#i always go off on my own tangents

[canisalbus]

Vasco and Machete are absolutely adorable, your style is so lovely and you draw the softest beds I’ve ever seen in any art ever

.

[candyriku]

finally getting a chance to work on chapter 15 today :-)

[stellardeer]

i have to come to terms with the fact that I am actually well off for someone in this country now, like.. idk it's weird

i'm still living the exact same lifestyle that i was before, so for the most part it feels almost like nothing has changed, like maybe im spending a little bit more money on food and buying the "good" toilet paper, but all that does is allow me to actually have savings in my bank account

i still stand with the working class and impoverished people of this country, and I am very much still in the boat of "one [very] bad day from homelessness" so i am not taking this for granted whatsoever

i've just been watching some of those youtube channels where they interview random people all over the country and just like.. kinda show what their life is like and it's definitely putting mine in perspective

very very grateful for the opportunities i have had and very proud of myself for forcing myself to stay in college (even tho it took almost 10 years to finish and left me with a mountain of debt) and just like.. idk, i feel like i could be doing more to help people out, i can't wait til im out of debt ;o;

[mars-ipan]

i will ALWAYS believe in the oscar wilde mentality of creativity

[kanameows]

hmm

[all-of-your-mercy]

sounds like an occasion........................... where i need to have a crisis :thinking emoji:

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | fake marriage au [18+]

in holy matriphony ch4. in a mother’s eyes

ᰔ pairing. fake marriage au - neighbor&realtor!gojo x nurse!reader (ft. choso x reader & suguru x reader)

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is your extremely annoying next-door-neighbor who you're pretty sure is the most insufferable man you've ever met. given the fact that you exclusively work the night shift at a chaotic emergency dept, just got broken up with your boyfriend of seven years, and have been taking care of your sick mother ever since her multitude of diagnoses, yet somehow your neighbor is the main source of stress in your life should speak volumes. but when your mother's medical bills start to skyrocket to more than you can manage, and you learn that said neighbor of yours has the best private health insurance plan in the country, you ask him to enter a matrimonial agreement with you for the spousal benefits all in the name of saving a few hundred thousand dollars. but you'll have to see if suffering cohabitation w him is worth any amount of money.

ᰔ genre/tags. fluff, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (sort of), annoyances to lovers (that's more like it), small town romance, fake marriage, next door neighbors, lots of bickering, suburban shenanigans, slow burn, mutual pining, gojo likes to play house but you don't, hatred for the american healthcare system, gojo always forgets to mow the lawn, jealousy, an insane amount of profanity, mentions of cigarettes, depression/anxiety; btw gojo in this fic is in his mid 30s n reader is in her late 20s

ᰔ warnings. reader in this fic has a sick mother w alzheimer's & cancer so there is secondary medical angst!!

ᰔ chapter. 4/x

ᰔ words. 10k (omg a whole number...very sexy)

a/n. hellooo my ihm friends! hope you're all doing well. ahh i'm glad to finally be posting this chapter lolol. it's a littleee off tangent from what happens in ch3, but still has some important plot developments. it does dive into feelings of depression & anxiety, so just wanted to give a warning on that! but yea other than that i hope you enjoy and see you at the bottom!! :) also so sorry if there are errors i only had time to skim through it once :((

nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 :: ch5 (pending)

“Just go ahead and sign right here for me.”

You take the pen from the hospice nurse’s hand. It’s cheap black plastic with a pink fuzzy pom pom attached to the end of it with peeling glue. 

Your eyes briefly flit across the paragraphs detailed in printed ink until your gaze lands on the highlighted lines at the bottom of the page. Your signature. Spouse’s signature.

“We’ll need to have your husband come here to sign the paperwork as well, since he’ll have to add your mother on his list of dependents, but we can certainly get started on expediting this process for you since the insurance has already been pre-approved,” the nurse tells you as she accepts your signed paperwork and then neatly tucks it into one of the compartment holders. 

The afternoon goes by smoothly, with your mother surprisingly patient as she sits in the waiting room while you wait for the nurses to formally show you to her new room.

You thought that you could put off putting her in hospice for a little longer, because in all honesty, you weren’t prepared to let her go just yet. You weren’t prepared to not have her in the house anymore. But lately, she’s been putting herself in lots of danger, like attempting to take her own medications when she does not know the correct dosing, and forgetting things on the stove when she attempts to cook.

But the last straw was when you came home from a very brief run to the grocery store at night a couple days ago to see a handful of your neighbors out on the front lawn with your mother at their side. She had apparently gotten out of the house and walked down the neighborhood, then fallen on the sidewalk but was unable to get up. When your neighbors had found her, a miracle as they were just coming home from dinner and caught sight of her in the illumination of their headlights, they tried to help her get up but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even tell the firefighters that came by to help her what her name was, or what year it was, or where she lived.

It was when you realized you couldn’t even keep her safe anymore that you had to let go.

“Is that a wedding ring?” your mother asks, pointing a trembling finger to it as she lays tucked inside her new hospice bed, “are you married?”

You glance down at the ring Gojo gave you in the courthouse, almost surprised to find that you were still wearing it in good faith. “Yes, mom. I am.”

“Why am I here?” she asks you, “I don’t want to be here.”

You stiffen a little. Although you were mentally preparing yourself to answer these questions, the preparation didn’t make it any easier. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just for a little short while, okay? The doctors want to run some tests on you.”

“Who are you married to?” she asks.

“To Satoru,” you tell her, “our neighbor.”

She lets out a small gasp. “The sweet boy who fixed our A/C?”

You roll your eyes. not sure why your mother has hyper fixated on that memory with Gojo when most days she’ll look at you like you’re a stranger. “Yes mom.”

“Oh, I like him,” she tells you with an affectionate nod. She hesitates slightly, wearisome of some other thought that flashes through her mind. “How long have you been married?”

You let out a small sigh. This is already a conversation you had with her a couple days ago, and it doesn’t feel good to lie to her. It was hard enough to do once, but to have to constantly lie to her over and over again over all the smallest things just so that she stays calm and safe and happy seems to drain you of all your energy and happiness you had left in your bones.

Little white lies, that’s what they are. Harmless ones. That’s what you tell yourself to absolve yourself of the guilt.

“I’ll come back soon, okay? I’ll tell you more about him some other day,” you say to her, speaking gently in the way an adult would speak to a child. The way she used to speak to you. You could never exactly pinpoint when those roles became reversed.

You finish discussing some more insurance matters with the front-desk nurse as she puts together a small folder of documents for you. While she works, you glance at the little counter shelf that includes a plethora of pamphlets on how to deal with the complicated feelings that arise from putting a loved one in hospice care, and dealing with the emotions of having a relative with advanced stage dementia. They are pretty brochures, lovingly creased at the folds as if looked through multiple times by people who walk in and out of this facility, but seemingly only few take them home. You slip one of each into your folder when the nurse hands it to you, manage the best smile possible, and then turn on your heel to head out the hospice doors.

The sun is setting outside as you take the walk back to your car, which was purposefully parked a half mile away to afford you the luxury of a melancholic stroll. Somehow, you feel like you’ve left a piece of yourself back at the hospice. A feeling you can’t quite shake from your bones.

Your feet stop walking somewhere along the sidewalk on their own, the street lights above you flickering brighter into life as the sky is now a dusty gray with only streaks of purple. There’s a liquor store you spot across a small parking lot to your right, and you’re guided towards it, but not without a sickening feeling in your chest.

When you open the door, the bell at the top jingles, and you glance to the right where you see a lanky young man playing some sort of shooter game on his phone by the cash register. You grab a bottle of vodka, a bottle of white wine, some packs of skittles, one of the mini pizza boxes at the hot food station, and then dump it all onto the counter.

The young man scans all your items without even so much as sparing you a glance, but does take a look at your ID, then says, “Total’s $68.65, cash or card?”

“Card.”

Just before you tap your card, something displayed behind the cashier counter catches your eye. Something familiar, something tempting, something you weigh in your head about twenty times within one millisecond all due to the cortisol coursing through your veins and you eventually say, “Uh, and could I get one of those, too?”

The cashier looks behind himself to what you’re pointing at before turning around. “Sure.”

The same jingle is heard on top of your head as you leave the store, now with a burning hot mini pizza box in your hand as well as a plastic bag that carries your candy and the two clinking bottles of alcohol.

“Oh!! omg, y/n,” you hear a feminine voice call out and you’re instantly wincing. The last thing you wanted was to be bothered right now. You just wanted to go home and get drunk and then pass out on the floor of your living room. But alas, the world is small.

You turn around to see Hana come running across the sidewalk lot towards you, and when she’s about a few feet away, she glances down at your hands and all the things you were carrying. You quickly shove your last-minute purchase into your jacket pocket with a shameful conscience, and try to hide the plastic bag of liquor behind your calves. There was no hiding the pizza box, but at least that was the least incriminating.

“Oh, Hana, wow! What a coincidence seeing you here,” you say to her, pressing your lips into a small smile.

“Yeah, I um,” she points over her shoulder towards the hospice that’s standing tall in the darkness of night, cells with windows illuminated with light. If you didn’t know any better, you would think it was a prison. “Remember I told you my friend’s mom is sick and she’s at this hospice?”

“Yeah,” you say.

“I was just visiting her mom with her,” she tells you.

“Aw,” you comment, “I see, I see.”

You adore Hana, you really do. She was there for you when the whole Yuna and Choso thing went down, picking your shifts up for a good week when you couldn’t stomach going into work when your ex-best friend’s stupid face was gloating in the halls over how she stole your boyfriend. Hana was there for you when you were a new hire and all the doctors were being bitchy about a “newbie in the ED”, but she stood up for you, even cussed the fuck out of one of attendings for the whole hall to hear when you were being disrespected by one of them. She’s someone you can beam about how hot the EMT and Firefighter men that stroll into the ED are, too. A priceless companion.

And even though you two have hung out after hours sometimes, it was still always a little awkward to see a coworker outside of work.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I actually, um, was going to tell you at our shift tomorrow, but I just admitted my mom to the hospice too,” you say, “and…thanks a lot for telling me about it. I really appreciate it. It seems like a wonderful facility.”

Her eyes briefly widen with surprise before they soften once again. “Oh, that’s wonderful, love. I hope all goes well. And your little insurance scam worked! Good for you!”

“Shhh,” you hiss at her, looking around yourself with paranoia, “the feds are everywhere.”

She laughs, sweet in the air, before the sound settles and she looks at you with something reminiscent of well-intentioned concern. Her eyes flit to the plastic bag you were still holding behind your legs. “Hey…um, if…if you ever want some company when you come to visit your mom, just let me know. I hope you know you don’t have to do everything alone.”

You blink at her, sucking in a short breath to respond, but it only leaves you as a slight puff of air. There’s a silent gratitude that you give her, because it’s hard for you to express any feelings with words, but you’ve found that the people in your life who know you best can always read you without them. 

“Thank you, Hana,” you manage to say with a slight croak to your voice because you were fighting back tears.

She smiles at you. “Take care, okay? And see ya tomorroooowwwwww,” she coos at you, coming up to you to give you a small hug, a squeeze of your upper arm, and then she heads back towards the direction of the hospice.

You watch her walk away until you can’t see her anymore. And then you head towards your car.

When you arrive at your neighborhood, you park in front of Gojo’s house. You have a feeling that you won’t be able to bear the vast emptiness of your home now that your mother is elsewhere, and so you drag your feet up the stone stairs of his house with a heavy heart instead.

The spare key that he gave you weakly pushes into the keyhole with about as much force as your fingers can manage, and you realize they almost feel atrophied. 

The house is dark when you step inside, spare for the ambient street lights shining through cracked open blinds on the windows, and the curtains rustle gently from the draft of the AC, a chill that reaches you too by the time you make it to the staircase.

It doesn’t seem like Gojo’s home. A glance at the clock tells you it’s close to 8pm. You briefly consider texting him to ask where he’s at, why he’s out so late, when he’ll be home, and what’s for dinner, but you can’t even bring yourself to pull your phone out of your coat pocket.

Weak legs manage to take you upstairs and you’re about to pass through to your room when the slightly open door to the master bedroom taunts you, like a peephole into some other wordly dimension. Like the wardrobe in the chronicles of Narnia. A portal into your fake husband’s life.

With a palm pushing on the door, you slowly crack it open, and you know the anxious voices in your head are getting worse by the day when the creaking of the door hinges sounds like a lullaby to you. 

Was this an invasion of privacy? And did you really care if it was?

The room is big, with a king sized bed off to the left, sheets neatly made and duvet primly tucked under, like the way hotel beds are set up. You feel a slight flush of embarrassment when you remember you haven’t been making your bed in the mornings for the past couple days you’ve been living here so far, and you wonder if Gojo would judge you for something like that. If he’d think you were a messy or undisciplined person. If he would think less of you.

Truthfully, in a lot of ways, you still felt like a child. You barely weathered a lot of your formative adolescent years when dealing with your parents’ divorce, and you’ve had to put so much of your life on pause to take care of your mom ever since she got diagnosed. So here you were, in the body of a 29-year-old woman, yet still feeling so painfully juvenile. One that forgets to make her bed in the mornings, and on most nights can’t seem to stomach anything other than cereal for dinner. It was like you were still at a party that everyone else had left, except all it ever was is hell. Your life was such a stark contrast to the lives of other adults you’ve come across. The ones that wake up at six to go on runs, the ones that have paid off mortgages with five figures in their retirement accounts, oh god, the ones that meal prep, and the ones that, all things considered, have their lives together. The ones that don’t spend at least an hour of every day, in fetal position on their bed, sobbing until tears soak through the sheets of the pillow down to the feathers like bone, because you’re so overwhelmed with stress and preparing yourself for the grief of losing your mother which you know that, no matter how hard you try to save her from, will inevitably one day come. 

You used to cook dinner every night, make your bed every morning, and go to pilates on the weekends. Back when you were a little younger and healed and excited to live life. But now, you barely get by. Your priorities are with your mother. You can’t remember the last time you did anything nice for yourself, including something as simple as the luxury of getting to come home to a clean house because you hardly ever had time to clean it, not with all the doctor’s appointments you were driving your mother to, not with all the extra shifts you were picking up at the hospital to pay off your debt, not with all the times you felt too depressed to even get out of bed. 

But your mother is in hospice now, so you’ve made time, right? You’ve made the decision that everyone in your life has been begging you to finally do. So why do you still feel so empty inside?

By a quick survey of the room, you notice Gojo doesn’t really have many framed photos hung up on the walls or perched up on surfaces. None, actually. Only a contemporary painting above his bed frame and then a faded vintage horror movie poster plastered up near his desk. Not terribly odd, since in your experience most men don’t really do the whole “cluttering the house with millions of photos of their family” thing until they at least have a couple of kids and some purebred dog. The thought of Gojo someday setting up a little portrait photo at his desk with his wife’s—his eventual real forever wife’s, pretty face in it, posing with their two beautiful kids, makes an oddly melancholic feeling waft through you. You wonder if he would keep a two-by-two in his wallet, too.

Your feet move one in front of the other as your finger traces the surface wood of a dresser cabinet, something that looks a little vintage and oaky, in stark contrast to the modern minimalist vibe Gojo has set up in the rest of the room. A family heirloom, maybe? There’s no dust that coats your finger, which surprises you. If you were to run your finger across your dresser at home you’d have collected enough dust to snort down your windpipes like a recreational drug. But Gojo’s a real estate agent, making a living off of dressing houses up in perfect cosplay so that monetarily stable middle class families feel inclined to buy them. So you’re not exactly surprised he’s invested in keeping his own house in pristine condition too. 

There is a little bit of chaos, though. Like the shirt he has haphazardly hung over his chair at his office space over to the right. There’s a coffee mug sitting there too, porcelain and reflecting the moon light off, but upon peering inside you see that it’s half empty with stale coffee. He’s got pens sprawled across the desk, in a fashion that suggests he accidentally knocked them over in a rush, and slowly, like some grounding exercise, you place them one by one back into the paper mache pencil holder. It briefly occurs to you that he has a lot of paper mache containers of sorts around the house. You lift up the pencil cup, turning it in your hand until your eyes catch something written on it with glittery pink gel pen.

i luv u unkle toru! -yur BEST FREND 4EVUR juno!!! :D

A small smile makes it onto your face. The handwriting was messy, more like scratches than smooth lines, and nothing less than what you would expect of a child. You remember making paper mache and clay trinkets at preschool for your mom and dad when you were younger. And you’re sure if you were brave enough to open the box of memorabilia that sits in your attic some day, you’d see your own scratchy scribbled handwriting on them. An innocence that is long gone and buried, never again to be delicately placed on desks or counters for all the living.

The draft from the AC reaches you once again, brushing over your skin and causing a chill to shiver down your spine. It kicks at the curtains as well, causing them to ruffle up towards you, baring the dark outside world into the streets. And you notice in that momentary glance that there’s a roof just outside the window that overlooks the backyard. A roof? Spotted by a depressed woman going through a quarter life crisis? There was nothing more tempting than that. 

The window was easy to open, which only caused unease over the revelation of how easy it would be for someone to rob this house. You make a mental note to tell Gojo to get a ring camera or security system of some sort since he doesn’t seem to have one, but you can already picture him telling you something about how statistically low the crime rates are in this neighborhood compared to all the other neighborhoods, and then you’d tell him that it’s just for your peace of mind. But whether he’d compromise or not after that, you’re really not sure.

You take a seat on the roof, a little scared as you sit because of the slight slope, but it’s comfortable once you’re settled. You sit criss-cross-apple-sauce, staring out into the neighborhood of perfectly lined up suburban houses. You’ve got a better view into some neighbors' backyards, noticing that a couple of them had pools while some of them have big gardens. There's a cat resting up on a fence in the distance. A car drives by with headlights illuminating everything in its proximity briefly before zooming off. You glance up at the sky, and notice the full moon, but it’s too cloudy to see any stars. Or perhaps it was just the light pollution from the lamps making it difficult to see.

On instinct, your hand reaches inside your coat pocket for your phone, but your knuckles hit something else instead. A moment of brief confusion flickers through your head, but then you immediately recall the last-minute purchase you made at the gas station.

Your hand pulls out the object, and then you stare down at it. Squinting your eyes a little, because it’s a sight that feels familiar but also one you haven’t seen in so long: a pack of twenty Marlboro red cigarettes. 

You’ve tried a lot of things to manage your stress over the years. Excessively working out, eating a lot of sugar, going on six hour hikes to touch grass, flirting with random men at bars, fucking Choso until he was rendered speechless, multiple types of antidepressants, you almost tried smoking weed once with your roommate in college but you wimped out last second. But the habit that had gotten you through the years of 21 to 24 is held loosely in your hand right now. It’s been five years since you quit, but resolve was often a fickle thing. As the saying goes, once an addict, always an addict. 

There’s a brief moment of hesitation as you slowly peel the plastic off of the back, but then it all comes back to you like a reflex you’ll never forget up to where you slide a cigar up out and then pinch it between your two fingers. Forgetting to buy a lighter with the cigarettes is definitely something you would do, but because you remembered it was something that you would do, you remembered not to do it. The flick of the flame coming to life is ASMR you didn’t know you were painfully nostalgic for, and you balance the cigarette between your lips in that sort of movie-star way people used to obsess over back in the day. But just as you bring the lighter up to the end of the cigarette, and just before you can light it—

A hand shoots out in your periphery, grabbing your wrist and entirely stalling the movement.

You gasp, lips parting enough for the cigarette to fall from them and into your lap. The hand wrapped around your wrist is large and masculine, and you briefly consider screaming, but when you snap your neck to look at the perpetrator, you see Gojo crouched down next to you on this roof. You notice he’s wearing a black suit, a tie that was loosely secure hanging from his neck into the space between his spread thighs as he’s crouched, and whatever gel he had in his hair from earlier only barely remains as strands fall over his forehead haphazardly. He looks like he’s on the other end of a long work day. 

You blink at him, expression plastered with surprise, but his is only earnest. With breathtaking blue eyes that you realize he could easily use to surrender a person just by looking at them, like the way he’s looking at you right now. His lips are pressed together into a firm line, as if to suppress some emotion, but the slight crease to his brow makes you feel like you’re in trouble somehow. Like he was silently scolding you for something.

“I—” you stutter.

He lets go of your wrist and discreetly pulls the lighter out of your hand. And then his hand reaches for the pack of cigarettes you were balancing on your knee, but on some reflex that you don’t even think about, you try to snatch them away from him, and now you’re both tugging at the same pack of cigarettes.

“y/n,” he says, “let go.”

“No,” you say stubbornly.

He sighs and tugs a little harder. “Give them to me.”

“But—” you stammer, voice becoming softer to see if that’d work on him, “I’m…” Your grip on them tightens. “I’m stressed.”

He raises an eyebrow at you, then finally loses his patience and snatches them right out of your hand. He stands up from his crouched down position to toss the pack off to the side onto the roof somewhere. You’re surprised when he lets out a sigh and sits down next to you on the roof, as if he felt the obligation to. His legs stretch out in front of him, but still bent slightly at the knees, and he leans backwards with his body weight braced on his palms laid flat on wood paneling behind him. “There are better ways to relieve stress,” he tells you candidly. 

“Like what?” you ask, and just when he opens his mouth to speak, you clarify, “and don’t say sex.”

He shuts his mouth and his eyes flit up to the sky for a brief second. “Damn. I didn’t have a back-up answer.” 

You roll your eyes, releasing a deep breath, then draw your knees to your chest before resting your chin on top of them. 

“I didn’t know you smoke,” he says after a century-long minute. 

You wince a little, because you were half hoping he was going to just drop the subject all together. 

You bite your lip nervously and hug your knees to your chest tighter as if to hide yourself from him. “I don’t. Well, I haven’t. Um, not for a while.”

“Huh. I see,” he says.

Another silence passes, and as he shuffles next to you, the fabric of his suit brushes against the fabric of your coat, and you’ve become entirely too aware of the feeling.

“So,” he says, breaking the awkward silence, “your mom’s in hospice now?”

You nod, enthusiastic enough to where you won’t look like you’re entirely depressed about it.

“That’s good,” he says, “no issues with the insurance?”

You shake your head. “They need you to sign some papers by the end of the week though,” you tell him. “We’ll have to go in person.”

He nods slowly to affirm he’ll make time for it. “I really hope things get better for your mom,” he says, voice soft as he stares off into neighbors homes like you had been doing ten minutes ago. You see the cat that was resting on the fence get up, do a big stretch, and start walking along the length of the fence. Your eyes briefly glance at Gojo, and you notice his gaze is tracing the cat’s path. 

“My—” you start, hesitant all of a sudden by the vulnerability you already feel swelling within you, most definitely due to sitting with someone on a rooftop late at night, but you decide that you’ll be nice to him for once, “…my mom seems to remember you a lot. More than she remembers me.” You let out a small humoring laugh, as if that fact doesn’t completely destroy you. “She was blabbering to me again for the seventh time about how you apparently fixed our AC.” You try to bite your tongue, but can’t help it when you say, “although I’m pretty sure you just pressed a bunch of buttons until it started working again.”

“Yup. That’s exactly what I did.”

You roll your eyes and sigh.

Another awkward silence.

“Can I ask you a question?” you say.

“Sure.” His voice sounds deeper, like he’s sleepy. 

“Why did you agree to marry me? That’s not something people just do out of nowhere.”

He glances over at you, and you flicker your eyes to him. “Why? Having regrets?” he teases, with a slight nudge of his elbow to your side. 

“Just answer me.”

He lifts his palms up from behind him and leans forward, placing his hands on his knees instead. “I don’t know. If something I could do would help someone out that much, I wasn’t going to say no.”

You hum quietly, still confused by his intentions. But you’re too jaded to question them.

“It costs nothing to be nice,” he adds. 

You run soothing circles over your thigh through the fabric of your jeans. For some reason, your mind wanders to Choso. Thinking of all the years you wasted staying with him even though you knew his affections were long gone, just because you didn’t want to break his heart. Only to realize that you never had that privilege in the first place. 

“I think,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper as you draw your knees closer to your chest, “that sometimes it does.”

A gust of autumn wind breezes by, ruffling the trees that the two of you are at eye-level with at the moment. You're pretty sure you’ve completely lost Gojo’s interest at this point, where he’s finally too tired to deal with your oddly cryptic attitudes and overall generally displeasing vibe, assuming this based solely on his prolonged silence beside you. You’re ready for him to get up and abandon you here on this roof, left to ponder every single thing you’ve done wrong in your life. It was any second now.

“Sometimes,” he instead speaks up, and it’s so surprising to you that you jolt a little bit, “you can do everything right, and people will still find a way to fuck you over. But I don’t think that’s any reason to stop being nice to others.”

You glance over at him, your eyes widening slightly, but he just continues to peer off straight into the night. His blinks are slow, lingering on being closed for a moment before he opens them again, and you’re mesmerized by the sight. The skin under his eyes is slightly dark from exhaustion, heavy with character that makes you aware that he’s just a person too. And for what feels like the tenth time this week, you realize that he’s—…handsome. And for what feels like the tenth time this week, your heart flutters in your chest.

He scoffs suddenly and dusts his hands off. “I sound like a fucking youth pastor.” He lets out an exhale before suddenly standing up onto his feet before you can think more on it. He looks off into the night again and lets out another exhale that sounds more like a sigh this time. “God, it’s getting a lot colder these days. Might have to start running the heater.”

You blink up at him with no commentary to add. 

He looks down at you. His face is relaxed, but you can tell those eyes are distracted. A shimmering blue ocean in its own world while he attempts to stay present in this one. 

He holds his hand out to you, and you stare at it blankly like you’ve got no clue what he intends for you to do with it. But you finally take the hint and curl your hand around his palm so that he can pull you up onto your feet too.

You stumble a little, falling forward from the sudden blood flow to your brain, but he holds you steady by the strong grip of his hands on your elbows. He’s close to you, close enough to where you can smell the faint lingering scent of his cologne. Something different than that expensive one he wore to the courthouse, but it’s comforting somehow. A fragrance that’s more him. And you feel nervous as you look up at him underneath pale moonlight. 

He lets go of your elbows. You feel cold from the loss of his touch. But his right hand moves to gently hold your left hand in his palm, holding it curled as his thumb barely grazes the stone you wear on your ring finger; the one he gave you.

The way his thumb prods at the silver band is like he’s inspecting its quality, as if it has to pass some test to be worthy of sitting on your finger. Or maybe just any finger, if you were to quell the delusion. You’re not sure if he’s satisfied with his inspection.

“Where did you get it—” you blurt out.

His gaze flickers up to your face briefly before he’s back to examining the ring. “It was my mom’s.”

Your mouth gapes slightly in shock, heart dropping a little in your chest, and all of a sudden you feel guilty. Guilty that he put his mother’s ring on your finger for something that was fake, something that was essentially a business deal, something exchanged to you out of fraud when it was a precious family heirloom that should be exchanged with love. And maybe he didn’t care about it much, some people don’t care about the sentiments of objects. But your mind thinks of the oaky vintage dresser in his room, so out of place in the aesthetic of its surroundings, a decision you can only imagine him of all people, mr. “everything in this house has to look like an IKEA catalog”, would do if the dresser held some importance to him that was more than meets the eye. And so you’re compelled to think that maybe this ring did, too. 

“Why would you give me this?! You could’ve just gotten a cheap fake diamond ring from a pawn shop and called it a day,” you ask him, suddenly feeling burdened by it.

“Well I wasn’t exactly given much time to think of other options.”

“But—” you start, only to realize you have no counter arguments for that.

He lets out a huh noise, like the sound someone makes when they’re pleasantly surprised by something, as he looks down at your hand that he still held in his. “It’s kinda crazy that it fits you perfectly. I wasn’t sure.”

Your mind wanders to when he slipped the ring onto your finger in the courtroom, followed by the kiss. Soft, sweet, the lingering warm sensation of his palm on your cheek as he cupped your face, the same way those heartthrob actors do in all those romance movies and kdramas that you watch on Friday nights while snuggled up in a blanket, wondering when anyone will ever kiss you like that. You remember the ghost sensation of his hand hovering over the small of your back, fingers lightly grazing the nape of your neck, his frame blocking out everything around you as he kissed you, just to pull away and for the two of you to then pretend like it never happened, as if it wasn’t one of the sweetest kisses you’ve ever known.

You slowly pull your hand out of his, the moment feeling too tender for your liking, and you clear your throat before flitting your eyes up to his. 

“Rule #1,” you remind him with a soft whisper, “no touching.”

You purse your lips, watching his round eyes blink once, then twice, before he shoves his hands in his suit pockets. He rocks back and forth on his heels for a few seconds, nodding slowly in submission, and then he turns on them to head back to the house. You’re standing a little stunned from the abrupt ending to this trance of a moment on the roof, and you’re also a little surprised with how your chest is heaving a little bit with fast breaths, but you eventually snap out of it to follow him inside too. 

You two make it back inside the house, with little words exchanged. You pretend to not notice the way Gojo tilts his head at his desk, like he’s confused about why it looks tidier than when he left it. You’re prepared to feign innocence or ignorance, but he doesn’t press you about it. 

“Y’know,” he says from behind you, his chest briefly brushing against the back of your head as he pushes the bedroom door in front of you open so that you can head out into the loft, “those oversized 1800s-esque nightgowns you’ve been wearing around the house kinda make you look like a less-hot version of Ebenezer Scrooge.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•

“Sign right here for me, sir.”

You watch as the nurse slides the papers across the high-raised counter of the hospice nursing desk towards Gojo, his eyebrows narrowing as his eyes skim the words on the paper and land at the highlighted lines where he’s been intended to sign. You feel nervous for some reason, as if he’d suddenly find something disagreeable and refuse to sign, then take you to the courthouse first thing to finalize a divorce and send you off to prison while claiming he was blackmailed into the whole marriage in the first place.

Instead, he pulls a pen from the chest pocket of his suit jacket, clicking the end of it and scribbling his signature onto the paper with some jet black ink that looks like it takes a second to dry. How pretentious of him. The pink pom-pom pen was right there.

The nurse behind the counter continues to chat with him about something, blah blah dependents, blah blah tax claims, blah blah you’ll receive an itemized bill in the mail. You’re trying your best to eavesdrop in on the conversation, but most of your senses are being occupied by examining all your surroundings. When you dropped your mother off at the hospice, your feelings were at the forefront of conscience, but now that you’ve had a couple days to come down from that overwhelming emotional high, you’re here to scope out the quality of this place you’ve just dumped your mom at.

The facility is clean and sleek, with a color theme of red and an ocean blue across the signs, the furniture, even with the paperwork they hand out. All the workers had color-coded scrubs based on their occupation or specialty, and none of them had stains on the fabric. You take a glance down at the modest leather pumps you were wearing past the creases of the long skirt, and notice that the floor was shimmering off their reflection in a perfect polish. It wasn’t bad, this place.

“Thanks, you too,” you hear Gojo say to the nurse behind the counter. He has a professional smile on his face, but still kind and genuine, which makes the woman at the computer something bashful and unable to make eye contact. He folds something that looks like a receipt into his chest pocket before tucking his pen back in there too and then turns to face you. You make a mental note to pay him back for whatever he just paid for, at least once you move some money around. 

Your eyebrows lift, feeling a little dazed as you blink at him blankly.

“Alright,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets, the sound of his shoes on the polished hospital floors satisfactorily tapping in your ears as he took a couple steps towards you, “where’s your mom’s room?”

“Huh?”

“What’s her room number?” he asks you.

“Y-You wanna go see her??”

“Of course I want to,” he says, “she’s my mother-in-law.”

You roll your eyes and pet the fabric of your skirt to smooth the wrinkles out. “You’re getting a little too invested in this role of fake husband.”

“I get to annoy you all day and ride the adrenaline rush of committing a federal crime,” he says, “of fucking course I’d get invested.”

You sigh, tossing some of your hair to behind your shoulder before glancing up at the signs, squinting slightly to locate the ward where your mother’s room is, before you hear an extremely high-pitched and somewhat catty feminine voice call out from behind you. You glance at Gojo’s face as he peers off to whoever’s behind you, and you see him visibly stiffen a little.

“Is that Dayton county’s sexiest realtooorrr???” the voice purrs, and you turn on your heel to see a blonde bombshell of a woman clacking her kitten heels down the glistening floors of the hospice, with another brunette bombshell just a few paces behind her. Bombshell #2 sighs something like “it issss” before they walk right up to your fake husband and take turns at giving him a playful squeeze of his bicep. You have to physically stop your jaw from dropping at the sight. 

“Wow! Ladies, so–...so great to see you two,” he says out of polite obligation, and you immediately clock the fact that he doesn’t address them by name.

Bombshell #1 turns to look at you, all of her hair moving as one solid entity with the motion from all the hair spray that’s probably holding it up, and she points at you with a long slender finger that narrows into a french-tip. “Oh who’s this?? Another one of your clients??”

“Oh, no, she’s my–”

“I’m his wife,” you interrupt him, irritated for some reason. 

Both the women chirp something out like oh! before their faces twist with confusion. 

“I didn’t know you were married,” Bombshell #2 says in a thick New Jersey accent.

Gojo lifts his left hand up, the silver band on his hand glimmering under fluorescent hospice lighting. “Very happily,” he says, as if someone was holding a gun to his head.

Bombshell #1 crosses her arms, and you try not to stare at how nice her boobs look in the low scoop-neck jaguar print top she was wearing. You were no better than a man. And now you’re pissed off at the idea of Gojo glancing down too, but a flick of your gaze up to his face tells you he’s safe. For now. 

“You weren’t married when I asked you if you were a month ago,” Bombshell #1 sneers at him. It’s true, the math wouldn’t make sense, but in his defense, this marriage was a fraud.

“Or when you took me out for dinner last week after I bought my house,” Bombshell #2 snarls with an undertone of hurt. 

Gojo clears his throat beside you before pointing at Bombshell #2. “How is that, by the way?” he asks in an attempt to change the subject, “the half acre down on Maple Ave, right? You, uh, enjoying the pool?”

The woman let out an offended scoff and–were her eyes sheening with tears?? She puts her hands on her hips. “No. Mine is the three bedroom house with the cedar gazebo on 14th street.”

Her friend next to her rolls her eyes and smacks her gum between her cheek. “I’m the one that bought the half acre down on Maple Ave, jerk. Ugh!” She grabs her friend’s arm with a high-pitched hmph noise leaving her throat, and you can hear the other one sniffling subtly as she wobbles on her heels with her friend’s pull of her arm. 

Right before leaving the two of you alone, Bombshell #1 turns to you and says, “I hope you find someone who treats you better,” and then they storm off together down the hallway, their perfectly blow-dried hair bouncing in sync with each stomp.

You blink at the sight, a little flabbergasted from the interaction, and then flit your faze up to Gojo. You see him awkwardly scratching at the back of his head with a grimace on his stupidly handsome face. 

“That’s what you get for being a manwhore,” you tell him.

“I’m not a manwhor–”

“You went on a date with another woman while you were maaaaarrrieeeddd?!” you coo as you let out a fake gasp and slap your cheeks with your hands, “despicable, really.”

He lets out some disgruntled noise, the source coming from deep within his throat. “No. We weren’t fake-married yet,” he vindicates himself, “and it wasn’t a date. I just bought her dinner as a congrats for buying a house. Not a big deal. I do it for all my clients.”

“Satoru. You do realize you’re leading these women on, right? I mean, I’ve seen the way you talk to them. Even if you think you’re just being friendly, please know that your definition of friendly is most people’s definition of flirting.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s true.”

He raises an eyebrow as he glances down at you. “Alright, how come this flirting in disguise of friendliness hasn’t worked on you then?”

You scoff in disbelief before crossing your arms. Maybe you did deserve a better fake husband. “You’re never friendly with me. You’re always rude to me.”

“What? I’m not always rude to you.”

“Well, you’re certainly much more rude to me than you are to other women,” you say, tapping the tip of your shoe with irritation.

“Can we not do this right now? We’re in the middle of a hospice.” 

“God, you’re such a cop-out,” you mumble as you forcefully push past him towards the hallway that’ll lead you to your mother. You can hear that Gojo’s on your tail, following you down one of the more dimly lit hallways, and you can tell he needs to stall the strides of his Daddy Longlegs to not overtake your pace.

“What the fuck is a cop-out?” he asks you from behind.

“Look it up on urban dictionary, Grandpa. Unless you don’t know what the Internet is, either,” you spat. 

You waltz right up to your mother’s room just in time to see a nurse making her way out with a clipboard in her hands. She glances over to you when she sees you approaching in her periphery.

“Hi! How can I help you?” she asks.

“Is it alright if we visit my mother?” you ask her.

“Oh! Sure, let me just clean her bed pan really quick.”

Your brow furrows. “B-Bedpan?? Why is she using a bedpan??”

The nurse stops in her movements. “Well, yesterday and today, that’s just what she has decided to use.”

You immediately become hostile. “That’s not right. She never needed to use one at home. Why is she suddenly using one here? Is that not a clear sign of deterioration? The restrooms must not be kept well enough here if she doesn’t want to use them.”

The nurse becomes something meek, her eyes widening as her mouth gapes slightly. “Ma’am,” she squeaks out, “we see this commonly with patients as they begin to adjust to hospice life. We’ll urge her to use the restroom, but as of right now, we need to prioritize what she finds most comfortable.”

Your expression softens, your shoulders relaxing from their tense position, and you duck your head a little with guilt. “Right…I’m sorry.”

The nurse presses her lips together with a well-meaning smile before shuffling into the room and closing the door behind her. You sigh and lean your back against the wall next to the number plate, cheeks flushing slightly from the confrontation. You have no idea how loud your voice was or who heard you. But you try to convince yourself that you’re just stressed and trying to look out for your mother, although the guilt still sits.

You glance up to see Gojo staring at you with slightly wide eyes, his hands shoved into his pockets, and he tilts his head to study your expression.

“What?” you snap at him.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Just fine, thanks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Satoru,” you cut his questioning off by raising a palm into the air, “just—…just stop.”

His brow furrows together slightly, but before he can show any further concern, the nurse exits the room and holds the door open for the two of you. 

“All set!” she chirps, and Gojo moves to hold the door open in her stead, and then the nurse bolts down to disappear somewhere down the hallway.

You hear Gojo let out a small huff of a scoff as he stares down in the direction the nurse ran off in. “Glad to know I’m not the only one that’s scared of you.”

You roll your eyes and walk into the room through the open door.

Your mother lays in her bed, looking out the window with her hands resting on top of layers of white linen sheets, her skin looking slightly paler than usual. You approach her bedside slowly and she finally turns her head to look at you.

“Hi mom,” you gently greet her, sitting down on the stool beside her bed, “how are you doing?”

Her eyes dart across the features of your face, and you briefly glance towards the wall to the right where you see Gojo standing from a slight distance.

“Oh, hi dear,” she says with a smile, and relief washes over you.

You match her smile with your own. “Mom, I brought someone here to see you.” You glance over at Gojo, who starts to close distance now as he approaches the foot of the bed, “this is Satoru, my husband.”

Your mother’s eyes widen, “Oh! I know him,” she scoldingly swats a hand at you, like you’ve embarrassed her somehow by assuming that she doesn’t know who he is, “he’s my neighbor!”

You sigh, “yes mom, the one that fixed the A/C?” You attempt to finish her sentence for her.

She looks confused for a moment, but slightly nods as if to avoid any further confusion for herself. “But—…but, why…” she trails off and then looks at you, “I’m sorry, are you my nurse?”

Your shoulders drop slightly. “No, mom, it’s me. Your daughter. Do you remember?”

Her face scrunches before it entirely relaxes to keep some image of composure despite the haze you know she feels in her head. “Oh…yes, yes…my little girl. I remember you, of course!”

Your eyes become layered with a slight sheen of tears, “I’m glad.”

“Where’s your father?” she asks, “he said he’d bring me some…oh dear, what—…he said he’d bring me tea. I’ve been waiting.”

“Mom, dad is—” you pause for a moment to think on your feet. You could either tell the truth, or a little white lie. You never know what to do. And either one comes with either guilt or sorrow. “Well, he’ll be here soon, I just wanted to come see you.”

“Oh okay…” she trails off, her eyes squinting at you once more with that same look of confusion on it, but then they drift towards Gojo. “Oh you’re a very handsome young man! You look just like my neighbor.”

Your eyes flicker up to Gojo, and he walks up to your side by your mom’s bed. “Yes, Mrs. l/n, I am your neighbor.”

“With the lemon tree!”

“The avocado tree,” you correct her with a small sigh. “And he’s my husband mom. And also our neighbor.”

“Oh I see I see…” she says, looking up at him, and in a moment that shocks you, she holds her hand up for him to take.

There’s a slight moment of surprise on his face too, but he accepts her frail hand in his, and you glance over to your mom to see her look at him with some look of peace on her face.

“Oh, sit down here, won’t you?” she tells him, and you both blink at her in a moment of hesitation.

He pulls a stool up to the side of the bed right next to you and takes a seat down onto it. Your mother holds his hand with both of hers now, soothing her palm over the back of it before she taps on it lightly.

“Oh, my little girl is very sweet. She would bring me flowers from the garden when she was,” she glances at you, confused once more, “well I remember her when she was so little but she looks…a little older now. Ah, but she would bring me such pretty flowers.”

Your heart aches in your chest. You never knew what version of you your mother would remember. Some days, you’re still supposed to be an angsty teenager that shuts doors in her face, some days you were just as you are right now, and other days, you were just her little girl. And it confused her, the image of not seeing you in the way that she remembers. In the only way she knew how.

“You’ll take good care of my sweet girl, won’t you?” she asks him.

And it knocks the wind out of you.

It drops your heart to the center of the earth.

The thought that, after so many moments where she doesn’t remember you, she still knows that you’re someone she wants to keep safe.

Your mouth gapes slightly, tears welling in your eyes and you try your best to blink them away, but you see Gojo’s hand slip out from being held by your mother’s hands, to instead use both of his to hold hers. Your eyes snap to his face, and you see that same earnest expression you’ve been growing used to seeing these days. 

“Yes,” he responds, eye contact level with hers, “I will.”

A small puff of air leaves your lips, a single tear streaming down your cheek and you quickly swipe your trembling fingers to remove any evidence of it before you huff out a shaky, “excuse me.” And then you’re standing up off the stool, and in a few hurried steps across the room as more tears continue to stream down your face, you make it to the door to push out into the suffocating air of the hallway.

It’s hard to breathe, huffs and puffs barely leaving your lips as you struggle to pull air into your lungs while you storm down the hallway at a fast pace, your heels clicking underneath you in a way that only sets you off further. Suddenly, all the sounds around you make you sick to your stomach, a wave of nausea washing over you, and your nose burns with the intensity of the tears that continue to stream down your face. A few hospice staff look at you with concerned expressions, and you eventually reach a heavy-duty door that leads you out into a secluded staircase hallway where the dim lighting serves to relax at least some of your senses, but you still feel like you’re about to pass out.

Even in the haze of your emotions, there’s this glimmer of a memory that comes to mind. One from when you were younger and you were pushed on the playground at school. You cried and cried and cried in your mother’s arms, but even then, you didn’t want her to baby you. You would say to her, I’m a big girl now! in that same way a child knows nothing of what it truly means to brave the world. 

That little girl had no idea that one day, there would be moments where she wouldn’t be remembered as her mother’s little girl anymore. 

No matter how old you grow, you will always be my little girl, your mother’s voice echoes to you, the feeling of her squeezing you in her arms as she holds your sobbing little form in hers casting a ghost sensation across your skin.

In a mother’s eyes, you’ll always be her baby.

And that’s why it hurts.

Because it’s all fake.

It’s phony.

It’s not real.

This arrangement you have with Gojo.

And if your mother were to die tomorrow, there would be no one to take care of her little girl anymore.

Not in the way she believes there will be.

Of all the white lies, this one pierces you straight through your heart in a way that leaves you gasping for air.

Amidst your whirlwind of thoughts, you hear the door push open harshly, and when you glance over, you see Gojo standing in this dimly lit hallway as he turns his head quickly to the left and sees you standing there.

“Hey,” he says, catching his breath as he lightly jogs up to you, “hey, hey, hey,” he repeats with more concern now when he sees the state you’re in, and he seamlessly pulls you into a hug, your cheek pressing against his chest that feels warm even through the fabric of his suit jacket and shirt, and that familiar scent of him completely engulfs you.

You sob quietly, wiping your snot on his tie and your tears on the felt fabric beside it, your hands balled into tiny fists at your chest, squeezed between the two of you. You feel him tuck your head under his chin and his arms wrap around you tighter. You don’t even realize it at first, but suddenly, it has become easier to breathe.

Then, you wail, and you cry, and you sob, because you don’t have the words to even explain how you feel, about not just this, but with everything, a buildup of everything that has been suffocating you in your life that just comes crashing down on you all at once.

“I know,” he says, his palm resting on the back of your head as he holds your face to his chest, his voice soothing in your ears while you sob until there’s nothing left to cry. “I know.”

You two stay like this for another minute or so as you come down from the cries, your remnant sniffling echoing in the hallway while you wipe more of your snot on his jacket. You make the first move to pull your face away from his chest, but he still keeps his arms wrapped around you when you look up at him.

With your gaze darting across his face, you take in the blue in his eyes. Eyes that are looking at you so softly it’s suddenly hard to breathe once more. And when those eyes flit to your lips, your mouth parts slightly as you two breathe in unison.

It’s possible that you could have dreamed the moment you saw him lean down slightly towards you, his eyes still set on your lips, but it didn’t matter because you’re pushing him away with strong fists before you can even register the thought in your head.

He lets go of you entirely, his eyes wide once more, and you glance down at your feet. 

A tender moment, just like on the roof, broken just because you can’t handle that—…that way, that intense way that he looks at you. New rule, no looking at me longingly like you want to kiss me. I won’t allow it.

“I want to go home,” you whisper, still examining your shoes. And you suddenly feel embarrassed that he had to see you this way. He’s supposed to be scared and intimidated by you, not holding you in his arms while you cry. 

He’s silent for a moment, but you can tell he’s searching for things to say. “You don’t want to say bye to your mom before we go?”

You swipe your palm against the wetness on your cheek. “No. I just want to go home.”

“y/n,” he tried to convince you.

You finally look up at him. “Please.”

He breathes in a few breaths as he studies the features of your face in a way that makes you feel so seen that it’s frightening. But he slowly nods, then says,

“Okay.”

.

.

.

.

.

[end of chapter 4]

a/n. hi friendsss i hope you enjoyed :'') yea like i said at the a/n in the beginning, this chapter is a slight off-tangent from last chapter, but ch5 will continue with a lot of the stuffs that were brought up in ch3. but yea i wanted to explore the whole process of emotions reader would go through putting her mom in hospice, since it kinda felt like a big thing, hence why it got its own chapter. aaa i hope to see you in the next one!! much love from me :''0

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[indulgentdaydream]

How do you think Jason Todd sleeps, like sleeping positions

I'm so glad you asked

also i'm treating this as x reader hope you don't mind

actually i'm going to go off on a tangent first

jason is trained to be as silent as possible. not to draw attention to himself when he doesn't need to. he may be built like a fucking unit/ a militarized fridge, but he knows how to be quiet

that's why i don't think that when he has nightmares that he's waking up screaming/flailing around/punching air. Sure, he's panicking, but he's so used to keeping that under wraps that the most he'll wake up with in a small gasp. maybe a jolt.

after he's awake, of course, is when the panicking starts, the heavy breathing, the sitting up, the pacing, the crying, what not.

(i'm speaking from my own experience. I have consistent nightmares. I've been raised to never make a sound as to not bother others. At most I wake up with a deep breath and pushing myself up onto my elbows.)

now that we have THAT out of the way.

jason, by himself, DEFINITELY spreads out wide on whatever surface he's sleeping on

that man is only sleeping when he's on the verge of passing out.

most times, before dating you, he would get back from patrol, shuck his helmet and armour off, then just belly flop onto the nearest, softest surface and be OUT for a minimum of six hours

sometimes it was the floor. safehouses aren't always furnished

poor guy would usually forget to brush his teeth, too

he meets you and within the next few days goes to the dentist for the first time in a while because he wants to look and be good so you'll like him back

baby had 16 cavities :(

ANYWAYS

with you? good luck moving

he's gotta be touching you in some way. whether he's fully wrapped around you, spooning you, head tucked into your hair/the back of your neck when it's cold, trying to both keep you warm and steal some of your warmth

or a simple hand on your stomach/back/arm/thigh when it's too hot to be fully cuddling

he just needs to know you're still there and that you didn't leave him in the middle of the night

he's insecure :( leave him alone

actually do the opposite marry that man and never let him go

occasionally will let you spoon him, but he doesn't necessarily like it because he feels like he's very closed to being suffocated

loves when you lay on his chest though! he can easily push you off if it gets too much, but for some reason it feels more weighted blanket than suffocation by pillow to the face.

let him lay on your chest as well.

maybe not all the way. he'll keep only half of his weight on you when doing so.

he's SUCH a stomach sleeper. only sleeps on his back when in unfamiliar places. easier to get up that way.

y'all have any kind of animal? you're coming home to find him napping with them wherever. bed? check. floor? more than once. if it's a dog, dog bed? you're chiding him because you now how filthy that thing can become.

he's a sleeperrrrr

let him sleep

help him get rid of his eyebags by giving him some warm milk and tucking him in

100% played with your hair one night while falling asleep and now needs to do it every night otherwise he has a hard time

[samuelsdean]

Stitch Me Up

pairing: dean winchester x reader

summary: for dean, every scrape, every gash, was a twisted plea for your touch.

genre: angst

word count: 0.5k

author's notes: i wrote this at 3 am on my notes app while simultaneously rewatching spn because i'm insane and i'm a huge advocate of touch-starved!dean.

THE METALLIC TANG OF BLOOD WAS DEAN'S CONSTANT UNPLEASANT FOREWARNING THAT DEAN HAD RETURNED—HE WAS HOME. Sprawled on the floor, another injury marring his flesh, and he sees you right there in front of him. He could see the anger in your eyes, could feel the fury that bubbles in your gut is ceaseless, a familiar dance with the ever-present terror.

For Dean, every scrape, every gash, was a twisted plea for your touch.

Dean loves it when you touch him, when you lay your hands gently on his skin, careful not to cause him more pain than what he is dealing with at the moment. He loves it when you clean his wounds while going off on another tangent as to how he should be more cautious—threatening him that next time, you would not be there to treat him; yet, every time, not one did you miss his homecoming, when he comes home bloodied, the first thing you do is come running and restoring him to full health. He craved your tirades, the harsh scoffs, and thinly veiled threats that were your flimsy shield against worry. Each rant was a desperate battle cry, a plea for him to be careful.

Yet, Dean could not help himself. He reveled in your ministrations, the gentle contrast to the fire of your anger.

Dean loves it when you tend to him because it is proof that you care.

And he craves it—craves you—your presence, your touch—everything. He thinks it is sickening how much he has grown to crave you. Because he thinks he does not deserve you, and he knows that the universe always tries to play a sick joke on him.

It was a warped version of his affection born from a life spent in the shadows. Love, for him, was a dangerous dance, a promise of heartbreak waiting to happen. People he cared about had a knack for disappearing, leaving him with the cold comfort of solitude. Hunting was a drifter's existence. A life with no room for roots or dreams. Letting someone in, and building a family, was a recipe for disaster.

It is a lonely life being a hunter. One could never have the chance to put down roots because there is always a monster to hunt, a demon to exorcise, and a case to solve. Loving someone and having a family is just a foolproof way of getting yourself hurt. Yet, here he was, craving the very thing he swore to avoid. It was a sickness, a yearning that gnawed at his soul.

Because the truth, the terrifying truth, was that Dean could not bear the thought of being truly alone.

The sting of disinfectant was a cruel reminder of his twisted reality. As you patched him up, his eyes, usually alight with mischief, held a touch of vulnerability. At that moment, Dean gave you a glimpse of his plea for something more than just mending—a desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, he could find a place in a world that felt increasingly fragile, right beside you.

But the question remained, a silent echo in the tense air: could you give him what he craved without sacrificing your own heart in the process?

[rumisgf]

DENKI BOYFRIEND HEADCANONS

summary: here’s some denki headcanons if he was your boyfie bcs i rlly love this boy sm and he don’t get enough love for my liking :[

warnings: college!au, suggestive, crack, feminine terms for reader used, black!reader ofc and always

✧ you’ve earned yourself a himbo gamer bf congrats

✧ denki is so loud about how much he loves you and he makes it very known that you’re his

✧ while it annoys people like bakugou when he constantly goes on tangents about you, it’s honestly such a green flag

✧ by nature, denki’s a very flirty person so you assumed you’d have to work that out with him a lot

✧ not only that but as denki got older, ladies (and boys) definitely started flirting with him first

✧ it definitely irked you when yall were js talking/in a “situationship”

✧ sometimes you genuinely wanted to rip the hair out of not only your scalp and his

✧ it was only because you wanted him so bad

✧ surprisingly tho, if you bring it up to him he stops immediately

✧ and when you do start dating he pretty much tunes out anyone who even tries to make a move on him

✧ he definitely owns one of those “i love my girlfriend” shirts and will genuinely style it

✧ overall, denki’s one of the most reassuring partners you could ask for after y’all make it official

“i promise i’m literally obsessed with you.”

“you’re the only one i see, princess”

✧ if yall see the way he talks in the show, he definitely is in tune with his feminine side

✧ and in the best way possible, the only reason he might have a lot of friends who are girls is because girls feel so comfortable around him

✧ and i’m a huge believer in the ‘denki with an older sister’ headcanon so that’s definitely where he gets it from

✧ he always helps you with outfits and he even knows how to do makeup to an extent

✧ the first time you were running late but still had to do your makeup so he just came over and did a perfect winged eyeliner, you were just like ‘…..someone cooked here.’

“kaminari….what the fuck.”

“what?”

✧ he always calls you “girl” when you say something weird or dumb and it really just slips off his tongue

✧ denki also loves gossiping. he’s so messy

✧ if he peeps something, you’re the first person he texts and y’all definitely make fun of people together

✧ when he’s gaming you’d think he’s one of those dudes who just completely ignores their girl

✧ which sometimes is a habit when you’re on the phone

✧ but usually, he’s able to have a full conversation with you and play the game with bakusquad on a seperate instagram or discord call (yes, he has this talent because of his adhd)

✧ besides he makes up for it when you get to take facetime photos of him with his camera set up, his bedroom lights off, the lights from his computer monitor/tv and his led lights highlighting his features so beautifully

✧ if you ever need his attention, he’ll get off in an instant with the excuse ‘i wanna go hang out with my girl’

✧ and he also loves gaming with you. it’s 50/50 though, sometimes he’ll let you win and sometimes he’ll absolutely obliterate you then laugh in your face

✧ it’s ok though because you get kisses after :)

✧ in person, kaminari’s always is touching you in some type of way

✧ whether it’s you sitting between his legs on the floor, his hand on your thigh while you sit next to him, occasionally hugging your waist if you stand up next to him

✧ his favorite though is definitely having you sit in his lap

✧ he’ll play with the hem of your pants or your shirt, wrap his arms around your waist while holding the controller, or let you bury your face in his neck and fall asleep

✧ speaking of, he loves when you fall asleep on him

✧ even around other people, he always likes pulling you on his lap or having your head rested on his shoulder

✧ both of y’all’s friends definitely take pictures whenever this happens but he honestly loves it and doesn’t care when bakusquad sends it into their groupchat

✧ he’s just like yeah, that’s my cute lil girlfriend what abt it?

✧ he really does think you’re so adorable and he loves babying you

✧ yk how the one episode where he said nejire was cute because she was kinda stupid (😭) ? yeah, he loves when you have little dumb moments because he likes to make fun of you and tell you how adorable you are

“awww, you’re so adorable baby!”

“IT’S NOT FUNNY!”

✧ besides, it does make him feel better for him to not always feel like the “dumb” one in the relationship, it makes yall more balanced out even if you are smarter than him

✧ he also really likes flustering you. he’ll grab your belt loop, let his hands go a bit too low when you hug him, randomly pull you onto his lap, give you kisses all over your face, and purposefully stare into your eyes while you talk

✧ though, he does equally enjoy being babied. he loves when you play with his hair, laying his head in your lap, and being little spoon when y’all cuddle

✧ which is often the case unless you’re laying your head on his chest, his only other favorite cuddling position other than you being big spoon

✧ he loves playing guitar for you and if you can sing, he’ll play a song to have you sing the lyrics along with him

✧ denki is just a music lover in general, it’s often what’s in the background if y’all are making out or just chilling together

✧ if you like dying your hair, he will practically beg to help you do it because he thinks it’s a great bonding experience

✧ he’ll even dye a strip of his hair to match yours

✧ based on the ova where the big three were playing as villains and class 1-a were the heroes, i like to think denki was one of the first out of his friends to learn how to drive

✧ so he definitely was eager to make you his passenger princess. he loves taking you out to eat, driving you home, picking you up from places, and taking you shopping

✧ even if he barely has the money, he’ll spoil the hell out of you and (sometimes you gotta remind him to be responsible with his money 😭)

✧ his lock screen is definitely a picture of you in his passenger seat or you holding his hand while he’s driving

✧ he loves showing you off and he puts all your instagram posts on his story within seconds, and he will spam your comments

✧ he’ll also convince you to do tiktoks with him

✧ his favorite dates are at arcades, he just loves having fun with you and watching you get competitive with all the games

✧ he also loves when there’s a photobooth and will practically drag you to take cute pictures with him, which he’ll later put in his room on full display

✧ in general he takes tons of pictures of you and you take up a lot of his storage, his phone is really on its last leg.

✧ this also means he as the worst bangers of you imaginable. his birthday story posts are lethal.

✧ overall dating him is like having a built in best friend, except yall kiss a lot

✧ 10/10 boyfie

@ rumisgf

[fallstaticexit]

Prev / Next / Beginning / Pillowfort

AN: heads up, next post is NSFW so it will be broken up into "two parts" (even though it's one post). First part is the SFW part which will post on tumblr as normal, and the rest will be on Pillowfort which will be linked to the post. I'll drop a formal TW/CW before the post drops tomorrow he he

Transcript under the cut

Transcript:

Nancy Narrates: [There was a certain feeling that arose within me when I saw her name on properties around the city; it stirred a mix of both anger and desire]

Nancy Narrates: [If I was going to revel in the satisfaction of her loss to me, I knew I would have to put in twice the work, even if it came at a price]

-

Geoffrey: Go, Johnny! Go! Keep pushing!

Bob: You got it, kid! Bring it home!

Geoffrey: YEEEAAH! That’s my boy! That’s my son!

Bob: Whoa! Kid’s a natural athlete!

Jonathan: I-I made it? I made it! I did it!

Jonathan: Mom! Mom, I made my first goal! Mom!

Nancy: I guaranteed to Mayor Dreamer that I could cut cost 20%. We have 15 days left before the bid is awarded. We need to make this happen!

-

Malcolm: Mommy, come look at my sketches! I made a big house, just like you-

Nancy: I can’t keep burning daylight waiting for answers- one second. Malcolm, not now. Mommy is busy.

Malcolm: [whines] But you’re always busy! I want you to look at it right now!

Nancy: [groans] Please, no whining. Spare Mommy for a moment, please? Give me an hour.

Malcolm: [huffs] One hour!

Nancy: One hour.

Malcolm: It’s been exactly one hour, lady! Mommy? Heeyy...are you sleeping?

-

Nancy: She thinks she can best me at my own game? I’ve prepared my whole life for this, I refuse to let some second rate nothing firm challenge me.

Nancy: And I’ve research her work, her designs are horrid. She’s a brutalist. Of course she is. Anyone can put no effort into a tacky, soulless desolate building and slap a sale price on it. It requires no talent which she clearly lacks.

Geoffrey: Nance. [huffs] Listen, I love hearing about your day, but when I asked how you would like to celebrate our 10 year anniversary, you said you'd be busy with the Dreamer Project, which I understand, but when I asked could we make arrangements after, you went on a tangent about Lily Feng for 45 minutes.

Nancy: D-did I? ...I’m sorry.

Geoffrey: I know I married a passionate woman. It’s just, you have to find a balance with these things. You have to make room for the boys and for me.

Geoffrey: Johnny is feeling sore about you missing his big shot at his game.

Nancy: But I didn’t miss it. I was there!

Geoffrey: There’s being there, and then there’s being there, you know?

Nancy: God, I’m making such a mess of this. I’ll make it up to him. Perhaps... we can make a thing of it, our anniversary. We can take a trip with the boys.

Geoffrey: I’d love that. Baby, I don’t mean to make you feel bad-

Nancy: No, you were right to. I’m getting too carried away.

Geoffrey: [chuckles] I don’t know why you’re so worried, we all know you’ll win.

From: Nancy Landgraab (Nancy@LCorp.net) 3 more days until I’m awarded the bid. I may have a janitorial position open for you if you ask me nicely for it.

From: Lily Feng (l.feng@LE.com) Up so late thinking about me, are you? I guess we’ll see who ends up begging on their knees for work, Landgraab.

-

Assistant: Mrs. Landgraab, the site manager from Tomarang returned your call. He’s on line one. He also has his translator on the line as well.

Nancy Narrates: [I was going to win. Fortunately for me, money was a language spoken everywhere and I had plenty of it]

Lily: [speaking in Tomarangi]

Victor: I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.

Lily: [scoffs, laughs] More important than the needs of our clients here?

Victor: It’s about the Dreamer Project and the Landgraabs.

Victor: The contractors pulled out. They were paid off.

Lily: Fuck! This cannot happen, Victor! The fucking proposal is due in 24 hours! Where the hell are we going to get the cheap labor and materials?!

Victor: We can’t! We’re screwed!

Lily: So... so she won? Is that it?

Victor: Won? Are you serious? Damn it, Lily! You and this- this game of yours will ruin us! We needed this!

Lily: [murmurs] She- actually beat me?

[inbabylontheywept]

The Condom Bomber

The crux of the story is Brother Dean. Brother Dean was…is…a hate preacher. Red or blue, everyone agreed on that. His origins and his motivations, those were a little more mysterious. Different groups had their own legends. I had a class with a guy that was part of the campus pro-life movement, and the tale he gave me is the one that I give the most credence to. According to him, Brother Dean had started out as a “normal” pro-life preacher. He’d gone around campus, led parades, given speeches… And then he’d gotten punched in the face.

This led to a lawsuit against the school. Something about failing to provide adequate protection? The main result was that he got something like half a mil. Half a mil is an incredible amount if you’re still working, but he’d tried to use the money to fund a sort of pro-life career, and it had just… trickled down. Ten years later he was running dead low on funds, and had taken to the particularly dumb strategy of trying to get punched in the face again. You know. For economic reasons. It had become kind of a vicious cycle: He’d started off saying some objectionable shit to try and goad someone into taking the punch. The worse the shit he said was, the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, and the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, the less he had to lose by saying really objectionable shit. Throw in two years of living on ramen, and he was so desperate to get punched that he was quoting the Westboro Baptists. If you know, you know. The pro-life group, to their credit, hated him the most out of anyone. They viewed him as the ultimate sellout, someone who was actively making their positions and beliefs look worse by the day, solely for his own enrichment. The other conservative groups held him in the same regard. The rest of the campus hated him for simpler reasons. It would be difficult to find anyone more detested anywhere else on site. Brother Dean’s antithesis was the Trojan Warrior. TW was a normal student by day, but maybe once a month or so he’d don his hoplite armor and roam around, handing out free condoms. Trojan condoms. It was kind of his shtick. Between the costume, and the whole character that he had going on, most people didn’t really recognize his alter ego. I myself am pretty good with faces, so one day I noticed he was behind me in the foodcourt and decided to thank him by paying for his smoothie. Small tangent, but if you’re looking to get good stories, buying lunches for interesting people works like magic. TW decided that he was going to thank me for thanking him by giving me something like 10 feet of condom roll. I was mortified, aggressively single, and on SSRI’s. He was not sure how many of those were permanent. I wasn’t either. He wound up giving me just a handful, and said that if nothing else, they could probably be used as water balloons. I accepted. Who doesn’t like water balloons?

I finished my lunch with the warrior and left, considering targets for the "balloons". I passed by Brother Dean near the main commons and had my lightbulb moment. I spent a few minutes watching him from a distance, trying to find the optimal angle to get him without getting caught on camera (he always had someone filing in the background, it was a necessary thing for his hopeful future lawsuit). The time delay was useful for helping me realize that it really wasn't worth it. The sun had been bearing down so hard that the glue in my shoes had melted, and getting him wet would be a favor that day. 

So, mildly disappointed, I shelved my dream and left. 

A week later the monsoons hit. I left one class and ran to a campus computer commons to try and get some shelter and study between classes. Just before I got through the door, I saw Brother Dean, umbrella in hand, setting up his speaker and mic. He wasn't technically allowed this far into campus (the commons were owned by the city) but he'd gone to where his audience was and security was probably holed up somewhere cozy. I could hardly blame them. 

I made it up to the second floor and started studying when the mic picked up. All glass buildings are not very soundproof. He was loud, and he was annoying, and he was outside a library, under a balcony, and-

And I had condoms. Water balloon condoms. 

And he was under a balcony. 

I put my laptop away, pulled out my condom roll, and went to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure how big a condom could actually stretch, so I just kept filling it until it was about the size of basketball. Maybe a smaller watermelon? And thus armed, I waddled my way out into the halls. I cannot emphasize enough just how unsubtle this was. I was cradling this big, overfilled condom like some sort of phallic ghost baby, and it was so heavy that I sort of had to squat as I went. People saw me. Lots of people saw me. I passed by one room full of computer science students, all learning C++, and three of them waved at me. And I waved back in that my-arms-are-full-but-I’m-excited-to-see-you-too way, where you jut your wrist up a little bit and flap your hand around excitedly. I did, eventually, make it to the balcony. The building’s high ceilings made the second-floor thing kind of a misnomer: I was easily forty feet up. I scooched my way to the edge, and the view I had… it was perfect. Brother Dean was directly underneath, thank God. If he’d been even seven or eight feet out, I’m not sure if I could’ve shotput the condom-bomb far enough to hit him directly. Better yet his cameraman was only a few feet away from him, far too close to catch any action going up 40 feet above. I managed to wrestle the payload onto the balcony, and with a gentle push, I sent it and Dean to destiny. I realized that I’d made a mistake almost as soon as the condom began to fall. You know that sound that bombs make in cartoons, that long drawn out whistle? The condom made that sound. I had a second education in the seriousness of my mistake when the condom hit Dean’s umbrella. It did not pop. Of course it didn’t pop. I had no experience with condoms, I swear to you, I promise, I did not know how much they could stretch. You can fit your whole leg into them. You can fit them over whole park benches. A gallon and a half of water was nothing compared to that. It broke Dean’s umbrella. It hit the top, and it snapped the stem like a twig, and then-

Violence. Unspeakable violence. It clipped Dean’s shoulder and stretched down to his knees before recoiling back to its original shoulder height. It did not bounce. It floated in space, no wasted energy in the collision. One hundred percent of the kinetic energy, all 3300 Joules of it, were discharged into this sad wretch of a man. He did not collapse. There was no time for that. He rotated on his axis. It was as if the hand of God had reached down and grabbed him about his waist, only to twist. In a fraction of a second, his head filled the space where his ass had been and his ass filled the space where his head had been, and then his cheek, carried by the shuriken motion of his body, slammed into the pavement with a noise like Shaq slam dunking a porkchop. Maybe wetter.

He did not move.

I panicked.

I want to make it clear: I did not mean to assault this man. I meant to get him wet and embarrassed. But I also have to confess that this was a beating. Mike Tyson himself can only put about 1600 Joules into one of his punches, and if he hit me I would bounce off five walls before I fell. I would not wish 3300 Joules upon anyone.

I walked into the building and sat myself in the back of the C++ class. The people next to, to my immense and eternal gratitude, did not question why I was wet.

A minute later, Brother Dean stormed into the building with his microphone.

He yelled. He screamed. He hollered. He informed the entire world that he had been assaulted, with a condom, by someone on the second floor. I was ecstatic that he was alive. 

Every person in that class knew who had brought this hell upon them. Every single one of them knew it was me. And if I’d done this to someone else, some Steven Crowder, some Ben Shapiro, someone would’ve thrown me to the wolves. It would have only taken one person in that room of sixty. But Brother Dean was hated by everyone, literally everyone, and so the entire class sat in silence.

Some of that silence was gleeful, and some of it was bored, and some of it, a very small amount, was directly disapproving, but even the disapproving silence carried an understanding. A note of, “Yes, yes, that was very irresponsible, and you should not do that again, but who could blame you? Something needed to happen. Not that something, but…something.”

Security could be given grace to ignore the man when it was raining, and he was just outside the building, but they were not given such grace when he was inside with a microphone. Just a few short minutes later, a golfcart pulled up, and he was summarily marched out. There was maybe a minute of silence after that before the professor announced that his class was not open to visitors.

I left. He’d made his point.

It was a few weeks before I saw Brother Dean again, and his black eye still hadn’t healed all the way when I did. He was, however, still preaching the same old things as always. Percussive maintenance works better on vacuum tubes than human brains. I will say that he definitely made a point to stay away from balconies after that. And the next time it rained, I actually went out to watch him put his speaker and his mic into the back of a wagon and wheel it off the campus.

It appeared that he’d developed some opinions about the kind of weather he was willing to preach hate in.

[achocosun]

all I need is the air that I breathe, and to love you ft. lee mark !

𖹭⠀࣭⠀⋆ genre ; non-idol!mark × fem reader. fluff, pure unadulterated fluff. established relationship au. use of pet names (for her: baby, pretty girl / for him: lovie). just a short drabble to get used to posting on tumblr. ugh this turned tooth-rottingly sweet.

𖹭⠀࣭⠀⋆ word count ; 1.4k (this was supposed to be shorter but well, i got carried away haha)

𖹭⠀࣭⠀⋆ warning(s) ; none that i see ^^

𖹭⠀࣭⠀⋆ notes ; divider by @mewryn (it's so pretty oml)

laughter. the sound of laughter had to be your favorite music that drifted leisurely throughout the apartment.

be it hushed chuckles over a movie or a funny tiktok your boyfriend sent over to you, the rambunctious cackling that tailed your group of friends when they'd indulged a little too much in drinks after dinners that often than not happened in the home you shared with mark–you cherished them all the very same.

before you moved into the flat on the tenth floor, the highest any residential building went in the street equidistant to both of your workplaces, you had some doubts. mostly concerning how eerily quiet it tended to get even with the faint honks of traffic in the heart of seoul.

you could owe it to your upbringing in the city, never once truly alone despite how easily it was slipping into a faraway headspace. you still did that sometimes but after meeting mark, the use of your headphones that'd found purchase against your ears got lesser and lesser. until you could go days just listening to his little tangents.

of course, it was more because of the fact that you adored how his whole face brightened as he shared with you something, anything he held dear. the way his soft brown eyes twinkled as he animatedly explained his point made you lose all sense of reality.

once in sophmore year of college, he had stopped for half a minute and then chuckled at you staring at him in awe. it had taken him waving his hand before you and a "hello, earth to _______? do i have something on my face?" for you to realize your embarrassing predicament.

only mark didn't seem to find it odd. no, on the contrary he found the gesture endearing. he had that tendency to ramble, everyone told him as much. but for you to listen to every word and hang onto it infused a swell in his heart, a giddy feeling he honestly did not want to suppress.

with mark, everything came in it's most simple form. relationships were not supposed to be easy, each one had it's own complications as did yours. but with him you knew you would always try to work through every rough patch because your boyfriend was willing just as much.

you had put an official label on your relationship in junior year, and not being strangers to the amount of teasing that would ensue from your rather large circle of friends, you had decided to keep it lowkey, letting them find out on their own and ease into it.

but with your streak of not keeping your hands–or lips for that matter—off each other, it took them two weeks flat to figure it out. but that's on johnny and his inability to knock on doors as he strutted into mark's dorm as if it was his own, oblivious to you both tangled in each other's arms on the small sofa pushed against the wall beside the balcony.

to your surprise, no noticeably grand change came with the reveal. in johnny's words, you and mark had always been sort of touchy with each other even as friends. he told you to keep the make-outs to a minimum and nobody else would know for sure.

after graduation, mark had mustered up the courage to ask you to move in with him. he had put a lot of thought into it—scoured for decently sized apartments, looked for help from his older friends and even went as far as to ask your parents for their opinion.

of course, the one answer that mattered was yours but even the fact that he asked your parents made you feel elated. and it definitely earned him their seal of approval.

the hesitant question had followed a meal of chinese takeout for dinner as you leaned your head on his shoulder, watching the movie playing in the living room of his childhood home, an arm wrapped around his waist. you had noticed his skittishness all night and it all came to a head as he played with the ends of your hair.

"i was thinking", mark started, taking your hum as approval to continue while you lowered the volume of the tv. "and seriously you can take as much time to think or even say no, i won't force you."

this time you turned to face him fully, a frown creeping up to your face. "what is it, markie? is something wrong?"

"i– well..." he took a sharp breath, eyes never once meeting your own. "i was thinking maybe you can move in with me?"

the silence that followed only plummeted his heart further down his stomach. mark moved an inch away from you, grabbing the remote from your grasp while shaking his head. "never mind. it's way too soon to think of that stuff, right? that's was a sudden, stupid ques—"

"don't say that. nothing you said is stupid." regaining your voice, you shifted closer to him, your grip sliding up his arm and towards nape as you rubbed the area. his shoulders slouched visibly, irrate heartbeat slowing just a little.

you smiled up at him, deft fingers smoothing across his across his brow and finally resting against his cheeks. it took a little tug for him to finally face you, mouth opening and closing as he wracked his brain for the appropriate words to find him when you spoke again.

"i would love to move in with you, mark."

as much as you loved mark when he's talking, sometimes you took great pleasure in rendering him speechless.

as quick as lightning he held your wrists with widened eyes, stopping the advances of your hands down his perfectly sculpted face. you brushed his knee softly as his adam's apple bobbed with a dry gulp.

mark found it hard to even formulate a thought, let alone speak. just when he'd started believing all of this was a bad idea, horrendous really, your admission nearly made his brain short-circuit.

"woah, wait— no. what?" he stumbled over the words eliciting a giggle out of you. "run that by me again, baby. i don't think i heard you correctly."

swatting his shoulder playfully, you took liberty to throw a leg over his, straddling his lap. "you heard me just right the first time, lovie. i think we should do it, move in together. i mean, we have somewhat stable jobs and it would stop us from inconveniencing your parents or mine. honestly, i love your mother but i got goosebumps when she winked at me on the way out."

mark managed a chuckle, rubbing up and down the sides on your legs on either side of him. this had been your arrangement after college. date nights in either of your houses meant the parents always had to leave unless they wanted to walk in on their not-so-little-anymore kids doing anything reserved for behind closed doors.

suddenly, you found yourself being pulled forwards into his chest as his ecstasy evolved into child-like laughter–carefree and unbound. his arms tightened around your form as you succumbed to your own joy.

mark whispered against your hair between pressing kisses to the crown of your head, "i love you, you know that?"

you peeked up at him, cheeks starting to hurt from the wide smile that nothing in the world could dampen. "do you?"

"mhmm. and now that we will live together, i'll remind you everyday, pretty girl. over and over."

sometimes, it scared you how dependent you had gotten on this one single person. finding your chest surging with pride in his every minute success, just as it ached when he hurted.

mark looked at you like you had hung the stars in the sky. then again, you were sure you'd visit every length to do just that if he so much as asked.

and that night had brought you to this one, sitting against the armrest of the loveseat surrounded by your friends, legs thrown over your boyfriend's as he held you close. you knew he would never let you fall but every fiber in your being appreciated the closeness regardless.

you smiled at haechan's dramatic recounting of some incident in the pub last night, finding comfort in the fingers thrumming to an unknown beat against your hips.

as your eyes wandered to every occupant of the cozy living room of your apartment—yours and mark's—you couldn't help but thank your lucky stars for this chance.

because until you have this little life, this warm, lived-in home, your friends, family and most importantly him by your side, nothing could make you a stranger to the sense of contentment.

© ACHOCOSUN '2024 on tumblr

[spncvr]

HIII I kinda suck at writing so maybe you could take my idea and use your amazing writing skills and make something of it? (Only if you want ofc!!) hear me out yk how Spencer rambles about random facts and everything at the bau imagine if he had a partner (was a profiler as well) and that knew a lot about musics or movies and would ramble about it to him?

Ignore this if it sounds stupid 😭

rambles | s. reid

summary: you talk a lot, spencer doesn't mind.

pairing: spencer reid x reader

warnings: okay so idk if this counts as gn!reader?? but reader wears a dress lol. drinking, and again my terrible english,, lmk if i missed anything!

a/n: hey beautiful!! this deffo does not sound stupid i had fun writing it but this is so bad im sorry i didn't do u justice *crying emoji* also im so sorry this took me forever to finish LMAOOO

masterlist

YOU CAN FEEL it.

In your spine, in your ears. The song’s quiet but it had you in its grip, tight and firm—music’s always been like that to you. It didn’t matter if it was Hendrix, Queen or even Chopin; it has always been the one thing to make you stop dead at your feet. It’s a feeling you can’t quite put your finger on. There wasn’t a word in the English language that could possibly describe how it made you feel. Perhaps, you think humorously, you ought to learn another language, or two. 

You’re wearing this dress. This sweet, white silk thing that sweeps against your knees each time you take a step. The taste of expensive wine sits against your lips, lingering. The glass rests idly around your hand and your grip is careful. Expensive red wine and a cheap dress don't usually mix well together. 

“You okay?” 

You smile, teeth and all. Spencer who’s found his place next to you, furrows his eyebrows worry painted against his soft features. He looks tired. But he’s here, with the rest of the team; he always is.

“Fine,” you say, blasé. “You, Dr. Reid?”

His eyebrows raise slightly, “Yeah, fine.” then, “nice dress.” It’s a small whisper. 

You brush your tongue against the wine on your lips. The comment catches you off guard—especially when he’s dressed like this and looks at you like that. So, all that leaves your wine-stained lips is a small: “Oh.” then, because you remember your manners you say, “Thank you.”

The song changes, and Spencer smiles, “The songs—” he says “they’re nice.”

“I—” You stop yourself from rambling because really, they’re more than nice. It’s Elle Fitzgerald. She’s—Her voice, her instrument is clear as a bell, with diction that’s almost impossible to misunderstand. Her rhythm is— well it’s, you can set her as the metronome for her own band. Which, well, isn’t exactly easy to do. The way she’s able to scoop and bend her pitches with such precision is, beyond, nice. So the song, really it’s, more than nice, it’s a masterpiece it’s—

“Uh, yeah, s’nice.” you pause, “More than nice, really.”

Spencer smiles, amused, “More than nice?” he echoes.

You clear your throat, “It— yeah. I mean, it’s Fitzgerald, you know…”

“I don’t know,” he says simply.

Figures, you think. “No, yeah. She’s, like, got this tone in her voice, you know? And it’s like she’s the one leading the band— with the rhythm, I mean. As in like, instead of the drummer, which isn’t exactly easy to do. You know, actually, some people say she — she’s got the voice of an angel. Or something along the lines; can’t really remember and—” you pause, slightly embarrassed at how much you’ve been talking.

“Er, sorry,” you mumble sheepishly. The edge of your shoes had suddenly become increasingly interesting. “didn’t mean to go on a tangent.”

Spencer kisses his teeth, and you look up to find him grinning. “No, uh,” he scratches the edge of his eyebrow. “You don’t need to apologize for talking about something you like.” He seems to think about his next words as he brushes his hand against your arm. It sends a shiver that lingers longer than the touch itself. Spencer Reid could be so cruel sometimes. 

“I love listening to you talk.”

Your dress ends up wine-stained, anyway.

as usual my inbox is always open for requests (or just to talk lol) but it will take 192374 years to actually finish it,, reblogs are soo appreciated !! (u guys r always so kind idk why im asking for them) so is feedback btw!! (despretely in need of some)

[c0smiclatt3]

university!aventurine headcanons

☾₊ ⊹ TAGS: sfw, academic rivals :)), x reader

AN: time to university-beam aventurine :) it's been a minute because i've been away for a long while on holiday... forgive me if this isn't very good.

A business kid - and an infuriatingly good one. Some students whisper that he's only here because he got nepo babied into this school by his adoptive mother, a big figure in one of the biggest multinational corporations. Not that he needed the nepotism, though, Aventurine's mind is sharp as a knife.

He could charm even the most stubborn of professors. With him, once again, the rumors fly: some say that he must have dangled the seniority of his adoptive mother over one prof's head for a grade bump. Others say he must have been taught some sort of obscure hypnosis or subliminal messaging technique.

Color coordinated stationery and an entire Apple ecosystem. Of course.

Much to the disappointment of his group project members, he has a tendency to just go MIA for extended periods of time. Leaving messages on seen but otherwise unreachable and going on his own random tangents. Regardless, he always gets the job done, so there was no point complaining.

He's not a front row keener, he would never be that desperate for the professor's attention. No, much to the annoyance of the front row-ers, he lounges in the back of the lecture hall, speaking only to remark about some flaw in their answer, and when he did he always spoke as if it were the most obvious thing - and many times it was.

What probably infuriates them more is that it all comes so naturally to him - sitting in his seat there in the back with his arm propped up on the backboard, head propped on the palm of his other hand he counters every argument with ease. Even when he seems to be slacking off, whenever he’s cold-called he knows the exact answer.

Even if he didn’t, he’d still talk his way in circles until he’s gaslit you into thinking he’s right anyway.

You were a hard worker infuriated by the ease through which he made his way through the academy. It was all handed to him on a silver platter - you had to fight tooth and nail. One day you find yourself sitting beside him in the back, forced out of your front row seat by some other keener. You crane your head to try to listen to the prof's lecture but can't stand the flickering coin twisting through his hand. The way he twirls his monogrammed pen. It made your blood boil. "Can you quit doing that?" you finally snapped one day. "Am I distracting you?" He flashed you an even brighter grin that made you want to slap that smirk right off his pretty face. You scoff and open your mouth to retort, but the professor scolds you for the ruckus, calling you out specifically. When they return to their lecture you hear Aventurine hum in amusement. And so the bitter rivalry began.

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AN: i hope this was alright! it seems a lot longer than my old ones. honestly it's been hard to get back into casually writing after being on holiday for 2 weeks lol.

[junowritings]

What about romanced Astarion reacting to the normally goody-goody Tav revealing that they stole the special potion from Araj before they left. He discovers this because Tav gives it to him as soon as they are out of sight from the blood merchant.

Oh I absolutely love this idea. Though writing this made me realize I need to put Astarion in my party more often. Went off on a bit of a tangent but I do hope you enjoy~!

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♡ Oh, the things we do for love, ey?

♡ Astarion plays nice with others in the interest of survival, and he’s made no attempts to hide that fact from you since you had really begun to bond. You on the other hand are akin to a bleeding heart, all too often going out of your way to do what you thought was right even if it meant putting yourself in harm's way as a result. At the beginning that attitude seemed pitiful - he figured it would simply end up getting you killed later down the line. And yet you’d rise, time and time again making an example of the morals that you set and surviving every encounter stronger than before. Even if your morals didn’t always align, he respected that tenacity.

♡ Even after you’d managed to worm your way into his very heart, the pair of you have butted heads more than once on the matter; at the high and mighty goody two shoes act that you face the world with. All of the reminders about doing good deeds for the sake of being good, not stealing from just anyone nor going behind others backs rummaging through personal effects for answers or loot. Not to mention all of that time spent helping others and listening to their plights as though they were your own. Honestly, darling, you really do make things harder on yourself by playing into other people’s sob stories. 

♡ Astarion never suspected that the encounter at Moonrise tower could have changed anything.

♡ He’s uncharacteristically quiet as you leave the room together after dealing with Araj, but that’s because inside Astarion is absolutely seething. A familiar feeling of disgust he’d longed hoped to quash down burns a hole deep within his chest, opening old mental wounds as though freshly torn asunder upon his flesh. He’s mad at that damned drow; the way she looked down upon him, using honeyed words that he knew were a damn farce because for fucks sake he’d been using the same tactics for well over a century. That look, that calculated appraisal as Araj gauged what the vampire spawn could offer her in exchange for her potion made his skin crawl, all too familiar with the look that spoke volumes of his value - as a means to serve her own whims and not an actual person.

♡ And then, when he’d shown reluctance, she’d turned to you, as though you’d reign him in and get him to bend to your will like some fanged pet you kept on a tight leash. Far from the truth, of course, but the lack of autonomy that Astarion felt watching the pair of you converse about him as if he wasn’t even there had him clenching his teeth hard enough that the ache in his jaw persists long afterwards.

♡ There had been a swell of satisfaction when you put your foot down on the matter, nipping her demand in the bud with a firm reminder that he had already refused her request - there was no more to discuss. The drow had gotten bored after that, uninterested in further discussion with her own desires now off the table, and Astarion was all too happy to be out of there as you trailed a few paces behind.

♡ Astarion stands by his choice, but another part of him kicks himself for turning down the reward. A moment of discomfort, to give up a piece of himself for a potion that could prove invaluable was all it could have taken. He had done it before - done it for centuries to placate that vile beast he once served - why would this be any different? A transactional relationship, one that could have given you a leg up in the battles ahead, and he’d refused. 

♡ He’s still stewing in these thoughts when a nudge breaks him from his reverie, a gentle brush of your fingers against his hand as you move into step beside your partner. Your touch is warm yet he prickles as though he’s been burned, pupils akin to pinpricks as he looks at you from the corner of his eye. He’s measuring you, for a moment. Takes in the brow furrowed and questioning eyes - not pity, concern - trying to gauge how he’s feeling. It’s a discussion for later, so Astarion dons that usual placating smile and turns to you, fully prepared to pull a spiel about that whole conversation being a waste of your perfectly good time. And then he notices.

♡ His ears perk up at a noise, the gentle slosh of something moving. Crimson eyes dart down to the source, to the hand you’d touch him with. It’s not empty - no, fingers curl tight around the corded neck of a familiar glass green bottle, and your nudge this time is more insistent as you press the bottle into the palm of his hand, urging him to take it. You relinquish the bottle to his hold, pale hands taking the glass and stirring up the liquid inside as he brings it up to get a better look. Surely this isn’t…

♡ But then sure enough you smile, a mischievous twinkle in your eye that makes his own widen as you shrug.

♡ “For you. Figured she didn’t need it anymore; since she just left it lying out in the open and all.”.

♡ The laugh comes before Astarion can stop himself - loud and unabashed from the sheer absurdity of it all. You? Actually stealing something? And for him no less! And they say that romance is dead, yet here you are wooing him one stolen novelty at a time. 

♡Hells he hadn’t even noticed that you’d swiped the damned thing - had it been when you’d turned the blood merchant down? Or back when she’d had her sights set on him? He doesn’t care for the answer, not really. He’s more impressed that you pulled it off, but Astarion certainly doesn’t miss the irony of it all. His lovely partner, casting aside your usual goody nature in favor of stealing something and getting one up on the woman who’d disrespected your lover. As if he wasn’t fond enough of you already - this was just another lovely little reminder of the lengths you’d go for him.

♡ His smile for a moment is all teeth, shoulders still shaking with the last dregs of laughter - which damn if he didn’t need - as he brings his free arm to curl around your side. The kiss pressed to your cheek is quick, vibrating with the appreciative hum that passes the spawn’s lips when you lean a little into him. Once he pulls away Astarion keeps his free hand looped around your side, the other holding the bottle up and giving the contents a dramatic little shake to show off.

♡ Perhaps he’ll keep this as a little secret; or maybe he’ll spend the rest of that night flaunting this potion teasing you for your first act of casual thievery. Whatever the outcome it’s worth the grin he flashes you as he gives a conspiratory wink and declares.

♡ “Oh my dear. We’ll make a fine miscreant of you yet!”