#i do like the idea that when hes got some minor injury to the degree of some little papercur linebeck is incredibly bitchy and whatnot

[waywardsalt]

anyways. holding linebeck gently

[ugh-yoongi]

ex-conomics | csc

you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.

⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3

You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.

“Um—”

You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”

“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”

Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.

TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)

You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.

That, however, was two years ago.

“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”

Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”

“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”

You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”

Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”

You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”

“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”

“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.

But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”

You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.

You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.

You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.

You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.

You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.

You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.

You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.

So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.

“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”

For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.

A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.

But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.

Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.

You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.

Your stomach plummets to the floor.

You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.

“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.

Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.

The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.

“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”

Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”

She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”

“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”

She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”

You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”

“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”

Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”

Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.

You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”

“And continued wearing it?”

She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”

Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.

So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”

“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”

“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”

Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”

You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.

Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.

“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”

The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.

“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”

She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:

doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄

You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”

“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”

You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.

You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.

And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.

But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.

They never do.

And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.

“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

This time it is an accusation.

Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.

You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.

Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.

Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.

You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.

“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”

You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.

“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”

But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.

“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”

And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.

You cannot go there again.

So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”

Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.

You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.

Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”

He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.

But you did, so it stings all the same.

As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.

You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.

Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.

Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.

He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.

Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”

“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”

“Depends. How long do you have?”

“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”

“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”

You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”

He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”

“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”

You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”

“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”

Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.

And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.

Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.

“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”

He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”

“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.

You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.

You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.

He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.

It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—

“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”

“At this university?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”

Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.

“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”

You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.

So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.

Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.

But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.

You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.

Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.

The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.

“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”

He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”

“Oh—yeah, right.”

You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.

You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.

I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.

Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.

But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.

So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.

“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”

“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”

You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”

She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.

The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.

“Not bad, actually.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.

“Can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”

You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”

You blink. “No, you didn’t.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”

What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.

“They want to know about his girlfriend.”

“His what?”

What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.

But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.

You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.

Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.

“What’s wrong?”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.

What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”

Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”

“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”

“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”

“Seungcheol,” you correct.

He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.

They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.

Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?

Seungcheol shared a location with you

You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.

You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.

Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.

Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less “mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.

“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”

“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”

You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.

“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”

You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”

Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.

The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.

He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…

It’s the familiarity, you realize.

You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.

“That’s not what I’m say—”

“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”

“Right—not good enough, like I said.”

“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”

“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”

You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.

So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.

The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.

Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.

Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.

Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.

“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.

Also fruitless.

You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.

And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.

But it isn’t, and you’re not.

“If you’re not going to listen, then—”

“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

Perhaps he never did.

“What are we discussing, then?”

Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”

You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”

It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.

“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”

He nods.

“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”

The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.

So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.

Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.

Kaori invites you to a party.

Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.

After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.

So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever’s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.

At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.

You���re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.

You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.

You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.

You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.

Seungcheol finds you in your office.

It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.

You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.

So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.

“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”

He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”

“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”

You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.

So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.

But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.

Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.

Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.

“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.

You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.

Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.

Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Again.

Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.

She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.

Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.

And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”

Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”

“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”

She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”

“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”

“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”

You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”

“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”

A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.

Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.

You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.

Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?

Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.

Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?

Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.

You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.

L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.

You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.

So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.

She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.

“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”

Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”

You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.

And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”

She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”

“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”

You do.

Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.

It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.

You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.

You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.

The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.

There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.

You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.

(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)

One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.

Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.

Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.

You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.

“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”

Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”

Cut to black.

The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…

I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…

You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.

I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?

I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.

So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…

I’m sorry.

I love you.

You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.

The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.

“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”

On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”

“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”

She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”

“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”

After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.

The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.

Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.

You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…

And start recording.

He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.

There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?

He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…

Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?

It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—

And then there it was.

All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—

Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.

I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.

I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.

Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.

Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.

You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.

Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.

I love you, too.

—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.

Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.

There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.

He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”

“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.

There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.

Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.

Somehow you taste the same.

Somehow you taste like redemption.

You taste like home.

Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.

When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—

And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.

“I always will.”

(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)

if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. ����

i would love to hear your thoughts! <3

[aerynwrites]

Lovers Embrace

Halsin x afab!reader

A/N: I finally have an excuse to use the shirtless Halsin gif and I couldn’t be happier lmao. But yes - sex pollen/potion fic at your service 😏 hope y’all enjoy!

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY! Smut, sex pollen trope and all that comes with it, accidental consumption of aphrodisiac potion, reader has female anatomy, PiV sex, oral (female receiving), nudity, unprotected sex, fluff.

The only sound filling the tent is of the pestle grinding down into the mortar. It’s uncharacteristic for the camp to be so calm and devoid of sound, but most everyone else had agreed to Karlach’s idea of a jaunt into the city to spend the rest of the day at the Elfsong Tavern.

They had tried to get everyone to go, but Halsin chose to stay back and you followed suit - both because you won’t ever say no to some alone time with your partner, and because you had also wanted to stock up on some potions.

Which is where you are now - you’ve already got a good batch of lesser healing potions brewing and you’re currently working on a potion you found a recipe for, which just seems to be an amped up version of the greater healing potion while adding in a stamina aspect as well.

Halsin had left not long ago to look for a bit more of one of the ingredients, since you’re working with the last of what you have. Just as you finish preparing the ingredients, the first batch of the trial is done.

You look over the instructions one more time just to double-check that everything you’ve done was correct before taking the vial in hand, appraising your handy work.

Silently, you wish there was a better way to test potions rather than trying them outright, but if something were to go awry, you know Halsin isn’t far.

The potion is tinged red like the other healing potions, but held up to the candlelight, you can see that it’s slightly purple as well. Most likely from the stamina portion of the potion.

Slowly, you bring it towards you, carefully sniffing the concoction. When nothing seems off, you finally place the vial against your lips. The liquid is warm as it hits your lips and spreads over your tongue, and you automatically notice a difference in taste.

The other healing potions taste medicinal in nature, not at all pleasant. But this is…different. Sweeter. It’s more rich as well, coating your mouth and throat in a syrupy thickness as you consume it.

You pull the vial away from your lips and stare at the empty glass curiously before glancing down at your hands. You’d been sparring with Lae’zel earlier, resulting in bruised and split knuckles - the perfect way to test this new potion.

Except…they’re still there. Even after you wipe away the dried blood, the minor injuries are still present. Quickly, you set the vial off to the side and look back to your notes. Maybe the potion has a delay in effect, or takes longer than usual?

However, after reading over the notes several times, one particular phrase leaps off the page.

Effects are immediate.

So why isn’t it working?

You move to look over the ingredients once more, but stop as you reach for them. Your hands are shaking. Badly. And not only that - it feels as if the air in the tent has risen several degrees, a cold sweat breaking out along your skin.

Oh fuck.

Did you just poison yourself?

You move to stand but the world sways, mind foggy as a wave of…something rushes through you and settles low in your belly. Your knees almost buckle beneath you as something all too familiar clenches in your core.

“Halsin!” His name is falling from your lips before you can even stop it, not even wondering if he is in ear shot to hear you.

Panic is settling in now, fear of not knowing what you consumed or what it’s going to do to you. You stagger towards the tent’s entrance, pulling the flap back just as your partner does the same.

He stands before you, brows furrowed as he looks down at you. “I heard you call out as I came back into camp. Are you alright, my love?”

You shake your head, wanting to tell him no, you’re not alright, when your eyes land on the bundles of plants in his hand. Confusion fights its way to the front of your mind as you reach out to touch the plants.

“What is that?”

Halsin looks even more concerned now, “It is what you asked me to gather for the potion you are working on. Is it not?”

You shake your head, turning back to the desk to pick up the last stalk of belladonna you have before showing it to Halsin. “No, I needed belladonna, I-ah-“

Another wave of, what you now realize is pleasure courses through you, finally bringing you to your knees. But Halsin is quick. His hands catch you before you hit the ground as he gently lowers you both to your knees.

His concern is palpable now as he looks from you to the plant in your hand, and finally to the empty vial on the desk. His grip on you tightens.

“That is not belladonna,” he informs you, pulling away to show you what he gathered. “This is.”

“Then what…what is this?” You choke on a gasp, curling in on yourself. “What did I drink? Am I…Did I poison myself?”

Halsin quickly reaches over you to take the papers from the desk, scanning them over quickly. His eyes widen slightly before he lets out a soft sigh, eyes falling shut tightly.

“You did not poison yourself, my heart,” he tells you, causing a slight sense of relief to course through you.

However, any relief is overshadowed by the aching need now flowing through your veins. And Halsin’s presence just seems to make it worse, his smell invading your senses, his presence calling to you. You try to shove it away.

“Then what is happening?” The words are a plea on your lips as the pain starts to bloom in your belly, gnawing into your very bones.

Sensing your discomfort, Halsin speaks quickly, tossing the things aside in favor of taking the plant still gripped in your hand.

“This is Lover’s Nettle. It’s a rare plant, so I am surprised you stumbled upon it.” He reaches over you again to trade the plant for the empty vial on the desk, sticky purple residue still stuck to the glass.

He takes a small sniff and his lips quirk upwards ever so slightly. “It seems you accidentally created an aphrodisiac potion, little one - a potent one at that.”

Embarrassment wells up in your chest, almost strong enough to overwhelm your other senses. “I…what?”

Ever attuned to your emotions, the druid takes your face gently in his hands, turning your gaze towards him. “I have encountered what I believe to be this same elixir in the days of my youth. They called it Lover’s Embrace, as I am sure you can see why-“

“Halsin, you know I love you, but please-” Your plea comes out in a whine. “Is it harmful?”

Halsin smiles at you, that all too familiar twinkle in his eye. “No, my heart, it will not harm you. But it does tend to cause great discomfort until one’s…baser needs are met.”

“What?” you gasp, “why would someone create something like that?”

Gently, not wanting to rush you, Halsin readjusts and tugs you into his lap. The new position has you straddling his lap and places you slightly above him so the usually taller man has to gaze up at you for once.

“For many reasons, but the most common is just for pleasure’s sake - it was very common in brothels in the city to increase one’s pleasure during their time there.” Halsin’s voice is low now, his hands tracing patterns onto your back and making it even harder for you to stay focused.

“Although, the potion was meant to be consumed by both parties, but…” he’s leaned in now, lips brushing your jaw as he speaks. “It seems you’ve taken enough for the both of us.”

His words, his lips, the way his hands caress you, it all comes together to snap that final tiny string of restraint you had left. Turning, you capture Halsin’s lips with your own, your hands coming up to fist in the material of his shirt as you finally let the potion take over.

Gods, you want him.

You always want him, but now…you feel as if you’ll shatter into a million fragile pieces if he doesn’t touch you.

Halsin, always attuned to every part of you it seems, quickly obliges your silent thoughts. Large hands run from your hips up your sides, rucking up the fabric of your shirt as he does until, eventually, he slips his hands beneath the piece of clothing. They’re warm, as they always are - but now it feels like they’re on fire, scorching a path on your skin as he moves ever upwards, fingers trailing delicately along your spine.

“Halsin.” His name is a plea on your lips as you pull away from the kiss, forehead falling to rest against his own. “Please…”

His lips land on the corner of your own before trailing down to your jaw and lower, stoking the flames even more, until he finally moves to tug your shirt over your head - separating you both for just a brief moment before his lips are on your skin once more.

“Tell me what you need from me, my heart. State your desire and it is yours.” Halsin’s voice is low, almost a rasp as his lips brush over your neck, stopping there to suckle the skin sweetly, teeth barely grazing before moving lower.

His hands never cease their movement, both steadying in ther strength yet infuriating in the way the flit about, never staying in one place for too long and never seeming to touch you where you want him most.

A gasp slips past your lips as his thumb brush just below your breasts, and you squeeze his shoulders sharply. “Just…touch me, Halsin. Kiss me, touch me, fuck me just- please-“ Your words end on a moan as he places a particularly sharp bite to your shoulder. “Just do something, anything.”

Faster than you can blink, Halsin has you on your back beneath him, the furs that make up the tents floor soft beneath against you.

“Careful, my heart,” Halsin warns, voice low. “Your presence alone tests my control, but with words like that I cannot promise I will be able to contain it.”

You fist the fabric of Halsin’s shirt in your hands where they rest on his sides, trying to pull him impossibly closer from where he hovers over you.

“Then lose it,” you gasp, rolling your hips up into his own in search of some - any kind - of friction. “I just want you, I don’t care how. Just, please…”

That word, the one that’s already fallen from your lips several times tonight, finally reaches the man above you. His mouth is on you as soon as he hears it and you don’t bother to fight back the sounds that fall from your lips as he starts a path down your body.

The heat that started after you drank the potion feels like molten lava beneath your skin, and Halsin’s lips are doing little to douse the fire. Teeth scrape at the tender flesh of your chest before moving lower, as if he’s as desperate to touch you as you are.

After what feels like an eternity, his nose brushes the waistband of your pants, and before you can so much as think about begging, his hands are already taking them off, taking your underwear with them.

Halsin is an experienced and thorough lover, typically drawing things out to give you both the most pleasure possible. Tonight, however, he must take mercy on you. Because the moment your trousers are tossed to the side, his mouth is on you.

You almost come right there, the second you feel his tongue on you, drinking in your arousal. It’s like electricity shoots through you, and you can’t suppress the cry that falls from your lips, your hands shooting down to tangle in his hair.

Thick fingers dig into your thighs, keeping your hips pressed to the floor and his lips against your center.

You can’t stop writhing against him as his tongue presses against your clit teasing that bundle of nerves as one hand starts to slide downwards, fingers slipping through your folds to press against your entrance.

“Ah, Halsin-“ His name is like a prayer on your lips, begging him to keep touching you, afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t.

Your lover praises your plea with action, finally pressing two fingers into your warm heat. Normally, he would have to work you up to this, but with how wet you are and what you assume to be the work of the potion, he faces no resistance.

Immediately, stars erupt behind your eyes, and you are catapulted off the edge. Your climax comes on so suddenly it steals your breath away, your back arching upwards as your body fights to get closer to the source of your pleasure. It’s as if the potion has made every nerve ending more sensitive. Euphoria washes over you, and Halsin coaxes you through the tumultuous waves, lapping at you until you feel there’s nothing left.

It feels like there is not enough air to fill your lungs as you lay panting on the floor, a pitiful whine escaping your lips as Halsin pulls his fingers from you.

You watch through half-lidded eyes as he licks your spend from himself before your head falls back onto the soft furs.

Warm lips press to the inside of your leg before traveling upwards again, leaving barely-there kisses to your hips, then your stomach, then upwards still. His slow ascent gives you just enough time to gather your senses once more, just enough to realize that it’s still there.

That need. The fire beneath your skin. Even if it’s slightly dulled, you can feel the flames growing once more.

Halsin presses his lips to the valley of your breasts, then your collarbone, reaching your neck before you can gather enough words to speak.

“Gods,” you groan, arms moving to wrap around his shoulders as he presses a kiss to the corner of your lips, a breathy chuckle brushing over your cheek.

“I told you it was a potent mixture,” he says, voice full of amusement as he settles between your thighs.

It’s then, as you struggled to pull him closer, that you realize he’s still fully clothed. You paw at his shirt, your arousal growing hot in your belly once more.

“Off.”

Halsin can’t help but laugh again, kissing away the frown that tugs at your lips.

“As my lady commands.”

In a flash of that all too familiar druidic magic, his clothes are gone, leaving him blissfully bare above you.

Despite the need coursing through you, you can’t stop the way your eyes trail over him. The muscles rippling in his shoulders as he adjusts his position, the dark hair dusting his chest, the way his hair falls over his shoulders as he gazes down at you.

Taking his face in your hands, you lean up to capture his lips in a desperate kiss - one he returns eagerly.

He dips lower, his forearms resting beside your head as he moves to press flush against you. A moan escapes you, his body fitting perfectly against your own. You can feel him, hot and heavy against your core, can sense the way he tries to restrain himself but fails as his hips rut against you.

Halsin pulls away from your lips, chest heaving with ragged breaths as he presses his forehead to yours. You watch the slight grimace in his face as his eyes flicker open and a flash of gold overtakes them before disappearing.

The beast.

Gods, if you weren’t desperate for him the way his now, you’d tell him to let go. Beg for him to devour you like you know he’s able. But you don’t, instead you wrap your legs around his waist as fingers dig into his back.

“Halsin please, I can’t wait another moment, just-” A whine escapes from your throat as he rolls his hips again, teasing your clit as he pressed harder against you.

“Take me.”

He needs no more encouragement, lining himself up before thrusting into you in one fluid motion. Your body gives way to him with ease, taking him to the hilt in one thrust that pushes the air from your lungs.

You dig your heels into him, begging him to move as words escape you, a request he complies with eagerly. His thrusts are firm, and soon he’s built up a steady rhythm that brushes against that devastating spot inside you each time.

His head falls to the crook of your neck, kissing just below your ear and nipping the delicate skin with blunt teeth.

“I am not ashamed to say I have fantasized about this,” Halsin breathes, voice ragged as he continues to move against you, arms slipping beneath your shoulders to wrap you in a snug embrace.

“I imagined what it would be like having you like this beneath me, writhing and needy just as you are now.”

His words spark something within you, increasing the pleasure pooling in your belly and forcing a moan from your lips again. “Halsin…”

He lets out a groan of his own at the sound of his name on your lips, and suddenly your world is spinning as he hauls you up from the floor. He’s on his knees now, you in his lap as he continues to thrust up into you, arms wrapped securely around your body to keep you pressed flush against him.

The new angle allows him to press deeper, sending shocks of pleasure that have your fingers tingling and toes curling as you sag against him.

A firm hand settles at the back of your head, cradling it gently as his lips brush your ear.

“But in my dreams, it’s not just you who’ve consumed the elixir. Instead, we both indulge.” A kiss is pressed to your cheek, arms tightening around you as his thrusts become more frantic and that familiar coil in your core starts to pull taut.

“The potion works as it’s designed, making us crave each other to the point of lust-addled passion. The craving is so strong that all control is lost and there is nothing but pure pleasure as we claim each other.”

Gods, his words are pure fuel to the fire within you, creating images you don’t dare to push away. Fingers dig into his back, your nails no doubt leaving marks on his tanned skin as you cry out.

“Halsin, please, I’m close, I-“ A strangled moan leaves your lips as one of his hands works its way between your bodies to tease your clit.

“Come for me, my heart,” Halsin says, his voice a whispered command against your skin. “Let me hear my name on your lips once more.”

All it takes is one more press of his hips for you to obey. The coil snaps and you are falling once again into unadulterated bliss, Halsin’s name flowing from your lips like a mantra.

He works you through your climax as he chases his own end, a few more harsh thrusts before he’s filling you with a groan, then going still against you.

Slowly, ever so gently, he leans forward, laying you amongst the furs before following suit.

You wince slightly as he moves away from you, but quickly settled into the arms he offers you, cheek against his damp chest and one leg thrown over his own as you press against his side.

Exhaustion tugs at every part of your being, but despite being blissed out and spent, you can still feel that smoldering ember in your belly, unsure if it is the pleasure still waning or the potion waiting to be flamed once more.

“Is it…how long does it take for it to wear off?” you ask softly, tongue heavy in your parched mouth.

Halsin hums and you can feel the vibrations against your cheek as he reaches up to place a hand against your forehead.

“You are still running hot,” he observes before dropping his hand to rub soothingly up your arm. “This particular mixture does not wane quickly,” he tells you, a tinge of apology in his voice. “It may be well into sunrise before it completely leaves your system.”

He smiles then, an action you see solely because his words cause you to look up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape. “That long?”

Halsin laughs, nodding and pulling you against him again. “It is a powerful concoction. However,” he pauses, leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead, “it is gracious enough to give you brief respites. So, sleep now, my heart, and when the tendrils of desire pull you from your slumber I will be here waiting.”

Your eyes are already slipping closed as he speaks, your limbs resting heavily against him as he holds you close.

And as you drift off to sleep you can’t help the eagerness that stirs in your chest for what awaits when you wake.

Tags:

@daedriclys

[shiorimakibawrites]

Idea: Sanctuary (Daredevil)

Last one, I promise. At least until the muses give me more ideas through I'm hoping they actually let me write finish something before piling more work on me.

Brainstorming notes where any feedback or suggestions are welcomed.

Warnings: Spoilers for The Defenders - Angst with eventual comfort - Medical inaccuracies - Beginning of Season 3 Matt.

Sanctuary

Matt Murdock / Daredevil x Reader

Possible Ch. Titles: John Doe – Where There Is Life – HIPPA Violation – Do No Harm – Confession

You are a doctor who works at small charity clinic.

One day, as you are heading home, you are stopped by Father Lantom.

Not sure how you know him – maybe you are Catholic and starting attending Mass after moving to NYC.

Father Lantom asks you for a favor. There is someone who needs a doctor but you can’t take him to a hospital or tell anyone about him.

This request gives you some misgivings but you trust the priest and figure that he wouldn’t be asking this of you if it wasn’t necessary or important. So you agree to his terms.

He takes you to where your patient is:

(1) Still in the St. Agnes as it was in canon but tucked away somewhere out of the way.

(2) In the basement since they seem to want to keep Matt’s presence a secret and keeping someone in a building full of kids isn’t how you keep them a secret.

John Doe is half-naked, unconscious, and badly hurt. He should be in a hospital but they are adamant about not taking him. You wonder who is this man is but Father Lantom and Sister Maggie claim not to really know, that they found him like that but you aren’t sure you believe them.

Maybe you have some kind of healing power – the power is relatively minor, you can boost someone’s natural healing ability – cannot instantly and completely heal someone’s wounds or illnesses but you can heal enough to turn a deadly injury into a survivable one. Lessen the recovery time – you heal in one week instead of two.

There is some cost to your healing power – (1) takes energy (2) have to know exactly what you are doing to avoid more harm than than good (3) you can feel your patient’s pain while healing them (4) some combination thereof.

Despite efforts to keep things secret, you learn some things about your patient. He had been injured before but got medical treatment of varying degrees of quality (no shade on Claire, sometimes Matt does his own stitches) – that he was blind – seems to have sensitive skin – stuff from nightmares and mumblings when he is feverish (apologizing to various people – Dad, Elektra, Foggy, Karen, Stick . . .).

You also notice the man is very handsome.

You try to figure out which of the two people missing from the Midland Circle your patient is – attorney Matt Murdock or the vigilante Daredevil. Daredevil fits with the muscular body, the scars, and the insistence that he not go to hospital. Matt Murdock fits with the blindness but you struggle to think of why Matt Murdock cannot go to a hospital.

John Doe (Matt) isn’t exactly cooperative with unraveling the mystery when he walks up but not uncooperative either – sometimes he doesn’t seem to care if you know who he is, other times he does – you think its part of his depression.

Because yes, Matt when he wakes up is the same cheerful person we saw in the beginning of Season 3 (obvious sarcasm is obvious).

Matt needs SO MUCH therapy – physical and psychological. Neither of which is your specialty but you doubted that you could bring either in on this . . . maybe you have friends who are a physical therapist and a psychiatrist or psychologist whose brains you can pick. They will probably eventually get curious about your questions.

Maybe they discover things and become part of the team. Again, nothing against Claire but she might need some help with patching up vigilantes – if for no other reason, she cannot be everywhere. Also as a doctor, you can write prescriptions for things like antibiotics (given how often he lands in dumpsters, it is amazing that Matt hasn’t gotten an infection yet).

At some point, you move Matt from the church to your place.

Romance is slow burn.

[jackiehicks]

‘Family’

Spyder Johnson x Platonic!reader

request: none! this came from my very own brain.

A/N: happy birthday pearce!! it’s officially september 6th in the uk so i’m posting a piece about my favourite pearce character (sorry wyatt) i have had this idea in my head for literally a year now and it feels so good to put it into words. this is also Heavy on the ‘projecting onto my oc’ thing so sorry about that. enjoy!!

content warning: mentions of bad home life, homelessness, potentially death? injury, etc.

words: 1.8k

“sorry im late!” y/n shouted as the elevator door opened, then realising she did not need to be shouting, “sorry i’m late.”

“you’re good, y/n, no worries. we wouldn’t start without you anyway.” veracity reassured her.

y/n was the medic of mech x-4. she was still relatively new to the team, having only joined a few weeks ago alongside her best friend veracity. the other guys said it was good to have a designated medic on the team; usually harris would do it all, but if harris got hurt then the others were generally a bit clueless. y/n was tight with the team since the boys transferred to bay city east - especially spyder. the two sort of understood eachother in ways that the rest of the team didn’t quite catch on to.

“yeah, we literally couldn’t start without you. ryan isn’t here yet, or mark. and we’re testing the x-weapon today so you need to be here in case ryan explodes.” spyder explained to y/n. he received a look of concern from the rest of the team, y/n included.

“not that he’s gonna explode,” spyder corrected himself hastily, “i just mean like… what if he gets a nosebleed or a… a brain bleed! no, that’s also bad. yep, ignore me. giving you permission to ignore me now.”

“whatever happened to positive mental attitude?” harris muttered under his breath, shaking his head in disappointment. spyder looked dejectedly at the buttons in front of him. y/n had noticed that he seemed to do that a lot.

“hey,” she whispered to the boy on her left, “5 bucks says ryan gets zapped by the x-weapon’s power.” that seemed to perk spyder up by a lot.

“10 says he gets fried”

-

to say the x-weapon test went poorly would be an understatement. ryan and mark showed up, about 20 minutes after the team had arranged to, with their mother in tow. after a tour of the robot, plus a quick joyride just outside of bay city’s limits, the test begun. not only did it almost blow veracity up, but the test had ended with ryan unconscious in the harness with a sizeable cross burnt into his chest.

everyone was in the medbay, y/n running a scan on ryan’s injuries. luckily, the burns weren’t too severe; the x-weapon had been shut down just in time.

“he needs to go to a hospital!” grace exclaimed, worry wrinkling her face.

“no! no hospitals. besides, y/n is more than qualified to attend to ryan’s injuries.” leo countered.

“y/n is 16! what medical qualifications could she possibly have?”

“uh, my mom’s a veterinarian?” y/n admitted, unsure of how grace would react.

“oh, great. that’s just wonderful. i need to take my son to a hospital!”

“mom, i’m fine. please.” ryan pleaded.

“no. you will not argue with me on this. get up, we’re going. mark, you’re coming too.”

the walkers dejectedly got up and left the medbay, presumably leaving the robot too.

after that, the rest of the gang split up to head home. harris and veracity left to do some more research on gigawatts or whatever sciencey stuff they talked about after team meetings and weapons tests. spyder had gone home for dinner. leo disappeared too, doing whatever the hell he does when he’s not throwing himself into his work, and ryan and mark were at home, packing for miami. the only person left in the robot was y/n, who was researching the best ways to care for minor second degree burns from home and sending her findings to ryan. she was in the middle of telling him to dress the burn with sterile bandages when she heard someone walking around in the hallways.

still new to the dangers of the job, y/n started to panic. what if it was traeger? or grey? what if someone had come to destroy mech x-4 while it was seemingly empty? what would they do to her if they found she was there? not wanting to risk anything, she grabbed the nearest weapon she could find: a steel tray. usually it carried all the tools that could have been used as better weapons, but they were all being sterilised. steel tray would have to do. cautiously, y/n opened the door of the medbay. she walked out into the hallway, keeping a close eye out for villains. she turned a corner and saw a figure in front of her. in a panic, she threw the sheet of metal at the mysterious figure. the figure fell to the floor and let out a high pitched scream. y/n screamed in response, although not quite as high as her victim. she edged closer, and noticed that the figure was wearing a snapback hat.

“spyder?”

“y/n! what are you doing here? i thought everyone left.”

“i had some research to do for ryan’s burns - what are you doing here?”

“uh… weapons checks?” y/n checked her phone, seeing through spyder’s unconvincing excuse.

“it’s almost 9pm, weapons checks couldn’t have started a bit earlier? don’t lie to me, spyder.”

spyder stayed on the floor, looking down sheepishly. y/n sighed and offered him a hand up, which he took.

“have you been home since the test?” y/n asked, walking into the hangout alongside spyder.

“uh, no.”

“have you eaten?”

“yeah, i… uh. yeah. i ate.”

“spyder.”

he looked down at the floor again. he seemed nervous, shy… ashamed? y/n had never seen him like this before.

“i did. went to the soup kitchen.”

“spyder…” y/n was planning on comforting her friend, when he started to turn down a corridor - one that would not lead to the couch.

“spyder, where are you going? the hangout is that way.” she said, gesturing down the hall.

“can i show you something?”

y/n sighed, looking at her friend. he had never been so sincere towards her before. she had no choice but to trust him.

after a few more minutes into the corridor, spyder opened a door that led into what can only be described as…

“is this a bedroom?”

“uh… kind of? i sleep here sometimes.”

y/n looked at spyder, concern visible in her face. her eyes drifted to the mattress on the floor, blankets, pillows, empty soda cans and discarded candy wrappers on the floor, a nintendo switch lying haphazardly on a makeshift bedside table, and an absurd collection of hats.

“spyder, do you live in the robot?”

-

it was nearly 11pm, and spyder and y/n were sitting atop mech-x4, looking over bay city. spyder had confessed that he had been living in the robot for the last couple of weeks. the two had had a hearty conversation after that, with y/n simply trying to understand spyder’s reasoning for not going home.

turns out, his parents argue a lot. like, a lot. his house seemed to be a constant screaming match between his parents and spyder always being caught in the crossfire. he was the only child of two people that should have split up a long time ago but didn’t for the sake of their son, but now their son didn’t even want to go home for fear of what his parents will be like when he gets home.

“i’m serious, y/n, it’s awful there. they hate eachother.” he let out a long sigh, his breath visible in the cold air, “families can be so messed up sometimes.”

“yeah, i hear that.”

“what’s your family like?”

“i mean, i don’t think it’s as bad as yours…” spyder let out a light chuckle and playfully elbowed y/n’s arm. y/n smiled and continued her piece.

“…but yeah, my family’s a little messed up too. i mean, i’m the eldest of four kids - all girls, a full sister and two half sisters - my parents are divorced, we fell out with my dad about two years ago and i haven’t seen him since, my stepdad works away a lot and my mom works so hard and sometimes pretty late. my eldest sister is in her moody teenage phase at the moment so it’s on me to look after the younger girls a lot of the time. then when my parents do come home… they’re just so tired and stressed, i sort of get the brunt of all of those feelings they’ve got built up. my sister gets it too sometimes but the little ones can do no wrong in their eyes, so it’s usually me. i feel like i’ve had to grow up pretty quickly to be able to do all these things around the house on top of school, and i’m old enough to get a job now too so i’ve got that weight on my shoulders…” y/n snapped out of her rant, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “sorry. i’m rambling. you’re the one who’s essentially homeless, i don’t know why i’m complaining.”

“no, it’s alright. it’s kinda nice, talking to you like this. no one usually takes me seriously enough to have a real conversation with me.”

y/n placed a gentle hand on spyder’s arm.

“you’re more than people take you for. you’re really funny, and kind, and smart-“

“i’m not smart.”

“yes, you are. don’t be like that.”

“no, i mean it. i’m not smart. i’m failing almost everything in school, i can’t do any sciencey-techy-buildy stuff like the others can…”

“you’re smart in other ways, spyder. you saved veracity from that plant thing like, a week ago, right? harris didn’t figure that out. you did.”

“yeah,” spyder sat up a little straighter, “yeah, i did.”

“oh, before i forget…” y/n reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill. spyder looked confused.

“the bet. you were right, ryan was fried by the x-weapon. see what i mean? you guessed that it would fry him. you’re smarter than you think, spyder.”

“connor.”

“huh?”

“my name is connor.”

y/n smiled, letting the name roll off her tongue a couple times.

“you suit connor.”

“thanks.”

they both looked ahead at bay city in the dark, illuminated by the streetlights and lit windows of people that haven’t settled into sleep yet.

“do your parents know where you are?” y/n asked.

“told them i’m crashing at harris’ place.”

“why aren’t you staying with harris then?”

“dunno. don’t want him to find out, i guess.”

“but you told me?”

“yeah… i don’t know. i trust you. you treat me like an actual person. makes a nice change.”

y/n threw an arm around her friend. she could feel spyder - connor - melt into her touch slightly.

“you know you can always stay at mine, right? my parents don’t mind having guests over, as long as we stay out of mom’s way when she’s working from home.”

“you sure? i don’t wanna cause any trouble.”

“of course i’m sure. you’re my friend.”

“thanks, y/n”

“no problem, connor.”

[traumadumpwriter]

Heavy trigger warning! This story includes heavy themes of ab*se, r*pe, self h*rm, mental illness and violence.

Check out every part by going on the tag Freedom on my page cx

Freedom: A John Shelby mini fic

Chapter Two: 3303 words

A few days later and Alice was discharged; most of her injuries being minor and easily healed by a little care and nutrition. Once Alice was finally left alone, she crumbled onto the wooden floor and cried harder than she ever had before. Ada hadn't wanted to leave her alone, extremely worried for her welfare. She'd overheard the nurses discussing the injuries, how many there were and what seemingly caused them. Alice had yet to offer any kind of explanation, meaning her and Polly could only make assumptions.

Polly had moved around the furniture in what was apparently a filing office, making a temporary sleeping space; a sofa, some blankets and a cabinet for a nightstand. Despite the room being small and bland, Alice was grateful to have it, shuddering at the thought of being inside that cramped caravan again. She was grateful to be alive too and that Polly had saved some of her Mother's mementos for her, treating the girl with nothing but kindness from the moment they reunited.

However, she also remembered Polly being there when the men took her away and knew that she'd given her mother the idea. That was something that she could not forgive the woman for.

An intense mix of emotions overtook her mind and body; fear, rage, freedom, grief, relief, restlessness, sickness, despair. She darted over to the cabinet and rummaged through the drawers for something sharp, desperate for any feeling of control. Quickly, she found a letter opener and immediately brought it to her thigh, slashing at the already scarred skin.

Even after all the years of physical pain at the hands of others - something she obviously didn't enjoy - pain from her own hands still gave her a sense of comfort.

She hadn't been able to truly hurt herself in a long time, that was reserved only for her husband and whoever he saw fit. He even took extra measures to make sure she couldn't purposely harm herself, practically baby proofing the caravan. It took away the last sense of control she had.

Now though, looking down at her bloody thighs, she felt a huge head rush, her body filling with relief and relaxing slightly. She didn't realise how much she was shaking until she looked down at her hands, dropping the letter opener as she focused on the blood.

A couple moments passed before she grabbed her already stained dress and started to wipe up the blood. Ada had left a pile of her clothes in the corner, another thing Alice was immensely grateful for. As she got changed, she thought about how much she'd actually missed Ada.. and how lucky she was that her defiant brothers happened to be the ones in the automobile that night.

It took her a while to get to sleep, her body nauseous and her brain overloaded, but when she did finally get to sleep she found herself having a dream - something that hadn't happened in a long time - and the starring role was taken by none other than John Shelby.

Meanwhile, he too had been dealing with unwanted emotions, finding his mind drifting on an hourly basis. As soon as he got the chance, he interrogated Ada for the details from the hospital, his gut clenching as each injury sounded worse than the last.

But still, he struggled to picture the Alice that he knew growing up taking a beating from anyone - let alone to that degree.

"And you're sure that a man done all this stuff to her?" He asked, struggling to hide his anger.

"I mean she didn't say. I don't know for sure but it certainly looks like it." Ada answered, her tone also bitter. She saw the rage bubbling behind his eyes and quickly added "But don't do anything brash, please. She really doesn't need that right now."

John knew his sister was right, shooting her a small nod before heading to his room. As he passed the door of the filing office, he fought the urge to push the door open and ask the girl inside a million questions. Instead he carried on going down the hall and keeping the questions inside his head.

——————

The next morning, John was surprised to see Alice and Ada sat up at the kitchen table eating breakfast and happily chatting. The smile on her face was authentic, her eyes and cheeks glowing despite the bruises.

"You're looking better." He awkwardly chuckled in her direction, wandering through the kitchen.

Instantly upon hearing his voice, Alice thought about the dream she'd had and suddenly felt much more interest in John than she ever had before. When they were kids, she never saw him as anything other than a friend, but now seeing him as the handsome man he'd become, something changed.

"Thanks." She awkwardly chuckled back, locking eyes for just a moment before returning to her food. Her stomach was growling quite ferociously, not having had free reign over how much she ate for a long time. Every piece of bacon felt like heaven.

"Any reason why you're awake so early?" Ada looked up from her newspaper and sent John a playful glare.

He shot her a quick glare back before coughing and sitting down opposite the girls. Alice's eyes flicked back to him, partially cautious but more curious than anything.

"Fueling myself before a hard days work. Something you women wouldn't know about." He smirked, earning a scoff from his sister whilst Alice stayed silent.

"Alice Shepherd quiet before a sexist remark? She really has changed." He thought to himself, piling food onto his plate.

In truth, he didn't know why he was down there so early. The night had been relatively sleepless, his mind ravaged by war memories and now questions about Alice, so when he heard their voices downstairs it just felt right to join them.

And now, he could feel Alice's eyes on him and for the first time since their reunion he felt intimidated by her. Somehow her silence felt more judgmental than any comment or insult she'd ever made, her powerful aura clearly remaining intact. He couldn't let himself go weak and lose her again, he had to at least try this time.

So despite the nerves building up in his gut, he gazed back at the brunette with a smile, ready to ask her if she was free that evening. I But just as he opened his mouth, Tommy strolled into the room and he felt all the words leave him.

—————

They didn't speak much again for the next couple of days, John being very busy and Alice generally being with Ada or cooped up in recovery by herself when her friend was busy.

She'd struggled slightly to adjust to everything; her freedom, the slight opium withdrawal, the way things were now so different from the war, her mother and brothers passing, the trauma from her abuse. Every night, she'd cut her thighs, cry her heart out and then sleep like a log, completely exhausted despite not really doing much with her day.

The sleep felt really good too, not having to be alert and ready to wake up at any moment was something she'd dearly missed.

So as she sat down in front of the filing cabinet and reached in to find the letter opener that night, she was shocked to see that it wasn't there.

Suddenly, she felt frantic, searching around the room for it or anything else that could suffice but nothing appeared.

"Someone must have taken it." She thought to herself, quickly becoming more agitated by the second. She'd finally gotten back her favourite form of control and she needed it instantaneously.

The house had been empty for the last couple hours besides John and a light bulb instantly went off in her head.

"He must've used it and forgot to put it back. I'll just go get it from him now, it's not that late." She thought manically.

Wide eyed, she paced down the hallway and knocked on his door, hearing a cough and a sigh from inside before John's voice murmured "Come in." Once she did, their eyes immediately locked and it made her stomach flip, suddenly feeling the ridiculousness of her question.

"You alright?" He asked, staring at her intensely.

"Y-yeah... I was just gonna ask do you have a letter opener?" She stammered awkwardly, her eyes darting between his and the floor.

A small tut came from his lips and he looked to the ground for a second before pulling something out of his pocket. When he opened his palm, Alice saw the letter opener from the filing cabinet and instantly reached out to grab it, but he quickly closed his fist and scoffed.

"Why do you want it, Alice?" He pursed his lips as he spoke bluntly "And don't lie to me, I'm not gonna fall for it, I ain't a kid no more."

It's not like her self harm was ever much of a secret, but now that they were adults and their bond had faded, she felt ashamed and embarrassed.

"Why do you care, John?"

He on the other hand, felt guilty and upset and even slightly angry, standing up from his position on the bed and running his fingers through his hair.

"Why wouldn't I?" He turned to her with a sigh, stepping closer. "I've known you my whole life... and I've never understood you."

"No one understands and I don't expect them to ." Alice replied bluntly, becoming defensive as his words made her feel vulnerable. "Can I just have it please?"

John scoffed, feeling dumbfounded from just being in her presence, which made him annoyed.

"Are you fucking serious? Why are you cutting yourself up? It doesn't make any sense. You reappear out of nowhere with the shit kicked out of you and then you choose to add extra pain to yourself? Why would you do that?" His voice stayed low as he was relatively calm, but his frustration was clear through his tone.

Alice was shocked by how much the man actually seemed to care, not really knowing how to respond to him. Her mind flipped between listening to his words to how good he looked speaking them, causing a small smile to creep onto her lips.

"Now why are you smiling? Are you even more fucking nuts now? I'm being serious Alice." John's face was only straight for a minute before a smile started to form on his too, easily weakened by Alice's big, glossy eyes and delicate lips.

"I just think you're a good man, maybe that does make me nuts." She said quietly, creating a moment of silence afterwards as John soaked in the compliment.

"Anyway, I should probably leave you to it." She added, her mind darting to the knives in the kitchen.

Maybe it was the whiskey; John quickly put his hand on her shoulder before she could turn around and leave.

"Stay." He felt embarrassed but nonetheless made his request. "Let's catch up properly."

In his eyes, Alice saw a flicker of vulnerability that made her even more intrigued by the handsome man. The Shelby brothers never showed weakness. She'd realised just how powerful they'd become when walking around with Ada and imagined that it was rare for John to request the company of anyone, let alone so meekly.

"Okay." She smiled, stepping slowly towards him. Her mind wasn't even focused on the sharp objects anymore, instead focusing on the man in front of her and how he made her stomach feel twisted up in the good way she hadn't experienced in years. "So tell me, what have you been up to?"

It was clear that he was relieved by her answer, sitting down on the bed and patting the spot next to him with a relaxed grin. He reached over to his side, grabbing a box of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey as Alice sat beside him, leaning against the wall and crossing her legs.

"Where do I even start?" He huffed, taking a swig from the bottle before handing it to Alice. "Well Tommy runs the family now as I'm sure you've heard. I'm in the shop most days but every now and then he sends me or Arthur on these missions."

"Were you on a mission the night I stopped you?"Alice teased before taking a swig from the whiskey.

"Coming back from one actually. And I wasn't even meant to be on it, some prick fucked up last minute. Funny how life works out sometimes."

"What do you do on these missions Tommy gives you?"

"That is peaky blinder business and peaky blinder business only darling. Next question." He chuckled slightly, earning a giggle from her.

"Okay let me think..." She grinned. "Did anything interesting happen before you got into the business? Like what was going on in Small Heath just after I left? Did anyone ever end up scrapping Big Lee? That's the last bit of drama I remember!"

John scoffed and chuckled in amusement before thinking of his answer.

"Well it was just after you left that the war began weren't it, so I couldn't tell you what was happening in Small Heath then... lots of babies been born and lots of people have died. Big Lee's fucking dead, done in the Somme. I was a machine gunner in the Warwickshire Yeomanry, a bloody good one too, although I'm not sure what that says about me... Didn't get me anywhere anyway, still came home to this shit hole with nothing to show for all those years away."

As Alice watched him speak about the war, she could see him getting more withdrawn; his eyes looking distant and his body tensing up. She'd taken a few swigs from the bottle before she stopped his spiralling.

"I suppose I feel a similar kind of way." She interrupted, prompting him to shoot her a confused look.

"What? About killing hundreds of men?"

"No. Not about that. About spending years away, just to come back to this shit hole with nothing to show for it... It just feels like painfully wasted time."

A moment of silence passed between them, John lighting a cigarette and Alice taking another swig, savouring the relaxed feeling it gave her.

"Well, what did you spend all those years away doing? Maybe it wasn't a waste of time." He knew he was playing dumb slightly here, thinking of the injuries she'd arrived to them with and her general change of attitude. To him it was clear that she'd been through some kind of abuse, but he wanted to hear her admit it. Then maybe he could do something about it.

The brown haired girl sighed, looking down at her legs as she thought about the marks hidden by her clothing. The ones left by Jones made her feel unwell and tainted, but the ones left by herself made her feel a sick sense of comfort. She was sure that to the outside world they all looked the same.

Now her mind was focused on Jones though, what he did to her and how unwell it made her. Even now that she'd escaped him, she could feel his poison in her bloodstream, seemingly strengthened by her refusing to ever talk about him.

"Maybe talking will help." The girl thought.

A heavy sigh left her lips before she spoke.

"Well I didn't spend much time with my father, which I suppose was the original plan. He sold me to be married only a few weeks into my stay with him. Obviously his plan had been different all along and my mother stupidly fell for it. I sometimes wonder how much he was paid for me. It probably wasn't even that much; that stupid old bastard."

John took swigs of whiskey between the puffs on his cigarette but remained listening intently. His face straight and emotionless despite the fact that he was clinging onto every word, deeply curious for her truth. Alice's face also remained straight, dissociating while she recalled the traumatic events.

"And my husband.. he's the devil. Never met a man like him, if you can even call him that. There was never a break from it. I'd rather die than ever be in his hands again... he did such evil things to me, things I'm scared to say out loud." Her voice started to shake slightly and she pulled the bottle from John's hand, taking a big swig.

"Why are you scared to say it? No one can hurt you now, you're protected by us."

His words brought a small smile to her lips and she turned to him to make eye contact, instantly feeling her stomach flip as she did.

"Because... it would make you view me differently." She stammered, struggling to keep her cool composure. There was a lot more to it than that, a lot more deep, ugly feelings, but those words were all she could bare to admit.

"What? You think I'd judge you because your husband beat you up? I wouldn't judge no woman for that, that's on that bastard, not you!" He answered back with a level of enthusiasm that surprised her.

It became clear he really did care, but even that didn't give her the strength to say what had truly happened, in all it's gruesome detail.

"He didn't just beat me up. It was so much more than that." She stammered, shrinking under John's gaze. "It.. it was a lot more than that."

He could sense that she was beginning to shut down again, her body becoming rigid and her eyes holding that distant look. Clearly, talking about what had happened was too much for her and so in a split second decision, John leaned across the bed and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug, her body instantly loosening as she sunk into it.

"It's okay. You don't have to talk about it." He whispered, also finding comfort in her hugging him back. He could see his struggles with trauma mirrored through her, as could she with him and for a moment, they both felt their brains stop shouting as they held each other.

—————

For the next couple hours, they spoke and drank; laughing at each other's jokes and reminiscing on their childhoods. After the hug, they made no more physical contact - much to the hidden dismay of both of them - instead staying a foot apart on the bed, passing the bottle or a lighter across it every few minutes.

John found himself completely captivated by the woman. By her wit and intelligence, the humour that would effortlessly fall from her mouth and how beautiful she looked as it fell. Despite the amount of time she spent suffering, her face had not aged as some soldiers did at war. Instead, she'd grown even more gorgeous, "perhaps because she's more mysterious than ever before" thought John, but he couldn't place it exactly.

Alice's mind also ran wild with thoughts of the man beside her. His tough exterior was easily crumbled, instead revealing that inside he was kind, emotionally intelligent and funny. Even with a considerable amount of liquor in his system, he remained charming and cool, two words she never thought she'd use to describe John Shelby.

"He was such a weird kid, always trailing behind me or his brothers. I never expected him to turn out like this." She thought to herself, becoming more impressed by his presence by the minute.

She could sense a deep sadness in him, maybe one that matched her own, and much like his curiosity for her, she decided that she wanted to sniff out that sadness and maybe help fix it. It was the least she could do after he kind of saved her.

[onlythebravest]

Writing Self-Evaluation 2022

I was tagged by @larrysballetslippers to answer some question about my writing in 2022. It’s very very long, so I did as Aaliyah did and put the long answers below the cut and the short ones above!

1. Number of stories posted to AO3 this year: 14 (+1 hopefully)

2. Word count posted for the year: 93 900

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction

4. Pairings: Harry/Louis (and a minor side Liam/Zayn in one fic)

5. Story with the most… (it’s all the same work)

Kudos: never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same

Bookmarks: never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same

Comments: never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same

more under the cut

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): 

I’ve answered this before during an ask game, you can see my answers here & here, but I’ll leave an answer here too.

I have two fics that I’m the most proud of; never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same and can you build me a nest?

I had a lot of fun writing both these fics. when I wrote never been a fan, I took all my favorite things (touch starvation, omega drop, scenting and nesting) about the omegaverse and put them into this fic. I can’t really say why I’m proud of it, I just am.

can you build me a nest? is my first published smut, and that’s why I’m so proud of it. it’s a proof of how much my confidence has grown, that I feel comfortable enough to publish smut. and that’s why I’m proud of that one.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

probably party behaviour. I really like the idea behind it, and when I wrote just the dialogue I liked it. but when I added body language and descriptions, it just wasn’t working the same way anymore. I probably wouldn’t even have posted it if it weren’t for the fact that I had teased about to to A and she was excited about it 😂

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

I’ve gotten some really nice comments by authors that I look up to and whose works I love. those meant so much to me. and boosted my confidence in my writing a lot 😂

but also comments that pick up on small details in the fic also makes me so happy. I got a comment on never been a fan where someone had picked up on how Louis slowly progressed to calling Harry his omega subconsciously. and I got so happy that someone picked up on that!

9. A time when writing was really, really hard:

summer! if we’re talking mentally. physically, it was in May, because I had some problems with my shoulder/arm, so I couldn’t be on my computer or I would be in so much pain. I was barely able to finish dream about a summer night in time because of that injury, and the stress that gave me, gave me a writer’s block and to some degree is still here.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

there are a lot that surprised me this year. my characters have a tendency of writing themselves and do things I don’t really want them to. like in can you build me a nest?, i had to delete and rewrite the nest scene multiple times because those two kept undressing themselves to have sex and I didn’t want to write more smut. but the biggest surprise was probably the entire why can’t we forgive and forget?. I never would’ve thought that I’d write vampires, for starters. and then that they were arguing, where it took place, the “plot”. everything about that surprised me.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

I have too many!! and it’s impossible to choose, so I’ll add two that I’m proud of. but I have two more that I wanted to add too, a part of chapter 11 in snapshots of moments, and a part of can you build me a nest? 

this is from snapshots of moments (chapter 2: tiny is a state of mind)

At that, Louis locked his phone and put it aside, then turned to Harry and said, “Even if there were no videos like this, it wouldn’t matter. H, you’d still be my baby. I’d still carry you around. You know why?” He didn’t give Harry a chance to reply before he continued, “Because your legs are only this long so you’re able to wrap them around me. Don’t you know that?”

from never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same

Louis had never met someone who loved being manhandled the way Harry did, and he loved doing it for him. Depending on his mindset, Harry would sometimes complain about being too heavy or too tall for that, something that Louis proved wrong time after time. He thought it came from the fact that Harry outgrew his family and friends, almost getting taller overnight, so people just stopped. Harry had confided in Louis previously that there were plenty of people who stopped seeing him as an omega as soon as he hit his growth spurt, forgetting his needs just because he was taller than the average omega.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year?

confidence! I’ve gotten more confident in my writing, which in turn has made me more comfortable with going outside my comfort zones. 

13. How do you hope to grow next year?

I hope to get even more confident in my writing and push my boundaries even further. I am so proud over can you build me a nest?, the first piece of smut I published. and I was so proud of myself for feeling confident enough to do that, even though I was so nervous and scared. so I hope to be able to hit more mile stones like that next year!

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc)?

I’ve had multiple influences this year. I’ve gotten comments, both on fics and on snippets that I’ve posted, that have helped me a lot this year. those are too many to mention, but I have three amazing people who have helped me that deserves to be mentioned. 

@larrysballetslippers - an amazing cheerleader. she’s been so supportive and boosted my confidence whenever I needed it.

@paranormalbabydoll / @bottomhaztoplou - gave me so many nice, uplifting comments when they beta’d both never been a fan of change, but we’re still the same and snapshots of moments. super supportive when I bombarded them with questions and gave them huge jobs with my fics. and also, very much a cheerleader!

@hershelsue - gave me some great writing tips when they beta’d dream about a summer night, and they pointed out things I hadn’t realised about my own writing, that I now try and think about. such as not using the same words or phrasing over and over. 

15. Did anything from your real life show up in your writing this year?

it always happens 😂 there is so much of my real life in my writing. I have a WIP (that I’m not sure if I will finish) with autistic Harry who’s obsessed with learning stuff about plane crashes. this was me in august, september and october 😂 but also smaller stuff - Harry is scared of thunderstorms in dream about a summer night, that’s a piece of me that I gave him. 

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers?

Every writer works differently, but these are some things that I’ve learnt this year. 

Don’t force it when it’s not working. if it’s not working right now, don’t force it. I ended up hating/not liking the stuff I wrote while forcing myself to write on something I didn’t want to write it. either work on something else for a change, or just take a creak. 

sometimes it’s easier to write on unconventional ways. sometimes the notes app on your phone is less intimidating that a doc. sometimes it’s easier to write on your phone than on your computer. maybe it’s easier to write dialogue, then write only the dialogue. 

I often start my fics with dialogue, and it looks something like this;

H: love planes. Don’t know much about em but still love ‘em L: lucky for you, I happen to know quite a bit H: oh? L: I’m a pilot H: a pilot? L: yup

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year?

I have a few WIPs that I’m working on that I’m looking forward to finishing. but I’m the most excited about my omega gender confusion au. that’s my baby. you can read more about it and find some snippets of it here. but yeah, I’m so excited about this fic and I hope I can do it justice! and finish it during 2023! hopefully the first half, but we’ll see. 

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

I’m sorry if you’ve already done this! I haven’t really kept up with my dash these last few days, but I tried to do a quick look! If you’ve already done this - just ignore it. and if you don’t want to do it - just ignore it.

@stylesthebrave, @neondiamond, @parmahamlarrie, @sun-lt, @kenniewen, @wabadabadaba, @alwaysxlarrie, @finelinegynandromorph, @hellolovers13, @brightgolden & @allwaswell16. and if you want to do this but aren’t tagged - just say I tagged you 😊

[recoiloperated]

Kind of long under the cut

I'm sure you're expecting some soppy story about how we met, but no. Of all places we met in a soup kitchen, both of us were volunteering, It was kind of my misguided way of trying to correct the wrongs of my previous life. She was a dorky, stars in her eyes do gooder. And I? Hell. I was a wreck then, unkempt beard, dirty shirt, ripped pants. I looked more like a homeless guy then a volunteer, I figured she was just some college student trying to make merit or something. She seemed like the type...

Honestly, I kind of forget how it started. She just showed up and started talking with me, and the next thing I knew we were getting dinner that wasn't soup kitchen soup. And then coffee, and then wedding cake... God knows I don't deserve her...

Learning she was a B class superhero was a little bit of a shock. We had been married for about 2 years and I had no suspicions, some super villain, eh?

She got some of minor injury tangling with an upper c class villain, and the consortiums translocator, frame shift, showed up in my house. I almost killed him on accident, fortunately I missed entirely. What can I say? I was 5 years out of practice.

At one point I had fantasized about boarding Oracle station as a conqueror, now I was carried on to it as a husband worried about his wife.

It was interesting, there were a lot of other hero's spouses there too. Apparently there's a weekly support group, so of course my beautiful bride bullied me into joining it.

I was a little bit uncomfortable at first, obviously there were a lot of people on board the oracle I had clashed with. surprisingly, no one ever seemed to suspect who I was. If you had asked me whenever I was flamberge what kind of person I thought the living infinite was outside of his superheroing, I would have said that the s class hero was probably a total prick.

He's actually a pretty down to earth guy named Luke who plays pokémon.

They spoke of me like some kind of demon in the dark, which was something between saddening and flattering. S class meta humans are incredibly rare, really it's only me and the living infinite. Most meta humans are E-Class, hardly more superhuman than a particularly good athlete. There's a few d-class heroes, but they mostly stick to stuff like getting kittens out of trees. 

Anyways, my wife, Minerva. Known by her superhero name as Saberina- Yes, I bully her about the pun. Had gotten a couple of broken bones, nothing really serious, and the mook that did it got grabbed and locked up. All's well that ends well.

Honestly, I kind of enjoyed hanging out with the heroes for once. This showed me all sorts of stuff, including the simulator they built to simulate fighting me, they based on totally fraudulent idea of what my power was, which is funnily actually my wife's power. Though she has it to a lesser degree than they were attributing to me. "Your wife may someday be able to refine her power to the same level as flamberge," Luke told me once after sparring with my mechanical double. "Right now she can cut through almost any terrestrial material, but, still can't cut me."

I had taken a lot of pains to hide my real power, most people assumed my sword was magic, letting me cut anything. Which was exactly what I wanted them to think. The sword in fact, is a cheap replica I stole as part of my first heist, My power has nothing to do with it. But what made me S class is the fact that I wounded the living infinite with it. I didn't even think I could whenever I tried, and it made my life so much more difficult. From a simple A class bank robber to a globally hunted super villain, branded as the world's Greatest evil? Money and greed lead me down that path and it took forever to escape it. Sure, I have a ton of cash in various untraceable accounts, and when the whole Nation of France surrendered to me I just *HAD* to march into Paris to claim my certificate of surrender. I still have it too. It's too funny.

My favorite part was when we had a casual chat about how various heroes would have faired against different dead, missing or imprisioned villains- bro when they got to me, well- Flamberge. Everyone when dead silent until I claimed my wife would have had him whipped before he knew it. That was funny as hell. If only they knew

It was another 5 years, during which I actually became pretty good friends with Luke before it happened. Seven years of bliss with my wife, we were talking about her retirement and kids, and then frameshift, or Jack, as I knew him now, came and got me.

It was bad.

Really bad.

I... I still can't really think about it...

See, metahuman power classes are exponential. And a group of villains jumped her, a few D class, a few C class... And BloodPrice. The only active A class villain.

She was.... Broken. Her whole body was a terrible bruise, her ribs, arms, legs... I could see her shattered bones poking at her skin...

Jack gave me this speil about gathering Intel, putting together a team, bringing them to "justice"

While their metahuman doctor Caduceus warned me that she might die even with his A class healing abilities...

I didn't want justice... I wanted revenge.

I stayed that night with her, Luke was gone on some mission to represent us at some interstellar thing, Andrew- Talisman, one of the two active A class heroes, was trying to get a team together and work on a plan.

But I had a plan.

My plan was 195cm of sharpened steel.

Even when I was a supervillain I rarely killed, sure. My hands aren't clean, but I was never gratuitous. I wounded and injured a lot. hell, I took one of Andrews fingers clean off. Caduceus grew it back, but I still felt A little bit guilty.

I didn't bother with my old suit, just the sword, my pants, boots, and the zip top pull over I was in the day they hurt her.

The weight of the sword on my shoulder felt intensely wrong. And so, so, so very right.

I hid my true power well... I might not be in my garish Landskenecht outfit, but the swagger came naturally back, the C-class guarding the door, I think they called him Cinder? tried to stop me by setting me on fire. Not much use against a guy who's power is manipulating material properties. My skin and clothes were fire proof, and my bones were osmium dense. I smashed him through the wall with a left hook and all my strength. What was left of cinder was a pink haze that settled on everything and everyone. I remember saying "Where's BloodPrice. He hurt my wife, I'm here to make him pay." Before the party started, and I remember a flurry of blows, the heat, the cold, the venomous plants clawing at my skin, and the bite of my blade against them. An arm flying severed, a leg laying next to a B-class villain, and the blood, I waded through it, cutting and clubbing them as I moved through them until finally I was done. BloodPrice fought viciously, but in the end, I'm flamberge.

I made his bones like glass and skin like porcelain...

And I broke him, like he broke her.

Then I left, covered in gore and the blood of other men. And staggered out into the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse... To see him. A galaxy distilled into a man, a fractal individual.

"Luke." I said, afraid of what happens next.

Slowly, he settled to the ground near me. "Darren."

The silence stretched for eternity.

Finally "the hurt my wife Luke. Maybe killed her, my wife - my love." My voice caught. His hand rested heavy on my shoulder, his other hand held open in front of me. "I need it still. She needs to be protected." I told him. "Maybe you should do that with a new sword, not one with such a dark history..." He answered. "I came here expecting to find an enemy Darren, I hope I found my friend instead."

I gave him the sword.

I don't regret it.

Emily, my daughter is 7 next week. And Luke, my son is 3. We're expecting our third end of the year.

I freelance with the consortium every once in a while. They call me the paladin though. It's a nice change...

You’re a retired S-tier supervillain. After you retired, you married a B-tier hero. You are forced back onto the stage when an A-tier villain attempts to kill your spouse.

[missmentelle]

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem. 

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati 

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial 

COVID-19 denial 

5G panic 

QAnon 

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch. 

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns. 

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food. 

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined. 

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage -  the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there. 

Our brains love proportionality. 

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event. 

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause. 

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger. 

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon. 

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying. 

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices. 

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it. 

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world. 

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. 

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan. 

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side. 

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story. 

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult). 

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life. 

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world. 

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true. 

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew. 

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity. 

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity. 

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.  

There is a strong community aspect to these theories. 

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed. 

[lavendertales]

Do you feel in charge?—Bane x f!reader**

summary: Bane likes to tease you. how far can he push you though?

word count: 3.5k

WARNINGS: established relationship, usage of toy, dom!Bane (+ watch out for soft!Bane too), edging, vaginal fingering, dry humping, doggy.

AGELESS/EMPTY BLOGS & MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED!

A/N: thank you @cheshire-noir​​​ for enabling me and brainstorming with me cause shiiiit this man can bench press me any damn day.

Defining the circumstances of your encounters with Bane was tough. You ended up in his circle of entrusted vigilantes because you had medical experience and he needed someone to take care of the men.

While hesitant at first, you agreed. Bane was the last person you’d want to overstep, so you’ve adjusted to life beneath the surface, secrecy and most importantly, efficiency.

Bane had been watching you from afar for weeks. He would only stare when he was far away from you, never one to linger with his eyes. You were operating everything with ease, mending wounds like they hadn’t been there in the first place. Clearly, you were endowed with something significant, as well as a keen mind, keen instincts, and attractiveness.

Yes, Bane was perplexed by that last one. He wasn’t blind, he knew how to recognize beauty in its original state and yours was simply ethereal. But the degree to which he showed interest in you had to remain professional. He reasoned that it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Until one evening, when you were packing up your belongings and caught a glimpse of him, shirtless and facing the opposite direction.

You came to a halt, gasping for air. You grimaced as you saw a large scar going down his spine, and you wondered what type of injury had caused such a scar on such a massive man.

“Many would argue that staring is less than polite, little one.”

You must’ve been staring for too long because you flinched when you heard his voice. He spoke softly, just as he normally did, and you felt embarrassed. That, you supposed, was one of Bane’s many gifts. Through the most mundane gestures or words, he could choose the exact emotion to instill into someone’s heart.

“I’m sorry,” you cooed. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

You felt even more ashamed when Bane stood up and turned his enormous form to face you. You didn’t flinch, and you didn’t feel threatened. It was one of the things that made Bane secretly grateful for you.

“I was only wondering… what could’ve happened for you to earn such a scar on your back.”

“Pain.”

You had no idea what his complete tale was, and you had never considered asking. You were well aware that there were some boundaries you shouldn’t have crossed, yet Bane didn’t have to set any of them for you.

As he got closer, he cocked his head slightly to the left and stared down at you. You thought that the size disparity would always make you weak in the knees.

“You must have plenty of questions for me, little one,” he told you, almost as if needing to hear you pose them.

Taken aback, you kept quiet. “Just one.”

“Ask what you will.”

“Would it hurt if you were to remove the mask?”

You swear you heard him sigh, but you didn’t say anything about it. You didn’t want to get on Bane’s nerves since he was as private as he was devious.

“Would you be the one to remove it?” he asked.

You raised your eyebrows, puzzled. “Hypothetically? If I were to do that… only hypothetically, of course… I wouldn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to be in pain.”

“What would you like then, little one?”

You felt your cheeks burn with embarrassment again, only this time it was a different type.

“What if I’d want to… kiss you?”

“Hypothetically, I presume.”

“Yes. Hypothetically.”

Bane took a long time to answer. You were a formidable foe and a tempting proposition, but he could not succumb. He vowed he’d never do it.

But he failed to keep his palm from grazing your cheek softly, causing you to close your eyes and gasp, waiting, longing. He couldn’t keep your hands from going to either side of his face and pulling him in so you could stare into his emerald green eyes.

He failed to follow his instincts and inner desires when he took you to bed for the first time that night, spending hours treating each part of your body as if it were the most valuable work of art.

It’s been almost a year, and you’ve learned to rely on each other and operate as a team instead of being separated. You were Bane’s muse, his purpose for doing all he did, and you were frequently inspiring him with fresh ideas and methods for his plot to reclaim Gotham for its rightful owners.

You were also gaining a lot of knowledge from him. Being with him was boosting your confidence in ways you never imagined, and you were becoming more open and social despite the fact that you were literally living in the sewers with him now.

Take tonight, for instance: there is a lavish party you’ve decided to infiltrate in order to retrieve information about any of Bruce Wayne’s associates, and Bane granted you clear path. You’re wearing a microphone and he has eyes on you at all times as he hides in a van outside, since his stature does not make it possible for him to blend in anywhere, not to mention his mask.

However, the microphone isn’t the only thing you have on you tonight.

In a moment of playfulness behind closed doors, you had agreed to wear these vibrating panties. Looking back, the reason behind your acceptance was unknown – other than for sheer pleasure on Bane’s side. It didn’t take long or much for him to persuade you of this, and now that you arrived at the party all dolled up and fancy, you were nervous at the thought that Bane could decide to have his fun with you at any given moment.

“Feeling okay, little one?”

You can tell his voice is oozing with cockiness and excitement. You take a deep breath and lick your lips as you gaze around.

“Never been better,” you say with bravado.

“Remember your task.”

Oh, you remember, alright; for each person you correctly identify as Wayne’s acolytes, he will reward you handsomely. Should you fail to do so, he’d punish you.

In the privacy of your relationship, Bane had grown to be more playful and creative with the ways he showed his affection for you. Everything was a game for him, and this party is yet another point on the list. Truthfully, you aren’t sure if you’re more eager to succeed or fail with your task. Either way, you’d get to unveil a side of Bane that was reserved solely for you.

Each time you cockily recalled the fact that Bane was yours and you were his, your confidence swelled tenfold. You belonged to each other, and you knew each other like no one else. Something about that bit of knowledge made you shiver uncontrollably.

“Where is your mind at, little one?”

You gulp, looking around mindlessly. “You.”

Bane chuckles, the sound a soft vibration reverberating in your whole body.

“Is that so?”

You nod. That’s when it hits you.

Another vibration is coming from between your legs, but this one is much more noticeable and powerful. You freeze close to the bar’s counter, striving to keep your cool. For a brief while, you forgot you were wearing those damned panties.

“Bane,” you whisper, nearly choking on his name.

The vibration stops, and you take a quick scan around, eased to remark that people were too immersed in their dialogues, food, drinks and music to notice you holding onto the counter for dear life.

“I thought you were going to do that only if I don’t identify the people you are after,” you say.

“Keep looking. Describe to me what you see.”

You begin to suspect that you may have misinterpreted his game’s implications. Bane can see everything in the room, so there’s no need for you to describe anything to him. Furthermore, he is thoroughly aware of his adversaries. He also doesn’t need you to identify them.

“Commissioner Gordon is here,” you say, eyes on a man with glasses who was shaking hands with those around him.

Another vibration, this time a little more powerful. Your legs weaken under its ministration, heels almost unable to support your wiggling figure. You clench your fists against the sensation, shivering with a newfound need that consumes you from the inside out.

“Still thinking of me, little one?”

“Hard not to when you’re doing that.”

You take deep breaths in and out, slowly and steadily, although it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore the heat and wetness building in between your legs. You’re just now starting to question his real plan.

With Bane, you never really know what you’re getting, and you suppose tonight makes no exception.

“Is this need of yours stronger than the task at hand?”

You hesitate. “What if it was?”

And now Bane hesitates. You know you manage to stun him when his responses come with delay. For that you feel oddly proud of yourself.

You stifle a groan as you feel another tremor. You hide in the nearest corner, gluing your legs together as if that would help, but it only makes it ache worse. It’s a delicious torture that gets you going so good, it’s almost as if Bane is right there with you. You don’t protest because you know that if you did, Bane would just prolong the game, and the reality is, he’s always in command.

“If it was,” he says in your ear again, “we would have to do something about it.”

“Like what? Tell me.”

You try to beat him at his own game, at something, and Bane chuckles. You both know it’s not going to happen, yet it thrills him, entices him.

“Come to me.”

That is the last you hear. You don’t waste another second before rushing out of the party in pursuit of the vehicle. You rap on the door with the signature thumping you and Bane devised together, only to be greeted by his form again seconds later.

You’re trembling with excitement and arousal, feeling so achingly slick down there that you’re half afraid he might hear it if you rub your legs together.

“This desire of yours… does it make you think you are stronger?” is what he asks of you first.

You lock eyes, a magnetic sensation coursing through you just from that, and you part your lips, expecting an answer, but nothing comes.

“It does. Sometimes,” you admit.

“And what does my little one wish for right now?”

You’re feeling bold, so you pretend to ponder over the possibilities before leaving him hanging.

“It’s a bit hard to say. These panties have grown uncomfortable in the last half hour.”

Bane kneels before you, a move so rare in itself that it should’ve been a marvel of the world, green eyes scrutinizing your face, and you grin mischievously.

“Do you feel in charge?” he asks as his large hand goes to lift your dress above your thighs and plays with your underwear, calloused fingers barely touching your skin.

“No, sir,” you respond teasingly, to which he chuckles and simply rips the panties off of you.

“Good.”

To be honest, the events that followed your arrival at your shared quarters are a fog. After Bane took off those panties and left you commando on his lap, obviously putting his own resistance to the test, there’s not much to remember. He was a patient man, but with you, all of the things that others dreaded about him evaporated.

What you do know is that you’ve lost right now, as the bed sinks beneath your weight. You always lose at his games, despite the fact that you don’t care about winning in the first place. It’s a fact that you both know, but that doesn’t take away from the fun. Bane’s unpredictable nature is what initially appeals to you.

You’re about to take your dress off when your eyes meet Bane’s, darkened by lust.

“That stays on, little one.”

You cannot hide your surprise, as betrayed by the slight raise in your eyebrows.

“You look ravishing tonight,” he says, approaching the edge of the bed.

Bane’s compliments for you were never hard to come by, but their rarity added to their value. It was more than you bargained for to be confronted by a guy of his stature and fame.

“As I am sure many others noticed,” he continues, lifting you onto his lap.

“No one was even looking at me…”

“They were. Rightfully so. But they do not know whose you are.”

His hands softly grasp your hips to get you moving. Huffing at the surge, you bite your lower lip and begin to grind your exposed core on his glorious thigh. Bane’s hand slides from your clit to your cunt, grinning as he feels your moisture.

“Did our little game make you this wet, little one?”

You nod, wanting for more friction, more of him, but doing your hardest not to reveal anything. Bane enjoyed extracting such acknowledgements from you, and you were more than happy to oblige him.

“You never wanted me to identify anyone, did you?” you ask in one breath. “You just wanted to push my buttons.”

“A clever treasure you are.”

As you begin to make deeper motions on his thigh, his hands rest securely on your back. Bane is reassured of your desire by a few grunts here and there, and he feels his own sanity slide through the cracks your body forms.

For support, your arms are on his shoulders. This is another of your private experiences where all you want to do is kiss him deeply and passionately so he knows how much you care about him. If you weren’t so frightened of ruining what you have by expressing those bothersome little words, perhaps even more could be said.

With your head thrown back, you ride Bane’s thigh with an almost incapacitating craving. He loves nothing more than seeing you completely devoured by mutual lust. He can feel your frantic heartbeat through your crying cunt, and he knows you’re close when you crank up the pace.

“Take what you want,” he encourages you. “It’s yours. You need only take it.”

Bane loves the sound of your huffs and puffs leaving your throat. As you pursue your high, all other words leave your head and tongue, and you’re happy that those panties did a lot of the job.

You’re being lifted and laid back on the bed, much to your consternation. You open your mouth to protest, watching Bane as he disposed of his clothes one by one.

“You said – “

“I asked if you felt in charge, little one. You told me no.”

He’s still pushing your buttons, you finally come to realize. He’s playing with the limit between saneness and irrationality and you theorize that he might want to have you beg for him after all. No pity, but simple need for him and him alone.

“You do hold great power over me though,” he seemingly compromises, hands at his fly, unzipping it. “I will give you that.”

“Is that all you will give to me?”

A soft chuckle leaves his mouth. “I will give you much more. You need only ask.”

And there it is. The confirmation of your theory.

“Please,” you get out with a muffled sound, legs spread before him.

Bane cocks his head to the side, clearly waiting for the continuation.

“Please fuck me,” you say. “Please? I’ve been waiting for it for hours.”

“How would you like to be fucked, little one?”

“Any way you want.”

“So desperate to have me inside you.”

“Yes. Please.”

It’s impossible to ignore your sweet voice appealing for him. Finally, naked in front of you, you wonder at him as you always do. As he curls his fist around it and strokes himself a few times, your gaze is drawn unconsciously to his hardness. At the very least, you have that. Clearly, the game had taken its toll on him as well.

“On all fours.”

You obey, getting in position. The anticipation is nearly killing you.

You exhale when you feel Bane’s fingers pressed up against your clit, teasing you even more. You groan against your better knowledge, and Bane leans forward so that you feel his erection poking your ass, barely.

“Impatience will only get you so far, little one,” he says next to your ear.

“Bane, please, please just – “

He cuts the air out of your lungs once he inserts a finger in you, testing the water as it were. You arch, needing far more than that, but biting your tongue to not complain under any form. Neediness is one thing for Bane, but protests? Oh, you’d never hear the end of it and you won’t get to feel him at all should you go that route.

Bane is unquestionably the master of teasing, and he’s demonstrating it to you admirably as he fingers you until your breaths become hitched and you’re on the edge of tears from how amazing it feels. He’s just as tense as you are, acutely aware of how hard he’s working, seduced by your sounds and neediness.

And you’re so close. Just a little more – just a little –

You can’t help the whine that escapes past your lips when you feel empty again, edged to the point of some sadistic satisfaction in itself. Luckily, Bane decides you’ve both had enough torment for the evening.

“Let me ask you again, little one,” he says, hand wrapped around his cock. “Do you feel in charge now?”

“No, no, I’m not. You are.”

“You’ll do well to remember that.”

“Yes.”

You sneak a peek behind you and shiver seeing Bane guiding himself to your entrance. A gasp breaks in several little ones the second you feel him pushing past your soaked lips. His calloused hands go to your hips, almost tugging at the dress’ material as he starts thrusting in and out, slowly stretching you out.

But you don’t want it slow and you don’t think he does either. It’s only a matter of testing each other’s limit, as it usually is, finding common ground when it comes to pleasure.

Although an imposing man, his grip over you is tender; regardless of how rough he can be and how he is when you need him to, he never forgets to reassure you of his intentions. Tender and soft, just like you are to him.

He’s pulling your hips back against his and burying himself inside you to the hilt, stealing lively moans from you. Doesn’t take him long to pick up the pace, his own neediness exceeding his self-control. The rhythm of his hips smashing into yours makes it clear that his mission is to get both of you off, regardless of order. Your back is arched and your cunt is oh so wet and full, so full of him that you’re nearly seeing stars.

“To whom do you belong, little one?” he grunts in your earlobe.

“T-to you – only you.”

“Greedy little thing – so lovely when I take you – “

There’s no warning when you clamp around him, walls trapping his cock inside you and triggering his own climax. Clearly he had been just as needy as you, only better concealed. You couldn’t say you didn’t admire that about him.

You’re panting heavily as Bane pulls out in a haste, painting your ass with his warm release. His grunts fill the room, hand sneaking around your torso to pull you in closer to him, holding you with a little something more than possessiveness.

He wouldn’t tell you – not yet, in any case – how afraid he is you’ll leave.

“All needs sated, my little one?”

My. That would be imprinted on your brain for a while.

“Yes,” you whisper with a smile.

He lets you go, carefully undressing you and searching for something to clean you with. His touches are just as tender again and you shudder. So many feelings plague you, haunt you even, yet you fear to voice them. You at least hope it was fairly obvious, otherwise why else would you adapt to Bane’s lifestyle and remain by his side for so long?

No one could keep you safer than him, that you knew. And no one could ever make you feel the way he does – and not just physically.

“You hold great power over me,” Bane tells you as he tucks you in bed. “You can mold me however you feel like it, and that is… a weakness.”

Your eyes lock, and this time you only read a peculiar pain residing in their center, one you do not know its history.

“It’s not weak to care for someone,” you tell him, curled at his chest.

“Should something happen to you, my whole life would be compromised.”

“Compromised?”

“Do you believe I could carry on if something were to happen to you?”

Speechless, you caress his exposed skin, your way of reassuring him that you were, by all accounts, his and that you weren’t going anywhere.

tags: @beskarboobs​​​ 

[noblest-roman-of-them-all]

I had the dumbest fucking idea and it's making me laugh so I needed to share it:

Janus hitting his head and then just lying there like "I'm a snake. I don't have arms or legs"

Jfnfnfbrj

The physicality of Sides was a weird thing to be sure, Remus noted. For the most part injuries occurring in the Mind Palace were easy for everyone to dismiss with the exception of himself and Roman, or occasionally if Thomas was hurt, Logan would also bear that injury until Thomas was healed.

He and Roman had had plenty of minor injuries over the years from rough housing around and play fighting, but nothing too sever. Well. There was that one time, not too long ago that Remus had burned his hands pretty badly... But that was different.

There were plenty of times he and Roman had also been injured within the bounds of the Imagination itself. In fact several of the daggers in Remus's desk drawer had come from being stabbed. Thankfully Roman had created a magic potion for those things. Well. Mostly anyway. With fewer complications than for them to heal on their own anyway.

Remus shook his head. The point was Sides were complicated in their physicality and their relationship to injury. Janus even more so. He had four whole arms that he kept folded up in some other dimension or other under his caplet and literally would go into shed with Thomas's self growth, even down to losing an eyecap scale despite having an actual eyelid.

Whatever level of Weird the Sides functioned on, Janus topped it by at least three degrees. But only three because Remus had been informed he had, in fact, had some Weird occurances with being injured.

Which was why Remus was fairly certain, despite no evidence of it being possible before, that Janus had a concussion.

Remus had burst into Janus's room after a loud crashing noise disrupted his charcoal art session and had found Janus lying flat on his stomach on the floor, a brach from his basking tree lying nearby.

Which had all led the Duke to this particular moment of his life, staring at the wall trying to process what his friend, whom he has always considered to be very smart and clever, had just told him.

"I- Okay." Remus shook his head and glanced back down at Janus who had not moved a single inch. "Say that again?"

"I can't get up. I'm a snake, Remus, I haven't got any arms or legs."

The Duke nodded. "Mhm. Okay. That- I did hear you right. Okay. Um. Jan, last time I counted you have six arms and two legs."

"I'm not a spider!" Janus objected indignantly, raising his head to glare at Remus. "I'm snake."

Remus sat on his heels in front of Janus and gently cupped Janus's face in his hands. There was a deep purple bruise over Janus's left brow, giving his scale a sickly color. "Janus, what you are is an idiot. C'mon, Snakeboi, let's get you to bed."

Remus gently pushed Janus up onto his knees and peeled him off the floor before depositing Janus into bed and tucking him in.

Janus curled in the fetal position under the warmth of his heated blanket. He hissed when something cold touched his face.

"Don't hiss at me, you goon!" Remus scolded. "Hold still you have a bruise. This is gonna help you feel better."

Janus scowled but let Remus gently hold the soft ice pack to his throbbing temple.

"Relax, Jan," Remus advised. He rubbed up and down Janus's spine, trying to get Janus to do just that. "You'll remember about your limbs eventually and then you'll feel really stupid."

"I'm not a spider," Janua said again, more plaintively this time. "I'm not."

"No, you're not a spider," Remus assured. "You're just a little concussed. I'll take care of you, Jan, don't worry. And after you're all better, I'll help you build a stronger tree to hang out in. How's that sound?"

"Mangrove snakes are arboreal," Janus answered.

"I know, Jan-Jan. I'll make you a new tree, I promise. I'll even put a hammock up there for you, how's that sound?"

"I like that idea."

Remus snickered and kissed Janus's bruise face. "Get some rest, Jan"

[spaghetticat3899]

Funny you ask that, considering that one Splatoon AU (dubbed “Clatter”) I’ve had since… before I even bought Splatoon. Credit to ChubbiDust for the concept (although they’re apparently not too thrilled with the idea anymore :/), as I saw it and latched onto it. Fun fact: almost all of my Splatoon characters were originally made for Clatter, then reverse-engineered to be placed in the vanilla game world.

In Clatter, the first to get bit was Slick, in fact he has a depressingly short amount of screen time. Kinda sad, because I think he’d be super fun to write for in this type of setting. So, I suppose in an AU of an AU, he doesn’t end up being the first to be angrily nibbled. In that scenario, he’d survive off dumb luck and whomever he was with. He’s got no survival skills, but he sure is good at being able to break into places, and keeping things light.

Mochi is the protagonist of Clatter, so survives quite awhile. She’d probably find any way to avoid exiting a safe space, even if it means surviving off food scraps and unclean water. She admittedly would probably not take the apocalypse well, but if I got into details it might be kinda bad. She’d probably be useful for planning, thinking of escape routes, rationing supplies evenly, and being quite convincing in several realms. Her aggression and protectiveness also show off other strengths. Her issues are her lack of communication, not thinking many things through, and troubled headspace.

Hachikō would probably be extremely paranoid, but able to fare in combat. He could modify his Octobrush to do more physical than ink-based damage, maybe making a hacked-together amalgamation of bird spikes, take heads, and other objects to attach to the rims, and smack things beside the head with. He’d probably need some sort of group, though. As shy and asocial as he is, there’s safety in numbers, and he knows this. He’d likely be helpful regarding plans as well, able to think of multiple possible situations, and each and every way any decision could swing it. His knowledge of weaponry would also help with… well, weapons. His inherent anxious nature would probably make him paranoid and restless; on edge and too tired to think straight. In trying to not be a bother, he may neglect his needs, which helps no one.

Raina would be scarily good at survival, but also would not hesitate to raid people. She can and would use her combat skills for intimidation and to rob fellow survivors for the sake of her and her sister. She’d ensure Rio’s safety with her life, but both sisters know Rio wouldn’t survive on her own.

Javier would be well-off as well, but not as prone to raid living people. The dead and abandoned are free game, however. Most of his supplies were from nearby houses and empty supermarkets. Gabriel has zero survival skills, and would be picked off despite how much he wants to believe he’s capable of fending for himself. Javier would likely be deep in denial had Gabriel gotten bit, assuring that things will be fine, even when things clearly aren’t.

Kieren would likely try and group up with people, just trying to get by. He’s a little helpful dealing with minor injuries, thanks to Kōri teaching a few techniques to him. Kōri himself, though? He probably wouldn’t be there anymore…

Roxanne would be well versed in medical knowledge and some bit of combat, so likely well-off to some degree. She’d probably start using her hair tentacles as food, cutting them into slices until they’re too short to do that to anymore. She’d probably worry about her friends, if they’re okay, where they are, and things of that sort. Sometimes to make herself feel better, she might pretend they were there, thinking of all the talks she could have if she finds them again.

Quincy was originally a Clatter-exclusive character, only recently did he become canon to the vanilla universe. He was a wandering soul, trying to be of help to anyone he can find. He never sticks with groups too long, but doesn’t mind traveling with the same person/people more than once. He often finds and pairs up with Roxanne for a few days at a time, before wandering off into the wastes again. He doesn’t speak, but he’s made himself known in this new world.

How would your OC fare in a zombie apocalypse?

[brewing-radianite]

i'm manipulating the ask game for my own ends please give me all your tired parent trio + younglings thoughts

you know how weak i am for mentor&mentee content

i got you cinnamon toast crunch

for clarification to others:

tired parent trio: sage + brimstone + viper

younglings: jett, raze, phoenix, yoru, killjoy, neon

obviously all 3 tired parents help look after everyone to some degree, but i think in terms of closest bonds and mentor-mentee relationships, it's like this:

-Viper (+ Cypher, honorable mention); Raze (+ Killjoy, honorable mention)

-Brimstone; Yoru

-Sage; Neon + Jett (+ maybe Phoenix) 

(i want to explicitly and bluntly clarify these are mentor-mentee/parental figure-child figure relationships. nothing romantic here.)

-Viper hates being explicitly affectionate and even gives normal compliments sparingly, but she has to admit a good job when she sees one, and neither Raze nor Killjoy ever do anything less than great work. They’re geniuses, they’re resourceful, and they’re as intelligent as can be. Viper acknowledges this and, while she will deny giving them praise if ever brought up in other situations, she does sprinkle a few accolades here and there in private (”Raze, I will deny that I said this, but your inventions are... Useful. Keep tinkering.”) 

-”little mouse,” cute as hell (still not romantic btw; maternal petname) 

-Scolds them for being, “reckless,” when they (raze) injure themselves while tinkering around + ushers them (raze) off to Sage’s office ASAP (even for minor scratches... will also deny her urgency after the fact too). 

-saving brim;yoru for last bc ik youre anticipating that most MWAHAHAHA

-Sage is the peak mother figure of the Protocol; Sews tears in clothes, heals (and kisses, on request) injuries, even prepares meals for the agents after a long day. Makes sure Jett and Neon are greeted with a warm, hearty, nutritious dinner after an outing + always has an extra water bottle handy + shoulders are their pillows to sleep on, etc. 

-Teaching Neon and Jett a semblance of control. Neon actively struggles with her Radiant powers. Jett has once struggled, destroyed the shop she worked at, potentially even harmed others unintentionally. Sees herself as a monster. Fears polarizing herself from the people she loves and making them fear her. Similarly, Phoenix has had the same ordeal, supposedly burning down his own school on accident. Sage has some of the strongest powers of the Protocol that directly defy nature’s ways. She understands the idea of hesitancy, worry, self-doubt, etc. that comes with their abilities. “From one Radiant to another, everything will be okay.”

-Brimstone, head honcho, seasoned fighter, controlled temper and level head + Yoru (cocky. too cocky for his own good. thinks he knows everything.)

-Yoru looks in the mirror and sees a pitbull where everyone else sees a chihuahua. you know? like does that make sense? LMAO he’s like “i’m tough as nails,” and everyone else is like, “mhm. okay. yep. sure.” whatever helps you sleep at night little one

-Brimstone helps put things in perspective. Humbles him + educates him; Confidence is good! Self-assurance is good! But so is being realistic and having unbiased judgement of your capabilities in a situation. AND TEAMWORK. You cannot do everything alone. Brimstone understands this through-and-through -- Yoru? Not so much. 

they all have a lot to learn, and the tired parent trio have a lot to teach

[gerrydelano]

Recently I've been thinking about writing a fic where a character is very suddenly injured and becomes disabled (something with the knee most likely), and I was wondering if you had any tips on how to write this respectfully. I have a cognitive disability and some minor physical stuff, but nothing to the same degree as what I want to write, and you always handle disability very well in your writing. (I'm thinking around the same injury severity as Jon's in tsp)

hey hey! first off, sorry this took a couple days, it's - surprise - the disabilities LOL. second, ahhh! i have a strangely warm feeling about this ask, so i'm happy to help however i can.

there's actually not too much to say! i've already written a big long meta about incorporating disability into writing, but i don't know how much of that one answers your questions, so i'll give an updated rundown on some more thoughts i know i've had pretty recently, too! you unlocked a really happy infodump, i actually love this topic so much and am very passionate about it so i'm excited to share!

the first question you should always ask yourself is "for whose sake are you telling this story?" ren talked about that concept in an ask about writing abuse dynamics, but the concept still stands. if you're telling the story of somebody else, you have to first ask yourself Why you think you should, what good is going to come of it, and be conscious of internal biases that may creep through it if you're not careful.

examine your work for trends or subconscious intention of writing disability for angst/whump purposes, so that someone else can cuddle the poor baby who got hurt and make them all better. one of the tag replies on this recent post talks about it some from the perspective of disabled people who see it in media, and how frustrating that can be! it's really painful sometimes, to see something that you live with and cannot take off at will be used as fuel to either get somebody off (really happens), or push the idea that love will cure you if you're lucky enough to find someone who doesn't mind that you're sick or hurt.

that is 100% bullshit! love and support are MASSIVELY important components to any healing process, yes, but it is Not a cure-all and should never be treated as the answer to any of this. someone approving of or loving you despite What You Lack is not romantic, it's not healthy, it's not okay to push. that's the top thing i'd warn you away from, personally.

also, don't get super graphic about the injury, necessarily? you say you were thinking maybe the severity of jon's knee injury in TSP, which is a pretty standard dislocation where most of the damage came from compression of nerves and tendons when it got stuck out of place. i honestly was scared of going too hard on that one even just by saying he could see the misalignment through his pants! that's my own nerves, but i can say looking back it wasn't actually that bad all things considered and you should be safe describing the most obvious sensory details if it comes up.

it's the grieving period after that matters most, i think. handling that with care is important, which means being honest without going too far, OR sanitizing it to a saintly degree.

when you get hurt like this, you DO grieve the things you used to be capable of that you might not be anymore. it's an adjustment! it's changing the way you live your life. even if you somehow managed to undo every ounce of internalized ableism you can and don't devalue yourself because of it, the limitations WILL be frustrating and at times painful. missing opportunities, needing accommodation that may or may not even be accessible, new hoops to jump through with doctors or transportation or seating at shows or events, all of that can weigh you down.

example: i had to bring my rollator to a wedding recently, which is a walker with wheels and a seat (which is very annoying to get on planes, might i add.) it wasn't my family! but i had to sit in the front row on the very edge, next to the bride's 86 year old grandfather who was Also sitting on his walker. being only 25 and already thinking that some people there might be looking at me sideways for needing the same accommodations as an 86 year old man, that i was making a "big deal" out of it just by being there, was something i had to work through in my head and get used to. it was a beautiful wedding! and not a single soul was unkind to me. but the little comparisons you make in your head when it's you, when you feel like you're being scrutinized, DO matter and exist.

so, consider what changes your character has to make to their life! what mobility aids might they use? cane, crutches, walker, rollator, wheelchair. how often? in what circumstances?

a lot of people who use mobility/stability aids are partial users! many of them can stand or walk or shuffle short distances, or even moderate ones, but keep their mobility aids nearby for emergency or precautionary purposes. i personally keep my rollator in my car for when i go to unfamiliar places when i'm not sure if i'll be able to sit down on short notice, but i don't need it around the house or on small errands to places i frequent enough to feel confident in. recently, i haven't even been taking it out at all! and i'm about to have spine surgery in two weeks. you have good days and bad days.

more examples: my latest chapter of PBR had a lot of focus on jon and adelard's respective disabilities and how strenuous activity pushed them to and past certain limits, which impacted the "action" scenes quite a bit!

that's something a lot of writers do feel worried about when they consider giving their characters a disability. some will even erase or lighten up the limitations they've previously established for convenience so that their character can get through an action scene that they technically shouldn't. of course you want your character to at least SURVIVE! so, find another way to get them through it that doesn't involve magically being healed for about an hour while shit is hitting the fan.

like i said in that older disability post, i was worried about this with gerry, too! and guess what? he's DEFINITELY going to be a partial wheelchair user by the 4th out of 7 fics, and more or less permanently by the very end of the story. i feel comfortable spoiling that because i'm not shy about the things he's dealing with and quite frankly, i'm excited to get to the point where he finally gets it because i just think he's EARNED it for christ's sake. it will make his life so much easier, even if running might not be feasible anymore.

in that last chapter, jon and adelard have to go down the stairs because there is no lift in the institute. elias not having a lift there has been a problem of the ableism variety since the first installment, that everyone is aware of and feels powerless to change. jon used to willingly have a routine where he'd go up to the library every day before work as a "substitute" for the PT he hasn't been doing in years, but since moving to the basement, that's like two extra flights, so he can't do it as often. and that's just everyday stuff!

with this? he's in a lot of pain by the end, he's going to need to be on bed rest for a while to just recuperate from the strain he put himself through by running up and down the stairs (counts) about 6 consecutive times in less than an hour. he's exhausted, and the only reason he pushed himself was because lives were literally on the line and adelard was even less equipped to handle the same work as him, being older and relatively new to functioning with a prosthetic leg.

so, sure! he DID it. but does that mean he could do it Every Day just because he did it Once? that he could do it without Consequence? hell no. not for a second!

the key word here IS "consequences." yes, disabled people often DO find themselves in situations where they have to push themselves past what they feel secure doing, and maybe they CAN get home in one piece, but that just means the aftermath is going to play an important role in what comes next. sometimes you'll need to be in bed for days on end to recover from something like that, or something even less severe than the above example. i know i have, before. depends on the injury, the disability, the strain.

the point is, if you need your disabled character to go beyond what they should be doing, make sure you take care of them afterwards; either by Literally having them physically recuperate, or by acknowledging the problems that come with not being able to, and making sure you respect that they cannot go on like that forever. eventually there WILL be a crash, and it can either be handled with awareness and intent in-story, or it will sneak up on them later and bite them in the patootie. eventually, your body forces you to rest.

the other thing is that this stuff doesn't just happen once. with a chronic disability, it's always a risk. be mindful of that as you plan out the situations they're going to get into! actually incorporating these things into the narrative will honestly make it feel more real than just brushing it aside so that things go "smoothly." people who experience these things themselves will appreciate it a lot more than wish fulfilment, in my experience.

now, you say you have minor physical stuff, and i'm not going to make assumptions about YOU when i say that often times, we downplay our own experiences because we think we can't possibly have it "as bad" as other people, so i'm pretty willing to give you even more express support.

writing about these things can often be an avenue towards realizing, "oh, wait. i DO actually feel this, and it's not really, uh. something i should sit on." i know that writing characters with EDS before i even realized i had it was a part of me eventually seeing a doctor, and i actually got it put on paper recently. shock of all shocks! it resonated with me for a reason.

if you're drawn to disability narratives in a way that feels far more personal than how some people are drawn to them for the torture porn (and you clearly know the difference, given that you're asking how to write it respectfully) then it's worth sitting with yourself and really assessing how you feel about your body and what things maybe shouldn't be so hard for you to do.

definitely refer back to the first meta i linked up there for some slightly more formal tips on how to frame things when you start tying them in, but i think you're already on the right track with being respectful! realism is respectful, and so is drawing lines between that realism and being overly graphic. listening to disabled people and taking them seriously is essential, and you're already doing that. giving disabled characters a support network is fabulous and you should do it, but don't infantilize them or Cure Them With Love.

and don't think TOO deep on it! you can psych yourself doing that, it's really easy to let the fear of messing up keep us from even trying. i think a knee injury like you describe is NOT a super inflammatory topic to be tackling, and you should be absolutely fine imo. a lot of people write characters getting brutally and supernaturally injured all the time and don't pay NEAR enough attention to the lasting effect some of those wounds might have in the long run, so the fact that you're taking so much care with something more ordinary and common is a good sign that you're going to navigate well going forward.

best of luck! thank you again for the patience, and for asking :'-)

[queenofthursday6599-blog]

I mean Bruce is jewish and jewish law prohibits embalming, so I doubt it. Jason was more likely than not buried au naturel if Bruce indeed buried him according to jewish burial tradition.

Jewish law forbids the mutilation of bodies even after death.

Eye-caps and mouth wires wouldn’t be used because even if it’s minor it does mutulate the body to a degree. The organ removal and blood removal would be a huge no, because all parts of the body including blood is considered sacred and part of that person even after they die, so it’s supposed to be buried right along with him.

Everything that was once naturally part of the body in life is supposed to go right into the dirt with them when they die.

I’m willing to bet the only reason Jason’s Robin suit wasn’t buried along with him is due to the active risk doing so would pose to Bruce and Dick’s active identities. If someone got the idea to rob Jason’s grave for some reason (villains in Gotham are crazy and have few morals, I wouldn’t put it past one to try and hold the corpse belonging to a rich person’s deceased relative for ransom).

Batman already knows that Jason died of injuries resulting from an explosion, so an autopsy is unnecessary from that perspective. Not to mention he was almost certainly going to fake an autopsy report for the public anyways, so having a real autopsy performed would be for nothing but to satisfy his own curiosity as to the specifics as to how his son died.

In an ideal situation jewish funeral practice is to put the body on ice until the funeral, and to have the funeral pretty soon after the death itself. If the body has to travel long distances or there’s a significant period of time between the death and the funeral then the body is either frozen. So he definitely wasn’t embalmed.

This is also why when Jason wakes back up from the dead and is in a normal hospital among random civilians who have no idea who he is, there’s not a single mention of any kind of vivisection wound, or other things involved in corpse preparation.

Like Jason does have his all-caste tattoos that echo an autopsy scar, but Jason himself has never been autopsied.

Submitted Prompts #39

Tw: (Corpse, Perperation of a dead body, violent imagery)

Have you ever watched a video about how a dead body is prepared?

I have and every time I read about Jason digging himself out of his grave I remember it.

Because know what? When you die you usually get a gruesome version of contact lenses called eye caps to keep your eyes closed. They are small curved metal plates with tiny hooks that look very sharp honestly.

Since Jason didn't have an open casket funeral because of how mutilated his body was, you could safely assume that he was not subjected to these little torture devices.

But every time I wonder how horrifying it would be if he did and now here I am writing this so I will hopefully get it out of my head.

Anyways I'm sorry for this mental image (Hey bones here. I'm going to add to this a tad because there is still some parts of the body preparation process that would be freaky as hell to deal with after Ressurection:)

Jaw is wired shut to prevent mouth opening. they inject a wire with a spring loaded syringe type mechanism to connect your lower jaw to your upper jaw. Jason can't open his mouth. he can't speak.

Blood is removed from body and replaced with embalming fluid. What if this man straight up just runs on embalming fluid and not blood?

Organs fully removed and replaced with formaldehyde solutions. he shouldn't be living. he has no organs.

[guardianofrivendell]

Tea and Lockscreens

Modern!Fíli x reader

Requested: Yes! For my 500 followers sleepover @cassiabaggins​ asked for prompt nr 12 from the Fluff list with Fíli!

Prompt: “Am I your lockscreen?” - “You were not supposed to see that.”

Warnings: minor injury (I couldn’t help myself) - fluff - sweet caring Fíli - rushed writing (seriously, I need to chill sometimes)

A/N: Well, I broke my promise of keeping the sleepover drabbles under 1k so this gets its own post between the oneshots. I loved my idea/the plotline for this fic, I’m only not so sure it’s well written. 

You walked through the dark streets of your hometown.

Not too fast, but at a steady slow pace in an effort to keep the night going. Even though it was freezing outside, you didn’t want this night to end yet.

You pulled your warm woolen hat a little further over your ears to keep the cold from making them red and numb.

The reason why you didn’t want the night to be over soon walked right next to you, an arm around your shoulder.

Fíli.

Tonight had been your third date, and you were already looking forward to the next one. You tried to hide your excitement, knowing that you sometimes got carried away. It made you seem clingy or too attached. At least, that’s what your exes told you.

So when you met Fíli, you tried really hard not to go too fast.

The only thing you allowed yourself to do was changing your lockscreen to a picture of the both of you. The one Fíli took on your previous date at the ice skating range.

You had shared a few kisses - nothing too steamy, sometimes holding hands or he kept you close under his arm like he was doing right now.

But that was it.

It was your little secret. Your guilty pleasure.

When the inevitable happened and you had reached your apartment building, you stopped and turned to him expectantly. This was the moment he would kiss your cheek, tell you he had a wonderful night and would watch you enter the building.

Nice and slow, you kept repeating over and over again in your mind. We don’t want to rush things. But somehow, it wasn’t enough anymore. You wanted more. 

“You want to come inside to warm up?”

You bit your lip, anxiously waiting for his response. Fíli smiled, and placed his hand under your chin, pulling your lip from between your teeth with his thumb.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. “And yes, I’d love to.”

* 

“Please,” he answered. He took a seat on your couch and you couldn’t help but think he belonged there. Dark slacks, white button-up shirt – with the top button open – and a matching suit jacket. No tie… Pity, you thought. It might have come in handy later, when he would tie your hands with��  Ok, that’s enough young lady! Remember to go slow! Go, make tea!

“Tea?” you asked when you hung his coat away, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tremble in your voice.

The date had been wonderful, you both had a lovely time and he had taken your offer to come inside. In your apartment. No reason to freak out right?

You excused yourself and hurried to your kitchen before he would notice your flushed state.

While you were making two cups of tea, you tried to get yourself together again.

You felt like a schoolgirl again, infatuated with the lead actor of some teen movie. It had been a long time since you felt so giddy.

You took a few deep breaths and smoothed out your clothes. You got this!

 You carefully made your way back to your living room, carrying the two steaming mugs in your hands when you heard your phone ding. That was probably your friend to see how everything was going. She could wait.

You were focusing really hard not to spill anything that you didn’t notice the message had made your screen lit up. Before you went to the kitchen you had thrown your keys and phone on your coffee table as you always did. In full view of a pair of blue eyes…

“Am I your lockscreen?” he asked, looking up from your phone, a hint of amusement in his voice.

What? No! No, no, no!!

In your haste to get to your phone so you could pretend this never happened, you forgot you were holding mugs with boiling hot water. The sudden movement of your body made the water spill over the edge, right onto your hands.

A curse escaped your mouth and you dropped the mugs.

Fíli jumped up from the couch and was at your side in less than a second.

“Are you alright?” he asked, taking your hands in his.

Before you could answer his question, a curse escaped his own lips and dragged you towards your kitchen.

He opened the tap and put both of your hands under the ice cold stream.

“Keep them there, the hot water has burned your skin,” he instructed. His voice was calm, but you could see the worry in his eyes. So cute.

He placed his hands on your shoulders and gave them a light squeeze, before he lowered them to rub your upper arms a few times.

“I’ll be right back.”

A few seconds later he returned to the kitchen with the two now empty mugs.

“Luckily they fell on your carpet, so they didn’t break.”

But then he heard you sniffling.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

He lifted your chin with his hand and wiped your tears with the back of his other hand, lingering a little longer than he probably should.

You shrugged your shoulders.

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it stings a little but that’s it. And my hands are cold.”

You made a move to close the tap but Fíli’s warm hand stopped you.

“Just a few more minutes love,” he said softly.

The endearment was enough to send a few more tears over your cheeks.

“We were having such a good time and then I had to ruin it, and you’re being so nice and cute and… god!” you groaned, frustrated with the turn of events.

He chuckled.

“You didn’t ruin anything.”

“Yes I did,” you muttered.

 He leaned against your kitchen table, crossing his arms.

It gave you the chance to look at him. Really look at him. The man in front of you was drop dead gorgeous. The piercing blue eyes, long nose, the stubble you couldn’t wait to feel on your skin…

“What?” he laughed, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the spitting image of Dean O’Gorman? You know, the actor?”

The cute dimples in his cheek you liked so much appeared when Fíli smiled. He rubbed his neck to hide that he was flattered by your compliment.

“Yeah, they might have mentioned it once or twice.”

 “Can I remove my hands now? I can’t feel them, they’re practically frozen,” you whined after a while.

He placed his hand on the small of your back when he closed the tap.

“Let me see,” he said, and he took your hands in his. They were red from the cold water, and on your left hand was a small second degree burn.

“Where’s your first aid kit?”

“Fíli,  you don’t have to do this. I’m fine!”

He held your face in his hands and placed a kiss on your forehead. “Let me take care of you. Please?”

Was it possible for a human to melt? Because if not, you might be the first one.

You nodded slowly and told him where he could find the necessary supplies.

*

When he was almost finished bandaging your left hand, you bit your lip again.

And just like he did outside, Fíli took your chin in between his fingers and made you release it.

“What’s bothering you?”

You sighed.

 “About the lockscreen…” you began, dreading the possible outcome of this. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

He placed the clip in its place, securing the bandage around your hand.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Fili said, taking his own phone out of his back pocket with his free hand. He held your injured hand in his other, absentmindedly rubbing it with his thumb.

“Here,” he smiled and gave you his phone.

You looked up at him questioningly. Why would he give you his phone? 

“I saw your lockscreen, so it’s only fair I showed you mine.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. You giggled. Dear god, you were acting like a school girl. But when you pressed the side button of his phone, your smile faltered and your breath hitched. 

His lockscreen matched yours. 

“You’re not the only one excited about us…,” he whispered before he nuzzled his face into your neck.

Permanent taglist: @roosliefje​ @kata1803​ @entishramblings​ @artsywaterlily​ @sleepy-daydream-in-a-rose​ @marvelschriss​