#i had to do something really important. i think crawling and clawing my way up a steep rocky durface was involved

[sporesgalaxy]

I slept like SHIT last night AND I didnt even get to remember my nightmares. what if something funny happened. unfair

[acapelladitty]

Batman: Arkham Session #1

Summary: After an incident at work, Edward Nashton is assigned to Dr. Jonathan Crane for psychological assessment. A decision which places both men in the firing line.

One half of an exchange with the incredible @skxtchyghost who has the absolutely amazing art half of this little encounter here!

Fic Masterlist /// Link to A03

From the moment he laid eyes on him, Jonathan Crane could tell that Edward Nashton would be less than an ideal patient. From the way that he lounged carelessly in his chair to his casual gaze which swept along the many achievements and objects which littered the walls of Jonathan's office.

Every inch of the lanky frame screamed difficult and Jonathan found his mood worsening as he shifted past the meagre introductions which had been shared.

Jonthan flicked his eyes over the notes he had been provided from the incident report as his left hand rose to adjust the bolo tie which hung loosely around his throat.

"You destroyed a workstation in a fit of," Jonathan lifted the top sheet of paper from his clipboard as he quoted the report directly, "obvious rage while using considerably inappropriate language. These are not the actions of a rational man."

Unapologetic, Edward spread his hands in a wide gesture as a defensive smile stretched across his lips.

"I'm the only rational man in this city."

"Oh?"

Really having a limited interest in whatever nonsense Edward was about to spout, Jonathan made a quick note on his clipboard - ready to simply diagnose him with some asinine anxiety disorder and throw some medication at him to quell the worst of his obvious symptoms.

"The others are so willing to ignore the corruption," Edward continued with a growing irritation, "how unbearably stupid and foolish the criminals that rule this city choose to be."

"Harsh allegations."

"Only because the evidence is routinely destroyed. Weeks of work erased in an instance because a particular name would rather not be associated with the actions investigated." His tone snappy, Edward was clearly not at peace with his treatment and Jonathan frowned at the sudden emotional outburst. "Weeks! Good work. No recognition. Only a sharp reminder that our job is to catch real criminals."

"I can imagine the frustration."

Something in Edward's expression shifted and Jonathan tensed as he took in the change in body language, the immediate aggression which crawled into his leaning frame and clenching fists as Edward met his gaze without flinching. It was an open challenge and Jonathan would not back down as he accepted and adjusted his glasses to allow him to keep Edward's attention.

"You bore me. Don't feed me the words I want to hear, Doctor."

"Interesting. Do you see me as your enemy?"

Wary but slightly more interested in his patient, Jonathan asked the question with the smallest of smiles.

"Yes. Your work is as corrupted as mine even if your corruption comes from a more personal insistence."

Jonathan's blood ran cold.

"I do not know you, Mr. Nashton. Neither do you know me."

He couldn't know.

No one knew.

Especially not a jumped up technician from the GCPD.

No.

He was just fishing for information, attempting to claw back the control of the situation by fabricating infor-

"Your purchasing history is interesting, both online and in your role within this asylum." Edward grinned, his body language relaxing into something almost smug. "Meaningless to a layman, but a small touch of research and critical thinking goes to show just how dangerous the various chemicals and research papers you collect could be. Pair that with the increased reports of catatonia which patients under your care have been reduced to and we have something approaching a pattern."

"Mr. Nashton, these delusions do nothing to further yo-"

Rudely, Jonathan found himself cut off by a childish wave.

"Your business is your own and I have no reason to care for any of the degenerates in this building. My work is almost finished and I have my own important business to attend to. Where our paths cross is that I require a clean bill of health to leave my job with the appropriate supports in place."

Smiling widely, his glasses pushed tight against his eyes, Edward perched his fingers on the light-coloured vest which covered his shirt as his cheap shoes tapped a soft rhythm to the carpet. Opposite him, Jonathan felt much more uptight - the shift in dynamic having put his teeth on edge as the urge to regain control of the situation tempted him into dangerous territory.

"You're blackmailing me." Jonathan gritted out.

"If you choose to view it as such then yes. I choose to view it as a mutual exchange of services." Shrugging, Edward caught his hands between his knees. "You clear me, and I erase some of the more unsavoury purchases that you have unsuccessfully distanced from your name."

Seeing each other plainly, Jonathan abandoned any pretence of playing the game and his expression soured into open distaste, regarding Edward with contempt.

"And what guarantees do I have that you are speaking the truth? One word from me and you will be locked away with the worst that Gotham has to offer." Flashing a cruel grin, filled with yellowing teeth, Jonathan tilted his head. "I could have you in a shared cell which houses violence that would easily end a man like yourself."

"All my information is due to release at a specific time if I am not available to prevent it. Risk it all and see."

Reclining once more, Edward presented his hand before himself as he investigated his nails with a forced nonchalance.

"So, Doctor Jonathan Crane, how are we going to move past this?"

[icaruspendragon]

im sorry to ask but i dont know what else to do—how did you do it how did you dig yourself out because it feels like i am choking on dirt and people keep shoveling it onto me and i miss her so much and i dont know how to make this feeling stop. she was my best friend. ive never lived in a world without her before. how did you do it. how are you doing it

grief is so hard and so heavy when we first meet it. it feels like all our arms will ever hold for the rest of forever. and it is, in a sense. once we pick it up, we never really set it down. not fully.

and I don't think it gets lighter, I think we somehow, impossibly, get stronger.

there's lots of metaphors for grief. that's one of them. another one I like to use is that it feels like you're in the grave with them. like lazarus. like yourself. waiting for someone to raise you from the dead. to raise you both.

I've learned a lot about crawling out of the grave. more than I would have ever wanted to learn. like how emptiness is actually quite heavy. or how to pretend like you feel half-alive. but I think the most important thing I've learned is that somedays, we inexplicably end up back in it. and that sucks.

because we just spent months clawing our way through the bugs and the earth. because our soldier-hands have finally breached the surface. because the sun is finally caressing our hell-fresh faces. because for the first time in months we feel like we can finally breath. and then, suddenly, we're right back in the terrible thick of it.

those days make it feel like I'm sisyphus and grave dirt is my rock. or like I'm prometheus and the darkness is my eagle.

but then it's tuesday.

which is to say my brother died on my 25th birthday, a monday. and that day is now a memory that's fuzzy around the edges. single snapshots I know are connected, but I couldn't tell you how. I remember my mother standing in my bedroom and tears and family and phone calls and cleaning my living room because I didn't know what to do with my hands. I remember going to my grandmothers and my phone vibrating off the table and leaving to go get coffee because I couldn't sit still. I remember joking, trying to joke. trying to do whatever I could to make sense of that impossible day. I remember checking my phone and reading and rereading the messages, a mixed bag of congratulations for surviving another year and condolences that my brother didn't, I remember not knowing how to respond to any of them. so I didn't. I remember being surrounded by so many people doing nothing but extending love and kindness to me and never feeling more alone. the world was ending and I was alone. I thought that day would go on forever.

but it didn't.

it ended, as all things do. monday was over and my first day as an only child was done.

and suddenly it was tuesday. and everything was different but also exactly the same.

it was tuesday and my brother was dead. I was so heavy when I woke up that first tuesday. so heavy and confused. I thought the world had ended. it surely felt like it had. but it hadn't. because the world couldn't have ended on monday.

not if it was tuesday.

it was tuesday and my brother was dead but the world wasn't ending. monday should have been our demise, but it wasn't. and it hasn't. and it won't. because just as sure as we have mondays, we'll always have tuesdays.

that's something I've taken a strange comfort in, knowing that we'll always have tuesdays.

the feeling never stops. but I think that's okay. because you're only feeling that way because there was love first. and as much as what I felt on that first tuesday hurts, as much as it suffocates, as much as it consumes, I'd take the hurt and the suffocation and the consumption because the love I felt first will always, always be worth it.

tuesdays will always be worth it.

like yeah, if I loved less, it wouldn't hurt this bad. but I don't want to live in a world where I have to love less. where I was loved less.

I'll take the pain. I'll take the grave days. I'll take the rock. I'll take the eagle. I'll take apocalyptic, earthshaking mondays. I'll take every last wretched bit because goddamn what a miracle it is to love so bad it hurts this big.

I hold that love, his love for me and my love for him, a love that's now become our love in the cage of my ribs while I'm in the cage of the grave. and I dig.

it's monday and I dig.

I dig.

and then tuesday comes.

[mikuni14]

The Sign - Ep 5

As usual, I'll start with the police part of the story, the least important. All the time I was thinking about only one thing: if only you were so motivated, if only you devoted as much time, resources and effort to catching a fucking r*pist as you put into catching a grief-stricken, sick man. If only the inspector team leader shook the victim's hand and promised them everything like he promises a fucking criminal. Copaganda just doesn't work anymore, sorry guys, but acab 🤷‍♀️

I was kind of puzzled by Phaya's behavior at the beginning of the episode, I think he should have believed Tharn, his behavior is a bit ooc. I.. think? I assume that the still angry Phaya is just done so that the plot can later give a scene of him coming to his senses after almost losing Tharn (*and insert romantic scene here*). What I liked was how in character Tharn was, and he acted exactly as he should. And the look on Phaya's face when he unintentionally hit Tharn.

Phaya and Dr. Douchelaton scene was simply awesome, starting with the two of them momentarily slipping into the world of supernatural 🤩. Everything was cool here, Phaya's claw-like fingers, the way Doc could barely control his rage (that clenching jaw), their fight for dominance, for Tharn. Omg! Personally I like jealousy done well and Phaya fighting for Tharn and winning was a *chef's kiss*. And wow, Heng perfectly shows what a psycho Dr. Chophisdickoff is, his behavior, his expressions 👌

I love that when it comes to sexual fantasies, Tharn is slightly brothel-ish and Phaya has soft fantasies decorated with dancing luminous lights ✨

The shock on the face of the naga-possessed vigilante when the knife pierced Tharn, instead of that pesky bird, was so cool. Also telling. Tharn shielding Phaya and fighting the enemy with his superpowers was my fav 👌👌

Phaya and Tharn's reconciliation scene… oh gosh, what can I say except that when Phaya is angry, he is angry, but when he is not angry, he literally makes the most romatic, raw marriage vows. Or something. The way they touch each other tenderly, how they get lost in each other's eyes 🥺

The bed scene had me chewing on the walls, crawling on the ceiling and understanding quantum physics for a second. Ok, but this is what I call chemistry between characters (actors). It was Tharn trying to mold his body around Phaya's, wrapping around him, leaving not an inch of space between them. The way Phaya gently lifts Tharn's head to cradle him in his arms, to hug him closer, to make sure that there is absolutely NO space between them, that he finally has the opportunity to have Tharn in his arms. IT'S HOW NATURAL THEY LOOK TOGETHER, HOW PERFECTLY THEY FIT TOGETHER LIKE PUZZLE PIECES. The way Phaya took care of Tharn and looked at him with tenderness, the way he stopped Tharn's hand from going any further. Phaya is such a good guy. The way Phaya looks like he's experiencing nirvana when he finally has Tharn in his arms, cuddled up to him. (as a person of refined manners and uninterested in worldly pleasures, I will NOT write anything about the effect that Tharn's shaved legs certainly do NOT have on me. I will also politely ignore how Phaya's attention immediately shifted to those legs in this 👇 scene)

gif by @mymycorrhizae

I also want to say that I keep thinking about how caring, how forgiving Tharn is. How I think of his sweet, sweet face, especially upturned as he looks at Phaya with devotion and love. Tharn has my whole heart. I love how Tharn "don't come near me, you handsome cow" freaks out every time there's even a hint of the possibility of losing Phaya, like when Sand offers Phaya a date with her friend, or when Phaya gets mad at him and don't want to talk to him 😭 So I'm really looking forward to the next episode and long-haired, sweet Tharn/Wansarat caring for the wounded enemy Phaya/Garuda.

[galaxymagitech]

Skyglow

Summary: Jason wakes up in a coffin for the second time, the feeling of satin brushing against his fingers and the thick scent of dirt filling his nostrils. He should probably start digging. But he doesn't.

Characters: Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne

Warnings: Suicidal thoughts, possibly something that counts as a suicide attempt (not sure), a character claws at their skin.

It’s a dark, clear night in Gotham, and if you squint hard enough, you can almost see the stars.

Jason sits at the edge of the roof, staring into the sky and pretending like he’s finding meaning there. There’s the sound of soft footsteps behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, Jason sees Nightwing hang his legs off the roof’s edge a few feet away.

“When I was little,” Jason says, “I used to think they made the stars up.”

Dick hums.

“Bruce took me on a business trip in Metropolis, one day. We wanted to be there before sundown, but we ended up getting delayed. Don’t remember why. And so we were driving on the interstate and I looked up from my book and just—there were stars. Everywhere. And I was just like, oh, I guess stars aren’t just a metaphor. Can you believe that? I was twelve when I learned that stars were real.”

Dick shifts a little. “I never thought of that.”

“What, that a stupid little kid wouldn’t believe in stars?”

“That some people in Gotham haven’t ever seen a star. That’s just…” They sit in silence, for a bit. “Why are we here?” Dick asks, eventually.

Jason shrugs. “I dunno why you followed me.” That’s not entirely true. He’d be willing to bet that Tim snitched. But he doesn’t know why Tim decided his concerns were important enough to bother Nightwing about. Or why Dick decided to actually be concerned.

Dick sighs. “You know what I’m asking. Why are you here?”

Jason doesn’t know. He’s been hanging out on a lot of rooftops, lately. Maybe if he sits on enough ledges, he’ll decide if it’s actually worth it to jump, instead of just slowly sliding off. 

Unlike the stars, that’s a metaphor; Jason wouldn’t jump. A fall isn’t clean enough. Too much of a chance that the universe will fuck him over again. No, if he dies, he wants to stay dead.

“I don’t know what brought me back,” Jason says, well aware that Dick meant here on the rooftop, not here as in alive. “But dead screw-ups don’t come back to life. That’s for…Superman. The forces of evil. Hell, I’d buy it if Batman came back. But me? No fucking way was I supposed to get a second shot.”

“You did, Jason,” Dick says. “You’re alive. I don’t care if we don’t know how, you’re alive.”

But Jason just plows right past. “I figured, if I didn’t deserve a second shot, then I must’ve been brought back for a reason. ‘cause there was something I needed to do.” He frowns. “Do you know the first words I heard once I came back to myself?” Dick shakes his head. “Yeah, why would you? I didn’t say. But. Talia said, ‘you remain unavenged.’ That’s what she told me.”

“Jason—”

 “So I figured it had to be revenge, right? Only, I haven’t been able to kill the Joker. And then I figured, maybe I needed to prove Batman wrong. But he’s still doing the same thing he always did, letting the Joker live, not fixing anything. And then I figured, it was up to me, and my job was to fix things. But I’m not killing right now, I’m following the rules, and I’m a fucking joke, Dick. Everyone knows it. So there isn’t really a point to me after all.”

“Don’t say that.”

Jason shrugs. “It’s true. There isn’t. It would’ve been better if I hadn’t crawled my way out of that grave.”

---

Jason wakes up gasping for air and rolls over, fumbling for the switch of the lamp beside his bed. Instead, his fingers brush against cushioned satin.

Groggily, he opens his eyes, only to see complete darkness. No light filters through the curtains or leaks underneath the door. It’s unnatural. It’s wrong. He reaches up an arm, only to hit the ceiling a couple inches above his face. That’s when the panic sets in.

Jason loses himself to the shocks of fear pulsing through his system, pumped by his pounding heart. For a long time, he can’t think at all. He can only drown in the darkness and terror. When he regains awareness, his breaths are shallow and he can feel strips of satin beneath his fingers, torn from the roof of—

What is the last thing you remember? Jason blinks, but his memories swim. He doesn’t know. There are glimpses, lines thrown out into the water, but as soon as he reaches for them, they’re gone. He leans over Tim’s shoulder in the Batcave, examining a color-coded spreadsheet. He stands in front of Bruce, helmet on, as they brief on top of a rooftop. He sits at the kitchen table of Safehouse 4, the oldest of the safehouses he hasn’t burnt yet, with Around the World in 80 Days propped open as he picks at an omelet. All of the memories feel old. None of them explain where he is now.

His neck is itching, Jason realizes. He reaches up instinctively to loosen his tie. That’s when he realizes that he is, in fact, wearing a tie. These days, Jason only wears one of those for infiltration. Was he on an infiltration mission? He brushes a hand against his face. There doesn’t seem to be any make-up there, not even concealer for his scars.

The realization comes to him dully, this time.

He’s in a suit, surrounded by satin, in a small, enclosed space, and it’s dark. Jason’s been here before.

---

Jason stands across from Bruce, no, Batman. At the man’s side is Robin, arms slightly raised and fists tightly clenched. It’s milliseconds away from a defensive position. Jason should probably feel bad about that, but he doesn’t.

When he speaks, he aims to hurt. “You have no idea what it was like,” Jason says. “I crawled my way out of my own grave.”

This should not be news to anyone, but Bruce still flinches.

Jason grins, all teeth. “I remember it, sometimes. It took hours. I was screaming the whole time. I tore off all my fingernails, you know. Even when I was Robin, the most any torturer got to was four. But I lost ten, and I kept digging.” The Replacement looks like he’s going to be sick. Good. “Up and up and up. I knew I wasn’t gonna make it, you see. You can’t force your way out of your own grave. Mythbusters did an episode on it, yeah? So I had to scoop the dirt away, but I knew I wasn’t gonna have enough air for that. But I kept digging, because I thought—I thought maybe someone would find me, and if I made it just a little bit easier for them—”

“I’m sorry,” Batman says roughly. “Jason, I’m so sorr—"

Jason ignores him. It feels good to ignore an apology from Batman, instead of being grateful for whatever scraps of contrition the man can manage. “I don’t know how I did it. It should’ve been impossible. I think maybe I suffocated, and just came back to life and kept digging again, and suffocated again, and—”

“Stop,” Batman orders.

“Things are fuzzier, after I made it out. But I remember I was cold. So, so cold. It was raining. And I felt like I was as cold as a corpse, like life hadn’t properly warmed me up yet. And I didn’t know where I was going. I couldn’t walk, so I just crawled. I just crawled, Bruce, and then I stood up, and then I walked. A few hours before, I was being beaten to death with a crowbar. I thought someone would find me then. No one did. And I was still stupid enough to think someone would find me that second time.”

Robin’s right hand drifts toward Batman, like he’s going to try to cling to his mentor’s cape, before he clearly thinks better of it and withdraws his hand as if burnt. Batman growls. He doesn’t sound entirely human.

“You know nothing, Bruce,” Jason spits. “Nothing.”

---

Jason is in a coffin. He can smell the dirt around him, and he’s too lucid for that to be entirely an olfactory hallucination. He’s in a coffin, and he’s buried underground.

Although Jason wouldn’t put it past certain Rogues and crime families to bury someone alive, he’s in a suit and he isn’t wearing anything to disguise his identity. He has to face the facts.

Jason can feel phantom pains in his fingers, his lungs burning for oxygen before he’s even begun to truly run out of air.

Jason should probably start digging. But he doesn’t.

It’s quiet, in this coffin, just the sounds of his own ragged breaths. Jason knows that the first time around, he screamed. And when he couldn’t scream anymore, he cried, and when he couldn’t cry, he pleaded in hoarse whispers for someone, anyone, Bruce, Dick, Dad, please, please—

Jason realizes he isn’t breathing anymore and forces himself to inhale, wheezing like a dying man. Hah. He already died. At least twice. Probably—probably more. If he came back this time, how many times in the past have his “brushes with death” in fact taken him past its threshold?

But in the past, he seized his chance at life with both hands. This time…this time…

The universe brought him back for a reason. But it isn’t the Joker, and it isn’t Batman, and it isn’t Gotham. And Jason—Jason had been glad to fulfill it, whatever it was. He’d taken his second chance and used it, used himself as kindling to start whatever fire the universe desired. But he’s fucking tired of being burnt. Speaking of burning—

No one told Jason to write a will. He knows Dick has one and Bruce, of course, has one. Alfred has one, Barbara has one, even Cassandra Cain has one, although she has little to her name. Jason knows it’s standard vigilante/superhero procedure to have your affairs in order. But no one could work up the willpower—heh, willpower—to approach Jason and ask that he prepare for a second death.

Jason wrote a will anyway. Legally, he doesn’t exist. He has a small amount of money in various fake identities, but most of his funds aren’t exactly something he can distribute in a will. But he doesn’t much care what happens to them after his death. No, he wrote the will after one too many nightmares about his resurrection. That night, he picked up a pen and scribbled feverishly in his notebook that he wanted to be cremated. And Jason woke up in the morning and looked at it and thought, yeah, that’s fair. So he made it about as official as it could get.

Right now, it’s really fucking clear that he hasn’t been cremated.

Jason should start digging. But he doesn’t.

Death was supposed to mean that he was done. Cremation was supposed to ensure that. Jason just wants to be done. He thinks he deserves that much, at least. 

Jason thinks, what if I just lay here? Last time, he took his chance to live. What good did that do him? He didn’t get revenge, he didn’t get proof that Bruce cared, hell, he didn’t even properly protect Crime Alley. His dad always told Jason that he had to grow up to be something, “not like your old man.” But one time when he was drunk, Willis looked straight at Jason and said, “you’re never gonna amount to anything” and Jason had never figured out if his father had been talking to Jason or himself. Jason had thought, with Robin, that he mattered. But he was replaced as easy as can be. He never mattered. He squandered his first life, and he failed at his second, and really, Jason thinks, what’s the point of a third?

Jason wonders what will happen if he just stays here. Good corpses stay still. Good corpses don’t dig their way out of graves. Jason’s been dead twice now. He should be a pro at being a corpse.

It’s always been hard to do nothing. The same impulse that urged Jason to take his tire iron to the Batmobile makes his hands twitch to start digging. He’s wasting valuable time. Jason’s always been a do-er, and now he needs to not do anything. He’s always been a survivor, and now he has to lay down and die.

Jason should really start digging. But he doesn’t.

He is done being a zombie, a revenant, a walking memorial. He shouldn’t have come back that first time. The universe put things right and now Jason has to prevent her from having second thoughts.

---

“What the hell was that?” The Replacement shouts, one hand tight around his bo staff and the other clenched into a fist.

“I don’t answer to you,” Jason sneers. He folds his arms across his chest. Fuck it. This is a waste of time. He leans down to snap a ziptie over wrists of one of the less injured traffickers. The sooner he cleans up, the sooner he can get out of this warehouse.

“This is my route, so according to protocol, you do,” Tim insists.

“Yeah, I don’t follow protocol.” Jason gestures at the criminals bleeding all over the warehouse floor. None of them are dead. Probably.

“Clearly, or else you wouldn’t have engaged!”

“I made an informed decision.”

“No, you didn’t. You entered the middle of a freaking firefight, Hood, without your helmet, and you didn’t know you had backup.”

“It was fine.”

“Because I was there! Which you didn’t know, because you refuse to be on our comms.”

“I don’t need you.”

“Hood, do you not see how insane what you just did was? Or do you just not care?”

Jason bristles. “What, concerned about the poor widdle traffickers?”

Tim throws his hands into the air, like Jason’s the one being difficult. “That’s not what I’m talking about! I don’t care about them!”

Jason feels his lips twitch into a smirk, and before he knows it, he’s drawn a gun from its holster and trained it on the goon at his feet. His smirk widens into a grin at Tim’s flinch. “Oh, really? Guess I’ll just take out some trash then.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tim says, voice carefully measured. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Well, that’s one way to ensure that Tim never gets to his actual point. Jason flicks the safety off. The click echoes through the warehouse.

“Stop it,” the kid tries to order. Jason’s finger twitches on the trigger. “Please, Hood. Don’t do this.”

Jason shrugs and clicks the safety on, as if it doesn’t physically pain him to leave this scum alive. He knew he wasn’t going to kill anyone the second he dropped down from the rafters, and unlike what Batman thinks, he has self-control.

The Replacement tries to hide his relief, but he does a piss-poor job of it. “That was reckless,” Tim says. “Really, really reckless, and you know it.”

Jason turns around without a word. He doesn’t have to deal with this shit.

“I’ll have to tell B.”

Jason really doesn’t need a lecture from Bruce, but he can just avoid the cave until Bruce gets distracted by something equally reckless Tim does. Or, well, probably not equally reckless—Jason’s well-aware that what he did is pretty close to the edge of the ‘reckless’ spectrum, straddling the line between ‘reckless’ and, well, ‘suicidal.’ But equally stupid, at least. The Replacement seems like a dumb kid.

“I’ll tell Nightwing,” Tim tries desperately, and that makes Jason spin around. Because shit, Nightwing would hunt him down and not be satisfied just giving a lecture. He’d want to talk about feelings.

“Fine,” Jason huffs. “What do you want? A safehouse? Files? Me off this case?”

“I want you to stay alive, because believe it or not, I’d like Batman to not have another mental breakdown.”

Yeah, right. Like that would happen. Batman would still have his precious display case, and he cares far more about the dead kid than the Red Hood.

“Bruce can’t lose his son again,” Tim says, and Jason just—he can’t do this. His vision whites out. He has to leave. So he leaves.

When Jason finally registers the thuds of his boots, he’s three long blocks away from the warehouse. Whatever. The Replacement’s not going to go crying to Nightwing about Hood being a little reckless. If anything, he’ll be pleased.

---

Jason swallows. If he’s going to die, he might as well use up his air faster. Less time to wait. “It is a truth universally acknowledged…”

He recites the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice. Darkness by Lord Byron. Sings You Are My Sunshine five times. Waiting to die is a slow, slow thing, and every second, his entire body is screaming dig, save yourself, survive!

There’s a sound above him, strange thumping. Maybe, Jason thinks, it’s raining. That would be…not ironic, but there’s a strange sort of circle to it, isn’t there? He was born on a rainy day, and Catherine arrived at the hospital soaked. He was reborn in the rain. If he had dug up, he would have been born yet again in the rain. The opposite of a phoenix.

Bruce should have cremated him. Jason doesn’t even know that he won’t just suffocate and then wake up again, but this time with no air. An endless loop of suffocation. The thought sends a thrill of terror through Jason. He regrets not digging.

But if he wakes up again, Jason supposes, then he’ll make his way out. It’ll hurt, but he can take his time. And then after, after, he’ll find a fire. And then he won’t have to remember how much it hurt.

The thought should be comforting, but Jason just feels terrified, and afraid, and alone. He wonders where they buried him this time. Last time, he’d been next to Sheila. But he’d screamed at Bruce for it, so maybe, maybe this time it’s somewhere else. Next to his mom, his real mom, even. Not that Bruce seemed to particularly care about Jason’s wishes, when he was actually real and not just a memorial caged within rose-tinted glass. After all, he’d asked to be cremated.

Jason closes his eyes. Everything feels detached, out of phase. He isn’t sure if it’s oxygen deprivation setting in or a side-effect of his resurrection, or just the strangeness of the scenario. He’s tired. That could be any one of the three as well.

How did I die? Jason wonders. He strains for his memories. The taste of rocky road ice cream from his favorite ice cream shop. Tim laughing. Flashes of blinding light. None of it is an answer. None of it explains what happened.

The thuds are getting louder. Jason wonders if it’s hail. Last he remembers, it was June. If it’s winter now, he supposes six months have passed. Maybe more. Maybe he’s been dead for years.

“I’m tired,” Jason whispers. “I’m so tired.” He blinks. His vision tilts. Definitely oxygen deprivation.

It’s almost over.

And then Jason hears—Jason hears voices and there’s a light, but it’s dim, and there are shadows falling on him. Jason lies there. He wonders if this is what he saw right before he died the second time. The first time, he just saw flames, seared across his eyelids.

“Jason,” someone says. They sound horrified.

That’s his name. Jason doesn’t respond. What’s the point?

“Hold on.”

This dream doesn’t make much sense. Jason hopes it’ll be over soon.

Something grasps his arms and pulls. No. No, Jason has to stay. Corpses have to stay in their graves. If he doesn’t stay, then he’ll have to come back, and he’ll just ruin it again. He has to stay. “No,” Jason can hear himself babbling. “No, let me go, let me—no. I have to. I have to go back.”

“Jason, calm down.”

“No!” Jason shouts, desperately. He throws out a kick and dives forwards, eyes closed. Strong arms catch him around the waist and hold him close, pulling him against someone’s chest. “No, I have to go back! Please!”

“Jason, open your eyes!”

Jason’s eyes snap open and he sees—

Batman. Nightwing. Robin. It’s all wrong.

Jason doubles over. “Please,” he sobs. “I have to go back. You need to let me go back.”

“You’re okay, Jason,” Batman says in his ear, but his voice is all Bruce. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah, that’s the fucking problem.” Dick startles. Jason must’ve said that out loud. “Please,” he whispers.

The first time he dug himself out of his own grave, Jason’s voice was gone by the time he made it to the surface. This time, someone else dug him out, but no one will listen when he speaks.

Jason slumps in Bruce’s hold, and they just…stand there. Eventually, Bruce slowly sets Jason on the ground and kneels down in front of him. 

Jason’s heartbeat pounds in his ear. It’s wrong. His heart shouldn’t be beating. It’s wrongwrongwrongwrong. Desperately, Jason claws at his wrists, trying to dig the heartbeat out. It has to go away. Someone tugs at his hand and Jason snatches it away and cradles his hand against his chest. His pulse continues to tear him apart.

“Jason,” Bruce says. “Do you know where you are right now?”

“A fucking graveyard, right?” Jason says. His eyes burn. He refuses to wipe at them. He can feel the hard, rocky dirt beneath him. He wants to be numb again. He shouldn’t be here. He should be underground.

There’s a sharp silence. “We’re not in a graveyard, Little Wing,” Dick says, eventually.

Jason looks around slowly. His vision feels disconnected, and it takes several moments for each image to register. But there are no gravestones around, just trees, trees and sky. It’s dark out. He thinks, when he looks up, he can almost see the stars. He doesn’t understand. “Then why am I in a suit?”

“Do you remember the gala?” Tim asks, so quietly that Jason almost doesn’t hear him. In fact, it sounds more like “…oo…ber…gala?” with the rest being lost underneath the Replacement’s breath, but Jason figures that’s what he’s saying. Jason shakes his head. 

Dick takes a step closer. “The paparazzi saw us out in Gotham four days ago. With you. You…there was a gala tonight. Bruce convinced you to go with us. And then you went missing. We thought you walked out early. But then…well, Tim was working on a case, and…well…”

“A weird cult thought you were a zombie,” Tim says, when it becomes clear that Dick’s not going to explain anything properly. “So they knocked you out, did a ritual, and re-buried you.”

This is real, Jason thinks suddenly, and then he’s doubled over, retching. Nothing comes out except spit. He can feel grass beneath his hands. When he curls his fingers, he scrapes up dirt. “This is real,” Jason says aloud. “This is real. This is real.”

“This is real,” Dick confirms. Jason retches again.

This is real. Jason doesn’t know what to say.

Tim sighs. “We need to take you to the police.”

Bruce shakes his head. “We need to talk.” His voice is dark. Jason shudders.

“Not like this, Bruce,” Dick says. “Not with the cowl on. Jason, are you good to deal with questions right now?”

“I don’t remember much.” Jason tugs at his tie in the stifling heat. Across the room, Tim is talking to a group of teenage boys and making large, animated gestures. Jason stumbles, catching himself on a nearby table.

“That’s fine, Jay,” Dick says. “We recovered security footage and we have confessions. We’ll be there in civies as soon as we can, okay?”

Jason shrugs. Someone helps him to his feet.

---

On the rooftop, Dick places a hand over Jason’s. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” Jason says quietly. “I shouldn’t have come back.”

“You’re wrong,” Dick says. He sounds so sure. But that’s the first Robin. He’s sure about everything. Jason could never measure up.

“Jason Todd was better off without me insulting his memory.”

“Who cares about a memory?” Dick scoffs. “You’re alive.”

“Tell that to Bruce.”

“Tell that to yourself,” Dick says. “You’re alive, Jason. You’re alive. Don’t you see how amazing that is? All of us—me, Bruce, Tim, Alfred—we’re so happy that you’re alive.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jason says. He believes that Dick believes it. He believes that Dick has to believe it, that Dick won’t admit to himself that he wishes Jason was still dead. Dick will always ignore his darker thoughts. But Jason knows. Jason knows Dick would be happier if Jason never came back. And Bruce? The man doesn’t even think that Jason counts as Jason anymore. Alfred no doubt can see that something in Jason is deeply, deeply wrong—sociopathic tendencies, Talia had theorized, although Jason suspects he’s far beyond tendencies. And Tim has no reason to wish his murderous predecessor well, not after the Tower. So, no, Jason doesn’t believe Dick.

“You will,” Dick says. “I promise.”

Jason stares into the sky. He thinks maybe, just maybe, he can see a star.

[alphabetbill]

Macabre [ HEMLOCK GROVE ] - Chapter 4

~ description ~

A werewolf whose only skill is running from his fears, a half-upir with no idea of the true darkness lying inside of him, and a girl found alive in the woods months after her mysterious death.

Some secrets in Hemlock Grove should have just stayed buried. In a town that isn't so sleepy after all, monsters of all kinds are wide awake under the surface, crawling their way up.

~ warnings~

This story will contain mature and heavy themes that may involve potentially explicit content, gore and murder, talk of kidnapping and stalking victims, animal death, supernatural/paranormal/religious themes and trauma, any other themes not covered in the general description will probably be tagged here at the start of the chapters that other significant warnings apply to.

A list will be linked here upon completion and upload of each chapter:

Cicada and the Snake

Chapter 1 . Chapter 2 . Chapter 3 . Chapter 4 . Chapter 5 . Chapter 6 . Chapter 7

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

c h a p t e r    f o u r

Peter Rumancek

<<>>

"I SAW THAT IN MY DREAM THE OTHER NIGHT," Roman Godfrey announced as he took up a seat beside Peter in English class, leaning over the gap to talk.

He had been doing that a lot. For three days now to be specific, clinging to the side of the most interesting soul he could find because, assumingly, he had nothing better to do. It was sort of sad, really, once it became apparent just how utterly aimless he was without his dead best friend.

At his words Peter began to unfurl the sketch he had crumpled up in his hand, some roughly drawn cryptic image of an ouroboros. The upir seemed hopeful that it must have meant something, that they had both dreamed of the same symbol in the same circumstance. 

Peter just hoped it was a coincidence but unfortunately for him it seemed unlikely.

Nothing about his encounters with Roman seemed like they were a coincidence. Nothing about the bottomless darkness like that in Roman's eyes could ever be a coincidence.

"What do you think it means?" Roman asked him, his perfectly trimmed fingernails rapping on the desk. 

"Probably something important," Peter answered with a note of sugary sarcasm. It wasn't like he meant to sound either rude or disinterested- but talking with Roman in public was the perfect way to draw even more attention to himself which was something he wanted least of all.

Especially talking about this.

"Jude was in my dream. Was she in yours too?"

Now was the time where any normal person would have sat down with Roman and discussed to him the concept of grief and closure and that dreaming about dead loved ones was  a perfectly normal thing to experience after loss. The assumption that Peter had shared a similar dream with Roman would have been absurd had it not been true.

"Yeah," Peter answered after a while, the pad of his thumb brushing across the drawing. 

No renderings on paper or crude sketches mimicking the things he had seen in his dream would ever bring to justice the twisting, jarring feeling of darkness that Peter had experienced in the dream he had the other night. Nothing could make him forget the way the shadows had swallowed him whole and spat him out in a forest of endless trees that stretched all the way to the sky and straight through it. How the crescent moon had gleamed like a gnarled claw in the sky, how his eyes could never remove themselves from it. The werewolf had experienced preminition dreams before, and his heightened awareness of the supernatural meant those kinds of dreams felt familiar. 

In that dream, standing in that clearing, witnessing the suffering of a girl who used to know him, Peter's one sole instinct had been to run.

He didn't want to think about her anymore. Thinking about her made him think about the dream which made him think about his cowardice which made him think about how he hated that part of himself. That part of him that prioritized flight over fight, protecting himself over others. The selfish wolf in him who wanted to tuck tail.

He didn't want to think about how his shared dreams with Roman meant he was tied with the upir in some way. He didn't want to think about how those shared dreams likely meant a shared fate- and that whatever was to come meant trouble for the both of them. That whatever was to come had something to do with Judith Evergreen and the mystery of her death.

Peter wanted no part of it. Messing around with this stuff wasn't on his list of safest nor smartest things to do. So just like he tried to drown out Roman's desperation, he also tried to drown out the dreams by pretending they had not been frequenting him ever since moving to Hemlock Grove.

"I couldn't get close to her in mine," Roman said with a pause. "I tried."

Peter had tried to get close to her too. But the trees had stretched further and further away until all he could see was the silhouette of her body breaking. The further he had ran towards her the further away he had moved. Like the dream was taunting him.

"So. What now?"

"I don't know," Peter answered hastily. "I don't know, Roman. It might not even mean anything."

You know that's not true.

"Look I know this is weird-" Roman cut in, "really fucking weird. But you know what's even weirder? Sharing extremely specific dreams about a girl who died who we happen to both know. I don't even know you and you don't even know me. But like it or not this means we're connected."

Peter fought hard to bite back his retort because he knew Roman was right.

"And what am I supposed to do about that exactly?" he asked. "You think I've got all the answers?"

"I'd say you're a good place to start."

Because he was the one more intertwined with the supernatural, he assumed that Roman assumed. If only Roman knew how close he really was with the uncanny. How close he really was to the monsters he had only been told of. To the ones he had not been told of.

The two of them stopped talking when class started, because they got reprimanded by the teacher for their inside chatter and loose squabbling. 

Peter dreamed of the forest again that night. He dreamed of the smell of rotting flesh, the hissing of a serpent and the silent screams of a girl in pain. He dreamed of running through bramble thickets that only got thicker and higher until they blocked out the light, of becoming snared in the thorns and pickled and stabbed and shredded by the sharp points. 

He dreamed of deer with bloody mouths and glassy, blank white eyes. They stared at him through the trees, standing still and vacant like empty macabre creatures. 

He dreamed of torch light flitting through the trees, footsteps treading in hasty increments, fast and slow, close and far. He dreamed he was standing naked in a clearing surrounded by snakes winding through the black muddy grass to strangle him. He dreamed of snake bites and gloved hands choking back his screams. 

He woke up in a cold sweat for the fourth night in a row. He also woke up to a phone call.

"Peter it's me, Roman- don't hang up yet, please" the upir rushed when Peter answered the unsaved number. "Look I just need to talk to you. Tell me you didn't just have that dream and I'll leave you be."

"I didn't just have that dream again."

"Jackass."

"Yeah."

"You saw the deer right?"

"I did. Did you see the light?"

"I did. Did you see the snakes?"

"Shit."

"Shee-it."

There was a break, a silence between them that only swelled along with the tension through the line. This was real and dark and twisted and broken. It left him with a nagging pain in his gut that told him Roman was right. 

"You feel it, don't you?" Roman asked, his voice pooling with urgency.

Peter could feel it. Peter could feel it and he couldn't even deny it. Peter could feel the importance clinging to him like tree sap to bark, like smoke in a confined room that just kept getting smaller. Something was about to happen and that something would be his job, would be his and Roman's job, to foresee and to stop. To find their own answers when there were none. The weight of the world felt heavy on his shoulders and this time Peter could not run. 

He couldn't. 

"Whatever this is, whatever fucked up bullshit this is. We're in this shit together," the upir spoke again, as if he were desperately afraid that Peter wasn't going to reply.

"We have to do something," the werewolf conceded. "But where would we even start?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Where life ends and death begins. Where the aftermath of death is found. Where hopefully, Peter would be able to pick up a scent or a feeling or an omen or some kind of sign of what to do and what the fuck was going on. Something that could lead him to wherever or whatever the fuck it was that Judith Evergreen was trying to show them. 

"The ditch," Peter exhaled through his nose, disappointed in himself for suggesting such a morbid thing. "The ditch her body was found in. We could start there."

"What makes you think we'll find anything?"

"Just a feeling," he answered. 

Roman picked Peter up in his car about half an hour later. They drove to the outskirts of town and got out at the start of the woodland reserve trail. In the dead of night they walked. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

hmmmmm

[sergeantnarwhalwrites]

"Who's Greeter to you?"

Let's go thing I had an urge to write! Woo! This will probably make it into the rewrite. I have made some progress in the planning thank you @vacantgodling! My ass was stuck. Now I just gotta figure out a few important worldbuilding things which I'll probably do as I start writing and I'll be sure to actually write them in a place I won't lose them. Have Tharion questioning Cosma and Cosma being Cosma.

Tag list: @outpost51 @nanashi23 @winterandwords @jezifster @kk7-rbs @aether-wasteland-s @dumbthunder @manathen @the-void-writes @livums (Let me know if you want to be added or removed from the taglist!) 

Tharion didn't know how to feel. Working his hands with ease as he braided the two braids together, slowly annoyed by the feeling of his hair against his back.

Cosma towered over him. A massive red mountain and it was gonna crumble. Like the stacks of mud, not yet processed enough to be clay the children of his city liked to stab pudgy fingers into. Sliding and toppling into a heap. Tharion shoved her hard enough for her to misstep.

"You're obsessed," Tharion said.

Cosma smiled. Tharion noticed how tight-lipped it was. Her chapped lips bled a little at the action.

"What is Greeter to you?" Tharion asked, dragging a claw down her arm, unamused by how unbothered she seemed.

Cosma grabbed the offending hand.

"My squadmate, my friend. A fellow soldier."

"Your companion?"

Cosma shook her head heard enough to hear the air rush past. She didn't like the way he said that. Maybe it was just the word. Or maybe it was the way his tongue wrapped around the word, spitting it like his prayers that she was unfamiliar with.

With the word, she saw Greeter in her room. On her floor, too impatient to help prepare the bedroll. Wrappings undone, in a haphazard pile beneath her. Shirt gone. Drool dribbled down her chin as she parted her legs tauntingly. Invitingly. Breath faintly smelling of the medicated liquids Cosma used purely as a disinfectant. The smell wafted under her nose as she practically crawled to Greeter. Hungry. Insatiable.

Cosma's breath picked up, not yet fast enough to be panting. She let sweat roll down her face. Looking over Tharion as the word companion had damn there awoken something she refused to let a stranger see.

"Not companions? Too insignificant a word huh?" Tharion smiled now, seeing the hallway's artificial light illuminating the newly forming sheen.

Cosma rested her face in her hands, grasping uselessly at the skin of her face. Her fingers sliding over the greasy surface.

"You're stuck in her like a damn barbed bullet." Tharion's claws clacked against the wall.

He almost couldn't believe it. All the massacre this woman had caused. Was capable of. And she's fumbling over a woman. Two brutes in love, Tharion thought. So it was no surprise, at least not to him when he asked you're obsessed.

Cosma could barely lift her hands away from her face to answer. She took a deep breath, breathing in the smell of the same disinfectant Greeter drank. Did he really deserve one? Did she even have an answer?

She smiled behind her hands. Dropping them as she thought of an answer. Which meant thinking of Greeter. Which also meant imagining every drag of Greeter's canines on her skin, rough hands forcing her to pay attention usually with a forceful yank, newly forged swords lodged concerningly deep into the safety wear. The words she spoke in low grunts no one but Cosma could hear. The threats spat forced Cosma to improve for the both of them. They both would do anything to survive for one another, Cosma knew it.

Unbothered by the flickering lights above them she answered, "Who wouldn't be?"

Tharion could only laugh, "Useless."

Cosma shrugged. Though the suddenness of the accusation admittedly did sting. Her shoulders sank down a little lower than usual. That was a comment that never really stopped hurting. No matter the foreigner's mouth it flew from.

"And you're the loser stuck helping," Cosma scratched at the shaven parts of her head, careful not to trace over the pigmented swirls, "I'll meet you and Arc in the beast containment. I need a moment."

[skitskatdacat63]

misc lore drop day 55/?

I always characterize Seb as this very bold person who's not put off by Fernando's cold attitude. And I think yeah, he's able to put up with it more than the average person. But at the same time, he's equally more sensitive than a normal person would be. I guess there's a very specific line between him being able to confidently pursue and him feeling extremely rejected. Because he was raised with the idea that he's the most important person who gets everything he wants, well everything he feels he's deserves, he's obviously going to be pretty assertive. There's only so much he can take though before he feels unwelcome and very put out, since he's never faced such resistance. Let's make it clear though, as I've said before, it's not completely unrequited. Fernando enjoys that chase, having such a powerful figure begging for his attention. But he can go too far and act a little too hissy, and it starts to genuinely hurt Seb's feelings. They have more tolerance for each other's respectively pushy and aloof behavior, but not so much that they're completely immune to feeling hurt. Seb's kind of like a dog who keeps trying to get close to a cat, but then the cat actually uses its claws to swipe at him, so he has to go lick his wounds. Though, to me, he's still somewhat a cat because he is aware he is being a bit annoying, just a bit. Fernando on the other hand, is aware he's being a bit too standoffish for what his actual position is, and he would probably get into real trouble acting this way around any other person.

I've talked about this before but. Seb is very greedy for affection, the type to never be able to get enough to satisfy him. He'll take it in any form he can, be it platonic, romantic, sexual. Of course when Fernando starts spending more time around, he's Seb's new victim. He understands Fernando wants alone time, despite that being something he doesn't ever really partake in himself. Fernando is reading pretty inconsequential papers, but like all things, he treats them with utmost importance. In reality, he's kinda just trying to shake off Seb. But Seb's not the type to be aware of cues like that. He's like, ah let me just sit in the room, I won't be loud, I won't do anything. But then is practically crawling into Fernando's lap, getting all into his space. One day Fernando feels like it's getting too much, and is grinding his teeth and pursing his lips. Seb's trying to peek at the paper in his hand, "Something bothering you?" Fernado finally snaps at him, "Yes! You! You constantly brag about how you're the future emperor, no? Don't you have something better to do than lay all over me, or is being debauched all you're good at!?" Seb is very hurt by this, "Well if you're so bothered by my presence, I suppose I'll go. You're so busy after all."

Seb shuts the door behind him, and now the room is too silent. Fernando feels more on edge and fidgety than he had been when Seb was all over him. He can't concentrate on his "work" at all. He hadn't realized that the amount of effort he had been putting into consciously ignoring Seb had helped him focus. Like it or not, Seb was a stable presence in the room, he gave Fernando a reason to actually be able to focus purely on what he was supposed to be doing. Now it's quiet. And lonely. And the reading is no fun anymore.

[lumiolivier]

Tell Me I'm Pretty

Day 20 of 31 of Kinktober

Prompt: Crossdressing

Word Count: 1508

It shouldn't have gotten to him, but L was tired of the snide comments people made about him. And he needed a change.

L wasn’t much.  He knew that aside from his intelligence, he wasn’t much.  He knew he looked like something that crawled out of a gutter or haunted children’s nightmares.  It was something Mello had told him regularly while they were at Wammy’s together.  But it never got to him.  It wasn’t something he fixated on.  Until one day, a true Adonis walked into his life.  An absolute beauty that did things to him no one could ever do before.  And that’s when he started to realize it.

L and Light would go out on dates and L could hear the whispers at the next table over.  Who the homeless guy was with Light, how did someone like L get into one of the nicest places in Tokyo, which swamp did he claw his way out of.  He heard them.  All of them.  And more often than not, he wrote them off.  But they hit.  And they hit hard.  And telling himself they were only threatened by his intelligence only worked for so long.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he needed help.  Not Watari.  He wouldn’t understand.  He would tell him that his vanity wasn’t important or some empty platitudes of how he was fine just the way he was.  Everything that would sound helpful to an outsider looking in, but never to the person it’s said to.  So, he did something that he knew would be like throwing gasoline on a dumpster fire.  But he was already a dumpster fire, so it felt fitting.

The day had come to an end at task force headquarters.  Light had managed to cut out early to go to his night classes.  And it was quiet in the main room.  With the exception of L at the monitors.  And Misa on the couch in her pajamas with a magazine in her lap.  That she just happened to be on the cover of.  She wore a bright red dress and looked like her eyes could kill.  Misa had a confidence that L secretly envied.  And he knew that what would happen next would only breed disaster, but his scientific curiosity persevered more than his apprehension.

“Misa,” L broke the still silence in the room, “Can I ask you a trivial question?”

“A trivial question?” Misa perked up, “Really?  That’s a little out of your wheelhouse, don’t you think, Ryuzaki?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Of course,” Misa allowed, putting her magazine down, “What’s on your mind?”

“Would you call me attractive?” L wondered.

Misa froze, not sure where L was going with this.  It was something so out of left field that it truly stunned her, “Um…Ryuzaki, are you ok, sweetie?  Do you need to talk?”

“I want your honest opinion,” L insisted, “There are no tricks.  Merely a yes or no question.  Even you can handle those.”

“Even me?” Misa scoffed, “Wow.  I feel loved.”

“So?” L ignored her pathetic attempts at pouting and appealing to his kindness, “Would you?”

“Well,” Misa looked him over, “Yeah.  I guess.”

“Enough to have Light?”

“That actually threw me for a loop,” Misa admitted, “I had a feeling Light wasn’t just into girls, but I didn’t think you were going to be his type.  What’s the matter?  What’s bringing this on?”

“On our last date,” L sighed out, “Someone was talking about how I was Light’s charity case.  And it kind of got under my skin a little.”

“Really?” Misa gasped, “You?  Since when do you give a shit about 1.) what you look like and 2.) what other people say?”

“I don’t know,” L hated himself for it.  He knew he shouldn’t let it bother him.  He knew he would never see those people again and that their opinion didn’t matter.  The only one that did was Light’s.  But that didn’t make it sting any less, “But it just…I don’t know.  It’s not like me not to know.”

“I have an idea,” Misa bit the inside of her cheek, “But you have to trust me.  Ok?”

L could feel it in the pit of his stomach.  This couldn’t possibly go well.  But he was desperate, “Ok.  What did you have in mind?”

“Come with me,” Misa took his hand, “Do you know what time Light gets out of class?”

“Nine o’clock,” L remembered.

“We have time,” Misa smiled, “Come on.”

And so, Misa got to work.  She knew what she needed to do.  Did L?  No.  Of course not.  If he knew, he wouldn’t have been going to Misa in the first place.  But Misa would have some semblance of a vision.  Something that would get Light’s attention.  Something that would make people shut up.  Something that would bring L back to life again.  Anything to pull him out of the spiral that consumed his thoughts for the last few days.

When Light got out of class, he went right back to the tower.  After scanning himself in, he took a quick look around the war room.  And to his surprise, it was empty.  I’m pretty sure I left him right here.  He was watching the monitors.  I know damn well he didn’t do something silly like go to bed.  Light laughed to himself, the memory of many nights where he had to carry L on his shoulder like a baby to get him to bed warming his heart like nothing else.  So, Light checked over the cameras, hoping he could find L.  Nothing.  Where the hell did you go?

Light wrote it off as a glitch in the security system and went upstairs.  His lecture was nearly lulling him to sleep.  Between classes and the investigation, he was wrecked.  But there was a little twist.  He walked in to the softest, sweetest little angel on his bed.  And he wasn’t sure what to think about it, but he also wasn’t complaining.

“Welcome home, Light,” L smiled, the skirt of his bright, white dress billowing out under him.  Or, more accurately, Misa’s dress.  It’s not like L had it hiding in the back of his closet.  But there was a certain purity about him.  And something about it scratched an itch in Light’s head that he didn’t know existed.

Still, blissfully unaware of L’s motives and a touch paranoid, Light wrote it off, “Let me guess.  Misa got bored and got a hold of you, didn’t she?”

“Not entirely,” L confessed, pulling Light onto the bed, “I did ask nicely.”

“You did what?” Light looked at him strangely, his heartbeat shooting up.

“You heard me,” L got comfortable in Light’s lap already feeling him against the skirt, “Light, tell me I’m pretty.”

“What’s this all about?” Light started to worry, “This isn’t you.”

“What?” L felt his heart drop into his stomach, “You don’t like it…?”

“It’s not you,” Light cradled L’s cheek in the palm of his hand, “I know you, L.  You don’t ever have to impress me.  You already have a million times over.  So, forgive me if I’m a little concerned.”

“I let voices in my head take over,” L cuddled into him, “And worse yet, I let Misa take advantage of them.  I learned the hard way tonight that I am not meant for corsets.  How Misa deals with them is absolutely astonishing.”

“L,” Light snuck in a little kiss, “I’m flattered you wanted to do something like this for me, but you never have to.  Don’t forget that.  Ok?”

L managed to muster up a smile, his head comfortably snuggled into Light’s shoulder, “Thank you, Light.  You know, I’ve been rattling around all these different ideas that have been gnawing away at me for the last couple days.  But I think you just said all I needed to hear.”

“And for the record,” Light picked L’s chin up, getting a much deeper kiss out of him, “I think you are very pretty.  And the dress was a nice touch.”

“Thank you,” L shivered as Light’s wrist pushed the skirt of his dress up his thigh, “And…What are we going to do about it?”

“You’re not just pretty, L,” Light whispered in his ear, finding the lacy panties Misa gave him, “You’re the smartest person I know.  You figure it out.”

“I think,” L pulled the panties down and threw them to the floor.  Only to straddle Light’s thighs, “I’m turning you on.”

“Really?” Light held L steady with one arm and undid the button on his pants with the free hand, “And what gave that away?”

L buried his face in Light’s neck, leaving kisses in his wake, “The fact that you’re rock fucking solid for me already.  I bet with a few nice words and a little grinding, I can have you coming awfully quick.”

“And leave you aching?” Light awed, letting out a little moan, “Of course not.  I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Alright then,” L laid back on the bed, his legs wide and a smirk on his face, “Then, show me what you can do to me…”

[goosehascats]

Moon 6: Part 1

CW: Emotional manipulation, verbal abuse, trauma response.

“Again, Mitepaw?” Duskstar said sternly, eyebrows furrowed. “Surely you can pounce on a field mouse.” 

“I’m sorry, Duskstar,” Mitepaw said with a steely, determined expression. She had been struggling with hunting today, but she couldn’t figure out why. She was tasting the air, she had her ears on the swivel, perfectly down wind, but her pounces were just… Off, simply put. And she was paying the price now with Duskstar’s temper. She sat, back straight, but looking just down at Duskstar’s chest rather than at his eyes. 

“Do you think sorry is enough, Mitepaw? Do you think sorry feeds mouths?” Duskstar’s tail lashed, though his body remained composed. His eyes were dark and his ears were turned back, and this was about as outwardly angry as Mitepaw had ever seen him. She continued to stare coldly at his chest, knowing that any flicker of emotion could warrant more berating. 

“No, Duskstar.” Mitepaw’s voice was even, but she felt hot shame burn under her fur. She was better than this. She knew she was. And she had to be, she was Duskstar’s apprentice. His patience was not for her because she needed to represent him as a leader. If she went back to camp empty handed, what would that say about him? 

“Then what is the problem.” Duskstar demanded. It wasn’t a question, it was a command to speak. To give him a reason. To give him ammunition for the next leg of his rant. 

“I…” Mitepaw started. She knew she should have a reason. She knew that something should be different about today than yesterday, or any other day she’s hunted. She knew she was so close to her warrior name but if she kept having days like today, she’d never get there. So she needed something to be different, to be wrong. “I’m sorry, Duskstar.” She said again, tilting her head to stare solidly at the ground. “I’ve been distracted. I… I believe I had a vision from Starclan last night.” 

The silence that fell between Duskstar and Mitepaw was thick and heavy. She felt her skin crawl over her, thousands of little legs pricking at her skin as she waited for him to believe her lie. Her legs began to just barely quiver when she felt a tail on her back. She looked back up to see Duskstar with an observant but neutral expression on his face, eyes lighter and eyebrows lifted. 

“What did you see?” He asked in a soft, soothing tone. It was better than him being angry at her, but Mitepaw felt herself grow nauseous at the thought of having to give him details for a fake vision. 

“Oh, well,” Mitepaw started, looking away from Duskstar. “It was… A dream that I had last night, and it was… Clear, but it was soft in the way dreams are. There was…” Mitepaw looked around the horizon, her eyes landing on an awkward hump in the ground. “A burrow. Perhaps a tunnel, or a den underground. Hollow dirt.” Her claws tore up the dirt underfoot. “And there were…” Fox-dung, what’s a Starclan-y sign?! Mitepaw thought to herself in a panic. “Um, stars. There were stars in the den underground. I was being chased, or maybe just followed. But I found some water, and… And then I woke up.” 

“You just… Woke up when you saw the water?” 

“Well, yes, but only… Only after I looked into the water.” 

“And did you see yourself?” 

“Um… No. No, I saw Honeystream there.” 

“Hmm,” Duskstar hummed in thought, getting up on his paws to walk a circle around Mitepaw. “I see… I can’t quite make sense of it on my own, I think, but Snaillake would be rather delighted to hear this I’m sure.” Duskstar was purring by the end of his sentence, in a much better mood now. “Really, Mitepaw, I wish you had mentioned this sooner, this is far more important than a few field mice.” 

“Yes, Duskstar. Sorry, Duskstar. I wasn’t… Sure if it was real or not, but I’ll make sure to bring up any more visions to you and Snaillake.” Mitepaw felt her chest tighten as if she was going to cry, or maybe vomit. If he finds out I’ve lied about this… She shook the thought from her head. She would keep up the lie. She had to. If the vision was vague enough, perhaps Snaillake wouldn’t be able to parse it either. And then maybe they could forget about it and Mitepaw could hunt better tomorrow. All that mattered now was that Duskstar wasn’t mad at her.

[queenpiranhadon]

A/N: No personal messages at the moment, just enjoy the chapter! This chapter is written by the lovely Nyota (@labaguetteisdabest). You can find the masterlist here

Warning(s): Apex gets panic attacks (kinda), murder, fratricide, blood, injuries, fighting, espyn-animal hybrids, death, cursing, burning, phantom pain.

Pairing(s): Kaepex

Stomp. 

Stomp. 

Stomp. 

My brother-turned-bear stands outside the door. 

He hesitates, sniffing the air. 

And continues walking. 

Stomp. 

Stomp. 

Stomp. 

I breathe a quiet sigh of relief, and once I can’t hear his footsteps anymore, I carefully and quietly open the closet door. 

Then, I creep across Cove’s bedroom and open the door, praying that my brother had in fact gone far away. 

When I scan the glaringly white hallway with intricate flame patterns adorning the walls, I don’t spot the creature that used to be Daxton. 

Why is he a bear-espyn hybrid? I think. So much has changed while I was gone... 

I sneak around a corner. 

OH- 

My brother is right there. Right around the corner. 

I take a deep breath. 

Okay. 

There are two things I can do here. One, I can run and let my brother run rampant. Or... I can kill him, saving... I don’t know who I’d be saving. 

I know one thing. 

Killing Daxton is the right choice. It would crush my parents – my mother in particular – but I was taught to put the good of the people before my own life and biases. And that’s what I’m doing... right? 

I can’t even attack right now, anyways – why am I debating this? 

I dash down the hallway, away from my brother, and as I run, the reality of the situation sets in. 

I’m about to go murder my brother... or die trying. 

How unpleasant. 

I realize I’ve probably been running for longer than I intended and double back. I must have run past the armory. 

Bingo. 

I try to open the door quietly, but the hinges squeak. I pause for a minute, panic rushing through me again. I don’t hear any footsteps come in my direction, so I release a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and continue opening the door. 

Opening the door again, I walk in quickly and breathe a sigh of relief once I lock the door. 

I’m gonna need to be able to see fully, I realize. I look around for a clip or hair tie or something I can use to move my red hair away from my face. 

A minute or two later, I find a ruby hair clip and I push my hair aside, clipping it out of the way. 

Let’s hope this doesn’t fall out, I think. 

I switch my focus to what’s more important. 

My weapon. 

Relying on my Reya alone won’t be smart; I’ll end up exhausted. 

I look around, nothing really catching my eye, until I find a deep blue-hilted dagger. I had lit a small fire above my hand so I could see better, and the silver edge shines in my light. Lifting it, I discover it’s lighter than I anticipated. 

This is the one I’ll use. 

I extinguish the light from my hand and grab the leather hilt that goes along with the dagger, tying it around my waist. 

Carefully opening the door, I let it slam behind me and I sprint back to my brother, ready to save Fujimura – or die trying. 

No pressure. 

I stop when I reach the corner of the hallway. Unsheathing my dagger, I take a breath. 

And I step. 

And dash. 

I run at my brother, slashing at his back, and he gasps in pain. 

My dagger is lined with red. 

I hate it. 

I hate the fact that I have to hurt – no, kill – my brother. 

But I just have to deal with it. 

I keep saying that I’ll be saving people. 

But who am I really saving? 

Who knows how many of these diseased espyn-animal hybrids are out there, crawling through the forests of Dodomi? 

No one, probably. 

Daxton whips his head around, a deep growl rumbling from his throat. He stretches his sharp claws, aiming to hit me, but I dodge him, rolling underneath his arm. 

I summon a fire blast, sending it at his body, and while the flames are taxing on my energy, I manage to push through and lash out with my dagger, the blade hitting solid mass. 

I want this to end. 

I hate that noise. 

I hate hearing my brother snarl at me. 

Slash at me. 

I hate the feeling of the dagger in my right hand. 

And yet – the weight is comforting, somehow. 

Maybe it’s that the weight tells me that I have something to protect me? 

I hate it anyways. 

I hate this. 

Pain streaks across my back and I cry out. 

Anger fuels me and I throw my hand out, blasting another inferno at my brother. The crackling of the flames is calming, in a way, but it doesn’t save me from my terror. 

Daxton swings his leg around, kicking my legs out from under me. As I fall to the ground, the right side of my face begins to throb with pain. 

Stupid phantom pain, I think exasperatedly. Why now?! 

My brother-turned-bear-espyn-hybrid pins me to the ground. His hot breath stings my face, and I begin to hyperventilate. 

My dagger is pinned down to the ground because of my arm, so I can’t do that. My Reya is weak from the times I used it before. And Dax is too strong; I can’t wiggle out of his grasp. 

Then it hits me. 

I heat up my body, and as I do so, I can feel my life energy slowly fading away – like the layers of the ocean: the more layers you pull away, the deeper you go, and the more raw pieces you expose. 

My vision begins to fade, just barely, but I get lucky: my brother rips his hands away from my burning skin. 

And at his moment of weakness, I go for it. 

I stab my brother in the side. 

His eyes widen. 

And then he shrieks. 

A guttural scream erupts from his lungs, and I want to cover my ears but it’s not safe – not yet. 

Daxton locks his eyes on me, and I can feel it – he’s gonna bring me down with him. 

Not on my watch. 

I scramble away from him, sprinting out into the gardens in front of the palace, and I can hear Dax’s lumbering footsteps behind me. 

I stumble. 

And my vision gains black spots. 

No. 

Not right now. 

I almost made it. 

I look down and the white concrete has droplets of red – all from my back wound. 

That’s definitely scarring. 

Adrienne, you should not be worried about that right now. 

Worry about living first. 

The sight of my blood makes me slightly nauseous. But I have to deal with it, because if I don’t, I’m just accepting my death. 

And that is not happening. 

Daxton roars behind me, and I clamber up again, trying to run farther, but something pushes me, and I fall to my knees. 

My brother pins me down again, and this time, my dagger is lost somewhere, my brother’s side wound is dripping onto me, and I’m too weak to use my Reya. 

Yep, I’m dead. 

I try to wriggle out from underneath him, but he only pushes down harder. 

Ow, ow, ow... 

I kick my legs up and my brother freezes. 

I don’t think I had the energy to do that, but now I can get out from underneath and find some other weapon to use. 

The fresh breeze stings my back, and it seems it hurts my brother too because he winces. 

I run around the palace, my brother following me – until he isn’t. 

What the hell? 

I keep running, afraid he’s just hiding, and a shimmer of silver catches my eye. 

My dagger! 

I dash at it, picking it up. 

A newfound strength surges through me, and my eyesight sharpens. 

Gods help me. 

Please. 

I dart away and crash into my brother. 

He had circled around. 

Okay, I am so dead, I think. 

Desperation replaces the strength that I had felt moments ago, and I rush to figure out what I’ll do next. 

I slash up, dash to the left, avoid a blow. 

I blast flames to my right (don’t ask me how; I was exhausted), dodge, and trip. 

I’m in front of the drawbridge and my brother is on top of me – yes, again – and I take advantage of my arms being free for a moment. 

I shove my dagger up, into my brother’s stomach. 

His blood already covers part of my arm from before and now it’s dripping onto my fairly clean, white shirt. 

His wild teal eyes widen, and he falls to the ground. I scramble away before he can fall on top of me, and tears prick my eyes. 

“Shit, I knew I would do this, but I didn’t realize it would hurt this much!” I say to no one in particular. 

Daxton coughs beneath me. 

I look at him. 

His lips are moving – is he trying to actually speak? 

“Adri...” he rasps. 

“Wh- I didn’t realize you could talk still...” I whisper. 

“Tell Mother and Father. ... Tell them I miss them,” he croaks. Then his stare turns blank. 

Did he go fully espyn for his last moments? If he could talk this whole time, then why didn’t he talk to me? 

I collapse to the ground. 

The last thing I see is my brother’s dead body. 

[kat-xox]

PLS tell me ur fav things about him/fav fics/fav anything that has to do with barty crouch jr <3 he does not get enough love & recognition !!

hi!!!! oh so i have. many things.

okay so. this idea started when i got to “my beloved” in my fic, your lips, my lips. which is a two-part chapter that is completely barty-centric. and basically, barty crawled out of my computer screen and sank his claws into me and now i have my next fic planned which is going to be a canon-compliant hogwarts/first wizarding war barty pov called wicked ways. here are some of my hc for it!! :)

1. barty’s dad wanted barty to be well-rounded, and so when things started to bubble in the pureblood wizarding community he took a step back and put barty in a muggle primary school before hogwarts. so, prior to hogwarts, the only magic barty has been exposed to is the few magical objects in his father’s office at home and the books his father has let him read about hogwarts. he barely even knows what quidditch is, fascinated by all the brooms the first time he steps in diagon alley (except he’s 100% more mesmerized by the blonde boy he meets for the very first time by the window display, ofc.) so when he finally gets to hogwarts, it’s really easy for him to be influenced by some of the older boys, by regulus and evan (who have been surrounded by snotty pureblood society their whole lives) into thinking that those with magic are simply…better. stronger. that magic is what makes a person—not character—and that those without it are beneath him.

2. in his first two or so years, he’s always the odd one out between the three boys—the last one to get the joke. the one who went to “muggle school.” so he sort of takes these jokes and it translates into his idea of teasing some of the other kids. always the younger ones, or the muggleborns. but things start to go too far really quickly; he starts to learn right away that he likes feeling powerful, takes pleasure in the way he can make others feel so weak. likes when the older boys egg him on; say they’re proud of him. pride is a huge thing for barty, and so it all goes downhill from there.

3. i have always hc that canon barty doesn’t know the difference between romantic and platonic love, and I JUST LEARNED THERE IS A WORD FOR THIS!!! Idemromantic is on the aromantic spectrum and it’s basically when someone doesn’t feel the difference between the two. i think barty just feels connected to people and like, he knows it means something. that those feelings are important. but he starts out as this kid who has all this love to give and he winds up putting it in the wrong places. but then he grows up a little, and evan starts dating this girl, and he doesn’t know why that hurts, and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t like girls, and when he finds out that regulus doesn’t either the two of them wind up sticking together. it’s the moment that barty and regulus’ relationship grows and barty does love him. he does. not quite like evan, and he isn’t sure why, but he does. i am a rosekiller truther to the end HOWEVER wicked ways will absolutely have a stretch of bartylus because it just makes canonical sense to me.

4. his. FATHER. i have things to say about barty crouch sr and not a lot of them are very kind. i want to paint him as the parent that had all the potential to be a good father but just. didn’t. he failed his son. multiple times, even. he sent his kid to hogwarts and he did not have time to respond to all the letters he was sent, or even take his kid out to fucking ice cream over the summer break. barty is a lonely, lonely kid at home—his mother having left and his father barely there. and when his father is around, he’s almost always locked away in his office, working working working. so as soon as barty is old enough to understand the concept that him acting out gets his fathers attention, it’s exactly what he starts to do. it drives a wedge into their relationship; this young, ball-of-love boy that his father has never really had to worry about being outwardly rebellious. snapping turns into screaming matches, him being banned from seeing evan and regulus. and it turns to acting out because barty wants any attention, any at all, even if it’s the worst kind.

5. lastly. i am so invested in his descent to madness. i just have all these ideas that i want to put on paper so fucking badly it’s insane, lol. this fic idea has been rotting in my brain since summer. i think that learning regulus died is going to be the beginning of the end for him. he loves regulus so, so much. just. him and regulus have this thing—this connection. and when regulus dies it is fucking severed. and what’s worse is that evan feels the exact same way. like the two of them will never be the same in the aftermath of their best friend’s death. they just won’t. and i think that it can be interpreted differently in this fic—that evan dies after regulus—because that’s what’s going to work in this case and therefore that’s what imma do lol. but when evan dies. when evan. god, when he dies, shit is going to hit the fucking fan let me tell you. barty’s time in azkaban is going to be the most gut-wrenching, soul-crushing days of ruminating over the most ruthless regrets. everyone in bartys life, has failed him. miserably. they’ve left him there to rot, rot, rot. and so i have some theories about his mother, and how she ends up back in his life as he gets older and how they wind up switching places. but at that point, barty is so broken down that it doesn’t even matter. the only guidance he has left in his life is fucking voldemort, who convinces him that regulus was a traitor and never felt any love for him at all. that evan died a heroic death that should be fucking commemorated. and barty is so lost by this point, that he believes him. he listens to him—even kills his own father for him—up until he’s sentenced to death via dementor’s kiss. and he looks the dementor in the eyes, feels the leftover fractions of his soul leave his body. and he forgets that he was ever even loved at all.

TYSM FOR ASKING ME ABOUT THIS!!!!! truly you are so right; man’s bcj does NOT get talked about enough and i want to change this !! hope ur day is amazing-mazing & ty for your kind comment btw!! hope i didn’t drown you in one too many bcj headcanons 😭😅

[depressedhatakekakashi]

“Stay still.” yua instructed when Kakashi tried to squirm away. All she was doing was fixing a spot on his shoulder for pachirisu but her son was putting in his best effort to free himself from her company as soon as possible.

“Is this really necessary?” He asked, his eyes darting between her and the door just behind her. “You could just-“

Finishing with the shoulder sleeve, Yua turned her attention to her son and frowned. “Stop it,” she warned, poking the side of his head with two extended fingers. “It’s just a photo.”

“I have better things to be doing, mother.”

“Do you?” Holding out an arm, Yua smiled when she felt Pachirisu’s tiny claws digging into her pants as it crawls its way up her legs and over her back until it was perched comfortably on her shoulder. “I want a picture of my son with his namesake. What is more important than that?”

Kakashi opened his mouth, preparing to provide her with an answer that she was certain she’d shoot down just as she had shot down the last five excuses he tried to give her.

“Five minutes,” she promised, holding up five fingers for emphasis and immidiatly earning herself a glare from her son. “I’ll take one picture and then you can run off back to Gai and complain about how terrible i am.”

“I’m not- mother!” He didn’t raise his voice, but there was an annoyance in his tone that spoke louder than he ever could. Unwilling to wait for his argument, Yua held out her arm and gently laid her hand over his shoulder. As soon as her hand was down, Pachirisu took the cue and moved itself across her arm and onto Kakashi’s shoulder.

“There,” she smiled as Pachirisu found a comfortable spot and wrapped its tail around the back of Kakashi’s neck. “Perfect.”

Reaching a hand up, Kakashi placed it gently on Pachirisu’s head. “So much fuss.”

Making her way back toward the camera she had set up before her son’s arrival, Yua stepped in behind it and peered through the lens. “ Why shouldn’t it be? This is the first shiny pokemon i have ever caught.”

“And you named it-“ his words were cut off with a groan. “Mother, why exactly did you name it after me?”

“Oh, that’s obvious,” waiting for the perfect moment, she clicked the shutter button and smiled triumphantly when the sound of a perfectly captured photograph rang through the room. “It’s a little electric brat, just like you.”

Her electric brat whom she loved more than anything in the world and would commit atrocities to protect, but an electric brat none the else.

“Most people call their children their ‘sub’ or ‘precious baby’ or something equally as cute,” Kakashi complained “and here i stand getting called an ‘electric brat’. What did i do to deserve this?”

“Would you prefer your fathers nickname?” She asked as she straightened herself up and started at the beautiful scene in front of her. Pachirisu propped up perfectly on Kakashi’s shoulder leaning into him as he scratched it gently behind the ear.

“No…” he sighed, accepting his defeat with more grace than he usually did. “I think i’ll keep the ‘electric brat’ nickname, thanks.”

[beef-brisket]

((It was a risky move- but I had no idea who would first man lol))

Vaggie backed away, she knew not to mess with these two, especially in Heaven.

Vaggie: Look- I'm not here for trouble-

Alastor: Now, that is where you're wrong! You just setting foot here is more than enough trouble. And I don't like what your little princess is trying to do~.

Vaggie: What-?

Husk: Think of it this way. We don't want your scum clawing it's why up here. This place is pure and not a halfway house.

Vaggie: Everyone at the Hazbin has been working really hard and making great progress-

Alastor: I don't care, "Vaggie". So, I'm here to make a little deal with you~. You'll sabotage your girlfriends little presentation, and we won't spill your little secret~.

Husk: Hmph. I'm sure she won't be too happy to learn you're not who you say you are.

Alastor: Ha! What fun. See you at the meeting, "Vaggie"~.

Vaggie curled in on herself, fuck she hates it up here. She watched as Alastor and Husk walked out, laughing. Both of them are vicious on the battle field and definitely shouldn't be fucked with.

Looks like Vaggie doesn't have much of a choice.

Lucifer: See, that's where we diverge. What do you do, exactly?

Adams eye twitched. He should have gone to his room.

Adam: Maybe you were too busy being depressed or whatever else to notice that I was with Charlie writing a whole ten year plan for the hotel.

Lucifer: ...that took all night?

Adam: Believe it or not, it did. She put a lot of work into that report. I'm sure she would have appreciated some assistance from her father, but we can't expect too much from the king of Hell. Can we~?

Lucifer glared: Listen here, you fuck. Im trying-

Adam: Are you? Because so far, all I've heard from you is lies, excuses, mocking- oh, and the occasional insult. All not very cleaver, mind you. Is there a reason you've decided to crawl out of your depression pit? Or are you just here to force your way into something important, do some damage, hurt your daughter and then fuck off to your palace again?

Lucifer growled: I'm here to help my daughter.

Adam: Hm, could have fooled me~.

Lowkey want an au where Adam has Alastors' powers.

The tentacles

The eyes

The changing size

The shadows

The sass

The deal making

Him owning Husk and Nifty

The musical numbers

The radio control

The tentacles- have I mentioned that before?

The rivalry with Lucifer

Maybe he replaces Alastor entirely. No Alastor. Only Adam. It's always been Adam.

Thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

Only Adam lol This is good! His Husk and Nifty could be Lute and Peter.

He doesn't have to smile all the time does he?

Yessss, and he plays rock instead of jazz lol And yes of course there is a rivalry lol

[im-657-mv]

9. "I've always fantasized about this moment, let me enjoy your presence, darling..."

[requested] 001

word count: 801

He was appearing more often and in more places. In crowds and behind flashes of cars. But never for no longer than mere seconds did he stand there, staring. You didn't understand though. Viktor, the love of your life, stuck in the past reoccurring in your daily life, why? Why now of all times? Were you going crazy? You might as well be because seeing a dead person in broad daylight is more than concerning. People have been sent to the ward for littler things than this.

But you had a feeling in the pit of your stomach. This was something of greater importance. You just knew that all of this was happening for a reason. What if... what if Viktor was contacting you from the beyond?

I guess you were a believer in those sort of things, spiritual things if you must. But never in your lived life so far did you think the occult would make meets with you. For them, for Viktor, to dip his hand into this world must mean something, right?

With these thoughts spinning webs in your head you lay awake and unable to catch the sleep you had wanted most nights. Was he really trying to get your attention? The love of your life was dead. He had died. You had mourned his ever so presence in your life, and now that he's somewhat here again... Well, you couldn't pass this opportunity up. No one would.

The next morning you reluctantly made the purchase of an ouija board. It made you anxious and hesitant to even touch it, but this was what you saw in the movies. It was a way to contact the dead, whether you liked it or not.

You set everything up with shaky hands, labored breath, and worry lacing your beautiful face. And every so often you would question all that you were doing. Was this the right choice? Because talking about it and actually doing it are completely two different things in this circumstance. You bit your nails thinking, but you knew what your answer was. Deep down you just wanted to talk to him one more time. One last time.

The lights were off and the candles flared and lit up your living room, lighting the board and your face. This was it.

"In the name of the dead, I wish to speak to my Viktor. My husband. Show me a sign if you're here." You waited with absolute dreadful silence trying to sense if the triangle was going to move or not.

But not even three counts had passed until you felt something. Shivers went up from the bottom to the top of your spine slowly, erotically, as it trailed upward to the very base of your adorned neck. Goosebumps spread onto your skin and the hairs on both your arms and neck stood straight. You gulped and gasped at this exotic feeling that was quite new for a person like you.

"Viktor..." You panted as the feeling returned yet again. It burned into your skin as it crawled up making you itch with a new uncomfortableness across your back. Your face turned upward as a groan slipped out from between your soft lips at the experience.

With your eyes shut tight you felt the triangle move. You looked down and immediately saw it slowly sliding across the board to... 'NO'. Th-this wasn't Viktor...

Eyes widened and thoughts no longer being able to process anything the triangle flew away from your fingers, smashing violently into the wall with a loud bang.

"No no no no no..." You repeated shooting straight up from your seat as your mind raced a hundred miles per hour. You feared the worse upon your fate. Was how you were going to die? By the claws of a demon.

A chuckle echoed throughout the room filling it with a new ounce of terror and horror. And one by one, each candle burst into high flames proceeding to go out leaving you in the darkness alone with the stench of your fear and panicked breathing.

Only then did you feel it again. But it wasn't the searing pain all along your back. It was the placement of a cold unmoving hand gripping at your waist unwavering from its newfound spot on your skin. You stayed still, frozen as another hand joined it holding your body in place.

"I am no Viktor..." He whispered as he slowly turned your body to face him in his embrace. He wanted you to know of his beauty, of his presence, hence the sights of your dead husband. Even if you didn't know it was actually him it was all worth it in this underlining moment.

"But I've always fantasized about this moment, let me enjoy your presence, darling..."

taglist

@hueanhdang @zadri @whatinthefreshhellisthis @hawkinsbylers

[1kook]

new parent syndrome

— kim namjoon x (f) reader

SUMMARY You love Namjoon, honest. But you love your daughter Hyejoo even more— it’s not a controversial sentiment when you know he’s the same way! —and going back to a regular adult life sans kids absolutely sucks. (Or so you thought.) WARNINGS dilf!joon, dreamy husband joon, loving parents au, jimin is also a dad, bathtub sexy times, exhibitionism 😳 kinda sorta, tiny praise kink, joon calls her wifey TT, fingering, cunninglingus, doggy style, it’s kinda cheesy n romantic /.\, unprotected sex, …. impreg kink RATINGS m (18+) WC 9.5k 

NOTES writing parent fics is harder than i thought :/ i had this idea last week n was like yes, lets write this fic that absolutely no one asked for... except me! <3 so here we are, fantasizing about dreamy dad joon.... as always i have to thank rumu ( @kigurumu​ ) who is kind enough to edit these n b like that don't make no sense -_- anyway lemme know what u think !! enjoy !!

No matter how hard you try, the letter f refuses to fit itself into Hyejoo’s phonemic understanding. She’s a growing toddler so it’s only normal that there are sounds she still can’t pronounce, words she doesn’t quite get. But her inability to say food or family or friends, which are undoubtedly the three most important things in her three year-old world right now, is definitely a setback you didn’t see coming. 

Your worrywart husband has taken matters into his own hands, using the power of Google and about twelve parenting books to create an extensive, one-hour-a-day, mini lesson to try and increase her pronunciation skills. Of course, Hyejoo already attends daycare in the mornings while you and Namjoon are off at work, and gets sufficient learning done there. So she can’t exactly sit through Joon’s lectures, no matter how pretty he tries to decorate her flashcards. She’s still tiny— she’s still your baby, and you want her to enjoy the last of her daycare years before you’re forced to submit her to the worst twelve years of her life (also known as compulsory education). 

But as you’ve mentioned before, Namjoon doesn’t quite feel the same way. 

“She can’t sound out the letter,” he mopes in bed that night. He’s laying down beside you, face smushed against your thigh. The lamp on your side of the bed is the only thing on, casting a faint golden hue on his cheeks.

This conversation has occurred a variety of times these past few weeks, and you’ve just about ran out of every comforting reassurance possible. You settle on stroking a hand through his hair. There are emails to respond to and clients to check in with, but there’s also a huffy husband in bed beside you who quite pitifully crawls up into your arms. 

It’s with his face between your boobs that he speaks again. “What if she’s getting made fun of at school? Or her teachers think she’s dumb?” You roll your eyes. “My baby is not dumb, __,” he says, as if you don’t know. “Her IQ came back above average when I took her to the development specialist that one time, remember?” You have half the mind to tell him an IQ test on a three year old isn’t exactly valid, but there’s already enough stacked on his plate. Finding out he wasted a hundred bucks for an invalid test would just be the cherry on top of all his worries. 

Water clings to the very tips of his hair, remnants of his bath with Hyejoo. Namjoon is getting older now, nothing like the dashing grad student you had met what feels like a lifetime ago. There’s bags under his eyes, bags that surpass any all-nighter-pulling college student’s, induced by none other than the sheer power of becoming a parent. And still, he retains his beauty, looks like a doll with his skin so dewy from his skincare routine, lips puffy and red and kissable. 

He looks up, and you take the opportunity to place a kiss on his lips, his familiar scent making you melt into his arms. When he pulls away, there’s still a subtle furrow between his brows. 

“Hyejoo is fine,” you reassure him, carding his brown hair out of his face. He leans into the touch, eyes falling shut. “Our girl is the smartest three year-old out there,” you huff, feeling the slightest bit annoyed that he could even insinuate otherwise. “And if she was having problems at school, you know I would be the first one in there, fighting all the other moms.” 

Namjoon relents, face falling back into its haven between your tits. “Okay,” he mumbles, muffled from the way his plush lips drag against the soft skin over your sternum. 

The subject of Namjoon’s worries is in the other room sound asleep, not the least bit concerned with measly letters and sounds. It’s really only Namjoon who is, his stack of letter flashcards glaring at you from on top of the dresser. “Your mother hen is showing,” you tease as he slips beneath the covers, leaning over you to flick off your lamp. Just like everything else in your house, his t-shirt smells like him. It’s a natural, woodsy scent that floods your nostrils and makes your toes curl when he comes so close. 

Namjoon snorts as he settles beside you, beefy arm pillowing your head as he pulls you close. “I’m not a mother hen,” he says, hand on your waist, the tantalizing expanse of his neck before your eyes. “I’m the rooster— the cock,” he snickers, and you reward his terrible attempt at a joke with a pinch to his side that has him retreating to the other end of the bed. 

Hyejoo’s best friend in the entire world— or, as she says, her best pren in the entire world —is none other than Park Yerin from daycare. As the universe would have it, Park Yerin is also the one and only daughter of your college philosophy seat neighbor, Park Jimin. 

Crossing paths with him later down the road was not something you could ever anticipate, especially when you and Jimin were never that close in college to begin with. It was the only class you had with him in all four years, one where you had quietly acknowledged his charisma and occasionally shared homework answers, before never speaking to him again. You could have greeted him on campus, as you often crossed paths. But Park Jimin was a walking friendship magnet who seemed to bring with him a parade of followers everywhere he went, and approaching him required three layers of strategic planning if you wanted to catch him alone. 

So bumping into him at the entrance of Hyejoo’s daycare six years later comes as a bit of a shock. You had never pegged him as the type to settle down so quickly— you don’t mean to label him, but there were certain college stereotypes that he fit like a glove —but there he was, carrying the tiny love of his life who’s currently dressed in a bright pink Minnie Mouse dress. 

Unsurprisingly, just like her father, Park Yerin has the same enthralling personality that makes everyone in the three to four year-old daycare class want to be her friend, and your sweet little Hyejoo is not exempt. 

Long story short, out of all the kids at Sunny Side Daycare, Yerin is Hyejoo’s favorite, and Hyejoo is Yerin’s favorite. 

So now it’s been a little over a year since the two girls have established their friendship, which means it’s been a little over a year of acquainting yourself with Jimin again. He’s a house husband, something you never expected, and he loves his daughter like no other. Some afternoons after daycare are spent with Jimin and Yerin at the nearest coffee shop, watching the girls haphazardly scribble over every piece of paper they can get their hands on while the two of you catch up. 

Overall, you’re happy Hyejoo can have a friend like Yerin, and secretly, you're also happy you can finally befriend a fellow parent as nice and put together as Jimin. On top of that, Namjoon’s liked him on the few occasions he’s met him; the two have even gone out for drinks. 

However, befriending Jimin and Yerin comes at a cost, and that cost is seeing your little girl grow up.  

It’s your turn to mope. 

“Yerin asked her to sleepover,” you groan, sadly patting in your skincare routine the next night. Namjoon is somewhere behind you, his naked back glaring at you through the reflection of your vanity mirror. He’s so broad and big, sleep shorts clinging to his waist as he lotions up his body post-shower. There’s a thin gold chain around his neck that glints everytime he moves around, biceps flexing and bulging in plain view until he finally slips his shirt on. There was a time in your life where his back could not go more than two days unscathed, your rabid (read: horny) claw marks painting rosy trails down his spine. These days, you can barely remember the last time he’s held your hand. 

“Who?” he asks once he’s settled beneath the covers with whatever book he’s reading now and his thick-rimmed reading glasses. 

“Who else,” you say, tugging your night robe closer to your chest as if it’ll prevent your heart from breaking anymore than it already was. “Hyejoo’s first sleepover,” you sigh. 

You take it harder than you imagined. In the back of your mind, you’ve always known your little girl was growing up— hello, you were literally watching her grow more and more inches every single day —but you had convinced yourself she would stay your baby for a little while longer. As much as you wanted her to see and learn about the world, you selfishly wanted to keep her home too. She was your baby, your only one at that.

At least Namjoon feels the same way. “Absolutely not,” he squawks, abruptly slamming his book shut. He’s usually really meticulous about lining up his fancy bookmark right on the line he left off on, so his sudden carelessness tells you all you need to know about how he feels. 

You sit down beside him, hand over his. “It’s Yerin’s birthday,” you inform him in what you hope is a comforting tone; unbeknownst to him, you’re trying to reassure yourself as well. “And Jimin said he and his wife are gonna be there the whole night.” You trust Jimin, you really do. If there’s anyone who’s more in love with their kid than you and Namjoon, it’s Jimin. He would never let anything happen to his Yerin, and by extension, he would never let anything happen to your Hyejoo. He’s a good dad. 

Namjoon rubs at his eyes. In the span of two minutes, he’s aged about five years. “No,” he sighs softly, squeezing your hand tightly. “Once she starts going to sleepovers she’ll start wearing makeup and getting into relationships and having her heart broken—“ 

A kiss is enough to silence him when he gets like this, his warm breath fanning across your bottom lip when you pull away. “She just wants to wear tutus and sing Baby Shark right now,” you murmur, hand creeping up over his chest. His heart is beating fast as hell beneath his t-shirt, feels like it’ll burst straight out of his chest if you don’t calm him down. 

He’s the bigger worrier out of the two of you, has a classic case of paranoid parent syndrome. 

It’s no secret that Namjoon has a big brain; he’s an educated man with a respectable job. For every problem he encounters, he can procure a variety of solutions with different approaches. He’s always prepared and part of you thinks he’s a huge reason you managed to survive those first few weeks as a mom. Unlike you, who had attended a whopping two mommy classes in preparation for your upcoming child, Namjoon had studied up on parenting. A lot. He had read books and reviewed scientific studies, had learned about development on the chemistry level and the social level, did all he could until he was confident in his own dad abilities. 

But, for every solution Namjoon can find, there are always twenty-eight other factors to worry about. 

“What if she has an allergic reaction and Jimin doesn’t know what to do,” he pales, death grip on your hand. His matching wedding band digs into your skin and you have to wrestle his hand away before he accidentally breaks your finger. He nearly broke your neck once when you were in college, had almost sent you to the ER mid-thrust because he had underestimated his own strength while trying to choke you.

“Hyejoo doesn’t have any allergies,” you remind him, giving up on your awkward half-seated position as you clamber over him. His thighs are full beneath you, tense up as you move over him and he manhandles you into his chest. 

He’s not done. “What if she asks Jimin for a fizzy drink and he can’t understand her?” His eyes are owlish beneath his glasses, covered in what you can only describe as a visible sheen of absolute terror. “What if he thinks she’s saying ‘pissy’ not ‘fizzy,’ __— what then?” It’s amazing, really, how a man who graduated cum laude can hypothesize this many disasters pertaining to a four year-old’s sleepover. 

In the other room, Hyejoo calls for you, so you gladly take the opportunity to remove yourself from Namjoon and his spiraling thoughts. “Look,” you say, tightening the sash of your robe as you get back up. “I’m gonna go tell her that she can go to Yerin’s sleepover tomorrow,” you tell him, giving him exactly three seconds to groan dramatically, before continuing, “and you figure out how to turn that big brain off by the time I come back.” 

Luckily, the cause of Hyejoo’s sudden wake up is a tiny bug bite she got from playing outside that just won’t stop itching. “Mommy, it hurts,” she whines, digging her nails into the tiny red mark by her knee. 

“Uh huh, lemme see,” you order, turning on her bedside lamp to illuminate the space. Her room is the prettiest shade of yellow, fitting for a ball of sunshine such as herself. “Were you playing by the flowerbeds?” You ask, running a finger over the mark a little too weird looking to simply be another mosquito bite. 

She knows she’s not supposed to play near the flowers— the bugs like her a little too much. It’s with a hesitant little nod that she confesses to it. You give her a pointed look. “You’re not supposed to play too close to the flowers,” you remind her, a tiny scolding for now. 

With a sniffle she responds, “not by the plowers.” 

A little bit of anti-itch cream has her settling, and by the time you return to your bedroom, Namjoon is out cold. 

“How old is Yerin turning?” Namjoon asks her at the door, heartbreak clearly painting his features as you help Hyejoo into her shoes. 

“Pour,” she beams, her tiny hand held up to show four stubby fingers. She has Namjoon’s pretty smile, an honest look in her eyes that makes you want to put her in your pocket and never let her go. Alas, Yerin’s sleepover party starts at five and Hyejoo has been trying to leave since noon. 

“Pour,” Namjoon repeats, shooting you a pointed look as if to say see. He had fought the decision up until the end, had even tried to tactically convince your daughter to stay home by getting a head start on preparing her favorite food. And well. She said no. So now the two of you are stuck having dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner without her. 

She’s got her little travel bag on now, tiny feet stuffed into her ladybug rain boots because it had rained last night and she’s awfully addicted to jumping in muddy puddles. She’s absolutely adorable, your little girl, and you think Namjoon might’ve let out a tiny sob earlier. (Or maybe it was you.)

Namjoon joins you at the front door. “Be good,” he warns her. His eyes are suspiciously wet, but you don’t say anything because yours are too. You’re both crouched in front of her, her big eyes glancing back and forth between the two of you without a care in the world. Mixing your self-assured personality with Namjoon’s (mostly) composed attitude was quite possibly the worst genetic crossover to ever happen; Hyejoo doesn’t even seem remotely bothered by the fact she’s spending her first night away from home. Meanwhile, you and Namjoon are on the verge of a joint breakdown. 

Anyway, Namjoon gives in first. “Love you forever, princess,” he tells her, their ritual expression, and kisses her forehead. 

She accepts it and then, in an unexpected turn of events, surges forward to hug him around the neck. “Love you pporever, daddy,” she repeats, and your heart feels so painfully full at the sight, like you just unlocked a new life achievement from seeing your daughter and her father be so cute together. You don’t get to coo at them for long, because then she’s giving you a warm hug as well, the same phrase muttered in your ear. 

It’s the hardest thing about parenting. 

Seeing your kid slowly broaden their horizons, meeting new people and learning new things. Leaving home. (Granted, she’ll be back by tomorrow afternoon but even that feels like an eternity away to the dramatic parents you and Namjoon have become.) The second goodbye on Jimin’s doorstep isn’t any easier, especially when Hyejoo tugs on your arm and asks you to “say night to daddy please” for her, and your heart breaks just a little more. Jimin flashes you an understanding smile but all you want to do is punch him in the nose for ever telling Yerin what a sleepover is. 

You get home and Namjoon is in a calmer state by now, some old sitcom he hates playing on the TV. Usually, this time of day is reserved for his daily phonemic lessons with Hyejoo, drilling the f sound into her tiny brain, so you guess this is his preferred method of coping in its place: torturing himself with some boring television show. 

“Hey,” he says, and you crawl into his lap with a sad sniffle. “Shh,” he soothes, hand on the back of your head as he guides you into his chest. You’re actually crying now, which is super embarrassing in itself considering you scolded Namjoon for this exact behavior last night. He doesn’t mention it as he pats your back, stupid sitcom paused in favor of soothing you with the deep vibrations of his voice. “Hye’s gonna be back tomorrow, baby.”

“I want her back now,” you huff, vaguely aware of how childish and silly you sound. The tables have turned, and you find yourself wishing you had the same emotional fortitude as Namjoon now. All those parenting books have clearly amounted for something. Somehow, you will the feeling back into your body and pull away from his chest. You must look a mess because he doesn’t even try to hide the amusement on his face. “This is the worst day of my life.” 

Namjoon laughs, deep and hearty, with his eyes squeezing shut from the force. “Come on, wifey, those chicken nuggets aren’t gonna eat themselves.”

It’s quite possibly the most boring evening you’ve had in years. 

(The internet calls it new parent syndrome, where you’re so undeniably in love with your first child and the parenting experience that the rest of the world is put on pause.)

You love Namjoon, honest. But you love your daughter Hyejoo even more— it’s not a controversial sentiment when you know he’s the same way! —and going back to a regular adult life sans kids absolutely sucks. (Or so you thought.)

Kids are prone to asking weirdly philosophical questions, a fact that had greatly delighted you when Hyejoo first started speaking. Who am I? What’s money? Why not? It could get annoying sometimes, trying to answer all of Hyejoo’s curiosities. But as you begin on your second batch of dinosaur chicken nuggets, all you can think about is how Jimin gets to answer them tonight. 

Anyway, seven rolls around and you and Namjoon are bored. You can only watch so many episodes of Seinfield before you get tired of feigning interest, so you retire from the living room for the night. “I’m gonna take a bath,” you tell him, but he’s as brain dead as you by now. 

A second later, “lemme join.” 

It’s been a while since the two of you have squeezed into the bathtub together, usually assigning each other days to individually join Hyejoo. So it’s really not either of your faults when you realize a second too late how small the space is. One on each end, feet bumping into each other with every movement, it’s like trying to squeeze two feet into one shoe. You try to readjust yourself, but the bath flooring is slippery and you nearly take away Namjoon’s procreative abilities with a mighty kick. 

To make a long story short, you end up pressed against his chest, Namjoon’s thick thighs framing you as you relax into the steaming water. Instinctively, he reaches for Hyejoo’s bottle of baby shampoo that sits on the tub’s ledge and only catches himself just as the first droplet is meeting his palm. “Oh, fuck,” he sighs, quickly closing the lid before he can waste any more precious product. “Shit, I’m so sad.”

You snort, sinking farther back into his chest. He’s warm and soft in all the right ways, the hot water making him slippery. “What did we even do before Hyejoo?” you ask, reaching into the deepest crevices of your mind for answers. Namjoon’s hand comes around, fingers sprawled out over your knee, the one you have propped up and breaking the water’s surface 

He makes a rather vague sound, something like I don’t know, as he lolls forward, forehead on your shoulder. “Go on dates,” he responds eventually. “Fuck like crazy.” 

You roll your eyes. “Besides that,” you chide, pinching the back of his palm. “Don’t we have any hobbies? Any interests?” He doesn’t answer, which is all the answer you need. Why didn’t you get into puzzle solving back when it was a trend? “Is this what our life has become? Crying in a bathtub at seven pm because our emotional support child isn’t here?”

“Our only child,” he corrects. Namjoon tries to placate your looming existential crisis with a kiss to your shoulder, lips against wet skin, that he trails up to your neck. “And what’s wrong with going on dates and fucking?” he murmurs, hands around your stomach. “That’s how we got here,” he teases, and you’re not sure if it’s the warm water or the way his voice is like melted chocolate dripping down your body, but you become all too aware of his presence at that moment. Particularly, of the plush lips mindlessly kissing your shoulder, the wet smack of their motions. 

Another kiss, this time right below your ear. It has your head rolling to the side, exposing more skin for him to kiss up on. There’s still that overwhelming cloud of worry in the back of your mind, but it’s gradually nudged away by Namjoon’s warm hands on your skin. Sensing your weakening resolve, Namjoon strikes again. A hand slips down over your stomach, brushes over your belly button and finds itself between your thighs. “You used to love date nights, baby,” he says, the pad of his pointer finger grazing your clit. 

It’s been so long since you and Namjoon have been alone like this, months since you’ve been able to touch him beyond a simple make out session, a halfhearted grope beneath the sheets. Your daughter, as much as you loved her, made intimacy impossible for the two of you. She was always around, always looking for one or the both of you, so there was never time to even think about getting frisky. 

Only now, with his finger circling your clit, do you realize the blessing in disguise that was your daughter’s first slumber party away from home. 

His finger nudges your clit, flicks it teasingly. “Why don’t you let me take care of you, hm?” he hums, the hand that had been soothingly stroking the inside of your thigh coming up to rub at your breasts. 

“Yes, please,” you whine. Resting your head on his shoulder leaves Namjoon with a clear view down your front, lips kissing and sucking along your neck. His huge hand palms your breast, massaging the sensitive skin. You hadn’t realized how sore you’d been until now, his nimble fingers pressing deliciously into the skin. If your nipples weren’t already hard before, they certainly were now. 

He traps one pearled nipple between two fingers, the sudden pinch making you hiss. “Easy, now,” he chuckles, his low tenor paired with his wandering hands making your eyes roll back. 

Namjoon liked to use a higher tone around the house. He read somewhere that children prefer lighter, sweeter tones, so the last few years have been spent listening to him lighten the tone of his voice for the sake of your daughter. The deeper, growlier voice that had first made you fall in love with him became a rarity in your household, reserved for quiet nights in the living room or long drives where Hyejoo was asleep in the backseat. Only then does he unleash the gravelly qualities of his voice. 

Then, and apparently, now. 

His doll-like lips press against your jaw, suck lightly enough to make your body tingle. “Do you remember how it was the first time?” he says suddenly, his hot breath against your neck. 

Namjoon’s got your clit trapped between two wandering fingers, has your pussy twitching with the vibrations of his voice alone. And for some reason, he’s trying to reminisce about your first time sleeping together. 

“N- Not really,” you confess, subtly reaching down. You cover his palm with yours, hoping your touch will encourage him to carry on with his actions. It doesn’t. It just leaves both your hands hovering over your pussy, your thighs instinctively closing in on them to keep him there. Namjoon responds to that, releasing the breast he had been gently massaging in order to pry your legs apart. He does it so easily, despite the way your legs feel tight as hell, and the fact makes you whimper. 

Once he’s got his hands back between your thighs— this time, he uses one hand to carefully part your quivering lips, the other one gingerly pressing down against your clit to draw the most heavenly sensations out of you —Namjoon feels the need to dive into a recap of your first fuck. “You were so cute,” he laughs, and you don’t know if you should take offense. Well, considering you're married and have a kid now, it’s probably too late to say anything anyway. His hand suddenly switches gears, three fingers joining together to begin caressing them over your throbbing clit. “Kept talking to me so politely, even when you were creaming my cock.”

You scoff, but it gets cancelled out by the moan he draws out of you. “D- Didn’t know you that well,” you remind him, your thighs twitching. You desperately want to buck forward into his giving hands, want to feel the true power of those long, pretty fingers on your cunt. 

Behind you, Namjoon’s cock grows thick, his breathing a slow and steady pace by your ear. You can already imagine how heavy he is, the vein that runs along the underside and throbs with each new bit of stimulus he receives. Normally you would reach back and try to offer him the same helping hand he gives you, but your thighs feel wobbly already. Your libido has been dormant for so long that even just the barest flick of his thumb has you dissolving into his arms like this is your first time. 

It’s as if Namjoon’s sensing your inner battle, a muffled laugh against the side of your neck. “This is about you,” he reminds you. As much as you want to protest, a sudden hard rub against your quivering lips has you gasping for breath. “Give me a kiss,” he commands softly, nudging his nose against the side of your face. It takes a second for you to ground yourself, draw yourself away from your building pleasure, to turn toward his waiting lips. 

Namjoon kisses you slowly, like he’s taking his time with you. For the first time in a long time, he truly can. He doesn’t have to worry about a certain someone waking up in the middle of the night or walking in or anything along those lines, lips molding against yours. Plush as always, the faint taste of dinosaur chicken nuggets clinging to his lips. It makes you laugh a little, drawing away with an airy giggle. Namjoon smiles at your reaction, murmuring a soft, “what is it?”

You shake your head, eyes fluttering shut as he continues his circular motions against your clit. “Nothing,” you pant, finally getting in your first thrust against his fingers. “I just really need you,” you say instead, pushing his hand harder down against you. 

You’re feeling a little antsy, having been deprived of this sensation for so long. Namjoon knows this, which is why he very purposely slows down. “There’s no rush,” he smirks, placing a kiss against your chin. “How do you want it, baby?”

The inside of your brain is a scrambled mess, filled with fantasies and ideas that have been plaguing you for months. There’s so much you want to do, want to try, but it’s like your brain completely blanks out when he asks. It’s just as you’re beginning to formulate a thought that you’re interrupted by the sound of your ringtone in the other room. Your husband’s arms tighten around you. “Don’t go,” he says quietly, the tip of his nose running along your neck. It’s so tempting to stay here, to let yourself go in his arms and chase the pleasure you’ve been craving for so long. 

But the endless possibilities of who exactly could be calling wins over. Was it work? Was it your parents? Jimin?

It is with a heavy sigh that you reach for Namjoon’s hand, slowly pushing him away from your cunt. “I’m sorry, honey,” you frown, standing up out of the tub. Your legs really do feel like jelly, and you nearly slip and crack your skull on the porcelain edge. Luckily, Namjoon is there to steady you with two secure hands on your waist. “I’ll make it quick,” you reassure him, dropping a kiss on his pouty lips as you fasten a towel around your body. 

The phone is just starting up its final ring when you reach it. It’s Jimin, and you’re torn between being thankful that you’re getting word on Hyejoo and full blown panic from the fact Jimin is calling you while Hyejoo is in his care. The unease has you accepting the call without a second more to waste. “Hello?” you say, hand tightening on the front of your towel. Stray water droplets trace ticklish trails down the backs of your thighs.

“__?” comes Jimin’s sweet voice. It’s normally soothing, but right now it has every hair on your body standing on end. Before you can even respond, Jimin is jumping headfirst into a whirlwind of a conversation. “Sorry for calling so late, but I just wanted to check in on you, babe. I know you were really panicked about Hye’s first night away from home, but don’t worry! Me and the missus are doing everything we can to make sure she’s fine.”

His confidence reassures you, lessens the weight that had been sitting on your chest all afternoon. But at the same time, you find yourself wanting to throttle him. 

Your gorgeous, sexy hunk of a husband is sitting in the other room, cock at full mast and ready to pleasure you to the moon and back, and here you are listening to Jimin brag about how good of a caretaker he is. You were definitely going to make Jimin pay for this. 

Deep breaths, you tell yourself, toying with a stray thread on your towel. “Really,” you drawl, and you can practically see Jimin’s ego swell over the line. 

“Yup,” Jimin agrees, and by the sounds of it, doesn’t seem like he’s hoping to end this call anytime soon. You want to shoulder part of the blame; you had been extra sad and mopey when you dropped your daughter off. On top of being a good dad, Jimin was also a good friend. It was only naturally he wanted to reassure you when he could. 

Still, the memory of Namjoon’s wet chest was calling out to you. 

“The girls are playing princess in the living room with the missus right now,” Jimin chats on. “New dresses and everything— the Yerin Birthday Special —and they asked me to be their handsome prince!” You sincerely cannot wait for the day you get to introduce Jimin to your right fist. 

“That’s great,” you offer, not that he’s really listening. He’s too busy talking about Yerin (and making sure to include Hyejoo in for your sake) and how amazing it is to watch your kids grow up before your very eyes. And while you agree with the sentiment, you really wish he had called you and told you this earlier, when you were at the peak of your motherly meltdown. Not now with Namjoon waiting for you in the bathtub. Was the water even warm anymore? 

The mind blowing orgasm practically slips from your fingertips the longer Jimin talks. “Anyway! Enough about them. I’m thinking of trying out that blueberry bread recipe that aired on TV last night. You know, the one they had that actress make.”

You’ve just about resigned yourself to listening to Jimin talk about his love for pastries for the next thirty minutes when something brushes up behind you. “What the fu—“

He’s so tall and broad, practically covers your entire frame when he stands so close. And his smile is so pretty when he aims it your way. “Sh,” Namjoon murmurs, gesturing towards your phone.  

“__?” Jimin calls. “Everything alright?” 

Namjoon nods eagerly, the hands on your waist properly positioning you in front of him. It’s with a shudder running down your spine that you respond. “I’m fine,” you tell Jimin, letting go of the front of your towel when Namjoon abruptly pushes you over. The white comforter infused with both of your scents comes all too close, your elbow barely managing to reach out in time to catch you.  

Wide eyed, you turn to throw Namjoon a scandalized look over your shoulder. He meets you with a close-mouthed smile, the dimples in his cheeks making themselves known. His chest is drier now, the smooth planes covered in a thin dewy glow and a spattering of droplets he missed. There’s a towel around his waist that’s barely doing its job, especially when you catch sight of the erection tenting beneath it. 

“As I was saying,” Jimin rambles on. Namjoon nods towards the device, refusing to move again until you finally turn back around to finish your conversation with Jimin. “That actress fucked it up so bad. They really give anyone with a pretty face screen time these days, huh? At least I know how to properly preheat an oven.”

You nod. “You do make the best cookies in town,” you respond, a ball of anticipation building in your throat from the mere fact Namjoon is standing behind you. 

It’s completely warranted once you feel two cold fingers trail up the back of your thigh, your towel gradually pushed up to drape around your waist. The air in your room is a little chilly, and the goosebumps that raise on your skin are partly due to that, as well as the ghostlike touch of Namjoon’s fingers. “Pretty,” he murmurs, so deep and gravelly it has you shuddering.  

Two fingers dance along your skin, and you subconsciously jolt away when they meet the tender skin around your pussy. By your ear, Jimin says, “if I completely fuck it up, we’ll just pretend this conversation never happened. Deal?”

Using your own body against you, Namjoon lets one finger dip just the smallest bit into your quivering hole. You clench up, thighs trembling when he eventually pulls it back out and traces your own wetness over your folds. “Perfect,” you bite out, clutching at the sheets beneath you as Namjoon reaches for your forgotten clit. It’s still so sensitive from your little fun in the bath, and it takes every ounce of strength in you to hold back the whiny gasp in your throat. 

Behind you, Namjoon suddenly presses in close. One hand on your hip, he gently encourages you onto the bed. Your knees sink into the mattress, one less strain on your legs. “Good girl,” he praises quietly, rewarding your behavior with a finger sinking into your cunt. 

“Joo—“ you almost slip, burying your face into the sheets just in time. 

A devastatingly slow pace, his finger just barely moving in and out of you. The bulk of your pleasure is coming from that bundle of nerves towards your front, but the teasing gesture isn’t appreciated anyway. When he leans over you, breath against your neck, you feel the length of his cock against your thigh. “He’s asking you a question,” Namjoon whispers, “answer him, baby.”

You nod, eyes rolling to the back of your head when he presses himself closer. Jimin hasn’t even noticed your lack of participation, mindlessly humming a song. The sounds of a running sink highlight his vocals. “Oh, absolutely,” you babble. “I wouldn’t tell a soul.” 

“Ha!” Jimin scoffs. “I knew I could always count on you, Miss __,” he snarks playfully. 

The hand toying with your clit comes around your waist, fingers stroking against your folds from this new angle. A silent moan has you writhing forward, unconsciously away from him as Jimin babbles on the other end of the line. He’s none the wiser to the lewd acts happening on the line, listening to the sound of his own voice. Namjoon lands a mean little bite against your shoulder, plunging his finger deeper inside of your clenching hole. 

Paired with his teasing fingers, it’s nearly impossible to withhold your moans, biting your lip until it stings. “Fuck, fuck,” you whimper against the sheets, holding your phone as far away as possible from your mouth as a litany of curse words spill from your lips. Namjoon chuckles at your dramatics, not like he has his fingers deep inside of you right now or anything. 

“So cute,” he hums, removing his hand from your clit to snatch your towel away. It gives way too easily, messily thrown over the edge of the bed. With your back completely exposed now, Namjoon wastes no time trailing a line of kisses up your spine, finishing off with an especially wet and hard one behind your ear. “Hang up now.”

His permission sets your body on edge, drawing your phone close again. Jimin is talking about dinner or something, you don’t even know. Not an ounce of remorse fills you when you clear your throat and hurriedly announce, “I have to—“ Namjoon’s cock, finally uncovered by his towel, presses against your folds and you nearly lose it. “—I have to go now, Jimin,” you say, leveling your breathing as best as you can. 

“Wait, what the fuck?” Jimin says, thrown off by your sudden departure. 

The mushroom tip of his cock kisses your clit. “Fuck— I really have to go.” And you hang up, chucking the phone off to the side hastily. With your hands both freed, you scramble onto your back, meeting the amused gaze of your husband behind you. “Fuck me, now.”

Namjoon laughs, reaching for the towel barely clinging onto his waist. One suave swoop later and it joins yours on the floor. “You did good,” he praises, lowering himself between your spread thighs. You roll your eyes, grabby hands reaching for his hips until he’s sitting snugly against you, cock resting over your throbbing cunt. 

“Yeah, yeah,” you snap, the tight feeling in your tummy growing with every second that passes. Namjoon isn’t as unaffected as he pretends to be, a pearly bead of cum appearing at the tip of his engorged cock. “Just fuck me now.”

He raises a brow. “Missionary?” As if it’s the first time. 

“Is there something wrong with it?” you ask anyway, self-consciously reaching an arm over yourself to cover your naked breasts. They’ve pebbled over just from his stare alone. 

Namjoon hesitates, the hand on your hip drawing slow circles with his thumb. Eventually, he responds with a halfhearted shrug. “It’s not the best.” This is news to you, and you find yourself sitting up at the sudden bomb he’s dropped. 

He’s still hard as rock between you, his dick laying almost artfully against your slit. You really just want to throw aside all reservations and begin grinding against him, penetration be damned, but now Namjoon’s got that thoughtful quirk to his lips. The one that usually accompanies any big brained idea, so you settle down, nudging him with your thigh until he’s looking at you again. “Penny for your thoughts?” What you really want to say is please fuck me like I’m just another cum rag of yours and make it hurt, but alas. 

Namjoon sits back on his haunches. “I read somewhere that on your hands and knees is the best way to get pregnant.” You choke on your own tongue, face ablaze from his forward statement. Meanwhile, Namjoon is looking as relaxed as ever. 

You hadn’t really discussed children after Hyejoo. The wordless agreement had been that sure, you were both down for another kid sometime in the future. But the exact date had sort of been murky. Hyejoo is three now, and you heard from another mom that it’s difficult for children with wide age gaps to get along. You don’t want her growing up being far removed from another sibling. 

But also, now?

It’s like Namjoon knows your thoughts before you even do. “Alright, wifey, say no more,” he says, leaning down to place a kiss against your lips. “I’ll get the condom, alright?”

And then he’s stepping off the bed, every muscle of his toned body flexing as he swaggers over towards the dresser. He’s a walking dream, the physical embodiment of all your crazy sex fantasies, and he wants to fuck a baby into you. Your pussy says yes, but your rationality is still on the fence. 

You roll onto your side, head propped into your open palm. “You want another baby?” you ask tentatively. Namjoon shrugs, carefully opening the new box of condoms you had bought half a year ago. 

“It wouldn’t hurt to have another kid,” he answers, procuring a tiny foil packet from the box and returning to his spot between your legs. It’s like staring at a marble statue from this angle, the defined planes of his chest and abdomen, the gorgeous slope of his nose, the sharp angles of his face. You really lucked out. 

Your decision comes just as he’s easing the rubber over the tip of his cock, the swollen head just barely enveloped. You place a hand against his wrist, earning his attention. “Take it off,” you mumble, and you swear on your entire life he swells another inch. 

“Oh, baby,” he groans, hastily throwing the condom somewhere across the room. He rolls over you, bulging arms sweeping you up into his embrace, lips capturing yours in a sloppy kiss. You whimper, letting his tongue push itself past your lips. When he pulls away, it’s with a wet pop and glistening lips. They’re so puffy now, flushed a nice rosy color, that makes him look even more handsome when he smiles down at you. “Gonna look so pretty all pregnant,” he beams, placing a chaste kiss against you one last time before he’s hurriedly rolling you onto your stomach. 

You hide your bashful expression against the sheets, suddenly feeling very shy before him. But then Namjoon’s cock is running along your lips and you’re left a shivering mess. “Please just fuck me,” you beg hoarsely, and Namjoon obeys. 

“Whatever you want, wifey,” he teases, and before you can call him out for his cheesiness, he’s pressing his thumb into your aching hole once more. “Is this okay?” he asks, somberly for the first time in what seems like forever. 

“I’m okay,” you confess, a little shyly now that you know his true motives.  

Namjoon chuckles, quickly removing his finger from inside of you to give your ass one soothing pat. “Going in,” he warns you, and finally, you’re rewarded for all your struggles. It’s only as his mushroom head squeezes in that you realize you could have done with a bit more stretching, but that thought fades away the more and more he pushes in. “Fuck,” he groans, the low intonation of his voice making your toes curl.

If it’s not his voice, it’s the sheer length of his cock inside of you. The girth makes your spine tingle, has you muffling a pitiful whimper into the comforter beneath you. “Relax for me,” he directs, and then suddenly he’s placing a palm against your back, pushing you further down. “Hips up.” 

You groan. The normally soft fabric of the blanket feels like hell on your sensitive breasts. “I’m trying,” you whine, pushing back onto him in an effort to familiarize yourself with his cock again. It’s been so long since he’s been inside of you like this, since he’s filled you so well, that your body acts a little stupid now. He hasn’t even begun thrusting and you already feel like you’ll cum just from this.  

The angle is different than your usual style, has him moving along every inch of you as he sinks in. Two big hands grab at your waist, manhandling you closer to him until you’re just like he wants you to be. “There we go,” he sighs, and with him motionless, you finally relax. It’s about a two second pause before he begins to draw himself back out. “How do you want it?” he grunts, but it’s lost beneath the moan that escapes you. It’s the same question he asked you in the tub, right before Jimin called, except this time you have an answer. 

“Fast,” you gasp, the pain from the stretch finally, finally, melting away as your body grows accustomed to his presence inside of you. “Do it fast, please.”

Namjoon does as he’s told, waiting until he’s pulled out until the tip to satisfy your requests. And then he’s off. 

Your body isn’t as young as it once was, left a little worn from the entire child-bearing process. Sometimes you wonder how exactly you and Namjoon would fuck until sunrise before, how your sex drive was so high that it allowed such a thing to happen. Admittedly, there’s currently a stiffness inside of you that has been there for a while now, and you barely remember how you got rid of it before. Apparently, this is how.

Namjoon’s hard cock rams into you once, makes you release the most embarrassingly loud moan at the sudden intrusion, and it’s like all those months of tension that built up in your body are melted away. His cock pushes past your folds, creating a lewd squelching sound that would otherwise leave you mortified to learn it came from your body. You shudder, desperately pushing your ass back against him in a feeble attempt to feel it again. 

“Still so fucking tight for me,” he growls, snapping his hips forwards. His skin slaps against yours, leaves you feeling tender from the brutal movements of his body. But at the same time, it feels absolutely terrific. 

Your lips are still coated in your own wetness, have him noisily moving in and out. “J- Joon,” you whimper softly, but you doubt he hears it over the sound of his own labored breathing. “More.”

He responds with a sudden piston inside of you that has the tip of his cock nearly kissing your cervix. “More?” he huffs, the hand on your back pressing down until you fear you’ll become one with the mattress. “You want more?” You nod hurriedly, somehow managing to stretch a hand down between you to toy with your clit. The brush of your own fingers has you bucking back onto him in surprise.

Wordlessly, he speeds up his pace, thrusting his hips into your velvety walls at a faster speed than before. It’s a weird sensation, a sort of ticklish feeling m that makes you tremble with each roll forward. You can’t say the two of you have done it in this position a lot, always preferring the more romantic missionary position to anything else, but this experience was quickly making you an avid believer of its validity as a top tier sex position. 

You swirl your pointer finger around your clit, trying to sync up your shaky touch with his steady thrusts. It’s useless, because every time you feel like you’ve gotten into the same groove, Namjoon one ups you by hauling you back against him. “Oh, f- fuck,” you sob, clawing at the sheets beneath you. 

Namjoon groans, momentarily pausing his rapid thrusts to roll his buried cock against you. “Come on, baby,” he husks, the hilt of his cock kissing your folds. 

There’s a lot of built up sexual tension inside of you, months on top of months of nothingness. Not to mention that little scene in the bathtub just now. So you’re not really surprised that your orgasm rears its head so early, curling up tightly in your stomach the longer Namjoon fucks you. He’s back to thrusting now, shallow little movements that make you see stars every time his cock glides inside of you. “Joon, I'm gonna...” you rasp out pitifully, grinding back against him. 

“Whenever you want,” he murmurs, leaning forward to press a kiss against your shoulder. It’s sweet, but on top of that, it has him pushing in further than before, finally pressed against that sensitive spot inside of you that makes your entire body lock up. You sob, thighs quivering when he reaches an arm around you. It’s almost romantic how your hands meet, his fingers covering yours as he guides them over your clit slowly. “Give it to me, baby,” he croons, lips pressed securely against your neck. He leaves soft kisses there, smooches really, that make you melt. 

Another shallow buck of his hips forward and you’re cumming, breaths picking up until they accumulate into a choked wail against the sheets. “Fuck— oh, fuck,” you cry, your thighs spasming from the force of your first satisfying orgasm in months. Namjoon holds you through it, slowly thrusting inside of you until he’s drawn out your entire orgasm.

The new added pleasure makes his movements sound even wetter, dirtier even. “That’s it,” he purrs, pushing himself back up to his full height behind you. You feel absolutely boneless beneath him, laying limply against the mattress as Namjoon repositions your hips for himself. “Can I finish like this, sweetheart?” he asks anyway, thumbs drawing a soothing pattern along your hip. 

You can barely catch your breath, so you settle on a halfhearted nod that has him huffing out a laugh. 

For some reason, Namjoon fucks you harder once he knows you’ve had your fill. Like he’s trying to draw another orgasm out of you, but is also the least bit concerned with you. Honestly, it works. He moves fast and hard, like he has no regard for your pleasure, and for some reason that turns you on more than it should. It’s this weird fantasy of yours, to be mistreated by a man as respectful as Namjoon, and you find yourself weirdly fulfilling it now as he fucks his cock into you. 

His fingers dig into your skin, wildly bucking into you as he chases his own high, and it’s embarrassing how quickly a second one builds up for you. You moan at one particular thrust, body sensitive all over. “Oh,” you whimper, “Namjoon.”

He grunts, your cries fueling him on as he continues his mad race to the end. “Gonna cum with me again?” he pants, his quick pace rocking you forward. You nod, using your killer grip on the sheets to ground yourself as you weakly attempt to meet his thrusts. “Aren’t you the sweetest,” he hums, and doesn’t let you respond as he continues to jackhammer his way into your pussy at a bruising pace. 

It takes a few more thrusts, and one whiny cry of his name— “come on, Joonie,” you whimper, turning to throw him a teary-eyed gaze over your shoulder; he shudders at the sight —until Namjoon is finally tipped over the edge, shooting his pleasure deep into you on the next thrust. It’s warm, paints your walls and threatens to spill out when he finally pulls out. 

But Namjoon has read up, using those big strong arms of his to keep you from collapsing onto your tummy as he scrambles around for something to keep your hips up. “It sticks better this way,” he says, a sheen of sweat against his temples when he flops down beside you. 

“What sticks better,” you groan, the achy feeling of just having your world rocked quickly settling into your bones. 

Namjoon leans forward and places a kiss against your lips, as if saying here, for all your hard work. “You know... it,” he shrugs, hands behind his head as he prepares himself to supervise your post-sex nap, just to make sure you don’t accidentally move around and let his cum leak out. “You did good, wifey,” he praises with another smooch. “Maybe we should let Hyejoo sleep over at Jimin’s more.”

Hyejoo’s return is the highlight of the year. 

You pick her up around noon, and your heart nearly grows ten sizes when you see her come running down Jimin’s front steps and into your arms. “Hi, mommy,” she beams, the same smile as Namjoon. And just like Namjoon, you can’t stop yourself from covering her face in tiny kisses. She says they tickle and squirms and squeals in your embrace. 

Jimin’s at the door with this weirdly blank look on his face. “Hey, Jimin,” you call out, helping Hyejoo load her bag into the backseat.

“Hey…” he greets, just as Hyejoo frantically begins calling for you to buckle her in. “Um, __,” Jimin says, but you’re a little busy securing the tiny love of your life into her booster seat, so you just throw him a quick glance to let him know you’re listening. Kinda. “There’s something I have to tell you—“

“I wanna see daddy!” Hyejoo babbles from the backseat, wildly waving her hands around as you finally close the door on her. With it shut, her loud voice is drowned out and you’re left raising a brow at Jimin as you round the front of the car. 

“What’s up?” you ask. 

Jimin comes down the steps, awkwardly hovering by the front of your car. “Um, when we were on the phone—“ Hyejoo knocks her tiny hands against the window, gesturing for you to hurry up. You flash Jimin an apologetic frown at the interruption. “Well, you see. She kinda heard us— well, me—” 

Another flurry of knocks, and you can’t wait to relay to Namjoon how excited your daughter had been to see him again. It’ll boost his ego, not that he really needs it to be any bigger. “That’s fine,” you tell Jimin, swinging your door open. Immediately, Hyejoo’s high-pitched voice fills the space between you and Jimin. “You know I don’t mind talking to the missus,” you joke, nudging his side. “She’s my friend too, ya know.”

“Gotta show daddy something!” Hyejoo shouts from the backseat, has this big smile on her face that makes you smile as well. 

Beside you, Jimin is quickly falling apart. “No, well—” you drop down into your seat “it wasn’t her who heard—“ You shut the door, lowering the window to thank Jimin one more time. Hyejoo beats you to it.

“Bye, Mr. Jimin!” she says, tiny legs kicking around all wildly in her excitement. You shake your head with a grin, waving goodbye to Jimin one last time as you pull out of his driveway. 

“Daddy!” Hyejoo shrieks upon entering your home. Her tiny overnight bag is tossed down at the entryway, ladybug rain boots haphazardly kicked towards the general direction of the shoe closet. Namjoon had been upstairs in his study when you left, but he now comes bounding down the steps at the sound of your daughter’s voice. He cries out a dopey, “princess”, as he scoops her up in his big arms. He does a twirl and everything, so dramatic. But it makes Hyejoo giggle like crazy. 

She allows one big fat kiss against her chubby cheeks before she’s shushing him with the news of her announcement. “Daddy, look,” she beams, holding his face between her tiny hands. “I can say the f sound now!”

Namjoon has been avidly working towards this ability for months now. Namjoon, who has spent nights reading every page of every child development book possible, who has spent hours decorating pretty flashcards for her, who has sectioned off time from his busy schedule everyday just to go over lessons with her. Well, Namjoon looks over the goddamn moon at the news. 

“Let’s hear it, honey,” you urge, stepping in when his happiness renders him incapable of speech. So he just nods along, looks like a bobblehead doll beside you. 

And with both of her proud, sometimes overprotective, parents standing before her, Hyejoo puts on a big grin and says, “fuck.”

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