#he at least lights up more than he has in a while

[kiragecko]

I recognize that I'm probably not the target of this post. Or, at least, the reblog. But, this IS on topic, even if it has a different energy!

-

It can be challenging to renavigate a relationship with a subject when your previous relationship was HEAVILY effected by a cultural context that is no longer there.

I used to dip my toes into the Harry Potter fandom despite not being able to read the books. (I read for writing style, and hers didn't work for me.) This was back in the mid-2000s, and a huge number of my peers had grown up transformed by this series. They were now adults who considered it an important childhood touchstone. Saying that I hadn't liked the writing style, but thought the ideas were cool, could offend people who thought it was EXTREMELY well written.

So I learned to enjoy the fandom from the sidelines, accepting that I was a bit of a curmudgeonly fun-killer. Keeping the grumpy bits quiet.

And then public opinion shifted, and shifted HARD.

And suddenly the carefully mapped ground was unknown again. People wanted to rant about how the writing sucked. How terrible the ideas were. Positivity got attacked. Quiet enjoyment of fan creations was seen as public support of Rowling's beliefs. Mild comments about the writing being only okay gained "agreement" that it sucked and had never been worth enjoying. There wasn't ROOM to process my opinions about her beliefs for quite a while, because I was too busy trying to figure out how to reconcile with a completely new environment, which was equally dissonant with my opinions of the book, but in very different directions and with a LOT more aggression!

The urge to talk about not liking the books was STRONG. Because I HADN'T been able too before! People got mad if I tried! But I was used to a context of people assuming the book was great, and needing to contrast what I was saying with that assumption. In this new context, where the books were stupid and full of hate and poorly written, my statements sounded REALLY different. They echoed with all sorts of other voices that I wasn't expecting to be there.

-

I rarely make absolute statements, so I didn't come off as delighting in people's suffering if it gave me a chance to be right. There are some benefits to anxiously stuffing every sentence with context and exceptions! But I have a lot of empathy for some of the people saying tone-deaf things now. Because not everyone is able to master new tones at the same speed.

Sometimes people are still processing the fact that they might not get argued with if they state that the Anansi Boys wasn't that good, and they've been wanting to complain about Anansi Boys for YEARS without having to acknowledge that they HAD enjoyed Neverwhere and Sandman. And that gets in the way of the fact that something terrible has come to light.

Or they they try to talk about how Mr. Gaiman selling Good Omens 2 always felt disingenuous. Him telling people that Terry Pratchett would have wanted him to make it. They've never said it before, because fandom should be FUN, and it was just a little thing. But they care about Mr. Pratchett's memory a lot, and it had BOTHERED them. But bringing it up now gets them accused of 'boasting', and 'pretending that they knew all along'.

And sometimes, they're trying to work through a hard topic by finding its limits. They need to be able to explore 'everything he ever did sucked' before they can accept the nuance that 'he made beautiful works and also hurt people badly'.

-

There are a lot of people who jump to easy absolutes, rather than grapple with complexity. That's who this post seems to be about, and they aren't who I'm talking about.

But, conversely, It's easy to say the 'right' things when you were never invested in a topic. And you have the social skills to pick up what the 'right' thing is.

If you already HAD complex feelings about a topic, it can be harder to throw them aside and only focus on the 'right' thing. If you WEREN'T 100% buying into someone's public image, there's a period of working through your shit that kind of needs to happen.

-

Anyways, I've always been a bit uncomfortable about Neil Gaiman. I didn't think Anansi Boys was that good, and gave up after a few chapters. I wasn't surprised when people started coming forward, because there's been a little 'be careful here' tag attached to him ever since I read about the Good Omens photo shoot where he wore black and Terry Pratchett wore white and they joked about it. Something about how Mr. Gaiman told the story.

All of that is a bit tone-deaf to bring in now, even though they're things I've had to process over the last few months. They're part of my relationship with Gaiman's works that I had pushed to the side, and now need to recontextualize, but they aren't directly about the people who have been hurt.

I didn't predict that Gaiman was a sexual predator. I've recommended Gaiman's books in the past, and think his writing is some of the most gorgeous, poetic stuff I've ever read. Neverwhere is amazing. Sandman is also amazing, even if it, too, added some warning tags to Mr. Gaiman's file in my head. I don't think I'm vindicated in any way by what happened, or that talking about my previous reservations is a sign that I was oh so enlightened.

But I'm also 40-ish? I have enough experience to recognize that the world has endless 'clues', and they should be noted down, but not trusted. Maybe the first time something like this happened, I WOULD have excitedly talked about all the puzzle pieces I had gathered, which now fit into place. (But I was offline back then, so we'll never know.)

Gaiman seems to have hurt a lot of people, and lied a lot, and broken people's trust. All of which is more important than my feelings about a disappointing book that everyone kept bafflingly hyping. But in this sudden space for processing what he's done, the pressurized stuff inside of me needs to be processed before I can focus on that new content.

So the disappointing book gets priority.

[ckret2]

Chapter 85 of human Bill Cipher getting a ✨💅 makeover 💇‍♀️✨ so he can seduce a government agent into not arresting him and/or the Mystery Shack gang: a flashback to Scalene & Euclid on Bill's birthday, Pacifica receiving the world's most inept lesson about fatphobia, and the continued adventures of the Pines family attempting to get a flash drive out of a goat's guts.

####

Scalene braced one shaking hand with the other as she reapplied her lipstick—a red so bright it was nearly orange, all the better to make her look a little less sickly than she felt.

She tried to pretend she didn't notice Euclid glaring daggers at her.

She'd come out of her swoon as she was being helped outside by several shapes, including Euclid supporting her with one arm and carrying Bill in the other. Once they were outdoors, someone had shoved the trophy and knives Bill had won into Euclid's hands, and then they'd been left outside as everyone else's attention turned to dealing with the mysterious fire that had spontaneously ignited inside; and for the past few minutes, Scalene had been putting herself back together while Euclid tried to soothe Bill.

Finally, once she deemed herself sufficiently presentable, she held out her arms to Euclid and their still-whimpering child. "All right, I can take him."

Euclid didn't move.

"Come on! You're not gonna hold a grudge against me for fainting, are you?"

Euclid said, "What did I tell you?"

"I brought my cane," Scalene said indignantly.

"Well, where was it?"

There was a long silence.

"Lene..."

"Oh, don't give me that look, it was just behind the curtain! I wasn't about to bring it on stage, I had to make sure Billy looked good!"

"What does your cane have to do with how good he looks?!"

"And the mayor didn't hand over the trophy fast enough," she said, ignoring Euclid's question. "If he had, I could have leaned on that. But no, he just kept yammering on..."

Euclid's copper blue eye had the most piercing glare in town. The fact that he also had the worst eyesight in town did nothing to dispel its power. Scalene much preferred when it was aimed at other people.

But then Bill wiggled his tiny hands toward Scalene with a displeased coo; and with a warning, "Careful," Euclid finally handed him over. "So. He didn't do too bad for his first outing. We've got a winner on our hands?"

Scalene was off the hook. She relaxed. "I think we do. The judges were very impressed he showed up to his first contest on his birthday." 

"You'll only be able to do that once," Euclid pointed out.

"Sure, but for the rest of his life he can tell judges he went to his first pageant on the day he was born—can't you?" She directed the question to Bill. "Yes you can! That shows real ambition!" She poked one of his sides just beneath his eye. "And they were impressed by his good looks and how calm he is."

That was well deserved. Bill had entered the world with eye wide open—rather than face scrunched up and eye retracted to cry like most infants—and looking around for his parents, as though he were already used to the light and recognized his surroundings.

"Glad the judges didn't find it creepy, at least," Euclid said.

Scalene waved him off. "What did those nurses know? They should've been grateful to get a kid that isn't wailing in their faces! They couldn't appreciate how adorable he is—but look at him. From the front you'd think he's an oval." It was true: his corners were soft and rounded, and his angles were so flexible that his top angle squashed down toward his feet, making it look more like a right angle than acute. On top of that, his bright, shining pupil was so wide it took up half his face. "One of the judges said he looks downright cherubic. That's going on your resumé, young triangle."

Bill blinked sweetly up at his mother. He would never in his life need to write a resumé, for all the worst reasons.

"And—" Euclid lowered his voice, "—none of them realized how many birth defects he has?"

She swatted his arm. "Shh! No. Everything we've got is too obscure. As far as the pageant circuit is concerned, they're birth assets. My corners were still round when I started competing, and the judges thought I was adorable, too. As long as he goes on stage without braces on, they'll think he looks unique instead of deformed—just like I did."

"If he keeps going on stage without braces, he'll need a cane before he's middle-aged, just like you do."

"Not until his best pageant years are behind him," Scalene said icily. "Besides, we'll do better by him than my mother did for me. We already know what he has—"

"—we think we do, you left before the doctors could examine him—"

"—and I've already got appointments lined up for him with the best orthopedic doctor in the county and your and Euler's optometrist. We'll make sure his face stays pretty, his angles sharpen up, and his organs don't collapse in on themselves. He's just lucky he's got a mother that knows how to make that big eye of his look cute instead of bulgy." She pointed at the trophy, "As long as his good looks keep winning prizes, he'll be able to pay off his own medical bills and bring home a few bonuses."

For the first time, Euclid turned his attention to the trophy and the Knifeco gift box, and he laughed sharply. "Knifeco's still got the myor convinced that the next sample set he gives away for free will get everybody excited to order a full set from him, huh?"

Scalene scoffed. "I don't know why anybody would bother to order one. If they wait long enough and show up to a few city events, eventually they'll win a full set. How much of his own money has he spent on knife sample sets by now?"

"Last I heard? 30, 40k? We probably won't find out how much he's embezzled from city funds 'til next election."

"Otto's an idiot," Scalene said. "After all these years, you'd think he'd figure out the only way to make money at that company is to recruit more salesmen and get a cut of the profits from the kits they sell."

"You'd think." Euclid shrugged impassively. "But as long as I'm still getting 5% from each of his sales to himself, I'm not about to tell him that." He rubbed a thumb on one of Scalene's corners, rubbing off a bit of waxy red side liner to expose the duller pink underneath. "We probably wouldn't be able to afford your makeup habit without him."

Scalene swatted Euclid's hand away. "Well, we can throw away your old chipped set." She patted the dark wood box. "From now on, we're using the set Billy won for us—isn't that right, Billy?" She bounced Bill lightly by her side. He was staring at the box, transfixed. "I think he likes it! That's right, these are your birthday knives, sweetheart."

When his parents looked at the box, they only saw the dark wood; but Bill saw through the wood—over the wood—to the silvery needlelike knives within. They gleamed with starlight shining down from a higher dimension. And then Bill looked up at the stars, glittering far above. He wiggled in Scalene's arm, but couldn't figure out how to move his limbs in the direction he saw above.

Euclid looked at the wiggling child, and tensed up. "Lene. Look at his eye."

She did, and sucked in a sharp breath. "What happened to him?"

"If this is because you dropped him..."

Bill's pupil had disappeared, leaving his eye looking empty and bloodshot silver. But at the change in the tone of his parents' voices, he blinked and focused on them curiously, his pupil back where it belonged like it had never disappeared.

They stared speechlessly at him.

"Did you and Euler's eyes ever do that?" Scalene asked. "Before those surgeries you got as kids?"

"Not—not that I remember. But I could ask Mom and Dad," he said, already knowing the answer would be no.

She stared at Bill's eye a moment longer; but when he didn't do anything but stare back innocently, she sighed. "Well, that's something else we can ask your optometrist. Maybe he'll have a fix for it."

####

While Pacifica was in the bathroom cleaning up after their makeup experimentation, Goldie stood from his folding chair to lean on the desk next to Mabel, staring with a look of intense concentration into the air over the chair about where his head had been.

"What's up?" Pacifica asked, leaning out of the bathroom.

Distractedly, Goldie said, "Nothing, just watching you do my face."

Pacifica frowned. "What? I'm over here?"

Mabel leaned between them, laughing nervously. "What he means is, he does this thing where he, uhh, imagines that he can see what happened around him in the past, so he's... pretending he's watching you put makeup on his face a few minutes ago." At Pacifica's skeptical look, Mabel hastily added, "It's not like a psychic thing or anything! It's just a... um..."

Goldie mumbled, "Mindfulness visualization exercise."

"Yeah! It helps him memorize stuff! Right?"

"You bet. All the best venture capitalists are doing it."

Pacifica said, "Oh, I think a CEO my dad invited over was talking about that. Is it like a meditation thing? You think about what you want to get it?"

"Say it until you believe it, believe it until it's true!" Mabel said.

Goldie elbowed her. "Look who's been paying attention." She beamed at him.

Pacifica packed the makeup, brushes, and spare hair ties and pins he'd need in a bag, and handed it over. "Okay, that should take care of your face. When you shower tonight, remember to wash all the makeup off, you do not want this messing with your pores; remember to moisturize or your skin will crack apart like a mummy's"—one of her mother's favorite threats—"get Mabel to help pin your curls tomorrow, and just do what I showed you for the rest. Now we just have to worry about clothing." She sized up his hair color, his skin color—couldn't quite bring herself to look at his eye color, though. "I think you're a spring. You can probably pull off some autumn colors too. But usually springs are supposed to tan easier than they burn..."

"I do!" He gestured at himself, sunburns and all, and said proudly, "This took hard work!"

That answered a question she'd been asking herself all day, and brought up half a dozen more. "Not going to ask. So, you want to go for bright, clear, warm colors. And you'll look better in gold accessories."

"I know," he said smugly.

Colors were the easy part. She wished she'd had time to call up her personal tailor to bring by some dresses that could be adjusted. Goldie had such a weird body shape—narrow shoulders, sticklike arms, slender calves, and then a wide waist and even wider hips. There couldn't be much clothing that fit him, masculine or feminine. "Do you have any cute clothes in colors that flatter you? Feminine clothes?"

"What's feminine? Dresses?" Goldie turned to Mabel. "Everything else is hit-or-miss, but dresses and skirts are still universally feminine around here, right?" Pacifica was dying to know what Goldie's life had been like.

"Yeah," Mabel said, "I think we managed to get that yellow summer dress at the mall."

Pacifica winced. "Is a summer dress all you've got?" Not the worse choice, depending on the cut, but it probably wouldn't do his figure any favors.

"It's either that or Jesús's grandma's skirts," Goldie said, shrugging. "Did we manage to snag that sparkly dress with all the pink peacock feathers?"

"That's more of a third date dress. You don't want him to think you're out of his league," Mabel said. "It's too bad we didn't get that galaxy print skirt."

"You know what I could really use? Halter top trapeze dress. Maybe stick a petticoat under the skirt for extra volume. They've gotta make trapeze dresses with petticoats somewhere."

"I could probably make one," said Mabel (who wasn't even sure what a trapeze dress was but was over the moon to see him voluntarily express an interest in human clothing).

Pacifica's face twisted in a grimace. Pityingly, she said, "Oh, you really don't know your body type at all."

He gave her an unimpressed look. "Don't I?"

The thing was, a trapeze dress in and of itself wasn't a bad idea: it was tight around the bust, flared out like a tent underneath, and stopped before the knees; so it could highlight his slim shoulders and arms, let him show off his thin calves, and do at least a bit to conceal those thunder thighs and flabby waistline. But... "A halter top would make your shoulders look way too narrow; and a petticoat would completely undermine the flattering effects of a trapeze dress, and—where would you even position the petticoat? Trapeze dresses doesn't have a waistline."

"About where the skirt starts," Goldie said, drawing a line in the air around bust height.

He couldn't be serious. "Absolutely not. You'd look like a walking triangle."

A smile of near maniacal glee stretched across Goldie's face. Before he could say anything, Mabel grabbed his arm and said, "I think you should just go with what Pacifica says! Pacifica, what do you think?"

"Just—stick with the dress you already have." Between a triangle trapeze dress, the threat of pink feathers, and galaxy print, suddenly Pacifica was grateful for the yellow summer dress. "It's great. Summer dresses are flirty. Do you have shoes that match it?"

Goldie pointed at his fish slippers. "It's these, black oxfords, or foam clogs."

"No," Pacifica said. "Sandals, flats, or open toe heels. And throw away the fish slippers."

"Never."

Mabel said, "You could reuse the sandals you borrowed from Dipper for your Summerween costume?"

"Please don't tell me what they look like," Pacifica said. "Okay, dress, shoes—accessories... just, get something nice but understated. And classy. Do I need to explain what 'classy' looks like?"

"Relax, I used to have a collection of gold that put Albion Art to shame," Goldie said. "I know how to do 'classy.'"

"I'm going to pretend I trust you," Pacifica said. "Okay, underwear—got to wear a bra unless the dress has built-in support; and if you hurry, it's probably not too late to go wherever poor people shop and grab some shapewear for your..." she gestured vaguely toward Goldie's abdomen, "problem area..."

"No," Goldie said flatly. "I'm drawing the line at shapewear. I look fine."

Ooh, not good. His attitude toward everything else about his looks ranged from "apathy" to "disgust," why was flaunting his not-flauntworthy curves the point where he chose to push back? She should've been more direct with him.  "Hon, I love the confidence, but..." Pacifica grimaced apologetically. "You're fat. Like, really fat. And you're not gonna win this guy if he thinks you've let yourself go."

Mabel shot from slouching to sitting straight up. "Pacifica!"

"What, it's true! He probably thinks having skinny arms hides it, but back me up here—it is not subtle."

"Don't say that, he's beautiful!!"

Pacifica had been braced for Goldie to be outraged, embarrassed, ashamed, go into denial, something—just about anything except snort with laughter. He waved them off when they looked at him. Pacifica wondered whether he'd misunderstood the conversation. "Listen to you two! You're letting the subtext do so much of the heavy lifting that you don't even realize half the things you're saying." His gaze on them was cold and faintly amused; and for a moment Pacifica felt like a bug whose behavior was being studied by some immense alien being, and who had been judged inferior.

"Anyway, I'm not trying to hide anything—and I'd make it less subtle if I could. I love my shape!" He pantomimed his shape with his hands—although, where most people would sort of draw an hourglass shape if they wanted to their body's curves, the shape he drew in the air looked more like a triangle. Which, admittedly, was more true to his actual appearance. "And you're changing it over my dead bo—" He winced, muttering, "Maybe not the best way to put that."

Now Pacifica wondered if she'd misunderstood him. "What."

"Look, kid..." Goldie stood straighter, put a hand on Pacifica's shoulder, and adopted the most patronizing tone she'd ever heard. "I know your parents taught you the only things contributing to your personal worth are how rich you are and how attractive other people find you, so let's agree that's all that really matters, right?"

"Um," said Pacifica, who was pretty sure she was about to receive some twee lesson about 'inner beauty' but had never heard one that started with the lecturer agreeing that wealth and looks were the most important things.

"And I know Missy Priscy's got you convinced that your beauty and your weight are engaged in a battle to the death over the right to terraform your flesh. So this might blow your mind—but you've been lied to! The sight of a human female over size 4 doesn't cause the contents of a human male's gonads to curdle! Fat chicks have been successfully getting hitched and passing the genetic baton to their offspring for all of human history—and reproduction is the only objective benchmark evolution has to measure who's hot and who's not, so you can rate that higher than the opinion of a tarnished trophy who thinks enough botox will make her immortal. Hear what I'm saying, Alpaca. Absorb it. Incorporate it into your worldview."

She bristled at the description of her mother, but swallowed back the urge to lash out. He was bitter and taking it out on her. He was feeding her a load of sour grapes. This was just the kind of thing fat people told themselves to feel less bad about being fat. "Riiight."

Goldie's patronizing smirk curled down at one corner in irritation. "Ah, who'm I kidding! You're not gonna believe me! Your mom, your modeling job, the pageant world, the beauty industry—they've burrowed way too deep in your head, and there's no digging them back out without a lobotomy." He scoffed. "You're one snide jab at the wrong time away from an eating disorder."

"Hey! How dare you!" Pacifica thought that was way meaner than anything she'd said.

Mabel snapped, "B—Goldie! Be nice! What's gotten into you two!"

"Yeesh, touched a nerve! Excuse me!" He raised his hands apologetically, but he was grinning impishly. "Anyway—" he raised his voice as the girls attempted to scold him again, "Anyway! More to the point—our target looked me up and down in a bikini and asked if he could help slather sunscreen around my waist, so I think he thinks my body looks great in the shape it's already in. And getting the guy is the only important thing—right?"

If Goldie was telling the truth, Pacifica couldn't think of any other reason some guy would volunteer to rub sunscreen on him—even if she found it hard to believe. And if he was making it up, then whatever, he could sabotage himself if he wanted, she didn't care. She rolled her eyes, grit her teeth, and muttered, "Fine."

"Not fine! Both of you hold on!" Mabel stood, decided she wasn't tall enough, and climbed on the folding chair.  "You two were just really mean to each other! That's terrible—especially after you were getting along so great! Apologize to each other!" She crossed her arms, glaring them down.

Pacifica stared at her in disbelief, brows raised. "I beg your pardon?"

But Goldie didn't look like this was odd to him at all. He just rolled his eyes—"All right, all right,"—and looked at Pacifica. "C'mon. You can't be that mad. You've heard worse."

She scowled at him, but she supposed she had. From her mom, her old pageant coach, her manager that got her modeling jobs—she was just more used to warnings about getting fat than she was to warnings about fearing getting fat. "So have you."

"Worse than you can imagine," Goldie said. "We're good?"

"We're good," Pacifica said.

Goldie looked at Mabel. "We're good!"

Mabel looked between the two of them suspiciously. "That was an apology?"

"Got the job done, didn't it?"

Mabel didn't look pleased, but she sat down on the folding chair and crossed her arms.

Pacifica said, "Okay, you're off the hook for shapewear—but if he thinks you look like a slob, it's on you."

He rolled his eyes. "Noted!"

"But you've got to wear a bra. What are the straps like on the summer dress, do you have a bra that'll fit under it okay?"

Goldie groaned. "We can reuse my bikini and pad the cups or something. We don't have time to go to the mall and figure out what size I am."

In horror, Pacifica quietly asked, "Do... do you not even own a bra."

"Why would I?" Goldie asked, like he couldn't imagine a single practical reason. Hard to tell his size through an oversized t-shirt; he was definitely small, but it wasn't like he was flat. "I've never really cared about local fashion outside of batiks, brocades, tie dyes, and sarcastic t-shirts, but now that it's affecting me personally? I cannot wait for that particular fad to die."

Since when were batiks local. And who calls bras a fad. That's like calling shoes a fad. "What is your life like," Pacifica asked.

Goldie grinned. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."

####

"That's it. That's all I can do for you," Pacifica said. "Good luck on... whatever it is you're doing. Because I'm pretty sure you're not actually into this guy?"

Mabel said, "Wooing a federal agent to avoid getting the whole family arrested!"

Pacifica nodded. "Oh, cool. Let me know how that goes."

Mabel stopped to hug Giorgio on the way out.

As they left Pacifica's barn, Bill turned to face Mabel. "Welp!" He pantomimed like he was playing a violin, "Ready to bow on some poor sucker's heartstrings until we yank out his aorta?"

"Ha ha. Yeah. Sure." Mabel tried to smile and it came out as a grimace. "Sounds great."

"Hey, don't give me that look!" He shoved Mabel's shoulder. "You've heard me say gorier things than that!" He flashed her a grin she could only describe as bloodthirsty, and bounced off toward the road back to town, so cheerful he was very nearly floating.

And she watched him go, biting her lip.

Something had been bothering her since his argument with Pacifica:

She couldn't figure out why he wasn't better.

####

Bill nudged Mabel. "Hey. Am I in trouble?"

"What?"

"You've been giving me the silent treatment since we left." That had been about fifteen minutes earlier. "Is it because of the eating disorder thing? Do I have to apologize to you for that? It's not like I was insulting her! If anything, I did her a favor by warning her—"

She gave him a sour look—that had been very rude, even if not Bill's typical existential horror cosmic nightmare level rudeness—but said, "No, it's not that. I'm just thinking about stuff."

"Are you gonna share it, or do I have to wait until I can crawl inside your head again to find out?"

Mabel was silent a moment. "Do you actually like tie-dye?"

"That's what's bothering you?" He pulled his eyepatch back on—Pacifica had told him putting it back on would probably mess up his makeup, but that didn't really matter until tomorrow. "Of course I do, who doesn't! It's chaos on a shirt." He shrugged. "I've never had any—but, y'know, it's nice to look at, anyway."

"Wait, never? We should do tie-dye together! I can get us some white shirts and we can dye them outside," Mabel said. "Maybe I can invite Grenda and Candy!"

"Sounds like a party! Let me know when, you know what my schedule looks like."

"Great!" She beamed at him.

But as they walked, her smile slowly faded as she drifted back into her own thoughts.

His ideas about flirting were very hit or miss, but Mabel thought they were probably hits more often with aliens that thought dead salmon smelled sexy. He'd had a girlfriend, at any rate.

And he'd gotten chummy with Abuelita (even after she tried to poison him), he'd charmed Gideon's mom in like ten seconds, Wendy thought he was cool and so did half her gang, Candy and Grenda said he was fun, Mabel was pretty sure Stan kinda liked him even if he wouldn't admit it... He'd even managed to develop a rapport with Pacifica—Pacifica!—which had taken Mabel like two-thirds of the summer!—and he'd done it even though they'd insulted each other!

He was charming, he was fun, he clearly got romance...

So how come he didn't have true love and best friends that weren't evil?

The question itched at her brain.

Mabel firmly believed that the only thing that made people bad was not getting enough love. Family love, friend love, romance love, adorable cuddly pet love, whatever. Put love in, get love out; put nothing in, get a swirling vortex of loneliness and hatred where the love should have been stored. Like Prickly Bee in Color Critters! Who during season one had been one of the color-hating bad guys, but in season two had inexplicably joined the good guys due to network executive meddling, and it wasn't until season three that they did a flashback episode showing that the critters had won her over by showing her the kindness and caring that her old boss Serpent Grey never had!

And at the beginning of summer, after Mabel helped Bill get his hair back, he'd said it had been a long time since anyone had been nice to him; and he'd been nice to her since then, so that seemed to support her theory. All it took was a little love!

She just couldn't figure out why he didn't already have enough.

He had all those monster friends he'd tried to conquer the world with last year, but maybe they were those "people who claim to be friends but are actually allies who hate each other" that you see amongst cartoon villains. (Like Serpent Grey's minions.) Was it because they were aliens? Were aliens not good at friendship? Had he been deprived until now?

She remembered how heavy even the smallest glimpse at his pain had been—listening to him grieve over his own death. It was clear that, whatever he'd had before, what he needed now was better love, more friends—enough to share that psychological weight without collapsing—but how much would be enough to untwist his crooked morality?

Mabel was running out of time. Summer was almost halfway over. She only had seven more weeks to reintegrate Bill into society—to help him make amends for everything he'd done last summer—or else... or else she'd failed. She'd failed him. 

And she knew she was making progress with Bill, but she didn't know if it was enough. She wished he'd go faster. She wished summer would go slower. She wished she had more time.

She remembered what had happened the last time she'd wished for a little more summer.

So she'd just have to figure out how to save him in the time they had left. She couldn't just pick up a broken teacup, glue half the pieces together, then abandon it half-repaired to leak tea all over the floor. She was a problem solver, it was what she did. She had to solve this problem—or else everything she'd done this past year would be for nothing.

As they walked, she reached out to grab Bill's hand. He gave her a curious look, but he didn't pull it back.

"Was all that stuff true about you doing pageants as a kid?" (There must have been something in his past to explain why he didn't have enough love—maybe in his childhood.) "Or did you just make that up to make Pacifica relax?" (She guiltily remembered him accusing her of trying to "fix" him—how badly he'd been hurt by the thought.)

She felt his hand tense in her grip, but he shrugged dismissively. "They're not exactly identical to human beauty pageants—no real fashion component, for one thing—but, yeah. Did 'em as a kid. I went to my first pageant on the day I was born."

"So you lied when you told me you didn't do them yourself?"

"I did not," Bill said indignantly. "I just didn't correct you when you guessed wrong!"

At Mabel's sour look, Bill rolled his eye and said, "What, am I supposed to correct you every time you say something wrong? Because humans are wrong about just about everything—"

"Bill."

He huffed. "The specifics weren't any of your business, okay? It's—not something I talk about with humans. Or any other aliens, for that matter."

"Why not? Was it—"

"Because it's ancient history," he said sharply.

Mabel gave him a worried look. When he didn't elaborate, she said, "So, is it really as stressful as you and Pacifica made it sound?"

"Stressful!" Bill scoffed. "Name a part of life that isn't stressful. School, work, breeding a family, yadda yadda—better to learn how to handle it early, right? And it's only stressful if you're bad at it! I was good. I was very good."

"Good at what?" Mabel asked.

"Uh..." Bill had to grasp for a moment. "Being... cute. Charming the judges. Wowing 'em at the talent portion—when I wasn't starting fires. I really did play the piano! I mean—not a piano, but the closest equivalent my world had. There's nothing cuter than a kid playing an instrument he can hardly reach each end of." At Mabel's continued worried look, he said, "What! It was harmless. It was just a bunch of baby shapes bumbling around the stage looking adorable, that's all! It wasn't that bad!"

He was quiet for a moment; and then he repeated to himself, "It wasn't that bad."

####

"Don't get any closer," Stan said. "This place is about to be a toxic waste dump."

Bill and Mabel looked around Stan. In the middle of the clearing behind the Mystery Shack, a tent had been set up. Inside, a goat bleated in a plea for help.

Mabel asked, "Why?"

"Poindexter and your brother's plan to get that computer doohickey out of the goat the old-fashioned way didn't work. He wouldn't eat the concoction they mixed up. So they're getting it out of him the other old-fashioned way."

"Vivisection?" Bill asked hopefully.

"No—" Stan fell silent, squinted at Bill's face, and decided not to comment on his new look. "Vomit. You remember that witch's brew we used to chase off the flying eyeball that you—er—you knew?"

Mabel screwed up her face. "Oh, yuck, that was the worst thing I ever smelled."

Stan tipped his head toward the tent. "Well, they're about to detonate what's left of it."

"'Detonate'?"

Ford's voice came from the tent: "On the count of three! One... two..."

There was a muffled boom. The walls of the tent billowed outward and an orange ball of fire illuminated Ford, Dipper, and Gomper's silhouettes. Gompers let out a loud bleat of distress.

Voice strained, Dipper said, "Ugh, that smell—I think I'm gonna be—" He had to try a couple of times to unzip the tent, then stumbled out and landed on his hands and knees in the dirt, gasping for fresh air.

Ford—wearing a gas mask—ducked out of the tent. "I told you you'd want a mask."

"Smelling it in close quarters is way—" He clapped a hand over his mouth and gagged, "—way worse than I thought."

"Well?" Stan called. "Did anything come up?"

Ford peered back into the tent. "No."

Stan flung his hands up.

"Don't lose hope," Ford said. "I have a spell to induce vertigo somewhere. I don't remember all the words, but..."

Bill spent several seconds pretending he didn't notice Ford was staring directly at him before he said, "Can I help you?"

"You know the spell, don't you?"

"What, the Maximus Vertiginous? 'Course I do. Classic prank."

Ford stared at him expectantly. Bill said, "What?"

"How does it go?" Ford asked impatiently.

"Oh, you expect me to teach you?" Bill rolled his eye.

Mabel frowned up at him. "Come on, Bill, don't be a jerk."

The back of his neck started heating up as he realized the whole family was staring at him. He stood a little straighter. "Listen to you, ya little hypocrite! Aren't you the one who keeps showing me those cute cartoons telling me to be myself?" To Stanford, he said, "I don't tutor my dropouts. Go find your own notes, Stanford Pines."

Ford glowered at Bill, but then he left the tent, zipped it shut behind himself, and trudged toward the shack. His irritated muttering was muffled by the gas mask.

As soon as the door shut, Stan clapped his hands. "Okay! Ford's gone, now we're doing this my way." As he passed Dipper, he said, "C'mon, kid, chop chop. I need your help, your hands are smaller than mine."

Dipper groaned, but got back to his feet, pulled his shirt over his nose, and trudged back to the tent with Stan. "What are we doing?"

"The same thing you and Ford were—but more assertive! Sixer nixed my plan, but his obviously didn't work." Stan unzipped the tent's flap. "All right. I'll hold the goat's mouth open, you reach in."

"Ohhh no."

Bill's face lit up. "Heeey, that sounds fun! Let me try! My hands are small and I can actually see the flash drive!"

"Oh no you don't," Stan said. "We can't risk you picking up the eyeball repellant stink, you've gotta stay pretty until loverboy shows up!"

"What, so suddenly I'm too pretty to grope a goat's guts?" Bill stared at Mabel in disbelief, waiting for her to commiserate over this injustice.

Mabel—who was still a bit miffed about being called a hypocrite—said, "Let's just go in." As they walked to the porch, she said, "'Be yourself' doesn't mean be a jerk. It means 'don't hide your talents' and 'keep doing your hobbies even if other people think they're boring' and stuff."

"Yeah, well, what if one of my talents is being a jerk?"

Mabel groaned. "There's gotta be an episode that covers this."

As Stan entered the tent, he said, "Phew, that reeks! Hey, zip the tent when you come in."

Dipper hung back nervously, half in the tent and pinching his nose shut. "Grunkle Stan, I'm not sure about this idea."

"Come on, it—it can't be hard! Farmers do this. I think. Look, I'm doing the hard part, all you have to do is reach down his throat! Lemme just... get my fingers between his jaws...

Gompers bleated angrily. Stan hollered in pain.

"Oh, no!" Dipper dove for Gompers and landed in the dirt as the goat shot past. From the porch, Mabel and Bill could only watch as Gompers headed the other way.

Soos walked around the corner of the shack. "Hey, du—whoa!"

"Soos!" Dipper shouted. "Catch him!"

Soos dove to the side to get out of the way of the charging goat, watched him vanish into the forest, and said, "Aw—dude, I just did the opposite of what you asked me to do. That's totally my bad."

Ford opened the back door with a handful of papers and his gas mask pushed up on his forehead. "I heard shouting, what happened?"

"Uhhh," Soos said. "Gompers just escaped into the forest."

"What?! How?!"

Stan stumbled through the tent's flap, cradling a hand. "It was—it was totally unexpected. Just ran off for no reason. Completely unprompted," he said. "He also bit my hand. Don't ask why my hand was so close to his mouth."

Ford said, "Which way?! We have to follow him immediately! If the agents detect the drive's signal before we retrieve him—"

"Don't bother," Bill said. "As long as he's in the forest, if he doesn't want to be caught, he won't be. There's nothing you can do until he comes out."

Ford narrowed his eyes. "How are you so sure?"

"He ate some magic rocks."

"Ah. Well." He shrugged in defeat. Nothing they could do if he'd eaten magic rocks. "But what if he does want to be caught?"

Bill gestured toward the forest with a flourish. "If you think he's eager for more of the hors d'oeuvres and perfume you've been offering him today, go get 'im."

Stan cleared his throat. "Well—the good news is, when the agents get here, they won't find the thingamajig in the Mystery Shack! Eh? Ehhh?"

"Oh, yeah, that's what I was coming over to tell you guys," Soos said. "I was taking out the trash, and I saw this car parked just up the road, and it looked like the car the government dudes were in today, so, I think they're watching the shack now?"

There was a long silence as the group processed that.

"We can't be outside," Ford said. "If they see Stan they'll want to interrogate him, if they see Bill here after hours they'll know he's not a passing tourist, and if they see me they'll realize I'm not a superior officer from Washington—"

Bill slammed his fist on the back door. "Then stop rambling and let me in!"

Ford opened the door and ushered everyone inside. "Hurry!"

"But what about Gompers?" Dipper asked. "We've gotta at least try to find him before the agents do!"

"What if the agents follow you to Gompers?" Ford asked. Dipper hesitated.

Mabel said, "We can make disguises so they won't recognize us!" She took off her half of the enchanted friendship bracelets, chucked it toward the coat rack just inside the door, and ran upstairs. "Come on!"

Dipper shot one last worried look toward the forest, then followed her.

Ford shut the door and asked Stan in a low voice, "How long is Gompers usually gone when he wanders off?"

"No telling. Sometimes I don't see him for weeks at a time."

Soos said, "So if they're gonna keep looking until they find that drive, but we can't go looking because they're watching us, and Gompers doesn't come back, so we can't find the drive, and they can't find the drive... then, how do we get rid of them?"

"We don't," Stan said. "Unless they find something more interesting than the drive."

As Bill added his end of the bracelet to the coat rack, he was keenly aware of three sets of eyes on him. He could see the cold gray walls of his cell in the— of the surgical suite in Hangar 618. Oh, he was certainly a billion times more interesting than some lousy drive; and if the eagles figured that out...

"Distracting them for a few hours won't cut it, will it," Ford asked him.

Bill pushed away the phantom psychological weight of heavy ankle cuffs and cheap orange fabric. "Doesn't look like it. You'll need some other way to make them leave."

Grimly, Ford said, "It looks like your job just got a lot more important."

####

(Your "what was edited due to TBOB" roundup: as mentioned in an earlier chapter, some of the specifics of the pageant scene came from TBOB—the name of the "best baby ever" award and the mayor handing out free knives. But everything else was plotted well before TBOB—including Bill being born able to see the stars, having a condition that makes him unusually flexible (which lines up with Baby Bill's squishy look quite well), and his parents getting him medical treatment at a very young age due to, among other things, his weird eye. Most of the rest of the chapter was written pre-TBOB.

Although my god did i rewrite the conversation about Bill's weight a hundred times. This has been a high priority to work into the fic for some time! I wanted to make it clear that Bill's body shape isn't merely a cosmetic part of his character design but something with actual in-world impact, that for him it's a positive and not meant to be punitive or a joke, and that Pacifica's got issues and we're gonna be dealing with them. The hard part was doing all that while avoiding Bill sounding like an enlightened angel spreading the gospel of fat positivity to the ignorant masses, rather than what he actually is: a selfish alien who realizes humans are being stupid but whose only personally investment in this issue is convincing a 13-year-old not to make him wear spanx. 

Next week, the agents are finally back, and Bill gets to put all that flirting practice into action! I'm sure he'll do a great job.)

[queenie-ofthe-void]

A Florist's Least Favorite Holiday

Steddie || wc: 1.7k || rating: T || tags: fluff, author clearly writing a self-insert story to vent about valentine's day, this is a real thing that happened to me so I wrote about it

Valentine’s day is fucking awful. It’s the worst day of the year, and this year’s no different than the last five Valentine’s days Eddie’s worked in the floral shop.

Don’t get him wrong, all holidays are chaotic. There’s centerpieces filled with sticky sap and sparkles for the winter holidays, cornicopias filled with crumbly floral foam for Thanksgiving, enough lilies for Easter to jump-start his seasonal allergies, and even mountains of red, white, and blue headstone wreaths for Memorial day.

Combine all of the holidays, and weddings and funerals together; and none of them hold a candle to the house fire that is Valentine’s day.

Prepping over a month in advance, Eddie has taken almost four hundred orders for pick-up and delivery for the tiny, backwater town of Hawkins. They’re a small shop, with only himself, Chrissy, and Vickie as permanent workers. Thankfully, this year they were able to hire some temporary helpers to blow up balloons, make candy baskets, and take deliveries. Even with the help, that still leaves everything else to the three of them.

Eddie’s stripped the thorns from over a thousand roses in the past two weeks, sorting them into buckets by color or arranging a dozen into a beautiful bouquet. The best part about his job is usually bringing a design to life, picking the perfect flowers to create an arrangement like a work of art. Yet somehow, Valentine’s day manages to sucks the life out of that too, with little to no creativity between each one-dozen red roses arranged in a fake crystal vase.

Regardless, he’s busting his ass. The newbies have left for both rounds of morning deliveries and the first round of afternoons. Chrissy’s working the counter while Vickie fields complaints. This leaves Eddie to wander the floor, helping confused husbands and boyfriends find the right pick for their spouses.

Working with customers to find something they’re happy with isn’t so bad. He likes guiding them towards answers to questions they didn’t think to ask. Questions like what their spouse wears, how their home is decorated, what their favorite color is, and how each of those are a small clue into exactly what the recipient would love. Every detail helps, and Eddie is, quite genuinely, always happy to help someone who asks– nicely.

He’s on his way back to the counter with an empty bucket in his arms when he spots a guy holding a few roses. Eddie watches, momentarily transfixed, as the man sticks his tongue out in concentration, swiping it over his lower lip. His brow’s furrowed, glancing back and forth between single-stem lavender and pink roses in the display case in front of him. 

Eddie can’t blame the guy, honestly. There’s over twenty different colored roses to choose from this year. Chrissy really went above and beyond to haggle with their suppliers. They’ve got the best of the best, truly something to brag about. 

He sets the bucket down underneath a display table so it’s out of the way as he heads over to help. And damn, the guy’s even prettier up close. There’s a light dusting of moles across his face and neck. The lights in the display case shine golden against his softly styled brown hair. 

Eddie must catch his attention, and the lights reflect the light hazel tone to his russet colored eyes. A goddamn fucking angel walked into Eddie’s shop. Except he’s wearing high-top Nike’s like the jocks used to wear, along with tight acid-washed jeans, and grey Members Only jacket. The guy screams straight, ex-jock, fuck boy, even more evident by the three separate roses in his hand. 

Still, he’s a customer in need. And Eddie is nothing if not a helpful, humble servant.

“Can I help you find something?” Eddie asks. It’s only slightly more casual and flirty than his typical customer service voice. 

The man’s lips part into a soft ‘oh’ as he just stands and stares at him. Eddie quickly glances down at himself, scanning for stray stems or petals hanging from his apron. There’s nothing there, at least nothing worth gawking at. Maybe he’s got something in his teeth? Shit, he should’ve checked first.

“Uhh–,” the man says, intelligently, interrupting Eddie’s own internal spiral– “I was just looking at, you know.” He gestures to the buckets of roses without taking his eyes off Eddie. “I need one more, and can’t decide on a color.”

“Three roses, huh?” Eddie says, the joke rolling off the tip of his tongue before his mortified brain can prune it, “One for each girlfriend, that’s sweet of you.”

Fucking Christ. He wishes he’d kept the bucket of water to drown himself in, like this day can get any worse.

This beautiful, angel of a man scoffs at the unbecoming joke and yeah, Eddie can’t blame him. For someone who not only prides himself on his customer service skills, but also his ability to charm his way into many men’s beds, this is a royally large fuck up.

The man grabs the lavender rose, holding it out to Eddie along with the two other pink and white ones already in his hand. “This,” he emphasizes with the lavender rose, “is for my best friend. This one–” he holds out the pink– “is for my adopted sister.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, before the guy cuts him off.

“And this one–” he shows off the white rose– “is for my Gran. I’m stopping by the cemetery on my way home and thought she’d like it.”

Forget drowning in a bucket of leaf water, Eddie deserves to be crushed under the weight of a million roses, thorns cutting into tiny little pieces. 

“Right,” Eddie huffs, annoyed with himself. He scrubs his hands roughly over his face, like he can erase the embarrassed flush burning up his neck to the tips of his ears. “I’m so sorry, man. I have no idea why I said that. It’s just–” Eddie waves his hand around the store– “it’s been a long day, and sometimes I think I’m funny when I’m really, really not. I’m not normally this awkward, and I’m typically much better at my job.”

At this, the guy smirks, like watching Eddie squirm is entertaining. It’s the least he can do, if his misery makes the man feel better.

“Can you ring me up?”

Eddie nods, thankful how quickly he seems to let the entire confrontation go. They make their way to the counter, Chrissy eyeing him as he asks her to switch for a second. She eyes the customer and nudges Eddie, where he notices a playful smirk on her face. Jesus, she’s nosey. He only rolls his eyes as she walks off.

Doing his best to avoid eye contact, Eddie focuses solely on wrapping up the flowers in the pretty, heart-printed paper they bought specifically for the day, and wraps a matching colored bow to each flower. He feels the unrelenting urge to fix this, unsure why it even matters to him. This guy most likely won’t even be back until next year, just like the rest of the customers he’s helped today. Eddie shouldn’t treat this one customer any differently because he’s cute.

And yet.

“I actually think you’re really sweet!” Eddie blurts, thrusting the packaged roses into the guy’s waiting arms. “Shit, I meant it’s sweet you’re buying them gifts. I didn’t mean you’re sweet. I mean, not that you’re not sweet, I mean– goddamnit.” 

He’s smiling at Eddie, like this is all an adorable spectacle and not the worst experience of every Valentine’s day Eddie’s. God, that fucking smile makes Eddie’s insides melt, blinded by pure sunshine.

“Really?” His voice is playful, if yet a little shy. Eddie buys into it, of course he does, desperate to make up for his flailing. 

“Yeah, definitely sweet– adorable, even. Positively charming.” Eddie’s on better footing now, watching a rosy blush bloom underneath tanned freckles. There’s a line of customers grumbling about the wait, but Eddie doesn’t care, not so long as he gets to keep staring at the literal angel now smiling back at him.

“I’m single, you know.” 

Eddie can’t think to respond over the roaring static in his ears, brain going into full shut-down mode. Did he just–

“What?” And Eddie’s back to being a total buffoon.

It must be cute though, because the guy laughs as he leans forward to grab one of the shop’s business cards next to the register. He writes something on it, then hands it back to Eddie who flips it around in his hands to read it.

Call me, and thanks for your help.

♥️ Steve

There’s a phone number listed below the man’s– Steve’s– name. An actual, honest to god phone number. From a man who looks like he could work in Hollywood for a living. 

Eddie can feel his own face splitting in two with how hard he’s smiling. He reads the simple note once, twice, three times before he remembers where he is and who’s still standing in front of him.

Steve looks hopeful, eyes flitting between Eddie and the note as he fiddles with the bow on one of the packaged roses. 

“Yes,” Eddie practically shouts, glee saturating his tone. “I’ll definitely call you tonight. Well–” Eddie glances around the shop, spotting the scattered empty buckets, piles of dead leaves on the ground, and the stack of unprocessed delivery tickets– “maybe I’ll call you tomorrow.”

And Steve nods, like it’s that easy, and shyly answers, “Can’t wait,” before heading out the door, sending a dorky little wave over his shoulder as he goes.

Somehow, Eddie manages to recover enough of his higher brain power to work the rest of the day. He falls back into routine: boxing vases, filing orders, dumping rotten plant water, scrubbing buckets, and organizing the back cooler. It’s almost midnight by the time he gets home, slightly earlier than he expected.

His feet ache like they always do, and he’s so emotionally drained that Eddie thinks he could go the rest of his life without talking to another customer ever again. Except he thinks, fiddling with Steve’s note, maybe there’s one customer Eddie would talk to again.

Tomorrow, though. Definitely tomorrow.

divider kudos <3

[lorelune]

(michael kaiser x reader // 18+ MDNI // cws: yandere kaiser, stalking, reader smokes cigarettes, toxic behaviors // wc: 2.2k)

"so you really did it?"

"did what?" you ask, exhaling a puff of cigarette smoke into the frigid air. your fingers are numb.

"break up with him!"

"kaiser?" you snort, taking another drag before speaking. "i guess? i called things off earlier today, but we weren't actually dating. so it's not like it's really a breakup."

"... sure."

your friend on the line hardly sounds convinced. but it is... true. you and michael kaiser never dated. you never had a label, never discussed any type of commitment or potential future together. though you had spent more than one weekend (try a dozen plus) at his apartment, oscillating between cuddling, fucking, and being in each other's presence's in a way that was distinctly not platonic—

you and michael kaiser were never dating. you were not together. (Regardless of him flying you out to one match in Vienna, and the another in Rome—) you weren't dating.

you never were.

you never expected to either. michael kaiser was transparently damaged, and handling it in an unproductive, destructive manner. you saw this from a mile away, but entertained your chemistry regardless. maybe it was the influence of a few drinks and a few heated arguments that got you in bed with him to begin with, despite clocking his toxic tendencies early on.

you fought a lot, for not being a couple.

care made kaiser squirrely and angry. kindness made him snap. aggression, biting and clawing— angry sex that metastasized into something carnal and closer to a fight resonated with him far more than little affections. you only saw moments of vulnerability from him when you were both fucked out and exhausted. or, when he thought you weren't looking. you felt him pet through your hair while he thought you were asleep, more than once.

you broke up with kaiser because you couldn't handle things as they were anymore.

maybe you wanted to be loved. maybe you wanted to be held, openly and tenderly. maybe, you wanted a partner and not a man with an ego problem who fucked like a god and treated you like invasive creature nine times out of ten when you showed him affectionate.

(you just want to be loved.)

the luxuries and innate chemistry of your relationship simply wasn't worth it.

so, you broke things off. over text, because it seemed the least messy.

[you]: hey, what we have isn't working for me anymore. i don't want to see you any longer. i care about you a lot, but what we have is not sustainable. i wish you all the best, michael.

(you try not to be too affectionate with your message, lest you rile him up. you want to be gentle, but not too... emotional. it's better this way.)

you block him after sending the text. clean breaks— it's kinder in the long run, isn't it? even if it hurts more in the moment.

you sigh into the receiver, tossing your cigarette butt to the side, "i mean it, we weren't ever serious."

"if you say so."

you kick at the snow beneath your feet. there's an inch or two of it on the ground, coating the cobblestones of the path you walk on. the river that cuts through your city runs, despite the cold. there's no one around, and it's peaceful beneath the amber-tinged street lights.

"you don't sound convinced."

"because i'm not." your friend pauses. "... have you seen his instagram story from today?"

"nope," you pop the word from your lips. "i blocked him."

"already?"

"immediately."

"damn. that's cold of you."

"you don't know kaiser like i do," you shake your head. it's better this way, to be cleaner.

(you have always been able to foresee the way that man would tear you apart, if you misstepped too grievously.)

"well regardless," a notification comes up on your phone. your friends has sent a screenshot of kaiser's story. "look. he flew out to your city."

your stomach drops. sure enough, the screenshot has a location stamp over a photo of kaiser's deft hands, twirling a flute of champagne from what is clearly a first class seat.

"... maybe he has a match."

(he doesn't. you know this; there's no league that plays in your city.)

"or, he's coming to see you!"

"that would be insane," you laugh. that bastard... wouldn't, would he? he is... was halfway across the world.

"it would be romantic."

"it would be insane," you repeat.

you turn on your heel, back the way your came through the parkway. your apartment is... about a mile away, maybe. it's dark and cold, but you can probably get back there quickly. you're not sure where this particular sense of haste comes from—

but it's a frantic sort of feeling.

your friend pouts, "you have no sense of romance then, i guess."

(and your friend doesn't know michael kaiser.)

anxiety pitches around between your stomach and lungs. you swallow, and it feels too dry.

"i promise i do," you shake your head. "that's the problem."

"sure. tell me more about it later, 'kay? i gotta get ready to go out. let me know if your man shows up!"

your stomach rolls. "gotcha."

"bye bye!"

the line goes dead. your drop your arm to the side, your phone like a deadweight in your hand. you take a few steadying breaths, looking out at the rush of the river. the roar of it is just far enough away to not be overstimulating. the rest of the night is blanketed in snow and stillness.

you nearly trip as you begin to walk again, panic unfurling in your chest with each step.

(there's no way michael came all the way to your city, on a fucking last minute flight no less, for you. there's no literally no fucking way.)

why would he anyway? to try and salvage your not relationship? that hardly logical. there has to be another reason— his team has had him in a few PR campaigns lately, maybe... maybe that's it.

(you know that you are lying to yourself.)

you slip, just for a step or two, on some ice that's beneath the layer of fluffy snow. barely, you keep yourself upright, your arms flying up to find your balance once more. you take a steadying breath, pressing a hand to your chest.

"you should be more careful."

the blood in your veins freezes, numb and chilled like the air around you. your head jerks up.

kaiser sits on a bench, about ten paces in from of you. his arms are spread out over the back of it. he regards you with a tilt of his head, almost playful.

he looks you up and down, voice full of poison, "you could have hurt yourself."

"why the fuck are you here?" your voice barely manages to stay steady.

"why wouldn't i be?" kaiser shakes his head, a laugh bubbling in his chest. the cadence of it makes you feel nothing but unease. "i've got a match in London. i'm just picking you up."

"what are you talking about?" you swallow, audibly. you know that he hears it.

"don't be obtuse." he stands up. your stomach fills with leaden dread.

"you don't be obtuse," you snap back. "we're done. this—" you point between the two of you, "— is over."

"that's a mutual decision." he steps toward you.

you step back. "no, it's not."

kaiser is faster than you, he's up against your front in a moment. it makes you stumble back, nearly falling on the same patch of ice as before.

deftly, he gets an arm around your waist. the force of it is immediately too much, too tight, too hard. you're pulled against him, chest-to-chest. you brace your hands on his shoulders, some attempt at distance, but he doesn't budge. he stares down at you, the cold heat of his own presence engulfing you effortlessly.

"i-it's not," you whisper, voice wobbling. "you need to leave."

"you're an idiot."

"please let go."

"now, you're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" kaiser smiles, something acidic that you can almost taste.

he bends the two of you, so your back arches. you scramble against him for some purchase.

"there's nothing to 'let go'," his sneers. you hit your fist against his shoulder. "you're coming with me to London, and you'll stop throwing this tantrum now, or along the way."

"it's a not fucking tantrum!" you snap at him. your voice matches the roar of the river. you meet his gaze, angry slipping into your tone as it so often does with him. "we are done. i don't want anything to do with you, michael— especially now. i can't believe you hopped on a fucking plane to, what, harass me on my own turf?"

his palms circles your jaw in a swift, uncomfortably fast movement. the pressure of him is unyielding. you can't look anywhere other than him.

the way he looks at you scares you, now more than ever. the frigid blue of his eyes is haunting and as hollow as it is full of vitriol. anger. all directed at you.

"i 'hopped on a plane' to take you home," kaiser dips you further. if he wasn't holding you, you'd crash to the ground. "i should've done so earlier, but i didn't expect that you'd lose your shit so quickly."

you weren't—, "i’m not—"

his grip on your jaw grows tighter. from a distance, this may look romantic to an onlooker.

from your position, you are in the jaws of a beast that you thought you had escaped.

"you're mine—" he pats your cheek, hard, as he tells you. the angle is bad, given it's with the same hand that's holding your jaw. your brain rattles inside of your skull. "don't think you can run away just because you got a bit scared."

"that's not why i broke up with you—"

"but, it is."

you want to cry, run away, jump in that goddamn fucking river. "no—"

"i get it," kaiser noses into your cheek. he's just as cold as you are. his voice is too soft; it unnerves you. "it's scary, loving someone. i'm scared too"

"i—" you don't love him, you can't love him—

he pulls back just enough to dip your body as far as it can go, and look into your eyes, his own pupils blown.

"let's be scared together," he says, just above a whisper, before slotting his lips against yours.

you slam your fist on his shoulders, his chest, the back of his head— you don't fucking care. whatever you can reach. kaiser doesn't relent. instead, he licks into your mouth. kisses you filthy in a public park just because he can.

maybe his words seem romantic, if you were to recount them to someone else. maybe. maybe someone could read his plane ride to you as a grand, romantically-driven gesture.

but, as he holds your head squarely in place, and fucks your mouth with his tongue, stealing your words and breath in tandem— you know, so lucidly, that none of kaiser intent here is 'romantic'. not in a way that's normal, that's sane.

no, this is the only way a deeper connection can exist for him, you think. the hand on your jaw slips down to your throat, holding you there. it's a collar and kaiser's holding the leash.

you whimper; you feel so foolish. you feel so fucking stupid for thinking you could disentangle yourself from him so easily.

"do you get it now?" kaiser says against you lips.

all you can do is nod, it's all the action he allows you.

all of the fights and tension that made connection between you before so intoxicating— it evolved into this. it was always destined to. you've been ensnared since day one, but didn't have the foresight to see you.

kaiser did, though.

as he pulls away, you're light-headed. he rights you and steadies you at the waist. he pats your head and even coos at you.

"are you done now?" he begins to walk you with a hand at your lower back— back in the direction you came. probably toward the nice hotel in the center of town where he undoubtedly has a suite. where he'll fuck you stupid into the king mattress. "if you cry, i'll just make it worse."

'worse'.

you shake your head, hard and fast, and suck down any tears beading at the corners of your eyes.

he seems pleased. "good."

there's nothing you can do but walk by his side. this has always been his design, even if you couldn't see it. regardless of any attempts to sever things and run off, even cleanly, this is where you'll end up.

hip-to-hip, with his hand on your lower back. with the promise of pain and pleasure doled out to you in equal measure.

as you step through the doors of the, as expected, upscale hotel, a wave of warm, fragranced air hits you. and with it, some part of you sags, defeated so simply. crushed. you sniffle and rub at your eyes.

(you don't see kaiser smiling at your side. you don't see the way he slips the concierge a wad of bills with the understanding that he'll be given a room far away from others, and that you won't be disturbed.

he has work to do. you— were going to fucking leave him? he— he needs to make sure that you understand that that is not your choice to make.

and, as he sees you, stifling tears and shaking like a leaf, your little act shattered so seamlessly, he thinks you really are starting to get it.)

you are his.

[revelboo]

I just know EIA! Megs is gonna hold the carrier thing Over their heads in the most PETTY of ways. Like the human and Starscream are like. Bickering about names like "They need a powerful name. Like Vaportrail or Heatseek." and the Human's like "Oh, I was thinking bc your name is STARscream it could be one of the stars we've named, like...Polaris or Arcturus." and then Megatron chimes in like "We're naming them after a poet." "What?!" "Hey, that's not-" "I'm sorry, WHO is the one who was forced into carrying?? Thats right me." or like. "Wow I cant believe I managed to find a pack of rust sticks." "yeah, amazing. Especially since your CARRIER would love rust sticks rn." "You're such an ass, ugh. here."

He absolutely will and bring it up every chance he gets

Everything Is Alright Pt 128

IDW Starscream x Reader, Soundwave x Reader, Shockwave x Reader

• Antenna immediately flattening back upon seeing you cradled in Starscream’s hand, you at least take a petty pleasure in the fact that Shockwave is as unhappy to see you as you are to see him. “Lord Megatron has ordered more tests be run on my human,” Starscream says, wings flaring as he curls his lip derisively and lies through his denta while you struggle to not laugh at how serious he sounds. Wings preening like he’s showing you off and it’d be cute if you weren’t still nursing your annoyance with all of them.

• Venting softly as he lingers nearby to watch over you, Soundwave divides his attention between you and Shockwave. While the scientist is an old friend, most of that friend was stripped away a long time ago. Every good thing torn away like his face. Knows you don’t like Shockwave, but they’ll need him to create protoforms for them. Servos flexing as his own thoughts snag him. Protoforms. Wanting that. Wanting you with his sparkling, to spark you. To have a family even if it’s this dysfunctional mess as long as you’re part of it.

• Easing you down on the counter, Starscream’s servo lingers against your back. Reassuring himself and you. Because Shockwave? Unpredictable at best, motivated by who knew what. “There are other aliens besides humans out there, right?” You ask as Shockwave retrieves a scanner. “Other organics.” You’re looking up at him, expression uncertain. And he nods slowly as you look away to track Shockwave. “So Cybertronians and other organics?” You ask and he realizes what you’re asking. As far as he knows, organics have always been a taboo.

• ‘There are archival records of Cybertronians bonding organics in the past,’ Shockwave interrupts and Star looks more surprised than you are. Making it apparent he hadn’t know. “What about the sparklings?” You ask, holding still as the light of the scanner plays over you. ‘Sparklings? There were no viable sparks created from such unions,’ Shockwave growls, frowning at the screen. And you look up at Star then Soundwave. Because you’d been hoping for some reassurances. That this was going to work out in the end, but you’re back to being a weird one-off again. Your whole species weirdly compatible with theirs.

• “Query- the lifespans of such bonded pairs?” Soundwave asks and you look at him in surprise, before your expression empties and you look up at Starscream. ‘How long do you guys normally live?’ You ask him, voice tight. Not bothering to look up from studying the scanner, Shockwave’s antennas flick. ‘The organic’s lifespan is bound to the Cybertronian’s, not the other way around,’ Shockwave growls. And Soundwave’s tension eases, venting raggedly as he turns his attention back on you, watching you frown up at Starscream while he tells you how long they live. How long you might live if nothing happens to your bonded mates. And you pale slightly, nodding absently. ‘Why are there now two spark bond signatures?’ Shockwave growls, as he holds up the scanner.

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[captain-huggy-bear]

Morning Sickness

Pairing: Quinn Hughes x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of sex in the past, pregnancy, etc.

Summary: Quinn is getting increasingly worried about you as you're sick every morning and every evening, you're adamant that you're fine. Turns out you're right in a way.

Notes: Thanks to the person who sent this idea in :)

Totally happy to take requests/ideas/prompts at the moment in my ask box :)

Writing Masterlist

It starts around a month after your honeymoon. Every single morning Quinn wakes to the sound of you throwing up and every single night he holds your hair back as you're sick over the toilet.

You pass it off as a bad stomach bug or anxiety, something different every time but Quinn doesn't believe you nor does he like what's happening. He's had many health scares with you; the chest infection that led to you being hospitalised after you nearly passed out at work being a prime example. As a result, he knows better than to assume that when you say you're fine, you're actually fine. Instead he sits with a heavy buzz of anxiety in his chest, a fear that something is seriously wrong but not knowing what and not knowing how best to convince you to get a check up and see the doctor about it. You’re stubborn to a fault. 

It's another one of those evenings where he's happily curled around in bed, blankets tucked in around both of you. You're in his arms, back to his chest, legs twisted together so that any movement jars the other, but you're so used to it at this point that sleeping apart is more difficult and less restful than navigating the tangled mass of limbs that the two of you become each night.

When you try to slip out of his arms he's awake like a shot, blinking through bleary eyes while you push his arms off you so that you can get up. Quinn lets you go, an instant release but he's quick to follow, footsteps padding on the carpet after you towards the bright light of the bathroom. Never once considering rolling over and going back to sleep.

"You okay, baby?" You're leaning over the sink, taking deep breaths, cheeks puffing out as you try your very best to not be sick again, nausea roiling through you. You’re so fed up of being sick, it’s become a routine that’s led to you being careful about what foods you eat in the morning and evening, learning what is the worst to throw up and what’s the least offensive thing to throw up.

All you can do is shake your head frantically before you're rushing to the toilet, knees hitting the floor with a loud thud as you lean over the toilet bowl to be sick. Quinn winces at the sound of your knees impacting tile and he's beside you in an instant, hands reaching for your hair to pull it back and out of your face so you don't have to worry about throwing up in your own hair.

"Oh, baby...just let it out..." A warm, free hand landing on your back, rubbing soothing circles as he feels the way your body jerks with each bout of sickness, your muscles contracting and relaxing each time. 

You’re crying, he can hear it, the way you whimper and whine because this is the worst and you’re fed up with being so violently sick…It only increases his worry because this has been going on for too long and it just doesn’t seem to be getting any better. 

He stays beside you, holding your hair and rubbing your back until you’re no longer vomiting. When you stop, cheek resting against the toilet seat in exhaustion he’s up and reaching for a glass to fill with water for you.

“Here, baby, have some water…” You take a mouthful only to spit it out in the toilet in an attempt to get the taste of vomit from your mouth, before downing the whole glass. It doesn’t really help much.

“I hate this…” You groan out, feeling silly because it’s not even like you feel ill most of the time, you just keep getting these random bouts of sickness in the mornings and evenings. Quinn shouldn’t be as worried as you know he is…it’s probably all in your head, maybe you’ve created a Pavolvian response to the morning and night time where your body expects to be sick, so you are?

“I know, baby…” Quinn runs a hand over your hair, pushing a few strands out of your face and behind your ear, he’s gentle about it, long fingers gingerly caressing your skin like he’s worried you’ll break, “You need to visit a doctor, baby.”

“It’s probably nothing, Quinn…I’ve just eaten something or have some sort of bug or something…” You don’t want to go to the doctors, you’re certain this will blow over soon, that it’s nothing serious and you hate the idea of taking more time off for it even as your husband looks at you like you might be the most stubborn human being on earth. 

“For weeks?”

“Quinn…” You sigh out his name because you don’t want to argue, because you’re tired. All you want is to go back to bed, curl up in his arms and get what little sleep you can before you have to go to work in the morning.

He must see how tired you are because whatever fight he had seems to leave his body, shoulders slumping, head nodding to himself like he’s made a decision in his mind to put this down for the moment even if he wants to keep going, repeat himself until you give in.

“Okay…okay, let’s get you to bed at least…” He gives up arguing because you’re so tired and have to be up at 6am for work. It’s bad enough you're not feeling well, let alone that you have to still teach like this, adding exhaustion to the mix is just a bad idea. He’ll keep pushing until you go to the doctors, but right now? Right now he can see you're tired and sleep is probably better for you than arguing at 1am. 

Quinn helps you to your feet, your hands resting in his much larger ones while he pulls you up. He keeps both hands on your hips the whole time as the two of you waddle your way back to bed, there’s part of him that worries you might fall or faint on the way back to bed, hands firmly gripping you just in case. 

He curls around you once you're both back under the covers, almost protective like he’s trying to shield you from some unseen threat and you nestle back into him, resting your head on the arm underneath you. 

The early morning throw up session had you completely wiped hours later, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise that you felt dizzy as the day went on. Even more so because food was just not enticing you and you had skipped lunch when your sandwich made you feel queasy just looking at it. Each lesson felt harder and harder to teach and your last lesson of the day had your head reeling. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise with how dizzy you felt, how lightheaded you were, that you fainted completely in front of your students. Thankfully, you had felt it coming on, having lowered yourself to the ground mere seconds before it happened.

To give them their dues, your students who could have used that as an opportunity to cause a mess, do whatever they wanted and generally cause chaos, actually tried to help. They were so concerned for you that they got another member of staff to come help, David, your favourite trouble making hockey fan, put his rolled up Canucks hoodie underneath your head and Stacy checked you were still breathing. The fainting spell didn’t last long, within a minute or so you were back to consciousness and trying to sit up, staff and students trying to force you to lay back down. 

It’s Laura, the English teacher next door, who grabs your phone and calls your emergency contact, Quinn…even as you protest and tell her not to bother him, that you’re fine. All your protests go ignored by the forty year old, who had become something of a mentor and parental figure during your time at the school.

“Hi Quinn, sorry, it’s Laura from Y/N’s school?” You can’t quite tell what Quinn says on the other line, but you’re sure it’s along the lines of ‘what’s wrong?’ in a panicked tone because no one ever used your phone. You hate worrying him, he has so much on his shoulders already, so much weight there from the team, the season, his brothers…

“She’s fainted, do you think you could come get her? It’s the end of the school day anyway but I don’t think she should be driving home…thanks, Quinn.” 

You groan at her, tempted to tell her off for calling him against your wishes but you know she means well…you also know there’s absolutely no chance you’re getting away with avoiding the doctors now. In fact you wouldn’t be surprised if he drove you straight to the doctor's office after coming to get you…still, maybe you should see a doctor, what with throwing up all the time…and now fainting? 

Laura won’t even let you get up from your spot on the floor, packing your things away for you, getting your students to chill for the last 10 minutes of the day and waiting until Quinn arrives. You know she’s worried you’ll faint again, but it feels ridiculous, sitting on a cold, dirty classroom floor waiting for your husband to come get you.

“Hey, baby…” The way he stands in the doorway to your classroom when he finally arrives makes you want to cry. It’s like he’s scared you’re going to faint again, a sense of hesitancy and caution in his body language that you hate because Quinn is never like that around you. 

“Please don’t…don’t be scared of me, right now…” You feel like crying, wetness starting to fill your eyes and your voice coming out choked. You’re not even sure why you’re so emotional about him looking like that when Quinn’s always worried about you, it’s not a new development. He cares so he worries. 

“Hey, hey, I’m not scared of you…I’m worried, baby.” He’s crossing the space between you as quickly as possible, crouching down next to you with care, hands reaching for your face gently to rub his fingers across your cheeks to try and calm you down.

“I’m sorry…I don’t mean to be a bother…” Your eyes are so watery that Quinn’s face is a blurry mess, but even then you wouldn’t be able to mistake the serious set of his brow, the way his jaw clenches, how he always takes your concerns and worries seriously.

“Sweet girl, hey…you’re not a bother. You’re never a chore, okay? But I'm going to need you to accept that we need to go to the doctor's now, okay? I’ve already phoned them, they can see us in forty minutes.” You can’t really deny him, he’s been so patient with you, worried, but not pushing you to go to the doctors too much and you know he’s right…something’s not normal right now and you need to get checked out.

“Okay…” The smile he gives you is radiant, relief filled and bright like your answer is enough to make his day. It makes it worth it.

“Atta girl, right, let’s get you up off this floor, okay?” 

You nod at him, reaching for his outstretched hands and letting him grip yours tightly, your wedding rings gleaming and new under the fluorescence of the classroom lights. As Quinn stands he pulls you with him, helping you to your feet and holding you steady when you get a bit of a headrush from the sudden upright position.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, i’m good,” He doesn’t quite look like he believes you, “I promise, i’ll let you know if i’m not.”

He’s got an eye on you the entire way to his car, always watching in case you suddenly faint or trip or take a dive to the ground. You don’t, your dizzy spell has passed and now you just feel emotional and embarrassed about the whole thing. 

As is routine by now Quinn opens the car door for you and buckles your seatbelt, making sure it rests comfortably against you and isn’t digging into you at all. He goes a step further than normal though, reaching into the backseat to grab a blanket he keeps there for when you get cold, laying it over your lap and tucking it under your thighs like he’s worried you’ll get cold on the drive to the doctors. 

Quinn leans forward into the car, pressing a kiss to your forehead gently causing you to close your eyes, letting out a happy sigh. He lingers slightly, hand smoothing down some of your fly away hairs before he shuts the passenger side door and gets into the driver's seat. 

There’s a heavy silence that settles over the two of you while Quinn starts the drive to the doctor’s office. It’s a silence that screams that Quinn has things he wants to say, words he’s holding inside him right now and you wait patiently for him to break. 

It doesn’t take long, a few minutes pass before he’s watching you from the corner of his eye, “You need to start trusting me to handle knowing when something is wrong…” He sighs out at you, and you try not to cut him off, biting on your lip to force yourself to listen until he’s said what he needs to say. “I know you’re scared of being a burden and putting more stress on me, but, baby…I’m your husband. I need to know. I want to know. My job is to support you. I can’t do that if you’re not letting me in…” He reaches a hand across to squeeze your leg, an attempt to reassure you that he’s not mad, but that he wants you to trust him more and you get it…you do. You’ve been so reluctant to put any more stress on him, but here’s Quinn demanding that you do, telling you he wants to know when things aren’t quite right.

“I just…you have all this pressure on you and I don’t want to add to that.”

“Baby, the only stress you’re giving me is when you don’t let me help you…I need you to promise me you’re going to start relying on me more, please?” He can’t take it anymore. The way you try to hide how you’re doing, try to take all that onto yourself so that he doesn't get any of the pressure. You’re the only pressure he wants, fuck hockey, fuck the season, but he needs to know what’s wrong with you so he can fix it, so he can help you.

You reach for his hand on your leg, twisting your fingers in his and holding his hand tight, watching him glance at you out of the corner of his eye, focusing on the road for the most part. 

“I promise.” 

Quinn’s shoulders drop in relief, his need to support and protect you, to look after you already feeling better now that you’ve promised you’ll actually communicate with him properly. He loves you, but your fear of being a burden is his least favourite thing about you. He hates that people have made you feel like you have to minimise yourself, your problems. Hates that you’ve been trained to be so hyper independent and self reliant. 

“Have you taken a pregnancy test?”

You blink at the doctor like she’s insane because the thought hadn’t even crossed your mind that that was a possibility, that maybe you were pregnant.

“Uh, no…”

“Have you been using protection? Is it possible you’re pregnant?” You try to think back to your last period, late, try to think back to the last time Quinn and yourself had unprotected sex…your honeymoon. So over the moon, so giddy the two of you hadn’t really thought about it, forgoing the usual precautions because you were married now so it didn’t seem like such a big deal. 

You look at Quinn, the two of you sharing a look that says you’re both thinking back to your honeymoon, the two weeks of being absolutely feral for each other that you really didn’t think much about the consequences…well, you did, in a sense. Quinn had had a great time considering what you’d look like pregnant with his child, dirty talk filled with comments about getting you pregnant, but it had all been fantasies, silly in the moment dirty talk, neither of you had really considered (rather stupidly perhaps) that it might become a reality. You hadn’t thought…normally it wasn’t that easy for people and you’d always had concerns about fertility in your family in the past so why would it be that easy for you? 

“It’s…it’s possible.”

“Okay, I want you to go take this test and come back when you’re done. I think you might just be experiencing some really bad first trimester morning sickness.” You take the test offered to you, the little pee cup and pipette too, glad that she wasn’t expecting you to pee directly onto the stick…

“Do you want me to wait outside the door?” Quinn asks as you hesitantly get up, not really wanting to go alone, as silly as it was because all you were about to do was pee into a little cup and put some drops onto a pregnancy test, it wasn’t like you were going to do anything crazy. But, you’d never had to take a pregnancy test before, you’d never had to deal with the reality that you might be pregnant and even if it's with your literal husband it’s still kind of scary...

“Yes, please…” He’s reaching for your hand without any hesitation, guiding you out of the examination room and towards the toilets. 

You hesitate before entering, scared to find out the answer, unsure which you want to be true; that you’re pregnant or that there’s something else causing you to be sick and faint. You want kids, both of you have discussed it time and time again, but you always thought it would be planned, that the two of you would be actively trying when you got pregnant. 

“It’ll be okay, y’know? No matter what. If you’re not pregnant we’ll figure out what’s wrong and if you are? That’s a good thing, we wanted kids, baby.” Quinn can see you’re scared, the way you grip the test tighter, how you seem to stop breathing as you stare at the bathroom door. He’s trying to not get his hopes up, to temper some of the excitement he can feel because he really…fuck, he really hopes you’re pregnant, he’s so ready to be a dad, and it would be an added bonus to know you weren’t seriously ill, just dealing with the first trimester. 

“Yeah, just…wasn’t expecting it to potentially be this soon.”

“I know, baby, but it’ll be okay and mom’ll be over the moon.” You smile at the mention of Ellen, how excited she’ll be…heck Jack and Luke would be ecstatic to be uncles, suddenly things didn’t seem quite so scary when you considered the people around you, how supportive they would be.

“Yeah, she’ll probably scream down the phone…” If you’re pregnant goes unsaid but it’s there, the reality that maybe you’re both starting to get your hopes up for something that isn’t going to happen. 

“Okay…I can do this.”

“You’ve got this, baby…it’ll be okay,” He smiles at you one last time before you disappear into the bathroom.

Your hands shake the entire time you’re in there, completing the test and putting it on the side to wait. You pacing a hole into the floor, back and forth, back and forth as the time ticks down on your phone. In that time you start to get excited, nervous, but excited. The initial shock of potentially being pregnant disappearing in favour of thoughts about what it would be like to finally have your first child with Quinn…how he’d teach them to skate, how Luke and Jack would play with them at the lake house in the summer, how Ellen and Jim would be devoted grandparents, how you’d read them books every night and make your own Christmas traditions… Your nerves now centred on that possibility that you weren’t pregnant, that your hopes might be crushed.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look when the time was up, reaching for the door handle to Quinn pacing outside the door. His head shoots up the moment you open it.

“So?” Quinn looks so expectant, lips bitten and red from all his worrying, waiting for an answer. 

“I…I can’t look, can you check it for me?”

“Uh, yeah, course, baby.” You can tell he’s nervous too, but he steps inside the bathroom, locking it behind the two of you for privacy. You point to where the little, but no less life altering, test rests by the sink. 

You watch him walk over, watch the tension in his shoulders, how he looks at the little test, seems to read the marks, and then again, and again like he’s struggling to process it. You know the answer the moment his shoulders relax, the moment he turns to you with tears in his eyes and a wide smile, so wide across his face. He’s practically grinning, vibrant in the way he is after a won game or how he was at your wedding. The sort of vibrant that changes Quinn, his usually understated calmness wiped out in favour of pure unfiltered joy. 

“We’re…we’re having a baby…” Saying it feels unreal at first, that those two little lines can mean so much, that right now, in your tummy is your baby. The perfect mix of the two of you slowly growing into someone amazing, someone he’s so excited to meet. 

“Yeah?” You can feel your own excitement starting, hearing it is making it real, so fucking real. 

“Yeah, baby!” You’re crying, he’s crying, it’s a mess when you come together in a hug, his arms wrapping tightly around you and lifting you off the floor to spin you around. You’re both crying into each other when his mouth slants over yours for a kiss, one of his hands cupping the back of your head, the other resting gently over your throat.

It’s a kiss that feels monumental, deep and filled with love, so much love that the taste of the salt from your tears does nothing to deter either of you as you cling to each other. The scratch of Quinn’s beard, the silky smoothness of his hair in your fingers, the way you cling to each other, you’ve not felt that happy since your wedding day, since you both finally said I do. It feels like the world has shifted on its axis in the most spectacular of ways and all that worry, all that fear is gone, just like that. 

He’s so fucking relieved, that’s part of it. God, is he excited that you’re pregnant, that he’s going to be a dad, but part of the excitement is relief, that you’re okay, that you’re not seriously ill. You’re just pregnant, just dealing with morning sickness and all the changes associated with growing a baby. 

When you pull apart neither of you go very far, foreheads pressed together, noses nuzzling against each other. His hands still cradle you close to him, his breath warm against your lips.

“We’re going to be parents…you’re going to be a mom…” There’s something about him saying it that makes it feel more real because it feels almost out of body of an experience, to find out you're pregnant when you had no plans to be. 

“Yeah…you’re going to be a dad…”

“Fuck, I love you…” Quinn kisses you again, soft but lingering as a hand comes down to rest against your belly, no sign yet of the bundle of cells that’s growing into a baby, “and I love this little bean too,”

“I love you too, you’re going to be so great, they’re going to love you.”

“They’re going to love us.”

[juyeoz]

SOFT SPOT — HAN TAESAN

SYNOPSIS — To the eyes around you all, you and Taesan are enemies. You hate anything to do with each other and recoil at the mention of your names. However, behind closed doors, you two are completely different — inseparable. Clearly, Taesan and you will go to an extent to keep your relationship private.

PAIRING — fake-enemy-but-boyfriend!taesan x gn!reader

CONTAINS — kissing, corny love birds Likee i kinda recoiled when writing some lines, and literally just fluff.

WORDCOUNT — 1007 words

NOTE — soph sent that taesan pic and our lives were changed……..and this fic was born duhhh!!!!

“Absolutely not!” You exclaim and spin around in your chair after hearing a few words leave your superior's mouth.

Mr. Lee looks taken aback by your response. Yes, everyone knows about the ongoing battle between both Taesan and you, but your reactions to each other’s names being mentioned never fails to catch them all off guard. 

In the office, you and Taesan never get along. It's been this way since the beginning of your careers. 

Yes, you two have taken a liking to one another since you met, but you couldn’t let anyone else at work know about it, so you played it off as enemies. 

Well, you two at least pretended to want to do nothing with each other to make things less obvious. 

The “enemies” title was given by your coworkers.

Therefore, working with each other is never an option. You “can’t” even stand being in the same room as him, making working in the office a “terrible” experience.

“I won’t work with him.”

“Please, the two of you are the only free ones. We need this proposal by tonight.” Mr. Lee explains with a pleading gaze.

“Then I’ll work on it alone. I don’t need his help.” You say while collecting your scattered papers on the surface of your desk.

“That won’t do.” 

“And why is that?” 

You stack your papers into a pile and turn off your computer in a swift motion as Mr. Lee sighs from behind you.

“It’s too much for one person to handle. With his help, you’ll surely get it done.” He crosses his arms over his chest as you snicker.

Is he looking down on you right now?

“Whatever that means,” you begin and stand up from your seat, with your papers in hand. 

“I’ll work overtime. It can’t be that hard.”

Although it has only been three hours since you uttered those words, you surely are regretting them now.

There you sit, staring at a blank document showcased on your monitor. No matter how long you sit in silence, nothing is coming to your mind. 

Brain fog is after you, and clearly, it doesn't need to try so hard to catch up.

The longer you waited for something, a starting sentence, words — even an overall idea to come to your mind, the more and more workers left. The sun is starting to set, casting an orangey light on your belongings.

In distress, your hands pull at your strands as you let out a groan of frustration. 

You should have listened to what Mr. Lee suggested, but you couldn’t let your relationship become known.

Everyone is used to both you and Taesan rejecting any projects that have to do with one another, so, if you switched up, would they have questioned it?

It sucks, really. You want to spend time with your boyfriend at work, but there are too many eyes on the two of you. To be honest, you can’t even recall why you chose to keep your relationship a secret. It could be because of the awkward tension that would come if you two ever break up and everyone knew about it.

That is a possibility.

The only times you two interact romantically are in the break room when you coincidentally both end up there at the same time. The teasing glances that make your eyes lock with one another and break out into a smile. Or when he secretly leaves anonymous sticky notes on your desk belongings.

Other than that, there is nothing. However, despite that, things will be seen eventually. 

“What’s worrying your pretty mind, love?” A voice approaches you from behind, instantly calming your tense figure due to the familiar warming tone. 

It’s Taesan — your loving boyfriend and so-called workplace enemy.

“A proposal.” You inform as Taesan’s hands slide down from your shoulders and his chin rests on your head.

“Is it the one Mr. Lee suggested we do together?” He asks and you hum in response.

“Why’d you say no? I would be more than glad to help you.” 

“It’ll draw too much attention if I agree, no?” Your head begins to turn to look his way, causing him to rise from his resting position. He looks down at you and smiles while you look up at him.

“That’s too bad.” Taesan begins, then leans down to give you a short and sweet kiss on the lips, which you happily return. 

“If it didn’t, then I could’ve done that many times during work hours instead of after hours.” He teases while your face becomes slightly flushed.

“Why don’t I just help you now? I mean, there’s nobody around…” The boy suggests as your hands lower into your lap.

“Would you actually?” 

“Of course. Here, let’s have a food break first. You seem too overwhelmed by everything to even continue your supposed brainstorming process.” 

You roll your eyes at what he truly meant — your flustered expression — and rise up from your seat for him to lead the way to the break room. 

“A coffee will do?” Taesan questions and you nod. 

“That and your presence, of course.” You reply, giving him another kiss on the cheek once you reach his side.

“Hey.” He stammers out because of the sudden warmth on his cheek. Now, it’s his turn to be left a blushing mess.

“Only I can catch you off guard with a kiss.” He says and you laugh while interlocking your hand with his. 

Out of nowhere, his thumb rubs against the skin of your hand — a reflex he has whenever he intertwines your fingers with his own.

You hum at his words, pondering on his new sudden rule.

“Doesn’t that seem unfair?” Your brow raises as you say your question and look over at the boy interrogatively. Taesan looks back at you, holding eye contact with no signs of breaking it and smiles.

“Not at all.” Taesan replies to your question.

Best believe, after his words, you earned yourself another kiss on the lips for him to prove whatever point he had.

© JUYEOZ

BOYNEXTDOOR PERM TAGLIST — @ancnymcnzjy @miumura @ilovedallywinston @i03jae @borednia @s0shroe @leehanwish @sol3chu @en-dream @ribbeoms @itsactuallylina @macapunoz @hollxe1 @r1kification @mensisim @mydearyeseo @sunghxxnie @taesanfav @wonzzziezzzz @ijustwannareadstuff20 @tanghuyuj @ranjupotato @mimimimiaa @ningizuo @hyunjinslongasslegs

[ghostgirl-22]

Hiii ik you’ve heard this before but you literally write the yummiest Artrick smut!! Their dynamic is sooo good

I was thinking about Art and Patrick trying frotting for the first time? Maybe they’re dry humping and then Art’s really getting desperate and Pat suggests they do it skin-to-skin? Penny for your thoughts!!

I thank you anon! I love you and I apologize for getting to this so late <33

CW: 18+, NSFW, Patrick my little pining baby.

—-

I think it’s Patrick’s birthday some random Thursday night in January and Patrick makes Art come out with him on the day because he’s gonna celebrate with Tashi on the weekend. Art’s in a bad mood at first. He tries to pretend he isn’t but Patrick knows he’s still annoyed that Patrick has her.

“I can’t stay out late.” Art says coolly. “So if you want a real celebration with me… maybe you shoulda went out to eat with her midweek instead.”

“You want to come out to eat with us this weekend?” Patrick smirks, rubbing his back. “Just a romantic dinner. Me, my girlfriend and my best friend. Probably the most romantic thing ever.”

“Fuck off,” Art shrugs him away. They’re going to a frat party. Art knows one of the frats has insane parties every night of the week which Patrick says is pretty impressive.

“Only reason to join that frat is if you plan to take at least five or six years to graduate from a four year program.” Art says, judgmentally. “Actually, it’s probably what you’d pledge if you went here.”

Patrick lets him be bitchy and goes to get them both drinks. As Art gets tipsy he starts to loosen up. He’s getting drunk on Jell-O shots. His lips turning red and his cheeks flushing. His eyes go all moon shaped when he’s giggly. Patrick is a little obsessed, wants to make him giggle more. They get drunk enough to dance. Both of them dancing together and then dancing with various college girls. Patrick avoiding it when one of the girls leans in to kiss him. She kisses Art instead before her friend grabs her. They both giggle with each other and run to get more shots.

Art’s looking after them dazed and so drunk… Patrick grabs him away. They go to the dj table and request Apple Bottom Jeans for the third time and everyone cheers when it comes back on.

It’s dark and loud, strobe lights going off and Patrick realizes how drunk Art is when they’re on the sofa and he’s leaning on Patrick, nibbling at his throat. Patrick feels warm, hot even, he tangles his fingers into Art’s golden curls to keep him there. “I wanna lie down,” Art sighs in his ear after a minute. Which leads to Patrick guiding him upstairs in the frat house, the bass from the music thrumming through the house even though it’s much quieter upstairs. There’s a couple making out in the hallway. Some girls hooking up in the the bathroom tub while another girl is dozing off on the toilet seat.

Patrick finds an empty room and Art falls onto the bed. Patrick shuts the door and crawls on the bed, lying down next to him and before he realizes what’s happening Art climbs on top of him. “‘M so horny,” he groans, eyes half closed, dizzy drunk and barely aware of what he’s doing. Patrick is immediately hard. He thought he knew everything about Art but this is fucking new. Art is humping him through the fabric of their jeans, grinding, rutting, like a fucking animal in heat. Breathing hard, moaning loudly, chasing his orgasm. It’s so fucking hot.

”Oh fuck,” Patrick breathes. “Holy shit.”

“Mm wanna come Patrick, please. I need it.” Art whines.

“Fuck, mmkay. Come here… maybe we need… need more friction.”

”mm, yeah, please,” Art gasps.

“Yeah? Let’s…” Patrick grabs at Art’s zipper, swallowing hard. He’s had weird dreams about fucking Art for quite some time, weird wet dreams where he’s made a mess of him. So many dirty dreams this feels like deja vu.

But this is better than the dreams. Best fucking birthday ever. He’s easing it out of Art’s boxers. He’s seen it of course. When he didn’t need anything in his head to make himself cum… just the sight of the messy blond boy on the bed across from him spilling it too quickly all over himself. Always dazed by it. It was enough to send Patrick into the stratosphere, every fucking time.

And now he’s touching it, gripping it. Swollen purplepink, and heavy. He undoes his own pants. Art’s thrusting into his fist, eager. Hips rolling.

“Skin to skin, gonna feel so good,” Patrick mumbles, it’s nonsense. He’s half out of his mind. He takes hold of his own cock, lined up along Art’s and starts fisting them both. Art on top of him, the only sound is the endless thumping of the music, the squeaking of the bed inline with their hips rocking, and the breathy moans spilling from their mouths.

“Oh fuck. Oh yes,” Art whispers. He has his eyes closed but Patrick can’t stop staring at him. Lips parted, chest heaving, face flushed, hair falling into his eyes, clothes all disheveled. He’s leaning back, palms resting on Patrick’s thighs so he can thrust his cock mindlessly up against Patrick’s. So hot Patrick might die. And then, as always, it’s taking him by surprise. Come spurting out of him, covering Patrick’s fingers, his t-shirt. He’s whining and moaning and gasping “Fuck… oh fuck…yes…”

Patrick’s not far behind him. His fist now coated in jizz he’s gripping them both tighter, fisting them faster. Art’s making these breathless little “oh” noises, so delicious it makes Patrick shiver and then he’s seizing up, his balls tightening as he spills hot sticky strings of pearly come all over his palm, Art’s jeans and his own t-shirt.

“God it’s so fucking hot, you’re so fucking hot….” Patrick whispers, breathlessly as Art settles sleepy onto his chest. Patrick wipes his dirty palm on the bed and ponders vaguely the poor frat boy who’s gonna be taking this blanket to the laundromat. He kisses Art’s mouth, the way he’s always wanted to, and Art sighs into it. He’s got the hiccups all of a sudden, little ones escaping between kisses which is actually kinda fucking adorable. Art rolls off of him eventually, curling up on his side. “Need to…*hiccup*… so sleepy.” He mumbles.

Patrick sighs, looking up at the ceiling as Art starts to drift off. They’ve been drunk as fuck before, even spooned in bed together, but never like this. He’s not sure what just happened but he thinks he’ll go crazy if Art has no memory of it when he wakes up.

[slut4thebroken]

A Pleasant Surprise

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Pairing | Neil Lewis x reader

Summary | You’re hired to gain dirt/intel on Neil so your client can blackmail him into selling his store or something idk lol. You’re stalking him basically.

Warnings | Smut, technically non con cause voyeurism, come eating lowkey lol, stalking, overstim, masturbation, multiple orgasms, pain kink?, light cbt, pathetic & subby!Neil obvi.

Words | 1.7 k

Notes | I wrote this in like… one hour lmao.

Ao3 link | <3

Masterlist

Kinktober | day 20: CBT

“I think I’m going insane.”

Your friend laughed through the phone at your opening, then finally replied, “Why?”

“You know that guy I was hired to gain intel on?”

“Scrawny, nerdy one, right?” She asked. “Something about not selling his store?” You sighed heavily, finally taking the binoculars away from your face for a break. 

“Yeah. All he does is sit at home and watch movies, go to work, and then sometimes sit at work and watch movies… I’m so fucking bored.”

“Can you at least see the tv and watch too?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t even matter! They’re all weird, obscure films that no one has ever even heard of!” Your friend laughed again and you rolled your eyes. “Shut up— It’s not funny.” You grumbled. 

“It’s a little funny.”

“Then switch jobs with me!” You whined, despite already knowing her answer. 

“Can’t. I'm watching this rich kid who’s supposed to take over his dead dad’s business.” 

“Rich kid? Is he hot?”

“Hang on.” You heard some movement through the phone, then felt it vibrate. “Check your messages.” You obeyed and turned the phone on speaker before opening the text from her, finding a picture of one of the most beautiful men you’ve ever seen in your entire life. 

“What the hell? That’s not fair!” Your voice got even more whiny than it was before as you pouted. 

“Eh… He travels a lot for work which is annoying. And like I said, his dad just died so he’s all depressed now.”

“I’d rather have a sad fucking Greek sculpture than,” you lifted the binoculars again, but Neil was gone. “Okay- what the fuck? I swear, I took my eyes off him for less than two minutes.”

“Oh my god— please go do your job. I have to go anyway, he should be leaving the office soon.”

“Whatever.” You huffed with a pout while you searched the other windows of the house for any sign of him. “Enjoy your hottie while I’m stuck doing nothing all day.”

That made her laugh quietly. “Let’s meet up for dinner soon, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah…” You muttered playfully, unable to hide your smile. 

The call finally ended and you focused your attention on the house again. Usually if he went into the bathroom, the light was on, but the room was still dark. After waiting a few minutes, you finally saw the bedroom light flick on. Neil was bad about leaving his blinds open, but you weren’t complaining— it made your job a lot easier.

He sat down at a desk and was typing something on the computer. You couldn’t see what because he was perpendicular to the window you were watching him through, so you could only see him from the side. 

Then, after a couple minutes, his hand drifted down to his crotch. Your eyes widened as you stared at him, hoping he was just adjusting himself or something… But, no. He started palming his bulge and you practically ripped the binoculars away from your face with a blush. 

This has happened a few times over the course of your career and usually you just take it as a sign to go on a break and get food or something… However, you couldn’t help it when you slowly lifted the binoculars again, biting your lip as you watched. 

It didn’t take long for him to scramble to open his pants and take out his erection. You choked on your spit and your eyes widened again once you saw it— flushed pink and a lot bigger than you would’ve guessed. When your mouth started watering, you forced yourself to look away, but it barely took five seconds for your gaze to stay back to him. 

He was stroking himself now, his free hand using the computer mouse to most likely find a video to watch. Neil definitely wasn’t your usual type— he was too submissive and pathetic… but something about the way he was pumping his cock like a fucking horny teenager had you reaching a hand in your pants to join. You imagined him whining and whimpering, begging for pussy… Not your pussy, obviously. That would be unprofessional... 

His mouth dropped open and you wished you could hear his moans. You also wished you could hear the sound of him rapidly stroking his cock, slick with the lotion that was sitting on his desk that he used as lube. 

Your fingers worked faster on your clit, hoping to finish before the ‘show’ ended, even though you weren’t really expecting to— he didn’t exactly seem like the type to have a lot of stamina. 

Neil was presumably changing the video again, then he moved his hand down from the computer mouse to cup his balls, the sensation making him throw his head back. You watched, completely entranced, as he jerked off while playing with his balls, the visual making your cunt gush, no doubt soaking through the fabric of your panties. 

His hips were squirming and bucking off the desk chair as he reclined back into it as much as he could without falling. When his hips thrusted up again, and he almost actually fell off the chair that time, you rolled your eyes, still not even knowing how you were possibly finding anything about this man attractive… 

Despite that though, you could feel yourself getting closer to the edge already. Based on how frantic his movements were getting, you figured you wouldn’t be able to come before he finished and you were proven correct when, barely ten seconds later, he finally came. 

Ropes of come shot out of his cock, landing on his shirt, as his body twitched and writhed, riding it out. You groaned quietly in disappointment, your fingers slowing to a stop on your clit as you sighed. While Neil sat there panting and recovering, you debated just finishing early tonight and heading home so you could finally come, but you saw more movement again. 

Rather than getting up, Neil was scooping up the come from his shirt and licking it off his fingers. You raised your brows as you watched through the binoculars, trying not to laugh. After that, he took a deep breath and reached for his cock again. He wrapped his hand around it, but didn’t move yet, confusing you. 

Then he started rapidly stroking his half hard cock, faster than before, making your eyes widen in surprise. He was squirming and writhing on the chair, and his mouth was moving, but you couldn’t read his lips from the side like this. It didn’t take long for you to rejoin, your fading orgasm starting to approach again as you rubbed your clit in time with his pumps. 

With his other hand, he reached for his balls again, but he pressed his hand flat against them. You watched with morbid curiosity, wondering what he was doing, but your silent question was answered when he reeled his hand back and brought it down hard on his balls. His whole body jerked and his legs quivered with the effort of keeping them open. 

If you weren’t so fucking turned on right now, you might’ve even laughed at how pathetic he was. Instead, all you could do was moan. 

He did it again and again, but you could tell he was keeping his hits kind of light. If it were you, you’d be using a paddle…

He suddenly let go of his cock and you practically held your breath as you waited. It was twitching on his stomach, red and leaking precum from the tip. He spanked his balls again and it jerked, then he spanked his cock. He didn’t react much because it seemed like he was too scared to hit hard, but once he realized it didn’t hurt, he did it again, harder this time. Except he apparently overestimated how much force he’d be able to use and he cried out, his body doubling over. 

For a brief moment, he just trembled, then he quickly shot back up, reclining in the desk chair again… coming for the second time tonight. He instinctively started stroking his cock again, but his face scrunched up in a grimace and he immediately had to slow down because of the overstimulation, as well as the lingering pain. 

Your orgasm hit you suddenly and you bit back a groan, trying to keep your eyes on him as you came. Your hips squirmed against your fingers as you rode it out, watching his hand slow to a stop. After another moment, you finally sagged back on the rooftop, panting heavily. Neil was in a similar state; catching his breath as his sensitive, almost bright red cock gave a few weak twitches on his stomach before starting to soften. 

Once he recovered well enough, he logged out of the computer and then carefully peeled off his messy shirt, tossing it haphazardly on the floor. 

“Huh…” You muttered under your breath, taking in his pale, barely toned stomach along with his somewhat skinny, but long cock, and his pale thighs peeking out from where his pants were pushed down. He was definitely very scrawny, but he was actually more attractive than you would’ve guessed. 

Now that you were really looking at him too, he actually kind of looked like the rich kid your friend was currently stalking— just different hair, and a less neat and expensive appearance. You desperately wanted to tell her about your realization, but you knew the abrupt shift in your thoughts would be suspicious, so you decided to just wait and “coincidentally” bring it up the next time you both got drunk together— when you’d actually be able to admit to her that you got off while watching him masturbate…

Eventually, he carefully tucked his cock back in his pants, wincing at how sensitive he was, then he got up and left the room. A few seconds later, the bathroom light turned on, so you decided to just call it a night since he’d probably just be watching a movie and eating dinner before going to bed— assuming he followed the same routine he’s been doing every night for almost a week now. 

Still don’t know how to end one shots tbh

[loveandleases]

Randomly got hit with nostalgia because "Again" sung by Hadley Fraser popped up in my Playlist and now I'm wondering, on the off-chance that MC met the ROs while still with Chris (if Chris is still cheating or not with Jade is up to you), would any of them try to talk to MC at/right before the wedding (preferably before and not objecting during the ceremony, but I'm not opposed to mess) to talk MC out of it and be with them (the RO, that is) before its too late? Damn you Hadley Fraser--

I had forgotten about that songs existence until you mentioned it. (I actually have canon scenarios for Cam, G, and Kara.) ❤️ Cam - Oh you know he is just looking for that moment, to get MC alone truly. To see that this wedding isn't what they wanted, that Chris isn't who they want. Cam is ready for it mess and all. If he did it before the wedding it would go something like this:

If his voice isn't giving away his nerves, then the shaking of his hands as he holds theirs is. His eyes are darting, never settling on one part for too long. Afraid that once he does he'll lose this burst of bravado. "You can't marry Chris."

"Wh... what do you mean I can't?"

Cam's grip on yours tightens, fingers intertwined hoping that, after all these years, you understand—this isn't selfishness. This isn't him trying to stake a claim.

"It's your choice, at the end of the day. But I'm asking you here... I'm," his voice falters, as he closes the distance and places his hand to your jaw. "begging you. Don't marry Chris."

"Cam I can't just... I-I need a reason. You can't just beg me not to and not say why."

Logic—of course you'd ask for logic. He wishes you wouldn’t, because it makes this part harder. And much more embarrassing.

He's not good with words, or at least he doesn't think so. (he's wrong.) Cam’s breath comes quick, his chest rising and falling faster than your racing heart. But before you can question what he's doing he steps closer. Tilting your face so that he can press a kiss to your lips.

"They say it’s good luck to kiss the bride/groom on their wedding day." He mumbles against your lips, just enough to speak but not enough to stop.

"Maybe... but I'm not getting married."

"Then good fucking luck indeed."

💙 G -The real question is whether they would have been invited at all.Chris would never have allowed it, but G would have found a way in anyway. Former friend, former lover—it didn't matter. It was still an important day for MC.

But G couldn’t sit through a wedding. Not this one. The thought of MC marrying Chris—a person so different from them, so full of hate—was unbearable.

So, G arrived early. Far too early. A note in hand, because they knew if they tried to say it out loud, MC would freeze. They’d get lost in pleasantries, in what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.

They waited until MC stepped out of the dressing room. Then, with a final glance at the words they couldn't bring themselves to speak, they left the note behind.

I won’t tell you everything it says. But I can give you a line from it.

💚 Kara - Internally, she would be at war with herself. Because she cares about MC—but she cares about Chris, too. And the Kara before the breakup is not the Kara you will come to know. Back then, she wouldn’t have realized that Chris wasn’t the person she imagined them to be.

So, she would suffer through it. Convince herself that loving MC from a distance was better than not loving them at all. She would force a smile, wish them good luck—

And regret it.

(similar to Angelica in Hamilton.)

💛 M - They are far too shy for the kind of attention that comes with interrupting a wedding. So, they would act weeks in advance. They would ask careful questions, fishing for insight into MC’s relationship with Chris—trying to see if they’re truly happy.

But M notices the truth early on. MC has settled. The spark that usually lights up their eyes when they talk about their passions is dimmed. When they’re with Chris, that glint is nearly snuffed out. The luster of who they are fades.

But not when they’re with M.

And in a fleeting moment, M realizes it. A split-second of shock. Because for all their intelligence, M can be painfully dense—especially when it comes to love. Their thoughts slip out before they can stop them. They tell MC how much they care. How they know they can make them happy. That they don’t want to change who MC is, only help them shine—if MC will let them.

(Expect several pages in their dedication section about the one time they were brave—and how, for once, it worked in their favor.)

💜 Isaac - They didn’t want to admit their feelings for MC. They fought it for so long. And part of them would have kept fighting—because Isaac doesn’t believe they’re good enough for MC. But they don’t believe Chris is good for MC either.

It’s a brash decision. An impulsive one. But on the wedding day, Isaac makes a mess of things. Because the second they see MC, standing there, more beautiful than they ever imagined, they crumble.

They told themselves they’d be okay with this. That they could live with it. (They couldn’t. They just chose to lie.)

So they say it. That it’s a mistake. The whole relationship is a mistake. If MC is going to be with someone who doesn’t deserve them, then they should choose him. Choose Isaac.

They’re not promising MC a life of luxury. Chris has money, influence. But Isaac? Isaac has heart. A broken thing that only felt whole when MC walked in. When they saw Isaac—not just the mess, the flaws, the defenses—but the person beneath. And they took that mangled wreckage and held it together. Made it worth something.

So if MC has to settle—then settle for him.

(And if Isaac found out Chris was cheating with Jade? MC would know before they walked down that aisle. And if MC chose to leave Chris at the altar with nothing but a note to be read in front of the guests? Isaac would be more than happy to do the honors.)

🖤 Ardent - He doesn’t believe for a second that MC is happy. He sees through them the same way they see through him—always has. He knows how terrifying it is to go against expectations, to walk away from the choices you thought you had to make. The ones you were led to believe were the only option.

There’s a knock on the door. You assume it’s the food you ordered, so you open it without thinking. But instead of a delivery, it’s Ardent—cheeks flushed, panting, rain clinging to his skin and flattening his hair against his forehead.

"Can I come in?" he asks, breathless.

"Did you run here?"

He doesn’t answer. Just steps past you, scanning the room. His gaze lands on the wedding invitations stacked on the coffee table—still blank. The wedding creeps closer every day, yet you haven’t filled them out. You haven’t invited anyone.

"Sorry about the... mess." Your fingers brush the embossed lettering, as if touching them will make it real. Before you can shove them out of sight, Ardent takes your hands.

"I need to talk to you."

No one likes hearing those words. And judging by the knot in your stomach, you’re no exception. But you nod, maybe out of shock. Maybe because he looks... hesitant. Scared, even. And that’s not like him.

You motion to the couch, watching as he sits, his rain-damp clothes soaking into the fabric. You can already hear Chris complaining about it.

But that’s not what surprises you most. It’s the way Ardent speaks—soft, careful. Like he’s afraid of breaking something. You’ve always compared him to a bull in a china shop. That’s who he is. That’s who you’ve come to—what? Care about?

The same man who held you when he told you about Chris and Jade. The same man who nearly broke when you said you wanted to give Chris another chance. Because your parents called it a mistake. Because they told you Chris cared. Because they needed you to forgive him. Not for you—for them.

"You're scaring me, big guy. Why are you here so... late?" Focus on that. Not on how your fiancé isn’t home. Not on how they haven’t answered your calls.

Ardent rests his elbows on his knees, threading his hands together under his chin. He watches you—every movement, every breath. Every glance at this hollow room.

"You're not getting married, are you?"

"What? Of course, I am."

He scoffs, raking a hand through his wet hair. Droplets fall from the strands, darkening his shirt. "You're not."

"Yes. I am." You hold his gaze, sharp and unyielding. But then he stands and grabs a handful of the blank invitations.

"Put those down. That doesn’t mean anything—"

"It means everything." His voice booms, unfiltered and raw. Loud. Unapologetic. Angry. Like you. Only, you’ve been holding it back. For what? For who?

"Whether I'm getting married or not is none of your business. It’s not like you care." And there it is. The truth beneath everything.

You want him to care.

"Is that what you fucking think?" He drops the invitations, letting them scatter across the floor. He doesn’t care about the mess he’s making—not of this, not of anything—as he pulls you toward him. His eyes lock onto yours, dark and searching. "You really think I don’t care? That I want you marrying that fucking idiot? That I’m just gonna stand by while you waste your life with them—hell, start a family with them?"

He’s close. Too close. But he won’t cross that line. Neither will you.

"I've cared for so long. You're just too much of an idiot to see it." His breath is warm against your skin, while his is so cool from the rain outside.

You swallow hard, words catching in your throat. "Are you saying..." You fight for air, for clarity, for something—someone—that is only yours. "Are you saying you don’t want me to get married?"

His nod is small, barely there. But you feel it, forehead resting against yours.

"I don’t want you marrying Chris. I don’t want you here in this place. I don’t... fuck, I don’t want you having a family with anyone but me. Is that... okay?"

His hands trace along your jaw, slow and reverent, mapping the lines like he’s memorizing them.

"More than okay."

[societyfolklore]

Plus One – Consequence

Title: Plus One – Consequence

Pairing: Loki x SHEILD Agent!Female Reader

Summary:  Loki wants to be 'of use' and is assigned to be your partner on a mission. But that's not the only thing he's focused on. He's done waiting, this time he wants his answer.

Word Count: 6.6k (It got big… but plot though!)

Warnings: /Explicit Content / 18+, Minors DNI, smut, fingering, Unprotected sex, No beta read.

A/N: Part 1 and Part 2  (this is the finally.. I think.. maybe..probably)  BIG thank you to  @angelremnants for helping me out with this

You had been left alone since the incident in the library, no sign of Loki, and for once, you told yourself it was for the best. You were fine- better off, even. It wasn’t as if you had been waiting for him to reappear, looking over your shoulder at every flicker of green light, or catching yourself searching rooms as if expecting him to be there. No, you weren’t missing him. Not at all.

Still, suspicion gnawed at you over his absence. Loki wasn’t the type to simply disappear without a reason, and while you should have been relieved, something about it felt... wrong. Like he had been deliberately keeping his distance. Was he playing some new game? Or had he simply grown bored of you?

You forced the thoughts away, refusing to entertain them further. You had more important things to focus on. At least, that was what you kept telling yourself-until you were suddenly called in for a meeting.

Thor and Fury. That was an unusual combination. Your missions rarely overlapped with Thor, and the fact that he was involved at all made your stomach twist with unease. You had told yourself you didn’t miss Loki. That you weren’t waiting for him. But now, sitting here, the realization hit you harder than you wanted to admit.

Maybe it was just... wishful thinking?

Thor sat forward, his massive frame somehow managing to take up more space than the chair should allow, his expression a mixture of determination and pride. “Loki has expressed a desire to be more ‘of use,’” he began, his tone firm yet encouraging. “And after speaking with the Director, it has been decided that Loki shall be joining you on your next mission. You know a trail run of things."

"Excuse me?" You looked between the God and your Director. "Tell me he's joking.."

Fury leaned back in his chair, ignoring your clear objections, his single eye fixed on Thor with a skeptical intensity. “He’s your brother Thor and I respect that, Loki appears to want to make amends but that doesn't mean he gets to just 'jump in' he has to prove we can see him as an ally ” Fury said, his voice calm but edged with steel. “His is guy who tried to level New York.”

Thor’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t falter. “Loki is a proven warrior and strategist,” he said. “He has fought beside me countless times and, while his methods may be unorthodox, his results are undeniable. He is motivated to prove himself.”

You shifted uncomfortably in your seat, the weight of Thor’s words settling in. Motivated was one way to describe Loki, though you weren’t entirely sure if it was for the right reasons. Still, you kept your thoughts to yourself, waiting for Fury’s response.

Fury tapped his fingers against the table thoughtfully before turning his attention to you. “And what’s your take on this? You’ll be working closest with him. You comfortable with that?”

You hesitated, feeling both pairs of eyes on you.

“Comfortable might be too strong a word,” you admitted, keeping your tone professional. “But I trust Thor’s judgment, and if Loki’s abilities can give us an edge on this mission, I’ll make it work, better it just be me he scre-" You couldn't even bring yourself to say it. "Better it's me he stabs in the back then have the whole team go down with him."

Thor gave you a small nod of gratitude, clearly deciding not hear your backhanded comments about his brother, all while Fury studied you for a moment longer before speaking.

“Fine. But let’s be clear about something: if he so much as hints at going off-script, it’s on you to rein him in. Understood?”

“Understood,” you said firmly, though the thought sent a flicker of doubt through you. Reining Loki in was a task easier said than done.

Thor exhaled, a faint smile breaking through his serious demeanor.

“You will not regret this decision,” he said confidently. “Loki will not disappoint us.”

Fury didn’t respond immediately, his gaze flicking between you and Thor before he finally stood. “Let’s hope not. Because if he does, I’ll make sure we’re not having this conversation again. I'll order him off world and back to Asgard.” With that, he strode out of the room, leaving the two of you alone with the gravity of the situation.

Thor turned to you, his expression softening. “Thank you for your faith in this, even if it’s tentative. Loki’s journey will not be easy, but I believe he is capable of great things.”

You nodded, though the knot in your stomach remained. “Let’s hope he believes that too,” you said quietly, already bracing yourself for the challenges ahead.

“Oh, don’t look so glum, Darling,” a familiar voice drawled, cutting through the charged silence like a blade. You turned your head sharply, catching the faint shimmer of green light in the corner of the room. Loki stepped forward from the shadows, his sharp features illuminated by the glow of the monitors. His smirk was as maddening as ever, exuding a confidence that bordered on outright arrogance. “It will be... enlightening.”

Thor’s posture stiffened, his voice immediately dropping into a warning tone. “Loki, I told you to wait outside.”

Loki waved a dismissive hand, the motion languid and unconcerned. “Oh, come now, brother. I was merely curious to hear the verdict of my fate. Surely you can’t fault me for wanting to be... informed.”

Thor’s expression darkened, a rare flicker of frustration slipping past his usual composure. “If Fury finds out-”

“He didn't even notice.” Loki interrupted smoothly, his icy blue gaze flicking to you, lingering just long enough to make your pulse quicken uncomfortably. “I doubt anything I say now would surprise him. Besides,” he added, his tone softening into something almost thoughtful, “I suspect our dear Agent here prefers knowing exactly what they’re getting into.”

Your eyes narrowed, but you refused to take the bait.

“What I’d prefer,” you said evenly, keeping your tone professional despite the simmering irritation, “is for you to follow orders. Starting now.”

Loki chuckled, the sound low and rich, like velvet wrapped around steel.

“Oh, I fully intend to follow orders, I do enjoy making sure your satisfied with my performance” he said, his smirk widening slightly. “But forgive me if I indulge in a little... curiosity. It’s not every day one gets the chance to prove their worth under such delightful scrutiny.”

Thor stepped between you and his brother, his towering frame blocking Loki’s view as his voice dropped into something firmer. “Enough, Loki. Prove your worth through action, not theatrics.”

Loki raised his hands in mock surrender, his smirk never wavering. “As you wish, dear brother,” he said lightly, though the glint in his eyes betrayed his amusement. He stepped back but didn’t leave entirely, lingering just long enough to cast one last glance your way.

“I’ll see you at the jet then Agent,” Loki murmured, the promise in his voice unmistakable, before disappearing in a swirl of green light. "Don’t be late..”

Thor sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This will be... a challenge.”

You couldn’t help but agree, though a part of you suspected Loki’s presence was about to make things more than just challenging-it was going to make them impossible to forget.

The HYDRA facility loomed ahead, its sleek lines cutting through the forest like a blade. The metallic sheen of its exterior caught the moonlight, giving it an eerie, otherworldly aura. Loki walked beside you, his presence both magnetic and maddening. Despite the weight of the mission, he seemed utterly at ease, his movements fluid, his expression one of quiet amusement.

“Try not to get us caught,” you muttered, scanning the perimeter through your scope. The darkened forest was alive with distant sounds-rustling leaves, faint chirps, and the occasional snap of a twig underfoot.

“Darling, please,” Loki replied, his tone dripping with mock hurt. “I am the very definition of discretion.” He smirked, tilting his head to regard you with those piercing blue eyes. “Although, if you’d rather admire my talents from afar, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Your talents aren’t exactly why I’m here,” you retorted sharply, though you couldn’t entirely suppress the warmth rising in your cheeks.

“Oh? And here I thought I was your favourite Asgardian,” he quipped, falling into step just behind you. “You do seem rather fixated on me lately.”

You ignored him, motioning for him to follow. Loki’s illusions cloaked your approach, turning you into shifting shadows that passed unnoticed by the guards patrolling the perimeter. His magic hummed faintly in the air, a reminder of the power he wielded with infuriating ease. Every so often, you caught the faintest flicker of light from his hands, the only sign of the enchantments he was weaving.

Inside, the server room was sterile and cold, lined with blinking terminals and an unsettling hum of machinery. Loki conjured a shimmering barrier at the door, sealing you inside and masking your presence. The faint green glow of his magic illuminated his sharp features, making him look almost otherworldly.

“Efficient,” you admitted grudgingly as you began downloading the data. The whir of the transfer filled the room, the only sound aside from Loki’s deliberate footsteps.

“Praise from you? How unexpected,” he murmured, leaning casually against a terminal. His voice was quieter now, almost reflective. “You’ve been remarkably tense, Agent. Shall we discuss it?”

“No.”

“Ah, deflection.” He crossed his arms, watching you with an intensity that made your pulse quicken. “You can’t hide it forever, you know. That… spark between us.”

You turned sharply, glaring at him. “This isn’t the time.”

“But there will be a time,” he countered smoothly, his eyes gleaming with unspoken intent. “Admit it, darling. You find me… intriguing.”

Before you could respond, alarms blared. Loki’s barrier flickered as HYDRA’s countermeasures overloaded it. Red lights bathed the room in an ominous glow as the door burst open, and armed agents poured in, their weapons trained on you.

“Ah, and here I thought we might avoid theatrics,” Loki said dryly, his hands already glowing with magic as he stepped in front of you. “Shall we?”

Things had been going well. You and Loki had managed to sneak into the HYDRA facility undetected, extracted the necessary files, and were making your way out. It had almost seemed too easy. But then, chaos erupted. Loki moved with lethal grace, his illusions scattering the agents as he cast bolts of searing magic. His movements were fluid, a dance of power and precision, and for a moment, it seemed as though he thrived in the chaos. You fired with equal determination, covering his blind spots with sharp efficiency. It was almost seamless-until one guard managed to fire a well-aimed blast directly at Loki.

The energy struck him square in the chest, sending him reeling backward. He staggered, his illusions flickering and his magic faltering visibly. "Go," he hissed through gritted teeth, his voice tinged with both pain and frustration as his hand glowed faintly in an attempt to hold the illusions together.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you snapped, catching his arm as you fired another shot with your free hand. You needed cover-fast.

“This is hardly the time to argue,” Loki grunted, his weight pressing into you as you pulled him behind a crumbling support beam. “But you do seem to enjoy things happening in public places..”

“You’re one to talk,” you shot back, breathless, scanning the space for an exit. “You could have just let me take the hit.”

Loki scoffed, despite the pain evident in his stance. “Yes, well, call me sentimental.”

You huffed, pushing him down against the wall as you checked his wound. “Sentimental, my ass. You’re just trying to prove a point.” "And pray tell? What point might that be?" Loki hand was still pressed into where he'd taken the hit though it seemed not to effect his sharp wit in anyway.  "That I need you."  You were glowered, but a slow, dangerous glint flicked in his eyes. 

“Darling, if I wanted to prove that point, you’d be on your knees by now,” he murmured with a pained smirk.

You glared at him, though the warmth in your cheeks betrayed you. “Shut up.”. He staggered, his illusions flickering and his magic faltering visibly. “Go,” he hissed through gritted teeth, his voice tinged with both discomfort and frustration as his hand glowed faintly in an attempt to hold the illusions together.

“Not without you,” you snapped, the words coming out harsher than you intended as adrenaline coursed through you. You grabbed his arm, hauling him to his feet as you fired at the remaining guards with one hand. His weight leaned heavily against you, and you could feel the tremor in his body as he struggled to regain his composure. Guilt gnawed at you with every step; he had shielded you without hesitation, and now he was paying the price.

You practically dragged Loki into the nearest hiding spot-a disused stairwell, the walls damp and cold from years of neglect. It wasn’t much, but it would give his magic time to work, to let his body stitch itself back together while you caught your breath.

He leaned heavily against the wall, his usual cocky grace slightly dulled, but his smirk remained infuriatingly intact. The dim lighting of the stairwell cast sharp shadows across his features, making the blue of his eyes stand out even more vividly. You knelt beside him, pressing your hand against the wound to gauge how bad it was, but before you could fully assess it, his fingers curled around your wrist, halting your movements with a surprising gentleness.

His grip was firm but not forceful, his thumb brushing against the inside of your wrist in a way that sent an unexpected shiver through you. "Why is it that you recoil at the idea of needing me?" he asked, his voice lower now, almost contemplative. "Be it in battle or in your bed, you seem to find the notion unbearable."

You swallowed hard, refusing to meet his gaze. "This isn't about that. You took a hit, and I need to make sure you don't bleed out before your magic kicks in."

"Ah, deflection," Loki mused, his grip tightening slightly, forcing you to meet his eyes. "It's a fascinating thing to watch. You insist I mean nothing, yet here you are, hands trembling as you touch me. Tell me, darling-what are you so afraid of?"

Your pulse hammered in your throat, but you yanked your hand free, glaring at him. "We are not having these conversations now, and why are you talking like I'm the problem? The library happened, and you've been MIA since..." Your voice trailed off, frustration tightening in your chest. You weren’t sure why it stung-why it felt like a betrayal that he had disappeared after that afternoon.

Loki’s smirk faltered just slightly, a flicker of something unreadable flashing across his face. He held your gaze for a long moment, searching, and then, with a slow exhale, that insufferable confidence slid back into place.

"And yet, here we are," he murmured, tilting his head, voice like silk and steel. "Tell me, darling-why does it sound like you mind? Miss me did you?" 

Loki only smirked, though there was something softer behind his usual arrogance, something dangerously close to hope. “Dogs don't miss fleas,” you snapped, though the heat rising to your cheeks betrayed you.

Loki’s smirk wavered. Just for a second, so quickly you almost missed it. Then, something colder took its place, an expression you hadn’t seen before. Not irritation, not amusement-hurt.

“Oh,” he said, his voice losing some of its playfulness, a dangerous undercurrent forming beneath. “I see, so you do want to be a bitch then.” "What's that supposed to mean?"  You looked at him hurt feeling stabbing at her chest, he didn't get to call you names.  His arms crossed over his chest, and his gaze darkened as he took a slow step back. “You let me touch you, taste you, fuck you-and now I’m just something to be discarded? A game you can play when it suits you, but when the pieces stop falling in your favor, I’m nothing more than a parasite?”

Your breath hitched, stunned at the venom in his voice. “Loki-”

He scoffed. “No, please. Enlighten me.” His tone was sharp now, edged with something almost bitter. “What am I to you, exactly? Because you seem to enjoy having me when no one’s watching. But the moment we step into the light, I become inconvenient, don’t I?”

His words cut deeper than you wanted to admit. Because there was truth to them. You had pushed him away, compartmentalized your moments together, told yourself they didn’t mean anything. But standing here now, faced with the rawness in his voice, you realized-

It mattered to him.

The memory of his words in the library resurfaced, unbidden: A chance to be what you need. You hadn’t given it the weight it deserved at the time, hadn’t let yourself. But now, with his piercing gaze locked on yours, demanding an answer you weren’t ready to give, it was impossible to ignore.

Loki exhaled sharply, shaking his head, as if disgusted with himself for letting this moment happen. His next words came quieter, but with even more weight.

“You think I don’t want you? That each of our encounters hasn't left me wanting, haunted, in need of you?” His voice dropped lower, edged with frustration, but there was something else beneath it now, something raw. "You doubt me? Yet here I am injured on your behalf. Playing hero, trying to be better, all so you might be willing to take what I can offer out of the shadows."

The intensity in his voice sent a tremor down your spine. He stepped forward, his presence overwhelming, his tone shifting to something almost desperate. “You think I toy with you?” he murmured, voice a quiet rasp. “Do you know how insufferable it is-to crave something I cannot have?”

And then he kissed you. Push in against you, his body pushing you into the floor. Mission almost entirely forgotten in this moment. The dirt of the stairwell scrapping at the leather of your suit. 

It was nothing like the teasing, taunting brushes of lips you'd had before. This was different. Fierce. Possessive. A demand and a question all at once. And you-

You didn’t stop him.

Your fingers curled into the leather of his suit, pulling him closer, because this time, there was no use pretending you didn’t want this too. Didn’t want him.

His hands slid down to your waist, gripping hard enough to bruise as he pressed you back against the wall. The tension, the heat, the hunger-it all snapped, unraveling in a desperate collision of mouths and hands.

When he finally pulled away, his breath was ragged, his forehead resting against yours. “I won’t be your secret anymore,” he whispered, the words more declaration than threat. “Not after this.”

Your heart pounded, the weight of what he was saying crashing over you. But before you could respond, the distant sound of approaching footsteps shattered the moment. You were on your feet, your rifle already raised. It was time to get out of this hell hole. They’re finish this conversation later, right now both had to get out, making sure Loki could stay on his feet, you started down the stairs. 

Waiting at the extraction point for the quinjet to collect the pair of you. The safehouse was barely more than a disused, abandoned guard station. Neither of you had really spoken since the hall, unless it was to bark instructions or warnings at the other. No witty jabs, none of Loki’s usual sharp, flirty comments. Just silence that filled up the space-it felt suffocating.

Loki sat against the cold wall, one knee bent, arms resting loosely, but his gaze never left you. His silence was not his usual brooding arrogance-it was something else. Something more calculated, restrained.

“Do you regret it?” he finally asked, breaking the quiet with a voice almost too soft to be his. A whisper, but one that carried weight, making your chest tighten.

“Regret what?” you asked cautiously, though you knew exactly what he meant. Your voice was quieter now, the usual edge replaced by uncertainty.

“This. Us,” Loki said, his gaze locking onto yours with disarming intensity. “Every time you let me closer, you pull away twice as hard. Why?”

You tensed, your body stiffening instinctively as if preparing for a fight, but the words wouldn’t come. How could they? How could you put into words the war raging in your mind? The sheer impossibility of what you felt for him?

Loki exhaled, shaking his head as if he was already resigned to your silence. Then, something shifted in his expression-something darker, edged with frustration. His voice turned sharp, his patience worn thin.

“Why is it so hard for you to accept this?” he asked, his voice rougher now. “That I want you. That you want me.”

You stiffened, shaking your head as you tried to step back, but he followed. “It’s not that simple.”

Loki scoffed. “Oh, but it is. You just refuse to admit it.” He leaned in, his breath hot against your skin. “You act as though I have no hold over you, yet you let me in. Over and over again. You let me touch you, you crave it, and then you run the moment it becomes too real.”

“That’s not true.”

“Liar.” His voice cracked slightly, his frustration barely contained. “God of Lies remember? You think I don’t see it? The way you hesitate, yet you still reach for me?”

His words struck deep, rattling you more than you cared to admit. You didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction-but then his hands were on you, dragging you into another kiss, this one more desperate, more forceful.

You shoved at him, breathless, but he barely moved. “Loki-”

“Stop pretending,” he bit out, his grip tightening. “You want this. You don’t tell me no. Stop acting like this isn’t everything you think about.”

Something inside you snapped. With a growl of frustration, you pushed him back, eyes burning with defiance. “You don’t get to tell me what I think.”

Loki’s smirk returned, but it was different now, something darker curling at the edges of his lips. “Oh, but I do.”

And then he kissed you again, all heat and frustration and something dangerous. This time, you didn’t pull away.. Then, something shifted in his expression-something darker, edged with frustration.

“You fight me at every turn,” he murmured, leaning forward just slightly. “You let me in-your body, your mind-and then you pretend none of it matters. That I don’t matter.”

“That’s not-”

“Oh, isn’t it?” His voice sharpened, and for the first time tonight, the intensity in his gaze turned molten, heated with something far too raw. “Stop pretending. You want this. You don’t tell me no. Stop acting like this isn’t everything you think about.”

His words struck deep, reverberating through you like a blow, because they weren’t entirely wrong.

“I don’t-”

“You don’t what?” Loki cut in, moving fluidly to his feet, stepping into your space. “You don’t want me? You don’t crave me, even now?” His voice dropped lower, barely a breath between you. “Liar.”

Your breath hitched, your pulse hammering as his fingers brushed against your wrist. A touch so simple, yet it burned like a brand.

“Why are you so resistant to this?” he demanded, voice a rough whisper. “To me? To us?”

Because it was dangerous. Because it was Loki. Because you weren’t sure who you were when he was around.

But the words never left your lips.

Loki scoffed, shaking his head as if he finally understood something you didn’t. And then-

Then he kissed you.

It was the same as before.  His pure frustration, desperation, and need colliding all at once. A battle neither of you had the will to fight anymore. His hands gripped your arms, pushing you back until you felt the cold wall at your back, caging you in without escape.

And the worst part? You didn’t want to escape.

Your hands came up his chest onto his shoulders, pulling him impossibly closer, like you needed to drown in him just to survive this.

Then, just as suddenly, you shoved him back.

Breathing hard, your hands still curled into his clothes, you stared at him-at the mess he had made of you.

Loki’s chest rose and fell in sharp movements, his pupils blown wide. And then, his lips curled, but there was no arrogance in his expression. Just something deeper.

“You can keep running,” he murmured, voice dark and knowing. “But we both know how this ends.” Loki took steps towards you. 

“You’re insufferable,” you managed, though your voice trembled more than you’d like.

“And you’re irresistible,” he shot back smoothly, his tone teasing but heavy with intent.

The moment stretched taut, and though you knew you should push him away, the pull of his proximity was overwhelming. His fingers brushed your jaw, tilting your face up to meet his.

“Just say the word,” Loki murmured, his voice a silken promise as his lips hovered achingly close to yours. "I can be what you need." His voice sounded more like a plea than a promise as his hand brushed over your cheek, pushing stray hairs away. "Imagine it, everything I could give you..." His breath on your cheeks as he whispered made your heart race. "You've only just sampled the things I can do, for you, with you."

His fingers traced lightly along the column of your throat, lingering just beneath your chin as if daring you to pull away. His touch was slow, deliberate, the cool press of his fingertips sending a shiver skittering down your spine.

"Are you worried your friends will judge?" he murmured, his breath warm against your cheek. His other hand moved to the zipper of your suit, teasingly dragging it down just enough to expose the sensitive skin at your collarbone. "None of them have perfect pasts. Why do they get the chance to make amends, yet you dismiss me?"

You exhaled sharply, shaking your head. "It's not the same, Loki."

"Isn't it?" He pressed, his fingers toying with the buckle of your utility belt slowly undoing it.  You barely registered it hitting the floor. "You think me irremediable-is that it? Or do you just like the idea of walking on the darker side but refuse to admit it?"

Your pulse thundered against your ribs. His words cut too close, slipping through the cracks of your defenses like tendrils of smoke. You should stop him, but instead, you stood entranced, helpless against the way his touch made your body burn.

Loki's smirk softened into something more knowing, more dangerous. His lips brushed the corner of your mouth, teasing, testing. "You're not as pure or righteous as you like to pretend," he murmured, his voice a velvet caress. His finger pulling the zipper down  to your stomach.  "We all dwell in the grey."

His hand slid down, fingers grazing the curve of your waist before settling on your hip. With agonizing patience, he traced the seam of your suit, slipping beneath the fabric just enough to make your breath hitch. "You make this idea of heroism not seem like such a folly. Can't you see I need you too?" His voice dipped lower, dark with something deeper than seduction-something raw. "You make me want to be better, and that terrifies me more than anything."

Your breath caught, your fingers trembling where they rested against his chest. Still, you didn't push him away. His words, the weight behind them, left you teetering on the edge of something you couldn't name.

Loki’s smirk deepened as he slid his hand lower, slipping past the half-unzipped fabric of your suit. His fingers trailed over your stomach, teasing, deliberate. Then, lower still. A wicked chuckle rumbled in his throat as his palm pressed against your core, his breath hot against your cheek.

"No underwear?" he murmured, voice dripping with amusement and something darker, something possessive. "How delightfully scandalous. Like you were expecting something, or just wishful thinking?"

A flush crept up your neck, but before you could muster a retort, he pressed his fingers more firmly against you, feeling the heat, the undeniable evidence of your arousal. A pleased hum vibrated from him, his lips ghosting along delicate  of your throat.

"Don’t fight it," he purred, his mouth leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses against your skin. The scrape of his teeth followed, nipping just enough to make you gasp.

Then, you felt it-long, skilled fingers slipping between your folds, teasing before one breached your entrance. A sharp gasp left you, your head tilting back against the wall as he worked you open with excruciating slowness.

"That's it, darling," Loki whispered, his voice a silk-covered blade. "Let me in."

His fingers curled, pressing deeper, slow and deliberate, savoring the way your breath hitched, the way your thighs trembled beneath his touch. His mouth trailed down the side of your throat, the scrape of his teeth sending shivers down your spine as his other hand splayed against your lower back, keeping you pinned where he wanted you.

"So conflicted." he murmured against your skin, his voice thick with satisfaction. "Going to keep pretending you don’t want this?"

A ragged gasp escaped you as he added another finger, stretching you, working you open with agonizing patience. His thumb circled your clit with infuriating slowness, teasing, coaxing, drawing out every reaction like he was savoring a masterpiece only he could create.

"You can deny it all you like," Loki purred, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "But your body knows the truth. It has always known."

Heat coiled in your stomach, the pressure building too fast, too much, and still, Loki took his time, dragging out every moment, every sensation until you were gasping against him, clinging to the leather of his suit as your body betrayed you.

"Let go, darling," he coaxed, his fingers pressing deeper, his pace quickening just enough to push you closer to the edge. "Let me hear you say my name. Before I ruin you properly."

But just as the pleasure coiled unbearably tight in your core, his movements slowed-then stopped entirely. A desperate whimper escaped you before you could stop it, frustration knotting in your stomach as your body trembled on the precipice of release.

Loki chuckled darkly, his breath warm against your ear. "Not yet," he murmured, withdrawing his fingers just enough to leave you aching. "Admit it, and I'll give you everything, darling. Just three words. 'I need you.' just give me the words."

Your body burned, every nerve alight with the cruel denial of release. You clenched your jaw, trying to resist, but Loki's fingers traced lazy circles against your sensitive flesh, teasing, never giving enough to push you over the edge. His other hand slid up, cupping your throat gently, his thumb tilting your chin up so you had no choice but to meet his gaze.

"Say it," he coaxed, his voice smooth as silk, but beneath it, there was something deeper-something raw. "You need me. Say it, and I'll make you come so hard you'll forget your own name."

Your breath hitched, your hands fisting in his leather as your body warred with your pride. The ache between your legs was unbearable, his teasing touch driving you to madness. Your lips parted, a shuddering breath escaping, but still, you held back, even as your resolve wavered dangerously.

Loki's smirk softened into something almost reverent, his fingers ghosting over your pulse. "You can keep pretending, darling. Keep fighting me. But we both know how this ends. We both know what you need."

Another flick of his fingers, another pulse of pleasure, and a strangled moan tore from your lips. Your resolve cracked, splintered under the weight of your desire. You squeezed your eyes shut, barely above a whisper as the words finally slipped free.

"I... need you."

Loki exhaled sharply, something triumphant gleaming in his gaze before his mouth crashed against yours. This time, there was nothing measured, nothing teasing. It was raw, hungry, desperate. His fingers didn’t work at your suit with the same slow deliberation as before-instead, he all but tore it from your body, the fabric peeling away under his forceful touch.

With a firm grip, he spun you, shoving you down onto the desk behind you, your palms hitting the cool surface as his body caged you in. The sound of leather and metal followed as his own clothing vanished in a shimmer of green. He pressed against you, his heat searing, his strength undeniable. His hands roamed freely now, greedy, possessive, mapping every inch of you like he was memorizing it for eternity.

“You have no idea,” he growled against your ear, his breath hot, “what you do to me.”

His teeth scraped along your shoulder before he bit down, sharp and claiming, his body pressing harder against yours as his hand gripped your hip, anchoring you in place

Loki groaned, the sound deep and unrestrained, his fingers digging into your skin as he finally sank into you, filling you with a stretch that was almost too much-but god, it felt right. The noise you made was something guttural, something you hadn’t even realized you were capable of.

“Mine now,” he murmured, his voice thick with satisfaction as he pulled back, only to slam into you again, rougher this time, dragging a strangled cry from your lips.

Loki wasn’t measured now-wasn’t teasing. There was no more patience, no more waiting. He drove into you with a force that left you breathless, your nails digging into the hard surface of the desk as your body rocked beneath him.

He growled against your ear, the sound primal, raw, vibrating through your entire body. "And to think, you fought me so hard," he mused, his tone dark, nearly mocking. "Tell me, darling, was it worth resisting?"

You tried to respond, but all that came out was a gasp as he snapped his hips again, filling you to the hilt, stretching you, making you feel every inch of him.

Your body betrayed you, clenching around him, desperate for more. He felt it too, a pleased chuckle escaping him as his fingers curled tighter around your hips, holding you in place as he set a relentless pace.

“You take me so well," he praised, his lips brushing against your shoulder before his teeth sank into the sensitive skin. You gasped, your back arching, the sharp pain blending into the overwhelming pleasure. "This was how it was supposed to be. Only mine."

A wanton moan tore from both of you, the intensity of the moment swallowing everything else. Loki was everywhere-his hands gripping, his mouth marking, his body claiming you in ways you could no longer deny.

“You’re mine,” Loki growled, his voice rough with something unrestrained, something dangerous. His hands, strong and possessive, guided your hips against him, holding you exactly where he wanted you. He moved without hesitation, without restraint, his frustration from before bleeding into every punishing thrust.

“Say it,” he commanded, his voice dark and demanding. “Say you want this.”

Your breath hitched, the pleasure clouding your mind, leaving you unable to think past the way he felt, the way he filled you, stretched you. You knew what he wanted. He wanted the words. He wanted you to say what he already knew. But pride still warred within you, even as your body betrayed you, clenching around him, pulling him deeper.

Loki’s smirk returned, but it wasn’t playful-it was predatory. “Say it,” he demanded again, punctuating his words with a hard thrust that sent a broken moan tumbling from your lips.

You bit down on your lip, refusing, even as your body trembled beneath him. But he wasn’t going to let you win. His fingers found your jaw, tilting your face up, forcing your eyes to meet his. His pupils were blown wide, his expression twisted in pleasure, but beneath it was something else-something raw.

“Louder,” he growled, his movements turning desperate, relentless. “Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me.”

Your resolve cracked like shattered glass. Your hands gripped his shoulders, nails biting into his skin as a cry escaped you. “I want you.”

Loki groaned, the sound primal, his pace never faltering. “Again,” he ordered, his voice rough, breathless. His fingers curled around the back of your neck, holding you in place as he thrust harder, deeper. “Say it again.”

Your head fell back, pleasure surging through you, consuming you whole. “I want you, Loki,” you gasped, the words breaking free before you could stop them.

His mouth was on you in an instant, capturing your lips in a bruising kiss, his desperation matching your own. “That’s it,” he whispered, his voice thick with satisfaction, with possession. “Let go, darling. Let me have you.”

Your climax slammed into you, tearing through you with a force that left you breathless. Your body arched into his, your fingers tightening their grip as you shattered against him. Loki followed seconds after, his name a rasped groan against your skin as he claimed you completely, utterly.

For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of your ragged breaths, your bodies pressed together, the heat between you still lingering, still pulsing.

Loki’s hands moved to cradle your face, his touch suddenly tender, reverent. “Mine,” he whispered again, but this time, there was something softer beneath the claim, something deeper.

Your chest still heaved, the aftershocks of pleasure humming through you as you met his gaze, seeing something you weren’t sure you were ready to name. This was it-your last surrender. And yet, you were still panting, still trembling, and the look in Loki’s eyes had softened, the hunger tempered with something more, something yearning.

"...Yours," you whispered, the admission slipping from your lips before you could stop it.

Loki inhaled sharply, his grip on you tightening for just a moment before his features melted into something smug, but there was warmth behind it, true satisfaction. "Good girl," he murmured, brushing stray strands of hair from your face with an uncharacteristic gentleness, his fingers lingering along your jaw.

The moment was intimate, raw-until the coms crackled to life, shattering the quiet between you.

"ETA five minutes."

Loki sighed, his smirk returning as he tilted his head. "Better get you dressed, darling. Can't have anyone seeing what's mine now, can I?"

You felt the loss of him immediately as he pulled away, the absence of his warmth making you shiver despite the heat still simmering beneath your skin. Your limbs were heavy, still trembling as he helped you back into your suit, his touch lingering longer than necessary, almost reverent. His own attire reappeared in a flash of green, his expression shifting back into something unreadable, though you caught the satisfied gleam in his eyes.

As you both collected yourselves, he moved toward the door of the abandoned guard shed, holding it open for you. The night air was crisp as you stepped through, Loki falling into stride beside you with an ease that felt... natural.

As the quinjet descended, kicking up dust around you, you hesitated for just a moment. Then, before you could think better of it, you reached out, slowly taking his hand in yours. Loki stilled, his fingers tightening around yours just slightly, an unspoken acknowledgment passing between you.

As the rear of the jet opened, you walked in together.

TAGs @mischiefmaker615

[aliceinborderlandsquidgame]

Home (you) | Gi-hun x Wife!Reader |

Summary: He finally returns to you.

Warnings: Post S1 - Non canon events - Non canon background for Gi-hun - Sad!Gi-hun - Paranoid!Gi-hun - Trauma - Soft!Moments  - NON CANON EVENTS FROM S2  - ANGST -

When Gi-hun was left with nothing but his underwear and a credit card full of zeros his mind did nothing but drift off.

He could not forget them. The others, the ones who died in order for him to be here today. Alive, looking at the account, sounds and smells from the city, ignorance from what had happen to him and others.

Gi-hun knew you were there, at the small aparment you two shared. The small yet filled with love place. It was his safe heaven, the home he loved. Where you waited for him, never once judged him and rather tried to help.

You have been nothing but the best wife, woman and friend. More than what he could ask for and more of what he deserves.

In his mind you should have left him, for someone better. But he could be selfish and when it came to you he was.

But now after everything that had happen..did he deserve to go back to you ? To his life ? When he had promise that he would not dissapear again? But he still did ? Knowing he may not be back ?

His mind driffted back and he found himself walking without a destination, not caring for the cold or nasty looks along the way.

~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○

Another morning came, the bed felt cold but you have to get used to it. Thats whar you keep telling yourself. However when you see the ring on your finger you cant help but let out some tears before getting up and prepare for the day.

It has been at least three months now since Gi-hun dissapear without a way to find him.

You tought the loan sharks would look for you but that never happened. Part of you did wonder if they had killed him but when being confronted by you they just said a quick excuse and went off.

You hated your life without him. Besides the pity looks you got at your work or the few words of compassion, you missed him. A lot. You were used to his laught, to his touch, the silly jokes he would make...but that was in the past now.

With a bottle of shake you went to your home. Another day, another week, you should think on moving maybe that way it would hurt less. But the memories with him were deep in your mind and you could not shake them off.

You were going to Open the old door when you took notice that it was slighty Open.

A robbery ? The loan sharks decided to come ?

You moved the door slowly, the old thing making a sound that felt louder than it actually was. The aparment was dark, no light or sight of life. It was just and the forniture.

Or at least thats what you thoguth when suddendly you hear a muffled "fuck" and "I never cleaned that"

Even if it was small you knew in an instant from who it was. You went there, not caring if maybe your mind was playing you a cruel trick. You needed to know.

Once outside the bedroom you turned on the lights seeing his form trying (and failing) to repair some broken base he had most likely knock off.

You also took notice on the big spoot on the wall, yeah it was caused by him once and he never took care of it, but it added personality to the room.

He looked at you. Eyes big like a fish, he was a mess. Hair larger and dirty.

"Gi-hun?" You called taking a step towards him while he took one back. He did not want you to see him like this. He came on impulse, a rational part of him said to not come, but his feelings....he missed you. Wanted you again by his side.

"Please tell me this is real" You tried again voice now breaking as you stopped one hand reaching for him.

Gi-hun felt his heart break, he moved slowly taking your hand in his, the same hand that he had used to fight off Sang-woo was now holding yours.

He almost fell as you pulled him into a big hug, crying on his chest, you had to take a moment to listen to his heart beat. You eyes going over his face.

"Oh Gi-hun...what happened to you?" You asked pulling him for a hug again his own hands returning it with more force. He never wanted to let go of you again.

"(Y/N)...Please" His voice broke at the end "Hold me, I will tell you everytning but please"

He fell on his knees you followed still hugging him, his cries were muffled by your shirt as she held you like you were the only thing that could keep him sane.

"Shh I got you Gi-hun, let it out"

He cried for a bit more only moving when he felt you move from discomfort because of how you two were.

"Gi-hun...you should take a bath" You said to him very careful "I can prepare it for you.."

"Will you stay?" He asked his eyes letting out the raw vulnerability he was feeling

"Of course I will, I will stay with you"

~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○

Gi-hun havent feel this...relaxed in such a long time. You carefully washed his hair, and relaxed his tensed back. There was nothing sexual out of it. Just you taking care of him.

And it felt like heaven.

"Im going to brush your hair a bit is that alright with you?" You asked from behind him inside the bathtub  worried that it might trigger something from him.

But Gi-hun just nodded letting out a content sound when the brush made contact with his hair. You were very patient with him, slowly untangling his now long hair. He knew he needed to get it cut off. But he had let himself be lost and...and he could not bring to take care of himself.

"We should also cut your beard too..if you want" You softly asked after you ended with his hair doing a small bow that made him look quiet cute.

He touched his beard without realizing how long it had got. But finally gave a nod to you. He saw you move towards the cabin getting the tools and now taking a seat in front of him.

"Im going to do this slow, ok? You tell me if I need to stop" You tone let him knew that he was the one in charge of the situation. You did not know what had happen to him but it must be more than the old threats the loan sharks would use against him.

No, this was something worse. And you wanted him to feel safe with you.

~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~○~

After it you offered him a fresh change of clothes. He asked you to stay with him and you nodded. He was slimmer than the last time you have seen him. And there were some bruises too. You wanted to ask him, to know what did happen. But you also knew he would come around, that you needed to be patient with him.

After he changed he muttered that he was tired and you were ready to guide him back towards the bedroom you two shared.

To him the bed sheets felt softer than he did remember. Even if the mattress was old it was better than the beds from the games. A shiver ran down his spine and he had to hold his head to prevent memories from coming back.

"Gi-hun..."

"Can you get me some water...? Please" Gi-hun asked his voice almost breaking. He did not want you to see him like this. So broken so....

He had no words to describe the pain he was feeling.

He felt when you left, and he decided to take some deep breaths, letting the familiar smell of the room fill his sense. He was back, he was at home.

"Gi-hun? I got your water?" You said from besides him giving him the glass as he gulped it down.

And you were with him.

He finally looked at you. Seeing how tired you were. It must have been difficult for you. To be alone and worried over him. He wanted to blame himself even more for leaving you like that. He did not deserve you and part of him wanted you to hate him for leaving and then be back without a explaination.

But as he looked all over you his eyes ended in your hand, most precise on the ring. You were still using it, a solid proof you never gave up on him.

"(Y/N).." Gi-hun said your name with so much care as he took your hands on his bring them up to kiss them. "Im sorry, im sorry that I left you. Im sorry for not coming back sooner" He said between broken sobs. "I know I must have caused you so much pain, and im so sorry for it"

"Gi-hun please stop, you know I would have waited for you a lifetime" You responded gently caressing his face "I dont know what happened to you, and you dont have to tell me. I will wait till you are ready. Just know, I love you. And that wont ever change, just...dont leave me again"

"Never, I wont ever leave you again (Y/N)...you are all I have and all I will ever have. You are the most important thing to me, and from now on I will do my best to show you how grateful im for you being by my side. For putting up with me"

You smiled at him giving him a soft kiss then pushing him down so he could get comfortable.

"And you are the best thing that ever happened to me Gi-hun. You dont have to prove me anything" You laid besides him both facing each other. He pulled you against his chest his face on your hair.

"Promise you wont ever let me go? Not tonight or ever ? Even if...things change" Gi-hun knew he was a different Man now, he could not just ignore his trauma. He was positive nightmares would still come to haunt him and that at some point he would tell you the truth.

But not tonight. Tonight all he wanted was for you to hold him and promise him that everything would be fine.

"I wont ever let you go Gi-hun, not tonight or ever. You are with me till death do us apart, remember ? Now get some sleep I will be here once you wake up"

And that was all he needed to hear. For the first time since he won these games...he got a nice sleep. Besides you anything seemed to be possible. Even finding his way back to life.

[1-800-local-slut]

Girl I would kill for more stilesx black reader smut!!

Thinking about...

Stiles, who gets horny when he's stressed. He's tired and thinking about practice tomorrow and considering skipping school but he knows he has too many absences and is one week away from repeating junior year. It's 2:30 in the morning, he just crawled through his bedroom window and flopped onto bed when he remembered the homework that was worth 60 points of his grade.

So, he drinks some coffee and prepares for an all nighter. He's studying, scrolling through pages of his online textbook, and all the pressure is mounting on his shoulders. Even Stiles has a breaking point for math.

During a spontaneous break, Stiles takes a scroll through Instagram. One thing leads to another, and he's clicking through your story, then through your highlights. His fingers automatically go to the highlight he's spent a gross amount of time looking at, your summer highlight

He's getting hard, staring at your tits in the swimsuit he helped you pick out at the mall, and imagining what it would look like slipping you out of that swimsuit top. Or maybe keeping it on.

One more thing leads to another and now his hand is down his pants. Oops!

He's now a red, pathetic mess. He's rubbing his thumb over the tip and sending shivers through his entire body, his eyes hyper focused on the image he has saved on his computer of you two posing where just enough of your cleavage was visible and he could see a bit more of one of your boobs than the other. The outline of your hips, and he's imagining what in between your thighs look like. Ultimately it would be as beautiful as the rest of you but still!

He promised himself he wouldn't do this again. How gross could he get? Jerking off, literally humping his hand from overstimulation while zooming in on the part of Scott's story where you were laying down on your stomach in the back, and Stile's had a dream like view of your perfect ass covered by your tights. He promised himself yesterday that he would stop jerking off to one of his best friends, but he truly couldn't help it!

He's stressed like all the time, and for some reason his brain always turns stress into the urge to hump something. His mattress in his sleep, his hand, you. Oh god, the urge to rub up on you was strong

Whenever he sees you, applying lip liner and gloss to your thick lips, whenever he sees you reclining in the sun with light sparling off your dark skin, when he gets a full view of the perfect roundness of your ass, when he noticed your shorts slide over once during a group sleep over and he saw a bit of your plain underwear, when you randomly put him in a bonnet and he's engulfed by your scent for just a moment.

It isn't his fault! Ever since he had a dream about you dry humping him, Stiles's hasn't been able to really think straight. And with the regular stress of his life, it was only getting worse.

Right now, he's struggling to keep his voice down. Eyes rolling to the back of his skull and legs shaking as he stood up to try to avoid cumming on the bottom of his desk like some sort of pervert and ended up cumming on his own stomach. The second the warm liquid touched him, so did his shame.

Oh yeah, you can't focus on your homework, but you can touch yourself while you think of your friend dry humping you while she wears a cheetah print strapless mini dress? Good job man. Real good job.

Well, at least he could focus now.

༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺༻༺

Here you go! I feel like Stiles would be a gooner sometimes. Like not typically but sometimes he goes a little crazy and is the type to rub himself sore. We know he's very imaginative, so I can imagine him having a really good sex dream and going insane over it. Now I'm tempted to write more about gooner Stiles who feels guilty for being a gooner </3

[seeker-of-stories19]

𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙈𝙞𝙜𝙪𝙚𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙠𝙖𝙞 𝙏𝙖𝙞𝙠𝙖𝙞 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙍𝙤𝙗𝙗𝙮 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙞𝙣

I have had this in my drafts since before part one was released and I never finished it, after part two I came back to it because we didn’t know the Sekai Taikai victor yet. Now I feel like we all know how it’s going to end but I thought this might still be interesting to post before the final episodes drop.

I love both characters and I really believe that Miguel losing is just as important as Robby winning for their respective story arc in the series so these are some of the reasons I think the narrative would make more sense if this was the outcome. While I don’t think this is actually going to be the result of the tournament I feel very strongly that Robby being the victor makes the most sense to the show so I’m going to lay out some of the reasons I think this would be the best ending.

- Robby is the underdog and the original karate kid was all about the underdog story. Miguel hasn’t been the underdog since the first season but Robby has gone through so much shit throughout the series, specifically in the tournaments, and constantly gets mistreated and stuck in his own head. Even in season one when Miguel had more of an underdog story he was still the instigator with Robby. He’s been through constant trauma, incarceration, homelessness, struggling to pay his moms bills, physical abuse, sexual assault, mental health issues etc. and has yet to get a major victory. Even in part two you can see how they reinstate Robby’s role as the underdog repeatedly (specifically in relation to him struggling to manage his emotions and insecurity which has been an ongoing battle for him through the series) before Miguel gives him the confidence and support he needs to step up.

- Robby is the best fighter in the series, he’s able to master incredibly advanced moves like the two legged kick after only training for a couple months and he holds his own with many opponents who are bigger and more experienced than him. He’s also able to fight off all of Cobra Kai at once in season four, only getting taken down when he turns his back. In my opinion Robby is the most talented and skilled fighter but the least consistent as he is so vulnerable to his emotions, still we’ve seen that he can win when he finds balance which is what his whole arc and a lot of the show is about.

-Robby’s kicks are his go to move and they’ve specifically stressed kicks as being important in the Sekai Taikai, both earlier in the show when Robby Miguel and Hawk are talking about how high the contestants kick and again when they get there and Robby and Kwon do the kicking competition. Not to mention it’s how Robby beat Kwon both times. Even in the teasers for part three you see Robby practicing his kicks and many of his significant moments in the series have been centered around kicks as well.

- Robby also has the strongest ties to both dojos, with so much of the show being everyone coming together I feel like Robby being Johnny’s son and Daniel’s first student he would truly represent victory as a combined dojo better than any of the other students.

- Finally Cobra Kai has tried really hard to bring Johnny’s side of the story to light and I think after him being so haunted by his loss against Daniel Cobra Kai ending in the opposite way with Robby following a different path and ultimately winning would be a really great full circle moment.

Now for the second part of this post here are the reasons I want Miguel to lose. (I know this sounds mean but it’s because I think it honors his character journey and storyline better.)

- Miguel has already won a tournament, and backed down from the second one because there were other things that were more important to him. I feel like that was a very important moment for him, especially after how far he was willing to go to win the first tournament, that showed him wanting to find himself outside of Johnny’s influence and that karate wasn’t the most important thing in the world. Which again shows that he had grown a lot since the first tournament where he hurt Robby.

- Miguel feels like the tournament is his only chance at Stanford which I personally think has a lot more to do with how desperate he is to win, it’s about his future dream at least as much if not more than it’s about karate. But Miguel could still get into Stanford without winning the Sekai Taikai (and even if he doesn’t get into Stanford he’ll go to another really good school.) To me this is important because Miguel has been set up with other possibilities while Robby hasn’t. Miguel realizing that is a significant moment because he apologizes to Robby and makes sure he knows he is on his side. This is a massive moment after the ups and downs in their relationship and it marks so much growth for him in being able to look past his own wants and care enough about Robby to put him first.

- Growth is what makes characters and stories interesting and there’s been a lot with Robby and Miguel over the course of the series. I feel like Miguel winning would take away from some of the significant moments in his story where he has to start building an identity and future for himself outside of Johnny and karate but still using the lessons he’s learned. Miguel fixing things with Robby and coming far enough to cheer him on would be a better end to the series than anything else with them both having satisfying well rounded ends to their respective character arcs and their overall dynamic.

Now having heard about the leaks it doesn’t seem like this is the ending that we’ll get which is very disappointing and (again in my opinion) a very unsatisfying and poorly thought out choice. I don’t have very much faith in the writers and while there are obviously many things I love about the show there are also some major issues I have with it such as Miguel’s unrealistic recovery, how Robby and Johnny’s relationship is handled, their general inability to write good romantic relationships, the whole Johnny and Carmen plot even before the baby, and Robby being sexually assaulted without it being addressed.

At this point I’m incredibly nervous for the final episodes but still somewhat excited and there’s always fanfic to fix things. Now that I’ve finally finished this I’ll share it and hopefully someone finds my rambling interesting.

[knight-a3]

Heavenbound AU

Hazbin Masterpost

Mimzy

Mimsy was an interesting one to work on. I wanted to make sure she looked inhuman like the other characters, but without making too big of a change. Canon Mimzy basically just has the black eyes and sharp teeth.

She's apparently loosely based off a chicken, which is why she has a hooked nose. But I knew pretty early on that I wanted to use peacock colors. It also helps increase the color variety of the cast by reducing the red.

More notes under the cut, including human Mimzy

Face: I gave her face markings that resemble running mascara, because I figured she wanted to be a showgirl or movie star or something. But she kept getting rejected, so she cried a lot. And apparently "mimsy" was a word coined by Lewis Carroll and is a blend of "miserable" and "flimsy".

She has vampire fangs for two reasons:

1. She leeches off others. Alastor was missing for 7 years, and the first thing she does is dump her problems on him.

2. In the 1920s, there was an equivalent to femme fetale called "Vamp". Vamps were more or less extra promiscuous versions of flappers.

Hair: An iconic 1920s hairstyle was finger waves. I made them a bit loose, because I didn't like how it looked plastered to her head.

I know she has a tattoo in the show, but I don't know how important it is for her to have it. So I just didn't bother with it. If it becomes significant, I'll add it back in.

Mimzy said that she and Alastor ran in the same circles while they were alive. He frequented the club that she sang at. But she also sounds like she's from New York, so I'm not sure how/why they ended up in the same place.

She died in the 1920s in her late 20s or early 30s. Not sure how she died.

1920s fashion--

I'll try to keep this brief. You know the stereotypical flapper dress? With the fringes? That wasn't really a thing. The style was slim, dropped waist, and no curves. The clothes weren't heavily tailored and just draped over the body like a potato sack. Fringes happened occasionally, but not often. More common was beading, pleats, tiers, and ruffles. The skirts were shorter than in previous generations, but they were still below the knee. Sometimes the stockings would be rolled down so the edge was visible--Scandalous!

While I appreciate the body diversity with Mimzy, she is honestly not an ideal choice to show off 1920s fashion. Plus sized women would utilize vertical lines to help create the illusion of thinness. So I changed canon Mimzy's film strip motif and made it vertical instead. Historically, the top would not be so form fitting, but I'm claiming that modern influences got to her a little bit. But in her human design I'm claiming it's just stylized.

The stereotypical flapper dress better resembles showgirls and lingerie, imo. Not entirely sure what to think of that, but there it is.

Makeup--There are two makeup styles to go over. Regular and movies.

Regular is fairly straight forward. Pale skin. Black eyeshadow(or a color that matched the eyes). Thin, pencil-drawn eyebrows that look kinda sad. Lips with an emphasized cupid's bow. Rosy blush on the center of the cheeks.

Movie makeup: I went down a rabbit hole with this topic. It gets pretty interesting, but I am simplifying a lot. I also only know the basics.

The 20s was a transition period of the types of film used. There was the older orthochromatic/blue-sensitive film, which struggled to pick up warmer colors. Reds ended up darker than they really were, and tended to emphasize facial blemishes. This was counteracted by lighting and makeup. They used Arc lights, which gave off a blue-green light, were noisy, and hard on the actor's eyes.

The idea was basically to wash everything in blue light, to counter any reds present. Then they just had to worry about values. White or creme makeup was used to even out the skin tone (At least for white people, didn't find anything for other skin tones, but I imagine the basic idea would be similar). Then dark blues were used to contour the face, enhance definition/contrast, and mimic blush. Light blues would act as highlights. The lips would vary based on if you wanted a natural look or not. Greens and yellows could get a natural to dark lipstick appearance. If red was used, it could only get a dark lipstick look. Overall, the actors would have looked pretty weird.

If regular makeup colors were used, then everything would end up looking too dark.

Panchromatic film started becoming more widespread by the late 1920s. It had a wider range of sensitivity(but was still more blue sensitive than the human eye, which is more yellow sensitive. Reds were difficult for film even into the 21st century. That could lead me into a tangent about the Raimi Spiderman films, but I'll hold it in). They were able to switch to incandescent lighting, which were quieter(important for the rise of "talkies") and easier to maintain. The way makeup was previously used in movies was essentially invalidated.

(Below)I'm not sure what type of film the left side was designed for exactly, possibly panchromatic(because the green and purple is an interesting choice) or early color. But the right side is for blue-sensitive films.

I guess I bring this up because it's interesting, and helps me justify her blue-green color scheme.

I think that's everything relevant.

(edit notes will go here if needed)

[atimeofyourlife]

A sticky note on my heart

@bucktommyfluffebruary day 7: love notes/ letters | rated: g | wc: 496 | ao3 Evan leaves love notes in Tommy's lunch.

Be safe, I love you baby - E

Tommy couldn't help smiling as he read the note from Evan. Written on a post it, stuck on his lunch that Evan had lovingly prepared. Evan was reluctantly doing light duty, taking on a position as an instructor at the academy, while he was recovering from an injury that had taken him out of the field for months. Having the more regular hours, he had taken on more around the house, at least the chores where he wouldn't overexert himself and prolong his recovery even further, and one of the big ones was meal prepping.

Every day, Tommy would have at least one meal prepared to take with him to his shift. If it needed to be heated, there would be a note with instructions. But there was always a note telling him to be safe. Telling him that he was loved. Some were short and sweet, like the one on this particular day, some were much longer, going into detail about the little things Evan loved about him.

And Tommy kept every single one. He'd even brought a folder for them, to keep them safe in his locker, so they would last and he could look back on them whenever he needed a pick me up, making the difficult shifts and oh so painful calls just that little bit easier, getting him out of his head when the impostor syndrome started to creep back in.

You deserve everything. You are so worthy of love, of kindness, of grace. Bring my pilot home safe for me. -E

Every day I wake up thankful that you came into my life. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and you make my life so full. I love you with all my heart. Stay safe out there- E

Be safe. I have a surprise for you when you get home. All my love- E

You are one of the kindest, most incredible people I have ever met, always willing to throw down for those you care about without a second thought. Be safe, I love you- E

You are exceptionally good at your job, and you look unbelievably hot in your turnouts. Be safe for me- E

You are an inspiration. You have fought to overcome your demons and your past, and every day you become a better man. You are so loved. You are my love. Come home safe- E

I like your butt in your uniform. I love you, be careful out there- E

You have a beautiful soul. Yes, there are scars, but I will spend every day helping you heal them. Your kindness, your generosity, your dedication to being better define you more than you past ever will. I love you so much. Be safe- E

Tommy traced over the letters, love filling his heart. There wasn't much he was certain about, but he knew he was going to marry this man one day.