#i had a lot of fun with the article tho

[quartergremlin]

I've got all my patreon content for the next two weeks out! if you're interested in that -> support me?

[seiwas]

for writing game, iwaizumi + assistance <3

hope this sparks some inspo and thank you in advancee

hi there!! thanks for sending in a prompt 🫶

contains: friends to lovers (ish), halloween parties, reader is dressed as catwoman, expletives, iwaizumi is thiiiiis 🤏 close to murdering seijoh4 (jk)

iwaizumi + assistance

this is a set-up.

iwaizumi knows he shouldn't have fucking believed anything the boys "promised" him back when they assigned him this costume.

the suit is fucking tight, spandex digging into his groins and all other crevices that definitely should be aired out after after a few hours. he's had to constantly readjust his stance almost every few minutes, the black fabric compressing his thighs and torso, significantly constricting the range of motion his shoulders and arms are typically used to. if anything else, it could double up as a back brace from how rigidly straight it's kept his posture all night.

he'll give it to makki though; he did outdo himself sourcing this year's costumes―this batman set looks pretty damn legit.

except for one tiny problem.

there's no fucking pee hole. it's a zip-up, zip-down one-piece situation. and that normally wouldn't be a problem, except that oikawa "accidentally" knocked over a cocktail straight into his pants, the sickeningly sweet liquid now seeping straight into the fabric and past his boxers―cold and sticky as it touches his skin.

and so, the problem: his pants are wet, it makes him want to fucking pee, and coincidentally, the only vacant bathroom is across the hall, at your apartment.

this is why he believes this is a set up. that, and the fact that you're dressed in an outfit strikingly similar―just with cat ears.

he's been asked five times in this party if you're in matching couple outfits.

it catches him off guard, flusters him because of how badly he wants to say yes. but, you're just friends, and he doesn't even think you like him that way (despite mattsun and oikawa practically begging him to confess. makki tells him he thinks you're going to do it first).

so he politely smiles and says no, but you look good, your costume clinging to you in all the right places. thank fucking god he has a cape because he's pretty sure he spent the first 30 minutes in the party hiding his boner.

"hajime, it's fine, i swear," you stand beside him in front of the conveniently locked bathroom in oikawa's apartment. from the other side of the door, he's pretty sure he hears mattsun and his girlfriend mumbling. maybe fucking? who knows. "you can just use the bathroom in my apartment."

he glances at you before closing his eyes, contemplating, before finally agreeing to you.

"okay."

if he's being honest with himself, friends is definitely an incomplete label to what you are. as oikawa's neighbor, you are conveniently around all the time; and oikawa being oikawa, the ever-social butterfly, he's somehow managed to carve a space for you in the friend group.

(never mind the fact that oikawa's sniffed him out from the moment he first introduced you.)

you were a crush, then a friend, and now you're someone he picks up from work and drives back home three times a week, because he "has to train oikawa." you don't question it, even when you both know he stays over for dinner way past the gym's open hours.

"you know where it is," you open your apartment and urge him in.

"sorry again," he turns to face you.

"yeah, yeah, just pee!" you laugh, shoving him towards the bathroom door.

getting out of the suit is manageable, and he's able to wipe off a bit of the cocktail that's leaked to the suit and his boxers just to make sure it isn't gross and sticky when he gets home later. peeing is a big relief once he gets it over with, but it's when he has to suit up again that things become difficult.

stretching out the spandex one body part at a time is a workout in itself―the hardest task being when he has to pull it over his shoulders, adjusting it to fit properly over his arms and chest.

but then the zipper breaks.

and he truly thinks makki has fucked him over.

iwaizumi contemplates what to do next for a good, good while. he tries calling oikawa, only to no success every time; no way in hell is he calling mattsun in the middle of having sex. and calling makki isn't even an option; he'd never hear the end of it.

then you knock on the door, your voice soft and concerned as you ask, "hajime? you good in there?" you hit it spot on, too, "do you need help with your suit?"

iwaizumi presses his palms to his eyes. he's a rational man, straightforward and logical in thinking. there is literally no other option for him right now but to ask help from you. again.

fuck.

.

it's 30 minutes later when oikawa barges in your door, and the sight that greets him is iwaizumi in nothing but a hoodie (the hoodie you borrowed some time ago) and his boxers, with his hands on your waist as you hover your hairdryer over the crotch of his batman costume―cat headpiece off and all.

"you finally got together?!"

[celestie0]

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

in holy matriphony ch.3 domestic encounters

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

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

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

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

ᰔ chapter. 3/x (probably 10)

ᰔ word count. 14.1k (i like this number)

a/n. hello hellooo my ihm bb's :'') so good to see you all again. so this is actually the first half of an original 26k word chapter 3 that i had written lmfaooo i genuinely entertained the idea of posting a 26k word chapter but like gat damn. idk i thought it would be too much. so there is this first part which is 14k and then the next chapter will be 12k! anywho, this chapter was fun to write, there's still a lot of set-up tho hahah. ihm has been really fun to write for me cuz it's kinda chaotic but chill at the same time lol :0 i really hope you enjoy!! see ya at the bottom!!

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“Soooo…..ready to consummate the marriage?”

You turn fast on your heel, so fast that Gojo almost trips over his own Welcome mat at his doorstep in an attempt to not accidentally topple over you, which you’re sure by the sheer size he has on you would’ve killed you or at the very least paralyzed you from the neck down, so it’s a good thing his hands fly out of his pockets then brace himself on the wood paneling above the door. 

“Wha–” you stutter, “what?!”

He stands up straight before leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms, the sleeve fabric of his suit stretching across thick muscle but you refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking. “The marriage technically isn’t valid unless we consummate it.”

You roll your eyes and dig your finger into your heel to take it off and then do the same with your other, relishing in the freedom of your feet from the shackles of constrictive feminine clothing articles, although you’re a solid two and a half inches shorter again. “I would rather make love to one of those inflatable balloon salesmen at car dealerships that flail and flap around in the wind than let you touch me for the purpose of sex.”

“Fuck that’s harsh,” he laughs, like he’s genuinely impressed by the comeback this time, “so a dead bedroom then, huh?”

“Can’t be dead if it was never alive in the first place,” you mumble as you tread into his house and toss the documents envelope you had been holding onto the coffee table. You hear Gojo make his way across the hardwood floor behind you paired with the metal clanking of keys as he throws them into the paper mache bowl on the foyer table. 

“By the way,” you hear him say, and you turn your torso slightly to side eye him only to see that he’s casually taking his suit jacket off with a flip of it backwards, “who was that guy in the courtroom that was glaring daggers into my soul?”

Your eyes widen briefly. And then you sigh. “My ex.”

He pulls the jacket off behind him by the sleeves and tosses it onto the loveseat. “Huhhh. You used to date a cop? You don’t seem like the type.”

“What?” you say as you face him fully. He’s loosening his tie now with a tug. “Why not?”

“You’re kinda…delinquent. Figured a cop would like a more ‘docile’ woman,” he says.

“You sound creepy as fuck,” you say, grimacing a little as you narrow your eyes at him.

He sighs before tossing his tie off to the side as well. “I don’t agree with it. I’m just getting into their headspace. Everyone knows how cops are. Y’know, controlling.”

“Choso is different,” you immediately spat back at him, before your head can even run the words through a filter, and you realize it came off as defensive. Your cheeks warm, because now it looks like you’re not over your ex. And you want to be. Why were you still protecting Choso’s dignity?

Gojo blinks at you, a little surprised before he swallows slowly and he holds his hands up in front of him in surrender. “Alright. I believe you.”

You turn away from him and worry your bottom lip between your teeth, feeling awkward before you scratch your elbow and then turn back to face him again. “Well. If you run into him around town,” you say, “can you try to make him feel emasculated and jealous? He did me dirty.”

Gojo runs a hand through his hair. “Uhhh. How?”

“I dunno,” you shrug, “brag about how great our sex life is or something.”

“But we have a sexless marriage.”

“Oh, yes, speaking of this sexless marriage,” you start, jutting your hip out to the side as you cross your arms sternly, “there are some ground rules that need to be set between you and I.” You point between the two of you.

“Ground rules?” he mimics after you as he undoes the top couple buttons of his white dress shirt, “like what?”

You hold a finger up. “Like no touching.” You hold another finger up. “Obviously, no sex.” You hold another finger up. “No sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.” You hold another finger up. “No peeping in on me while I’m showering.” You hold another finger up. “No ogling me around the hou–”

“These rules sound incredibly one-sided,” he snorts. 

“Yeah, well, don’t break them, you creep.”

“And if I catch you ogling me around the house?” he asks. 

You roll your eyes. “Such a thing will not happen.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he sarcastically affirms, and he approaches you which makes you flinch a little but you realize he’s just walking past you towards the living room.

“Y–” you stutter, “you heard me, right? Once I start living here, you have to adhere to these rules.”

He waves his hand in the air dismissively with his back facing you. “Yes ma’am.”

Your eye twitches slightly, and you storm towards him only to watch him slump down onto his couch, knees spread wide as he leans forward with a small grunt to grab the remote off the coffee table before settling back again. He lays an arm up and stretched across the backrest of the couch before he turns the TV on and scrolls through news channels. 

You make your way in front of him, obstructing the view of the TV, and he leans off to the side to try to catch a glimpse at the screen but you reposition your body so that he still can’t see it. His eyes slowly move to you and he has an irritated look on his face. 

“I’m tryna watch CNN,” he says. 

“Punishment,” you say, “for breaking any of these rules will be severe.”

He raises an eyebrow, interested all of a sudden as he tosses the remote back onto the coffee table and leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “Oh? What’s the punishment?”

Honestly, you don’t know. You just want to threaten him to keep him in line. Forget the fact that he’s the one doing you the favor here with this marital arrangement, and yet you’re threatening him. But it has to be done. “You don’t want to find out,” you say, trying to sound as eerie as possible.

“Not knowing what it is makes me want to find out,” he tells you, his knee swaying side to side like a dog wagging its tail. 

You briefly glance down, and for fucks sake why is all of his clothing so perfectly fit and stretched taut whenever he does anything? You try not to eye the shape of his thighs as the black fabric stretches while he’s seated.

You clench your fists at your side, worry your bottom lip under your front teeth, furrow your brow and blink rapidly from not being able to come up with something to say, and Gojo seems to read this as worry before he laughs a little.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m not gonna break any of your silly rules, despite how tempting it might sound to me.”

“I don’t believe you,” you mutter as you walk around the couch towards the kitchen, feeling thirsty all of a sudden. 

“Seriously. I won’t. You’re not my type,” he says from behind you on the couch, with a tone that tells you he’s trying to sound reassuring but it really just pisses you off even more, “I don’t really go after women with daddy issues.”

“Wha–” you gasp, offended, and you spin on your heel to glare at the back of his head. “Who the fuck said I have daddy issues?!?!”

“No one has to say it, I can feel it,” he says as he continues to click through channels.

You pick an avocado up out of the pile of fruits from the bowl at the center of the island, holding it over your shoulder to charge up as much kinetic energy as possible so you can chuck it at him hard enough to knock him unconscious, and it’s like he senses the malice radiating off of your body because he looks over his shoulder at you.

“What’s that in your hand?” he asks.

“A grenade,” you say, “that I’m gonna launch at you.”

“Oh, thank god,” he exhales in relief, “I almost thought it was an avocado for a second.”

You deadpan stare at him. “I don't find you funny.”

“I think I’m pretty funny,” he says mindlessly, like he’s just arguing with you for the sake of arguing.

“No. I have never once laughed at a single thing you’ve ever said. Only grimaced with disgust,” you say.

He sighs. “Look at us. We’ve barely been married for an hour and we’re already fighting.”

You abandon your empty glass on the counter, shuffling around the corner towards the front entrance of the house because you can feel the headache from your pure annoyance starting to creep up on you. You sense Gojo’s eyes on you from the couch as you shove your feet back into the uncomfortableness of your heels. 

“Where are you going?” he asks. 

“Back to my house,” you grumble, wobbling a little when you take a step towards the door and place your hand on the handle.

“When are you gonna move in?” he asks suddenly.

You freeze in your tracks at his question. You’ve never heard the question before, because you’ve never had the chance to live anywhere that wasn’t your childhood home next door. So the question is jarring at best, and threatens to make you cry a little at worst. 

“Once I get my mom into hospice,” you say, quiet enough to where it’s possible he might not have even been able to hear it over the sound of presidential election updates. And then you make your way out of his house. 

•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•

It’s a beautiful sunny spring morning, clouds trailing by across the sky offering momentary relief from the heat reaching the pavement, and you’ve got a good marching band walk going on as you stroll down the sidewalk of your neighborhood for your morning walk. Well, that phrase implies that you go on morning walks often. You really don’t, you very rarely have the time or energy. But today you decided it was time to turn your life around (your running shoes will see you same time next month). 

You hear some commotion off at the right side of the street, and when you lift your head up a little to clear the obstructed view of your sun visor, you see a couple of cops standing on a lawn, chatting up your elderly women neighbors with their laughter bolstering in the air. One of the cops turns around, making eye contact with you, and—  of fucking course, it’s Choso.

“Oh, fuck me,” you mutter under your breath and try to walk faster down the sidewalk in Korean ahjumma style. 

“Hey! y/n! Wait!” you hear him call out and he jogs across the street to catch up with you.

You continue to military march down pavement. “What do you want, Choso? Why are you stalking me?”

He runs up in front of you to stop you in your tracks. You frown at him and cross your arms across your chest. “I’m not stalking you,” he says, “I got a call about a stray dog out here.”

“Oh. Wonderful. So glad to know our officers are keeping us safe from cute street dogs,” you say, tone dripping with sarcasm.

“The dog had rabies. It bit an old man. Had to put it down,” he deadpans.

“O-Oh,” you stutter, cheeks flushing, “well, then, leave? Your job here is done.”

“I just—” he starts, “I want to—” He sighs, looking flustered like he’s trying to gain some sort of courage. And you’re almost entirely certain he didn’t need to garner this much courage to face a rabid dog than he seems to be needing for you. “I, uh, I want to meet your husband.”

“W-What??” you exasperate.

“To say congrats,” he says, but through gritted teeth.

You roll your eyes. “Yeah fucking right. You just wanna abuse your po-po powers to arrest him then throw him into jail then kill him to leave me widowed so that I’ll get back together with you and make a fool out of myself all over again.”

“Your capacity for catastrophization never fails to amaze me,” he says.

You’re pretty sure your therapist said something similar to you last week, too. 

“Ahhh!! y/n!!” you hear a familiar feminine voice call from down the street, and both you and Choso turn your heads toward the source of the sound.

Amaya, your neighbor, who is roughly thirty-weeks pregnant at the moment and therefore waddling down the street to get to you, is waving her arms in the air as her husband as well as another one of your neighbors follows after her. She finally reaches you and takes your hands into hers. “I haven’t seen you in forever!! How’s your mom doing?”

“She’s doing well…just getting by,” you say awkwardly, as Choso’s cop partner also approaches this little group that’s forming here, along with the elderly neighbors that he had been talking to. 

“Doctors taking good care of her?” Amaya’s husband, Ren, asks you with a twisted expression on his face and arms tightly crossed over his chest like he was gonna beat the doctors up if they weren’t. 

“Yes…” you say, “although, I think I’ll be transferring her care to Kaiser.” Oh. Fuck. You should’ve kept that to yourself. Big mouth.

You can feel Choso’s eyes on you as he watches this interaction between you and your neighbors. 

“Oh! That’s interesting,” Amaya says, and as her hands soothe over yours, she feels the bump of the ring on your left hand. She glances down. “H-Huh??? Is this a wedding ring?!”

Choso crosses his arms and tucks his hands under his armpits in your periphery.

“Y…yeeeeesss…” you say awkwardly.

“You’ve finally married?” your elderly neighbors chirp out at the same time.

You shoot them a dirty look over the word finally. “Yes.” Please drop the subject, please drop the subject.

But Amaya has always been the gossipy nosy neighbor. “To who??”

Choso snaps his face to you, intently studying your body language. You take a deep breath.

“I-I didn’t tell you?? I married Satoru!!” you chirp, as if it was a normal thing.

“Ehhh?!” you hear multiple of your neighbors’ voices call out. 

“You married Satoru??? But you hate him!!” Amaya blurts out, her voice loud and echoing down the street of the neighborhood.

“I—” you stammer, ducking your head a little to hide behind your visor, “um, oh, y’know…those feelings just…snuck up on me!”

“Awwww good for youuu,” Amaya coos, and one of your elderly neighbors comes up to you with a cheeky smile to then rubs your arm approvingly, “he’s sooooo handsome, you’re so lucky!!”

Ren lets out a hmph over his wife’s flattery of another man, and you roll your eyes, wanting to put Gojo in his place even in the face of just your neighbors, but then you remember that a loving wife wouldn’t say something like his personality makes him an ugly rat. 

“But when did this happen?” Choso’s partner speaks up, his voice accusatory. Choso hits his partner’s chest vest with the back of his hand, as if to say cut it out.

You feel pissed off at that.

“Oh yeahhh, you and Choso only recently broke up!” Amaya says, pointing between the two of you.

You purse your lips together from the anxiety of this entire conversation. “Three weeks ago. Choso and I broke up three weeks ago,” you say, not even sure why you’re disclosing your personal matters to this group of congregated people, but the peer pressure was damning, and you’re pretty sure silence on this subject in front of your neighbors would only make Choso more suspicious, “and—” you had to get your story straight, “well…within those three weeks, Satoru and I just…got to know each other.”

“Eh?” Ren speaks up. “But he was out of town for two weeks. He only came back a week and a half ago.”

You blink at him.

“Ohhh yes, yes, that’s right, honey,” Amaya agrees with a slow nod in remembrance as she pats her husband's chest, “those chocolates he brought us were from London, right?”

Choso tilts his head at you, giving you a glare with the intent of having you crack under this pressure, because you’ve just been caught in a cold hard lie. More importantly, how the fuck did you not notice that Satoru had been gone for TWO WEEKS??? He was your next door neighbor. You’ve seriously been so damn out of it these days. Also, why the fuck didn’t he get you chocolates from London?!?!?! The fucking snake. 

“A marriage within three weeks is a little odd, no?” Choso’s partner speaks up, but with less of a casual conversation tone and more of a I sense something illegal going on here tone.

“Alright, alright, alright,” Choso sighs, taking a step to stand in front of you. “Let’s all get on with our days. She doesn’t have to share any information she doesn’t want to.”

You blink in surprise at Choso’s words, of which all your neighbors acknowledge albeit slightly reluctantly as they wave goodbye to you and start dispersing back to their homes. Choso’s partner gets some notice through his radio, and he pulls it from the velcro of his chest to speak into it before heading back to their cop car with a slight jog. Once everyone is gone and it’s just you and Choso again, he turns around to face you. His arms are still crossed at his chest while he wears a very skeptical and almost reprimanding look on his face.

“What are you up to, y/n?” he immediately asks you, and you feel goosebumps tickle your skin even in the heat. “I really hope it’s not something fishy. Or illegal.”

You swallow hard. You know the U.S. federal codes in the law for marital & insurance fraud like the back of your hand, since you read through them hundreds of times before deciding if your arrangement with Gojo would be worth it. 8 U.S.C. 1033 and 18 U.S.C. 371 provide for a penalty of up to ten years in prison for insurance fraud. And under that statute, you can also be fined up to $250,000. The best case scenario is that you just have to divorce Gojo, and forfeit your chances of ever recovering from your crippling debt. And while it’s hard to prove marital fraud, Choso had reason for a personal vendetta against you, and he has the resources to launch an investigation. 

“Why would I do something illegal??” you ask, as if to convince him that the possibility was absurd. 

He takes a step closer to you, and your breathing picks up. “People do illegal things all the time,” he says, “for the thrill, out of curiosity,” another step closer, “the most common reason that I’ve seen?” He’s so close to you now that you catch the familiar scent of his skin. “Desperation.”

You catch a small gasp of air from his imposition in your personal space, and finally, your weak legs manage to take you a step back. 

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about here,” you say with a shaky voice.

He raises an eyebrow at you. And then he sighs. “Stay out of trouble.”

Your eye twitches at him, annoyance resurging but you have to bite your tongue for self preservation. Gojo’s words about cops liking more docile women ring in your ears for a brief moment, and you have to physically shake your head to get his voice out of it. 

His partner yells for him from his car, something about a call they got for a robbery downtown, and Choso spares you a warning look before he turns on his heel and jogs back to the car. The sound of police sirens mimic the panic in your beating heart as you watch them speed off down the street and out of sight.

•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•

You pull into your neighborhood at the early hours of the morning, skin feeling dry and eyes feeling heavy with exhaustion as you yank your hospital badge clip off your scrub top to toss onto the passenger seat along with your stethoscope, releasing it from your neck like pulling a noose loose. 

Before your shift last night, you had to take your mom to the hospital because she was have shortness of breath, and her oxygen saturation was low on her pulse oximeter. She’s stable now, it was just yet another flare up of her COPD, but given her other risk factors, the hospitalist admitted her to monitor her overnight and through to the evening today if all goes well. Which meant that you could have the house to yourself for once. It might sound selfish to say, because shouldn’t the more dominant feeling be I hope my mom will be okay, but the reality was that there’s only so much of that worry you can have at a time. It doesn’t mean you’re not thinking of her literally every second of the day. It just means you’re human. 

The weirdest thing about working the night shift is seeing everyone else’s days start while yours is just ending. There’s a bit of satisfaction with it. Like imagining laughing at their faces ha ha! You have to go to work now at seven in the morning, meanwhile I get to sleep! as if working the night shift doesn’t lead to substantially higher rates of cardiovascular disease and other chronic illness, as well as an early death. So who really got the last laugh? Day shift workers. Literally.

It wasn’t something you did because you liked working the night shift. You do it because you get paid a 20% differential for it. And you need all the money you can get right now.

Your brain seems to be working more than usual if you’re able to think about all these things after a shift. Swiftly pulling into the driveway of your home, around the hull of Gojo’s obnoxious boat in the driveway, you get out of your car with your purse hanging from your shoulder and just before you shut the door, you see one of your elderly neighbors waving at you from across the street. You’re pretty sure her name is Margaret, but you’re awful with names. You do remember that she was in the posse of neighbors that were flocking you yesterday and asking you pushy questions about your marriage in the presence of Choso. And your body stiffens a little. 

She tilts her head at you as you stand in your driveway, and you awkwardly glance over at Gojo’s house.

“Oops!” you chirp from across the street, “always forget to pull into the Hubby’s driveway instead! Silly me!!”

You grab your emergency overnight stay bag from the back of your car and hurry over to Gojo’s house, knocking on the door incessantly and ringing the bell so as to not arouse any more suspicion from your neighbors about why two married people aren’t living together. “Forgot my keys!! Hahahhahaha,” you exclaim while your pounding on the door intensifies. You’re sure you're just being paranoid, because why would sweet old lady Margaret (Janice? Patricia?) snitch on you? But you’ve been paranoid all your life. It’s one of your fatal flaws. 

The door opens suddenly, right as you were about to pound harshly once again, and you stop the motion in time to not sock Gojo in the abdomen with your fist. He blinks down at you, his face a little puffy from sleep, his hair shooting out in all different directions, and he scratches at his chest through the thin cotton of his shirt, one he clearly threw on last minute before opening the door considering the fact that he put it on backwards. And inside-out. 

“Huh? y/n?” he mumbles, his voice deep and kind of raspy with sleep, “what are you doing here?”

“Just let me in,” you hiss at him, glancing over your shoulder to your elderly neighbor's lawn for a second, and then duck under his arm that was holding the door open to get inside the house.

You turn around to see him shrug his shoulders and slowly close the door, clearly too tired to deal with the bullshit this early in the AM, and he turns around to face you before leaning back onto the surface. His eyes close, like he’s trying to preserve the sleepy feeling for when he gets back into bed.

“Can I help you?” he says. His head falls back with a small thump to rest on the door.

“I’m going to sleep here for the night. Er, for the day,” you say. “I will move in starting today.”

“Okay,” he easily agrees.

You blink at him. “Um. Show me to my room.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, scratching the back of his neck as he heads for the stairs with the shuffle of his slippers across the hardwood floor. You note that he is very easily malleable and overall smooth brained when he’s sleepy. You try to ignore the fact that you find it kinda cute. 

You follow him up the stairs and he leads you across the loft into a hallway studded with a couple of doors. He opens one of them for you, his head drifting a little like he’s about to fall back asleep. “Here you go,” he says while gesturing inside the bedroom and rubbing his eye with a weakly closed fist, “guest bedroom. Uh, there’s another one near the master too that’s a bit bigger, but this one has a lock on the door. So that I don’t sneak into your room in the middle of the night.”

“Thanks,” you accept and head inside. You set your emergency overnight stay bag on the bed and then turn around to face the door to find Gojo still standing in the frame. He has his hands pushed into the pockets of his pajama pants as he squints at you. 

You feel…a little…nervous? Shy? Who the fuck were you to be shy in front of Gojo? You really don’t give a damn what he thinks about you, since a lion does not concern itself with the opinions of a sheep (you’ve been doing reruns of Game of Thrones this past week), but starting today, you’ll be in his territory, and this whole situation is so domestic that you feel vulnerable in front of him. Like the sheep somehow managed to splay the lion open this time, and now the real you is on display for him. You’re suddenly self conscious of the unruly state of your hair and the stains of IV fluid on your black scrubs and the fact that the allegedly flake-proof mascara you put on at the beginning of your shift has long since flaked all over your cheeks.

“Um. Can you leave?” you say in a small voice.

“Huh?” he responds, like he himself forgot that he was still standing there. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” He lets out a very long exhale. “Make yourself at home.” And then, still facing you, he walks off to the side veeeeeeery slowly until he’s out of sight.

You walk up to the doorframe and peak your head around to the left to see him still standing there.

“Satoru. Stop treating me like I’m some animal at the zoo. Leave.” 

“It’s just so weird seeing you in my house like thi—”

You slam the door on him, your breathing finally slowing down again as your palms lay flat on painted white wood. You move your hand down to the handle, thumb and forefinger lingering on the lock as you look at it for a moment, but ultimately decide against locking it.

The room has a bathroom attached to it which is nice. The bed is a queen size, fitted with light blue and eggshell white sheets, tucked neatly spare for one corner of the bed where the duvet is flipped over. To the left of the bed is a nightstand and to the right is a dresser that looks very new. You take a glance at your reflection in the mirror sitting above it, and let out a small gasp at your less than flattering appearance. 

A five minute shower does you wonders, and you pat yourself dry with a towel that matches the shower curtain. You find one of your floor-length vintage nightgowns, with the long frilly sleeves, after rustling through your overnight stay bag, along with a toothbrush and some moisturizer. 

As you brush your teeth, you pace around the room. There’s a little staggered rack near the window that is lined with plants and the blinds are angled perfectly for sunlight to get through to them. You poke your finger to one of the plant’s soil and notice that it’s damp. Been watered recently. Gojo is a plant guy? He really doesn’t seem the type. Well, actually, he’s pretty vain about his avocado tree. But houseplants were a different story. A whole different trope of person.

After getting ready for bed, you slip into the sheets and lay stiff despite the comfortable mattress as you stare up at the ceiling with the duvet tucked under your arms. It’s bright in the room. Back home, you have blackout curtains, which help you sleep because it blocks out the morning light. Here, you don’t have that. You don’t have your melatonin either. But you do have the exhaustion in your veins, making you blink slowly and slowly until the water in your eyes feels as thick as oil. You’re so tired to the point that you can’t even sleep.

You force your eyes to close anyway. You’ll pretend you’re a queen in a palace, here in a foreign land she has recently conquered under her empire. A daydream that you find doesn’t really help you drift off to sleep. But counting sheep never fails you. 

•┈┈┈••✦☽✦••┈┈┈•

You awake in the afternoon with a headache that pounds at your head like the FBI is trying to infiltrate your own mind. And all you can hear now is the FBI OPEN UP!!! meme as you groan and rub at your temples with one hand while leaning over the bed to pet at the nightstand for your go-to bottle of Tylenol just to–

Pet around at nothing.

“Mm?” you mumble, opening your eyes cautiously before harsh light makes you close them again. But even behind the protection of your eyelids, you’re still very keen on the brightness that finds you in this room. Finally, you’re able to blink the sleepiness away and adjust to the light, and when the blur of your vision subsides, you realize that you’re in a bed that is most definitely not your own. And then you remember.

You spent your first night (well, technically morning and early afternoon), at Gojo’s house.

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed, balled up fist rubbing at your eyes ferociously as you sit groggy from the sleep that enveloped you so performatively after your shift last night. You can’t even remember coming to his house, which is concerning, since that could mean you forgot to do a lot of other things when coming home. Like changing your clothes, and scrubbing your make-up off. But it seems like habit and routine has saved you, since you glance down and see yourself in one of your nightgowns and your skin doesn’t feel dry.

A loud thud! noise from directly beneath you startles you, jolting some of the sleepiness out of you, and you finally feel inclined to head out the door.

You make it across the loft and to the top of the staircase so you can peer over the railing to the downstairs floor. But from the top, you can’t see anything except for the entry area and the family room, but you assume the sounds you hear are coming from the kitchen, because it sounds like the closing of a fridge and ceramic on marble paired with footsteps on hardwood. Lifting the hem of your nightgown up so you don’t trip over it, you creep down the stairs, diligent in avoiding the 2nd and 7th step (you’ve since learned that they creak a little), and make steady progress in getting to the bottom of the stairwell to then stealthily peak your head around the rail and peer into the kitchen. You only have a view of one side, the long counter strip with the stove and the fridge, but you freeze when you’re met with the sight of a man standing there shirtless pouring orange juice into a coffee mug.

You’re temporarily shocked, your fight of flight immediately kicking in as you clutch the imaginary pearls around your neck in fear…but then…you slowly…find yourself starting to stare. This man’s back is huge, massive really…with tense and defined muscles, expansive smooth lines with ridges that meet bone. His shoulders are broad, rounding down into strong arms that are split with veins. And your eyes trail the way his waist narrows down to his hips, of which gray sweatpants very loosely hang from. Honestly, if the door in the movie Titanic was as large as this man’s back, then maybe Rose AND Jack could have fit on it and survived. (a/n. basically picture this)

And in the middle of your drooling, you realize. That this man. Is. Gojo.

Which should be a relief to you, because if it wasn’t Gojo, and there was just some random man in the house, then you’d have to start looking for a weapon of sorts. But instead you just continue to watch him silently without coming out of your hiding. Shirtless in his own kitchen (a crime, really) as he pours OJ into a black mug (who the fuck drinks juice from a coffee mug). He suddenly turns around to face the island and a small gasp leaves your lips before you duck your head behind the rail to hide yourself from his line of sight, and when you realize you’re in the clear, you slowly peak your head back out.

The sight of his chest and torso nearly knocks you breathless, because why is his skin so smooth…and taut across the defined muscles of his abs, glistening with a sheen you can only guess is a salty layer of sweat. His fringe is damp, sticking to his forehead and the sides of his face, a droplet of sweat rolling down from his temple towards his chin but he uses his bare shoulder to wipe the sweat off before it can get that far. He brings the mug of OJ to his lips and tips it back with a swallow, the thick muscles of his neck rippling and rolling with the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, a singular droplet of orange juice escaping from the corner of his lips, trailing down the vein on his neck and into the territory of his chest. Okay. You were being creepy as fuck right now. He can’t find out that you’re staring at him like this, you’d literally move to a different country if he ever caught you. And yet, for some reason, you just can’t stop either. 

He pulls the mug from his mouth, letting out a large exhale since he literally just gulped it all down in one go. He places his palms flat on the table, slightly distant from one another, as he takes in the sight of his counter, while you take in the sight of the way his biceps bulge and the veins on his thick forearms tense. He looks like he’s contemplating something. And then he shrugs his shoulders slightly before grabbing the carton next to him and chugging straight from it, like whatever he poured himself wasn’t enough to quench the thirst for citrus juice he seems to have after–you can only assume–the workout he just had. 

There’s a deep noise that’s muffled in his throat in the second before he pulls the carton away from his mouth and his eyes glance at something on the floor. You can’t see what it is, but you can see the marvelous shape of his ass through his sweatpants– I mean, you can see him furrow his brow a little and then he’s suddenly crouched down on the floor, ducked behind the island and out of sight, before he mutters something that you think sounds like damn fridge…

You stand on your tiptoes on the last step, trying to peer over the obstructing view of the counter, but you trip over the hem of your nightgown, losing balance and–

–fall straight onto the hardwood in front of you, on all fours. 

“Ah,” you exclaim blandly, and in your periphery, see Gojo suddenly stand up straight from his crouched position.

“y/n?” he calls out from the kitchen, his tone surprised.

“Sorry!” you chirp as you feel embarrassment creeping up on your cheeks, “just, uh, fell down the stairs!”

“What?!?” he exclaims in a panic, and you forgot that most people would panic if someone said that to them. He rushes over to you and gets down on one of his knees to peer at your face, his hand shooting out to grab your upper arm with little delicacy out of concern, and his eyes roam all across you to assess for injuries. “Are you okay??”

“Just!” you chirp as you yank your arm out of his hold, “Peachy!” You’re not able to make eye contact with him as he remains kneeled next to you, but you can’t find yourself able to move either. So you just relish in the ridiculous feeling of being on all fours in your vintage grandma nightgown in front of your shirtless and, breaking news: very hot, fake husband. God you can smell the musk and sweat from him when he’s this close, and it’s sexy. You have to be careful to not just straight up mount him on the floor right now. Much to your aroused dismay. 

“Um,” you squeak out, “can you put a shirt on.”

“Huh?” he looks down at himself, like he forgot he’s half naked. “Oh. Yeah.” He stands up. “Sorry, I’m not really used to having someone in the house anymore,” he says, and his use of the word anymore isn’t lost on you. 

He heads over to the coat closet, pulling a gray sweatshirt that’s a shade darker than his sweatpants off of a coat hanger and then pulling it on over his head. He pulls the hood off, and now his hair looks damp with sweat and sexily ruffled up. And he’s also in a comfy-looking sweatshirt. That was way hotter than being shirtless, for fucks sake. You wonder if he’d reconsider being shirtless again. He’s kneeling down beside you once more, and yes you are still on all fours just staring down at the hardwood floor like an animal paralyzed with fear. 

“Have some decency, please. Especially since I am to start living here from today onwards. I would appreciate modesty around the house,” you say as a tactic of self preservation. “Take note of my attire–appropriately covering all skin.”

“Are you gonna stand up?” he asks you.

“No. I shan't.”

“What? Why not? And why are you talking like that?” 

“It appears I am frozen.”

“Are your knees okay?”

“I believe so.”

He sighs and gets up from his knelt position, then suddenly comes up behind you, bending over to wrap his arms around your waist tightly before picking you up with the same ease in which someone would pick up a plastic lawn chair. You gasp, still retaining your four-legged creature formation, until he shakes it out of you and then sets you back down onto your feet. 

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says with a sigh as he heads back towards the kitchen, and he’s back to crouching down somewhere behind the counter.

You shuffle your feet over to the kitchen and peer over the kitchen island to see that he’s examining the floor in front of the fridge.

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

He scratches at his eyebrow. “The fridge is leaking again.”

“Oh.”

He clicks something on both sides of the fridge's feet and then grips the corners of its body, pulling it out from the wall with a small grunt leaving his lips. Even with the baggy sweatshirt, you can see the curves of the muscles in his arms as he works. 

You place your elbows on the island and hold your face in your hands as you watch him. “How are you gonna fix it?”

He’s dabbing at the wet hardwood with a very worn out rag to get it dry. “I just have to shut the water valve off for a bit.”

“How do you do that?”

He points over his shoulder with his thumb, and you trace the line of it to the cabinet under the sink. 

“Really? You’re gonna get under the sink?”

He dusts his hands off and tosses the rug off to the side. “Uh-huh.”

“Are you sure you can fix it?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

“How long has this been an issue?”

His gaze flicks to yours briefly before he stands up. “About a week.”

“Don’t you think you should just call someone?”

“What?” He turns to face you and crosses his arms across his chest while raising an eyebrow at you, like you’ve just deeply offended him. “Why the fuck would I call someone for a job I could do myself?”

You tilt your head at him, trying to hide the smirk that threatens to tug at your lips. “Well you said it’s been a whole week.”

“Yeah, I’ve–...I’ve just been busy. So I haven’t had a chance to really take a look at it.”

“Ohhhh okay okay,” you say in a teasingly skeptic tone, poking your tongue to your cheek as it’s getting progressively harder to hide your grin.

“What?” he says to you, impatiently.

“Nothinggg,” you purr, and you watch him with a cheeky look on your face as he glares at you before he disappears off towards the garage.

He comes back with a tool box and you spend some time poking around in it curiously as he grabs a couple of tools before crouching down in front of the sink.

For some reason, you feel shy watching him. Maybe it’s because when he’s laying on his back, the top twenty-percent of him ducked underneath the sink, and he’s working his hands on some pipes that you can’t see, his sweatshirt rides up a little and you can see the very lower part of his torso. And then when he yanks particularly hard on something, it rides up more and you can see his abs tensing and relaxing with almost every breath he takes and every move he makes. You’re just grateful he can’t see you, and the urge to clench your thighs together is almost stronger than your brain’s disposition to convince yourself that he’s not attractive just because you think he’s annoying most of the time. 

“y/n,” he calls out to you from under the sink, and you jump a little. He tilts his head a little so he can make eye contact with you from under. “Can you hand me those slip-joint pliers?”

“I have no idea what that is or where to even begin to know what that is.”

“The pliers that have the serrated edges,” he tries.

“Huh?”

“.........shark with sharp teeth.” 

“Oh! Yes. Yes, of course,” you grab them and then shuffle over to him before crouching down, balancing on your toes, “here you go.”

“Thanks,” he says in a flat tone, slowly taking them from you. 

“You’re welcome!” you chirp. You feel very useful. 

His head disappears back to deep underneath the sink again to work on stuff again. Even though this whole thing is probably just his masculine ego wanting to fix things around the house by himself rather than just call a person that is literally paid to fix these sorts of things, you have to admit that you’re not complaining for getting to watch him do something handy. 

“I’ve just– gotta–” he grunts a little and you hear the creaking of pipes, “tighten this up a bit–” he lets out another gruff noise, his voice strained with effort, and you’re ashamed to say it sounds hot. “Alright!” He pulls himself out from under the sink and stands up back onto his feet with a bounce in his step as he dusts his hands off. “Fixed. For now.”

The fridge starts making a strange whirring noise. You raise an eyebrow at him. He quickly reaches behind it and clicks some button before the eerie whirring stops.

“Okay. Now it’s fixed.”

You give him a very skeptic look. “Sure, Jan.”

“Don’t sure jan me. Trust. It won’t leak anymore.”

“Whatever you say,” you respond before heading back up the stairs to freshen up. 

By the time you go back downstairs, Gojo is nowhere to be found, and you take the opportunity to sit on his couch in the living room to then peruse which streaming services he has on his TV. It isn’t until about ten minutes later that you hear someone coming down the stairs, because he makes no effort to avoid the creaky steps.

You put your elbow up on the couch backrest and twist your torso to look at him. He’s wearing pajama pants and an unmatching black short sleeve cotton T-shirt that’s loose around his torso but tight at the arms. He’s ruffling his hair up with a hand towel, attempting to get it dry from the shower he clearly just took. As he makes his way towards the living room, you catch a waft of the clean soapy aqua fragrance of shampoo lingering in his hair. He stops about four feet behind the couch.

You glance down at his feet. “Why the fuck are you, as a grown ass man, wearing bunny slippers inside the house?”

He opens one eye to glance down at his slippers as he continues to tousle his hair dry, “oh, Juno got them for me for Christmas last year. She wanted me to wear them ‘all the time or else uncle toru’s feet will burn off from the floor lava.”

A small smile makes its way onto your face. 

Juno is Gojo’s five-year-old niece, and from the interactions you’ve seen between them, and from the way My Little Pony was the first thing that popped up when you turned the TV on, you know that Gojo absolutely adores her and vice versa. You’ve met her a couple times, even babysat her once in an emergency, and she’s a cute and bright little kid that you certainly have way more fondness for than her obnoxiously annoying uncle who is also now your fake husband. Wait, does that mean that Juno is your niece now, too?

Gojo lets out a sigh before hanging the towel over his shoulder, his hair apparently adequately dry enough for him now. He looks younger when his hair is messy and a little damp, falling over his forehead flatter than usual. It’s kinda boyish and dare-you-say charming.

He looks down at his slippers again with a pleasant reminiscent look on his face before placing his hands on his hips like he’s a baseball dad of three. “Y’know, when I was growing up–”

“Ah yes. During the Great Depression.”

He gives you an annoyed look. “Quit it. When I was a kid–”

“Back in the 1800s.”

“Aren’t you pushing thirty?” he asks you.

“Aren’t you in need of some new dentures?” you ask him.

“Fuckin’ rude,” he mumbles as he walks towards the foyer table to rip open some of the mail that was scattered across it.

“What happened when you were a kid?” you ask.

“Forget it,” he says, tucking some of his bills back into envelopes.

“What!! I wanna know,” you say.

“Yeah well I don’t want to tell you anymore,” he responds.

As you two fully grown adults continue bickering like toddlers for the better part of two minutes, your phone is ringing upstairs unbeknownst to you. 

“Wait. Shut up,” Gojo cuts off your next insult as he snaps his head up-right suddenly. 

“What?! Did you just tell me to shut u–”

“Shhhhhh,” he hushes you, turning his ear towards the stairs with a concentrated expression on his face.

You silence yourself, and then you hear the ringing coming from upstairs.

“Fuck,” you mumble as you scramble off the couch and jog to the bottom of the staircase, Gojo’s eyes on you the entire time as you run up the steps back to your room.

You hear your phone ringing on the bed somewhere but you can’t find it so you rummage through the sheets before finally spotting it, swiping on the call and bringing it to your ear without even checking the caller ID.

“Hello?” you say.

“Oh! y/n, hi there. It’s Dr. Johnson calling. I was prepared to leave you a voicemail,” he says.

“I’m here,” you say hastily, holding your phone to your ear with both hands as you feel your entire body tense up. 

You never knew what to expect with any sort of phone calls these days, especially when you’re at work or when your mom isn’t home, because a phone call could be something as simple as approving a refill on some of her medication, to something much worse than that. Something much more final than that. 

“It’s not an emergency,” Dr. Johnson says on the other line, like he can sense your fear and anxiety through the phone, “just wanted to reach out to let you know that I spoke with the hospitalist who admitted your mother to the hospital and she’s doing better now. They’ll likely discharge her by the end of the day.”

You slowly let out the breath you were holding. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I know she needs to come in for chemo tomorrow, so it’s perfect timing.”

“Yes, we’ll see her tomorrow.”

“Uh, Dr. Johnson, I do want to let you know…I’ll be admitting my mom for hospice in a couple of days,” you tell him. You wince a little, because you know it’s probably something that you should’ve discussed with him prior to all of this. “It’s…likely that you won’t have to continue her care anymore, since she’s been approved for Kaiser insurance, I’ll be transferring her care to Kaiser physicians.”

There’s a moment of silence on the other line, the briefest moment of hesitation from a self-assured doctor who always had something to say right away. “Really? That’s–...wow. I can’t say I won’t be extremely sad to not see her anymore.”

“I know…” you say, worrying your bottom lip through your teeth, feeling a sudden wave of guilt overtake your senses, “you’ve been following her progress ever since her diagnosis, even got her into remission…it’s just a little complicated with some insurance stuff and some bills as well. If I could have things my way, I would continue care with you and your team.”

Even though you can’t see it, you can tell he’s nodding on the other line. “I understand, y/n. I know that there’s more to healthcare in this country than just…receiving care. But I don’t have to explain those things to you, since you’re a nurse. Do what’s best for you and your family. Give me the details for the hospice, and I’ll have my MAs send over your mother’s chart.”

“Thank you, Dr. Johnson,” you whisper, your voice cracking slightly. “Really. For everything.”

“You’re most welcome.”

“Oh–” you stutter, in fear he might hang up right as you remembered to ask him something.

“Yes?”

“I know I’ll see you tomorrow so we can discuss it then too, but I was just wondering if the scans were back from my mom’s brain MRI she had done? I know they usually take three weeks to come back but just wanted to check.”

He lets out a low chuckle. “I had a feeling you’d follow up about that. No, there are no scans that have come back. I’ll let you know right away when they do.”

“Okay…” you say.

“I know you’re worried about a possible glioma,” he speaks up, “but let’s just try to stay positive until we see the scans, okay?”

“Yes. Sounds good. Thank you, doctor.”

“Alright. I will see you and your mom tomorrow.”

“Yes. Bye,” you say and hear his word of farewell too before hanging up. 

You stare down at the screen of your phone, taking in slow deep breaths to calm down your nerves. You just wanted these scans to come back already so that you could feel at peace knowing that your mom’s worsening neurological condition is due to her Alzheimer’s and not a tumor in her brain. The average survival length of a person with a brain tumor is low, and even worse if it’s a glioblastoma, ranging at around 12-18 months. You can buy her a few years at least with the stage of cancer progression she’s at right now, even with the possibility of remission, but if it becomes severely advanced disease then–

You gasp softly and cover your mouth with your hand, unable to even fathom the thought without feeling a feverish chill run down your entire body. Now's not the time to spiral. Deep breaths. One, two, three. Now is the time to stay positive. Just like Dr. Johnson said. 

Putting one step ahead of the other, you leave the room, cross the loft and slowly make your way down the stairs and stop at the very last step when you see Gojo rushing across the foyer with his dress shoes on, wearing a dark blue suit, save for the tie, and he looks like he’s pressed for time.

“Are you going somewhere?” you ask from the last step, your hand curled around the rail still.

“Hey, uh, yeah,” he scrambles, grabbing his keys from the paper mache bowl on the foyer table and then pats at his pockets for his wallet only to notice it’s absent. “Fuck.” He disappears somewhere into the house in a hurry and then returns with his wallet in his hand before shoving it in his pocket with the jingle of his keys too. “I had to push a couple house viewings from this afternoon up, so I need to leave.” He finally turns to face you and exhales slowly to regain his breath. “Small favor?”

“What’s up,” you say.

He rubs the back of his neck a little guiltily. “Well, Sana called a few minutes ago asking if I could watch Juno since she had to pick her up early from school, and I said sure, but I have to leave now, so–”

“I can watch her,” you say.

He claps his hands together in prayer form and holds them up to his face, “I owe you one.”

“Mhmmmmm,” you hum, watching as he resumes his haste to leave the house. And just before he heads out the door, you say— “Collar.”

“Huh?” He turns around to face you. “Oh.” He takes a second to flatten the collar of his shirt. “Thanks.” And then he’s out the door.

You sigh, relishing in the emptiness of the house. Maybe you should raid his pantry, or play porn on the TV super loud so all the neighbors think he’s a creep. But perhaps that is not appropriate, given that his sister will be bringing his niece over very soon.

You quickly head over to your house to change into something more appropriate than your nightgown, just some blue jeans that honestly make you look like a soccer mom, and then a T-shirt. You walk back to Gojo’s house and only get about five minutes to peruse his pantry when the doorbell rings.

When you open the door, you’re met face-to-face with Gojo’s sister, Sana. How would you describe Sana? Well, first of all, she’s beautiful, with all the same features as Gojo except in female form. Striking round blue eyes, silky white hair that shimmers silver underneath sunlight (you would describe Gojo less poetically than this, though). Her hair is pin straight, falling down just past her shoulders. She’s sweet, or at least has been the couple of times that you’ve met her, but she can also be a little serious and strict. The type to not really laugh at the dinner table if you make a pointed joke about the current political state of the country, but maybe it’s because she didn’t even understand the joke to begin with. Either way, she’s very different from the annoying and irritating temperament of her older brother, and how their mother managed to give birth to such two different kids is beyond you.

“Hey,” you greet her at the door with a small smile.

“Hi, y/n,” she returns with a polite smile of her own. She’s holding onto Juno’s scrawny shoulders as the kid stands in front of her, barely to the height of her mother’s hips. Juno was toying with the light pink baseball cap on her head, her hair pulled through the opening in the back and tied up into a ponytail. “I’m so sorry to bother you with her.”

“Oh! No, not a bother at all, I love getting to see her,” you say as you crouch down to get at eye level with her. “Hi Juno!”

Juno has curly white hair rather than the pin straight that her mother possessed, a feature that more closely resembles her father’s hair, along with her hazel eyes. You’ve only met Sana’s husband, Jun, once before. From what you know, he’s some type of businessman, and the first thing you noticed about him was that he was the same height as Sana. But his wife was blessed with supermodel height and was probably taller than most men, so it wasn’t surprising. Jun was hearty, almost suspiciously kind, laughed boisterously loud, and in the small amount of time you met him, it was easy to see that Sana very rarely humored his ill-mannered and awkwardly-placed jokes, but they seemed very in love with each other regardless. Apparently he and Gojo go golfing every other weekend. Information that you seem to know despite any desire to know it. 

Juno hugs her water bottle to her chest, shy as she makes eye contact with you. “Hi, auntie y/n.”

“I loooooove your baseball cap! It’s so cute, where did you get it?” you ask her.

She blinks off to the side timidly, her fluffy white lashes fluttering over her bright eyes. “Um. Uncle Toru.”

“Ohhh I see, I see! It suits you.”

Sana nudges her a little with her knee. “What do we say, Juno?”

“Thank you, auntie y/n,” she immediately squeaks out in reflex.

Your eyes catch a glimpse of the white bandage wrapped over her tiny arm and your brow furrows before reaching out to gently hold it. Juno winces a little from the sensation. You stand up straight.

“What happened to her arm?” you ask Sana.

Sana sighs as she tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “She fell on the playground at school today. It’s a pretty large scrape and it’s been hurting her a lot.”

“Did you disinfect it?”

“Oh…I just–...washed it with some water. The school nurse wasn’t there today so I just had to pick her up early.” 

“Mm, I see,” you say, “I can take a look at it. I have some neosporin in my purse.”

She lets out a relieved sigh, like she was secretly hoping you would make the offer. “Thank you. Really.” She gently pushes on her daughter’s shoulder. “C’mon Juno. Go inside and set your homework up on the table.”

Juno cranes her neck up to look at her mom. “Mommy, can I have a snack first? Pop-tart!”

“If your uncle has them in the pantry, then sure,” Sana says, and immediately upon hearing those words, Juno rushes inside the house with giggles filling the air. “But only one!!” Sana yells out to her in a strict tone, and you watch with amusement as Juno skips off before returning your attention back to Sana.

“Sooo…” she starts, a small hint of hesitation playing on her usually prim face, “I suppose we’re sisters now. Sisters-in-law.”

Your eyes widen and your shoulders stiffen. It was at least a good thing that Gojo told his family already that you two are married, because it seems that most of his extended family live here in this town. At least, you know that his sister’s family and his parents live here. Better to be heard from him directly than to run into you randomly living at his house all of a sudden when they drop by. You’re sure his family has questions about this extremely sudden marriage to say the least. You’re not sure how much they’ll try to pry, but you hope it’s not much, because you’ve never really been a great actress. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

“Mm,” she hums pleasantly at you, nodding slowly and peering off into the house beyond your shoulder, “say…I’m, um, just a little…surprised by how sudden this all is.”

“Hmm?”

“With you and my brother,” she says straightforwardly. “Obviously, you must know he’s been married before, but it’s…a little odd, it feels like just yesterday when he told us he was…getting a divorce. And now he’s married again.” She trails off when she has some sobering thought that flashes through her head. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m blabbering about this. I’m just–...I’m just thinking out loud. It must be a sore topic.”

“Oh, no, no, not at all. No worries,” you say with an awkward laugh, “I’ve, um, come to terms with it?” You try your best to come up with a believable response.

“That’s good,” she says while she runs soothing circles with her thumb over the skin at her elbow, “well, some love moves faster than others.” She displays a well-meaning smile on her face. “I’m really happy for you two.”

For some reason, your heart warms. Like when the lines of reality and imagination blur, and so you’re left here with a truly comforting feeling. Only it’s fleeting and temporary, like escapism. “Thank you,” you say softly. And after a moment, “by the way, I’m really sorry for…Satoru and I not having a proper wedding. We just wanted something simple.”

She lets out a small scoff. “Oh, gosh, don’t apologize for that. I’m sick of weddings. I was so glad I didn’t have to peruse yet another wedding registry this year. There are only so many toaster ovens I can buy.”

You’re a little surprised by the humor from her, but the two of you let out small laughs in unison at the doorstep.

Sana glances at her watch. “I have to get going. Call me if you need anything, okay?” 

You nod. “Sure. Thanks.”

You close the door slowly, watching her briefly through the stained glass window as she heads towards her car and gets inside before promptly driving off. 

There’s the sound of ruffling heard and then the sound of things falling off a shelf towards the kitchen. You turn on your heel and head in the direction. “Junooo,” you call out, “where are youuuu?”

“In here!” she chirps from the pantry room. You turn the light on to see her standing in the center with a couple boxes of cereal fallen around her. She’s holding an empty box in her hand. “The pop-tart box is empty,” she says with a pout and sulk of her shoulders as she makes the most :(( face you’ve ever seen a child make.

“Oh no,” you say, grabbing the box from her and inspecting the inside, “your devious uncle must’ve eaten them all in a manic episode.”

“What is a manic mean?” she asks you as she looks up, rubbing her ankle with her other foot.

“Oh, it’s like…crazy? He went crazy?”

She giggles at the thought.

“If you’re hungry, I can make you something,” you offer.

She shyly nods her head but her grin fully rounds her cheeks before she darts off towards the kitchen. 

You find her standing near the kitchen island, trying to get up onto one of the bar stools but to no avail. You come up behind her to pick her up then set her down on the seat, adjusting it so it’s a little higher. 

“What do you want me to make?” you ask her as you come around to the other side of the island and set your elbows up on the cold marble, leaning over to place your chin in your palm. 

“Um…” she brings her index finger up to her bottom lip in thought, “pancakes? Can I have blubbery pancakes?”

“Huh?” 

“Um…” she starts again, “last time, when I eated them at your house. Um, when I ated them at your house,” she tries to correct herself, “I really liked them.”

“Oh!” you perch up from your bent over position, “I remember! The blueberry pancakes. Aww, Juno, you remember that? How sweet.”

She becomes a little bashful and glances down at the her lap.

“Okayyy,” you say, placing your hands on your waist as you look around at the kitchen, “well I’ll have to see what ingredients I’m working with here, but hopefully I can make them for you.” You tilt your head at her before pointing a finger. “Have you ever seen the show Chopped?” 

She sits up straight with excitement. “Yes yes! Me and mommy love it.”

“Good. Let’s pretend I’m working with a mystery basket here,” you say, and then you turn around to open Gojo’s fridge. 

You can learn a lot about a person based on what the inside of their fridge looks like. You’re surprised to find the inside of his looks…sparkly? That was the only way you knew how to describe it. With clean shelves that reflect the bright lighting off the plastic, plastic that looks as mirror sheen as glass. As your eyes take in the contents inside, you notice he has some leftover thai food at the front, most likely leftovers from as recent as last night. One of the produce drawers is filled to the brim while the other is mostly empty, and you notice he separates them by leafy stuff vs. veggies. The leafy stuff is the drawer that’s filled to the brim, and you just know he’s stressed out over how to use all of it up before it starts wilting. Must’ve been on sale, you think to yourself. To the right of the fridge, there are an insane amount of orange juice cartons, and you notice he drinks the same one as you–pulp free with the added vitamins and calcium that’s made for kids. Although maybe he has an excuse for it, since he has a five-year-old niece. There’s a few containers of meal prep stacked up at the back of the fridge that look like some sort of arrangement of quinoa, chicken and Mediterranean vegetables. And then there’s just a bunch of assorted cans of beer throughout the fridge, which you assume are to appease the diverse preferences of his friends whenever he has them over. 

You grab a couple of eggs from the egg carton, placing them on the counter along with a stick of butter plus a half-full carton of milk, and peer deep into the fridge past the wall of condiments to eye for any fresh fruit such as berries, but you don’t see any. You try the freezer and are relieved when you see he has some frozen blueberries in there.

“Okay!” you shut the fridge. “Just need to grab a few more things from the pantry room and then I’ll make you your pancakes, okay?” 

Juno nods enthusiastically. “Um. Can I get my backpack?”

“Sure.” You pick her up off the bar stool to set her down on the ground and she runs to the coffee table in front of the TV to grab her things as you head to the pantry room. 

Flour, sugar, baking powder, all tucked in your elbows as you carry the ingredients back to the kitchen before dropping them onto the counter and picking Juno up to place her on the barstool again. She starts to lay out her glittery pens and pristinely sharpened pencils in front of her as well as a packet of papers. 

“I can’t believe they’re giving Kindergarteners homework these days…” you mutter under your breath as you grab a bowl. “Juno, wanna help me crack the eggs?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go wash our hands then.”

As you mix all your ingredients together and Juno continues to stare at her papers with her face awfully close to them (does she need glasses?), you think to yourself what a nice little life this is. Although you haven’t been able to spend the day at your house like you were hoping you would, since you could finally have it for yourself, it was nice to spend it at Gojo’s. It was something different, something refreshing, something grounding. An escape that you needed. 

“Um. Auntie y/n?” Juno calls from behind you as you flip a pancake at the stove.

“Yes sweetheart.”

“How is mommy?”

“Hmm?” you hum. “My mommy?”

“Yes!”

“Oh you are just the sweetest thing. She’s doing okay. She’s just a little sick still.”

“When I’m sick,” Juno speaks up with a childlike enthusiasm in her voice, “my mommy gives me grape soor–...stir–” she struggles with the word, “shrup, ah, syrup! Grape syrup. It makes me better.”

“Ohhh honey, I know,” you coo as you try to match her enthusiasm, placing two little pancakes onto a plate for her. “When you get the sniffles, right?”

“Yes! Maybe your mommy will be better too if I give her some of my grape syoorup?”

You stop in your tracks, staring down at the food you were just plating.

The innocence of a child. It was hard to stay strong in the face of it. When you were younger, you probably would’ve thought that a magical potion would make your mom all better, too.

You turn around to face her. “Well,” you say, clearing your throat a little to fight the knot that you find is twisting it, “I think,” and now you’re blinking away the faint sheer of tears as you press your lips into a thin smile, your soft soft above a whisper, “that that is a wonderful idea.”

Juno gobbles up her blubbery pancakes with the extra maple syrup on them and you watch her take every bite. There was something satisfying about seeing a little kid eat so well. The sight made you feel well-fed on their behalf.

“Alright,” you say with a small grunt as you pick Juno up and set her down onto the ground, then take her hand to lead her over to the carpeted family room. “Let me take a look at this scrape of yours.”

Juno’s hand tugs slightly when you try to pull on it, so you turn around to see that she has stopped in her tracks halfway through the trek to the other room.

“What’s wrong?” you ask her.

“I don’t want you to see it…”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s ugly.”

“Juno,” you tug on her hand a little, “I have to see it so that I can clean it. Otherwise you might get sick. A type of sick that even grape syrup can’t fix.”

She looks up at you with curious eyes, not fearful ones. 

“There is sick like that?” she asks you.

“Yes. Now give me your arm.”

Juno follows you to the family room and stands still, the front of her jutting out slightly as she pouts, a display of her remaining disapproval for you taking a look at her scrape. You get down onto your knees and slowly undo the bandages, unwrapping the layers one-by-one before the end falls off and you’re staring at a 4x2cm superficial abrasion on her arm, and when your thumb lightly swipes at the skin underneath it, Juno winces from the pain.

You also notice she has a bruise on her left upper thigh, right below where the hem of her shorts end.

“You…only fell onto your right side, right?” you ask her.

“Mhm,” she nods.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“How come you have a bruise on your left thigh then?”

Her eyes widen slightly with shock and her head quickly snaps down to look at her thigh. “Um. Um. I don’t know. Um. Um.”

“Juno,” you say, trying to muster up a strict tone, but she refuses to make eye contact with you anymore as she stares at the carpet beneath her. You gently grab a hold of both of her wrists. “Sweetheart. Look at me.” Her eyes slowly lift up to meet yours. “I want to help you, but I can't help you unless you’re honest with me.”

Her big eyes blink at you slowly and her bottom lip quivers slightly.

“How did you really hurt yourself?”

She immediately starts bawling. Full on sobs that echo throughout the room and startle you slightly as the tears freely fall down her cheeks and she struggles to wipe them off with her left arm, but they only drip down her elbow.

“Oh–” you stutter, holding her by her shoulders, “Juno–”

She sniffles. “They–” she hiccups, “they pushed me…they always push me.”

“Who pushed you?? Who always pushes you??”

She sucks in a deep breath as she continues to cry and you struggle to wipe at her tears for her with the pad of your thumb. “The–hic–girls at school. They’re so–hic–...wahhh…they’re so mean.”

“They pushed you on the playground and that’s how you got this scrape and bruise?” you ask her.

She nods as she slowly begins to come down from her outburst, her remnant sniffles and short sharp inhales showing that she was struggling to breath. You run to grab some tissues and then come back, holding them to her nose before she blows into them.

“Oh sweetheart…I’m so sorry,” you say to her.

She suddenly runs into you, hugging you tightly, and you’re momentarily surprised before wrapping an arm around her too and then gently patting at her back.

“How long has this been going on?” you ask her.

“Mm…ever since I–hic–ever since I got on T-ball team…but they couldn’t get on.”

“Oh…” you coo, gently rubbing her back now. You’re not a mom, you’ve got no fucking clue how to navigate this sort of situation. But you can try your best to give some advice. “Juno, you have every right to feel happy and safe at school.” You gently pull her away from the hug so that you can look at her face. “And it’s okay to stand up for yourself and against anyone that is being mean to you. Don’t let them take that power away from you.”

She nods slowly, her lip quivering slightly again.

You sigh slowly before giving her another hug. “And we’ll work out something with your mom too, okay? She can talk to the teachers.”

“No!” Juno shrieks, pulling away from you suddenly. You blink at her. “No. Please don’t tell my mommy.”

“W-Why not??”

“Because–” she stutters, “um…I want to tell her myself. Because I lied, and mommy always says to me to not tell lies. So I have to fix it myself.”

You tilt your head at her, frowning slightly. You’re not exactly sure how much autonomy over such things you should be granting a five-year-old, but you decide to give her the choice. You hold your pinky finger out to her, “you have to promise me you’ll tell her though, okay?”

She nods and wraps her pinky around yours. 

After getting her scrape cleaned up and tended to, Juno spends the next hour or so watching My Little Pony on the TV as you clean up the mess you made in the kitchen. And as you’re staring out into the backyard while wiping down the cutting board, the sound of the doorbell ringing makes you jump with a startle and breaks you out of your trance.

You were prepared to open the door to find Sana standing at the entrance, but instead you’re met with the sight of a different woman.

Much older, and with all the same features, it doesn’t really take you long to figure out who she is.

“Ah! There she is!” the woman chirps out. “I’m—”

“Juno’s grandmother,” you finish the statement for her.

“—Satoru’s mother,” she instead says.

You both blink at one another.

“Well,” she chirps, “I’m both!”

Gojo’s mother appears to be a kind woman, and it’s evident that being gorgeous must run in the family. Although she has aged features, they’re still beautiful in a graceful way, where people would take a look at her and think of aging as a privilege and not a curse. Her eyes are somewhat feline, different from the roundness of those you’ve seen in her family, and her hair is a shimmering silver all around with a pretty silk press layered hair style that flatters her frail jaw. She was wearing a French-style button up dress with a rather gaudy belt around her waist, and you catch the scent of her lilac perfume even while she’s standing three feet away.

She puts her hands on her hips and has a forced smile on her face. “My son gets married and he doesn’t even tell me a peep about it, or introduce me to his new wife! I have to come all the way over here myself!” she exclaims, and her tone is like she’s trying to play it off with nonchalance but the stiffness of her features makes it look like she’s losing her mind. “Well,” she clicks her tongue, “he’s always had the penchant for never sharing anything he ever does with me.”

“Ah…I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gojo,” you say to her, unsure why you’re apologizing, but there was this energy to her that made you realize she had a skill for making people feel apologetic in her presence.

“No worries! Not your fault. I’ll deal with him later,” she says, her smile growing to where it almost fully crescents her eyes in a frightening way that almost sends a shiver down your spine, “anywhoooo,” she takes both of your hands into hers, “you’re very beautiful, and you have a very lucky-looking nose!”

“Lucky?”

“Yes, yes. You will bring luck to our family.”

“Thanks?” you say, trying to manage a smile.

She takes a step closer to you. “Tell me, what do your parents do for a living?”

“Oh! Um, well, my mom is retired, but she used to be an art teacher. My dad is in the food business, but uh, I haven’t spoken to him in years ever since my parents got divorced.”

“Ah,” she says curtly, her face blank as if she couldn’t think of a single thing to follow up with after that. She peers past your shoulder. “Where’s the little princess?”

“She’s just inside grabbing her things.” You gently slip your hands out of her hold and turn around to face the inside of the house. “Juno!! Do you need help?”

“No!!” she calls from the kitchen.

“Say, my dear,” Gojo’s mother speaks up, “why don’t you and Satoru come by for dinner this weekend? Jun and Sana apparently have some important news they’d like to share with the family, and I offered that we all hear it together over a meal. This way you can meet your father-in-law too!”

You take a deep breath in, realizing that this fake marriage agreement involves a lot more deceit than you ever thought it would. “Sure. Yes. I’d love that. Let me know if I can bring anything.”

“Wonderful!” she exclaims, just in time for when you feel Juno brush past you towards her grandma, hunching over slightly with her backpack’s weight. Gojo’s mother pulls you in for a hug which entirely startles you and you slowly wrap your arms around her as well. “It’s so lovely to have a daughter-in-law. Oh, I am just so happy to have you in our family.”

She lets go of you but still keeps you close by a delicate hold of your elbows, a gleeful smile on her face as she looks you up and down slowly.

“Bye, auntie y/n!!” Juno squeaks out, hugging your leg, and you pat at the top of her head. Her grandmother finally lets go of you and takes Juno’s tiny hand in her frail one, and you see them off to the car.

By the time you make it back inside the house, you let out a deep slow breath, one that you didn’t know you were holding in, as you lay your weight back on the front door. You feel a pressure in your head from your dwindling social battery and all these tricky encounters.

So, you’re part of a whole other family, now?

That. Is. Frightening.

.

.

.

[end of chapter 3]

a/n. ah!! hope you enjoyed this ihm chapter :’’) sorry if it seemed like a bunch of random scenes lolol i swear it’s all set up for stuff that will happen down the lineee. i just be yappin so the word count ends up kinda high. hope to see you in the next one!! <3 love u all. also it’s my frank ocean anons bday today so i dedicate this chapter to themm 🫶🏼💕 manifesting dilf gojo for u bb for anyone curious about why reader is a bit paranoid w potentially being busted for her fake marriage, i had another reader that was curious about this too so i answered them here if you'd like to check it out :)

➸ take me to chapter four!

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[john-get-the-salt]

Tight Leash w/ Roy Kent

Imagine: Roy has managed to keep his feelings for you to himself….until one night he’s unable to hold onto them any longer.

Contains: fem/reader, cursing, Roy losing his absolute shit in the best way, sexual innuendos

Warnings: none

“I can’t believe I ever let you convince me to wear this.”

“Babes you look phenomenal,” Keeley preened.

You might not have had the option to skip the fundraiser event you were about to enter, but you did have the option to wear something more….lowkey. You did tend to keep it lowkey, as one of the clubs media specialists. Keeley handed all of the flashy bits, the paparazzi and signings and public appearances. You tended to a lot of the background stuff; the sports articles and communications within the league, and the clubs various websites and platforms. Ever since you joined the team nearly a year go now you liked to work in the background, liked being unnoticeable.

Unfortunately you’d become best friends with Keeley Jones-the most noticeable person on the planet. And when you learned you had to attend some annual fundraising gala Rebecca was putting on, Keeley made it her life mission to convince you to wear something daring. And in a moment of weakness you’d agreed.

But now that you were present at the gala and it was almost your turn to walk to press carpet, you were having some serious regrets.

“Seriously Keeley, I feel ridiculous. One of the guys is going to see me and bust out laughing. This is something Rebecca would wear and pull off, not me.” Not to mention the carpet ahead was daunting. Cameras flashing constantly, held by shouting, viperous paparazzi.

“Hey,” Keeley pulled you to the side, forcing you to look at her instead of ahead at the walk into the hall. “No matter what mean things your brain are telling you right now, you look phenomenal. And when the guys see you, when Kent sees you-they’re gonna be lost for words.”

You flushed, because of course your best friend couldn’t resist mentioning the man you had a huge thing for. She never let it go after you let it slip one night. The two of you were just friends, no matter how much Keeley insisted that Roy was in love with you. You two had hit it off shortly after you started, appreciating each other’s dry sense of humor and love of cursing. Besides Keeley he was your best friend. But that was it-no matter how much you daydreamed of more.

"You've got this babe, i promise. Don’t forget-you are a badass bitch." Keeley gave you a final smile and quick kiss on the cheek before she was being called up. She left your side and stepped out onto the carpet. The photographers went wide, bursts of light exploding. You were officially next.

You took a deep breath, in and out. You just wanted to be inside the gala with your people, having fun with the club and Rebecca and Keeley. Unfortunately, this carpet stood in between you and them.

Just when you thought you had taken enough deep breaths and were finally ready, you heard a sharp inhale behind you. You risked a glance over your shoulder, finding Roy standing a few feet behind you. And you had to admit, he looked good. The all black attire did not surprise you but it did suit him. He was taking you in, slowly, from head to toe. Your outfit was all white, comprised of crisp high waisted pants and a corseted long sleeve top. (see visual below, I love a good visual, tho feel free to alter it in your brain to best suit you)

When his eyes finally rose to your chest he swore.

"Fucking hell."

"What was that, Roy?"

His eyes rose again, this time to meet yours.

Maybe it was Keely's words ringing around your head, or the way Roy couldn't keep his eyes off you, or the shot of whiskey you'd taken on the drive in. But regardless, you suddenly felt a smudge more confident. So with a final mental fuck it, you decided to embrace it. You relaxed your shoulders, straightened your spine, and as they called your name you smiled at Roy and gave a quick wink before you spun on your heel and took your first step out onto the carpet.

The cameras lit up, photographers crying for a spin, a turn, an angle, any bit of attention. You stopped a few times, allowing them pictures of you in different poses. The lights and the noises soon became too much however, so you kept it short before you strutted down the rest of the carpet and made it inside the gala building where Keely was stood waiting.

"Oh my god, you looked like a right model walking into a show," she gushed. "Those pictures of you are going to be jaw-dropping babe. And poor Roy's dragging his jaw against the floor."

You flushed as you let the excitable girl link arms with you and drag you towards the teams designated table. "I don't know what came over me, Ke. I just decided to go with it and channel my inner Rebecca. And I fucking winked at Roy. Who am I?“

"If he doesn't pull you away to ravish you by the end of the night I will."

You giggled with your friend, happily accepting the drink she got you.

"Ladies."

To your delight Coach Lasso approached, eyes crinkled as he smiled. "You both look down-right beautiful."

"Oh thank you Ted, you're looking quite handsome this evening."

"Well that's mighty kind of you. Now between the three of us, I was really just coming to let you know that Roy just stormed into the building like a starved man on a mission, demanding to know if I'd seen which way you went. The poor man looked so red in the face I was worried he was going to keel over."

You flushed, eyes suddenly finding the floor quite interesting.

"Now you two wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?"

"He's realizing that he's in love with her," Keely couldn't help but gush.

Eyes widening, you smacked her arm.

"Ow!"

"Keely! He is not!"

"Ah," Lasso hummed, chuckling a bit. "It's about damn time. The boys and I are getting tired of the silent pining."

"We are not- there is no silent pining." You argued, looking between your two friends.

“You two have been inseparable since you met. You spend more time with him then anyone else in the club, babes.”

“Kee, we’re just friends.”

"I don’t think he thinks that," Lasso gestured with his head and you followed his gaze, finding Roy stood across the room, staring straight at you.

Your heart skipped a beat as his intense eyes met yours.

"I need some water," you stated, the air suddenly too heavy to breath.

"I can-"

"It's ok, Kee," you interrupted, kissing her cheek. "I'll be back."

She nor Lasso argued, watching as you hurried away from the table and towards the bar. Roy was after you the next minute, speeding across the floor and past the table towards you.

"Those two...." Lasso trailed off as he shook his head.

"Idiots."

"Lovesick idiots."

-

You weren't really thinking straight when you rushed away from your friends. All you could think was that the weight of Roy's gaze was heavy, stifling, and you felt your chest constrict.

You stepped up to the bar and asked for an ice water, receiving it moments later. You thanked the bartender and glided over to a neglected corner of the room, where only a few stragglers buzzed around. It was quieter over here, and you could feel the ache in your chest ease slightly.

"Hey," a soft voice invaded your space.

You froze, turning.

Roy was stood there, looking down at you again with that intense dark gaze.

"Hi," you said softly, unable to stop your eyes from flickering down to his lips before quickly back up.

"You look....fucking beautiful."

A heat began in your cheeks, reaching down your neck and no doubt flushing your collar and chest as well.

"That word doesn't seem quite enough. Fucking....breathtaking." And the way he said it sounded like he was, in fact, breathless. His chest heaved, as he stood perfectly still in front of you.

The heat was beginning to prick at your stomach, and if Roy wasn't very careful it was going to continue to travel downward.

"Thank you. Everyone here looks pretty amazing."

"Sweetheart, I haven't so much as glanced at anyone else in here. How can I, when you look so...." he trailed off, lips parting silently.

"What?"

“I’ve been doing my best to keep what I was feeling on a tight leash. I never wanted to ruin…this. Our friendship. I don’t know what I’d do with it, but…”

You furrowed your eyebrows. He wasn’t making any sense. “What are you saying Roy?”

"Can I kiss you?"

Ok, the heat had officially traveled to your entire body. You felt like you were on fire, and all Roy was doing was looking at you. Never had you considered how much a simple question like that could affect you, but as you watched him wait in heavy anticipation, wanting to touch you but unwilling until you gave him permission, you became weak in the knees.

"Yes-" the word was barely out of your mouth before he was kissing you, trapping the word in between you. His hands cradled your face so delicately, like you were made of glass. You rested your hands on his chest, appreciating the muscle you felt under the suit.

His lips were so soft, and tasted faintly of the cherry chapstick you'd given him just the other day. He smelled of spicy cologne and his scruff tickled your face.

He pulled away, just enough to meet your eyes.

"I may be the most stubborn, selfish, miserable prick on this planet, but you make me feel like I'm so much more. And this may be the most selfish thing I ever do, but I don't fucking care anymore. I'm in love with you."

Your lips parted, eye searching his for any signs of deception. You couldn't find any.

"Im in love with you too, my miserable prick."

He choked on a laugh, his eyes glassy as he rested his forehead against yours. "God, I love you so fucking much."

"I love you even fucking more."

[p0rk-guts]

Niffty's finally here!!!! Was gonna post her earlier but I had brain worms. Alr comparison + breakdown time ⬇️

Niffty's another case where I feel like the pilot design was better; mainly with the colors.

I'll admit that my internal biases are definitely in play with these redesigns and opinions, but honestly her more warm hues probably would've helped separate her a little more from melting into the main cast & background red-pink scheme. Other than that tho I'm neither here nor there on either design

Once again, her design is one that shares very little about her as a character. The apron helped to convey she acts as a maid, but her supposed bug themes and the face that she died in the 1950's doesn't really come through at all. She's just. Some little girl!

Here's my Niffty in her unaltered state! Her hair isn't actually legs, it just naturally forms in these odd curl shapes. Usually it's tied back. She naturally has 4 arms (cuz she's roach inspired!) but she hides them bc she's very unhappy with her insectoid features. It's very uncomfortable. She's a fat woman but she's very self conscious about her weight and figure so she always cinches her waist with her apron. Also very uncomfortable.

Obviously has more bug features now. I'd say she's inspired by the Yamato cockroach, which I looked into, but. To be real wit u a lot of roaches look pretty samey. She's got the hair that I wanted to resemble cartoony bug legs a bit, hatched pupils, segmented limbs, the apron tie representing cockroach wings, and the hair tie representing antenna. She has no wings or antenna of her own tho.

Inspired her look off 1950's housewife attire, particularly this one pic I think I snagged off an article

Emulated the collar she has on, as well as added heels to her design bc apparently that's all the gals were wearing. Niffty's very traditional. She's also got cleaning gloves and a front pocket in her pocket for all her cleaning supplies! And I added her lipstick back in there bc it's saurr cute.

Edit: girl I forgot to mention her colors.AAAAAUGH. erm okay. SO. she's green and red now bc. Wrath and envy colors in my rewrite. Prominent sins in her I'm sure. Also just warmer in general bc... Well I liked the look. Also having her be mainly green adds some color diversity to the lineup + helps her stand out.

That's it fr! Here's the rest of the conceptualization page... As a gift

She was very fun to design hehe. Alright that's awl.... Hope u liked her....... Okay bye✌🏾🧍🏾‍♀️

[bucketslutz]

Don't Be Late (Professer Logan Howlett/Fem Student Mutant Reader)

Chapter Summary: Logan's behavior continues to intrigue you as you begin to struggle to hide your feelings towards him.

A/N: I've never churned out a chapter so fast before. i'm having a lot of fun writing this!

Warnings: Smut, 18+, minors DNI!!, unprotected p in v, dirty talking, logan talks you through it lowk, grinding, swearing, no use of Y/N, pet names for reader tho🤭

Word Count: 4,040

Chapter 2

The door to the classroom creaks open loudly causing you to turn your head abruptly from your notebook, finding Logan staring at you incredulously. Adamant to not repeat the same mistake as you did Monday, you arrived at class 15 minutes early this morning. You smile awkwardly and look back to your notes, trying not to pay him any mind, despite that familiar swirl deep in your stomach telling you to jump him right then and there.

“Early bird today huh, bub?” Logan chides, his sudden display of humor surprising you. You chuckle, unsure of how to respond.

“Yeah, getting used to that commute, Monday I was too late, today I’m too early, what can ‘ya do?” you reply, laughing lightly, not to Logan’s amusement, however, who glares at you like a horn protruded from your skull as he settles himself at the head of the classroom. You clear your throat and go back to your notes. So, he’s funny, but he doesn’t like small talk, got it. You think to yourself, becoming even more confused by his demeanor. You couldn’t find anything about him online last night, not a social media post, no articles, no information about his credentials besides a flimsy description on the school’s website that describes him as having a “masters degree in the history of american wars,” whatever that means. It doesn’t say where his degree is from either. Everything about this man is clouded in obscurity.

You jump slightly when Logan slams a piece of paper in front of you. Glancing upwards, attempting to meet his gaze, you’re confused to see he’s already turned away from you and walking to the front of the room. You look down at the paper to see it’s the attendance sheet, your name already has a check mark next to it. Before you can even mutter a thanks, people have already started to file into class and you swallow any more potential verbiage that may escape your mouth, not wanting anyone to perceive you.

…

“Professor Howlett, I’m not quite sure I understand,” a brunette in the front row pouts, “Could I see you after class?” she asks suggestively, flicking her hair and resting her pencil between her lips. Her attempt to subtly gain Logan’s attention almost makes you laugh.

“It’s Logan. And no,” he snaps, not breaking his focus from the dates he’s writing on the board. The girl scoffs in surprise and sits back in her chair in defeat, looking at her friends on her right and left like she couldn’t believe he would rebuff her like that. It’s not lost on you now that Logan is very attractive, at least, you’re not the only person who finds him attractive; maybe not the only person who has had a lewd wet dream about him either. Why that girl would attempt to be so bold is beyond you, seeing as Logan is so goddamn terrifying. Just one look from him makes you want to crawl into a shell and never come out again.

“Friday’s essay—I want you to write about independence,” Logan asserts, leaning against the whiteboard and nonchalantly crossing his arms. The room is quiet, some people even looking around for clarification, yourself included. The brunette in the front row raises her hand causing Logan to roll his eyes and nod in her direction, affirming her request.

“I’m sorry, like, do you mean what independence means? Or how it played a part in the revolutionary war? Or, like, what it means to maybe fight for it in the modern era?” she asks carefully, not wanting him to snap at her again. Logan considers her for a moment.

“Yeah, sure,” he concedes with a shrug of his shoulders. There’s still an air of confusion hanging in the room. You’re struggling to understand how this man made it past a vetting process to secure his position in the first place. Logan looks at his watch, sighing in relief. “That’s all I’ve got. See ‘ya Monday.”

Logan wastes no time in collecting his coat and briefcase and rushing out of the classroom. Everyone pauses, sharing glances of bewilderment. You avoid eye contact with others, opting to just quietly collect your things and depart with the one or two stragglers who’ve made the same choice you did.

…

It’s painfully slow at the store. You had hoped there was inventory that needed to be stocked, or a shipment, or cleaning, a robbery even. But there’s no action here. The only customers being two teenagers who bought candy and soda after school, an old man and a case of beer, and an old lady with a pack of smokes. That’s it. That’s all you’ve seen for the past 5 hours. The free time at least allows you to work on Logan’s essay for Friday. The vague topic gave you quite a bit of room to work, it’s a good thing you have a lot to say or else you would’ve had a much harder time working on this. The store’s door opens with a jingle, the bells hanging by the hinge shaking, the sound draws your attention.

You’re surprised to see Logan entering, broad shoulders tucked into a brown leather jacket. He scans the store and eventually makes eye contact with you. Your breath hitches when you notice the chest hair peaking out from beneath his wife beater, the tank top revealing slightly more of his chiseled physique than you’re used to seeing. You involuntarily clench at the thought of what he might look like without that tank top on…No. You shake the thought from your head, trying to keep your composure despite your growing arousal towards your professor; an arousal that only started from that damned wet dream.

Boots click against the linoleum tile towards the register you’re situated behind. Logan slams a case of Budweiser onto the counter as he rifles through his wallet for cash. You quietly ring him up.

“Get me two Arturos,” he instructs, rather impolitely. You look at him, he doesn’t even attempt to make eye contact. You decide to make a little joke, seeing as he was feeling so humorous this morning.

“What’s the magic word?” you coo, teasingly, through a friendly smile. Logan finally looks up at you through slightly raised brows.

“Go fuck yourself.” Logan was not in a teasing mood.

You purse your lips in embarrassment and defeat as you retrieve two Arturo cigars from behind you. With a sigh, you ring him up and tell him his total. He pays in cash. As you’re loading the bills into the register, Logan hesitates before leaving.

“What’re you doing working this far out of town? Aren’t there better stores to work at closer to campus?” he questions. You try to hide your surprise at his inquiry before answering.

“Oh, uh, I don’t live too far from here. It’s an easier commute when I’m not taking classes,” you answered, trying to be as matter of fact as you can possibly be. Logan chuckles.

“No offense, but how can you afford a place over here? Who the hell died and left you their place?” he asks, resting a hand on his hip. You swallow hard, not wanting to draw too much attention to the peculiarity of your living arrangement. Houses over here are expensive, there’s only farmland on acreage that can be worth millions. But sometimes a plot of land can be cheaper than a whole house, and a whole house is something that you can manage to manifest with your powers by consuming around 25,000 calories a day. You offer Logan the same answer you’ve prepared for anyone else who might question you this way.

“I used to rent here until my landlord passed away and left me the property. I’m just lucky, I guess,” you explained with a shrug of your shoulders, trying to hide your nerves. You tug at the hem of your polo, hoping that’s the last of his line of questioning. Logan just offers a simple nod of understanding, before turning around and heading towards the door.

“What about you?” you blurt out, shocking yourself with your own abruptness and sudden want to continue the conversation. Logan turns on his heel and stares at you in confusion.

“Whaddya mean?” he asks, narrowing his hazel eyes.

“I mean, it’s just such a hike from campus, I was just—I mean it’s a fair question. You asked me, I ask you, you know?” you explained clumsily, hoping he at least understood a quarter of what you were trying to say. He looks down at the floor and chuckles with a shake of his head.

“I do live around here, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turns on his heel and starts towards the door. “See ‘ya Friday.”

Your heart flutters in your chest, and you try not to watch his ass, framed by those tight, worn jeans, as he exits the store. Unsure if the feeling in your chest is caused by anxiety, or how you secretly want to bang your professor, you clear your throat in an attempt to bring your mind back down to planet earth.

Despite your own constant correction and policing of your mind, you can’t help but drift away; reminiscing in the way Dream Logan devoured your pussy like no one else ever has. The way he roughly grabbed and pawed at you, pleasuring you in a desperate, animalistic way. Why your subconscious brewed up this intoxicating cocktail, is beyond you. You’ve never been with someone who’s fucked you the way Logan did in your dream, nor have you ever watched any porn that portrays a man acting that way towards someone. No matter what you tell yourself, it felt so inexplicably real. You’re starting to believe that the way Logan acted in your subconscious was strangely true to how he really does act in real life. But no matter, you have an essay to write, for a class you cannot figure out whether or not it's happening on Friday due to Logan’s own vagueness and potential misspeaking.

By the time you finally get home from work, you have maybe a page and a half written of your essay. In an attempt to be as prepared as possible, you decide to finish your work tonight so you can proofread and edit throughout the day tomorrow. But you’re struggling to keep your eyes open at your desk. It’s 1:30 in the morning, and you have a class at 9 am, but you don’t want to pull an all-nighter tomorrow just to work on this stupid essay. It’s getting increasingly more and more difficult to focus. Your bed, just a few feet behind you, beckons to you. It’s so, so tempting. Maybe resting my eyes for just a few minutes wouldn’t hurt, you think to yourself, wanting to give in to your exhaustion so desperately. You lay your head back against your chair and close your eyes. Oh, this feels so good.

So, so good.

Your eyes, half slit, peek open to see a broad chest; you're barely awake as an arm hooks under your legs and behind your back and cradles you before lifting you up against the strong, firm chest. You hum gently, turning into the man’s touch and getting comfortable. You feel yourself being lowered down onto your bed and tucked in under your comforter gently before the bed dips behind you as you’re joined in comfort by the man that tucked you in so tenderly. His arms wrap around you and he pulls your back flush against his chest, meeting the curve of his pelvis with the protrusion of your ass. He’s so warm and firm against your back, cocooning you in an embrace so gentle that it almost makes you want to wake up and fuck him.

You sigh in contentment, circling your ass ever so gently against his crotch, hoping to feel a firm indication of arousal through the boxers of the man behind you. A rough groan emanates from behind you as the pair of arms draped around your waist tighten slightly. His breath is hot against your neck, his scratchy beard tickling you.

His hands move up your stomach and to your chest where he palms your breasts languidly. The grip on your tits causes you to arch your back into his crotch, finally feeling the stiff outline of his cock against your ass. You smile and hum as he trails kisses up and down your neck, biting the flesh there gently.

“Not so tired now, huh, baby?” Logan’s voice rasps from behind you, causing you to gasp quietly. He’s here.

“You’re hard to resist,” you purr, an inexplicable truth bleeding through your words. You turn your torso, facing him, “I missed you.”

Your fingers raise to run over the patch of stubble on his chin that’s nestled between his mutton chops. His eyes look hungry, desperate. His hands, still fixed on your breasts, now lazily stroke them through your shirt.

“Yeah?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper, his mouth turned upward into a cocky grin. You nod in response. He places a gentle kiss to your lips, chastely.

“You know, I missed you too,” he whispers against your lips. He kisses you again.

“Yeah?” you ask flirtatiously, swiping your tongue against his bottom lip as he continues to kiss you repeatedly, gingerly making contact each time.

“Why don’t you show me how badly you missed me big guy?” you challenge against Logan's lips, your voice dripping in a seductive tone. He smiles against your lips before shoving you roughly onto your back, situating himself between your legs. One hand moves to your waist, the other pressed against the wall above your head to support his weight.

“I’ll do just that, princess,” his gravelly voice beckons to you from above, his breath fanning your face. A flirtatious smile spreads across your face, causing Logan to waste no time in capturing your lips with his. Unlike last time when you were pinned on his couch, this kiss is sensual and tender. His tongue dances with yours carefully, creating a specific pace with the move of his lips. You follow suit, matching his rhythm, allowing your hands to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. His hips grind down into yours, the two of you moaning into the kiss at the sudden friction. Logan’s hand moves down your waist and under your shirt, traveling up to your bare breast. His thumb circles your nipple softly as his hands knead your tender flesh. You arch your back into his touch, humming in contentment against the kiss.

You could be here for hours, Logan palming at your breasts, his stiff cock grinding against your pussy, the rhythmic swipe of his tongue between each expert kiss to your lips. You’re putty under him. Needing to feel more of him, you snake your hands down his back, and slip them under the hem of his wife beater. You hike the hem up his torso, incapable of moving it much further. Logan breaks the kiss and sits up before he pulls the tank the rest of the way off his body and over his head, revealing his bare torso to you. He’s unbelievably toned, chiseled like he was made by the gods. The veins in his chest and arms bulge with each breath he takes. You bite your bottom lip as you take him in, your fingers creeping up his abs, eventually sliding up his chest to stroke it tenderly. You prop yourself up on your elbows, looking at Logan seductively.

“Come here, baby,” Logan growls, snaking an arm around your waist before hoisting you up onto him. Your legs wrap around his waist as he spins the two of you around so his back is against the headboard and you’re straddling him. You can feel the full length of him at this angle as he’s aligned deliciously with your pussy, applying the most intoxicating pressure to your clit. Logan stares at you hungrily, pressing your chest into his, his hands firmly gripping your waist. You both moan as he grinds up into your pussy with his hand occasionally dipping down to squeeze your tight ass. You mewl at the feel of his hand there.

“Need more of you, princess,” he growls, taking no more than a second to grip the hem of your shirt and rip it up off of your head, you gasp with no time to react when he reaches down to the waistband of your shorts and tears them in half with ease. Both your shirt and ruined shorts tossed carelessly onto the floor.

“Logan!” you exclaim, trying your best to hide your amusement from him.

“Much better,” he drawls. He attacks your neck where he aggressively trails kisses and bites up and down the flesh, occasionally sucking and leaving purple marks in his wake. You throw your head back in ecstasy as you grind your naked cunt onto his cock, wetting the fabric of his boxers with your slick. His head dips down to your breasts, sucking purple bruises into your skin and leaving as many marks as he can before bringing a sensitive bud between his lips and sucking there as well. You moan throatily, gripping the back of his head and forcing his head further onto your breasts as he sucks, licks, and bites with animalistic need. You circle your free nipple with your fingers as he continues his onslaught, alternating with him when he switches attention between each breast. The feel of Logan’s clothed, firm cock against your clit as you grind against him is not enough. You need more of him.

“Logan,” you whine. “I need you. Inside me.” Your hand travels down to the waistband of his boxers, slipping them down as far as you can in desperation.

Logan responds by lifting you slightly off of him, allowing you to pull his boxers further down. You watch as his cock reveals itself, pressed firmly against his stomach. Your breath hitches at the sight. The girth shocks you, curious how it’d feel splitting you into two. You’re sure his length would take up entirety of your pussy once inside, most definitely pressing into your cervix no matter the position. A gasp leaves your lips as your hand wraps around his length, surprised at the difficulty in which your fingers have encasing the entirety of him. Logan hisses against your breast at the sudden touch, the grip on your waist growing tighter. He leaves one last lick on your breast before capturing your mouth in a feverish kiss. He attacks your mouth aggressively, his occasional bites almost making your lips bleed, his tongue thrusting into your mouth without a care. The onslaught of your mouth is so intoxicating, you almost don’t notice him lifting you up to position himself at your entrance. The tip of his cock prods your pussy and you whine into the kiss, driving your hips down as much as you can.

“We’re gonna take it nice and slow, baby,” Logan rasps against your lips encouragingly. Logan grips your jaw so you’ll look into his eyes, “You’re gonna take it all for me, won’t you?”

You nod eagerly as you squirm on top of him, so desperate for him to fill you up. He slides himself in about an inch further, causing your moan to turn to a wince at the delicious stretch he applies to your pussy.

“That’s it, princess,” Logan praises with a gravelly drawl that makes you melt. He groans as he spears into you a few more inches, your moans fanning his face.

“Good girl,” Logan encourages, making you fawn, “Just take a bit more for me, princess.”

Tears prick the corners of your eyes as he splits you open. He's bottomed out inside of you and already grazing your cervix. Your pussy’s stretched to its maximum around his girth. You can tell Logan is holding back, he’s tense beneath you, gripping you with such fervor that you’re sure he’ll leave marks.

“Logan,” you pant, “fuck me.”

He grunts as you raise your hips, allowing him the space to thrust up into you. The force of his thrust makes you groan in a mixture of pain and pleasure.

“That’s a good girl, take it,” he coaxes, thrusting slowly into you, acclimating you to his length. Slowly, the winces become replaced with needy, lewd moans. Giving Logan permission to hammer into you harder and harder with the progression of groans and moans that escape your throat.

His cock is so deep inside of you that it applies the most delicious pressure to your cervix, pinching it each time he bottoms out. The feeling is so full, so stretched, each ridge he passes making you moan in ecstasy.

“So tight…so, so tight for me, baby,” Logan growls, his face so close to yours that his beard scratches your face with each of his thrusts. “M’gonna pound this fuckin’ pussy.”

The feel of his breath against your neck makes you whimper. His mouth latching onto you and biting down possessively making you yelp in a mixture of pain and pleasure. Logan hoists you up off of his pelvis, supporting the entirety of your weight in his arms. To keep your balance, you grip his shoulders tightly gasping when Logan begins to hammer into you with such strength and speed you almost sob.

“Yes,” he drawls, his voice raspy and breathing ragged, “good girl, you take it so well for me.”

Your moans become unrecognizable to you as a pleasure unlike any other you’ve experienced ravages all your senses; Logan’s mouth on your neck, his cock surely bruising your cervix, his finger suddenly drifting down to your clit to rub circles into the sensitive bud. The pitch in your voice rises with each flick of your sensitive nub. If you were with any other person, surely you’d feel self conscious about the way you’re screaming—almost sobbing as you’re being fucked up into. But Logan draws this kind of unabashed pleasure from you that makes you forget where you are in the world and allows you to just focus on how fucking good he feels inside of you. How he can sustain this kind of power, force, and strength as he fucks into you, is beyond you, especially while supporting your weight with only one arm. Your cries of pleasure grow further and further together as the familiar swirl of heat and pleasure rises in your stomach.

“Keep going, Logan, keep going…don’t stop,” you plead as you desperately seek your release.

“You gonna come for me?” Logan grunts into your ear, sending shivers down your spine and making a whimper escape your lips.

“Yes, Logan,” you mewl, now cheek to cheek with him, his beard almost vibrating against you as he sustains the speed of his thrusts.

“You take it so well, princess, can’t wait to feel you come around this cock,” he rasps into your ear, taking a lobe between his teeth and nibbling gently.

Your pleasure swirls inside of you, building and building into white hot pressure against your clit, causing your breaths to quicken and thighs to clench.

“Logan, I’m—“ you warn.

“Look into my eyes when I make you come, babygirl,” Logan commands, pulling your head back to look at you.

“M-my eyes?” you question, a wave of realization washing over your face of what he might see if that happens, “No…I can’t.”

A gasp jerks you awake. Your chest heaves, your pussy clenching around nothing. A pain grows in your neck and lower back, due to the position you feel asleep in your chair. This one felt so much more real than the last one, a slight lucidity to your thoughts and feelings. How the hell are you supposed to look him in the eye on Friday? Everything just felt so right.

Doing your best to shake your feelings from your head, you check the time on your phone to see it’s only 1:45 am. You huff in annoyance, looking back to the essay you neglected for a wet dream.

...

A/N: i promise this will probably be the last chapter that ends like this, i just desperately need an excuse to write logan smut without compromising the plot too much🤭 hope you enjoyed. to view this work on ao3 click here

[irlnorthshaw]

CARS OF SUPA STRIKAS: a shameless thread 🏎️

did i spend too much time on this? sure... BUT IDK maybe you guys wanna write fanfics and need details. im here to help!! 😁😁😁

id also like to add a disclaimer that these cars are very stylised so obviously its not a direct representation of the real model. so, im basing all of this on what it resembles the most!! (also all of these prices are in usd)

THIS ONE’S A LONG ONE BC I ADD RAMBLING SO… BUCKLE UP!!! (pun very much intended)

SUPA STRIKAS::

shakes

and i thought i already did not like this guy... he already bagged all the baddies and now he has my dream car?? JUST BIG AND GREEDY!!

anyways i think this is his car, assuming bc he's sitting in the driver's seat!! always saw him as someone who hitched rides bc he cant be bothered w a license. bc if so SAME

yes... my dream car is a Ford Mustang. SIGHHHH!!! this one is probably an older model, think 60s or 70s.

the price on this one ranges from $20-70k– unless its a high-performance model like a Shelby GT500 which could reach $150k

el matador

oh boy this one's gonna be long... (not as long as skarra's tho... you'll see later)

a lot of this is also based on his section in the official wiki page of the series (not the fandom wiki dw!!) but nonetheless here's a rundown based on this image, left to right:

here is where im correcting the article. i dont think his car is a Rolls-Royce Ghost but a Phantom instead (more flashy and grandiose). which can range from $500,000 to… one million LOL imagine if i had that kind of money?? id be buying myself a hojicha everyday 😋

another correction, the wiki page says its a Lamborghini but i think that looks like a Porsche 911. which is around $100-$200k for variants like Turbo S or GT3 R

and so apparently, according to the page, bruno is not one but two cars!! bruno and his twin are both Lamborghini Gallardos, a Coupe and a Spyder – both of them? $200k. EACH.

left to right again:

i thought the Mustang hurt me... but this brought tears to my middle class eyes. that red babe is an Aston Martin One-77. brief xander car lesson!! this is a very rare hypercar, only 77 of these bad boys were produced. oh and it costs almost $2 million 🤑

the blue one is a Cadillac Coupe de Ville. which honestly shocked me?? considering El Matador’s character, but it does have a sense of historical glamor to it! price: $20-$50k

AND FINALLY!! a green McLaren 570S. ofc another sports car. not too big on mclarens myself but... depending on year and condition, at most its $400k

feeling extremely broke writing this out SO LETS MOVE ON

klaus

IDC WHAT ANYONE SAYS!!! KLAUS' BUBBLE CAR IS SO CUTE AND ICONIC!!!

at first i thought this might be a BMW Isetta (bc of the classic shape). but by the looks of it, it seems very modern. so from that conclusion, i think this is a Microlino!!

these ones dont roll out in the states but you can def spot these around west europe!! these cuties can cost you around $15-$25k ish

fun fact: you can drive this on an AM license alone (basically for mopeds and such) since it's a low-powered vehicle. so no need a traditional car license, which explains klaus' preference to riding bicycles in "magnetic north"

so, fear not if you dont have a license yet in ur 20s because klaus most likely doesnt either!! (comforting myself here)

cool joe

FIRST OF ALL. I LOVE LOVE HIS CAR EUGH ITS SO NICE???

cool joe drives an american classic!! this is a Plymouth Barracuda, one of the earliest pony cars (like a Ford Mustang) so yes... it does match his old man aura

it compliments his interest in vintage stuff like yeah the guy still listens to vinyl and owns a brick phone. this car might as well be the cherry on top

but i gotta say. the white and purple is a nice combo?? like i... want to be him all of a sudden

price depends. as always. classic models are around $20-$50k but rare HEMI variants can go up to $500k

big bo

YES YES I KNOW ITS NOT A CAR but i had to include it!!!

also when i was researching i went yikes i dont know what tf that is cuz listen... bikes are NOT my area of expertise

like i know my Yamaha Mio's but this?? i have no clue

i wanna say its some kind of Royal Enfield but if any of you know bikes better please feel free to correct me– i only chose it bc it fits his old-school, grounded american vibe

"but xander, harleys are more american!!" yeah ik but its way too flashy for him

coach

icl this one stumped me because i cant see the whole build of it. for all i know its just a mysterious black sedan LMAO like?? it could be anything

WHATEVER IT IS THO. ITS A DAD CAR!! and not just any dad car. we're talking, golf on the weekends type dad.

others/misc

i remember mentioning this picture in another post because of the horrendous parking... but now that we know some of the guys’ cars, we can just assume the rest!!

Blue Subaru WRX STI. actually more on the affordable end compared to the rest, this one is around $40-$50k (if bought new). and i can tell u rn it’s definitely north’s car– how do I know? IT’S A RALLY CAR!! MR "ADRENALINE JUNKIE" FOR SURE RALLIES ON THE WEEKENDS

Purple Porsche 911… guys. this is actually el matdor's car (refer back to his section). but like his Gallardo is already parked beside it?? now im thinking someone definitely borrowed his car COUGHSHAKESCOUGH.

that makes a lot of sense.. no way shakes would own a Porsche bruv... also look at that parking?? yeah that may not be shakes’ car but he definitely drove it to Strikaland

Black Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon. if u could hear me whistle through the screen… DAMN!! A G-WAGON?? idk who owns this car, i can only assume it’s dancing rasta's, it has his energy written all over it

not sure what the silver one is… if u guys know. pls do tell!!

blok and tiger

from what i have searched (yes i watched thru a lot of eps for this post) we dont know what cars blok and tiger own/drive. but if you ask me?

i think blok would drive a Land Rover because he’s built like one!! those cars are absolute tanks just like him

and also just because im a geek for Supras… i will give that to tiger TEEHEE!!!

INVINCIBLE UNITED::

this one is just skarra i fear bc i cant seem to track the others' cars. but maybe in another part if i get a better look at it!!

skarra (divided into three sections)

and i thought i already wanted him bad... this motherfucker!!! also whoever was in charge of assigning their cars, i want to give u a raise personally from my own paycheck

by the hood stripes… this is a Dodge Charger. see– im very new to Dodge bc I was researching the Challenger yesterday but this is for sure a Scat Pack Charger

usually starts at around $50k for the base model itself. BUUUT including the HEMI Orange Appearance, it bumps up the price to $55k

"oh... i actually expected skarra to be more obnoxious with his cars, this one is–" let me stop you right there.

lets not forget his infamous... diss track

lets assume these are all his cars (bc imagine he rented it... #LOSER). also its rlly hard to tell but these are my best guess. left to right:

im actually not sure abt the blue one. maybe a Nissan GTR?? if so, thats about $100-$200k

Orange Dodge Viper. this for SURE looks like it. its $50-$150k. this is probably the most obnoxious in the lot… loud and aggressive, just ego on wheels if anything. very fitting for my wife 👅👅👅

Green Lamborghini Aventador. or... at least it looks very similar. the base model LP 700-4 starts at around $400k but other special variants can go up to $600k

also i cant be arsed to squint my eyes and see the ones in the back sorry not sorry

this entire garage runs on testosterone and midlife crisis!!! and to think his ride before was this...

based on the shape... it looks veeery similar to an 80s style Volkswagen Golf (likely Mk1)

honestly it makes sense for him in rs, its a pretty solid choice at the time but yk things change

and speaking of things changing. id also like to write a different post analysing skarra's cars over the seasons and what it says about his character arc so... KEEP AN EYE ON THAT!!

[urautismdiagnosis-wistie]

Do you have any Peso headcanons? :3

yep!

Peso is a bit of a stress cleaner! Clutter just tends to make him feel a bit more stressed and overwhelmed.

You might assume its cuz hes from the antarctic, which would be a valid thought process, but in my au penguins tend to have two "family" (for the entire community) homes they alternate between depending on the time of year. So it wasn't like they didn't have homes that got cluttered from kids and whatever.

It was more that well... everyone got into EVERYONES business and family and friends just.. ARRIVING at your house entirely unprompted was totally normal too. He didn't mind it, even if being an older cousin did mean he babysat more often (which he didn't mind he loves them and prefers to be with the kids than older adults).

It was really more just that having lots of people, lots of noises, lots of little kids to worry about getting hold of breakable/valuesble things, and etc. Yeah hes so autistic.

So everything being neat and tidy and perfectly put away just makes him feel a big sense of calm and comfort. This also applies to the medbay, which makes sense cuz he was also trained to be neat and tidy.

(this is how he draws himself)

this guy also freaking LOVES romance movies and stuff. Especially the dramatic ones... he'd used to go watch them to escape the world with his mom when he was little and it was like their little secret bonding activity. But now he's just so freaking invested. He and dashi watch them together <3 (he still talks to his mom about them and they gotta deal with a plot twist every week 🙏 its therapeutic probably)

Speaking of him and dashi they're actually pretty close friends lol. Whether it's just chatting and de-stressing, making fun of inaccurate medical dramas/zombie movies, just sharing whatever family gossip they have, (maybe venting about their relationships with their older brothers everyone in a while), or just windowshopping online.

Dashi also taught peso who to meditate and do yoga. Although him being a penguin that waddles- uh hes had various levels of success and failure, (penguin bones r kinda just in a permanent squat which is why they waddle) but its still fun and ends with them both laughing. Yeh they're very cute friends <3

peso would be so feral over chiikawa, those Japanese comics about like lil creatures that cry over every inconvenience but still have human struggles and are adorable or wtv. I think its be great for his anxiety.

you can't look me in the eyes and tell me he DOESNT STIM by flapping his FLAPPITY FLIPPERS. When stressed his flappity flippers can also become slappity flippers.

Peso also LOVES physical comfort and closeness alot! Its a big love language for him. So even just close physically proximity is very comforting for him, he loves movie nights and social dinners. Another aspect of his love language is making sure to listen to small details that people mention about themselves. He likes to give very thoughtful or homemade gifts. (Like his stickers <3 its one of his favorite hyperfixations) that also extends to food too! Well made food is such a love language.

Peso also, like shellington, puts glow in the dark stars on his ceiling to remind him of the night sky. He loves little trinkets and decor too, he and dashi love looking for different ones online I mightve already mentioned that tho.

They don't always have great internet and have to basically "download" pages, articles, and etc in advance to have stuff accessible when they don't have connection. Its hard to explain but eh.

Thanks for the ask btw <3 if yall wanna know more about the specific relationships he has with the other octonauts feel free to ask

Some more uh, heavy sad headcanons under the tag? Well not headcanons but just him in my au ig

also in my au pesos dad may have or may have no been extremely emotionally and financially abusive which mightve partially contributed to his career path, self doubt, and high expectations, but when peso was out traveling in training his dad may have sort of been eaten by a leopard seal and peso did not even feel anything.

He mightve even only managed to feel a small odd sense of relief and felt bad for his mom. Whoops. Also pesos canonical brother pogo, who hasn't shown up ONCE in the series, was kinda their dads favorite oldest son so yeah there ya go they don't talk much yeesh).

I didn't set out to make this happen but as for the type of person pesos dad is lets just say he was inspired by the experiences of some people ik, so this isn't meant to be some stereotype thing I just saw his anxiety and my heart screamed to do this to him. Sorry yall I shouldn't have been mean to peso and gave him a gaslighting, blackmailing, pos dad but its already too late.at least he doesn't have to worry about pinto going through the same anymore. It was tough being a middle child trying to defend his mom from his dad.Yikeeeessssssss. his dad was probably a narcissist or at least narcissistic ngl

He probably has complex trauma and an anxiety disorder at least.

[purplepeptobismol]

I absolutely love IWMOY it is something I wait for every single day and it was awesome, I found it on tumbler and I was so glad I did, it is honestly so amazing, now on to my questions

Super duper important questions about IWMOY trust, I was wondering if Butters/Vic or kenny(at this point any of the parents) liked to put the kids in baby animal onesies cuz I can just imagine 60 onesies in the closet and the baby looking annoyed every time they have to wear one

Um second question what would their Halloween costumes be?(I know Halloween isn't till a few months but it's going to take a long time to draw their costumes 😔)

Also who would take the most pictures of their kids like who would have a billion pictures on their walls and like show off all of their kids achievements and such

Sorry if my question are dumb, u just really enjoy learning about the kids and their parents dynamics (ch14 made me this way😔)

Mhm yes 🙂‍↕️ this is a VERY serious question that requires a very serious and deeply thought out answer! WHICH IS WHY IM GOING TO GO FAR AND BEYOND AND EVEN GIVE YOU MY HEAD CANONS FOR THEIR BABY CLOTHES AS WELL. This response is in fact sooo long, I'm gonna have to break this into multiple parts! So please bare with me!😫🙏

Let’s start off with our dear McCormick family!!! 

Baby Coop

So I think they would have a couple of animal theme onesies for Cooper, but not a huge amount compared to the Marsh-Broflovski’s (which I’ll get back to that in a second). I can totally see Butters putting Coop in one of these (especially the cow one!! so cuteeee!)

They’ll probably have fun with it too, and get a couple of silly colorful ones as well!!

As for Cooper’s actual baby clothes, i believe they’ll get a couple of clothes they consider fun and cute! Lots of them would probably have cute animals or typical bear or dinosaur designs as well. 

Ok but imagine Karen coming to visit, and she says she found a parka onesie similar to this one right here(👇), but in an orange color. And she thought it would be so cute for Cooper to have one and match with Kenny! 🥹🥹🥹

Self indulgent a bit, but I like to think that one day, Kenny was out shopping and he found this goofy ass caterpillar onesie for Cooper, and they DEFINITELY have like 20 photos of him in it ☠️☠️☠️

Baby Kate 

Kate would be given the same onesies Cooper had worn as a child (if they end up fitting her). The koala fit her the cutest tho 🥺🫶! But Kenny and Butters end up buying a bit more and get her some themed capes or jumpers since she was around 16 months when they adopted her. Definitely more on the girly side!

As for her clothes, she’ll be given more of knitted sweaters or things with tiny flowers. Very cute cottage-core type of aesthetic. It fits her overall vibe and she looks super cute in them too!!! Knitted sweaters end up being her favorite article of clothing! 

[BTW, she too fell victim to the caterpillar onesie 😔🙏 it’s just too funny]

[desadeness]

I drew (finally) about the Marquis de Sade topic again, and also i think i’ll talk a little about the Marquis de Sade’s wife.

This is how i imagine Renée de Sade and Marquis de Sade.

I’ve read a lot of articles about how did they really look like, except everything said something different, so i freestyled as how i imagined them to look like and their colour palett, but i love how the drawing overall turned out since i had a hige artblock the last few weeks

They got married because Sade’s father wanted him to marry a noble-woman, into a noble and rich family, and Sade had a girlfriend like that at the time, but his father did not like the family she was from, so they had to break up and Sade had to marry Renée de Sade. Surprisingly they grew a bond of each other, (Renée was one year younger than Sade) but Renée did not want to give in to Sade’s sexual fantazies, but she did nothing (especially after a while when she realized ahe can’t do anything) to really stop his husband from doing what he did, the things he got him into trouble. Now, even when Sade committed a crime with his male servant, kidnapping 6 children and locking them up to La Coste, using them and even each other for their own pleasure (they committed sodomy, nothing worse than that), Renée was there, and she did nothing serious about it. A girl’s father began to search for his daughter and in the end, Renée’s mother, Marquis de Sade’s mother-in-law reported the Marquis, that’s how she got him in prison, and Marquis new that his mother-in-law got him into prison. The 120 days of sodom was written than and there in 1785, and it was inspired by what he himself commited, except the 120 days of sodom is way more “creative” and “worse”.

Sade and his wife slowly grew apart, Renée grew sick of de Sade and that he ‘never changes’, and even tho they loved eachother, especially the letters Sade wrote to her from prison shows, that after a long while of being in that marriage, they both grew annoyed. (Note: i’ve read some letters by Sade from when he was in prison, and i searched some which were to his wife, i found them fun to read, he asked for things in them and also i saw very clear ‘fight’ scenes, except i only could read his side)

They ended up divorcing in 1790.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 12/3/2024

no tuesdaypost next week! some real martha stewart homemaking ass activities going on rn tho

listening

extremely rare musical fallow week, mostly bc i have not felt well enough to drive places or walk around my apartment complex. i have mostly been relistening to old Well There's Your Problem episodes, a podcast about engineering disasters (with slides).

of course this would fuckin happen in jersey

-

reading

im having a brain time related to an unpleasant anniversary and have been churning through my stacks of weird little paperbacks. i am in the bad habit of picking up cheap interesting-looking older scifi and fantasy and then not touching them for years on end. the trouble with loving scifi and fantasy as a genre is that most of it is not very good. u gotta wade through a lot of chaff to find one thing that sort of delivers on its premise.

unrelated to all of that, ive had a little stack of cold war and wwii spy paperbacks sitting around since i bought them in high school. these have been with me through So many moves. unfortunately i have only enjoyed one of them, Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novel I, Lucifer.

i did not know anything about ms. blaise before reading this sixties spy/thriller but it was catnip to me. it has not aged particularly well, but the stuff per chapter is very high. lots of the latest and greatest sixties Cool Stuff- amateur parachuting competitions, trained dolphins, paranormal and ESP cognitive tests, impersonating american tourists for fun and profit, packets of industrial diamonds. a genuinely fun and inventive ransom method. evil marionettes? the next time i am in a real used bookstore and not a half price books i will look for more of these little fuckers.

modesty is so much fun. she gets to sleep around and be her own boss and have fun but also have her own moral code. peter o’donnell is good at writing a fight scene, and good at setting up and paying off much later but unfortunately he is still subject to the social mores and orientalism of his time.

“I’m going to try and make the black couch a thing,” Gifford says as she arranges a selection of pumpkin decorations in her living room. “Hopefully that becomes identifiable as my couch.” It’s a sentence that would sound absurd on its own, but this is the minutiae that can preoccupy the minds of influencers — especially if they live in a constant state of unease, worrying someone else will copy their life. The fierce competition of this industry means you can’t be normal about your living room furniture.

“I’m going to try and make the black couch a thing,” Gifford says as she arranges a selection of pumpkin decorations in her living room. “Hopefully that becomes identifiable as my couch.” It’s a sentence that would sound absurd on its own, but this is the minutiae that can preoccupy the minds of influencers — especially if they live in a constant state of unease, worrying someone else will copy their life. The fierce competition of this industry means you can’t be normal about your living room furniture.

i think this was a longreads suggestion from the new tabs suggested articles on firefox?

-

watching

racked up eighteen things on letterboxd this week, mostly bc kanopy had a collection of thirteen betty boop shorts. the one that tickled my fancy the most was Bimbo's Initiation (1931). six and a half surreal and horny minutes about secret society and fraternity initiations. the ass slapping machine was a real thing you could buy specifically marketed toward initiations like this.

-

playing

bc i have nothing but time on my hands i compared a list of my hidden achievements in genshin impact with a list of known hidden achievements and have been knocking them off. some of them were embarrassingly easy and i do not know how i missed them. i do have a fat stack of commission-related hidden achievements (somehow the only nation whose commission-related hidden achievements i have completely finished is the new nation. i have been playing this game for almost five years since 1.0. augh). there are a ton of co-op achievements that i don't think i'm ever going to rack up bc i don't generally play co-op but like. that's fine. there are 1428 known achievements so i think 1273 is pretty fuckin good.

-

making

sometimes i have a problem: loose threads, hang tags, etc on clothes bother the fuck out of me but i don't do anything about it bc i can never find scissors and if the kitchen scissors leave the kitchen i will never ever remember to put them back in the kitchen. the solution is getting rid of the friction involved with finding scissors and remembering to put loose threads in the garbage where my cats can't eat them and remembering to put the scissors away. too many steps! too much friction! i have reappropriated a little garbage can from my office to the laundry room and added scissors on a command hook. this will also help stop lint from piling up on top of the dryer. the second set of scissors is inside my closet, where i have command stripped up a pretty tea tin for a tiny garbage basket.

another extremely annoying thing/minor problem: i've had to wash my couch covers a lot lately. this is fine. they are designed to go through hell. however, bc i made them myself from giant dropcloths and just kind of tuck them in, it is hard to tell what the correct placement is on the couch.

there are vanishingly few practical applications for embroidery. i initially stem stitched the SHORT and chain stitched the LONG and then hated how the stem stitch looked a little messier, so i ripped it out and redid it. front & back below, there are dabs of fraychek on the knots to help them survive the wash a bit better.

i'll do the other futon cover too eventually but the couch cover has needed more frequent washing lately and was a little more of a priority. these were all extremely minor things that felt very silly to do but they did solve minor annoyances. yay.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

here have a medley of miscellaneous timeskip pro team headcanons bc WOW i haven't posted in a while and this is my only stress outlet other than binging new series <3333

starting off strong with ejp raijin LET'S GOOOOOO

washio 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼suna 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼komori: being EXHAUSTED from carrying the pro team world on their backs

no no i'm kidding. mostly

they keep a tally of other pro team matches in which their former teammates go up against each other and are REALLY smug if their respective teammate wins. which means you get shit like this

komori, cheerfully: "so how about that hornets v falcons game last night, huh?" suna: "oh shut UP tell iizuna tsukasa that aran-san could kick his ass any day of the week you little SHIT - "

they ARE united on the jackals front tho. all three of them want the adlers to go down HARD.

is suna nursing a grudge against ushijima from high school? yeah. is he ever going to get over it? probably not.

only komori feels bad bc he is fond of kageyama, but, hey, family's family

they ask washio why he hates the adlers and he looks them dead in the eyes and goes "hoshiumi kourai . . . he is a man that requires constant vigilance"

actually wait i know we all saw everyone watching and talking about the game (which makes me wanna cry SO bad) but god. how fucking funny would it be if players from monster gen convinced everyone else on their very professional and very mature teams to take sides

ejp raijin captain, who's been friends with hirugami fukurou for like ten years: "okay so explain to me again why we need to blow our entire team budget on jackals merch when we're not even going to the goddamn game?" komori: "well, it started on a cloudy but beautifully crisp spring day in 2012 - "

SPEAKING OF TACHIBANA RED FALCONS

hakuba joins the team, sees aran, and IMMEDIATELY starts texting the old kamomedai group chat

altho tbh i don't think there's no way that the "who-from-where-made-WHAT-pro-team" news never breaches the high school circuit. like come ON you know everyone's keeping up with the third year stars when they graduate

by the time the first years are third years they've got everyone pinned down on a fucking MAP. they have a shared file where they update each other on EVERYTHING. it's way less creepy than it sounds they're just a really passionate bunch okay!!!!

well that AND they can't help but brag about their amazing upperclassmen

okay sorry back to it. so it really goes more like

hakuba: "HOLY SHIT OJIRO ARAN FROM INARIZAKI IS HERE" suwa: "hakuba, we already knew that. i linked the article when it first dropped, remember?" hakuba: "yeah but it's still so WEIRD like it's OJIRO ARAN from INARIZAKI" hoshiumi: "lol atsumu told me he talks in his sleep, go find out if it's true"

aran actually does recognize hakuba mostly because gin paid him a compliment ONE (1) time and then aran had to listen to atsumu complain incessantly about the "stupid wall of muscle with stupid hair and his stupid height and stupid arms" ever since

ALSO. i think people get hakuba and hyakuzawa mixed up a lot. they've both got a similar height and build and hairstyle and play the same position

(not to mention the similar backstories)

it becomes a running joke throughout the pro leagues and makes for a fun time with falcons v warriors matches

in the event of a hyakuhina hookup (which i feel like actually could happen) they somehow get onto the topic of "haha it'd be even harder to tell them apart with your eyes closed!" and hinata, without thinking, goes "well, i probably could" and everyone is like "WHAT"

he digs himself an even deeper hole by saying "no, i just meant - i know hyakuzawa's body really well!!!" and everyone immediately starts screaming

poor hyakuzawa is dying on the inside

i think shibayama (MY BELOVED) kind of occasionally forgets that he also has his own fanbase and is sort of semi-famous as the libero of tokai heavy industries esperanza bc. he knows kenma and yaku and lev and komi and yamamoto and fukunaga and, in general, a bunch of people that he believes are much more well-known than he is

he's always so flattered whenever someone stops him in the street to ask for a pic or when he sees posts online gushing about him

this is extra funny bc he never talks about his friends like they're famous so all of his teammates don't really know that shibayama is friends with all these other famous people

and then one of them, an avid kodzuken fan, spams their group chat when kodzuken's newest video is released and shibayama shows up in it

they're like "SHIBAYAMA!! HOW COME YOU NEVER TOLD US THAT YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH KODZUKEN??" and shibayama is like "i have?? i talk about kenma-san all the time??" and they're like "YOU'RE TELLING ME KODZUKEN IS THE SAME KENMA-SAN WHO RIPPED HIS HIGH SCHOOL JERSEY TRYING TO JUMP OVER A FENCE???"

(shibayama's second year. they'd been dealing with things. it worked out, in the end. even if they had to lie to nekomata and naoki about why all their jerseys ended up with holes in them.)

i love the pro teams you guys they're so fucking funny

[deadzonedenizen]

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

RAMBLING ABOUT OCS: GIBBY EDITION

BASIC CONCEPT IDEA:

Before we start with the rambling, we first need to start with the JTTW character she is based on.

According to this article, there are four monkeys of havoc, Wukong and Macaque making up half of them. Horse Monkey will be a ramble for another time. Right now, we're putting our focus on the gibbon.

Lots of space-themes going on with this little guy. When I first read this bit, you know the first character that came into mind?

Now you know the reason behind Gibby's Halloween costume. So anyways, that collector inspiration already gave me a basic idea of what I wanted Gibby to be as a character. Bouncy little kid that has too much power for her own good.

Other inspirations for her character include Mebh from Wolfwalkers, Young Eda from The Owl House, Spinel from Steven Universe, and later on Kingsley from Yaelokre. The first two especially influenced Gibby's hair design, the third tracks with her ability to stretch her arms, and the last with a good chunk of her personality.

DESIGN:

Probably the first thing you'd notice from Gibby design-wise is her giant hair. I've decided to give her that hair to give her a sort of silhouette that resembles a shooting star. With Gibby herself, she is somewhere around two-three lego heads tall. I mean- gibbons are already teeny, and especially the young by default, so of course Gibby's gonna be fun-sized.

With her color palette, I chose colors from the more pastel-y side to emphasize that childlike wonder that's basically associated with her. Fun fact, her hair is a reference to how she was born ;)

Her clothes, I wanted it to look like something you'd find a FFM monkey demon wearing, while still referencing Gibby's former job as the Jade Court's jester by adding what's basically a faded version of the Celestial Realm's signature turquoise and gold, and putting jester-like design bits like the little bells and mismatched colors. I also want the outfit to look like something she made herself.

NOTES FURTHER INTO DEVELOPMENT:

I can't really say too much without spoiling some bits of Ship In A Bottle, so I'll try to avoid anything that borders too close to that. Instead, I'll list each of the details from the JTTW Gibbon's description + how it's applied to Gibby.

'Seize the sun and moon'

Okay, so she can't literally manipulate celestial bodies all over the place. Instead, it's reflected on her flutes. Yes, Bell's flutes are actually hers, and are just meant to serve as Bell's training wheels with his powers. The flutes have a second form that resembles sunwheels (Though it would be appropriate to call the moon flute's wheel form a moonwheel).

Usually only one flute can be used in this form at a time. Which of the flutes can be used in its wheel form depends on whether it's day and night (moonwheel only for night, sunwheel only for day). The only time both can be used in their wheel forms is during an eclipse, or if the flutes are being used by two people. (Something I need to update in Ship In A Bottle 💀)

I haven't designed the wheel forms yet, but the sunwheel has its rays more emphasized, and the moonwheel's appearance depends on the moon's current phase. The sunwheel also resembles a suncatcher, while the moonwheel resembles a dreamcatcher with magpie feathers (for Ship In A Bottle readers, no you can't make oaths with them).

'Shorten a thousand mountains'

Ooooohhh boy, this is one of the more spoilery bits. All I need to say is...there was a reason they had to trap Gibby in the calabash. Gibby's abilities that aren't mentioned anywhere else here fall under this category. That's how you know these are her more...unstable abilities. Thankfully she'd need a good supply of power to source the energy needed for all of that. Otherwise it'd be really...disastrous. An ability I can safely mention without spoilers tho, is her ability to...literally shorten mountains. And by that, I mean cause chunks of land to break off from the ground and remain floating in air. A lot of floating islands can be contributed to her.

'Distinguish the auspicious from the inauspicious'

Or in Gibby terms, her gut feelings. AKA her intuition. There is a small legend about her, where if she appears in your dreams, it's a sign of that dream possibly foretelling a future event. So she's basically an omen, good or bad depending on the dream. Being a dream-hopper, she tends to be more attracted to dreams that likelier to be a sign about the future.

Another small legend basically makes her a wishing star-like figure. If you wish upon a star, you're inviting Gibby to visit your dream (dream, as in your wish in this context).

In the waking world, her gut feelings are a bit weaker. Simply put, the closer that specific event is to happening, the stronger her gut feeling is. For an event that could happen maybe a year into the future, Gibby would only get a slight gut feeling that she could easily just wave off. For an event that's a second from happening, Gibby gets literal vision flashes before they actually happen. This makes her a really good dodger, making her difficult to attack.

'Manipulate planets and stars'

Again she can't just play pinball with celestial bodies whenever she wanted (and believe me, she does). The planet bit is less referenced compared to the star bit (for a reason involving another oc).

Reading this far into my rambling, you already see a lot of star motifs with Gibby. Well another is her ability to manipulate stardust, which can put people to sleep if she's not careful. She generates stardust using her flutes, and the stardust is how she makes clones of herself, and even other people. The stardust can act like pixie dust too. Sprinkle a bit of it on something, and that's how you make that something float (remember the floating islands?). Yes, she can manipulate normal sand too (also a reference to her birth).

Stars and other celestial bodies also make up a good chunk of how she can tell if her gut feelings are a false alarm or not, since the position of celestial bodies can predict someone's d*stiny in Chinese astrology.

Gibby as a celestial primate

Whereas Wukong is the sun and Macaque is the moon, Gibby is the stars. Whereas Wukong is the hero and Macaque is the warrior, Gibby is the jester. I like to think that there's this sort of duality when it comes to pairs of celestial primates.

Wukong represents the unchanging sun, and the fact that it never stops shining. You just can't help but notice him, but even dare to make eye contact, and you might mark yourself as an enemy.

Macaque represents the ever-changing moon, its different phases reflecting in how Macaque is better able to adjust to different situations. You don't always notice him. Sometimes he shines brightly with a dramatic display, and sometimes he's blended with the shadows of the night.

Gibby represents the playful stars. Her head is in the clouds and she's almost always literally floating. She embodies the whimsies of childhood, the curiosity of youth, and the world through the lens of a child.

So you already have a bit of a hint about down-to-earth Mandrill's character, hint hint nudge nudge ;)

[dreambones]

Jake's Halloween Night Series fun/random fact and details

All of the plants in Reid's house are plastic except for the ones in his room, which are wilted and dying. Reid tried to copy Grin in different aspects but he lacks a "green thumb" and all the plants he takes care of end up dying.

2. Most horror movie references in the game were intentional: The yellow raincoat from IT, the door breaking for The Shining, the lake to Friday 13, etc. The key in the bathtub was an accidental reference, at the moment of designing the puzzle I forgot that's one of the keys in the Saw movie.

3. All the party guests in CHN have names of horror characters except for Catrina, Hope n Reid:

John - John Kramer/Jigsaw Mike - Michael Myers Pamela - Pamela Voorhees/Jason's mom Fred - Freddy Krueger Hope if you take the P is Hoe (the bimbo stereotype) Reid Harris sounds similar to Red Herring

4. Bellow the forest painting there is a small easter egg to The Mushroom Killer, the slasher game I was originally working on until I took a break in October to work on JHN. The painting itself is also a reference to the setting of the game.

5. I came up with the idea of Jake touching/scratching/picking at his neck scar after myself, I have the (kinda bad) habit of picking at my own neck or just scratching it when my hands have nothing to do.

This is also a habit he developed after dying :)

6. Jake colors are orange + green while Cat is the complementary colors purple + blue. At the same time orange + purple are classic Halloween colors, with Jake represented by a pumpkin and Catrina by a black cat. They are opposites but at the same time complement each other, they are tied together.

7. In JHN walking around the present house, you can vaguely piece together Jake's last night by following the bloody footsteps, stains, and broken furniture.

At the moment I made this post I forgot to include his bedroom, where he enters and writes a message to himself on the chest "keep keys safe".

8. Jake is left handed, but I haven't had much chance to show it aside with how he holds his ax. It's one of the random traits I picked when I first made him and the one that I have to pay attention to because I am right handed, so I always default to drawing all my characters right handed too.

9. A bit about Reid

10. For Jake's notes I wanted his handwriting to reflect his personality, so I tried to follow graphology articles to try to portray his personality in how he writes and then made a special font to keep it consistent. I don't know graphology, so I am not sure I did manage to portray him correctly tho.

11. I really enjoy putting lots of details that won't make sense until later in the series :) Especially in places where they seem gratuitous or just an aesthetic choice.

12. Looking for a name for the Final Girl I found out Catrina means "pure/virgin", but also La Catrina is a skeleton lady used to represent Dia de Muertos, which I see as a representation of the dead visiting the world of the living. Plus she can be Cat, with the symbol of a black cat tied to Halloween

13. A bit of foreshadowing for the third game (if everything goes according to plan).

That's all, hope you enjoyed <3

[wolvertooth]

can you plz hate rant about the deadpool & wolverine movie… saw it last week and i didn’t like it all… very refreshing to see that someone shares my opinion lmao

i got u man👍 most of this was in my drafts from after the movie came out, but i just never got around to posting it. i added some other opinions ive had since then, tho theres still a lot ive said over the past month that ive totally forgotten about lol

the intro sequence was fucking HYPE‼️ but then, part way thru the movie, u realize....it doesnt ever hit that same mark again. WHERE TF WAS THE HUGH JACKMAN SONG THEY PROMISED? the trailers showed 95% xmen origins clips. the movie didnt mention it once. no the brothers line doesnt count. false fucking advertising. deadpools sexuality has been confirmed since 2014. and now, 10 years later, its still being reduced to gay jokes. and people still eat it up like its genuine rep.

that guy at the tva who’s whole punchline was that he likes men. why. in 2024. why is that allowed. his whole character was a gay joke. i mean so was deadpool, but this guys whole thing was. That. can i say homophobia? can i say i felt that? is that reasonable? this movie felt like a fundraiser for the future avengers movies to make up for all the recent flops.

i watched this shit twice and yea. i was right. the plot was half assed. once u watch it once, thats it. thats the fun. its all just cameos. the jokes didnt even make me laugh again, since it was majority shock based humor. my second watch thru i was trying not to fall asleep in my chair. the way it lacks plot isnt in the Not Coherent kind of way, but rather 'this couldve been a 40 minute monster of the week episode'....or maybe even a 2 episodes if they wanted to get freaky with it it just felt so separate from the rest of the movies, like it wasnt even a sequel.

literally, the movie begins with them abandoning the previous timeline and wade moving to a new ‘better’ one.....almost like hes moving over to a more sacred timeline.........separate from fox.........which is dumb af cuz the movie couldve been him accepting that whatever happens in ur life u cant go back and change, and u have to make due with the good u already have. the previous movie ended with him having a family, he didnt need a new one. i mean, they did that for logans 'learning moment', why wouldnt that also apply to wade? paradox literally says ‘hey we brought u in cuz the mcu is dying, so u should come over to the sacred timeline’ and then after he changes into his costume THEY CHANGE THE PLOT. THEY THROW THAT OUT. WITHIN MINUTES. now paradox is like ‘actually just your timeline is dying, and i wont elaborate on how that works. and also u dont get to go to the sacred timeline. and i hate you.’ WHY BRING HIM THERE AT ALL THEN IF THATS THE PLOT U CHANGED IT TO? ITS DOESNT MAKE SENSE. even if the plot was that he had to go to the sacred timeline cuz his own was dying, WHY WOULDNT HE BE ABLE TO BRING HIS FRIENDS?

what was the vanessa plot? they never explain why she broke up with him? theres like a tiny flashback where she says hes been distracted ever since he got rejected, rejected from what? clearly not the avengers, since that happens after she leaves him. so wtf was the motive here????? the cameos felt like props. especially the deadpool corps, which i feel like they didnt even skim a wiki article for. they just went off google images. which hurt me. cuz i reallyyyyy like those guys....in the comics, theyre a group of deadpools(consisting of lady deadpool, kidpool, headpool, dogpool, and deadpool), who in their first series save the multiverse from being destroyed(sound familiar?). theyre the GOOD GUYS. why tf would they hear cassandra nova say ‘hey im gonna kill the entire multiverse’ and go ‘alright sure whatever’. why were they in the void to begin with? how’d they get there? isnt the void just for movie continuities anyway? why was cassandra also there? how does the void work? why does the void exist? will someone please explain literally anything in this movie? why not have them come in later to save the fucking day instead??

oh lady deadpool...how they massacred ur character... OH KIDPOOL.....HOW THEY MASSACRED UR CHARACTER...... god speaking of that. cassandra nova had literally so much potential and they watered her down to just Evil Villain. she hasnt done much in the comics, but one the things she did in one them was using her powers for therapy on the xmen(which deadpool also made a cameo in). she sort of does this briefly in that one scene, but it was just so.....basic. bland. why was there no b plot with the rest of the main cast. did they think the audience doesnt watch these movies for them? cuz i sure fucking do. i was waiting for the continuation of colossus and wades epic romance arc. side note, the gay jokes in the previous movies felt even less queerbaity then these ones. this movies queerbaiting was just....sad. marketing queerbaiting. this movie WISHES it couldve been deadpool 2 levels of queerbait(shoutout to the extended sex mimicking scene set to In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel)

did anyone catch at the end when deadpool was narrating and when he said ‘friends’ yukio and negasonic teenage warhead were on screen. did anyone see that. they disney gal paled them.

i know wade is supposed to be the Funny Guy but man. thats literally all he was this movie. the other ones has ANGST they had him be HUMAN while this one was like 'logan was mean to me one time ):' bro. what happened. where'd the writers go.

this wolverine was like. the wolverine 2014 wolverine. which is when fox wolverine started to lose character and just become grumpy and mean. hes also like that in Logan 2017, but the reason why this kinda attitude works in that one is bcuz hes old, hes fucked up, hes tired, and every fuck that comes outta his mouth he means it. and yet....still manages to experience other emotions. what a concept. ive read literal satire comics that understood his character more(shoutout to the What The--?! series). it just had me waiting for the 'gotcha! this wolverine is actually 3 dimensional!' but it never fucking got there. it was amusing in the beginning, but by like half way in, i did not give a single fuck about this guy. they tried to give him some emotional moment(like. the only emotional moment in the entire film) but it just...lacked the emotion. just 'heres my sad backstory. are u sad now?' and then they did the SAME THING AGAIN no we get it man u were at the bar instead of with ur friends and u went on a classic wolverine style berserker rage. why should we care tho?

i mean, sure, they could use the excuse of being in the type of depressive state where ur emotions numb out(speaking as a mfer with the came curse), and yea hes not the kinda guy to open up about his emotions unless he really trusts someone(which he would likely distance himself from forming connections with others after that kind of trauma), but with cassandra nova right there there was a missed opportunity for elaborating on that. for digging deep into his brain and telling why this fucked him up so bad. imo, if i were to write it, with everyone he gets close to he puts upon the expectation for himself that hes at fault for anything that happens to them. that he needs to be the savior, even in a friendship. to prove himself to be worth something. especially after a life of being convinced hes a burden by just existing as himself, he needs to have use in order to make up for the fact that hes Logan.

but whos going to save him? isnt he struggling too? whos gonna help you? looking at all the other logans across the multiverse, who is the wolverine? why do you keep falling for the same patterns no matter where you are and who you are? deadpool called sabretooth queen and she/her'd logan within like 5 seconds of eachother. that was pretty good ig

final verdict:

yknow. i think i get now the way fans reacted the way they did tho.

the other night i was rewatching the movie Hackers with my mom, saying that it was obvious the creators mustve known a lot about hacking in order to do such a good parody of it, out of love for the craft….but my knowledge of hacking is pretty minimal, so i have no actual fucking clue if that assumption is accurate or not. im just going off of a ton of references to hacking. for all i know, real hackers couldve hated this movie.

and thats how the average non comic fan saw this movie. they saw a buncha characters and references and thought ‘damn, they must really love the source material’ without knowing how much of a kick in the face it felt like to watch them get used and butchered like that.

[quinnkle]

still a work in progress, will add onto this post when i get more done from wizardsfang' post!!!

Raccoon dogs are absolutely sick and u should know more about them!!

One of my sub-cladotheriotypes is a Raccoon dog, and for as far as i know not a lot of ppl know this animal, so here's one big summary of a lot of facts, photos, personal favorite things, affirmations, memes, personal experiences, music, gifs and a lot more related to this kin of mine :]

I made this post in response to the Niche Kin Appreciation post of @wizardsfang, which u should def check out after looking at this post :3

Introduction to my silly kin: Raccoon dogs

so here is my (not so) short summary of one of my fav kins which is actually super cool!

Raccoon dogs are a canine distantly related to dogs and wolves, they're a lot closer to foxes tho. They originated from Japan and continental east Asia (Siberia to coastal South-China) and are also known as Tanuki, that also being the name a lot of folklore and superstition is tied to.

For instance, in Japan it is believed they are able to shapeshift and posses people. The origin of their power is supposed to be stored in their balls, which is extremely funny to me. This is also why depictions of them in classical Japanese art show them with absolutely gigantic sacks, which is just hilarious imo, here is an example of what I'm talking about -> example :3 (TW genitals)

In the early 20th century Russian trappers took them to West-Russian fur farms to bypass the enormous distance they needed to travel to trade the furs of these animals, this was of course the dumbest idea ever. Some racoon dogs managed to escape into the wild, where they thrived in the large-predator slim environment.

They made their way through the whole of Europe driving some species to extinction, the furthest into Europe they've been spotted is at the border of France and Spain, which is a journey of around 2000-3000 km! in only a hundred years of travel that is a lot (I'm not a specialist on animal behavior so idk for sure but it sounds like a lot lol).

Although racoon dogs and raccoons look a lot like each other and their name suggests otherwise they aren't actually related, both just happen to be nocturnal omnivores with black spots around their eyes that happened to evolve in a very similar way.

PLAYLIST that give me the vibes of the silly dudes

*Big disclaimer, none of these songs are actually about raccoon dogs, they just remind me in some way, shape or from of them :3 its also just songs that give of the vibes I get whenever I'm shifting into this type, specifically "boss battle in a french cat cafe"

5 super cool fun facts about raccoon dogs >:3

In super Mario there is a power-up called raccoon Mario, even though its named after raccoons the ears and tail Mario gets actually depict those of a Tanuki/japanese raccoon dog. This power-up makes u able to temporarily fly, which stems from all the folklore around Tanuki's. there is also a Tanooki Mario which depicts Mario in a Tanuki onesie and gives him the ability to turn into a statue which doesn't take any damage but damages the enemies it falls on, this makes him able to hurt otherwise invincible enemies.

Some theorists think COVID 19 came from Raccoon dogs instead of bats, i had a hard time finding any actual research on this so i cant say if this is possibly true or not tho :( But here's a pretty interesting article about it tho -> article :3

In eastern Russia up to half of the raccoon dogs die to be being killed by a wolf, which is rlly conflicting specifically for me because one of my other types is a wolf lol

Raccoon dogs produce way more saliva than they actually need, they do this so they are able to eat poisonous frogs. The saliva dilutes the poison of the frogs to the point it cant harm the raccoon dogs anymore. This is so quirky to, they lit were just like, spicy frog? Ima just not care and become extremely thirsty for it :] AND IT FUCKING WORKED

The black spots around the eyes of raccoon dogs (and also those of raccoons) are there so that whenever they're in the dark and a sudden bright light gets turned on they wont get flash banged. The black spots absorb the light instead of reflecting it into their eyes making it easier for them to adjust to the light. Humans actually also use this trick, mostly by soldiers and hunters :3

Photo and vid dump :D

*ps, last vid is from here -> vid source :3

Sources

I'm such a good doggy for doing sources, always give credits pups, otherwise you're a bad dog >:(

Wikipedia.org: "Common raccoon dog"

Wikipedia.org: "Japanese raccoon dog"

Wikipedia.org: "japanse wasbeerhond" (dutch version of wikipage)

Youtube.com: "Tanuki: The Dog That Thinks It’s A Raccoon"

Treehugger.com: "8 Surprising Tanuki Facts" (it seems impossible to scroll on this page so if u rlly wanna read it u can ctrl+a and then copy and paste all the text into a text document to read it)

MarioWiki.com: "Raccoon Mario"

MarioWiki.com: "Tanooki Mario"

BBC.com: "Genetic ghosts suggest Covid’s market origins"

Wikimedia.org/commons: "File:Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus - Tobu Zoo - 2012.ogv"