#i ask this shit in jest but we really all did play into this shit back in the day huh

[lorelune]

of carnage

|| blade x reader || E/18+ || shared toxicity, band au || wc: 8.8k  || ao3 ||

You and Blade are mutually assured destruction. You know this, and yet it does not stop you from chasing after him.

minors, antis and ageless blogs dni

notes: well hello :3c this fic is part of a trade i did for some LOVELY selfship art with MOST BELOVED @rabbbitseason!! they asked for toxic bladie and reader and i come to DELIVER 🙏 setting and au are heavily inspired by my time in my local music scene and all of the 💀that came with it. i'm glad it can be all get repurposed into blade smut 🫶 THANK YOU!! to bitti for giving me so many fun wants to craft around!! THANK YOU!!! as well to @ofmermaidstories and @2kmps for beta reading!! now, please mind the tags on this one and enjoy <3

CW: dark content, band au, dubcon, pain during sex, bleeding during sex, toxic relationship between blade and reader, angst, hurt/a little comfort, manipulation, gaslighting by blade and the reader @ themselves, face slapping, spanking, spitting, reader smokes cigarettes, reader drinks, self destructive reader, past blade/dan heng, implied unrequited jing yuan/dan heng, kernels of jing yuan/reader

“Are you going to the gig tonight? Fu Xuan asks as if the answer isn’t obvious already.

You crane your neck back to look at her from your roost in front of your full-length mirror. Your knees dig into the carpet and the tips of your fingers are tinged with black. You’ve spent the better part of the last thirty minutes attempting to perfectly smudge the smoky line of eyeliner on your lower lash line. A tube of dark, red lipstick (his color) and sticky gloss rests on the fluffy carpet beside your folded knees.

“Of course.” You can’t make yourself smile, not when your stomach is in knots. “Are you?”

“I should if you are going,” she huffs, leaning against your doorframe. “You need a chaperone.”

(She’s probably right.)

“Please tell me you’re joking.” You grimace and turn away, unable to meet her gaze. She’s too good at reading you. “I’ll be just fine on my own, thank you very much.”

“... He’s playing, isn’t he?”

“I mean, yeah.” You rub more aggressively at the widening smears around your eyes. “But that’s not the only reason.”

“Sure.”

“It’s not, really.” You meet her gaze with a glance in the mirror. It’s hard to keep, her stare intense and full of judgment— (And worry.) “There’s a bunch of good bands tonight. There’s a touring group— all the way from Pier Point.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You have no faith in me, do you?” You pout, keeping your voice light, and hoping it comes off as a bit of a jest.

When you finally turn to face Fu Xuan fully, she dips to sit beside you, on her own folded knees. She plucks your soon-to-be-worn lipstick off the ground and uncaps it, just long enough to see the color, before sighing and closing it once more with a pop. 

“Not really, no.” Fu Xuan leans against your side, cheeks puffing out. “Not when it comes to him—”

“You can say his name, you know.” You smear chalky highlighter on your cheeks with your fingertips. “It’s not a slur. He’s just some guy.”

“‘Some guy’,” She groans. “If he’s really just some guy, why don’t we skip the gig tonight and stay home? We can order in some nice food, and I could invite Qingque.”

“... I—”

“You know that going is a bad idea, right?” Fu Xuan sighs. “We’ve gone over this before.”

“I’m aware of that.” You can’t suppress your scowl any longer, turning to face her. “Blade is fine—”

“He treats you like shit.”

“He treats everyone like that.”

“That doesn’t make it better. If anything, that makes it worse. You deserve better.” Fu Xuan sounds genuinely upset. “And you can do better. Easily. With literally anyone else, even if you find them at one of your nasty house shows. Try entertaining the thought?”

“You don’t have to be so—” You turn to her, fist balling up on your knees— “So mean about it.”

“It’s messy.”

“And it’s not your business.”

“It’s not!” Fu Xuan says, exasperated as she rolls her eyes. “I really shouldn’t even be bothering, but you are my friend. And it is painful to watch you chase the tail of a man who will hardly give you the time of day or bare minimum respect. Excuse me for showing concern.”

“Your concern is noted.” As it has been before. “But I’m fine. I wasn’t lying earlier— there’s other groups I want to see tonight. You... don’t have to come along just to babysit. I’ll be alright. I know you hate them.”

“I do.”

Fu Xuan crosses her arms and exhales, something angry and burning. “At least let me drive you. I can pick you up later too. Rather I do than some stranger or him—”

“Blade. His name, Fu Xuan.”

“Blade.”

“God, you do say it like a slur.” You roll your eyes, the pit in your stomach having become larger and darker. You swipe below your eyes and thank an Aeon or two that your eyeliner is waterproof. 

...

The house venue is a bit out of town, in the rural suburbs on a lot that’s big enough to host a crowd and not bother the nearest neighbors. Fields streak by during your journey, humming with junebugs and chirping with late- summer crickets. Low hills roll by as a harvest moon rises, waxing and half-full.

Fu Xuan drops you at the curb and idles as you collect yourself. A crossbody bag carries your essentials (your phone, your sticky lip products, a lighter to go with the pack of cigarettes that you actually don’t smoke, and two condoms shoved against the bottom). You fiddle with the strap against your shoulder.

“Call me when you need me to pick you up, okay?” Fu Xuan taps the steering wheel. “I’ll be awake.”

“Okay, mom.”

“I mean it—”

“I know.”

“Don’t go home with Blade. Or let him drive you home. He handles a car like he’s trying to kill himself.”

It’s a fair assessment but you still shake your head, trying to seem good-natured despite the rot you feel curling in the back of your throat. Bile, rising, before you have a drop of liquor in you. It’s a little pathetic; you’ll really think so in retrospect. For now, you walk toward the venue itching for a drink in your hand or familiar company. Thundering bass and ripping guitar vibrate from the basement windows, shaking the ground beneath your feet.

A crowd clusters at the back of the house. Folks swap cigarettes and clutch cans of cheap beer and flasks decorated with stickers. You quickly survey, looking for, searching for him—

(He’s usually out here before his set, hiding away somewhere with Kafka sharing cigarettes and glaring at anyone dumb enough to make a pass at her.)

A hand grabs you by the shoulder, and you nearly jump out of your skin. “Oh my gosh, you’re here! I didn’t know you’d be coming to the gig!”

It’s March, you know. She is easy to identify with the sweet, candy-like perfume she wears and the slight press of her almond-shaped gel manicure into your shoulder.  March turns you abruptly, throwing her arms around your shoulders and squeezing. Too tightly, knocking the air out of you in an instant. You give her a tentative hug back and pull away quickly. The contact scalds you.

“Have you seen—?”

“Blade?” March pouts and tilts her head. “You know, I feel like you only come to these things to see that guy. He’s nothing special. And I have seen him. He was off sulking a while ago, by the sheds in the back of the lot.”

“... I’ll have to check. Thanks, March.”

She sighs as you walk away from her, before calling out to Stelle (who is always a step or two behind her anyways.) 

You feel— bad about how you treat them. They’re both good people. So is the third in their trio, Dan Heng, a man with a beautiful face and an eerily calm demeanor, especially when compared to his companions. The group of them was introduced to you back when you first started attending these shows, hanging around the scene, and sweating in the basement of mildew-filled houses. They were some of your first friends, and easy to mesh with when you gave yourself the time and space to. Stelle always had a flask with lukewarm vodka or tequila, and March kept a case of seltzers in her trunk. Dan Heng was the ever-reliable sober cab. 

(It was nice back then. Before you had become so entangled with Blade and the subsequent social politics that came with chasing and occasionally fucking the hot, albeit emotionally-unavailable bassist of HUNTERS. It was far easier to hold those friendships than to orbit around a man who you can never tell if he hates you or wants to fuck you in his back seat.)

You find Blade tucked away around the side of the house, cloaked in shadow while taking long drags of a cigarette. The cherry glows in the dim light. From the basement window peeking out from the ground, a red glow pours out, illuminating the well-worn combat boots he wears. They’re crusted in filth, falling apart at the toe. 

(You’d still lick them if he asked you to. Hump them if he asked you twice.)

Another figure stands across from him. Serene, arms crossed, with storm eyes visible even in the poor lighting. Dan Heng keeps a perfectly neutral expression as he speaks, hushed, to Blade who wears a scowl so perfectly that it looks like he’s carved of immovable stone rather than not flesh. 

You’re not quite within earshot. You can’t make out their words, only their tone. It’s an angry exchange, one that’s charged with heat lighting and ire. Blade spits something at Dan Heng, venomous in his tone like he so easily is. Dan Heng replies back something so cooly that it’s like a low-tide wave lapping at your feet.

If you were better, you would turn around and leave. Neither of them know that you’re here, so close. It’s invasive to listen, but you know that there’s... history between Blade and Dan Heng. You’ve always wondered what it is, and considering that Blade has the emotional availability of a rotting vegetable, you won’t be getting those details out of him.

Maybe witnessing their dynamic (yet again) could provide you some clarity—?

(And maybe, if you know why Blade was so, so hurt by Dan Heng, you can do better. You can be the exact thing that Blade wants, and then he will want you, just as much as you want him.)

You listen more keenly:

“I’ve asked you to stop booking shows where the Express is already playing.”

“And I’ve asked you to get off my dick and stop being such a priss, but it doesn’t look like you’ll ever do that.”

“I’m asking you to be reasonable.”

“Sure, because clearly asking me to not play prime gigs is ‘reasonable’. Not to mention you should be taking this up with Kafka or Elio, not me. Did you just want an excuse to talk, Imbibitor Lunae—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What, have something else you’d prefer to be called? I remember plenty of things you liked hearing. Want me to name a few?”

“Hold your tongue—”

A stick cracks behind you and you nearly jump out of your skin.

“Bladie~” Kafka purrs behind you, hands sliding up over your shoulders, hot breath over the back of your neck. “We’re on soon. Soundcheck in five, Firefly has a vodka shot for you if you want.”

You’re frozen.

Blade grunts from around the house, and as he does, Dan Heng emerges from the shadows quickly, on hastened feet, and nearly stumbles when you see him. Your expression must be— fucking stupid. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed as Kafka runs her nails up and down your neck. 

As Dan Heng practically sprints off, Kafka croons quietly into your ear, “And what are you doing all the way back here? Looking for Bladie again?”

You don’t need to speak for her to know your answer. Blade’s steps thud against the ground over the short, dry grass. 

Part of you knows you should scramble away and pretend you weren’t just lurking like a stray dog begging for kitchen scraps. It’s humiliating to be caught by Kafka (yet again), doing the same shit on a different day. Another part of you, one which is much louder, more persuasive, and saccharine sweet, urges you to face Blade. If you get caught in his maw, good. 

Your hands shake as Blade emerges from the dark.

He looks like death. Ghostly pale skin with deep purple eyebags, like bruises. His eyes are cut carnelian, ethereal and volcanic against his parlor. A cigarette hangs between his plump lips, threatening to burn and melt the pieces of his fringe that hang around his cheeks. Long, wild black hair, tipped in faded crimson, falls down his back in frizzy waves. His arms bulge obscenely in the tight, black shirt he wears. A carved jade pendant hangs off of his belt.

Blade stares you down and his scowl deepens, turning even more sour. He mutters something under his breath, something unintelligible but cruel. It’s not the first time he’s spoken to you that way. He’s done so more loudly and more brutally. 

You—

(Hate it. You love it. Well, maybe not love, but you crave the way that Blade is awful to you. You’re horrible.)

“Better get inside now,” Kafka hands drift to your waist, tugging on the belt loop of your pants. You let out a little yip. “I’m sure the front row is filling up fast. No need to spy on Bladie if you get a prime spot during the actual set, hm?”

She’s right; she usually is.

Kafka leaves you with an elegant twirl, humming one of HUNTERS songs from their new EP under her breath. You know the tune. You’ve been playing it on repeat for the last two months. 

It’s easy to follow the jarring trills of soundcheck as you float inside the home, following the trail of people headed toward the basement. Descending down the rickety, railingless stairs into thick, humid air that reeks of sweat, beer, and fledging mold. Down, down, down you go— maybe to hell, where you perhaps belong.

...

Moon Drinker by HUNTERS

You taught me that the high moon 

Was our lovers’ sigil

How quickly did you throw away our runes

How empty is your cup

Moon Drinker

That you would break mine too

...

The gig is decent. That’s how these shows tend to be and you enjoy them just enough to tolerate the stench and humidity of grungy basements like this one. 

Three bands play, IP3, the Express, and HUNTERS. The interest you expressed to Fu Xuan about Pier Point’s IP3 was a lie, but they’re not bad. The frontman, a blond with eyes like inverted crystals, has a sultry edge to his voice that verges on sexual. It’s a cleaner sound that rips into something dirtier, filthier, as their set goes on. 

The Express follows IP3. You’ve seen them more times than you can count, but the trio is still nice to listen to, even now. March always plays with the crowd in between her harmonies in a way that riles folks up just enough without causing abject chaos. The band plays a new song you don’t know, one that is angry and loud and so unlike their normal sound. Dan Heng is on vocals, rather than solely on guitar, and you’re reminded of how mournful and melodic his voice can be. The exact words of the piece get eaten by the cement foundation of the basement, but you imagine that it’s an elegy.

HUNTERS is last on.

They usually are, as their music is the loudest and gnarliest, and they’re typically the most well-known (even if they have a shit reputation and their crowds leave trashed venues in their wake). You feel— insane when they start playing. You know all of their songs, even if you don’t really like their music. Kafka’s voice is hypnotic in a way that’s disarming, even on a recording. Silver Wolf is too good of a drummer for the caliber of band that they are, and Firefly shreds easily on guitar, trained on strings since childhood, but using her talents in a grunge band rather than on a world stage.

Blade’s bass playing is messy. Though his tempo is sure and unwavering, the actual rhythm drags and punches in intervals that verge on unnerving. You have never been able to place if this is due to whatever rage and poison he carries into music making, or if his fingers are as arthritic as Kafka jokes that they are. 

It doesn’t really matter, in the end. The sound blends together in a cacophony that sounds like the way bursted flesh looks. If you could taste the way their newest EP sounded, it would be the iron tang of blood and the acrid burn of bile. 

You’re fucked for it— for Blade. You’ve been since you first became tangled in this web.

A pit opens in the middle of the crowd, small at first, but rapidly widening, with more and more people throwing themselves into it. They bounce around and bash against the individuals at the sides of the pit, only to be shoved back in a moment later. 

You try to stay away from it. Instead, you watch Blade like a fucking pervert.

The basement has gotten hot. Steamy, if you look hard enough at the air that barely circulates against the low, pipe-ridden ceiling. Blade has thrown his hair up in a high ponytail, wisps of hair still cling to his neck and temples, sweat visibly rolling down his neck. His shirt sticks to his toned chest as the overclocked speakers try to keep up with the HUNTERS most recently released song— ‘MOON DRINKER’.

Blade doesn’t look at you. Not once.

His eyes are fixed elsewhere, deeper in the crowd, beyond the bodies in the pit and those who hang at the outskirts by the house’s ancient boiler. Blade’s attention is fixed on— something (someone. You can assume who.) Not once does his gaze drift down his instrument, and never does he acknowledge the way you stand in the front row, so close, with your attention squarely on him.

(This is normal. So normal, it’s painful.)

The pit expands even further, widening as more gig-goers jump into mosh as one song bleeds into the next. You almost get swirled in yourself as a stranger slams into your side with enough force to nearly knock you to the ground. 

A broad, warm hand catches you by your bicep, hoisting you up before you even have a chance to fall. 

“Be careful now,” It’s Jing Yuan (who is much too powerful and rich to be at a basement show, but yearning pushes you both to do stupid, nonsensical things) who speaks directly into your ear, so you can hear him even as your ears ring muffled. “Are you alright?”

You turn to nod at him, flashing him a thumbs up and nervous smile. The cologne he wears permeates the space around you, overpowering the sweat and mildew with ease. He gives you an easy smile and a squeeze, before letting you. He sidesteps your frame to be closer to the pit, crossing his arms over his chest and shielding you from the worst of the throng. 

You’re grateful for the cover; it would be embarrassing to topple over right in front of Blade.

It takes you a moment to recenter yourself, lost in Jing Yuan’s scent and the roar of Firefly’s final, aching guitar riffs. You look back to HUNTERS once more as they finish out their set in a loud, carnal flourish. The expensive speakers they’ve dragged with them are going to fucking blow out—

Blade is staring at you.

Not into the crowd, toward the placid face and cold heart that so clearly plague him, not to his bandmates or instrument, but looking at you.

In the red-lit basement, his eyes nearly glow, unnatural in their anger as they always are. It seemed more concentrated, feral and crystallized in its intensity. Rage. You want to cower under it while your insides feel hot and frigid all at once. He pierces so easily, so thoughtlessly. As the crowd erupts into cheers and shouts as the set ends, you cannot move. Staked in place. 

Not once does Blade look away from you, and his mouth does not deviate from the twisted frown he wears.

... 

Swordmaker by HUNTERS

If I were forged alongside you, 

Do you think I would forgive you then?

If iron was your skin,

Steel your lungs

and lead your heart,

You would be easier to hold.

Empty are memories

Full is the garden

And bloody is the blade.

…

You should be better than this.

Blade slams you up against the back of the shed, the motion jarring and far too fast to be pleasant. Your head knocks painfully against the wood and peeling paint, and despite how you whimper with the impact, Blade doesn’t react. He doesn’t seem to care. 

(You know he doesn’t.)

He hikes your leg up over his hip and grinds against your core through your pants. The motion is rough, clumsy and far too harsh to be pleasurable. The dry friction through your panties makes you squirm and dig your nails into his shoulders. Blade grunts in your ear. You think he likes the pain.

The gig was only let out half an hour ago, and plenty of people are still milling around. Whispers are circulating about if and where there will be an afterparty. You weren’t paying much attention to them— they’re easy to ignore— especially when Blade had been dragging you by the wrist just far enough away from the main house to fuck without being overtly noticeable. 

(Barely, though. Blade can be loud and you can be loud when you’re with him. You’re tempting fate to be caught, seen with him in this way. It’s an open secret that you’re the scraps that Blade entertains himself with, but you would rather not be caught with your literal pants down.)

Blade smells like cigarettes and sweat. The scent of unclean smoke tangles in his unruly hair as you get a grip on it and tug. The juncture of his neck has the faintest hint of some cologne you’re sure he doesn’t know the name of and stale sweat. You press your lips there and dare to drag your tongue across his skin and taste him. It’s not a good taste, not necessarily, but you love it. Salty and filthy. (It’s disgusting, but familiar and morosely comforting.) You are drunk on it and it makes you feel pathetic at the same time.

A growl sounds in your ear as Blade pins you with his weight to the shed. Dragging you back from his neck, he grabs your jaw, forcing you to look at him fully. 

“Don’t leave marks.” He paralyzes you with his stare and sneer. 

“I’d never.” You try to sound earnest, even if it’s a lie. Because you would— you’d bite and tear at his neck (like he does at yours) until the skin there is black and blue. Happily, you would leave hickies above his collar. Split his lip and bite his jaw hard enough to bleed. You could wear his blood on your teeth and smile for once at these fucking gigs.

Instead, you do not bite him. You just let Blade maul you as he desires.

He grinds against your core. The pressure is unpleasant at this point, too much and too little all at the same time. When you whimper now, he just ignores you and slips his hands under your shirt. He grabs your waist in both hands and squeezes.

“Turn around,” says Blade, already twisting you himself, so your front is pressed against the shed.

“H-Here?” You laugh nervously. Despite your... reputation, something cold, unwelcome and uncomfortable settles in you. “C-Can’t we go to your car? Or inside?”

“Maybe later.”

(It’s awful. It’s sick, the way your heart flutters at the implications of ‘later’. ‘Later’ means more of him. More of Blade’s time, his touch, his hardly-there care. More scraps for you to gorge yourself on, more time to beg for more. It’s sick. It’s sick how fucked you are for him.)

Blade reaches around your front to undo the button at the top of your trousers. In a swift motion, he has them around your thighs. Just enough that he can bend you over and access your cunt with some amount of ease. He keeps your panties on at first (he usually does this. You’re never sure why. You can delude yourself into thinking it’s him taking his time with you, but you know that that is a lie). 

Blade places one of his hands on the back of your neck to flatten you against the shed, while the other must be unbuttoning his own pants to get his cock out, based on the jingling of metal and shred of a zipper. You swallow, your mouth dry. You’re dry, but you know that if you try to touch yourself to prep at this point, Blade will only be meaner.

The most he does is run two fingers over your slit, over your panties. It’s barely enough contact on your clit to be felt, but you gasp and shudder anyway. Canting your hips back, you try to encourage more contact. Anything he’ll give you.

He sighs behind you. Disappointed. Aggravated. It makes you want to cry.

Blade peels down your panties. The cold air shocks you, your core tightening up, but you hardly have time to adjust to the temperature before Blade’s equally cold hands fully part your folds. He sighs again, pulling away only to spit on his fingers, and smear his saliva around your hole. It feels dirty. You feel dirty.

When Blade pulls away, you whine at the loss of contact (at how cold it is, at how the crowd milling around smoking cigarettes and cheap weed is just on the other side of this dilapidated shed crows and laughs into the night). You swear you can recognize March’s giggle above the din of conversation.

You’re brought back to your entanglement with a harsh slap to your ass. Harsh and audible. The sound that escapes your lips is choked and high. 

“Don’t get distracted,” Blade huffs. He spits again, presumably on his dick. 

You nod, latching onto the pain radiating from slap to your ass. As if sensing it, Blade lays down another strike. This one is hotter, harder. He isn’t holding back. It is sure to bruise the tender flesh there. A mark. Something that will tangibly ache, something leftover from your tryst.

You could cry.

The velvety head of Blade’s cock nudges your folds. He brackets you into the wall, arms on either side of you. Heat radiates off his chest and sinks into your spine.

“‘Feels good?” He asks, voice hoarse as he coats himself in your meager slick.

“Y-yeah,” you lie. It’s not enough to feel good. You don’t care.

Blade seems content enough with your answer as he bears down on you. Flattening you to the dirt-covered shed, he hitches his hip down, then up, trying to fit the tip of his cock into your hole. He maneuvers your hips as he pleases, grunting when the tip of him catches on your cunt. When you dare to whine, even the smallest sound, he cracks his hand down on your ass again. Your vision speckles into darkness with the shot of pain and—

(The roar of anxiety and subsequent shame when you realize how much quieter the milling crowd nearby has become.)

“Hold still.” Blade's voice has sunk low, gravely with the cigarettes he’s been smoking all evening. 

The next time his cock touches your opening, he presses in without hesitation.

It’s—

It’s too fucking much.

It is, it always is, every single fucking time he fucks you. Any prep he gives you is perfunctory. Blade will never lavish you with attention, not in the way that you probably need. That you—

(Might even deserve.)

No, the most that Blade will do is fuck you filthy behind a shed, near some of his more well-adjusted peers and probably come inside of you. On past occasions, he has let you suck him off in the backseat of his car. He’s only accidentally (‘accidentally’) came on your face a few times. Less than ten, more than five. Once, he ate you out for a few minutes, but you swear to god he was groaning someone else’s name as he did.

(You’re fucking pathetic.)

This is always too much. Blade is too big. Too big, even if you were stretched and primed with a few fingers like would be right and proper. As tight and dry as you are, it’s painful. He has to grind into your cunt with rolling little thrust so he can fit himself in at all. Each one shocks a breath out of you, a shattering, fragile sound. 

When Blade bottoms out, he lays flat over your back. The weight of him is suffocating. His corded muscle is all dead weight above you as his cock twitches inside you. You can’t tell if he’s idling to allow you some time to adjust, or purely for his own leisure. You can’t be sure. You don’t want to ask him either.

“You’re tight.” Blade’s voice threatens to break.

(Of course you are. He’s the only person you will let fuck you, and these trysts only occur every few weeks, when there’s a show that you can be cornered at.)

He bucks into you, deeper still. The head of his cock is touching parts of you that shouldn’t be touched.

You whimper, “Blade—”

He growls in response. It’s a raspy and low tone that makes arousal burn in your gut and leak down your thighs. (You hope so anyway— it’s more wet and you don’t think it hurts enough that you’re bleeding.) Blade fucks you in earnest, then. There’s no delay, no waiting, no potential for momentary, perceived niceties. He pulls out of you almost completely, then thrusts back into you in one single motion. The friction burns and your vision wavers. 

(You still moan like a whore.)

You feel— dirty. Disgusting. Pathetic as he fucks you like. You don’t feel like a person as he fucks you; you never do. How could you? The grip he uses on your hips is too bruising and the force and strength he’s using to brutalize your cunt is just too much. He fucks you like he’s taking anger out on a piece of drywall. Blade shares physically with you in the way a dog shreds a chew toy to bits, then leaves it on the ground to fester.

Blade grunts next to your ear, nipping there.

He doesn’t kiss you— well, not often. He can’t with your current position. You wouldn’t expect him to anyway. Sometimes he leaves a ring of dark hickies across your neck, like a collar. You like those, but he always waits an extra long time to see you after he marks you like that.

(You presume to make sure that the bruises have fully yellowed, then faded. A clean canvas.)

Blade’s pace increases, just before he pulls out. His cock rests on the cleft of your ass and he tips his forehead to rest on the shed, just beside yours.

“You’re still dry.”

“Sorry—”

He cuts you off. “It’s fine.”

...

It apparently isn’t fine. 

Blade drags you toward the house. He barks at someone, then Kafka, to find a room. You feel dazed as he does. Out of your body, as you receive a number of knowing and unknowing stares from the lingering show-goers who cluster around a firepit. 

(How many of them heard you just now? How many know the exact sounds you make when in barely-there pleasure? In certainly-there pain? How many of them know the sound of Blade’s too-big cock slapping into your too-dry cunt?)

It makes you feel sick to think about.

A room must be found for the two of you, as Blade drags you up the stairs of the back porch. 

As he does, he hesitates.

(He has so rarely done this.)

His gaze is not on you; it pierces elsewhere in the dark. A floodlight off the back of the house illuminates a section of the yard, and just beyond its reach, nestled somewhere between the dark and light, he fixates. His jaw sets and locks. 

There are figures, you realize.

They’re easy to identify once you actually focus. One is lithe and short-haired, the other broad-shouldered and long-haired.  Dan Heng and Jing Yuan. Speaking on the outskirts. It feels private. Their attention turns from their hushed conversation to the two of you as Blade stares daggers and swords into them. As if he could pierce them with nothing more than his silent rage and angry eyes. 

You freeze.

Their expressions are obscured in the lowlight, but you can almost feel the looks they give you. Like a sickly mucus that gets stuck to you and rolls down your flesh in slow, cold globs. 

Dan Heng (once so dear to you, still probably dear to you—) looks guarded, thought darkened. Contempt twists his expression, anger following just after. You’d ever wager that he’s disgusted, maybe. Probably with you, because he knows you’re better than this. Beside him, Jing Yuan wears an expression of careful passivity, of geniality, as he always does, but it’s tinged with something sad and old. For all parties involved in this silent, momentary exchange.

Jing Yuan regards you directly, slowly blinking at you, as though he was a large house cat intent on making you feel safe, and not a presence that only drives the bubbling anxiety in you higher. 

It’s a seconds-long encounter that stretches for an eternity. You cannot make yourself move. You cannot feel anything other than rotten and small.

Blade lets out a harsh exhale and yanks you away. The scene breaks and you’re dragged inside. He whispers under his breath, vitriol-tinging his tone. Your panties feel sticky and wet as you walk.

Kafka had found a room for you, on the second floor of the house. God knows whose it actually is. You don’t get a good look at the room as Blade pushes you inside.. It’s dim, the only light is licking in from the dirty window, an afterburn from the raging bonfire outside. You hear muffled voices still, leaking in like a draft. 

Blade locks the door and pushes you onto the unmade bed.

It’s a cheap mattress with flannel sheets. It smells like old weed smoke and cheap incense. Fu Xuan would tell you that you deserve better than this. You think you might.

Blade climbs on top of you, jaw still locked, and eyes far away.

(You do wonder what happened between him and Dan Heng. Something did. Something gutting and heartbreaking— you hear it when Blade sings. A betrayal, an intangible knife cut but still so painful. Dan Heng has always spoken about Blade with a type of protective neutrality. He warned you to never get involved with Blade. To stay away, to not get on Blade’s bad side, and if something did entangle you with him, Dan Heng could sort it out. He has always cared so fiercely for those he loves; it’s a shame that you have squandered it.)

(Blade is a sentimentalist. Blade is so held in the past that it chokes him. It always has, during every moment you’ve shared with him. He lingers in the bloody past, he holds it in his hands with a grip that’s meant to snap bird wings and flay flesh. He hates Dan Heng. He still loves him, though. You see it on his face sometimes. You hear it in Blade’s music. The ache, the death, the unending grief and mourning and rage that the man simply won’t let go of.)

(It is obsession.)

It shouldn’t make you bitter to think about. Yet, it does. It’s not your place to hold those types of feelings, let alone express them. For so many reasons, Blade will never see you as anything more than a cheap fuck. You think Dan Heng is the primary one. Over time, you’ve grown bitter. Resentful. 

Blade pulls off your shirt in one swift move. He’s slower than he usually is. More deliberate. His hands are shaking, like how they do just after he finishes a set. It’s… off—

You hate it. You hate that the lingering pain of someone else will effect Blade more than you ever, ever could in the present.

You grab a fistful of his hair and tug. His breath catches as you do.

”What the fuck is your deal?” You sneer at him. There’s a cruel edge in your voice that does not sound like you. Blade brings out the worst in you, and you fall prey to it, so easily. 

Blade glances up at you, eyes sharp like cut gems. He says nothing.

”You and Dan Heng,” you laugh. You don’t mean to— you don’t, you don’t— and you yank Blade’s hair so he has to look at you better. “It’s pathetic, you know. How you look at him like a kicked fucking dog. What happened between the two of you, anyways?”

Blade freezes. So do you.

You’ve misstepped so brutally. So stupidly and tragically and idiotically. You’ve pushed too hard for what—?

Blade is on his haunches in an instance and he slaps you across the face.

Your head follows the force of the impact, forcing your face to the side. Your cheek smarts. It wasn’t— that hard. Blade is strong. He could do worse. Still, it shocks you. The pain is enough to make you gasp and reel.

”What the fuck—“

”Don’t,” Blade grabs your jaw, “open your mouth about things you know nothing about. You should know better.”

You should. You do.

”I could know more, if you ever told me, I don’t know— anything?” You laugh in his face, manic behind your eyes. You’re crushing the delicate nature of your cheap arrangement like how a child would crush a flighty butterfly’s papery wings. 

Blade shakes his head, smothering a laugh. He wrangles you forward, half-off risen from the bed, and parts your lips with his thumb. Before you can react, bite, claw— he is raising himself higher than you, dwarfing you in height, and spitting down into your mouth, onto your tongue.

”You don’t know when to shut up, do you?” He pats the side of your face, over the cheek that he struck. It burns. In another world, this touch would be tender. Here, you can only wince. 

Before you can reply, continue to run your mouth and rile him up further, Blade kisses you.

It shocks you, stuns you. 

He— he hasn’t ever kissed you before. It’s never been an explicit boundary, but never once during these trysts has Blade ever initiated this type of contact. It has felt dangerous to do so yourself. Something that’s too intimate, too personal to share. The core of your entanglement is the way he uses you. It’s impersonal. 

A kiss, you think, implies something more tender.

You gasp into his lips, and he takes the opportunity to all but violate the inside of your mouth. His tongue plunders inside, licking at his own spit that you have yet to swallow. A noise chokes off in the back of your throat. Something desperate and shocked that you hardly recognize. It’s filthy. He nips at your lips and pushes you back down.

Blade devours you. 

It’s too much, really. It’s a gesture of tenderness that has been so thoroughly mutilated, calling it a kiss feels paltry. The way his lips are on your own is much more like an argument and a subsequent conquest. One in which you lose ground. He nips at your lower lip, snags it between his teeth, and tugs it as he pulls away.

You pant, the sound of your own breath roars in your own ears. Your hands are still buried in his hair, grip unyielding, anchoring you.

Blade smiles, something poisonous and satisfied. You are too drunk on the singular kiss he gives you to care that much.

“That’s all it takes, is it?” He laughs, the sound dark and rolling, like the sound of an earthquake cracking the earth. 

He already knows you’ll beg for scraps. God forbid he gives you even a morsel more. 

The bed squeaks as he flips you by your hips so you’re laid flat, belly-down on the dirty sheets. Blade spanks your still-clothed ass for good measure before rustling around behind you. Assumedly to disrobe, just enough to fuck you. Assumedly, to ignore the condoms you brought (knowing he would disregard them—). Assumedly, to fuck you with every inch of your life. 

You want it. You want him so badly it physically hurts.

(Or, maybe you tore while he had you behind the shed. Who is to say?)

Blade clamors behind you, shaking, arthritic hands tugging your pants by the waistband. He doesn’t even bother to unzip them this time. Your panties get pulled down along with them, and they get tossed elsewhere in the barely-lit room. Blade spits behind you, and a sound of too-dry stroking follows. 

“D-do you want me to suck you off?” you ask with a hum. You’d let him fuck your face, if he asked. Or, if he wanted. Blade wouldn’t ask.

“No.”

“Just let me know.”

Blade sighs behind you, but you think little of it.

You brace yourself up on your elbows, lowering your upper half to be flat against the bed, and arching your hips as high as they’ll go. It’s as if to make yourself look appetizing. You hope it entices Blade, even a little.

(Please, you need him to want you. You need him to want you so badly. Please, please, please—)

The head of Blade’s cock rubs as your hole, down to your clit, then back up again a few times. He’s so hot, it’s like he is burning you. Contact that scalds. The contact against your clit is... nice. It’s the most warm up he has graced you with in a while. You could crave more, but settle for this. 

“C’mon Blade,” you whine. Your voice sounds airy. “Fuck me.”

He doesn’t reply, not with his voice. The rocking of his hips becomes more pronounced, and the slide of him against you becomes slicker. Still too big, too hot, but wet at least. Which is a bonus. Pre and blood are probably leaking onto the shaft at least a little bit too.

It makes it easier once he slides home in a single blow. 

It’s too fucking deep— especially with this angle. The head of his cock presses against your deepest parts, bruises them in a place where no one can see or feel but you. Blade is huge, the girth of him stretches you as his hips rest against your ass.

A wretched noise bubbles up past your lips. Something between a cry and a plea, for more, for less— to go home, to be in a warm, clean bed with someone who actually cares— you aren’t sure. Your desires have been twisted up and wrong for so long, you can’t tell what you really want. 

It makes you feel rotten, and then there’s only one thing you want.

(To hurt.)

Blade fucks you, then. Fully in, fully out of. Long and deep thrusts that carve out your insides in a brutal way. It’s violent. He leans over your back, and braces himself over you. You feel small, stupid, and hurt. A horrible swirl of things that make tears spring up at the corners of your eyes. You bury your face in the crusty pillow you’d manage to snag nearby—

And Blade tugs it away immediately. His big, calloused hand curls to hold your jaw up, so every pitiful whine and whimper you let out can’t be muffled. The bed squeaks as his thrusts slow.

“Don’t hide.”

“I-I won’t.”

“You were.”

“I won’t a-again—”

“You want this, don’t you?” Blade growls in your ears, then moves to the most fragile skin of your neck and bites. 

(You do, you do— god you do. You need this.)

You nod, and Blade keeps biting. His jaw nearly locks. You’re sure that you’ll be bruised for a week.

Blade scoffs and rears back, grabs your hips in both hands for leverage. And he fucks you.

That’s all it can be, really. You can’t get a solid hold on anything. The pillow has been thrown off the bed, and you struggle to find purchase on the sheets. All you do is take it. Pleasure, or something like it, builds in your core and goes nowhere. It simmers but never crests anywhere near orgasm. 

You don’t mind. This is enough.

Blade’s pace increases, never frantic. Never with him. Manic maybe, insane, tortured and damaged, but never frantic. Not with you. His rhythm falters as his cock slides in and out of you, slick beginning to stick to the inside of your thighs. 

His hand comes down on his ass. The other cheek, this time. It’s enough force to bruise again. You’ll have trouble sitting for a week.

As Blade nears his peak, his rhythm stutters. His breath grows harsher and more strained. His grip goes from bruising to breaking. You gasp with the pain, but don’t tell him to stop. His cock brushes against your cervix, and never your sweet spot. 

Blade flattens you to bed, prone, and puts his entire weight on top of you as his orgasm hits him. A strangled cry shatters from his lips into your ear as he fucks you too fast and too hard. A gush of warmth fills your insides, spilling to your outsides when there isn’t enough of you to hold all of him.

The bed frame slams into the wall with his final few thrusts. 

You lay there, in the filth, in the pain and the dissatisfaction of the tryst, and rot.

...

Blade leaves you there, at some point.

Not right away, but eventually. He rolls off you at some point, catches his breath for a while, checks his phone, then rises to right himself.

You cannot make yourself move. The only thing you can make yourself do is take slow, measured breaths. Each ache in your body is punctuated, loud and unignorable now that the fizzling pleasure of sex has dissipated. What’s left of it is this: carnage. 

“You have a ride home?” Blade asks. He must be near the door, based on the sound of his voice.

Fu Xuan’s warning words come to mind, and shame fills your belly. 

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

And he leaves.

You rot for a while longer.

This is not the first encounter that has gone this way. Blade fucks you like this and leaves. There’s no reverie or sweetness. There is using and being used, and the conclusion that always follows is this. Cooling, soon-to-be dry cum leaking out of you in thick droplets and a bite mark on your neck you’ll need to conceal for the next two weeks. Blade will ignore you like he doesn’t know you, next time he sees. But still fucks you like a toy.

It’s awful. It’s all you want.

You force yourself up at some point.

You’re surprised to find that your pants and panties are in a heap on the end of the bed. You are sure that they were tossed farther, but perhaps you misremember. Painstakingly, you rerobe yourself. Moving your legs in such ways hurts so bad, you could cry. You probably did cry while Blade fucked you. 

The quick stop in the squalid bathroom confirms this. Mascara smudges around your eyes and down your cheeks. The sticky gloss you were wearing has been smeared away. Not even a stain of the crimson remains. 

You feel hollow as you walk down the stairs, outside, toward the bonfire and its rapidly dwindling flames. A few folks still millaround, people you recognize, just barely, though no one you could call a friend remains around the pit. Stelle, March, and Dan Heng are long gone, probably. You’d feel too ashamed to look them in the eye anyway.

Someone offers you a warm beer and you take it. Your hands shake.

Hollow and wordless, you move around the backyard like a specter. Part of you wishes you were one, just something mostly formless and shapeless. Transparent. No one could see you make a fool of yourself that way. There would be no witnesses to your desperation and perversion.

You swallow back bile when it rises in your throat, and wash it down with a chug from the can.

You’re surprised to find Jing Yuan idling around the corner of the house. He looks up when you near him, and he greets you with the same genial smile he always wears. He nods to the space next him, already plucking a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket on his shirt. You take one, and he lights it for you in the next instant.

“It looks like you needed that,” he hums. He doesn't take one for himself, only tucking the carton away and out of sight.

“Maybe.” You want to vomit. Or slide down the wall of the house and rot there. 

He laughs then. It’s too... warm of a sound for how you feel. For how dirty these venues are, and for the company that you have come to hold, it feels dissonant. Jing Yuan is too kind, too patient. 

(He cannot be your friend because your ruin would spread to him, maybe.)

“Take as many as you like,” he urges with a hum, and settles next to you.

Silently, you ruminate. Descend into yourself. You suppose, given the events you’ve seen tonight, that you’re both stewing in something akin to yearning. 

(Jing Yuan is better than you for it. He, at least, doesn’t sleep with his unrequited adored in someone else’s bed after a messy house show.)

“Do you have a way home?” asks Jing Yuan, breaking you from your slow-rolling spiral.

You shake your head. It would be rude to call Fu Xuan so late. You— you hadn’t really thought about a ride. Not yet. 

Jing Yuan looks you up and down and his smile looks sadder, “How about a ride home?”

“Sure.” You nod. 

The ride back home in Jing Yuan’s (too nice, too expensive, too decadent) car is quiet. An album from a band you don’t recognize plays at a low volume. Soothing, soft voices, so juxtaposed from the venue you leave behind. Maybe you just can’t recognize the words because you’re decaying. Your phone lays in your lap, over your aching thighs. 

[no new messages]

(Because Blade never messages you after a fuck. You’re not worth that much to him.)

...

Gingerly, you unlock your front door and enter your little apartment. Fu Xuan lays on the couch, on her back, with her phone against her collarbone. Her mouth is parted in peaceful sleep, though her hair is still done up, all of her pins are still in.

(She waited for you, again. And you failed her, again.)

You don’t know how she puts up with you. Or why either.

Some part of you wants to vomit. Wretch, like it’ll purge the awful, disgusting thoughts warming you. They do not serve you. You should just—

(Know better. You gain nothing from entangling yourself from Blade. The sex is... enough. Because Blade doesn’t know his own strength sometimes and makes it hurt, unintentionally toeing the line between too little and too much. It’s still not worth it. It shouldn’t be worth it. You’d be better off never going to any gigs, ever again. You wouldn’t have to disappoint and embarrass yourself to your old friends then. You wouldn’t have to linger in the yearning of others while never having that affection given to you.)

You collapse atop your bed. Your makeup has been roughly scrubbed off with an old towel, and you can feel the crunchy remnants of mascara clinging around your eyes. You can’t make yourself care. Burying your face in your pillow, you burrow into your blankets. You’ll probably be sore and hungover tomorrow... today? The songbirds are just beginning to chirp their morning arias. It makes you sick to your stomach.

As you begin to doze, your phone vibrates. 

[one new message]

blade: did you get home 

Your mouth feels dry and your chest feels so tight you could die. 

you: yeah. jing yuan drove me. 

[seen: 5:11 AM]

You hold your breath as Blade begins to type. Then stops typing. Then begins again. It goes on for several volleys and you really do think you might puke.

blade: get some sleep

You drop your phone somewhere in your sheets. Giddiness fills your chest, despite the exhaustion and ache and bone-rotting fatigue. Elation causes you to smile, something wide and girlish that you have to hide in your pillow, lest it be beared to the world.

(It’s a scrap. It’s nothing. It’s worse than the bare minimum and the bar is already in hell.)

But, it’s something.

A morsel. Something to clutch onto and hold and cherish.

You want to put his words between your teeth and swallow. 

[szynkaaa]

02. In Which the Monkey King Is a Lightweigt

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“You were not jesting around when you said you can hold your liquor well!” 

Cups were refilled, the white liquid spilling out, but everyone was too wasted to care about the precious bit of wine being wasted. 

“So what d’ya say lassie, did uncle Shen Monkey outdone himself this time?” 

The cup was of wine was downed down in one go, with the wine liquid running down his fur around his mouth, which he quickly wiped away with his arm.  

I sniffed the wine cup carefully. It smelt faintly like rice flour, followed by something more flowery. I couldn’t place what that smell was though – not that I care too much about it. In my old traveling days with the Destined One, I learned early on that sometimes it’s just better not to ask or question what ingredients were used to make certain brews and soaks. As long as it gave you a good boost when taking a sip, it was good enough for me.  

The liquid inside my cup had a milky color, but the texture was waterier than milk. I swirled it a couple of times in my cup, before also chugging it down in one go. The wine went down my throat smoothly, leaving a sweet aftertaste as it settled into my stomach, feeling warm. I could barely taste the alcohol. 

“Hmmm.” I pretended to be thinking hard about the answer, before raising my cup towards Shen Monkey and replied with, “I’ll need another cup in order to give you an answer.”  

Shen Monkey let out a hearty laugh, very pleased with my reply and grabbed for the gourd to pour us more wine. Then we held up our cups and shouted “Gānbēi!” 

“Wait wait wait!” I interject before the Shen Monkey could take a sip, who looked the most offended that his drinking was interrupted. “Eye contact, otherwise it’s seven years of bad luck.” When I first started to become drinking buddies with Shen Monkey – and then his in official soak-and-brew-tester – he asked me about my home world. And then the conversation turned to alcoholic beverages that I liked, which then at some point turned into a conversation about all the drinking games played in my years as a university student. 

We raised our cups again, opening our eyes comically widely open to keep the eye contact and then downed it one go.  

“I’ll give this a nine point eight out of ten.” I said. “It’s good, but there is always room for improvement.”  

“You wound me, lassie.” was Shen Monkey’s reply, as he placed a both hands over his heart.  

The facts were these: You, the Great Sage Equals to Heaven, proclaimed that of course you know how to hold your alcohol, which great leader doesn’t. To which I pointed out, I wouldn’t know because when you were still a nameless monkey wandering the four lands in search for relics, we never really sat down to get shit-faced together. And then you said, well now that things have settled, we should catch up with the gentlefolks from the Zodiac Village and get ‘shit-faced’ together (new word that you learned from me). You were sure Shen Monkey has a good stash somewhere, and you were right. 

The facts were also these: After the first round, your face was red. But you were in a really good mood. Laughing and jesting with your comrades, telling them stories of your adventures as Sun Wukong. Yin Tiger rolled his eyes, probably having heard the stories many times already. Shen Monkey and Chen Loong indulged you, while Xu Dog was looking at you starry-eyed, like you were the coolest person walking on this planet (he was right but I would never admit that to your face). 

And I have to admit, you are a good story-teller. Or maybe I just liked listening to your voice talking about anything and everything. If you would record an ASMR of you reading out loud the Terms and Condition of whatever, I would listen to it before my bedtime.  

After the second round, it looked like you were stumbling a lot more over your words, and you had a bit trouble walking in a straight line. When I offered you some water, you declined stating once again that ‘the Great Sage Equal to Heaven does not need that’ – words you probably came to regret in the morning (which you’d never admit).  

What I learned about two-drink-Sun Wukong is that you start to seek out close proximity of people. And by people, I meant me. Here’s the thing: I like being close to you. I like it when you grab my hands and rub them when they’re freeing cold, or when you just grab one of my hands to give me three reassuring squeezes. My most recent realization is that I sleep easier when you’re next to me. At some point, our ‘hey do you wanna stay the night here’ turned to ‘so will you be sleeping in your own room tonight or mine’, just so we know later in which bed we’d find each other.  

However, I was not prepared for two-drink-Sun Wukong to put his arms around me in front of the others. I did not mind us being physical affectionate in private, but in front of others in a time where this could be considered highly inappropriate? There was also the whole matter of that I’m still trying to figure out how to get home, and I’m still getting adjusted to the new you.  

You felt how I stiffened up the moment you settled your arms around me – I didn’t mean to do that, but my body reacted faster than my mind could catch up to and by then you have already removed your arm from my shoulders. I glanced at you but you kept your eyes at the zodiac villagers while telling them about how the rebuilding of Mount Huaguo is going. There was a brief of flash hurt in your eyes, but it disappeared quick enough that I could have mistaken it for the flicker of the fire reflecting in your eyes.  

I didn’t mean to hurt you, so I reached out with one hand to grab your hand quickly and gave it a firm squeeze - ‘I am sorry for my reaction, I did not mean to hurt you’. You gave me three squeezes - ‘everything is okay’.  

The drinking continued into the next round and by then, most of us were either wasted, or passed out.  

By the fourth round, your face was beet-red and your eyes unfocused. Some of the fur around your mouth and chin were wet and covered in wine, as you throw your head back laughing at something that Xu Dog said, your canine teeth in full display.  

I wondered in that moment how they would feel like if I ran my finger over them. I must have been staring for too long, lost in my thoughts because you flicked my nose with your finger. “See something you like?” At the sight of your wide shit-eating and toothy grin, and you leaning back on your two arms with your exposed chest and hair puffed out, I felt my heart beating faster and my ears flushing. 

“I see a stinky monkey.” I replied and held up my cup towards Shen Monkey. A gesture asking him to kindly refill my cup. 

You pouted at my stinky monkey remark, and I thought that was the cutest face expression you ever made. Cute wasn’t a word in your vocabulary that you would use to describe yourself as. I knew you weren’t angry at the stinky monkey remark though because your tail was swishing back and forth. 

Happy monkey, happy life.  

Eventually Xu Dog and Chen Loong have retired for the night, the latter stating that he is not as young as he used to be (probably hitting 2000 years old or something), and the former saying that he needs to check up on his furnace. The pills he was making needs to be regularly fanned at a three hours interval, which means tipsy or not, he has a job to do. Yin Tiger left after the first round already, stating that he has to clean up his workshop and make preparations for work the next day. 

Which leaves just me and two monkeys. One that was barely holding it together after three rounds of drinks, and another one that brewed the drinks and was able to hold his drink much better than you.  

By the time Shen Monkey and I were toasting our sixth rounds of drinks, you have decided that the most comfortable spot for a Great Sage to sleep off the alcohol was my lap. You didn’t even ask if it was okay to use my lap as your personal pillow. No, you just shuffled over, plopped your head down and didn’t respond to anything or anyone anymore. My ears caught the faint sound of snoring, and my eyes watched Shen Monkey’s face breaking out into a huge grin. “Ah, young love.” The wine was slowly getting to him now too, seeing how he barely managed to pour himself a clean cup of wine without spilling over half of it.  

I rolled my eyes at him, while taking another sip from my cup. Amateurs. Can’t even hold their liquid well.  

Here is a secret: I can’t really get drunk. Sure, sometimes I do feel the room spinning a bit when I stand up too fast after a drink, but usually after a glass water I am all sobered up and ready for more drinks. I have never had a hungover in my life, and never been wasted to the point of black-out drunk. I could never figure out what it was that way just assumed it had a very very very high alcohol tolerance, until I came to this world and learned a thing or two about my ancestors and some weird hidden powers locked away in my DNA.  

Ah well, stories for another time.  

With your head resting on my lap, it meant that I was stuck at where I was sitting. I knew from sharing a sleeping space with you that once you have decided to cling onto something (me), that meant getting out of your clutches was nigh impossible and I had to held onto my pee until you were awake before dashing for the loo. In this particular moment, I wouldn’t even be able to push your head off my lap. It was there to stay until you decided to wake up and take us home.  

At the eighth drink, Shen Monkey has decided that he liked having a functional liver and also retired for the night, leaving only me and you, the few empty gourds that need to be cleaned away and the dying fire. I bid him goodnight and watched him disappear into the night, and then took a deep breath to mentally prepare myself for the next task at hand.  

Waking the Great Sage up.  

I knew from past experience that sometimes waking you up was not a good idea. During our travels, it would trigger your fight and flight mode, and I have found myself enough times staring at the end of your staff, thinking that this was it, this is how I’m going to die and dammit I didn’t even get to see Taylor Swift live.  

“Alright mate, time to wake up.” I said, lightly scratching the fur under your chin. No reaction, you just kept snoring lightly.  

Then I patted your cheek few times. 

Still nothing, the most I got is a nose scrunch from you. I tried moving my thigh up, but your head was like heavy rock, keeping my thigh locked in spot. As much as I love the Zodiac Village and desperately wanted to live out my cottage core dream here, sleeping under the open sky with no blankets and pillows was not something I wanted to again for the next few years at least.  

Sighing, I propped up one arm on my free thigh and rested my chin on it, while I used my other hand to continue gently scratching the fur on your face. Your fur is very soft, it was almost like giving a cat the scratches. Stinky as you can be sometimes (not literally), you always put a lot of time into making sure that your fur was well kept and combed through and not tangled up. It certainly was a lot more care than I put into my own hair.   

My eyes swept over your face, illuminated softly by the dying fire light. A memory flashed before my eyes. The same face but smeared in dirt and dust and the fur around it was matt and sticking in clumps together in dire need of a good scrub and wash Your brown eyes still shone brightly and your canine teeth flashing from grinning while listening to a lonely six years old girl telling you about Alice Adventure in Wonderland and how she is Alice and the monkey stuck under the mountain was her rabbit and-  

Your body twitched and for a second, I hoped that you were waking up and we can finally go home, but then you rolled you head briefly to the side, which also gave me better access to scratching your fur there. And the snoring continued.  

I stopped what I was doing to ghost my fingers over your eyebrows that for once were not stuck in a permanent state of focus and scrunched together. You looked like you were at peace; this is where you are meant to be and you’d rather be here than anywhere else. And then my fingers hovered over your mouth. You didn’t have lips like humans do – and that made me even more curious about what it would if our lips brushed against each other, or what it would feel like to have your canine teeth lightly biting down on my lower lips. 

Maybe, just maybe in that moment the wine did get into my head. I found myself slowly lowering my head and moving it closer and closer to your face, until my lips almost touc- 

In a quick practiced movement, your hand grabbed mine and flipped me over. The word spun and everything was a blur and then I felt the cold hard grass on my back, a thigh pressed lightly between my legs and both of my hands being held down by a pair of strong hands – your hands. 

You were hovering over me, looking very smugly down on me, as your tail moved to wrap around my leg. The red flush was still very visibly on your face, and your eyes not entirely focused – meaning you have not slept off the alcohol yet. But clearly you were not drunk enough to not notice what was going on, or what I about to do. 

“Taking advantage of defenseless Old Sun now, are you?” You teased. You didn’t seem annoyed though. In fact, it seemed like you were quite happy with knowing what was about to occur.  

At this point, I felt how my face was glowing bright red – because I almost got caught, because I didn’t fully comprehend what I was about to do until you flipped me over, because of the compromising position we are in, and because this position was also giving a full glorious view onto your fur-covered chest.  

I may be not drunk, but I am drunk on my current view.  

“Defenseless is the last word I would use to describe you.” I shot back, trying play it off cool and tugged on my pinned down wrists a few times. Of course they didn’t even budge an inch, proving that you are the one with the upper hand here. Your grin widened, flashing your canine teeth at me.  

If my heart literally jumps out of my chest now and runs away because it couldn’t handle the slightly feral glim in your eyes, you’re getting me a replacement heart.  

“So what was my little yīnghuā about to do, hm?” You asked, running your tongue over your pointy teeth as you leaned down closer to my face, your tail also sliding up my thigh further along with your body movement.  

The whole universe knew that Sun Wukong has an ego the size of a black hole, ready to suck in anything that vaguely resembled a compliment and there was no way in hell I was going to feed it more, or give you the satisfaction of knowing that I was about to kiss you your dumb face.  

Admittedly, it was also a matter of pride to me. This stupid crush I have on you is killing my last braincells, and I really hated how it made me feel sometimes. The constant back and forth feeling of yearning to be just close to you but also wanting to push you as far away as possible. My unhealthy coping mechanism of having a crush on someone is to bury those feelings as deep as I can, and if they threaten to bubble up again, shove more dirt on top of it to push it even further down. I would eat a durian than confessing to anyone that I may or may not have inappropriate thoughts about them that includes as holding hands.  

At this point, all of the three realms knew that your feelings towards me were not entirely platonic – not that you were trying to hide in the first place. You were never shy about your own feelings. If you were angry at something, you made it known by reaching out to your ear to get your Jīngū Bàng out. If you found something funny, you would often be seen laughing out loud, sometimes to the point where you were clutching your stomach and doubling over. As the Destined One, you made your jealousy known by standing really close to me and glaring at whoever was trying to cozy up to me; sometimes you’d just out your arms around my waist and rest your head on top of me and holding me like that (although since you became Sun Wukong, I noticed that streak of possessiveness has mellowed out a lot).  

You never outright said that you have romantic feelings for me, but I’ve had my fair share of wild phases in my student days, and at some point, your gut just learns to pick up on those things. Additionally, a lot of the people we have met, including uncle Bajie, make tons of teasing remarks that are not very hard to miss, and you never. 

Unfortunately for you, I have what people call these days a wee bit of a commitment-and abandonment issue. So many what if’s running through my head. What if for some reason I was wrong, and you were always this flirty with anyone. What if after a while you find out I am not that great at all and lose interest? What if you meet an immortal that is everything that I am not, and a much better match for you? I’m used to people leaving, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less when it happens again. What if, what if, what if.  

I’ve been meaning to go to therapy for some time now, but finding an appointment takes ages, and now that I’m stuck in Ancient China, that search has been put down to the very bottom of my priority list. And my final goal still remains to find a way back home to my own time and world. You promised me you would help me with that.  

If I never admit that I have feelings for you, then it means they are not real – that was my childish excuse. If I close my eyes, you can’t find me.  

Instead of answering your question, I turned my head away, to look at anything but your face. You didn’t like that, and swiftly I felt how you move my arms from my side to above me, shifting from being pinned down by both of your hands to one. With your free hand, you grabbed my chin and gently turned my face to be facing you again. 

Your brown eyes seemed more focused now, but your face was still flushed red (the asian flush from drinking?). I could faintly smell the alcohol from your breath, with a peachy undertone. It’s a very addicting smell, which also seems to be clinging to me whenever you decide to be physically clingy again (which is like 75% of the time).  

In a last-ditch attempt to escape your clutches just to avoid having to answer your question, I kicked up my leg that was trapped between your legs. Low move, I know. As expected, you saw it coming and immediately trapped my leg between yours, preventing it from ever kicking your balls.  

“Oh, come on!” I shouted. Your nose scrunched up in laughter at my feeble escape attempt.  

And in an instant the atmosphere between us shifted and you stared at my intensely. You moved your hand from my chin to caressing my cheek, your sharp fingernails carefully gracing the skin. My hair was tussled up from being suddenly flipped over and spilled all over the place. Your fingers grabbed few strands from my face and tucked them aside, behind my ears, and then your hand stayed there, playing with my two helix piercings.  

At this point, you must have been able to hear how hard my heart was hammering against my chest.  

Then I saw how your eyes flickered down to my slightly parted lips, your gaze turning hungry. With half-lidded eyes, you began to lower your head again and this time, I didn’t struggle against your hold. A big part of me wanted what was coming next to happen.  

Your hot breath was against my face, I tried to take slow breaths to calm my beating heart down.  

The smell of alcohol became more intense, muddling my thoughts more.  

I closed my eyes, waiting for your lips to brush against mine. How would it feel if we kissed? I have never kissed an anthromorphic monkey before – how would it even feel like if we were to make out? 

FAAFO. 

Fuck around and find out it is.  

The kiss never came.  

Instead, I felt your lips lightly brushing the corner of my own lips, sliding down from the side of my face and your head was then lying there next to me, snoring again.  

The grip you had on my two hands also slackened, your whole body coming down to lay on top of mine, pinning me down.  

You... passed out again. 

I used my free hands to push you off of me, but of course you didn’t even budge and inch.  

I let out a shaky long sigh, part of me glad that nothing happened in the end because you were drunk after all; another part of me felt this immense disappointment that well, nothing happened.  

Looks like it is going to be another night out in the open.  

The fire finally died out. I moved one hand to put it on top of your head and gave you head scratches. In response you nuzzled your face into my neck, still snoring away.  

Slowly, as my eyes got adjusted to the dark, I then spotted a figure up in the trees not too far away from our drinking spot. It was the Shen monkey, who decided a drunk sleeping on a tree branch was the best way to cure a hungover. Only he wasn’t asleep, and judging by that shit-eating grin he has, he saw everything that happened. 

With my luck, by the next time I visit the Zodiac Village, every villager will know about the drunk almost-kiss.  

I decided that this was for future-me to deal with, and closed my eyes to finally get some sleep. Maybe you will not remember anything by tomorrow and we can both pretend that this never happened.  

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

I keep a bottle of rice wine at my apartment. Sometimes, when I’m feeling homesick, I pour two cups – one for you, and one for me. I would drink my cup down in one go, thinking about the evenings when it was just you and me and some good alcoholic beverages, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. 

I miss seeing the red flush on your face and your cocky smile whenever you noticed me staring at you for too long. The red flush looked good on your face.  

Your cup always remains untouched.  

Chapter notes:

干杯 gānbēi - is what you say when toasting your drinks, literally means dry cup 桜花 yīnghuā - cherry blossom. It's Sun Wukong's nickname for Oz, because she has pink hair. Also everyone uses peaches as a nickname and I wanted something different LMFAO #notlikeothergirls

Eye contact or seven years of bad luck (even bad sex) - toasting tradition in Germany. You're supposed to be looking at the other person when toasting, not your glass but when you tell someone to keep eye contact you usually just end up creepily staring at each other xD

And no, Oz cannot get drunk - which I will proooobably explain in another chapter, if not I will definitely write up post on my tumblr about it. Still hashing out some of her backstory details.

[redfoxwritesstuff]

A Misdemeanor Of The Heart (Chapter 5) Human!Alastor x Reader)

Rated Adult Chapter Trigger Warnings: Alastor is a little shit.

AN: Reminder- Double update this week, See you Friday. Updates will now be every Friday!

Now with Audio by Nyx Productions, read by the lovely @nyx-umbrakinesis. Want to revisit the land of Misdemeanor but don't have time to sit and read? Maybe it's your first visit and you want the whole experience? Let Nyx read you a story: Part 1, Part 2

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“It’s just up here,” Laurence said, glancing over his shoulder to find his dinner guest lagging behind. He needed this loan and yet dinner wasn’t wasn’t off to a great start if he couldn’t at least keep the man’s attention long enough to get to his office. He just needed you to not fuck up somehow when bringing ice up or finishing dinner. 

“A lovely wife you have, Laurence. It’s a shame for her to be married to a man so eager to offer her as collateral,” Alastor said, as the stairs creaked with each step he took. 

“Nothing but a jest, Mr. Moreau.” 

“Of course,” Alastor said, doing nothing to cover the fact that he didn’t believe Laurence had said it in jest for a minute. 

“We’ll let her finish up fixing dinner while we-”

“See to business. Yes, yes, that’s fine.” 

Laurence shut the office door as Alastor stepped inside, sealing them off from the wonderful aroma of fresh bread that permeated the lower level of the home. What a shame, Alastor thought.

You had invited Alastor to make himself at home when he came into the house, so he did just that. Rather than sit in one of the overstuffed chairs across from Laurence’s desk, Alastor walked around the small office, eyes taking in little details as they ran over trinkets and notes.

“Is Emma a pet name for your darling wife? Such an illogical choice.” Alastor turns from the calendar, eyes running over the desk.

Laurence laughed nervously. It was clear to Alastor that he didn’t enjoy having someone he couldn’t control in his space. “Oh well, you know how men are.”

“And how is that?” Alastor asked, cataloguing every bit of information he could about who Laurence was and what kind of man he really was. 

Laurence gaped, fishing for the correct answer in his small brain. Alastor wasn’t playing by the typical male script he was used to dealing with. Dreadfully dull, Alastor thought. He couldn’t come up with a slight excuse to cover his affair? Men’s desire to run around on their partners never made sense to him. 

“Was there a reason we must abandon the hostess?” Alastor finally settled into a chair, leaning back and crossing his legs. This may be Laurence’s home ground but Alastor made it clear who really had the power at the moment.

“This is men’s business…” Laurence tailed off at the soft tap tap at the door. 

You did not enter this space, Alastor filed that away as well. He turned, watching you as you passed Laurence the tray with ice-filled glasses, hands trembling.

Were you terrified of your husband? Or was it pain? Perhaps illness? No, not illness. You flinched too much for it to be something as simple as poor health. Plus, there were the marks on your wrist. Did you think you were clever with the bracelets and the sleeves? 

“It’ll be just a few moments while I draft up the contract,” Laurence makes a show of pulling out a large typewriter case from the shelf to the left of his desk. It was clearly expensive, just as many other items in this insufferable office. 

Alastor finished his glass of whiskey in one quick drink before setting the glass down directly on the solid wood desk. When Laurance frowned at the glass set exactly two inches to the left of the coaster he had ever so blatantly requested Alastor use to protect the desk surface, Alastor simply smiles back at him. 

“While you set to that task, please do excuse me.”

“Is something the matter?” Laurence stood slowly. 

“Not at all! I’m simply off to the washroom.” 

Alastor let out the breath he felt like he had been holding forever as the door clicked shut behind him. The washroom was lit by gas, Alastor noticed, not electricity like the office and living room had been. 

Why would the Latimer household only update part of the house when adding electricity? Looking around the washroom, he saw new pipes. The home was plumbed. Upgrades had been started but stopped. Why? 

Humming as he went, Alastor continued exploring the small room. Everything was bright white, and he hated it all. The warm wood tones of the rest of the house were far better suited to his own taste.

Spotting the small glass vial on the sink, Alastor picked it up and opened it. The smell made him cringe. Medicinal and strong. Laudanum, if he had to guess though, the label was ripped from the bottle in places. Who did it belong to and who were they hiding the contents of the bottle from?

Alastor had taken it before and never been a fan of how it had made his head feel. 

Sure, he had a bottle on hand in his own medicine cabinet but his was covered in dust and nearly new. This vial was clean, fresh and nearly half empty. Who took it? Was it you or Laurence that took it often enough for the vial to be fresh? 

Stepping out of the washroom, Alastor looked first at the closed office door. The click click click of the typewriter behind the door gave away how slow of a typist Laurence was. At the rate he was going, Alastor could type the contract four times over before Laurence would finish the first copy. 

Hell, he could draft it by hand faster than the keystrokes were coming from beside the door.

Instead of rejoining Laurence in the office, Alastor kept walking down the hall. He was mindful of each step as he descended the stairs, avoiding those he had noticed squeaked under weight. 

Laurence was eager to offer his wife as collateral, but clearly didn’t enjoy it when Alastor paid her any attention. Though Alastor shot down the offer at Mimzy’s, it surprised him that Laurence didn’t offer those same terms again. Instead, it was his car Laurence was drafting the contract for. 

Alastor had no trouble finding the kitchen. He moved through the house silently, leaning against the doorframe as he watched you work. Your back was to him, allowing him the freedom to watch you without reservation. 

If Mimzy was here, she would tell him how he could have this, whatever this was. He wasn’t so sure that it was something he ever wanted. He knew it was something he could have, and he likewise knew it was something he didn’t need. But did he want the domestic life?

It hadn’t worked out so well for his mother. If people were talking about him, though, that wasn’t in his favor. Could he trust a meek little woman in his space, keep her happy and entertained enough that she wouldn’t run around town being a gossip? Would he be able to find someone who would look the other way and believe it was animal blood that stained his clothes?

As he watched you in his thoughts, you worked the loaf of bread out of the pan. Thinking you were alone, you held your injured shoulder stiffly, using your body to brace it as you moved. When you shifted it wrong, you gasped softly in pain, muttering softly under your breath a reminder that the meal needed to be perfect. 

You dropped the loaf into the bread slicer contraption, then braced the end of the box against your apron covered front and slowly sliced through the loaf again and again until the loaf was leaning forward, sliced into neat sheets of bread sitting in a sea of crumbs. The rich smell of beef gravy was thick in the kitchen, hearty and welcoming. 

You were humming to yourself as you worked. It was a pleasant sound that Alastor found he enjoyed. As you turned to put the sliced bread into the basket, he stepped back out of what would be your line of sight. From where he stood, he could see you as you stepped up to the oven, but you were unlikely to see him. 

He watched as you rubbed your wrist, pushing the bracelets up and running your hand over the dark bruise. Though his eyes were not the best, Alastor could see the clear definition marking where fingers had wrapped around your wrist with more force than was ever justifiable. 

Why did you stay? Did you like being thrown around? He doubted it. You hardly looked like you loved your husband. It was clear as day that you were uncomfortable with him every time his hands touched you. The farce was better executed in public than he had seen in your home, but he saw nothing that told him you held anything close to affection for the man you were married to.

Carefully, you reached out with the towel draped over both hands and grabbed the handles of the kettle. Hesitation had you standing in that position as heat seeped into the fabric for longer than Alastor expected. Surely your hands were getting close to burning.

Then you lifted. The kettle didn’t make it any more than an inch off the iron burners before clattering back down as you cried out softly. Alastor watched as your shoulders sagged and you sniffled. 

You wouldn’t be able to lift the kettle. You wouldn’t be able to pull the meat out of it and put it in the serving dish. Dinner would be ruined, and you were convinced it would be your fault. 

“Allow me,” Alastor’s voice came from the doorway, startling you. 

“Oh, no- It’s fine.” You looked around for Laurence. The last thing you needed was for him to see you inconveniencing his guest. 

“He’s in his office, drafting the contract at the pace of a schoolboy,” Alastor’s long strides took him into your kitchen and to your side before you had a chance to protest more. “You’re clearly struggling to lift it.” 

He took the towel from you as if the kitchen was his. It looked easy as he lifted the kettle from the stove, as if it weighed nothing. You watched dumbly as he looked around to find where you had the trivets set up. The sound of the kettle setting down on the counter snapped you out of the daze. 

“Can I help you with anything, Mr. Moreau?” you ask, trying to remind him of propriety as he scooped the pot roast from the kettle and set the crumbling hunk of meat into the serving dish for you. 

“Alastor,” his eyes flick up to you for a moment before returning to his self-assigned task. “I simply needed a moment of more agreeable company. I find your husband rather dull. however do you put up with him?”

You were not sure what you could say to such a confession. It was improper to speak to a woman about her husband in such a manner. It was improper to be alone together, doing something as intimate as household tasks together. 

Arguing with the guest was improper, but it was also not something you could agree with while remaining proper. You were not even sure if you agreed with it. Laurence was a part of your life. It wasn’t optional, so you had never thought about it. 

Instead of thinking about it, you needed to set the table in the dining room. The dishes were in an overhead cabinet. Reaching up, you opened it easily enough. Plucking up the shallow bowls was something you expected to be doing in private. 

Your shoulder ached, you needed to take a few more pain pills and lift the delicate bowls one at a time to ensure you didn’t drop them. With him there, you couldn’t do that though. It would look suspiciously like you were avoiding using your arm. 

You’d already given away too much with the kettle. 

You tried to keep a smile on your face as you reached up with both hands. Finger tips trembled in front of your eyes. No matter how hard you tried to stop them from doing so, they continued to tremble. 

Grab the dishes in one neat stack. Put them on the counter. Do not drop them. Rest a moment. Carry them to the dining room. How hard could that be? You could do it. You needed to do it. You had to do it.

“Let me get it for you,” Alastor’s voice was soft and low in your ear. 

You hadn’t heard him move, but when you jerked back from him only to have your hip strike his arm. Without you noticing, he had come up behind you and caged you in, resting his palm against the counter on your other side. 

He reached up with his other hand, leaning forward as he picked up a stack of three dishes. Your breath froze in your lungs as his chest brushed against your good shoulder and back. For a moment, you told yourself that he didn’t know. He was just being helpful until he leaned more into you. 

You gaped up at him. Too close. You had never been so close to a man you were not related to outside of Laurence. Sure, you’d bumped into men and let Alastor provide you support as you got up off the floor at the butcher, but this was different. 

It was a second really, long enough for you to register the warmth of him. He leaned forward a bit more, smirking down at you as his chest and side pressed firmer against you. 

Torso to torso, you couldn’t feel any of the give that Laurence’s body had but before you could even form a thought about what that meant for Alastor’s body, he stepped back and held the fragile china in his large hands. 

“There you are.” Your heart dropped at the sound of Laurence’s voice. Had he seen? You did nothing wrong, but women rarely escaped the blame when it came to impropriety. 

“I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the lovely aromas of your wife’s cooking.” Alastor laughed, bowls in hand as he carried them to the dining room.

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[steddieasitgoes]

written for @eddiemonth Day 5, Prompt: Role Model (and Brave if you squint)

read on ao3 | link to my ao3 Eddie Month series

“Will’s out of practice, but I think he’s excited to play again,” Mike says, sliding Eddie’s worn D&D notebook across the small hospital bed tray. “You know, when you’re up for it, of course. I mean, one of us could DM me or Will, I mean, but we’re not as good as you.” 

“Who told you flattery works on me, Wheeler?” Eddie jests, grinning up at him from his hospital bed. “Yeah, yeah, of course, I’ll DM something for you sheep. It’ll give me something to do in here while those government people work their cover-up magic.” 

Eddie watches as a smile takes over Mike’s entire face, eyes crinkling in the corner. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the kid so happy before. And all over a game. They really are nerds, aren’t they? Before Mike has time to give his input, something Eddie knows he is gearing up to do because he always has input, there’s a knock on the closed hospital door. 

“Mike?” Nancy calls as she cracks the door open. “There you are. The boys are looking for you. Something about a vending machine?” 

“Oh, shit,” Mike swears, eyes wide. 

“Duty calls?” 

“Yeah, we’re trying to bride the guy in charge of stocking the machine on Max’s floor to give us snacks for free,” he says, walking backward towards the door. “I’ll bring you back something if our mission is successful.” 

Eddie places a request for a Milky Way and a bag of chips, which Mike mentally notes before disappearing into the hallway. Nancy’s about to head out behind him, already pulling Eddie’s door shut when he calls out to her. 

“Got a minute, Wheeler Senior?” 

Nancy hovers in the doorway, nose turned up. “Only if you promise never to call me that again.” 

Eddie laughs, mimes crossing his heart as best he can earning a shake of Nancy’s head. Still, she steps into the room, closing the door behind her before making the short trip to his bedside. 

“How are you doing?” she asks, eyes scanning him from head to sock-covered toes. 

“Now that I’m finally awake, I just, uh, wanted to properly say thank you,” Eddie says, wincing as he tries to adjust his position in the bed. It’s already raised to a seated position, but he’s still not comfortable. His torso burns and the wires hooked up to him clink against the bed frame and it’s hell, but if he doesn’t adjust himself soon his foot is going to fall asleep and the only thing worse than getting nearly mauled to death by bats in a hell dimension is the feeling of pins and needles in his feet. 

“Thank me?” 

“Oh, don’t play coy, Wheeler. You saved my life,” Eddie says, finally settling on his side. “Henderson told me how you took over carrying me back after Harrington’s own wounds got the better of him. You didn’t have to do that.” 

“Of course, I had to do that! I wasn’t going to let you die down there.” 

“I wouldn’t have blamed you. I mean, I almost got us all killed.” 

“You— what?” Nancy asks, eyes wide in confusion. Reaching behind her, she grabs the spare chair (the one Wayne’s been sleeping in every chance he gets) and drags it towards the bed. The legs screech against the linoleum tile, but it doesn’t seem to phase her. “You saved us, Eddie. Saved Dustin, definitely.” 

“Tell that to his fractured leg.” 

Nancy shakes her head and reaches for his hand that doesn’t have an IV needle shoved into it. She looks at him with a face of determination. One not unlike the face she had when she explained their plan two weeks ago in the stolen Winnebago. This is Nancy on a mission. Except, Eddie’s not sure what the mission is this time. 

“Stop,” she says, squeezing his hand. “Just stop, okay? You didn’t fail us or whatever you think you did. You kept Dustin safe. You bought us more time. I would have liked it if you didn’t use your body as bait.” She glances at his exposed arms, wrapped in gauze, some already bloody again. “But you did what you had to do. We all did what we had to do. And we’re alive. That’s all that matters.” 

“Yeah, but I—“

“No,” she scolds, glaring at him this time. “I don’t want to hear it. You don’t get to downplay what you did or think you’re some— some fuck up. Because you’re not. You are a hero. A brave hero! And I won’t let you say those things about yourself, especially not when Mike could overhear you. You’re his role model, you know?” 

It hurts to laugh, but it bubbles out of him anyway. It’s not the happy kind of laughter, though. It’s of the unamused variety. The kind of laughter he’s used at aiming at Jason and the rest of the jocks in the Hawkins High cafeteria. 

“Don’t bullshit me, Wheeler. M’not that kid’s role model.” 

“You are, though,” she says, doubling down. “Mike never shuts up about you. He was miserable this summer when the Byers moved, and he realized he was starting school without his best friend and girlfriend. I swear he almost jumped out of my car on that first day of school. So imagine my surprise when he climbed in the car at the end of the first day with a genuine smile on his face.”

“All I did was give him a place to eat lunch.” 

“No, you gave him so much more than that. Mike’s always had friends, sure, but he’s never had a role model. Not like the others do. I mean, Dustin has Steve, which is weird. but it somehow works. Will has Jonathan. Lucas has his dad. But Mike? Mike’s always sort of floundered in the role model department. I mean, you’ve seen our dad. He doesn’t exactly get Mike.”

“What? And I do?” Eddie asks, still not entirely buying Nancy’s words. Though, he should know better than to doubt Nancy Wheeler. After all, this is the girl who has guns, plural, in her bedroom. 

“Yeah, you do. More than either of you realize.”

Eddie considers that for a moment. Thinks about the way Mike’s cheeks have always turned the slightest shade of pink in his presence. The way he always, always found a way to bring up Baby Byers in conversations. The memory is hazy, but he remembers watching him in those first few hours he woke up from the coma. Mike reaching for Will’s arm when Eddie’s eyes fluttered open.

And then he thinks of himself. The lingering glances he’s snuck in the hallways. The flirtatious jabs he threw Steve’s way when he was running for his life, sure he was going to die. 

Once again, he’s left stunned by Nancy. Though, really, he should have seen this one coming. She is a journalist, after all. It’s her job to be observant. 

“Alright, fine,” Eddie concedes. “Maybe I’m Mike’s role model. But if I’m being straight with you, Wheeler. I don’t think I’m going to be any good at the job.” 

“You’re already good at the job,” she says, squeezing his hand once last time before pulling away. “Just keep it up. And you know, get better so you can play that damn game of yours.” 

“You know, there’s always room for more players at the table.” 

Nancy laughs as she peels herself off the chair. “You’re funny, Eddie. Unfortunately, I’ve got a real battle to get ready for. Not to offend, but I prefer to take on the monsters in real life now.” 

He shakes his head, smiling fondly as Nancy makes her way to the door. “You know, if anyone should be Baby Wheeler’s role model, it’s you.” 

“Yeah, well, Mike’s still a stupid teenage boy,” she shrugs. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.” 

Eddie salutes her before letting out an embarrassing yawn. Nancy muffles a laugh into her head before reaching for the door. “Hey, Eddie,” she says, glancing over his shoulder. Eddie hums, eyes already drooping. “For what it’s worth, you should also maybe stop being so hard on yourself when it comes to Steve. You’re good for each other.” 

* * * 

Eddie’s woken from his brief nap a few minutes later by Steve. “Was that Nance I saw leaving your room?” he asks, dumping an armful of vending machine snacks onto the hospital bed tray. The shitheads must have had a successful mission, after all. 

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie nods, dazed from being woken up and also the reality of Nancy’s final words to him finally hitting him. 

“Oh, no, I know that look,” Steve says, collapsing in the chair previously occupied by Nancy. He kicks his feet up on the edge of Eddie’s bed and tears into a bag of Doritos. “She gave you one of her ‘cut you to your core’ Nance speeches, didn’t she?” 

Eddie just nods. 

“Shit, I’ve been there,” Steve says, patting Eddie’s shoulder. “It sucks in the moment, but let me tell you. Eventually, you’ll realize she was right all along and thank her. Nance is never wrong.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, stealing a glance at Steve. “I’m never doubting her ever again.” 

[missuswalker]

Dude the red hcs are so good bc I have the exact same vision of her in my head like playing volleyball and being extremely gay and pining for Wendy like that’s EXACTLY what I thought too 😭😭 BOUNCING OFF THAT VOLLEYBALL IDEA could you do mutual pining hcs of basketball player Kyle and volleyball player reader please? With bff Red on the side bc the energy u gave her makes me wanna see u write her more HAHA thank you!!

THIS IS SO BFHEFBEUIHU!!! lets kiss.

cheer you on || kyle broflovski x fem reader

✮ summary: your best friend, red, has been trying to convince you that kyle likes you, though you aren't totally convinced until he shows it himself (pt two can be found here) ✮ warnings: stanley marsh jumpscare

"God damn, he's so damn fine." Red gives me a look, already knowing who I was talking about. "Girl, you're like a stalker, hashtag free Kyle," Red scoffs, looking in the direction I was. "Yeah, well you can't tell me that Wendy isn't in your recently searched on Insta," I retort. "I could. It just wouldn't be true."

My eyes stayed on Kyle, watching as he talks to his friends, telling someone off for spilling water all over the lunch table. Kyle and I were okay friends, we talked when we saw each other, but it was never much more than that. Red swore on her life that he flirts with me all the time, but I could only think he was just being nice.

"If you don't go talk to him, I'm drowning you." Red jests, taking a sip from her water bottle. "Hell no, are you insane?" I say, shutting even the idea of talking to him down, stealing a grape out of Red's lunchbox. "He's looking over here," Red whispers, elbowing me.

"Shut up!" I snap, trying not to give in to the urge to look back. "Woah, woah, woah, he's coming over her," Red continues, her voice louder than I would've liked it to be. "Shut up!" I repeat, acting like I didn't have a clue that he was walking up behind me.

"Hey, Y/n, what's up?" Kyle asks, taking the seat next to me. "Not much, just... lunch." I need to shut the fuck up. "Cool," Kyle chuckles, pushing his curly bangs out of his eyes. "You coming to the basketball tonight? It's a big one and I was kinda hoping you could be my personal cheerleader," He grins. I could feel Red's amusement even while I wasn't facing her.

"I totally would, but I have volleyball tonight." I answer. Of course I have volleyball the night Kyle invites me to come watch his basketball. "Home game?" He asks, messing with his bangs once again. "Yeah, sorry, I really wish I could come." He shrugs, giving me a nod, glancing back at his friends.

"It's cool, don't worry about it. Next time, maybe," He mumbles, standing up. "See you in history?" I nod, giving him an apologetic smile. "Yeah, see you." I watch him walk back to his table, jumping as Red punches me in the shoulder.

"He was so bummed! "My personal cheerleader"? Are you serious? He wants you! That was so an invitation to have his little kosher children!" Red exclaims, shaking my arm. "Ew, what the hell? Have his kosher children? He just invited me to a basketball game, I bet he invited, like, eight other girls," I argue, pulling my arm away.

"Are you talking about Kyle?"

"Jesus Chirst," I huff, jumping at the sudden appearance of Stan. Whipping around, I see him leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. "He only invited you. He's been growing the balls to do it all day." Stan continues, staring into my soul. I give Red a look, my eyes going back to Stan.

"Ok... bye Stan," I say, waving in hopes he'd leave. He rolls his eyes, returning to his table. "Creep," Red mumbles, zipping up her lunchbox.

✮

Our match had just ended, our setter, Bebe, dragging out a cooler of gatorades. "Holy shit, Y/n, look to your left," Red laughs, nudging me. I turn and immediately see what she was telling me to look at. "Is that Kyle? Why is he here, did he skip his basketball game?" I say, completely shocked to see the redhead boy at my volleyball game.

He gives me a wave, his signature goofy grin taking over his previously straight face as he steps down from the bleachers. I meet him in the middle, giving him a confused look. "What are you doing here, I thought you had basketball?"

"I wanted to come cheer you on. I called in sick, Butters was gonna take my place." He answers, sending me into a swarm of thoughts. "You're fucked if your coach finds out you were at my stupid volleyball match." I scold, earning a playful eye roll from Kyle.

"It wasn't stupid. You were really good. Plus, I wanted to ask you something."

Hoooollllyyyy shit. If this was going where I thought it was going, I was going to pass away on the spot.

"I think you're gorgeous, and I was wondering if I could take you to get something to eat sometime. I really like you."

Woah.

"Yeah, that sounds fun. Text me?" "Definitely. See you tomorrow."

I was literally about to pass away. Walking back to my team, Red was readily prepared to shit on me about this.

"Told you so." "Shut up."

a/n: MEOOOWWWW

ruff ruff ruff im such a kahl gremlin (not proofread, i'll do it after my nap 😻) (its 3 am)

[sapphic-bats]

It all started on Eddie's birthday.

Dustin had adamantly insisted that they host a party, to which Eddie relented, amused. After all, he had never really had a party before. They bought cake, invited everyone to Steve's, and decorated the house in colors that Eddie was baffled to see. I mean, who decorated for something as insignificant as a birthday celebration?

The gifts started out reasonably cheap for last-minute presents. It was more than Eddie had ever gotten, lest Wayne would buy him a very important gift every year, having saved up money since Eddie's last birthday. Dustin bought him more D&D books and a few sets of multi-colored dice. Mike handed him a small, cardboard necklace box that previously held a pendant of Nancy's, and now held all sorts of shiny, iridescent guitar picks. Will blushed, unused to praise, at the gratitude he received for a beautiful portrait of the Hellfire Club mascot in all its glory. Erica and Lucas gifted him a Mettalica t-shirt, one that wasn't currently sitting in Eddie's collection. So on, so on.

Until it reached Steve.

He laughed as everyone cheered at him, egging him on persistently until he gave in and placed the small box in front of Eddie.

The man grinned and cracked open the case, staring down at a beautiful onyx ring, embossed with a bat-shaped gem embedded into the center. His eyes widened, gaping at the object before a wolfish smile broke upon his face.

He looked up at Steve. "So soon? You haven't even asked me out to dinner yet."

Steve laughed, a twinge of sheepishness glinting through, though melting away with Eddie's jest. "You wish. No," He smiled. "I saw it in a store and... I thought of you."

The other man inspected it suspiciously. "How much did this even cost?" He scoffed aloud.

Steve said nothing.

Eddie now peered back up at the man scrutinizingly. "Steve. How much did this cost?"

"Ah, um," The brunette sucked on his bottom lip stubbornly. "Yeah, no. Robs, you're up."

As Robin went on to endow her present, Eddie snuck sneering glares of inquiry at Steve. Eventually, he acquiesced, but he never forgot the gift and its donor.

[]

One last "Vecna" scare.

Vines has seeped into the Right Side Up, thrashing around like their beastly counterparts, both bats and dogs together. One last mission before Vecna had died, one that they had not forgotten in their months in the opposing realm, waiting for an opportunity to carry out their orders of their deceased master.

Eddie took a drag from his cigarette before handing it to Steve. They were on night watch duty while the others gathered materials. Steve exhaled shakily, then inhaled from the cigarette.

"So, this is it."

Steve frowned, glancing over to rest his eyes on Eddie. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, this could be our last battle, and we know it." The man laughed humorlessly. "Everyone knows it, I see it weighing down the kids, and... eh, I dunno. It sucks, man."

Steve nodded, eyebrows lowering in empathy. "Yeah, I feel it too." He shuddered. "As long as we stick together this time, everything will be fine."

There was a pause for a moment, before Eddie took the cigarette from Steve and gripped the man's hands.

"Hey, promise me that if anything goes south, take the kids and run. I can fend for myself."

Steve recoiled, something akin to anger flashing on his face. "Can you? Because the last time you played hero, you died."

But Eddie wasn't perturbed. "I know. But it's a lot better than risking a casualty among the kids." He gazed down sadly, almost regrettably.

"Listen, Eddie. Our party doesn't just abandon our members when things look rough. We're not gonna let you get hurt, not this time." He glared at him, directly in the eyes. "But you have to do your part, and not try to do hero shit. You just completely disregarded my instructions!"

Eddie still wouldn't meet Steve's eyes. "So what do you want me to tell you?" Frustration laced his voice gingerly.

"I don't know, but you can do a lot better than just, 'Make him pay.'"

A silence hung in the air, and Eddie sighed.

"That's not what I was going to say."

Steve looked over.

"'Make him pay'? That wasn't what I really wanted to say." Eddie reiterated.

A pause. "What... were you going to say?"

Eddie inhaled deeply, meditatively, as if preparing to reveal something he wished to have kept buried, however it killed him.

"I was going to tell you I loved you."

Another hesitation.

"You... love me?"

Eddie nodded, finally meeting Steve's gaze. "And I can't die without telling you first."

He could swear his heartbeat raised about twenty percent, breathing hastened, hands shaking. Steve knew it was now or never.

All of his life, he had taken risks for other people. It was time he took one for himself.

He leaned forwards and kissed Eddie, shock rippling through the other for a mere moment before he kissed back, taking the man in his arms. They stood there for a moment, tasting skin and dark salt and cigarette smoke, and though the combination might sound repulsive, soon a citrus-sweet flavor began to bloom between it. They parted, heaving with the energy they'd sacrificed and the adrenaline they had created.

"I love you too." Steve gasped, something glistening near his waterline, shining like raindrops on the windshield of a car. It felt so good to finally be the one to say it back.

Eddie laughed victoriously, a feat of his nerves well over, rejection far behind them. Steve couldn't help but laugh too, still entwined in the other's grasp.

"Steve, I love you so much I could marry you right now." He joked, his fit of laughter still shaking him.

He didn't know what came over him, but Steve grinned. "So do it."

The laughter died in astonishment. "Wha- really?"

Steve nodded, furrowing his brows in ridicule of something almost unspeakable. "Yeah, fuck whatever laws there are. Marry me."

Maybe it was the adrenaline, but there was no unsurety or regret in any word he spoke, nor was there a trace of either in his gleaming eyes. Eddie blinked, and soon his face mirrored Steve's simper.

"Well, then. Steve Harrington," He released Steve, dropping to one knee gracefully. "Love of my life, heir to the heavens, will you make me the happiest man in the world, and marry me?"

He had slid a ring of his off of his left hand, the skull ring that had previously resided on his ring-finger, and held it up to Steve in proposal.

The man wasted no time in seizing the ring from Eddie's open palm, and slipping it onto his own engagement finger. He pulled the man to his feet and kissed him again, this time smiling widely.

When they separated, Eddie smirked. "I believe we have one more step to the process?"

Steve smiled knowingly, knitting his brows in mock annoyance. He then held out his hand. "My weapon?"

The other slid the onyx ring off of his finger adjacent to his middle, the middle finger which was adorned with an old ring that he now hastily moved to a separate finger on his right hand, along with the rest of his rings on the left. He dropped it into Steve's palm.

The man barely had any time to speak once he kneeled. "Eddie Munson, will you marry-"

He was interrupted by Eddie taking hold of his face on either side and pressing his lips to Steve's. He just about giggled. "Yes."

[]

And on October 6th, 2014, their rings, never once removed, touched together while they laced their fingers in front of the TV as it spoke the headline, "Gay Marriage Now Legalized In Indiana".

(Go follow my Ao3, Pink_October_Bones! I'm in the final stage of editing some stories, and will be posting thousands of words-worth of fan fictions soon!)

[saltyr3mix]

Okay someone asked about Winnie in your AUs could I ask about another character?? Maybe Sara?

sure! I'm assuming you want the same format where it's just explaining the sort of role she plays in each au? I think she appears less than Winnie but when she does she plays a stronger role.

To learn from the tragedies: she's just a girl. Shes a bit pushy but that's because she's stressed and fear is influencing s lot of her decisions. (Some one else also might be influencing her decisions in a bit tho) i think the plan is to have her redeemed by the end.

Shattered dreams: uhhh she dies in the end if? That's about it.

I will make them create my world: has the world's most tragic sob story of all time and she was angry about it so she cursed the world to have other people face just as bad a fate she had because she's petty like that.(I only jest about this because I still haven't actually figured out what her tragic backstory is, only that there is one)

Swap au/Skating in silence: she takes Oliver's role and is just tried. Some one let her go home. She doesnt want to be here. She wants her friends back but ends up with a tv on her head with only the hope that maybe her ex boyfriend will be looking for her because every single other person she knows is dead.

One shots/you'll live until I die: she killed people. Ussaly feels bad about it. Possessed by litho during the time most of these fics take place. The Refer to themselves as a singular entity Sara definitely was the one most likely to get redeemed but the others are just sort of there. Doing my best to follow cannon.

Steven universe au: she's a pink diamond in yellows role. She uses her healing powers to preform really crazy experiments in an attempt to save their kind. She's doing what she thinks is helping, but she lacks empathy for the ones she's hurting in the process. Also just kinda crazy.

Superhero au: FINALLY I SWEAR U DINT AKWAYS MAJE HER A VILLAIN GUYS!!! she did like- not bat an eye to the child experimentation and torture and was ready to straight up kill Glitch with out knowing it was Oliver at some point but she learns and has some charter development. When Error starts switching places at stuff she starts to realize her mistakes in her faith to the hero organization but can't find the courage to say it. If error was replaceable who's to say she isn't? Lewis is a little more empathic but she's the rational one most of the time and the pair do their best to save people but can save everyone so it looks bad on them that all the shit that happened to the acrimonies could be traced back to their neglect but their human and didn't know what to do you can't really blame them. Any way her hero name is Pulse and she can control peoples blood!!! :D

Here lies the burried masks: this in my opinion is the most villainous and messed up version of her. Just thinking about some of the stuff she does makes *me* sick. But she also has a reason for it that hasn't been explained yet. Really really really tough backstory that gathers a lot of sympathy to understand her actions but not excuse them. I also love her? She's so fun to write. She's so bonkers it's awesome.

Secret au/Oc au: So. With Winnie it was easier to explain because I have full control of him at all times and I play him. With Sara we kinda pass her around like a doll! We both play her and so she's a little silly type of inconsistent. Uhhhhh I think the major thing about her thats differ from cannon is we accidentally wrote litho out of au. We weren't sure if we wanted him there or not and kept being really vague about it. So he's not there any more? But Sara also isn't.... Evil? Well she's a murderer and a mastermind and most recent interaction was bringing a knife to a fist fight with a 15 year old from another dimension and then breaking his soul so hard he became 3 different people. (That was actually more Winnie's and slightly his sister's fault)

BUT ANYWAY SARA! yeah a lot of character in this au stems just off interactions with others. She and clove had a dynamic. She and joy have a particular dynamic I think. One of my favorite scenes in the whole au is just straight up gaslighting Eric and Lewis. Wiatts dead so I think that's another thing sorta different from cannon is that she won. And so she has a lot more if a ego and is a little more reckless cause there isn't anyone opposing her at the moment.

Maze au: (sorry I forgot about this one with Winnie. Haven't decided where he would be yet only that he's 10000% a half angel and would have been a terrible person to be stuck in the maze with) ANYWAY MAZE AU MAZE AU MAZE AU?!!?! I like the Minecraft series "The outsiders smp" a normal amount I swear- but!!! What would happen if all the wtdw cast were put into a clearing together!!! I don't have a lot of details but I have Sara's design and I love her. She's a half demon who got sentenced to the maze for the murder of three of her co-workers who had been harassing her for years. She's not even all that upset about it. She feels guilty and like she deserves to be there once she gets her memories about it back, but before then she's one of the more energetic faces in the clearing. She says she's a runner and will take maze trips occasionally but does more help in the clearing leading and organizing everything.

Andddddddddd i think that's all the Sara's at the moment? If anyone has any specific aus they want to hear more in agian just shoot me an ask!

I have like 4 other similar ones in my box rn and I'm looking forward to sharing! And I'm glad you guys are liking my aus! But don't be discouraged not to send stuff. I love y'all's asks and plan to answer all of them! It just takes a while!

[notinthislife50]

Chapter 21

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

The next night was the party, you, Maria, and Wanda had gathered in Nat's room to get ready. Nat sensed your anxiety “You'll be great and Steve and Bucky will kill anyone who fucks you off,” she hugged you.

You four were the last to enter the room, something you didn't want to happen but the three women all linked arms and took yours in theirs.

You felt so much gratitude in knowing these women.

“Ladies, are you trying to outdo my entrance?” Tony shouted over the mic.

“Think we just did Stark,” Maria smiled at him.

You all headed to the bar and ordered your drinks.

A short while later you heard a cough behind you, and you all turned around to see Steve looking like a deer in highlights

“Don't tell me Captain America is scared of a group of girls?” Maria jested warmly.

“When they all look as stunning as this, I can't help it,” he smiled graciously.

“What can we do for you cap?” Nat asked.

Steve looked at you "Care to dance?” he asked quietly.

You took his hand cautiously and nodded.

As you both swayed on the dance floor, he looked down at you with such love.

“I missed you princess.” he softly spoke.

" I missed you too,” you smiled up at him.

He gently kissed your lips, hoping not to scare you off.

“I know all this is a bit much, but Buck and I are here whenever you need us,” he confirmed.

You smiled wide, "I have never doubted that for a second Steve," and you brought his head down to yours kissing him.

“Want to get out of here?” you whispered.

He nodded. As you made your way out of the room bucky followed. You turned to Nat and mouthed " Be back soon, ” and winked at her.

As the three of you entered your bedroom you began to feel nervous. But seeing the smoldering look on Steve's face, caused your breath to hitch.

Your breath was then taken away when he grabbed your face and kissed you deeply, feeling the sadness at your absence for the past few months

He lifted you up bridal style and gently placed you on the bed.

“I'm not made of glass Steve,” you laughed.

"I know, but we know what you have been through, we want to make you feel safe,” he answered.

As he slowly made his way on top of you, you smiled up at him, your hands glided up his back taking his shirt with you.

“Let me see you both, please,” you pleaded.

Bucky took a place beside you and you watched in awe as they both take their shirts off. You ran your hands down their chest and over their muscles remembering them, you would never tire of this sight.

Steve sat you up “Can I?" he tugs at your dress and you nod.

He lifts it over your head, and Bucky takes his hand around your back " Do you mind?" he tugs at your bra and you reply "Go ahead."

As soon as your breasts are free, Bucky latches himself to one of them causing you to arch your back and moan in pleasure,

Steve takes the other one and you nearly leap off the bed in pleasure.

“Got to make sure both are taken care of” Steve smirks but all you can do is moan.

“So good to us doll Bucky encourages you biting on your nipple.

“James," you moan out loud.

“Do you want this princess?" Steve asked concern in his voice.

“Steve touch me and find out,” you rasped.

Steve found his way into your underwear and you were not ashamed of how wet you were.

“Fuck Y/n,” Steve moaned as he began to play with your clit.

“Such a potty mouth Captain," you tried to laugh but moaned instead as he put his fingers inside of you.

“Shit,” you sighed rutting against his hand.

" Now who is the potty mouth?" Steve laughed.

Steve drove his fingers into you while Bucky paid attention to your clit.

“James please, oh god not sure I'm gonna last long,” you whine.

You looked at Bucky with hooded eyes and he dove on your lips.

Lips, tongues, and teeth were thrashed together, leaving each other a panting mess.

“I really missed you both,” you sighed.

“You have no idea how much we missed you," the boys said.

You moaned out loud when Steve added another finger.

“Please," you screamed out in pleasure.

“Please what princess” Steve smirked at you.

“I need someone in me, please someone fuck me,” you begged.

Steve crawled on top of you and just as he was about to enter you he commanded "Look at me princess."

It took all your strength to open your eyes, but when you did you looked directly at Steve and he slowly thrust into you causing you to moan in pleasure " “Yes feels so good,”

When Steve was fully in, he stilled for a second, you looked at Bucky “James let me make you feel good, " you said.

He nodded coming to your head and slowly shoving his dick into your mouth. you moaned in such pleasure causing him to twitch. “Y/n I'm not gonna make it if you do that,” he whined but when Steve started thrusting into you, you were both goners.

“That mouth is sinful,” Bucky rasped “Glad it's just ours,”

Bucky pulled out of you just as he was about to cum causing you to be confused.

“Hurry up Steve, I need to feel her," Bucky sounded like a wild beast.

This caused Steve to fuck you relentlessly until you were screaming in pleasure, once Steve had come he rolled off you and came to lie at your side.

"You ready for Buck?” he wiped the sweat off your face and you nodded.

“Go ahead punk,” Steve ordered.

Bucky thrust into you and you moaned out.

“God doll, it's like heaven,” Bucky whined kissing you hard.

"James please please," you chant.

“Please what doll?"

“Fuck me James please fuck me," you beg.

As soon as the words left your mouth Bucky pounded into you causing you to scream out in pleasure.

Steve began to play with your clit making you a moaning squirming mess.

"That's it doll, I can feel you tightening around me, let us make you feel good." Bucky encourages.

Your orgasm steamrolls you and you scream out in pleasure causing Bucky to come.

“Good girl that's it,” he kept chanting.

After, the three of you lay there, and you finally said "Glad to have you back," causing the two men to laugh.

Steve stood up and grabbed you so you stood flush with his chest and kissed you "I love you, I hope you know that, but we need to get you back to the party."

The three of you started to get dressed and you looked at them both. "I love you both, and I have never been happier” and you genuinely meant it.

@kandis-mom @silverfire475 @rivthejellyfish @cjand10 @ladywhistledownx @marcelinethe-vampire-queen-blog @imjustanotherperson @panhoeofmanyfandoms @krissydclayton93 @ambersmommy2009 @calwitch @randomranda @clio-hook @drdbnkl2008 @vicmc624 @selenestar78 @fraidoftedark

[garnetblackwater]

The Rustle of Leaves

Human female x forest guardian

Chapter 4-What Is There To Say

The drive was quiet, Vanessa lost in her thoughts. No music playing, not even the radio buzzing away. She could only push herself to get home. Simple questions mumbled to herself. 

But why?

What does he want?

What even is he?

What did he mean by it is up to me?

Have I made a drastic mistake?

Why me?

What have I done? 

Just circular thoughts. Before she realized it, her keys were in hand standing before her door. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. The moment she reached for the door it swung open. Sandra Baker stood at 5 foot 6 inches,  her skin a warm tawny brown, a dark violet bob with a side part, several piercings on her ears and tattoo on the forearm holding the door, matching the one on Vanessa.

Sandy goes to yell, but once she sees the state of Vanessa she can only cry again. “Come on Cheeks, please don’t say I look that bad?” Vanessa walks into her apartment, moving Sandy out the way to look in the mirror. Blood had dried across her forehead and eyebrow, with small trails down her chin and neck. “Oh fuck me that looks bad,” vanessa turned back to sandy, the girls desperately trying to wipe tears away. “I am sorry, Sandy,” Vanessa swept the girl into a hug, “I promise to be more careful. I never meant to worry you.” Vanessa also began to cry, the stress of her encounter, the unknown consequences, and seeing her best friend worried to tears. It was all too much to hold in. 

“What happened Van? Do we need to take you to the hospital?”

“No, apparently I’m fine. I slipped and fell but it's mostly scrapes, and everything looks worse than it actually is.” Vanessa sighed, “At least that's what the rangers said.” 

The rangers being Ten. Fuck what can I even tell her? Can I tell her anything at all?

Sandy could see the cogs spinning away in Vanessa’s head, a deep sense of worry filling her chest. “Vanessa what happened?” Sandy asked sternly, her hand reaching out to touch the other woman.

The hair on the back of Vanessa’s neck stood on end. “How dare you use my government name? Who am I to you?” Sandy crossed her arms, Vanessa’s jest utterly disregarded.

”Ugh I don’t know what to say.”

“Say anything at this point, Vanessa?”

“Stop saying my name like that! Gosh its just,” Vanessa looked for any excuse she could use. She wasn’t sure she could say anything, let alone if she should. She doubted Sandy would believe her. Probably think she definitely had a concussion and rush her to the hospital. “It's just that I feel bad for everything. For worrying you so much. Also for rushing out of there so soon. I didn't properly thank them for saving my life. I feel like I should go back.” Not a lie exactly, Vanessa did feel bad for rushing away, but also she needed to go back. She had so many questions to ask, particularly in relation to this stupid deal she made.

“Well you are not going back alone.”

“Sandy, it's fine.”

“Nope. Not a negotiation. I will go with you. I’m not working next weekend, we can go together. We can even bring a thank you gift. Baked goods or some shit.” Sandy pushed behind her, “No go get cleaned up while I order food. You look like shit and I’m hungry.” Vanessa hugged Sandy and gave her a peck on the cheek before heading to the bathroom. Now that she could finally see herself in full, she really did look awful. Covered in muck and mud, scratched all over her legs, face and arms.The wound on her head had soaked her jacket,and blood had also dripped down the arm of her jacket, a bit splashed on her shorts. Well the magic tree man said I should be fine, if that fucking mens anything. 

Vanessa picked up her phone and snapped a picture. A day to remember I guess. Oh I should warn the others. Showing up to school tomorrow will be easier if some people know. 

She went to the “x-men” group chat skimming past all the new messages. Storm- Just a warning for tomorrow, I look like hell. I’ve been through hell. So don't freak out tomorrow.

Cyclops- Yeah yeah. Dramatic as always. Your bad day is still a good day compared to others.

Wolverine- Drink more water. Your hangover shouldn't be that bad.

Permafrost- I hate to agree but they are right.

More messages came through giving the same sentiment. Levels of disbelief and down play. “Well if they don't want to believe me.”

Storm- picture sent

Vanessa set her phone down as her notifications went wild. “Time for a shower.” She was indeed dramatic. Her body stung and ached all over. The heat of the shower acting as both a blessing and a curse. She hoped that she could wash away the grime on her body and the memories from her mind, even if just for a moment.

Ten left the rangers office and went back into the forest, his mind abuzz as he traversed the boughs. The day had been significant for him. He hadn’t planned for that deal to be made, truly. He really only intended to lead her to safety. But he couldn’t help but applaud her bravery, not just another lamb led by fear. She was definitely afraid he could smell it on her at the time, but she used her head. He enjoyed the look on her face in those moments. The defiance in her stance, the anger on her face, she was ready to fight for her life. Ten admired her in that moment, he couldn’t help but talk to her and see how far it would go.

It was worth it in the end. 

Ten angled himself in the branches and looked to the stars before he closed his eyes. “Vanessa Mae Carthwright,” her name like a prayer on his lips. He imagined her face again. Back to the moment she was in his arms, the softness of it when she finally let her guard down, brow no longer furrowed. Even as she wagged her feet to be set free, it brought a smile to his face. His heart raced as he remembered the feel of her skin, her hands gripping his arms, the closeness of her. She was so soft and plush against him, but she was also warm. Warmth was not something he often got out in the forest. Sure there were animals, bears that roamed, packs of wolves, but it wasn't the same. With Vanessa it didn't feel like a necessity. He would see her again, whether she came back to him or he had to hunt her down, he would see her again. He would experience the magic that was her again.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

||Jest of the Dark Angel Part 5||Noir au

Hello dears, I'm going to add a new chapter to this small short series jest of the dark angel. So I'm going to add a part 5 to this. This drabble series along with the Noir au belongs to my friend @demon-blood-youths so if you wish to read the other parts, you can check it out from the links below. :3

((Chapters))

Jest of the dark angle part one

jest of the dark angle part two

jest of the dark angel part three

jest of the dark angel part four

((Your reading part five part now))

||Warning for Drabble||

~Will have mentions of flashback in this drabble

~Dark themed is will be spoken and seen in this drabble

~Alcohol is present in this drabble

~Violence and gun use is present in this

||Drabble Summary||

After the recent meeting with Mori from the Port mafia, Matt and his lovely horrors were told that theirs more activity going on around town. So far, everything has been going on. However, others have been busy as well. Who are they? And who was taking business in the known territory? Read to find out.

((Guests in this drabble))

Matt Knack along with his fraction the Lovely Horrors belong to my friend @lovelyxhorrors ((a side blog that is run and owned by @demon-blood-youths ))

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Gin Akutagawa, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and others is from the anime series BSD (Bakugo stray dogs) a canon muse that I rp as.

((Note: Their will be grammar mistakes and errors in this drabble. It was written for fun so please understand. Thanks for that and hope you like.))

Matt still was silent, seeing Sid checking on some new information that got after hearing his father has done more shady business. Great, that's more headaches giving he's a lot more busy now. Though, he didn't really bother with anything his dad has done. He tries to stay out of this business. Even now, he was spinning a dagger that was a hand made one.

"........."

"Are you alright Matt?" He heard Sid speak to him while he was just done with a mission with her. They were drinking something in a shop near by but this part of town tends to be too quiet for his tastes.

"I'm fine Sid, don't worry. I figure we are done with today's businesses? I still rather just get through life without dealing with my old man's shit. That or the clubs still seem stable for now." He said but most were closed right now till tonight. Right now, the other lovely horrors were on patrol in different areas doing business but he did have Sid and Charlie with him.

"I'm sure it's nothing Matt. Right now, the others are still doing their own business right now. However, I got word that they have gotten new information that will be brought back." she said.

He hums thinking about that, hearing some light music playing in the shop since it's still sorta morning right now. This was rather nice; even after everything else. For now, he only takes a sip of a drink he got while Sid looks to him.

"Are you still wondering about Mori's offer from last night?" she asked.

"In a way. I don't know what he will give us to help with the situation. Knowing much, didn't you say he's one of the head bosses of the mafia here?" he asked her.

"He is. Mori Ogai is the known leader of Port mafia but also well known as many businesses, clubs, and other hidden organizations in town. It's said, most wouldn't dare cross him due to his power and known thought of what he can do. Even with others being under his rule." she said pushing her glasses up that Matt looks to the notes.

"So that bad huh? That explains a lot and I'm shocked that my old geezer had nothing to do with him unlike others."

"Well, given the fact it's saying something. Anyway, he is still waiting and having that opening for you if you do wish to work with him. He already said he finds what you do like the rest of us interesting. All he said is he will wait for you response." she said.

"I see. I still need time to think about it but from what I'm hearing he must be meaning business." Matt looks to some food he got but knowing much, he was wondering about it. Would this work in their favor or would it not? As the three were busy thinking about it, he saw the door open to the shop seeing a few people walking in.

A woman and three guys. Matt saw the female but she looked familiar while wearing a business female suit. The other was wearing something of the same and the last one...hold on, didn't he look familiar?

The group walks over to the front and speaks to the head owner or the female does. After speaking, the owner nods, having them follow him to the back that got Matt curious.

"Matt?"

".....Seems like someone is doing business right now.." he said seeing this.

~~~~~~~In the other area/back of the shop~~~~~~~~

Someone was waiting there for the meeting to happen, knowing it was going to be a lot to do but it was worth it. The man in question was named Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, known for being the hidden assassin. He tends to do in between jobs for both the Port mafia and another called the ADA. He's known for doing his job and getting it done. No matter how violent or bloody he does it.

The job gets done even so. Right now, he was checking his phone seeing the others for the meeting isn't here but wonders if they changed their mind. In a moment, the door to the back room opens showing the owner of the shop and even seeing the female and males.

"About time you showed up. Something happen I take it?" he asked.

"In a way, our leader had to be sure we got everything before coming to meet you. I hope we didn't make you wait too long." the female said only for Jun'ichirō to shake his head.

"No, you guys didn't. Just finished a mission on my own but I made it just in time." he said. "You know that it's nothing too long for me Gin." he said seeing Gin Akutagawa sigh looking at him.

"I see. But we will not take up your time. We have the money for you as promised." she said seeing Chuuya walk over showing a brief case that was heavy but as he lifts it up and opens it, it was full of money for him. Tanizaki sees and checked it only for him to nod.

"And here is the documents your boss asked for." he said showing some files in a folder as Ryu walks over to take it giving a light nod.

"Thank you. We will be sure our boss gets this. By the way, if I may ask, are you up for another mission or are you free? I hear you been all over the town recently." Gin asked.

"Ehhhh In a way. I been getting hit missions but most of them were not as bad. Right now, it's nothing too serious." he takes the briefcase and sets it down. "Though, I'm still doing some from time to time."

"I see. Well, with your skills you really would do good in any mafia or gang. Has anyone tried to offer you work besides the port Mafia?" she asked.

"Nope. They don't meet my requirements of payment. You guys know I ask for a lot..and I mean a LOT of money if they wish for my services. Though, I am always offering discounts which not many would have." he shrugs knowing some had tried but he rejects them.

"Well, I'm sure you will be happy to know, the port mafia appreciates what your doing to help us from time to time. However, we might have new members joining us."

"New members?" he asked.

"Yes. We got word that a group called the Lovely horrors were offered a deal with the Port mafia to work together. AT first the leader was worried they would be a threat to the business....but after seeing and hearing of what they do, he is now thinking of hiring them. He would offer a huge payment for their help but he has not heard anything from them yet." she explains.

"Huh, new help huh? Do you have pictures of them?" he asked.

"We have documents.....here." Gin shows another folder to give but saw Jun'ichirō take it and opens it. He saw some pictures of course and recent information. However, he blinks to see them even noticing Matt. However, Ryu also saw but his eyes widen.

'Hold on, it's him! He has his own gang!?!? And the leader wishes to add him? I thought he wanted him assassinated......the fuck?!?' he thought but keeps a calm look even if Ryu was confused. He'll have to speak about this later.

"I see. They do look pretty serious but how did you get this information?"

"Mr. Mori has ways and getting info. Somehow he got this one but I will admit they do look pretty interesting, even the other one." she said looking at a photo of Jason. He did look pretty handsome but Chuya sighed.

"Huh, well, that explains a lot." he said looking at the pictures but his eyes did spot a female picture. The one with blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes and a few scars from the looks of it. Huh, cutie.

He looks at the photo for a moment before closing the folder to hand it back to Gin. She takes it to smile but looks at him. "It does. I think it would be nice that this partnership happens but if not, we still can offer some help in a way." She said.

"It might you never know." he said but looking to them. "Anyway, I guess we are done here unless you got another mission for me?" he said.

"Not at the moment. That was it. If we do or if Mori does, we'll come to find you with it. For now, that was all. Thank you for your time." she said seeing Jun'ichirō nod. However, he picks up his money and turns to walk off. However, his mind was wondering of that woman, who was she and what was her name? Now he was curious.

As the group leaves, someone was hearing this from the darkness but her eyes looks to them before chuckling. "Interesting...very very interesting.." Shrika said sitting on a metal chair. "Willie, I think we should report this back." she said seeing another male wearing a suit nod. It seems they got new info to pass on.

~~~Later that afternoon~~~

"Hold on, you said what now? Another guy is helping the port Mafia?" Jason asked Shrika as she and Willie reports back seeing Matt having his arms crossed along with the others being in a meeting.

"It's true though. I was easdropping on a little meeting they were having. It was the ones you talked about Matt. They were from the port mafia. A female, and two guys. They worked for the man named Mori Ogai or the man that you two met last night. It seems he's trying to do something given he's well known." Shrika smiled sitting on the desk.

"Though, why? It leaves one questioning about something but seems he's gathering only who is best to work with him. Just like him offering the deal with you, Matt." Sid said.

"That or given the fact that he's really trying to show he's not what others thing. True, he's dangerous in power but he's got others willing to kill and fight. I Hear he even had dangerous men and woman." she said.

"We know that much Shrika." Charlie said.

"Oh? But their was another guy too. He seems to be a hired help but he does really good on his work. That's what Willie finds out." she said.

"Another guy?" Pete and Cobin asked with Lex sitting near by being quiet.

"Yeah, his name is Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, a hired help for another organization and the Port mafia itself. He does side to side jobs given he can do a pretty good job on it. You know, I will say he was really interesting but I hear he works alone. Maybe he would be a good addition-"

"Maybe but we need to focus on one thing like the deal with Port mafia. But if you say he helps them from time to time...maybe we will know more about him and the others." Charlie said.

"But it's up to Matt to decide that." Sid said but he was thinking about it. However, he was wondering of the cutie he met a few times but he wonders how he was doing. Closing his eyes half way, he only remains quiet to think about it."

The others wonder if he was alright only for Matt to sigh. "Again, I'm still thinking about the choice right now. I might give a answer in two days or so. I need to still think about it." he said.

"In the meantime, lets just do what we do. Right now, we need to be sure we are still doing our own business. Even if the others around are wondering of the clubs and other gang families. This still should be something." he said leaning back against his chair. For now, they would wait but Matt's mind was wondering of the precious hellhound.

~~~~At Port Mafia~~~~~

"So let me get this straight it was true sir? Your really going to see if the Lovely horrors will accept the invite to work together?" Mori heard Ryu speak but he remains calm to smile.

"Of course. They are a pretty strong group and you did tell me you been busy with the mission of trying to assassinate the leader. Though, didn't work did it?" he saw Ryu remain quiet. "But it's fine. I'm sure it's better to work together..."

"Though, you have heard of the things the leader's father done to others in town? Or some shady deals?" Gin asked.

"I've heard but...from what I remember, his father tends to do..things like that." Mori said with a sigh.

"However, he did a lot of things that pissed off a lot of people. No wonder he didn't want anything to do with his old man." Chuuya said remembering that.

"But that...tells a lot."

"Listen everyone, I know it's a lot but I think this would be fun. I'm sure we can make this work. Who knows? Maybe a few of you will find some new....connections with the group. Chuuya, Gin, and Ryu said nothing but they did have a person in mind but it was private.

"For now, lets just keep our heads in the game and see what else is going on. I am still waiting for his answer but I can...your all dismissed." he said kindly as the group leaves. However, Mori smiled wondering how this is going to go.

Such fun indeed.

[asparklethatisblue]

“You were right, actually,” he said, as Crawley cracked open her eye and raised a questioning eyebrow. 

“About what?”

“About teaching someone something entirely new and life changing,” Aziraphale quipped.

He grinned as Crawley groaned and smacked his chest, grumbling about insufferable angels. 

“You think too highly of yourself,” Crawley muttered, but her lips were quirking in a smile. 

At that moment footsteps sounded from outside the chamber, and before either angel or demon could do something several humans entered. One of them was carrying a lantern, which illuminated the room just enough to provide a perfect view of the rumpled clothes, the very obvious signs of rigorous sexual activity, and a newcomer to town wrapped around their most holy woman inside a sacred temple. It really couldn’t look any worse than that.

“Uh oh-” Aziraphale let out, trying to come up with an explanation as he saw the scandalized faces in front of them.

Then Crawley snapped her fingers and they were outside, high on a mountain cliff overlooking the early sunrise painting the temple below golden. 

Their clothes were scattered about them as well, so Aziraphale grabbed his robes and hastily pulled them against his chest. Crawley seemed to have no issue with modesty. She stretched languidly and yawned, before finger combing her hair into a presentable state with another miracle. Only then did she start dressing herself, not even bothering to clean up. 

“That was a rather rude awakening,” Aziraphale said, feeling like his mind was free from a lustful intoxicated daze for the first time in daze. “Those poor humans will think rather badly of me, I’m afraid.”

“At least half of them had fantasies about their dear holy Pythia,” Crawley responded, finally dressed and grinning down at Aziraphale, who couldn’t bring himself to put on his own clothes. For that he’d very briefly would have to expose himself again, and by the light of day he worried about this now. 

“I’ve made it so that they caught us but saw us escape through a side door before anyone could catch us. That’ll do it.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’ve ruined your reputation with them now,” Aziraphale said, feeling genuinely remorseful. “You must have enjoyed being at the temple if you stayed for so long.”

“Ah, that’s alright,” Crawley shrugged. “Was about time I set out wandering again. Besides, I can’t very well be a Pythia anymore.”

“Whyever not?” Aziraphale asked, blinking up at his demon. She’d cut a rather striking figure after all. 

Crawley’s grin grew sharp, her cheeks’ flush belying her attempts at bravado. 

“Because only virgins can speak prophecies at the oracle.”

With that Crawley winked and turned around with a wave. 

“See you around, angel.”

Aziraphale watched her disappear into the trees, his entire face flaming hot. He waited until the demon was truly gone to put on his clothes, and threw one last look at the temple below. 

That was an experience. And the first prophecy he’d ever heard, even spoken in jest, had turned out to be true. Perhaps prophecies were something to look into, after all. Might very well to lead more pleasant encounters with a certain demon if he was lucky.

lmao that. I barely remember the inspiration but to tell the truth? I was playing a shit ton of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and I really loved the visuals of Delphi, the idea of oracles and all that, the view from the mountain down onto the temple… say what you will about AC, but they know how to make scenery look nice. The prompt was Prophecy if I remember right, so of course my mind sprang to the oracles of Antiquity. I liked the idea of Crowley pretending to be a holy woman serving a false god (in the eyes of Heaven and Hell) and spreading mischief via prophecies. So many myths involve misinterpreted prophecies as the source of so much evil after all. So here we had her predict that Aziraphale would teach someone something new and life changing. What that is is up to you 😌

(also Aziraphale first encounters the idea of prophecy here, and thinks its quite fun, hence his later collection)

[theliterateape]

A Merry Christmas Punch/CounterPunch On the Sensitive Topic of One Mr. George Bailey, Part One

By Don Hall

Author’s Note: This is the first year in a very long time that I will be spending Christmas away from Kansas and my family. It will also be the first Christmas I’ve ever spent working and, given that I work at a casino, my first Christmas in a casino and my first Christmas in the desert.

As this holiday comes crashing through and the New Year comes next, two benchmarks approach. Both the mark of my first year in Las Vegas (I drove my Prius filled with crap out of Chicago on February 12th) and my fifty-fourth birthday. The year has been one of huge, sweeping change, a fresh start in a new place in a new industry, and some rather serious if not completely naval-gazey observations about things in general.

Rather than walk you through all of that happy crappy horse shit on Christmas Day (I’ll save the staring into my naval pieces for the New Year/Decade), Joe Janes flew out to Vegas for Christmas and he and I went head-to-head at BUGHOUSE! Our topic: George Bailey: A Wonderful Life or a Miserable Failure?

This morning, we start with my argument. Later today, Joe will present his. FYI: he won. Go figure.

George Bailey: Having Friends Bail You Out Isn’t Enough

The warmth of that final scene is supposed to make us hug our loved ones and revel in the glow of a town surrounding their failed banker by bailing him out all in the Spirit of Christmas.

But did that room full of people really know George Bailey? Did they fully grasp his horrible failure as a human being before throwing down the money he lost?

Who was George Bailey and why do we in the Age of Cancel Culture want to see him escape his tragic fall?

First, understand that the film was pretty much critically panned at the time of its release in 1947 and recorded a $525,000 loss. It didn’t become the feel good classic until the 1980s when public television began playing it because it was free to do so. The 1980s when the world was celebrating problematic films like The Breakfast Club, Wall Street, Risky Business, and Porky’s. 

Second, George Bailey in his own words:

George Bailey: How old are you anyway?

Mary Hatch Bailey: Eighteen.

George Bailey: Eighteen. Why it was only last year you were seventeen.

George Bailey: [to Mary] You look older without your clothes on.

George Bailey: You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?

Third, the George Bailey his many friends did not know:

George is that guy who graduates high school and then comes back to the high school party to troll recent graduates.

At the party, George becomes ­reacquainted with Mary, graduating that night. Mary is smart—she advances to college—but that isn’t what interests George. Walking home, he speaks lines seemingly from the Weinstein couch: “How old are you, anyway?” he leerily asks Mary, who replies that she is eighteen and wonders if that is “too young or too old.”

Later, when he learns he will be stuck in town managing his late ­father’s bank, George drunkenly makes his way to Mary’s house, where he “shakes her,” yells at her and forcibly kisses her. I suppose a later scene where he asks her if he can masturbate in front of her, she says nothing, so he does.

After George and Mary have married and had children, George releases his workplace stress by screaming at his children and ­destroying family belongings—incidents that today would be seen as red flags for domestic violence

Annie is the Bailey family’s African-American maid. At one point George’s brother slaps her fanny. All in jest, though one wonders how an older minority woman, as Annie is, might take such sporting if she weren’t ­dependent on a privileged white family for her room and modest income.

So, George is a sexist, a creep, a sexual assaulter, a potential domestic abuser, and a passive racist

He’s also a tragically bad businessman. Entrusting the money of the poorest people in Bedford Falls to a known drunk and a man who needed string on his fingers to remember things. You’d think after George caught the drunken Mr. Gower poisoning kids, he’d learn not to trust alcoholics but he was far too self-involved to learn that lesson. It all indicates that George had checked out somewhere around the time his selfish fucking brother reneged on his promise

George had kept the business running, in an agreement with his brother that Harry would take over after he returned from school. But Harry and his new fiancée, Ruth, had other plans. Ruth tells George her father offered Harry a job in the research business. While Harry says nothing’s set in stone yet, it hits George that his dreams really are turning to dust

Did Harry truly understand how much George hated him after that? The look of horror, panic, and hopelessness George gets on his face after Harry reveals his casual “I’m in love and have opportunities so go fuck your dreams of world travel” says far more than words

When George discovers the $8,000 missing, he loses his shit. “It means bankruptcy and scandal, and prison. One of us is going to jail. Well it’s not gonna be me!” George tells the exhausted and addled Uncle Billy, making it clear he’d send his uncle up the river if the money doesn’t turn up

Finally, when he sees that Potter, a bitter old man with a successful if not completely cutthroat business whom he has intentionally alienated throughout the first half of the film, is going to have him jailed, he decides to commit suicide. Not out of chronic depression or a chemical imbalance. Not out of grief or any sort of mental illness he may be suffering. He decides to take his life because that’s just easier than taking a breath, figuring out where the money went, and solving the problem.

His decision to off himself and leave his family and the host of poor people in town whose money has evaporated is narcissistic, sociopathic, and selfish to a degree that those friends who bail him out would stop in their tracks and say “What the fuck?

Instead, he is redeemed.

In the unwritten sequel, when George discovers a few months later that Billy has been quietly funneling funds to pay for his drinking problem, he decides to buy a shotgun, kill Mary and the kids and then turn the gun on himself until Clarence comes back and shows him how Zuzu grows up and creates a strain of agriculture based on the science of flowers that can feed the world. The third unwritten film, has George older and on trial by the FDIC for financial malfeasance. He plots to wear a suicide bomb to the trial and thus end his troubles but this time Clarence shows up, slaps him repeatedly in the face and tells him maybe suicide is the right choice. Once called on it, showing himself to be the coward he always was, Bailey turns state’s witness against his uncle

In a time when society no longer truly embraces redemption for mistakes, the idea that we can all sit down and feel good about a suicidal, abusive, sexist, racist, avoider of responsibility like George Bailey is out of place. We now look toward Punishment instead of Rehabilitation, Revenge in lieu of Redemption. We no longer Forgive or Forget

He may have a room full of friends but they don’t know what we know. He will never be held accountable for his mistakes. Bailey is a tragic failure and should be cancelled

Don’t even get me started on the Grinch or Ebenezer Scrooge.

[eddie]

⛧˖ ‒‒‒‒‒ MAYBE EDDIE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAYING more attention to the way that he was unintentionally worsening the injury to Boris' lip, but the buzz of exchanging musical tastes had thwarted the aim of his original intentions and sent them packing on a trip to the back burner. There were few things in life that stirred his soul the way that music did, and the gift of a near-blank canvas to share his various passions with was a rare novelty; an opportunity that he simply couldn’t pass up. For fuck’s sake, the guy hadn’t even seen all of the Star Wars films! It was getting hard for him to tell if he was worldly or if he’d been living under a rock.

            The confession of his failure to discover the absolute TREASURE that was the Star Wars trilogy in its entirety drew a feigned, dramatic gasp from Eddie’s lips, although he hadn’t peeled his gaze away from the task of sifting through the jumbled stacks of cassette tapes. ❝ Blasphemy! Shit, you really do need my help, man, ❞ he jested. ❝ Brownie points for your methods though. I respect the hustle, ❞ he added with a quick glance over his shoulder to flash him an approving grin. He was no stranger to petty crimes himself, and he would have been lying if he’d said that he hadn’t seen his fair share of ‘free’ movies. Or that he wasn’t totally proud of it.

            ❝ They play them all the time down at the, uh … down at the drive-in. You should check it out, ❞ he continued as Boris had approached, his words falling from his lips in a delayed lull as the bulk of his concentration was engrossed by the skimming of so many titles. And then, finally: ❝ AH! There you are! ❞ He lifted the little gem of musical transcendence into the air and waved it to show Boris. A DIO tape, its cover illustrated with the depiction of a red-eyed demon drowning a priest in chains. If the artwork didn’t draw him in, then surely the first few notes would.

            Back to the conversation. Where was he again? Right, Boris had asked him a question. ❝ Vocals and guitar, ❞ Eddie explained while he popped the cassette out from the confines of its case. ❝ We mostly just do covers right now, but we’re working on some original stuff. ❞ A small pause. ❝ This song I’m about to show you? One of my favorite songs to play live. ❞

Boris couldn’t help but grin wider when Eddie jumped in to start singing the next few lines of the song, which only went to make the bleeding of his lip worse since it kept stretching the split on it. Quickly, he lifted the cloth back up to catch the blood, his laughter muffled by the fabric. ❝Yah, that’s the song! Everywhere I went, always people listening to it! But,❞—a slight tip of his head—❝not so much now because is years old and the hype of it has worn off.❞ For the most part, he just listened to whatever he could find laying around. The same went for movies, which was why he often watched the same old VHS tapes that his dad owned on repeat. It typically made him behind with the times, but it also made discovering new stuff all the more exciting and he’d learned about so many new things in all the different places he’d been. Cultures, music, traditions; all sorts of things.

Pressing the bag of frozen peas against his mouth, Boris’ expressive brows lifted curiously while Eddie began rummaging through the shelves of his TV stand, supposedly to try to find the so-called real good shit. He appreciated the enthusiasm, and the fact that he seemed genuinely interested and content to have a conversation with him rather than trying to rush him to get out of his house. So far, even though it had only been a week, he was easily the most likeable person he’d met in Hawkins, a town that people liked to call small but was bigger than most places he’d lived. Even the school was a lot nicer than all the previous ones he’d (sometimes) attended.

❝Ukrainian Padawan? Hah! You must like Star Wars? I only ever saw the first one. Because it was showing at drive-in theatre with such big open space, I got in for free! Climbed through a hole someone made in the fence.❞ To put out his cigarette in the ashtray, Boris left his spot on the couch and then sauntered on over to Eddie to watch him look through the cassettes. ❝Would be interested to hear your music too. What is it you do in your band? Sing? Drums? Guitar?❞

[dragoneye01]

The Secret’s Out

Tangerine x Reader

Word Count: 680

Summary: You have been trying to keep your relationship a secret, but apparently you weren’t trying hard enough. 

Your neck was sore from how you slept the night before. Your back was also sore from being bent in all sorts of positions. Actually, your legs were sore as well from.  .  . ok, so you had a pretty eventful night. 

It actually bothered you how it was the morning after the job, Tangerine looked impeccable as always and you looked disheveled and like you hadn’t slept, which you didn’t. He didn’t either, but that didn’t seem to bother him. 

“You look.  .  . not great. What happened? You got hit by a car last night?” Lemon asked, sitting in the back seat with you. Smiling weakly, you nodded in jest. Tangerine had made it very clear that he didn’t want Lemon to know about you and him. He thought it might bring tension (teasing) to the already tricky work relationship. 

“Let’s just get on the road. I’m tired as fuck.” You mumbled, leaning against the window. Tangerine glanced at you in the rear view mirror and turned the car on. You three had to drive to London from out in the country to have a quick meeting with your contractor to make sure the job was done correctly. 

The drive to the city took two hours and you almost fell asleep through the contractor meeting. You were dead on your feet. 

Tangerine was getting ready to head back to the car, taking off his suit jacket and vest, when Lemon pointed something out. 

“Shit, your back is bleeding. Did you get shot yesterday?”

“My back? I didn’t get shot-” Tangerine’s face turned a cute shade of pink and he looked at you. Your mouth was tightly closed as you remembered what happened. 

He had relished in the fight you put up, legs wrapping around his waist as he threw himself into you. Tangerine must’ve forgotten how you had dug your nails into his back. He must’ve forgotten how after he had spilled himself inside you proudly, he noted that you tore his back up like a cat. You had sheepishly apologized, but then you were on him again, throwing him off the bed as you both fell on the floor in a horny tangle of limbs. That’s also where you got the rug burn that was showing up on your knees. 

“You know, maybe I did get shot or something.” Tangerine muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. Lemon raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. 

“Ok, I can’t keep playing dumb.” Lemon shook his head. 

“Huh? What do you mean?” Tangerine tried to act cool. 

“I know you two are messing around.” Lemon looked pointedly at you. 

“What?” Your voice broke as you laughed awkwardly. “No way, I mean, Tangerine is like- no, no.” 

“No, no? What’s that supposed to mean?” Tangerine spluttered. You stared at him as if you wanted to scream. 

“That’s not.  .  . we aren’t.  .  .” You tried, then snapped. “For fucks sake, Tangerine, just tell your brother.” 

“I KNEW it!” Lemon gasped, pointing a finger at his brother. 

“You DID NOT.” Tangerine yelled back. 

“You sneak into their room all the time. I can hear you two through the walls. You used the same fucking shower once. You really thought I wouldn’t notice?” Lemon crossed his arms. 

“No?” You said, sheepishly. 

“Well, that’s a fucking lie if I ever heard one.” 

You tried your best to keep your face from heating up. 

“How long did you know?” Tangerine asked, stunned. 

“Normally people don’t go around yelling the names of fruits at the top of their lungs at one in the fucking morning.” Lemon deadpanned. 

You felt like you were going to die. You really felt like you were going to die from embarrassment. You put your hands over your face and groaned in anguish. 

“Are there really scratches up my back? Do you think the contractor noticed?” Tangerine whispered. 

“If he didn’t notice the hickey on (Y/n)’s collarbone, I’d say we’re pretty safe.” Lemon nodded. You looked down in shock and noticed the bruise that was starting to turn dark. 

“I’m never fucking a fruit again.” You groaned.

[rosyreef]

i just wanna ask these kinds of people if theyd really be okay with “orientations” being like that for gay or lesbian identities. like, oh no sorry im not GAY im... idk, neogay. its where you dont care about appearances and genitals dont play ANY part in my love 🙅‍♂️ not like the sex-obsessed gays amiright (except gay/neogay solidarity, guys!! we’re valid!!!)

it sounds fucking insane but thats whats happened here with bi/pan and i thought we all agreed that sexuality = broad sweeping gender categories that youre attracted to, NOT “im attracted to men on tuesdays only so im tuesomosexual and im only attracted to nb’s when they wear yellow clothing so im yellenbysexual thank you for respecting my sexuality :)”

[cakeofthepan]

Turns out there’s a reason everyone is sus of Matt. Plus, bonus teen talk audio of that one time Matt murdered Freddie in resistance.

[Audio Transcript:

[The Bourne Identity Theme plays]

Will: I said this in the live listen but, when Matt’s the spy it’s devastating ‘cuz he’s very good. Then when Matt is not the spy he’s so intense and aggro, like when he’s not the monster you wind up thinking like man, maybe- maybe man is the real monster. Maybe we’re all-

Freddie: [laughter]

Will: It’s like you end up in a Twilight Zone episode, like a parable about like the nature of paranoia and like what it does to us, it’s very funny

Link: Just do me a favor and just- I’m gonna look each of you in the eye and just tell me if you’re an incursion person. Taylor?

Taylor: I am not. I am me. I am Taylor.

Link: Okay

Matt: Now, Matthew here, Freddie?

Freddie: Yeah

[laughter]

Matt: Are you the incursion?

Freddie: No, I’ve-

Matt: Are you the incursion?

Freddie: I haven't gotten shit.

Matt: Okay.

Freddie: I have not gotten shit.

Link: All right. Normally, right?

Normal: Yeah!

Link: I just wanna make sure I’m calling you—

Normal: It is Normally!

Link: Okay.

Normal: Yeah!

Link: Are you the incursion person?

Normal: I am not the incursion person.

Matt: Okay.

Will: Now Matt.

Matt: Matt, here.

Will: Fuck you, you paranoid piece of shit.

[group laughter]

Will: I'm not playing your fucking game! I'm not dancing for you, I'm not being your little puppet! MATT.

Matt: Really aggressive.

[pause]

Matt: Beth?

Anthony: [laughs]

Scary: You know what? I wish I was the Doodler. ‘Cause then I would be like a cool badass person and not this person's sitting here being fucking interrogated.

Link: Hey, Hermie! I forgot to ask you.

Hermie: Oh, did you now?

Link: Hey, look at me. Eye to eye.

Anthony: I don't- I don’t like making eye contact people while recording this podcast, this is hard for me.

[laughs]

Link: Is it you, Hermie?

Hermie: No.

[music fades out]

Matt: Anthony, is it you?

Anthony: No.

[pause]

Will: It’s fucking Anthony—

Beth: [wheeze-laugh] Why was it sexy?

[music fades in]

Will: Goddammit.

[group laughter]

Anthony: Was it?

Matt: It was sexy. It was sexy.

Beth: It was a sexy look!

Will: That’s why he never makes eye contact!

Anthony: Yeah! I don't want to get you so horny you forget to do the podcast!

Will: It's for sure, Matt. Literally every time I play, it's Matt.

Beth: Every time I play, it was Will!

[Music fades out]

Freddie: The most devastating moment I’ve ever had playing this, social deduction games was with Matt. Matt was not on the team. I was a spy with another friend of ours. We gave each other a look and we were like, Okay. Imma throw you under the bus as the first move to take heat off of me.

Matt: Oh I remember this.

Freddie: So the first round, I voted her off.  I-

Anthony: I love that

Freddie: basically said like oh-

Matt: It’s a good move as a spy to do.

Freddie: Yeah

Will: It’s like you’re trying to infiltrate the Nazis and they make you shoot one other resistance person or something like that.

Freddie: Yes, so I did this-

Matt: If you have two spies that’s always a good move to do

Freddie: So I did this, we got to the very last round and went for the very last vote, we were putting in a team that would lose. And then, Matt goes ‘WAIT’ and then proceeds to-

Matt: [giggling]

Freddie: tell the story of the whole game, he’s like ‘If Freddie threw the other spy under the bus at the beg’-

Anthony: Oh wow

Freddie: And then would, like literally like, it was like watching fucking Poirot

[laughter]

Freddie: Like I knew- I literally know what it’s like in a fucking uh- in a fucking

Will: Surely you jest Matt! That’s preposterous, I’ve heard enough

Anthony: To be the villain of  an Agatha Christie novel?

Freddie: Yeah. Because he then just then went through the whole game step by step.

Will: [laughter]

Matt: [still giggling]

Freddie: And, ALSO, like not only did he remember all five rounds, also to the point where he was like ‘that makes sense because in this round he does this and thi-’ and like he just went through the whole thing. And by the end like I literally couldn’t s- I was like ‘wh- d- buuu- that’s not- wha-’ he’s like, and Matt’s like ‘therefore he’s the spy.’ Convinced everybody through that

Anthony: That’s amazing

Freddie: And we lost. I was like ‘Fucking REALLY?’

Matt: I remember that, I’m an asshole. I wasn’t even playing and I did that? I’m sorry

Will: Wait, Matt wasn’t playing and he just interrupted the game?

Freddie: No, no, no, no, no. He was playing.

Matt: Oh I was playing oh okay, I thought that I wasn’t. Okay okay.

Anthony: Matt just doesn’t consider it playing unless he’s lying to people.

Will: [laughs]

Freddie: Yeah

Matt: That’s the only real game

End Transcript]