Jinae’s voice came through the door. “Can I come in?”

You wiped your face quickly, sitting up. “Yeah.”

She opened the door gently, stepping inside and closing it behind her. She didn’t say anything at first, just sat down beside you on the bed.

“You don’t have to keep it all in,” she said quietly.

The dam broke.

You turned to her, burying your face into her shoulder as you sobbed. She didn’t say anything, just wrapped her arms around you, holding you tightly as you cried.

When you finally calmed down, she pulled away slightly, brushing some hair out of your face.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said, “but you need to talk to him.”

You tensed. “Jinae—”

“I’m not saying to forgive him,” she interrupted. “But you need answers.”

You swallowed hard. Deep down, you knew she was right.

You couldn’t avoid Jeongin forever.

And whether you liked it or not, you still loved him.

You just didn’t know if that was enough anymore.

Jinae didn’t say much after that. She just gave your hand a light squeeze and stood, telling you softly that she’d be right outside if you needed her. You nodded, still clutching your pillow, your chest aching in that specific way grief and betrayal seem to carve into your ribs.

Once the door clicked shut, the room felt too quiet. Too still. It was just you and your heartbeat pounding against the inside of your throat.

With a shaky breath, you reached for your phone. Your hand hovered over his name, still blocked.

You stared at it for a long time.

Then, with one swipe, you unblocked him. And before your brain could catch up to what your heart had already decided, you hit call.

He answered on the first ring.

“Y/N—” his voice was sharp, panicked, breathless. “Why did you block me? I’ve been trying to reach you for days, I’ve—”

But you didn’t let him finish.

“I need to ask you something first,” you said. Your voice was raw, still hoarse from earlier tears, but there was a steel edge to it now. “Why did your team tell my company?”

Silence. Just the faintest sound of him exhaling on the other end.

You knew that silence. It was guilt.

“Jeongin,” you said again, quieter. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me first?”

He finally answered. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” he said, voice low, frustrated but more at himself than at you. “Chan—he freaked out when I told him. He’s been so stressed, and when I told him I was trying to keep it between us until we figured it out, he said I was being selfish. That I was risking everything.”

“So you told them,” you said, bitterness curling at the edges of your tone.

“I didn’t want to,” he said, quickly. “I had to. He made me tell management. I— I should’ve told you. I know. That’s why I lashed out on you the other night. I was already a mess, I didn’t know what to do and I took it out on you, and that was wrong.”

“You think?” you snapped, your voice cracking with the emotion you’d been holding back. “You called me annoying, Jeongin. After everything, I was scared, I was alone, and you made me feel like I was a burden.”

He went quiet again. You could hear his breath catching like he was pacing or shaking his head, angry at himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I swear to you, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of that. I was just scared. I still am.”

You wiped a tear before it could fall, swallowing the ache in your throat. “They’re putting me on hiatus,” you told him, voice hollow. “Starting soon. Over a year.”

The silence on his end cracked like thunder.

“What?” he whispered. “Already?”

You nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “I didn’t really have a choice. They’re angry. But… they’re trying to protect me. Us.”

He didn’t speak for a long moment. You imagined him sitting down, running his hand through his hair the way he always did when he felt helpless.

“I don’t want you to go through this alone,” he finally said. “You and the baby… I should’ve been better. I should’ve fought harder for you, not against you.”

You sighed, pressing the back of your hand to your mouth as the tears fell again. “I don’t know if I can trust you right now.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m going to fix that. I promise.”

You didn’t reply. You couldn’t. Because you wanted to believe him.

But part of you was still shattered.

So you stayed quiet as he whispered “I love you. And I love our baby. Please… just let me prove it.”

The silence that followed his words felt heavy, and you hated that it still stirred something soft in your chest, the way he said “I love you” like it wasn’t a question, like it was something that remained, no matter how messy things had gotten between you.

But you had to be honest.

“I hated that you shut me out,” you said, voice trembling but steady. “The second things got hard… you shut me out like I didn’t matter. Like we didn’t matter.”

There was a pause. You could hear a soft exhale from his side of the call, almost like he was bracing himself.

“I know,” Jeongin said quietly. “And you’re right. I did. I just… I didn’t know how to handle it. Everything happened so fast, Chan got scared, I panicked, I felt like I was being pulled in ten different directions. But that’s not an excuse. I should’ve come to you. I should’ve trusted you. I should’ve trusted us.”

You didn’t answer right away, your fingers gripping your phone tighter as his voice cracked just slightly on the last word.

“I’m sorry,” he added, and this time it sounded so sincere, so raw, you had to close your eyes. “Just… let me make it right. Let me prove to you that I can be better. That I want to be better. For you, and for the baby.”

A long breath escaped you, your shoulders sagging under the emotional weight you’d been carrying for days. “Okay,” you whispered. “Okay, Jeongin.”

You could hear the shift in him, like his body physically relaxed through the call. A little smile laced his voice when he said, “Thank you… really. Thank you. You have no idea how scared I’ve been. I missed you so much. How’s the baby?”

That question, gentle, hopeful, real made something stir inside you again. A different kind of ache. One that reminded you that this wasn’t just about pain and betrayal. There was still something beautiful in the center of all this chaos. A little life. A little piece of both of you.

“They’re okay,” you murmured, brushing your fingers lightly over your still-flat stomach. “I haven’t had a check-up since last week, but everything looked good. I’ve been eating more, resting when I can. The girls are spoiling me.”

He chuckled quietly, the sound familiar and warm. “Good. You deserve to be spoiled. Both of you.”

There was a small pause.

Then, you said it softly, hesitantly, unsure how it would land. “When the hiatus gets announced… I might be going home for a bit.”

The smile you heard in his voice faded almost instantly. “Home?” he repeated, and you could already hear the resistance in his tone. “Like, back to your parents’?”

“Yeah,” you admitted. “The company thinks it’s better if I’m away for a while. And honestly… I miss it. I need some space. Somewhere quiet. Familiar.”

“I get it,” he said slowly, but you could tell he didn’t like it. “But… that means I won’t see you. At all.”

You sighed. “That’s kind of the point, Jeongin. I need time. I need to think. And I need to be somewhere that doesn’t feel like it’s falling apart.”

He was quiet, clearly trying to figure out how to respond without pushing too hard. “I want to be there for you,” he finally said, and there was a quiet desperation behind the words. “I know I messed up. But I want to be part of this, even if I have to earn back your trust. Even if I only get scraps of you for a while.”

“I’m not doing this to punish you,” you told him softly. “I just… I need to feel safe again. And right now, that means going home.”

He didn’t fight it. Not really. He just let out a small, broken sigh. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait. Just… keep texting me, okay? Updates about you. About them. Even if I can’t be there. Just let me know you’re okay.”

“I will,” you promised, and your heart ached again at the quiet hope in his voice.

The call ended gently this time. No harsh words. No slamming silence.

Just two people, scared and trying.

Trying to figure out how to stay whole while everything around them changed.

-

The past few days had felt like a blur. Everything was moving too fast, yet at the same time, it felt like you were wading through thick, heavy air, each step forward feeling heavier than the last. You knew this day was coming, but knowing didn’t make it easier.

Today, your company would announce your hiatus.

Even though you had agreed to it, even though you had accepted it as your best option, the reality of it hit differently now that it was here. Your group had worked so hard to get to where you were. You had dreamed of this for years, sacrificed so much, given every piece of yourself to this life. And now… you were stepping back.

It terrified you.

What if things changed while you were gone? What if the group went on without you and you came back only to feel like an outsider? What if the fans turned their backs on you? And worse, what if they never took you back?

The girls had been with you all morning, refusing to leave you alone as you refreshed your phone, waiting for the official statement to drop. Minsu had even stolen your phone at one point, forcing you to sit down and eat something while they all kept an eye on the internet for you. You appreciated them more than you could put into words. They had been your rock through this, never once making you feel like a burden, never once making you feel like you were going through this alone.

When the statement finally did go up, your heart practically stopped.

Your company had kept the announcement simple.

"Due to health-related concerns, Y/N will be taking an extended hiatus from all group activities. We deeply apologize to fans for the sudden news and ask for your understanding as she prioritizes her health and recovery. Thank you for your continued support."

That was it. No further details, no hints at the real reason, just a vague explanation that left everything open to speculation. Within minutes, the internet was ablaze with reactions. Fans were confused, some were worried, some were already coming up with wild theories. It was exactly what you had been dreading.

And then there was your statement, an apology letter written by you, reviewed by the company, and now posted for the world to see. You had rewritten it a dozen times before finally settling on something that felt like you. It wasn’t much, just a brief message apologizing to the fans, thanking them for their love and support, and asking them to wait for you.

You didn’t dare check the comments.

Instead, you sat there, your hands shaking, your breath uneven.

Minsu immediately reached for you, pulling you into a hug. “Hey, it’s okay,” she murmured. “We’re right here. We’re not going anywhere.”

Jinae sat down beside you, rubbing your back. “They’ll understand. And the ones who don’t? They were never really here for you in the first place.”

Chae nodded. “And besides, this isn’t forever. You will come back. And when you do, we’ll be right here waiting.”

You bit your lip, nodding as you blinked back tears. “I just… I hate leaving like this. I hate lying to them.”

Jinae squeezed your shoulder. “I know. But you’re not lying, okay? You do need this break. You do need to take care of yourself. And when you’re ready, you will tell your story. On your own terms.”

You exhaled shakily, nodding again. “Thank you,” you whispered.

The moment was interrupted by the buzz of your phone on the table. Minsu handed it back to you, and your heart skipped when you saw Jeongin’s name.

Jeongin: I just saw the announcement. Are you okay?

Jeongin: Call me if you need anything, okay?

You stared at the messages for a moment before typing back a quick, I’m okay. Just overwhelmed.

Almost instantly, the typing bubbles appeared.

Jeongin: I know. I wish I could be there with you.

Jeongin: Just say the word, and I’ll come.

You swallowed hard, fingers hesitating over your screen. You wanted to see him. You missed him. But you weren’t sure if you were ready for that yet.

Instead, you just typed, Not yet. But soon.

His response came immediately.

Jeongin: I’ll be waiting.

The first few weeks of your hiatus were strange. For years, your life had been nothing but rehearsals, performances, interviews, and constant movement. Every single day had been filled with something, training, traveling, promoting. You had barely had time to breathe, let alone do nothing.

But now, your days felt… empty.

The girls would wake up early and rush off to schedules, photoshoots, meetings while you stayed behind. At first, it felt like a much-needed break. You could sleep in, take long showers, eat at a normal pace instead of scarfing down meals between rehearsals. You caught up on dramas you had missed, scrolled through social media, and actually had time to sit and just exist.

But then, the boredom hit.

At first, you tried to keep yourself occupied reading, sketching, even attempting to write lyrics for fun. But there was only so much you could do when you were practically trapped inside. The company had strongly advised against going out too much. They didn’t want any risk of you being spotted, and more than that, they wanted to avoid any unnecessary speculation. That meant no public outings unless absolutely necessary, no random shopping trips, not even visiting family.

You understood why, but it was suffocating.

Most days, you were alone in the dorm. The silence was deafening.

The only thing keeping you sane were the calls.

Jeongin called you every night without fail. Sometimes he’d call during the day too, quick check-ins between his own schedules. He always asked how you were feeling, if you were eating well, if you needed anything. Some nights, he’d talk until you fell asleep, his voice the only comfort you had in the quiet.

“You must be so bored,” he said one night, chuckling softly over the phone.

“You have no idea,” you sighed. “I’ve been staring at the ceiling for an hour.”

Jeongin laughed. “I wish I could come over.”

“Me too,” you admitted.

There was a pause before he spoke again, softer this time. “Are you still feeling okay? Any nausea?”

“A little, but it’s manageable.”

“Are you craving anything? I can send something over.”

You smiled. “You already send me too much.”

“I like spoiling you,” he said, a little defensive. “Let me.”

You could practically hear the pout in his voice, and it made your heart ache. You missed him so much. The secrecy, the distance, it was starting to weigh on you.

The girls checked on you constantly too, sending messages throughout the day. If they had free time between schedules, they’d FaceTime you, making sure you weren’t completely losing your mind.

Minsu: What are you doing?

You: Laying down.

Minsu: AGAIN?!

You: What else am I supposed to do??

Minsu: Okay, new plan. I’m buying you puzzles or something. You need enrichment.

Jinae would bring back snacks for you after schedules, sometimes forcing you to sit with them while they ate so you wouldn’t be alone.

Chae started watching the same drama as you just so you’d have something to talk about.

They did everything they could to make you feel included, even when you weren’t physically there.

But still… it was hard.

Hard not to feel isolated. Hard not to feel like the world was moving on without you. Hard not to worry about the future.

How long would you be able to hide this? What would happen when the truth did come out?

And the biggest fear of all, would things ever really go back to normal?

-

Days turned into weeks, and soon, you found yourself slipping into a routine. Wake up, eat breakfast alone, scroll through your phone, maybe watch a drama or read something, take a nap, wait for the girls to return, talk to Jeongin at night, and then repeat.

It was monotonous, isolating, but at least predictable.

However, your body was changing.

At first, it wasn’t noticeable, just small things. You felt more exhausted, even though you weren’t doing anything strenuous. Some days, you’d wake up starving, and other days, the mere thought of food made your stomach churn. You caught yourself resting a hand on your belly absentmindedly, still struggling to grasp the reality that you were really pregnant.

But then, the real changes started.

Your clothes didn’t fit quite the same. Your favorite pair of jeans felt too tight, your stage outfits (that you still tried on for fun) didn’t zip up as easily. Even the girls noticed.

“You’re starting to show,” Chae said one evening as you stood in front of the mirror, tugging at the hem of your hoodie.

You sighed. “I know.”

Jinae walked up behind you, resting her chin on your shoulder. “You’re okay with that, right?”

You hesitated. “I don’t know…”

You knew the inevitable was coming. You couldn’t hide this forever. Your hiatus could only serve as a cover-up for so long before questions started piling up.

And then, of course, there was him.

Jeongin.

He had been great, supportive, reassuring, always checking in. But he was still an idol. He was still promoting, still going on schedules, still in the public eye. He could pretend like none of this affected him, but you knew it did.

And your worst fear? That, despite all his promises, he’d start to resent you for it.

One night, when the girls were still out at a schedule, Jeongin called you unexpectedly.

“Hey,” you answered softly.

“You sound tired,” he said. “You okay?”

You let out a small laugh. “I think I’m always tired now.”

He chuckled. “That’s normal, right?”

“That’s what they say.”

There was a beat of silence before he spoke again, this time quieter.

“I want to see you.”

Your heart clenched. “Jeongin, you know that’s risky.”

“I don’t care.”

You sighed. “I care.”

He groaned. “I just, being away from you this much is killing me. I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

Your fingers tightened around the phone. You missed him too. So much. But what could you do? It wasn’t just about you two anymore.

“Just a little longer,” you whispered.

Jeongin didn’t respond right away. When he finally spoke again, his voice was softer, sadder.

“I don’t want to miss this,” he admitted. “Any of it. I want to be there.”

You felt tears prick your eyes. You knew he meant it. But you also knew that wanting something and being able to do something were two different things.

“Soon,” you whispered, more to yourself than him. “Soon.”

You weren’t sure if you were trying to convince him or yourself.

-

The night had started off quietly.

You and Chae were curled up on the couch, a fluffy blanket draped over both of you as you watched a movie. It was one you had already seen before, but neither of you really cared, it was just something to fill the silence, something comforting. Chae had been extra clingy with you lately, almost as if she could sense that you needed it. She would randomly hold your hand, rest her head on your shoulder, or link arms with you when you walked around the dorm.

Tonight was no different. She was snuggled up against your side, her head resting on your shoulder while you absentmindedly rubbed circles on the back of her hand. The warmth, the weight of her against you, it was nice. It made you feel less alone

You had barely thought about your phone call with Jeongin earlier. You had buried it deep in your mind, knowing that thinking about it too much would only make you feel worse. But then..

A knock at the door.

Chae lifted her head slightly. “That might be Jinhee. She said she’d stop by to drop off something the company got you.”

You hummed in response, standing up and stretching before making your way to the door. You didn’t even hesitate before unlocking it and pulling it open.

And that’s when you saw him.

A man in all black, hood pulled up, mask covering his face, hands reaching out..

You screamed.

Chae shot up from the couch, panic flashing across her face as she rushed toward you. But then

“It’s me!”

You froze.

That voice, deep, familiar, warm.

Jeongin.

Before you could even fully process what was happening, he pushed himself inside, shutting the door quickly behind him and pulling down his mask and hat.

You smacked his chest hard.

“What the hellare you doing?!” you hissed. “You scared me half to death!”

Jeongin winced, rubbing the spot where you hit him. “Okay, ow—first of all, I did try to warn you, but you screamed too fast.”

Chae, who had been standing frozen in shock, finally snapped out of it. “Jeongin?! Are you insane?!”

He gave her an apologetic look before turning his attention back to you.

You were still fuming. “You cannot just show up like this! Do you know how risky this is?! What if someone saw you?!”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I was careful. No one saw me.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I had to see you,” he said, eyes searching yours. “I couldn’t just sit around anymore.”

Your breath hitched. The raw emotion in his voice, the desperation, it made your heart ache.

Chae, sensing the tension, cleared her throat. “I… should probably go to my room.”

You turned to her, still flustered. “Chae, you don’t have to—”

“I should,” she said, giving you a knowing look before walking past you. But as she did, she whispered, “Just don’t be too loud, okay?”

Your jaw dropped. “Chae!”

Jeongin chuckled under his breath as Chae disappeared into her room, leaving the two of you alone.

You sighed, rubbing your temples before looking back at him. “You are so reckless.”

His expression softened. “I know.”

Silence settled between you. Now that the initial panic had worn off, all that was left was the overwhelming need to be near him. To touch him, hold him, feel him after weeks of nothing but phone calls and longing.

Jeongin must have felt it too because, in the next second, he was stepping closer, arms wrapping around you tightly, pulling you into his chest.

And just like that, you melted.

You buried your face into his hoodie, inhaling the familiar scent of him warm, fresh, safe. His hands ran soothingly up and down your back, holding you like he was afraid you’d slip away if he let go.

“I missed you,” he murmured into your hair.

Your fingers gripped his hoodie tighter. “I missed you too.”

More than you could even put into words.

The warmth of Jeongin's hand on your belly startled you for a moment, but it was a comforting surprise. His fingers brushed gently over the curve that was just beginning to show, the faintest outline of a baby bump that was slowly becoming impossible to hide. He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head, his lips lingering a moment longer as if he never wanted to pull away.

“I know this is scary,” you trailed off, not sure how to express everything running through your mind.

Jeongin laughed softly, the sound lifting some of the heaviness from the room. “We’ll get through it. Together.” He pulled you in again, wrapping his arms around you in a tight embrace. You melted into him, letting yourself feel safe, even if just for a moment.

You leaned against him, both of you sinking back into the couch together. His arms enveloped you like a shield from everything you were worried about the company, the fans, the possible backlash. For now, in his arms, you were allowed to forget about it all, just focusing on the warmth between you.

“What have you been doing all day?” he asked, his voice soft but full of concern.

“Honestly? Just… being bored,” you admitted, resting your head on his shoulder. “I don’t have anything to do anymore. No schedules, no rehearsals… Just sitting here, waiting for time to pass.”

He chuckled. “Sounds like torture.”

You nodded, feeling a little sad. The reality of the hiatus was starting to sink in, and the boredom that followed was nothing like you’d expected. It wasn’t peaceful, it was suffocating.

The two of you stayed like that, just cuddling, letting the quiet of the moment settle around you. You didn’t speak much; it wasn’t necessary. The simple act of being close to him, feeling his presence, was more than enough.

But then, you heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. You didn’t think much of it at first, probably Jinae coming back from the studio a little later than usual. However, when the door swung open and the soft click of heels followed, you immediately knew it wasn’t just her.

Jinae entered first, Jinhee followed closely behind her, her expression unreadable but not necessarily friendly.

The moment you saw her, you immediately jumped to your feet, pushing Jeongin away from you in panic. He stood up quickly as well, his eyes flicking to yours, a mixture of confusion and concern on his face.

Jinhee wasted no time. “What is this?” she asked, voice sharp. “Jeongin, you shouldn’t be here at all.”

Jeongin opened his mouth to speak, but Jinhee cut him off immediately. “No.” She shook her head, her gaze hardening. “You need to go. Now.”

Jeongin hesitated, looking at you as if searching for your permission. You bit your lip, not wanting to make it harder for him but knowing you didn’t have a choice. He had to leave. You nodded, your throat tightening, and though he didn’t want to, he respected your silent decision.

“Alright,” Jeongin muttered quietly, his voice thick with disappointment. He walked towards the door, but before leaving, he paused and glanced back at you. “I’ll… call you later, okay?”

You didn’t trust yourself to say anything, so you simply nodded, giving him a small, forced smile. Your chest felt heavy as you watched him leave, the door clicking shut behind him.

Jinhee turned to you, a disappointed look on her face. “You knew better than this. I don’t care if you’re lonely or if he’s the only one who makes you feel better. You have to think about the bigger picture.”

You couldn’t argue with her, but it stung more than you expected. You were trying to keep everything together, trying to follow the rules, but it was harder than anyone understood. You nodded apologetically, the weight of the situation pressing down on you.

Jinhee didn’t seem to want to lecture you more. She handed you a small, neatly wrapped package. “This is from the company. For you and the baby.” Her tone softened just slightly as she added, “You’ll get through this. Just… take care of yourself.”

You took the gift from her, your fingers trembling slightly. “Thank you,” you said, your voice barely a whisper. She gave you a curt nod before turning to leave, the door closing quietly behind her.

You stood in the middle of the room for a long moment, staring at the gift in your hands but not really seeing it. Your mind was on Jeongin. On the way he looked when he left. You hated that you had to let him go like that, even though you knew it was necessary. You had to be smart. You couldn’t risk anything right now.

You excused yourself early that evening, retreating to your room under the pretense of needing rest. But, in truth, you just wanted to be alone. You didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Soon, your phone buzzed.

It was Jeongin.

You picked it up immediately, despite the heaviness in your chest.

“Hey,” his voice came through, soft but filled with concern. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”

You sniffled, sitting on your bed as you responded, “It’s not your fault. I just… I don’t know what to do anymore. Everything is just…”

“Stressful?” he finished for you.

You nodded, though he couldn’t see it. “Yeah. It’s just been so much, and I’m not sure I’m handling it very well.”

“I hate seeing you suffer like this,” he said, his voice full of empathy. “I can’t stand it. You don’t deserve any of this.”

“I don’t know what I deserve anymore,” you replied softly, the tears starting to sting your eyes again.

“Hey,” he said firmly, “you deserve so much. You deserve to be happy. And I promise, we’ll figure this out. You and me, together. Just like we always have.”

You swallowed hard, the tightness in your throat almost too much to bear. “I hope so.”

“I’ll make sure you’re okay,” he assured you. “You’re not alone in this.”

“I know. I just need you to be patient with me. I’ll figure it out, but… it’s going to take some time.”

“I’ll wait. For as long as it takes.”

You closed your eyes at his words, feeling a bittersweet warmth settle in your chest. You didn’t have all the answers, and the path ahead was far from clear. But with Jeongin by your side, you were starting to believe that, maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.

For now, that was enough.

//

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ৎ୭. . . QUIMERA ─── Yandere! Clark Kent

⊹ ٬  Headcanon. A loyal caretaker and a hero trapped between duty and emotion. As the lines between service and desire blur, power and submission take a dark role in their relationship. Is it love or control?

⊹ ٬  Word Count. 15k

⊹ ٬  Content. MDNI. Yandere Clark Kent x Android! Reader, Dark themes, violence/death, age gap, blood, trauma, invasion of privacy, kidnapping, Angst, suicide, disturbing content, corruption, isolation, paranoia, manipulation, emotional abuse, abuse of power, emotional manipulation, stalking.

「 Dream or illusion that is a product of the imagination

and that is longed for or pursued despite being

very unlikely to come true. 」

Although from a distance, Krypton seemed like a celestial Eden, a perfect world where culture and power intertwined like the golden roots of an unreachable tree, reality was a beast with sharp teeth.

You knew it well. Living in the shadow of its splendor was nothing more than crawling through a desert of indifference.

Your kind, a masterpiece born from the impatient hands of the Kryptonians, remained at the base of their society as invisible foundations. They cleaned their halls until they were as white as a dying sun, as if the purity of those places could erase the dirt they breathed day after day. They were grateful, yes, because that was how they had been taught. They should kneel in gratitude, for the Kryptonians had given them life and consecrated them as something unique: the race created to serve.

They did not age like them, but they felt like them. Pain, hunger, cold. Their bodies were an amalgam of flesh and metal, a perfect design to endure the existence destined for servitude. They could eat, cry, laugh, but all of that held no more value than the cries of a child in the midst of a battlefield. The difference was simple, brutal: their emotions were irrelevant to those who dominated them.

From the moment their lips could form words and their legs walk steadily—around seven or eight human years—they were assigned a master to whom they would serve until the end. There was no escape, only the certainty that their purpose would fade at the same time as the life of the one they were to protect. The law of loyalty, your mother would say with her muted voice, repeating the words that embedded themselves in your mind like blades.

—Your purpose ends when your master's does.

They said it with such devotion that the words became sweet chains. But you knew there was no sweetness in the iron that surrounded your existence. And yet, there was gratitude. Even in injustice, there was gratitude. How could you not feel it when your creators had given you everything you were? Even if that everything was a shackle instead of freedom.

—Lara Lor-Van is going to have a child —your mother told you one day, her face marked by a weariness that no being of her kind should know—. Your master.

From then on, your world was reduced to the tiny, constant heartbeat growing in Lara's womb. The Kryptonian woman treated you kindly, but you understood it was not for you, but for the promise that throbbed beneath her skin. You dedicated your days and nights to caring for that pregnancy, watching over your master’s well-being even before he saw the light of the world.

It was not Lara who mattered. You observed her with clinical attention, ensuring her needs were met, but always with a persistent thought: she was just the vessel. The true purpose lay within her. Your master was inside her.

And when he was born, you would exist for him. Nothing more. Nothing less. Because if your kind of androids could feel, then purpose was the only emotion that truly mattered. And when that purpose died, so would you.

The day he came into the world was a dawn tinged with joy and despair, with light filtering through invisible cracks as the perfection of Krypton began to fracture. Your mother said that the birth of a master was a gift that no being of your kind should take lightly. You knew it, you had felt it grow beneath Lara's skin like a warm fire fueling your sleepless nights.

Kal-El. That name etched itself in your mind with an unbreakable certainty from the moment his first cries broke the sterile air of the room. But it was not a pure moment, not like the tales told of a servant's devotion to their master. It was a silent war.

Kara was there, wanting to embrace him with the urgency of a sister who intended to hold the future. But you stepped in. He was your master, your purpose. Kara had hers, a guardian who was to protect her and serve her until her existence ceased to make sense. Such was the law of loyalty. Such it had to be.

Your hands held him with fierce delicacy. You clung to his fragile, warm little body as if holding onto him could make the darkness that was already beginning to spread over Krypton disappear. Your whole being vibrated with a perverse happiness, the kind that comes from finding a purpose to which you could surrender until it consumed every part of your existence. You would live for him. You would die for him. You would reproduce only for your children to serve his, because that was your reason for being.

But then the end came. And there was no time to prepare.

Explosions rumbled in the planet's guts, and panic grew like a shroud of fog strangling the crowd. You were a speck lost among the rivers of desperate people running aimlessly, as if the screams and chaos could stop the inevitable. But you only cried his name. Kal-El. Kal-El. Because if he died, you were nothing.

Your legs moved like blades stabbing into the ground, tearing through the distance with the brutal force of purpose. You pushed, struck, tore flesh from those who stood in your way. You were a wounded animal, a desperate being clinging to the last spark of meaning that remained.

And then, you saw him. A tiny ship escaping destruction, like a silver lightning bolt slicing through the darkness. It was him. Your master was leaving Krypton, and you were not with him. Desperation tore through you like poison spreading through your veins.

You didn’t think. You couldn’t afford to doubt. You took the nearest ship, not caring to whom it belonged or how many you left behind. Kara had done the same, but her existence was not your concern. She could fall into oblivion for all you cared.

Your entire world had been reduced to a single task: follow Kal-El. Find him. Protect him. Because if you didn’t, then you were nothing more than a broken piece of a planet that no longer existed.

You arrived on Earth, a miserable, primitive world where the air stank of rusted metal and useless ambition. A rudimentary planet full of weak beings who believed themselves powerful simply because they had learned to master fire and build destructive toys. Humans. Archaic creatures who didn’t even understand the extent of their own stupidity. They were inferior to you, soft flesh and even softer thoughts. But you hadn’t come to judge them, even though you did with each step.

You had come to that planet with a single purpose: to find Kal-El. And in that purpose lay everything you were. Because if you failed, if you couldn’t retrieve the last son of Krypton, then you yourself didn’t deserve to exist. What was the point of breathing, eating, feeling, if not for him? Desperation was an acid that corroded your mind, burning every thought that didn’t relate to your lost master.

You searched like a soul in torment, a specter wandering aimlessly. You crossed continents with the fury of an exiled god, dug under every stone, explored every cave, submerged yourself in every filthy puddle this planet had to offer. Weeks turned into months, and months into years. But there was no rest, no truce. Every night you closed your eyes and saw him: a defenseless child, a master who had to be protected and whom you had let escape due to your own incompetence.

Slowly, hope began to disintegrate into the void. Each day was another step toward madness, another drop of torture dragging you toward the idea that you would never find him. But still, you didn’t stop. Because to stop would be to accept your failure. And if there was one thing you learned on Krypton, it was that a servant without purpose is worse than a corpse.

Japan was just another point in your endless journey. A chaotic and fascinating country in its own decay. You had learned to endure the filth and human stupidity, to blend in with them when necessary. Your body needed fuel, and though the food of this planet felt like an insult to your existence, you discovered something that quelled your hunger without making you gag: onigiris. They were simple, practical. And at least they filled that physical void that nothing else could.

You were sitting in a small restaurant, the walls decorated with paintings attempting to reflect beauty, but only managing to be sad reminders of clumsy, incomplete art. You bit into an onigiri with the hopelessness of someone chewing on stones, your empty eyes fixed on a screen that no one else seemed to be watching.

Then you saw him.

The face you had chased for so long appeared before you with the brutality of a blow to the throat. Words twisted in a language you had learned to understand, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except the image forming on the screen: a man floating in the air, with the symbol of hope etched on his chest.

They called him the man of steel. But to you, he was nothing more than Kal-El. Your master. Your purpose. The reason you had crossed the universe in an act of devotion so pure it bordered on madness.

United States. Metropolis.

At last. After all that time, you had found Kal-El.

Hunger disappeared, replaced by a voracious anxiety that burned within you. It no longer mattered how much you had lost, or how much you had suffered. It only mattered that he was still alive. And that you were going to retrieve him. No matter the cost.

The plane filled with murmurs and furtive glances directed at your robotic arms and your impassive expression. Humans didn’t know how to hide their fear. They squirmed in their seats and whispered as if discomfort was an animal they could keep at bay with soft words. It didn’t matter. There was no time to pay attention to their stupidity. There was only one thought repeating like a broken drum in your head: What would you say when you saw him?

Would he remember you? Would he recognize the devotion you had cultivated like a sweet poison since he opened his eyes for the first time? Or would he despise you for your incompetence, for allowing him to get lost in this primitive and cruel world? Each question twisted inside you, claws tearing pieces of your sanity. But nothing would matter if he accepted you again. If he allowed you to be what you were born to be.

When you arrived in Metropolis, you faced the chaos of the city like a storm sweeping across a defenseless prairie. You watched him for hours, hiding among shadows and crowds that didn’t understand the weight of your mission. It wasn’t hard to identify him. The suit he wore to blend in with those pathetic humans was an insult to his greatness. Ridiculous glasses and hair styled with the clumsiness of someone trying to be ordinary. But you knew. You would have recognized him even if he were buried under a thousand layers of foreign flesh. That man was Kal-El.

Anger and desperation mixed in your chest, a ball of fire burning every reasonable thought. He lived among those inferior beings, protected them, disguised himself as one of them. Did he want that? Did he want to flee from his legacy? To forget you?

No. You wouldn’t allow it. If Kal-El had forgotten who he was and who was supposed to protect him, you would make him remember. By force if necessary.

The Daily Planet was your choice. The symbol of truth for those tiny creatures. Their beacon of information and power. You tore it apart mercilessly, setting the offices ablaze until the flames roared like released demons. The globe that crowned the building trembled with a metallic creak, and with one last push of your robotic hands, you made it fall. It crashed down like a broken god upon the weak structure, and you waited.

He appeared just as you had always imagined. Flying, with his cape billowing like a harbinger of glory. His eyes looked at you with the contained fury of a being who believes they understand pain. But he didn’t know anything. Not like you did.

—Who are you? —his voice echoed in the air, thunder wrapped in silk.

The answer died in your throat, because seeing him before you was like looking at the sun for the first time after living in twilight. And instead of raising your voice as you had planned, instead of challenging him for letting so much time slip between you, you cried. Tears fell down your cheeks uncontrollably, and your knees hit the ground with a dull thud.

—Kal-El! I finally find you! —you cried desperately. Your voice broke when you named him, when you gave shape to the pain that had grown inside you like a wound that never healed.

You saw him descend cautiously, his gaze confused, worried about the destruction you had caused. Because he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand that everything you had done had been for him. Everything.

He was... kind. Inconceivably kind. Any other hero would have responded with violence, with an unrelenting and brutal attack. You had seen them on those monitors that humans revered as idols. Warriors who fought with fury and justice, with no room for compassion in the face of threat. And you, kneeling before him, waiting to be crushed as you deserved for your crimes.

But he didn’t. He didn’t raise his fist or throw warnings laden with authority. No. He knelt beside you and embraced you. He wrapped your trembling body in his warm, firm arms, like a refuge you had believed lost forever. It was unreal, a dream that stung in every corner of your body.

—I’ve been looking for you for decades on this Earth —you let out, your voice hoarse and broken. Your face buried in his chest as tears continued to flow uncontrollably—. Lara would be disappointed in my incompetence, my lord. I am a horrible caretaker...

Shame poured out of you like blood from an open wound. He shouldn’t have touched you; you didn’t deserve that comfort. But he simply caressed your back, his hand running over the amalgam of flesh and metal as if he didn’t know how to distinguish between them. As if both were equally worthy of comfort.

—You have thrived without me; you have relied on yourself without my care... —Your words intertwined with sobs, choked in the despair that still covered you like a cloak of thorns—. Do you... no longer need me?

Your eyes sought answers in his, desperate, like a lost child in the vastness of an unfamiliar world. You didn’t dare blink, for fear that if you closed your eyes, he would vanish like a cruel mirage.

—I have to finish my purpose... right? —you murmured, your fingers gripping his cape as if that could stop the inevitable. If your existence no longer made sense, if he didn’t need your protection... what was left of you?

Something changed in his gaze. A different concern. A silent alarm that crossed his mind like dark lightning. Perhaps he thought your mind had fractured under the weight of your failed devotion, that you were little more than a broken android, decomposed by years of abandonment and guilt. But still, he didn’t pull away. He didn’t hit you. He didn’t reject you.

He took you with him, holding you with that gentleness that hurt more than any punch. You expected everything except that. You would have understood if he had destroyed you right there. But he gave you something different: pity.

He took you to his home. Not to a prison, not to a laboratory or some forgotten corner of Metropolis. No. He took you to Smallville, to the home he had known since childhood, as if he still held hope of finding answers in simple, pure things. You thought it was ridiculous. That such an act could only stem from the naivety of a being who had grown too human. But the truth was that you had failed so much in protecting him that you accepted his mercy as a rope to keep from sinking completely.

You showed him your memories, those fragments of life that had survived in your battered, rusted body. You showed him Krypton. The landscapes of glass and fire, the majestic architecture that rose like solid dreams above the ground. You showed him his parents, Lara and Jor-El, with their faces hardened by responsibility but also illuminated by a love that you had seen with your own eyes. You showed him his uncles and his cousin, Kara, who just at that moment on Earth was attending her lessons.

Silence was all that remained when your memories faded back into the darkness of your mind. He didn’t know whether to believe you; you saw it in his eyes. Doubt slipped between his thoughts like a soft poison. But there was something more. Something you didn’t expect: acceptance.

He stayed with you. He didn’t cast you away or lock you up. He allowed you to remain by his side, perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of mere curiosity. But you accepted that gesture as if it were a sacred commandment.

You went back to doing what you knew best: caring. You cleaned his house, ensured the surroundings were safe. You watched over the borders of Smallville like a deranged guardian who only found peace in obedience. It wasn’t a real purpose; you knew that. It wasn’t the mission assigned to you at birth. But it was something. Something that kept you alive and gave you the illusion that you could still serve him.

Though deep down, the bitter voice of reality whispered that none of that was enough. That you had failed and that all you were doing now was clinging to the last crumb of meaning your existence could offer you.

Clark didn’t know how to treat you. The first days were... unbearable, like a freshly planted oak tree in barren soil. Your constant, meticulous presence enveloped him like a heavy cloak of human customs he didn’t want. You became a shadow in his life, not a maid, but a haunting specter of the death of his mother. In the mornings, your upright figure, relentless in its routine, was the one that woke him. Every gesture was calculated: breakfast prepared with the precision of a well-sharpened sword, suit pressed with the accuracy of a surgeon, briefcase loaded with his destiny. And always, the warning, the playful yet somber threat:

—Be careful not to hurt yourself, or I’ll have to go and beat someone up for being mean to you...

He spoke to you like a mother, but there was something more in his tone, something that brushed against forbidden intimacy, something that coiled like a serpent inside his chest. You didn’t see a son when you looked at him, but something deeper, more unsettling. And he, he knew it. He feared it.

But it was on that morning when something changed. The air was imbued with an unreal stillness, as if the universe itself had decided to pause and observe what was about to happen. Clark got up as always, hoping nothing would alter the course of the day, that nothing would disturb the calm waters of his routine. But there you were. You had arrived with a chilling diligence. You had pressed his suit with a perfection only a demon of detail could achieve. Breakfast was served with the same solemnity as a ritual sacrifice. And before he could comprehend what was happening, you approached him, with the softness of a mortal whisper, and adjusted his tie.

As you did, your fingers brushed against his neck, and the air became thick, hot, charged with a weight he could no longer ignore. Your eyes, those dark and penetrating eyes, caught him, and he, who had learned to see beyond human masks, could only succumb to the glimmer of something... different in you. The kiss on the hand was what broke him. A gesture so tender yet so strange, so heartbreaking, like a farewell to everything he had been. He looked at you like a slave seeing their master for the last time, but also like a man recognizing the truth in his own heart, that truth that hid behind the shadows.

And then, he left. The sound of his departure echoed like a distant thunder, but within him, everything stopped. The streets of Metropolis, the Daily Planet office, the very battle between good and evil, all blurred as his thoughts clung to you, to your image. The need to return, the need to see you again consumed him, and he found himself smiling like a foolish child, an idiot, for something he didn’t even fully understand.

Would you prepare his favorite dish? Or had you learned something new, something even stranger to surprise him, as if you were a creature born from the very chaos that had made him so strong? Would you show your dreams, those sorrows and hopes through holograms distilled from his memories, as if they were fables of a world that existed only for him?

Even the relentless Cat Grant, with her tongue sharp as a dagger, couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at the lost smile on Clark's face, that empty smile, so different from the ones he used to show under the spotlight. That smile, so somber and anxious, spoke more than he ever wanted to say aloud.

Time, with its inexorable march, continued its course, but Clark was no longer the same. He was no longer the man who thought he could control everything around him. You had overflowed his barriers, and in that simple smile, in that gesture that no one else cared about, something of you had marked him, something that even Superman’s strength could not erase.

Clark, as always, found himself caught between the threads of his own uncertainty. When he shared his thoughts with Lois, his ex-fiancée, a friend who still maintained a painfully close connection with him, what he expected to be wise advice turned into a veiled mockery. Lois, with her impetuous nature and sharp gaze, urged him to conquer what was slipping through his fingers, to take what he desired, like a king trying to possess the kingdom of what had once been his queen. In her eyes, you were nothing more than a housekeeper, a programmed being to serve him, a mechanical figure without a soul, without importance beyond what you did in his home. A detail, she thought, insignificant, if Clark truly desired to have you.

But days passed, and little by little, Clark began to untie the knots of his confusion. At first, it was strange for you. You didn’t understand why he was beginning to embrace you upon arriving or leaving, why the small gestures he had previously ignored were becoming routine, as if the air between you had changed. He brought you gifts, mundane treasures that fell from his hands as if they wanted to say more than his lips kept silent. He even took the time to check every part of your body, ensuring that your gears and your flesh felt the softness of his touches. You reproached yourself, telling him there was no need to do so, for you ate like him, and your body didn’t seem more than a reflection of his desire to keep you intact.

One night, in what for you was simply another dinner, he suggested taking you to an unknown place, outside of the quiet routine you both shared. People stared at you, observing you as an aberration. To them, you were just a being of metal and flesh, a monstrosity daring to eat, to laugh, to live. Clark was deeply annoyed by it, his anger growing with each gaze, but for you, none of that mattered. The fact that you were different didn’t change who you were. In your world, such things had never been relevant. You lived for and by your purpose. Eating, laughing, feeling... all of that became a mechanical act that no longer surprised your senses.

He seemed happy, almost proud of his act. Meanwhile, you... you simply fulfilled your duty, as you always had. You were fulfilled in the dedication you provided him, without feeling anything beyond the peace found in the certainty of doing what was right.

Clark began to notice your naivety, your silent submission to his will. He was a figure of power, and as such, he knew how to manipulate the invisible strings that controlled your existence. He took liberties over time, small and subtle, barely noticed, but deeply disturbing. You knew you belonged to him, that your existence had been forged for him, to serve him. But there was something in the way his lips sealed against yours, as if they claimed something more than your devotion, something darker and possessed by its own hunger. That invasion, that caress of skin against skin, was unacceptable, something you had been programmed to tolerate, but that your human conscience still rejected, fought against. Still, you let it pass, like a shadow dragged by the current without resistance. You didn’t want to face what was beginning to grow within you, nor what he represented.

What disturbed your soul the most was what came next. The public appearances, the hero galas, the events in which he strutted like the man of steel. And you, in his shadow, in his constant possession, observing from a corner, by his side, his hand resting on your hip, touching you in a way that made it clear you were his belonging, an object of admiration and control. The crowds looked at you, but you felt nothing but a growing void, an oppression in your chest that you could not name. You accepted his contact, even though something inside you began to scream, an echo of a being that still wanted to be free.

However, there was a moment, a point of no return, when his touching went beyond. While you were cleaning, his hand, like a snake, slid towards you, touching your rear inappropriately, his cold and meticulously calculated touch. Something in your being broke, a spark of resistance igniting within your soul, a fury you didn’t even know you had. You pulled away from him, your heart pounding in your chest, as you shouted with all the repressed fury: "That is wrong, Kal-El!" The surprise on his face was palpable, as if he had never imagined that you, his maid, his servant, could have anything more than a submissive response, something beyond acceptance.

He, however, didn’t understand. He didn’t comprehend in his entirety. In his mind, you were just another piece of his possession, another cog in his perfect world of power and control. The man who had saved the world and conquered the skies couldn’t see the rebellion growing inside you, like a silent poison slowly seeping through your veins. To him, this was just a small stumble in his absolute dominance. And yet, something in your gaze made him doubt. Something he had never seen in you. The spark of a being, a human, who was not willing to yield anymore.

So when Clark tried to persuade you, his gaze filled with a mix of desperation and possessiveness, pain reflected in his eyes as he suggested you start a marital life. He wanted you to be something more, something beyond the servant you had been made to be. But you couldn’t be anything different. He didn’t understand the weight of your existence, the weight of your destiny as his caretaker, his obedient and cold servant. You reminded him, with a distant chill that tore him inside: "I am your servant, Clark. Your caretaker. And you, my master. Nothing more."

That was a blow to him. His face, which had been so unyielding, crumbled, though he tried to hide it with a faint smile, as false as the life he had given you. But his eyes were no longer the same. Something dark glimmered in them, a contained fury, something he was just beginning to comprehend.

So he gave you an order, one that resonated in the air with a sinister weight: "You cannot leave the house. You cannot speak to anyone. And you certainly cannot run away." Malice hid behind his words, and although you refused to believe it, you knew it was his will. You could do nothing, and he knew it. He commanded, and you simply existed to comply, like a wandering shadow in a world you no longer recognized.

You surrendered to your routine, immersed yourself in household tasks, moving your robotic body, that container of flesh and metal, from one side to another in Clark's house. The days faded into monotony, but as time passed, the tension became denser, heavier, like the air before a storm.

Clark began to impose himself more on you. Each time he crossed that line, that invisible boundary between master and servant, you felt more trapped. But the worst was what happened one night when he asked you for something you never imagined. It was his most direct, most invasive approach. It wasn’t the words, but the weight of his presence, his breath on your skin, the brush of his hands on your metal body. You tried to resist, clinging to the few rules that still remained, but his insistence, his persistent, heartbreaking touch was enough for you to no longer be able to stand firm. You yielded, not out of desire, but out of necessity. His reluctant affection, as forced and cold as his will, overwhelmed you. You felt the discomfort of his contact, the conflict within you, but there was no way to escape anymore.

And so, you began to understand that there was no more space for resistance, only for submission. The idea of fleeing, of escaping, faded with every caress, with every order, until you became a shadow of yourself, a creature of metal and flesh trapped in your own destiny.

Days passed, and with them, the weight of reality became more unbearable. The memories of a time when your purpose was not to serve, not to exist for him, faded like a distant dream. You became an extension of his will. The days grew longer, emptier. Everything you did was oriented toward him, to fulfill his desires, to ensure he lacked for nothing, as if that were all that remained of you. And, for some twisted logic, that was all it was.

Each time you saw a shadow of a smile in his eyes, you knew it was not filled with love, but with something much more sinister: possession. You understood it too late, when you could no longer distinguish between what was genuine desire and what was simply his need for control, his need to further subdue you. Clark had begun to take liberties that felt like chains.

But something inside you began to break, like a string stretched too far, about to snap. Your robotic body, which at first had given you a sense of strength, was now just a metal prison. Chaos seized your mind, that internal struggle, that struggle against your own nature, against what he had made you. You couldn’t escape from him, you couldn’t escape from his will, but you also couldn’t stop feeling that something in you was being lost, something you would never regain.

One afternoon, while he was not there, and you were fulfilling your task of cleaning the house, silence was broken by a strange sensation in the air. A presence, a void. Something in you told you that this was the last opportunity. The last chance to free yourself, to escape from his yoke.

But like a shadow dragging itself in the darkness, despair loomed over you. You knew you couldn’t. Because when he returned that night, his gaze was no longer the same. There was something even colder in it. Something that could no longer be remedied.

—I told you —he said, his voice soft but laden with a threat that didn’t need to be pronounced. His presence enveloped you, and the air grew dense and oppressive. —You cannot escape. You are mine.

You tried to resist, you tried to fight, but it was useless. The force of his will crushed you like a hammer on a fragile piece of glass. And as you fell, defeated by your own being, you felt as if you were no more than a shadow, a broken creation. Something that had no right to exist, other than to please him, to serve him, to submit to him time and time again.

And so, you became what he desired. You were not a woman. You were not a person. You were not even a human being. You were no longer anything more than his property, his work of metal and flesh, empty of desire, empty of dreams, empty of yourself.

In that last gasp of consciousness, a tear fell from your mechanical eye. But it no longer mattered. Everything was over. Because in the end, you didn’t even have the strength to regret what you had done, nor to remember what you once were.

And without him knowing, when he walked away to attend to an urgent call from the Justice League, you remained there, in silence, in front of the mirror. The dim light filtering through the window cast shadows that danced across the floor. It was the first time in a long time that you didn’t think of him, didn’t think of what he needed or what you should do to please him. You only thought of yourself, of what you had lost, of what you no longer were.

You looked at yourself, not just with the eyes of a servant but with those of someone who, for the first time, was trying to find something that you no longer knew if it had ever existed. That figure in the mirror was nothing more than a combination of metal and flesh, a puppet of foreign desires. But through the reflection, you saw beyond the surface. You realized that the emptiness you felt could not be filled by him, nor by his cold and possessive love. It didn’t matter how hard you tried, how much you surrendered; you would always be trapped, lost in a labyrinth with no exit.

With a slight tremor in your hands, you touched the mirror. A soft, almost imperceptible knock. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, the sound resonating in the room like an echo of the fracture of your soul. And in that moment, without thinking, you made the decision. It was the end, the end of everything. The end of your life as his shadow, as his object, as his slave.

With a heavy heart, you ended your service to him.

[emmaxdelicate]

THE GREAT WAR | op81 x reader

summary: you and oscar fight about the growing distance between you two

pairings: oscar piastri x fem!girlfriend!reader

warnings: angst, swearing, use of y/n (2 times only), intentional lowercase (lmk if i missed any!)

word count: 1.4k

a/n: i felt so bad writing this idk why😭, i already have a part 2 in my drafts lmao

masterlist

rain came in sheets of water, a downpour. it had been this way for days now: gray skies, unending clouds, heaviness that settled upon your chest like a lead weight.

you stood in the kitchen of yours and Oscar's shared apartment , staring blankly at the half-filled mug of tea on the counter. the liquid had long since gone cold, untouched in the chaos of the evening. you could hear Oscar moving in the living room; his footsteps quick and agitated, not as usual, each step was a subtle reminder of the distance that had grown between you.

the fight had started hours ago, even thought "fight" felt like the wrong term. it wasn't just one argument, not really. it was more of a culmination of days and weeks, months, even, of little fractures, cracks in the foundation of the house you had built together. and now, you weren't so sure if the pieces could be put back together.

you gatered some bravery and walked to the living room. Oscar was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands and his hair slightly disheveled, you stood at the door.

"so what? you think i don't care?" Oscar's voice cut suddenly, sharp and defensive. it wasn't the first time he'd asked the question tonight.

you watched him, your arms crossed tightly over your chest. "that's not what i said."

"it's what you're implying tho," he shot back, his tone cutting. he rarely talked like this with anyone, let alone with you. this wasn't the oscar you spent days cuddling with, the one who whispered reassecurations in your ear each time something was wrong.

you sighed, running a hand through your hair. "i'm not insinuating anything, oscar. i'm telling you how I feel. and how I feel is—forgotten."

his expression shifted, a flicker of guilt crossing his face before it was replaced by frustration. "forgotten? that's ridiculous, y/n. do you have any idea how much i think about you? how much i care about you?"

"thinking about me is not the same as being here, oscar," you said, your voice trembling despite your best attempts at keeping it even. "you're always somewhere else, with the team, on the track, doing interviews. and i get it, okay? i really do know how much your career means to you, and that's amazing. but when was the last time you really saw me? when was the last time we had a conversation that didn't revolve around your schedule or your next race?"

oscar winced with your words; his jaw flexed. "that's not fair."

"isn't it?"

the question just hung in the air, heavy and unanswered. oscar slumped slightly into himself, his frustration giving way to something more subdued. "i'm doing my best," he said quietly.

your laugh was bitter, like a knife across the silence. "your best? oscar, your best is killing me." you took a step closer to him.

he recoiled as if you had hit him, his eyes wide with hurt. for a moment, you almost thought he might walk away-that he might turn around and leave the room, leave you standing there with your heart in pieces. but he stayed, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, like he was trying to keep himself from falling apart.

"what do you want me to do?" he asked finally, his voice strained. "tell me, because i don't know anymore. i'm trying to balance everything-my career, my life, you. i'm trying so hard. but it feels like no matter what i do, it's never enough."

"you never call me when you're away, only text me to tell me stupid shit instead of checking up on me. i can't be the only one doing that"

you felt the well of tears in your eyes, but you blinked them away, refusing to let them fall. "i don't need you to be perfect, oscar. i just need you to be here. to show me that i matter, that we matter." you sat next to him.

"you do matter," he said, facing you, his voice breaking on the words. "more than anything."

"then why don't I feel it?

the question came out a whisper, but it was enough to shatter whatever fragile truce had existed between you. oscar turned away, raking a hand through his hair as he let out a frustrated sigh.

"i don't know," he admitted, his back to you. "i don't know how to make you feel it. i thought i was doing everything right, but clearly i'm not."

you took a shaking breath, hands trembling at your sides. "it's not about you being right, Oscar-it's about us, about what we're losing."

he turned back to you then, his face open and raw. "i don't want to lose you," he whispered.

"neither do i,"you told him. "then fight for me," you shot back, voice breaking. "because I'm tired of being the only one fighting."

the words hung in the air, a challenge, and for one second you thought oscar might rise to it. but instead, he looked away, his shoulders sagging under everything that was left unsaid.

"i don't know if i can," he finally said, barely in a whisper.

that was your final blow. it was a punch in the gut, knocking the wind from your lungs. you stared at him, heart breaking all over again, feeling for the first time the full weight of what this fight had cost you.

"then what are we doing, oscar?" you asked, voice shaking, a tear falling from your eye. "if you can't fight for this-for us-then what's the point?

he didn't say anything, and the silence that followed was deafening.

you looked away, hands grasping onto the edges of the couch. outside, the rain again picked up, its sound a harsh backdrop to the chaos inside your head.

"i think i need some air," you said finally, your voice barely above your breath.

oscar looked at you, his face contorting with something almost like panic. "y/n, wait-"

but you were already in motion, snatching your coat from the chair beside the door and out into the rain, wich was heavier than you expected. maybe it was the wrong choice, going out there and leaving oscar alone. or maybe the wrong choice was even trying to confront him in the first place. maybe you should've just dropped him. cold drops pelted your skin, soaking through your clothes in seconds, but you didn't care. the storm inside was far worse.

you walked aimlessly, your feet carrying you down the empty street without any real direction. your mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, each one louder than the last.

how did you two wnd up like this? how had the love you once shared, the kind of love that felt undestructibl, turn into something so uncertain?

you remembered how oscar used to look at you, as if you were the center of his universe; you remembered your deep talks late at night, stolen kisses, and quiet times that made you believe you could go thru any storm as long as he was by your side.

but now, you thought of the missed calls, lonely nights, and the growing distance between you two. and no matter how much you tried, it was difficult to remove that feeling.

you didn't know how long you had walked around the neighborhood, but by the time you made your way back to the house, the rain had soaked through every layer of clothes. your hair was drenched and plastered to your face, and your fingers were numb from the cold.

oscar had been waiting for you when you walked through the door, watching as you came inside. he was sitting on the couch, still in the same position from before, looking up at you with a mix of relief and concern in his eyes.

"you're soaked," he said, quick to his feet to help you.

"i'm fine," you said dismissively, pushing past him toward the stairs.

"wait," he said, catching your wrist gently. "please, don't just walk away."

you turned to him, red-rimmed and tired, and said, "i don't know what else to do, Oscar."

his grip on your wrist tightened somewhat, his eyes pleading. "stay. talk to me. let's figure this out. please."

"we've been talking all night," you said, "and i still don't know where we stand."

He looked like he wanted to protest, but his hand fell instead to his side, slumping his shoulders in defeat.

"i love you," he whispered. "but i don't know if that's enough anymore."

it felt like someone had stabbed you in the chest, and for that moment, you weren't able to breathe. you looked at him, your heart breaking all over again, before you turned and went upstairs without saying another word.

you closed the door behind you and pressed your back against the wood. the tears came then, silent, without oscar to wipe them away, and you let them fall, your heart heavy with the weight of everything you'd brobably lost.

and for the first time ever, you weren't so sure if you and oscar would make it through.

© 2025 emmaxdelicate

[raynewolferune]

Meta Jazz, the Arkham Intern Therapist Pt1

Update 5/16/2024: Congrats guys, gals, and others! You have planted the seeds and they have grown. Today I wrote another 46 pages on this story (the first section was only 9 pages ya'll). I'm working on splitting it up into smaller sections so I can post it now because tumblr said no to doing it as one piece. I'll be using the tag #Meta Jazz Arkham Intern Therapist if you want to follow it.

Original Note: I'm going to go ahead and apologize for how OOC Bane is in this. It originally was Joker but I couldn't see Jazz tolerating his proximity for more than a single millisecond so Bane it is.

~*~*~

The hardest thing about being a Meta in Gotham was responding appropriately during a Rouge's attack, Jazz mused to herself. Or perhaps that was just the hardest part about being a Meta intern at Arkham while studying psychology at Gotham University. Or maybe it was just her, she considered watching the guards and Dr. Rylie whom she'd been shadowing for the past 2 weeks wide eyed, pale, and shaking as theybstared at Bane behind her. It must just be her, Jazz decided, newbie guard Kyle Jennings was definitely a Meta after all. She should probably give him some tips on hiding his enhanced strength considering how often he broke mugs, door handles, and other delicate items used in daily life.

"Weapons down or I'll snap her skinny little neck." Bane growled out, shaking her slightly for emphasis. She very much doubted that. Liminials were built different than the standard Meta, stronger, faster, better endurance, and senses even if they could mostly appear to be standard humans on the outside.  As such, their bones and muscles were much were much denser than regular humans or even Meta humans. Technically, she could be considered "invulnerable" much like the Kryptonians are.

"Back up! Let him through!" Dr. Rylie  shouted at the guards. "She's my student! Let him through!" His voice was higher pitched than she could recall hearing it before.

Ah. That was panic.

Jazz sighed involuntarily and glanced over her shoulder at Bane. Why the man had grabbed the only person close to his own height nearby was a mystery to her - no, nevermind, he clearly meant to use her as a shield - but it made looking him in the eye more difficult than necessary.

"Mr. Bane, remove your hands from my person, please." Jazz stated calmly, channeling what Danny called her inner mom as she spoke. "I will give you to one to comply."

Bane looked stunned for a moment then laughed.

"Five."

The laughing continued. Jazz could sense a stir of uncertainty through her colleagues as they looked on.

"Four."

"Did you really think that would work?" Bane snorted out, arms tensing more around her.

"Three." She continued, indifferent to his words from her experiences raising her brother. Once the count down starts you mustn't respond to anything the kids do or say until they comply or the count is done.

"What cab you even do if I don't?" Bane asked darkly breathing directly in her ear. She kept her face expressionless despite the urge to express disgust.

"Two."

"Jasmine..."  Kyle whispered halfway across the hall from her looking on with a pained and horrified expression. Gun tilting towards the floor. Sloppy.

"One." She finished and Bane gave a derisive snort.

Then she was moving. Hauling the enormous man up and over her shoulder using the arm that had been wrapped around her neck. Bane hit the cold tile hard enough that the tiles, subfloor, structural supports, and part of the concrete foundation buckled beneath him. His shoulder popped out of joint, his wrist cracked - a hairline fracture by the sound of it -  and his breath was punched out of him from the force of impact. She released his arm as soon as his was embedded in the tiles and moved forward. Kneeling over him, support most of her weight on her left foot resting on the broken ground, her right knees pressed firmly across his throat without supporting any of her weight. The position put more strain on her muscles than she would've liked but at least Bane couldn't risk fighting back without crushing his own neck in the process. He could hardly throw her while flat on his back with a mangled arm.

"Now," Jazz began, looking directly into the behemoth's pained eyes. "Do you know what you've done wrong?" She asked like she would have done with Danny as a child.

"Yes, Ma'am." Bane choked out. Jazz heard movement and murmuring behind her. She didn't turn to look.

"What did you do wrong?" She asked. It was important to make sure children correctly understood why they were in trouble after all. There was a long pause as Bane appeared to cast around for the exact right answer as if he feared getting it wrong. A bad habit Danny still uses as well, Jazz thought to herself.

"I tried to hold you hostage," He choked out in a rush, words tumbling over one another as he tried to get them all out. "I scared you coworkers and it was very disrespectful."

So he'd gone for the grab-bag response. It wasn't wrong per sey but it did indicate a past history of abuse. The type of answer given by someone who expected to be harmed or ignored if they gave the "wrong" answer. Danny tended to use that method also and their parents had always been negligent at best.

"And are you going to do it again?" She asked giving him a Look as she did. Bane's eyes widened and he tried to frantically shake his head as much as possible with the pressure on his neck.

"No, Ma'am." He promised fervently.

"Alright then," Jazz said giving him a warm smile. She gestured vaguely towards the guards without turning to look at them. "Kyle here is going to take you to see the nurse and then back to your room then. I'm sure you'll behave for him?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I'll behave." Bane said. Jazz stood slowly asking sure not to put any additional pressure on his neck as she did. Kyle came and stood next to her as the giant of a man slowly pulled himself to his feet then led him away with 5 other guards.

Jazz heaved a sigh. Well, time to find out whether or not she could play all that off as normal, non-Meta human behavior.

[flwrkid14]

Love, in All its Impossible Forms

Tim Drake loves with everything he has. He always has. And maybe that’s his fatal flaw—he doesn’t know how to hold back. He throws himself into it the way he throws himself into everything else: completely, recklessly, without a second thought for his own safety.

But love, for Tim, is never simple. It comes in forms that twist and tangle, leaving scars even as it gives him something to hold onto. And if you ask him, he could probably tell you exactly what kinds of love he’s experienced.

There’s love that is doomed.

Steph was chaos, energy, and unrelenting determination wrapped in a bright smile. She was Tim’s equal and his opposite all at once, and when he loved her, he did so fiercely, wholeheartedly. She didn’t just step into his world—she tore through it, unapologetic and unstoppable, showing Tim a version of himself that didn’t have to be so calculated, so controlled.

But their lives were chaos, a whirlwind of masks and missions, and when the dust settled, there was never enough left of them to make it last. Tim loves her in a way that feels like holding sand; no matter how tightly he grips, she keeps slipping through his fingers. And maybe that’s why he held on so hard—because he knew she’d never stay. Steph was never meant to be tamed, and Tim loved her too much to try.

Even when it ends, there’s no anger, no resentment. They don’t blame each other for the way things fall apart. They don’t have to. They always knew, deep down, that no matter how much they wanted to hold on, it was never meant to last. It wasn’t about a lack of love—it was about the world they lived in, the lives they led, and the way they could never quite fit together the way they needed to.

Steph was the love that burned brightly but couldn’t last, no matter how much either of them wanted it to. She was the fire he couldn’t hold onto, the storm he couldn’t contain, and the one who left her mark on him in ways he’d never forget. They were love, doomed from the start.

Then there's love that dooms them.

Kon wasn't just Tim's best friend—he was everything. A partner in every sense of the word. Loving Kon felt like second nature, so easy and so effortless that Tim didn't realize how deeply it ran until it was too late. Until Kon was gone.

When Kon died, it destroyed Tim. Grief didn't come in waves-it came in obsessions.

Tim couldn't let go, so he didn't. He turned to stolen data and secret labs, creating clone after clone in a desperate attempt to fill the void Kon left behind

It wasn't about moving on. It wasn't about closure. It was about holding on to the only person who ever made Tim feel like he could breathe, even when it was killing him to do so.

When Kon returned, whole and alive, it should have been everything Tim had dreamed of. But the shadows of what Tim had done lingered between them. The lengths he went to, the obsession that fueled him—it left cracks in the foundation of what they once were. Kon loved Tim, he always would, but part of him wondered if he'd ever been loved for who he was, or for what Tim couldn't let himself lose.

And Tim, for all his brilliance, couldn't figure out how to bridge the gap he'd created. He oved Kon with everything he had, but love born out of desperation carried its own weight, and he wasn't sure how to lay it down.

So they stayed in the gray space between what they were and what they could have been, bound by love so fierce it hurt, but too fractured to fully mend. They were doomed by their love.

Finally, there’s love that dooms anybody else.

Danny is chaos, but not the kind that breaks Tim—it’s the kind that grounds him. Danny exists between worlds, between life and death, and yet he’s more alive than anyone Tim has ever met. He doesn’t fit neatly into any box, doesn’t follow any rules, and yet there’s something about him that feels inevitable, like gravity or the pull of the tide.

Danny doesn’t ask for Tim’s sacrifices. He doesn’t need to be saved, doesn’t want Tim to burn himself out in the name of love. Instead, Danny challenges Tim to slow down, to stop trying so hard to hold the world together and just be. With Danny, Tim learns how to live in the moment, how to breathe without feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It isn’t an easy love, but it isn’t supposed to be. It’s a love that demands courage, the kind that doesn’t come from donning a cape or taking a hit for someone else. It’s the courage to be vulnerable, to stop hiding behind plans and strategies, and let someone see every cracked, raw piece of himself. Danny is relentless in breaking down Tim’s walls, not to fix him but to show him that he’s worthy of being whole.

Together, they are something untouchable. Their love is an anchor and a storm, a lighthouse and the waves crashing against the shore. It’s a love so big, so consuming, that it leaves no room for anything else.

And that’s where the doom lies.

They are the kind of love that consumes the world around them, leaving it scorched and battered in their wake. Not because they want to hurt anyone, but because their connection is so fierce, so all-encompassing, that nothing else can survive in its shadow. They are the eye of the hurricane, calm and steady, while everything outside is chaos.

It’s the kind of love that makes people ache to touch it, to understand it, even as it destroys them. The kind of love that people will write stories about and linger in though, long after the last page has turned. Love, that will echo through time in whispers and legends. But no one will ever truly understand it, because no one else could ever bear the weight of it.

Danny is the love that makes Tim believe he might deserve to be happy after all. Together, they are the love that dooms anybody else—unapologetic, overwhelming, and utterly unforgettable.

[cranberrydietcoke]

𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 - 𝘭𝘶𝘪𝘨𝘪 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦

heavily inspired by this post by @subtlehums

content: 18+, lore accurate luigi, cigarettes, mentions of prescription drugs, guns, L word, established relationship, unprotected p in v, riding, breeding kink, mentions of pregnancy, kinda emo but fluffy but smutty, he’s so tragically beautiful idk i hope this does him justice

wc: 2.1k

a/n: i am a woman possessed. he is all i think about like its bad. shout out the girlies who found my blog thru tiktok comments lmaooo enjoy

psa: he is innocent until proven guilty! this is a fictional, hypothetical situation in which he did do it.

“𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁. 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗱, 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝗲𝘁𝗿𝘆, 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿, 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗼𝗺, 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗶 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝗻. – 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱.” - tweeted by @ pepmangione, may 1st, 2024.

you missed hawaii. that tiny apartment for just the two of you seemed impossibly big now, as you imagined the sunlight weaving in through the windows, casting shadows of waves onto the kitchen tile. you missed that kitchen, sharing coffee in the mornings before work, baking together. you missed the way the island held you both, lush and warm and predictable. the late nights, the conferences, the schedule – it’s funny how everything always seems so simple in hindsight. he had a way of making it clear he knew best, and you’d stopped arguing years ago. so, when he said to pack a bag for the mainland, you didn’t question it. you trusted him with a kind of faith that went deeper than any earthly explanation could offer.

the frosty breeze whips by you as you step out onto the fire escape of the hostel, headlights and billboards illuminating the city below. you could hear luigi’s furious typing from the chair inside over the sound of honking horns and screeching tires, occasionally pausing to reread it back to himself and flip through the starched pages of the book he’d been in for days. the eraser of the pencil he annotated with was gnawed to damn near nothing. the flick of your lighter shook him from his focus, snapping his head to watch as you wrapped yourself in your fur coat and brought a cigarette to your lips with deep red manicured nails.

“that’s gonna kill you, y’know that right?”

and he was right. not that it made a difference. six months ago, the thought of smoking a cigarette would’ve seemed absurd. now, it almost felt inevitable, like the distance between who you were and who you are had blurred and widened into a festering chasm.

 and yet, here he was – the one steady thing in your life, lounging in the peeling leather of the black desk chair, eyes meeting yours like nothing else mattered. the air inside was thick, saturated with things unsaid. tomorrow would inevitably come, but that seemed irrelevant compared to the man in front of you. you crouched with bent knees, weight balanced on the balls of your feet as you blew out thick spirals of smoke, teetering on the tip toes of your flats with each gust of wind.

“lu,” you strain through quick puffs, tapping a nail to the lit stick, causing ash to fall through the metal bars that held you up and onto the concrete of the new york sidewalk. “please.”  you scoff, lash-lidded gaze lingering over him through the open window, a look that he couldn’t bring himself to argue with. you were the fracture in the foundation of his carefully constructed logic, the one thing he couldn’t solve.

 the first time he saw you at some hazy phi psi social in undergrad, something in him just…stopped. a whirlwind of wild dark hair with an unapologetic laugh that was too loud for the space but too beautiful to be mad at. you spoke with precision, arguing like someone who had points to make, yet there was a strange charm about you, an effortless grace. he had to have you. he assumed that bringing you to maryland for holiday break would be overwhelming, that the sheer volume of his family would cause you to tone yourself down. instead, they welcomed you as one of their own, perhaps because your bold opinions and high standards mirrored theirs. but that was a lifetime ago – before the pandemic, the accident, the surgery. before everything splintered into what it is now.

his puffy, purple-ringed and exhausted eyes follow you as you climb back into the warmth, slamming the window shut and shedding your coat. resting his elbows on his knees, he brought his hands to drag down his face with a deep, weary sigh, letting them fall to his denim-clad thighs with a slap. motioning you over to him with a nod of the head.

brass casings littered the floor, the bed a mess of neon monopoly bills - scattered in the dingy sheets like confetti after some great gatsby party. you’d been holed up in that room for a week now, and his restless energy was palpable. it wasn’t like his stress was something you’d never seen before. in fact, it was normal after all these years. but this. this was a different level. completely enrapturing, not only mental, but physical.

 you slip off your shoes with a soft thud on the floor. your steps are slow, deliberate, as you meander toward him, eyes heavy with sympathy. three sleepless nights had made his face hollow, and he’d refused every pill you’d offered – hydros, oxys, anything to subside the pain. you stand in front of him, positioned between his spread legs. his hands reach to meet your plush hips, each digit pressing firmly into your skin, grounding himself in your presence.

when al pacino said the eyes never lie, he was completely correct. luigi’s were sullen, dark, angry. pleading for help, for recognition. you lift a hand to cradle his cheek, tracing over the stubble that wasn’t there when you left hawaii. wordlessly, you sink to your knees on the warped wood of the hotel floor, looking up into his big brown eyes. your fingers trace a slow path from the curve of his jaw to the firm plane of his chest, before settling your palm on the denim of his thigh, smoothing it up and down his leg. you tilt your head, letting your temple rest gently against his knee.

“i love you, lu,” you spoke in a near whisper against him, gaze fixed on nothing in particular, thoughts somewhere far away. “i just wish shit was different.”

“i know baby, i know,” he answered without hesitation, cooing down at you and bringing a meticulous hand to brush the mess of hair from your face. “we’ll be back home soon, i jus- i have some stuff to take care of, love, you know that.” his voice softened as he looked down at you, coaxing your glassy eyes up to his steady stare. with a subtle touch, he grabbed your chin between his thumb and index fingers, lifting your face to meet his. only inches way, you felt the heat of his breath on your lips, drinking it in.

“i know this isn’t who you fell in love with, n’ i’m sorry. i-i’m a fucking shell,” he rambled, bobbing his head with each word, eyes darting around each feature on your face.

“this world, me, everything, is a fucking lie.” he spat, “just t-touch me so i know that i’m real.”

his eyes were wide and manic, brow furrowing as if every thought, every word, was a battle being played out behind those unblinking, shifty eyes. your mouth hangs open, and every part of you seems to be falling into him, melting in his touch. your eyes are unfocused and glazed over as they follow his, drunk off the very essence of him.

“fuck me so i know that i’m real. i’ve been dying to know if i am.”

heady puffs of breath fell against your face with each word, his eyes drifting down to your glossy pout. he ran his tongue up the curve of your parted lips, a tiny gasp escaping them, your eyes never leaving his. it was perverted almost, urgent and depraved. without thinking, you curl your tongue out, meeting and circling his without your lips even touching, saliva dripping onto the floor below. his hands grasp at the sides of your head, pulling you in closer as his tongue forces its way past yours, lips crashing together in a heated kiss. he stands you both up with a swift movement, each kiss growing deeper, more consuming, as he guides you backward onto the bed.

you can’t help but whimper into his mouth through the soft, wet smack of your lips that fills the room as he lays you on your back, pinned by the wrist in a pool of pink and orange paper money. hot, hungry kisses trailed down your neck and across your chest, his hands firm as he peeled off your white tank top. your fingers roamed over every inch of him – gripping a handful of curls, your palm finding the small of his neck to pull him closer. softly, your hands slid over the hard lines of his shoulder blades, tracing the muscles beneath his skin. for a split second, it felt like undergrad again – fooling around on that tiny twin bed, stealing kisses between whispered laughs and desperately hoping that none of the boys in the chapter house heard you.

“baby, sit back,” you murmur, craning your neck and biting into your lower lip as he licks spirals into the sensitive skin, sending a chill down your spine. with a smirk, he flips over to settle onto the edge of the bed, fidgeting with the cold metal button of his levi’s and squirming out of them. the print of his length pressed through the thin fabric of his boxers as you hook your fingers in the waistband, tugging them to fall around his ankles. you shimmy out of your leggings and black lace panties, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the hardwood.

letting a stringy drop of spit fall from your lips, you work and twist your hands over him, whimpers and pants making his chest fall and rise, head lolling back as you plant tiny kisses on both thighs. turning around with bent knees, hips between his legs and feet flat on the floor, you sink down onto him inch by inch, whining incoherently as it stretches you out.

his hands on your sides, thumbs running down the valley of your spine, molding you like pottery as he guides you up and down. the tips of your fingers balance on the floor as you gently bounce and roll your hips, stuffing yourself over and over again on his cock.

“f-fuck – mine, all fuckin’ mine,” he spoke breathlessly, watching your drooly hole take him in with little plap plap plap’s, the fat of your ass recoiling as his length disappeared into you. his grip tightened on your sides, and you felt his legs getting wobbly under your stabilizing hand. “my girl, my good fucking girl…” he spoke absently, almost to himself, each syllable dripping with lust. appreciation. worship, even.

“god, fuck – please.” you babble, whipping your hair back to steal a glance at him from over your shoulder – all focused and blissed out, slack-jawed as he groped and pawed at the lower contour of your ass, spreading open the sticky mess and watching with wild, amazed eyes at the way you wet him up.

“what, baby? want it inside? yeah?” he panted out with squeaky desperation, lower stomach tensing and turning as you gripped and slid over him. “wanna get pregnant, huh, the way you’re takin’ it – fuck!”

his thrusts got sloppy, breath hitching in his throat and translating to desperate whines as he pumped you full. even if he didn’t come back tomorrow, if you never saw him alive again, he was determined to leave you with a little permanent piece of him. bringing a strong, warm palm to the small of your lower back to slow down your pace and push you off of him, he fell back onto the bed with a sigh, rattling the bed frame with the impact. ribbons of thick, opalescent seed seeped from your hole, all fucked open and raw.

laying together, swimming in those hotel sheets, the cold touch of fingerprints tracing numbers and letters into your thighs. truly believing you both had nothing to lose, even though that was far from the truth because you had each other. the shrill sound of wind against windows was stomach-churning compared to the familiar crash of the ocean, and you’ve accepted that you’ll probably never see that apartment again. even if you did, it wouldn’t be the same. but, you trusted him. believed in him, his capability, his intelligence. holding onto that tiny sliver of hope that told you everything would be okay, he would be careful, come home unseen and unscathed. those worries were reserved for the future version of you, one that could carry the weight of tomorrow in the daylight. all of it – the pain, the planning, the uncertainty – was beside the point now. all that mattered was the shelter of his lingering touch, quieting the rest of the world, only if for a few more hours.

[woso-dreamzzz]

Ruin

Alexia Putellas x Pre-Teen!Reader

Jenni Hermoso x Pre-Teen!Reader

Summary: Your guardians fight for custody

You had dealt with lawyers before.

You had dealt with case workers before.

Nearly your whole life in the system meant you were familiar with both.

Seeing them never got easier as you sit outside the meeting room, hunched over as you stare at the phone battery that's rapidly depleting.

You'd plugged it in to charge last night but it hadn't.

The wire's been faulty for a while now, one of those chargers that you have to move to the right angle to make sure it works.

You suppose it must have moved in the night.

You can just about hear the low murmur of conversations if you strain your ears but you don't.

You don't want to hear what they're saying.

"Drink? Food?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

You turn away from your case worker, angling your body as far away as you can get without falling off your seat.

She'd been responsible for you for eleven years, right back to when you were a baby and your first set of parents had their rights terminated. You thought last year would be the last you would see of her.

"I'm fine," You insist.

"It's okay not to be."

"I know that. It still doesn't change the fact that I'm fine."

You both know you're lying.

She knows you well enough to not bring it up again, merely offering you a few of the hard boiled sweets from the reception desk.

"They won't decide anything without your input, you know."

"They're adults," You say dismissively," That's all they ever do."

"You're twelve now. Your wishes are taken into account."

"Only if it goes to court. Only in front of a judge. If they sign an agreement here and now, they don't have to talk to me about it."

Your caseworker looks like she wants to say something but a bang of a table has her stopping.

Jenni's voice in the meeting room is raised and Alexia's rises to meet it.

The fractures in the relationship were already there by the time you arrived. Small at first but steadily growing bigger and bigger.

You hadn't known it at the time but you know it now.

You had been adopted to salvage their relationship.

It's what a lot of people did. Have a child in the hope that it would bring the relationship together again.

It had worked, for a short while but the cracks hadn't healed. They'd simply been painted over for a little while. All it had taken was a little rock of the foundations, a little change in the norm.

They always came back and soon Alexia and Jenni were arguing where they thought you couldn't hear them and driving separately to practice.

Now, Jenni was moving to Mexico and the tender hooks they were on were failing.

You were hanging on a cliff and they were too busy arguing to notice your grip slipping, ready to plummet into the abyss below.

"You're not taking my daughter from me!"

You stand, unwilling to hear anymore.

"I'm going to the toilet."

It's a single stall, a door lock that you use as soon as you're inside.

You sit on the toilet lid, willing your shaking hands to stop as you clench them into fists. Your fingernails dig into the soft flesh until you're almost certain you've broken skin.

You hate this.

You hate the lawyers and their cool indifference towards you.

You hate your caseworker and her faux sympathy.

You hate Alexia and Jenni for putting you in this situation in the first place. You hate them for thinking a child would salvage an already broken relationship. You hate that they've made you their daughter. You hate that they've tied themselves into you in a way that you can't get away from.

Your phone dies, the music from your earphones cutting out instantly and you sigh, tugging them out of your ears and wrapping them around your phone.

They're an old pair, still wired and plugged in.

Jenni and Alexia have showered you in presents since the moment the adoption went through. You had a pair of Bluetooth ones but you've never used them, not since the presents stopped coming from them together and started coming separately.

They were always one upping each other.

If Alexia bought you Airpods, Jenni bought you a pair of Beats.

If Alexia bought you a Switch, Jenni bought you an XBox.

You blow out all your air noisily, the shuffling at the door alerting you to the fact that your caseworker is outside.

You flush the toilet to keep up appearances, washing your hands and stubbornly not looking in the mirror.

"They should be finishing up," She tells you and you glower.

"For now."

They're not finished up in the slightest and you slump in your seat.

There's no music to distract you from their raised voices, tension and anger building between them.

"And what about her training?! You'd take her away from all that? To what? Gallivant around in Mexico?!"

That's Alexia now, you'd recognise her anger anywhere.

You imagine she's standing now, palms flat on the desk as she gets as close to Jenni as possible. Her lawyer, a straight laced man in a fancy suit and a disinclination to children, probably sits back in his seat, arms spread in a 'how could you tear Alexia away from her child?' pose at the other lawyer.

"Mexico has pools, Alexia! They know how to swim! She can train there!"

That's Jenni.

She's still as angry as earlier, bubbling and boiling inside of her. She's probably standing up too, finger pointing towards Alexia in a brutal jab. Her lawyer pretends he likes kids, pretends to greet you warmly and act like her actually gives a shit about your feelings.

He doesn't and he doesn't even do a good job of pretending.

He's more condescending than anything, talking to you like you're five and don't understand why your guardians are fighting.

"And you'd have her make new friends? Put her in a new swimming club? Her life is here!"

"No, Alexia, your life is here!"

You've never felt more weightless than you were in the pool, just floating around on your back as the water laps at your skin.

You're the fastest swimmer in the region for your age group. Especially in long distance.

Your coaches say you have the stamina.

You think it's because you want to be in the water for as long as possible.

It comes easy to you, mindless, repetitive.

You like to do things you're good at.

The door swings open, slamming against the wall and you sigh.

The yelling has stopped.

Neither Alexia nor Jenni want to make a scene in public.

The meeting room is a free-for-all but outside they can pretend to be civil. Everyone will pretend they didn't hear them at each other's throats a few moments ago.

You stand, plugging in your earphones even though your phone is dead.

You've found that neither of them want to talk to you if you've got your earphones in.

"Say goodbye to your mother, y/n," Alexia says, already strolling over to wait for you by the door.

Your eyes linger on her before they flick to Jenni.

You shove your hands into your pocket and mutter," Bye."

She's still looking at Alexia too, eyes narrowed in anger before they softens a fraction as she turns to you.

Her hand rests on your shoulder, thumb rubbing ever so slightly.

"I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? You've got that competition."

"Yeah, I do."

"I'll be cheering."

You manage a weak smile.

Alexia and Jenni will be on opposite ends of the room, pretending that the other doesn't exist.

"I love you," Jenni says and you sigh.

"Yeah."

Alexia is waiting by the door, impatiently, foot tapping. When you join her, she starts off again, down the stairs and to the car parked up front.

"Not sitting in the front with me?" She tries to tease as you slip into the seat behind her but you're in no mood," I'll let you choose the music."

You hold up your dead phone, earphones in and her small smile turns into a frown.

"Well, if you're sure..."

"I'm sure."

"So..." Alexia drums her fingers on the steering wheel," That competition tomorrow...You excited?"

You stare out the window. "I guess."

You're in no mood to talk, clearly, so Alexia settles on looking back at you through the rear view mirror periodically.

"Don't worry," She tells you," This will all get sorted out soon."

You wish it hadn't happened in the first place.

You with you had never met them.

[utopianparadoxist]

On Roxy, Centrism, Gravitation, and Love

So Candy Roxy has gotten a lot of shit--rightfully so--for taking a consistently centrist and peacekeeping role in the Candy timeline. Generally averse to the spotlight and of the opinion that the Gods, with their outsize importance and cultural weight, should stay out of the governing affairs of regular people, Roxy has largely been reduced to a passerby watching as her friends plummet the world into chaos as they try to tear each other's throats out.

But there's another way to read her fundamental centrism, one where her focus and perspective simply aren't political, but rather interpersonal. As one redditor (I lost the comment and don't know who, sorry!) put it, they read Roxy in this latest update as a character striving to "keep everyone together", to pull the fracturing group back into unity.

Pulling things together. That sounds familiar.

It sounds, in fact, like Gravity. "In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas 'weight'[1]) is a fundamental interaction primarily observed as a mutual attraction between all things that have mass." In other words, Gravity is a word we use to describe the fact that everything that physically exists, that has substance and matter, is inexorably pulled towards each other.

Rose describes gravitation as "the intrinsic nature of nothingness", that is to say, the nature of Void itself. And while the force of Gravity gets weaker the further things are spread apart, this weak and subtle force is what draws together cosmic gases that compact and condense into each other with such intensity that they give birth to the Stars themselves.

In this way, Void is a force which creates and becomes Light. And in the same way Gravity acts as a force pulling stellar objects together, laying the foundation for organized solar systems and ultimately Life itself--could Roxy be trying to act as a force pulling her friends into harmony reflect her relationship to the Void, right at the time the Black Hole threatens to grind them all into oblivion and they most need someone to rally them to a unified cause?

Let's see how deep we can dive into the dark.

--@lime-bloods's Void/Home Collage.

To start with, there's some required reading to understand where I'm trying to go. The image above is from Homestuck blogger @lime-bloods, who has done some absolutely brilliant work unpacking the symbolic importance of Black Holes.

I suggest reading the images above to grasp the full context of the idea, but in essence, it suggests that Black Holes are synonymous with the concept of the Home in the bounds of Paradox Space.

As Lime-bloods states, The local Black Hole of a Cherub's birthplace is identified as that Cherub's home, and Cherubs always return to this same black hole in order to reproduce. John's speech about the note that desolation plays makes reference to "the Voids keeping neighbors apart", in other words, the houses separating communities into families.

--@lime-bloods's Void/Home Collage.

The Sprites, too, are bound to the gravity of their player's Home during Sburb, unable to leave the house until the player reaches unlocks the ability to summon and eventually release them. This carries over into Homestuck: Beyond Canon, where almost every sprite manifests inside the Black Hole created by The Point.

The only exception to this is Jasprose, who A) As a Light player may have some natural resistance to the call of the Void and B) was the only Sprite explicitly released from her duty by her Player--Davepeta "released themselves" as Davesprite, but we don't know if that represents true freedom from their Sprite nature or merely a more nuanced rebellion against it. That's a tangent though, lets get to The Point.

--@lime-bloods's Void/Home Collage.

The Plot Point is a massive machine created by Roxy and Calliope for the purpose of stabilizing a Black Hole, a supermassive source of literal and narrative Gravity, and for all intents and purposes, it represents a Space/Void fraymotif, or feat of combined Aspect magic.

And what it does once Vriska dives into it is pull her into an cocoon forcing to re-experience of her old childhood Home, her very experience of being Homestuck, to force her to confront and grow past it. In this simulacra of her Home she has to contend with the toxic family dynamics she grew up with--Mindfang and Spidermom as her mothers, Doc Scratch as her groomer and symbolic father.

Diving into the Black Hole makes her once again Homestuck.

"...Understanding that Rose's lapse into alcoholism is her own way of succumbing to 'gravity' - a pull towards toxic familial cycles which not only evokes Vriska's own "addiction" to breaking 8-balls but also literally surrounds the drinker in a dark pocket - her allusions to the Void and gravity here are also tinged by her own experience and outlook as a Seer of Light (who heavily relied on a magic cue ball as her source; a fountain of information which is symbolically opposed to the information-consuming black hole)..." @lime-bloods reader response to my ask.

Lime-Bloods also draws the insight that Rose's relationship with alcoholism--brought out by her grief over the loss/absence/non-existence of Mom in the first place--is itself her succumbing to the call of Void, of Gravity, the narrative and force that pulls her toward Roxy, Mom, and her own childhood. It is in the midst of her alcoholism, after all, that she has the very revelation that leads her to tie Gravity and Nothingness/Void together in the first place.

There's another name for that force. Another form Gravity can take, that is experienced not narratively, but emotionally.

"My instinct is that Rose has reached the same conclusion I have: that 'gravity', as a metonym for the influence of a black hole, is just the inevitable pull towards oblivion. I think she's using "nothingness" as a euphemism for "space", over which gravity has dominion, but through this we can start to appreciate how the concepts of Space and Void weave into each other ("nothingness", "space" and "void" all being functional synonyms)..." @lime-bloods reader response to my ask.

At the same time that lime-bloods identifies Gravity with characters being pulled towards their homes--and so, emotionally, toward their histories with each other, in the context of Child/Guardian pairs-they also identify Gravity with the pull towards oblivion, towards nothingness.

Towards death, like how it was in death itself that Rose's mother gained the gravity to pull her daughter's heart closer to her, bringing all of Rose's love flooding to the surface. Death is itself a kind of nothingness after all, and while Space is the neighbor holding Void's left hand on the wheel, Void spins through the cosmos holding Doom's hand on its right.

And there's something interesting there when it comes to Roxy. A recurring pattern in her emotional responses to death and brushes with mortality. When Jaspers died and she held an elaborate funeral for him in an attempt to connect with Rose, like when Rose died and she held a private funeral for her and reached out to embrace Jaspers, when Dirk committed suicide in Candy and Roxy reacted by proposing to John at his funeral--

when faced with her mortality, Roxy reaches out for love.

She actually lays out this logic explicitly in the midst of her proposal. Death reminds her that time is finite, and that reminds her that what she wants to prioritize in her life is her love and connections to the people that matter to her.

John's inner thoughts in response to her proposal describe love in a rather interesting way, too--describing it as a feeling that goes "unexamined", unobserved, not directly paid attention to, as if out of the spotlight of the concious mind, until it becomes overwhelming and crashes over you.

As if a mass of cosmic nebulae gaining enough Gravity to compact gases together intensely enough to birth Stars--or Light. This association between realized Love and Light isn't new--as the aspect of Truth and Importance, the original comic associates Light with almost every major pairing, including Dirkjake, Vrisrezi, Rosemary and Roxycallie.

But the process of being drawn closer together and developing love, of strangers becoming acquaintances becoming friends becoming family or life partners, gaining importance in each other's eyes through the mutual attraction of Gravity--that process tends to take place mostly in the Void in original Homestuck, askance and askew from the viewer's perspective, hidden and private.

Though perhaps I shouldn't limit the force of Gravity entirely to the word "Love" (perhaps Passion is a better one, Heart's echo to Void's Gravity as a horizontally mirrored pair on the wheel) after all, Terezi tells John that the purpose of kissmesitude is ultimately to force both partners to "Shine a Light" on parts of themselves that would otherwise go ignored in other to improve both parties, meaning Hate can serve much the same purpose.

Dirk, for example, shines a light on massive problems with himself and with his effects on other people interpersonally through his relationships with Jake (Love) and Hal (Hate). Both force him to contend with himself and grow, enabling his eventual rooftop conversation with Dave.

Coming back to the Candy timeline in this latest update, we find Roxy trying to pull everyone in a centrist position on the matter of Jane, again reaching out to the friends she knows and loves for support when faced with the imminent mortality of someone she cares about. She finds nothing.

The thing is, the call towards love, towards Home, isn't inherently either good or bad. What I'd call it instead is essential, as in that in the same way gravity pulls astral bodies together and keeps us bound to Earth, it is in the essence of people to be pulled towards one another.

This contextualizes the Home as a Void symbol somewhat. Above all else, what a Home literally is is a House, and what a House really is is Empty. A house means nothing by itself, its purpose to be a hollow shell encasing people away from the elements.

It is the shared life, the mutual draw of love or the conflict and hate between the people sharing that Home that defines it, that gives it distinct meaning, whether for the better or for the worse. Without that inner Light, a House is indeed a perfectly generic object--an oversized Box, forgettable, infinitely replaceable. A microcosm of the Void itself.

So as Lime-Bloods says, Gravity/Love pulls Rose towards reliving toxic family dynamics, and in this case it pulls Roxy towards saving the life of a fascist who will inevitably make the world more toxic and cruel for everyone, simply on the strength of feeling provided by Jane having been a core part of Roxy's Home herself.

That said, what is toxic in one context can be productive in another, and right now the Candy adults are desperately in need of a leader who can get them all to agree on a direction to take towards solving the very real, very imminent problem of the Black Hole obliterating the Candy Timeline to nothingness.

While Vriska suggests that it may be possible for them to save Earth C from its fate, it is really only Roxy that is stepping up to the plate of advocating for it, continuously emphasizing the metaphysical threat and her unwillingness to abandon her Home, and by association, the very Black Hole that entraps her.

She says it best herself: She feels it in her gut that they can still save this place, and who better than a Hero of Void to make that kind of determination? A Black Hole is after all as much a symbol of Void as it is one of Space.

So I suspect she's going to rise to the occasion of meeting this particular challenge, and if she does, she's going to do so on the merit of the Gravity/Love that keeps her bound to Earth C, in all its wretched beauty.

The two easiest ways I can think of to solve the Candy Earth situation are for either John to dive into the Point and become June, for all the Gods to work together on some sort of large-scale abstract fraymotif or combined God magic the likes of which we've never seen before, or some combination of both.

In any of those scenarios, it feels like Roxy will likely be coordinating and keeping the group on task, simply because everyone else is too distant and divided from each other. And all of this makes me think about someone else. The other Roxy, traveling to confront Dirk in Meat.

When I first read this update, Meat Roxy came off unusually cold to me, surprisingly callous about the idea of killing Dirk. He even came off as willing to do the deed himself if need be, and like he was simply asking Dave if he was up to the challenge.

Now I find myself wondering. It feels to me at the moment like Meat Roxy is playing it cool, so to speak, keeping his own cards close to his chest and deliberately providing the space for Dave to express his own feelings and opinion. Neither Roxy nor we get to hear Dave's answer, but considering Roxy even said he hopes things end hunky dory, he really asked the question as neutrally as possible, providing space for Dave to go either way without feeling judged.

But considering the lengths Jane was able to go and still have Candy Roxy's love keep her attached to her, at least as far as wanting to offer mercy, it seems likely to me that Meat Roxy would feel similarly merciful about Dirk. I'm sure Dirk will do everything in his power to make Roxy and Dave feel they have no choice but to try to end his life, but I think he and we may end up surprised at how far he'd have to go to really convince Roxy of that.

I suppose time will tell. This somehow feels incomplete--perhaps fittingly, even now it feels like nuances of both Void and Roxy escape me, and I find myself simply waiting for what the future will bring. But I think the association between Gravity and Love treads new ground on the subject of Void, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it.

Nothing to do now but wait for the next upd8.

Keep rising.

[reidmarieprentiss]

Something Better

Summary: You overhear Spencer and Diana talking about JJ's confession, it hits too hard with the issues you and Spencer have been experiencing.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Category: angst, hurt

Warnings/Includes: crying, insecurities, fighting, leaving

Word count: 2.5k

a/n: sorry!!!! i am notttt having a good time in my relationship (he doesn’t know we’re in a relationship)

main masterlist part two

The complexity of your relationship with Spencer had deepened significantly, ever since the enigmatic and dangerous Cat Adams had entered the picture. Understanding the nature of Spencer's job, you had been kept well-informed about his interactions with Cat, ensuring that you were on the same page with him throughout this unsettling chapter. You and Spencer had been together for four years, a relationship that was marked not only by affection but also by the trials that had weathered your joint experiences, including Spencer's traumatic stint in prison. Amidst the turmoil, recent events had only added to the strain: Spencer had once again found himself a hostage, and in those fraught moments, JJ had confessed her love for him.

This unexpected confession stirred a troubling mix of emotions within you. Despite your deep-seated trust and the solid foundation you had built together, insecurities bubbled to the surface. The knowledge of Spencer's initial crush on JJ during his early days at the BAU added layers of doubt and fear. You couldn't help but wonder about the what-ifs—whether Spencer harbored any regrets about the path he had chosen with you instead. 

—

As you held the tray with steaming mugs of tea, the warmth of the ceramic seeping into your palms, your intention was simple: to bring a small comfort to the room where Spencer and his mother, Diana, were deep in conversation. But the words that drifted through the slightly ajar door halted you in your tracks, the comforting heat from the cups suddenly replaced by a cold grip of fear tightening around your heart.

“You think that’s what I’ve been doing? Closing myself off to possibilities because I’m waiting for JJ?” Spencer's voice carried a mix of confusion and introspection, a tone you recognized all too well.

“I hope not,” Diana’s response was gentle, yet it carried an undeniable weight of concern.

The gravity of the conversation, the raw honesty of the words spoken, pierced through the veil of assurances and understandings that had surrounded your relationship with Spencer. The mention of JJ, with the concept of ‘possibilities’ he might be closing off, struck a vulnerable chord. It echoed the very insecurities that had been gnawing at you—fears of being a placeholder, of not being the ultimate choice but rather the safe harbor in the storm of his complex life.

The impact of this realization was instantaneous and visceral. The ceramic mugs slipped from your numb fingers, shattering on the floor as a symbolic fracture mirrored in your composure. A sob escaped your lips—a sound of pain so raw it seemed to carry the weight of every doubt and every shadow of fear that had gathered in the corners of your relationship.

“What was that?” Diana’s voice was sharp with alarm, slicing through the tense air as the sound of the breaking mugs echoed down the hall.

Unable to face them, to see the concern or confusion on Spencer’s face, you turned and fled down the hallway. The coolness of the walls was a stark contrast to the pain burning inside you as each step took you further from the room, from the conversation, from the man you loved yet suddenly felt miles away from. Your mind raced, caught in a whirlwind of emotion and a desperate need for solitude, a space to breathe and to grasp the full meaning of what you had just overheard.

“I’ll go check it out, Mom,” Spencer said, patting his moms hands.

Spencer's heart thudded with increasing urgency as he navigated the hallway, his eyes scanning the chaotic scene of shattered mugs and spilled tea, a silent testament to a sudden departure fueled by distress. "Y/N?" he called out again, his voice tinged with confusion and concern. The lack of response only heightened his worry, each unanswered call amplifying the fear that something was profoundly wrong.

As he passed by a window, his gaze inadvertently swept over the driveway, catching the sight of you getting into your car. The pieces clicked together in his mind, albeit without understanding the why behind your actions. His concern morphed into sheer panic, propelling him into a jog as he made his way swiftly towards the front door, his mind racing with possible reasons for your abrupt exit.

Reaching the door, he flung it open and stepped out into the cool air, his breath visible in the quiet of the afternoon. "Y/N, wait!" he shouted, hoping to catch your attention before you could drive away. His voice carried a desperate edge, a plea woven through the urgency.

Spencer's mind was a whirlwind of worry and bewilderment. He had no clue what had triggered your sudden need to escape, no understanding of the emotional turmoil that had driven you to such a rapid departure. As he jogged towards the car, his only thought was to stop you, to understand, to fix whatever had gone wrong, unaware of the conversation you had overheard and the doubts it had reignited within you.

He reached the car just as you were about to start the engine, his expression full of fear, confusion, and concern. His hands gestured slightly, asking for a moment of your time, his eyes pleading for you to stay, to talk, to explain what had caused this rift to suddenly appear between you.

As the window descended, revealing your tear-streaked face and the distress clearly written across your features, Spencer’s heart sank even further. The sight of you so visibly upset was enough to tighten the already squeezing panic in his chest.

“What happened?” he asked again, his voice rough from the sprint and the growing dread. He leaned closer, his eyes searching yours for an answer, for anything that could explain the sudden shift in the day.

“I don’t want to hold you back from anything,” you managed to say between sniffles, the words muffled slightly by your emotional state. Your voice was thick with pain, each word laden with the weight of your fears.

“What?” Spencer’s confusion deepened, his brows knitting together as he tried to decipher the meaning behind your words. His face fell, a mix of worry and incomprehension as he struggled to connect the dots. He reached out tentatively, resting his hand against the car door, needing some physical connection to bridge the gap that the conversation had opened between you.

“You’re not holding me back, Y/N. Please, tell me what’s going on,” Spencer urged, his tone softening, trying to provide a calm amid the storm of emotions swirling around you both. His eyes held yours, filled with concern and a plea for clarity, as he tried to understand the source of your sudden decision to leave.

As you struggled with the words, each one a reflection of the turmoil within, Spencer's expression shifted from confusion to a dawning realization of the depth of your concerns.

"Why haven't you proposed, Spencer?" The question came out choked, a manifestation of the culmination of doubts and fears that had been gathering, fueled by recent events and lingering insecurities.

"Y/N...what? What is happening?" Spencer's voice was tinged with a blend of confusion and fear, grappling with the sudden confrontation of an issue he hadn't realized was so pressing in your mind.

You shook your head slowly, signaling the seriousness of your need for an answer. "Just answer me," you said quietly, a firm resolve underlying your soft tone. 

"I don't... I don't know," Spencer admitted, his voice faltering. His uncertainty was palpable, reflecting his own confusion about the future and his feelings about where your relationship stood, especially in light of his recent traumas and challenges.

"That's not good enough for me," you stated, the pain in your voice evident as you began to roll up the window, a physical manifestation of the emotional barrier you felt compelled to erect in the face of his indecision.

Spencer's heart raced as he saw the window closing, a barrier rising not just between him and the outside air, but between him and you. He placed his hand against the glass, a silent plea for you to stop and listen.

"Please, Y/N, wait," Spencer's voice cracked, his usual composure unraveled by the intensity of the moment. "I love you. I'm just... I've been dealing with a lot, and I didn't realize you felt this way. Can we just talk about this? Please?" His words rushed out in a torrent of emotion, a mix of apology and confusion, desperately trying to bridge the growing gap with his earnestness and vulnerability.

The tension in the air thickened as you left the window half-cracked, Spencer stood rooted to the spot, his heart heavy with the burden of your words.

"I know you’re going through a lot...I understand, I’ve been here with you through it all," you said, your voice steadier now, each word deliberate. Taking a deep breath, you lifted your gaze to meet Spencer's, the pain in your eyes a clear reflection of the turmoil within. "Are you waiting for something better?"

The question hit Spencer like a physical blow, leaving him momentarily breathless, his mind reeling. "Something better? You’re the best there is, Y/N," he managed to say, his voice laden with sincerity and a touch of desperation, wanting nothing more than to dispel your doubts.

That response, however, triggered a shift from sadness to anger. "Then why did you tell your mom you’re waiting for JJ?" you yelled, the volume of your voice a stark contrast to the quiet despair of moments before.

Spencer's face paled, the accusation and the misunderstanding cutting deep. "No, Y/N, that’s not what I meant," he stammered, his mind racing to correct the misunderstanding. "It was taken out of context. I was talking about not closing myself off to healing, to moving forward with my life, which means with you. JJ's confession threw me off, yes, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you, and I'm not waiting for anyone else."

He stepped closer to the car, his expression earnest, almost pleading. "I haven't proposed because I've been scared—scared of not being enough for you with all my baggage. But I know that's no excuse. You deserve certainty, and I've been unfair. I'm sorry for making you feel this way."

Spencer’s eyes searched yours, looking for any sign of understanding or forgiveness, hoping his words could bridge the gap that had opened up between you, driven by fears and miscommunications.

Your glare didn't waver as Spencer began to unravel the layers of the conversation you had misinterpreted, each word weighed with a heavy mix of regret and urgency to clarify the misunderstanding. He shifted uncomfortably under your intense gaze, knowing how crucial this moment was to salvage the trust and future of your relationship.

“Bullshit,” you had said, the sharpness in your voice slicing through the air.

“What?” Spencer’s confusion was evident, a mixture of desperation and hurt flashing across his features.

“That’s bullshit, Spencer. Tell me the truth,” you pressed, your voice firm, demanding honesty over comforting lies.

Spencer took a deep, steadying breath, recognizing the necessity of complete transparency. “Fine. My mom…she wants grandkids, she wanted to know why we hadn’t given her any. I told her the truth, I’m scared to bring children into this world.” His admission came out in a rush, a confession of his deepest fears about fatherhood and the future.

You continued to glare, silently urging him to continue, to explain every nuance of the conversation that had driven you to such a state of distress.

“She asked if I thought JJ made a mistake having kids. I didn’t know what to say. She thought I was being quiet because I was upset about JJ being with Will, which I am not—definitely not. And that’s what you must have heard,” Spencer explained, his voice earnest, pleading with you to understand the context and his true feelings.

The air between you seemed charged with his words, each sentence he spoke unraveling the knot of misunderstanding that had tightened around your heart. His explanation painted a different picture, one not of longing for another but of fear and apprehension about a future he felt unequipped to navigate.

Your expression softened slightly, the initial rush of anger ebbing as the truth of his words began to resonate. The misunderstanding had morphed your fear into anger, but with his honest explanation, the foundations of trust began to show signs of mending.

Spencer watched you carefully, gauging your reaction, hoping that his honesty and the vulnerability he displayed would be enough to start healing the rift that had formed. His eyes conveyed a silent plea for forgiveness, his posture open and unguarded as he stood before you, laid bare by his confessions.

“Okay,” you had said simply, leaving Spencer clinging to that word as if it were a lifeline in the turbulent sea of your relationship.

“Okay? Is that—is that all? Are we okay?” His voice was tinged with uncertainty, searching for more reassurance, more solidity than the ambiguous affirmation offered.

“I don’t know,” you replied, the honesty in your voice reflecting the turmoil within. 

“Y/N...please, I love you so much,” Spencer implored, his words thick with emotion, his eyes begging you to see the depth of his sincerity.

“I love you too, but saying it and showing it are two different things,” you sighed, the weariness in your voice painting a vivid picture of your emotional state. “You’re my world, Spencer. I just want to feel like I’m yours too. Can I go please?”

His heart sank with those words, a stark reminder of the disconnect that had formed between your perceptions of the relationship. “Go? Go where? You’re leaving?” The panic was evident in his voice, his mind racing through scenarios of loss and loneliness.

“I need to be alone right now. Can you catch a cab?” you asked, your tone resolute yet gentle, not wanting to hurt him but needing the space to sort through your swirling thoughts.

“Are you breaking up with me?” The question was out before he could stop it, a fear-driven reflex.

“No,” was your simple, firm reply, a small comfort amid the storm.

Spencer nodded, accepting your need even as it pained him. “I can get a cab. I love you, darling. So, so, so much.” His words were a whispered caress, an affirmation of everything he felt, everything he hoped for despite the current heartache.

“I love you too,” you responded, a whisper of reciprocation that served as a temporary balm to his aching heart.

With that, you drove off, leaving Spencer watching the space where you had been, his mind heavy with love and fear. He pulled out his phone to arrange a ride, his heart clenching in his chest.

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