#i like you 3000
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the-nefarious-vampire · 9 months ago
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as an aroace, im particularly dangerous, because i wont fuck or marry. i only know how to kill.
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cubbihue · 2 months ago
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So, a changeling is sort of like a p-zombie?
(For the unaware, “p-zombie” stands for “philosophical zombie”. It’s a thought experiment in philosophy that describes a being that’s outwardly identical to a human, but does not have a consciousness; that is, a p-zombie does not think whatsoever, although it looks like it thinks to an outsider observer. There’s a whole wikipedia article on it that explains the concept better than I can!)
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They don't exactly think, as in "I dont want this" "I like that". But, Changelings do have a form of "Consciousness". It's just that their consciousness is more like a series of commands or tasks than actual formulated thoughts.
Timmy's Changeling has a very advanced "consciousness". It can predict future actions and reroute its tasks to pick only the best options for its situation.
We fill their heads with static to ensure that the Changeling does not form thoughts about anything. Thoughts leads to opinions, and opinions leads to incorrect actions. A proper Changeling should have more static in their mind than a TV screen on a defunct channel!
Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]
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shadowed-dancer · 1 year ago
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Characters that are younger than Xiao and it feels wrong
Over half the archons (Nahida, Focalors, Furina, probably the pyro archon and the Tsaritsa assuming they were born after the cataclysm. Idk I feel like we assume gods should be the oldest and they just... aren't)
Yae Miko
Dainsleif
NEUVILLETTE
Characters that are older than Xiao and it feels wrong
Ganyu
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mitskiluvr · 1 month ago
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this dialogue with akechi is set up the same way as the dialogue you get with all ur lady confidants right before you date them Do you know how funny that is. “I need to give him a serious answer…” as if he’s just proposed to you on the streets of kichijoji
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fishslappping · 5 months ago
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the little comment that all elves eventually lose their hair if they live long enough is driving me insane like what about their physiology does that? Is it just the follicles that age on elves? Is hair immune to magic?? Is it keratin?? Do they lose their nails too?? do elves just become smooth and fleshy?? where does it end?? Why does this happen??!
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rhaenyratargcryen · 3 months ago
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i want to hold you close, skin pressed against me tight | logan howlett/wolverine
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masterlist ❈
summary: drifting from town to town and never lingering in one place for too long has served you well since you began to realize something might be...different, about you. you've never been able to put a finger on what exactly that difference is, until you end up at the same bar as a mysterious, albeit deeply captivating, stranger. author's note: this literally came from an idea of a reader that could share their own feelings through touch, which then snowballed into an arguably too long one shot (if i'm not careful, that's what i'm going to become known for hahaha) i recently rewatched x-men (2000) after seeing dp&w (twice) and haven't had time to rewatch the others. i know at the end of the first movie, logan leaves the school - so i feel like this would take place, hypothetically, either after he returns/before x2, or between x2 and x-men 3. idk it's not that deep seriously just imagine early 30-something year old hugh jackman's wolverine while you read this <3 kind of still a shithead, not yet entirely traumatized lol!!!
pairing: logan howlett/wolverine x f!reader word count: 10,353 (uhhhh hahaha next question) warnings/tags: pWp (with, y'all!), sloooow burn, user rhaenyratargcryen had to google everyone's powers multiple times just. be warned
18+/mdni i am sooooo serious and please don't repost with or without asking for permission. i'm not into that kind of thing, if you want to share pls reblog!!!!
title is from she wants revenge's "tear you apart"
It’s a Sunday, when Logan finds you. Or, you’d soon come to find, perhaps it was you who had been the one to find him.
You’ve grown accustomed to becoming a familiar face at every shitty bar in every small town your drifter lifestyle drags you to, and this hole-in-the-wall in the Hudson Valley that smells slightly of piss and even more of cigarettes is no different.
The motel down the street that you’d unpacked your menial possessions into is the perfect distance from the dive — you could walk home at the end of the night, and not worry you’d find yourself in trouble with a stranger. Well, the wrong kind of stranger.
Sitting at the end of the bar, you’re nursing your third drink in the fading light of the afternoon as it comes through the row of windows to your right when the light blinks out, abruptly, and you look up to find yourself face to face with a very ruggedly-handsome man with…mutton chops, you think? You snort. They haven’t been in style for centuries.
Your gaze drags across his face, down to his torso, then rests for a beat too long to be appropriate on the way his jeans sit low on his hips, a bit too tight on his thighs if he was to ask you. He stiffens under your wandering eye, watching you carefully as your attention returns to his — begrudgingly, considering he’s disturbing your peace — beautiful face.
He’s hot, you’ll give him that, but you try your best to glare and look unapproachable; it’s a Sunday and you’re drunk on bottom-shelf whiskey, trying desperately to communicate that you’re not quite in the mood for conversation with a stranger at the moment. 
This man will not take a fucking hint. 
He gestures to the seat directly to your right. “Mind if I sit here?”
You glance pointedly at the rest of the seats at the bar, which are all notably empty, but you say nothing and grunt your indifference. This guy doesn’t look the talkative type, but you really hope he isn’t looking for a chat. Luckily, he sits down silently and gestures to the bartender, who seems to recognize him and pours him a finger of whatever you’ve also been drinking.
From the corner of your eye, you can see that he’s picked up the glass and swirled the liquor around in it, but before he can take a swig, he opens his mouth with the glass practically pressed to it and mutters, “You know what you are?”
“That’s an odd fucking thing to say,” you remark, pulling your glass closer to you and closing both fists around it, turning to look directly at him. Your heart stutters as you watch the left side of his mouth curl slightly into a smirk. “Wanna explain to me what the fuck you mean by that, dude?”
The man grunts and throws back his whiskey, swallowing it in one go. Before you can get another word in, he lifts his left hand up, flexing his forearm, and you watch as three shiny, silver pieces of metal pierce through the skin between his knuckles with a sharp snikt sound.
“What the fuck,” you rasp, pressing a hand flat down on the bartop to push yourself up and away from him in the seat next to you, knocking your own drink over in the process. No one else in the bar seems fazed, like he comes in here and does this — whatever this is — often. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make an attempt to come closer to you than he is, and eventually your heartbeat calms down, and your flight response becomes a fight response. You bristle, a bit pissed off at what you read as an attempt to scare the shit out of you for fun.
“What’s your problem?”
“Ain’t got a problem, bub,” the man murmurs, leaning against the bar and grinning, the claws retracting. He wipes the backs on his knuckles off onto the thighs of his jeans, blood staining the denim red. “Was just trying to get you to do whatever it is you can do.”
You thank the bartender, who has dropped a rag in front of you to clean your spilled liquor and replaced your empty glass with a full one. 
“Sweetheart, I could smell you the second I stepped foot through that door. I haven’t seen you around here before, you new in town?”
Smell you? You’re about one more strange statement from him away from losing your goddamn mind. “I’m gonna need you to elaborate on what you mean by smell. Please.”
He leans closer to you, that smirk on his mouth a provocation, so close that you can practically taste the whiskey on his breath. “You ever heard of mutants, dollface?”
—————
Now, seeing as that wasn’t the kind of conversation you wanted to have in public, you had tried to push him — Logan, his name is, you learn — back by his chest, but the man was an immovable object. Probably a good thing you’d ultimately decided it wasn’t worth trying to hit him.
“Excuse me,” you’d uttered, slapping a twenty dollar bill down on the bar top and slipping out of your seat carefully, quickly realizing how drunk you really are. When you right yourself, you turn to him and angle your head to the door behind you.
“We can have this talk somewhere else, yeah?”
Logan had looked up at the bartender, muttered, “Add hers to my tab?” and palmed your money to give back to you, following you across the room. When you’d tried to object, Logan had held his hand up and told you your money wasn’t good here anymore.
Now, you lead him through the door to your room, stripping yourself of your jacket and kicking at the dirty laundry on the floor at the end of the bed at the same time.
“Want to tell me what the fuck that was all about? Do I know you or something?”
“No, sweetheart,” Logan says, unzipping his moto jacket and slipping his arms from the sleeves, revealing a crisp white t-shirt and biceps thicker than your neck. You subtly try to shake your head, snap your attention away from them, but he smirks, catching your eye. “You don’t know me. But I think you’re like me. We’re drawn to each other, you know. It’s like some sort of…beacon, a homing device. I was coming to the bar anyway. I knew what you were, second I saw you.”
“And you think I’m…also a, what, a mutant?”
“Not think. Know. You seriously can’t think of a single thing recently that might have felt a little, I don’t know, off? Can you see things you couldn’t before? Have you been hungrier? Felt more on edge?”
You squeeze your eyes shut, trying and failing to think of any big change, but you come up short. Shaking your head, you glance back up at him. “No. No, everything’s been the same. I’ve been on the road a bit, moving from place to place, but that isn’t unusual for me.”
“Any particular reason you chose Westchester County to land on?”
“I don’t know…I just,” you blanch, realizing he’s right, except it hasn’t been one big change – it’s been little by little. “I felt drawn east.”
Logan considers this for a moment; you can see the ditch between his eyebrows deepen with thought, before he seems to come to some sort of conclusion.
“I think you been in fight or flight for a long time, trying to survive on scraps and strangers’ generosity. Let me guess. No family left? Nowhere to call home? Somethin’ big and bad happen to you?”
You say nothing and he watches a scowl slip across your face, humming when he realizes he’s cut deep, to the bone.
“C’mere,” Logan murmurs, and you take steps backward as he comes toward you, the backs of your calves meeting the bed. He holds his hands up, palms facing you. “Hey, okay. I won’t hurt you, I promise. I’m not in the business of scaring little girls.”
“I’m not a little girl,” you scoff, staring at him out of the corner of your eye as he advances, albeit a little more slowly, on you.
Logan shakes his head. “You’re still much younger than me, sweetheart.”
“What? You don’t look older than 31, maybe 32.”
“Yeah, well. Looks aren’t everything, okay? I’m just — I’m not in the business of scaring girls. I wouldn’t’a let you bring me back here if I was going to hurt you; that’s not who I am.”
You suppose you don’t have much choice but to trust him. 
“I wanted you to come here,” Logan breathes, hands returning to his sides. He gives you a look, asking permission to move closer to you, to touch you, and you tip your head forward in a slight nod. “So I can do this.”
He grasps your forearm in his hand, places your palm on his bicep, and immediately winces. White flashes in front of your eyes, and a sharp pain nearly splits your head in half. You gasp his name, beg him to stop. When he pulls your hand from him, it almost looks like the print of it has been burned into his skin.
“I have a friend who’s an empath,” Logan murmurs, pupils blown, once his heartbeat has recovered to its resting rate. “She has to touch someone, to affect the way they feel. It’s good for, you know, calming people down in situations where they might be worked up. You, on the other hand…”
Logan trails off and you shake your head, bringing your arms up to fold across your torso, shivering gently. “What? I’m what?”
“I think, when you touched me, you made me feel what you were feeling. You were scared of me, huh? I could feel it, immediately. I could taste copper in my mouth, I started sweating.” Logan laughs softly, running his fingers across the skin of his right hand. “My palms are still sweaty.” 
He’s still staring down at his hands, at the stretch of skin on his arm that still stings with the feeling of you. Your eyes rove over his handsome profile, at his strong nose. His jaw ticks when he looks back over to you, one eyebrow curled.
”Sorry,” he adds. “I didn’t know it would hurt you.”
Already walking past you, Logan gestures toward the bed. “Sit,” he orders, and you blanch and do as he says. He digs a cellular phone out of the front pocket of his jeans and ducks his head, disappearing wordlessly into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Groaning, you fall back onto the bedspread. Fuck, this whole ordeal has sobered you up, and quick. Why is there a strange man in your bathroom? You could make people feel what you’re feeling? What was going to happen now?
You run through every possibility — you could leave before he comes back, abandon your stuff, take your car and run — but by the time you come to any sort of conclusion, Logan emerges from the bathroom. 
“C’mon,” he says, sliding his jacket back over his arms, zipping it up and gesturing toward the door with his head. “Got somebody who wants to meet you.”
You sit up straight and look around at your belongings. Logan seems to take this hint and starts gathering the articles of clothing strewn across the room, along with those still somehow neatly folded in the motel dresser, ignoring your protests and stuffing them in the suitcase open on the floor against the wall. After a few moments of watching Logan pull together your worldly belongings, you fumble with the drawer on the bedside table, open the bible, and pull out your passport and an indeterminate, but large, amount of cash. Logan eyes it but says nothing, and when you zip your suitcase closed, he picks it up for you without a word.
“You won’t need to come back here,” Logan mutters as you slam the tailgate on your truck closed. He points to the room you’d just left, then rounds to the driver’s side of your truck and starts walking across the parking lot, looking over his shoulder to shout, “You can leave your key in the room. There’s plenty of empty beds where we’re headed.”
“And if I don’t want to go?”
Logan stops and turns back to face you, his jaw set. “Pretty soon, people’ll figure out what you are, sweetheart. And they won’t take to you as nicely as I have.”
You snort. Nicely. But you know he’s right. It seems like things are a little different around here, for people like you. But you know that now you know what you are, that will change. As you’re trying to figure out what to say to him, Logan starts backing up.
You’re still unsure of how to talk to this man you’d only recently met, who’d already had a hand in changing your life fundamentally, but you hold a hand up, asking him to stop. He does. He watches you carefully, probably trying to decide whether or not you’re going to run away. You’re still not sure yourself.
“How did you know that you needed me to touch you?”
“Call it gut instinct.”
“It didn’t hurt, by the way,” you murmur, turning to look at him. A few paces away from you, one of Logan’s eyebrows arches, and you wring your hands together.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It felt good.”
—————
The place you’re headed — plenty of empty beds, he’d said — is less than a ten minute drive from the motel you’d been staying at, it turns out. Logan had told you to wait by your truck while he went back to the bar to pick up his bike, then drove ahead of you all the way there, your headlights illuminating the back of his body. Wrought iron gates await you, and they ease open as you pull up the long gravel drive.
Logan drops his kickstand and leaves his motorcycle directly in front of a large set of wooden doors, and you slow nearly to a stop, trying to decide where’s best for your truck. Logan’s one step ahead of you and dismounts the bike, pointing you toward a line of cars on the other side of the little lot, following you on foot as you shift into park and turn the vehicle off.
“What is this place?”
Logan is popping your tailgate open when you open your door and he pulls your suitcase from the bed — the act takes him little effort, you notice. You thank him and try to take the case from him, but he shakes you off and leads you to the building.
“It’s a school,” Logan says, pushing through the front door. Immediately you’re greeted with the sound of children’s laughter, of feet running on wooden floors, of voices echoing off walls in the distance. You catch the door as it closes behind Logan, trying your best not to be distracted by the subtle opulence of just the foyer.
Logan drops your suitcase by the front window, then unzips his coat, removes it, and hangs it on the coatrack to his right. “We’ll figure out your room situation soon, but I wanna take you down to meet Charles first.”
“Charles?”
“He owns the place,” Logan mutters, crooking a finger to indicate for you to follow him. “He’ll want to see what you can do.”
Pursing your lips, you decide to press your luck with Logan. “What about what you can do? Is it just the claws?”
Logan smirks, coming to an abrupt stop in the dark hallway. He turns to face you, and you can see his teeth shine as he smiles. “What? You hoping for somethin’ else, a bigger show than I gave you earlier?”
You stand your ground with him, but your heart is racing, and he cocks an eyebrow like he can tell. He relents, shrugging.
“I heal pretty fast, too.”
Charles’ office is behind the last door on the left, at the end of the hall, and you’re shocked when Logan knocks, rather than entering the room like he belongs there.
“Come in,” you hear, then realize you hadn’t actually heard it. It’s more like you’d felt it knocking around the inside of your skull. Your heartbeat picks up again.
“It’s okay,” Logan says out of the corner of his mouth. “He does that sometimes.”
The door opens, and you’re met with an almost-empty office — only a bald man sat behind a large wooden desk.
“So,” the man says, folding his hands upon the tabletop. No hello. No, it’s lovely to meet you. “You’re an empath, are you?”
“I — I guess?”
“Hm,” he murmurs, glancing at Logan, who stands behind you and to the left, slightly.
“She is, Chuck,” Logan assures Charles. “I felt it myself. She can show others her emotions, make them feel what she feels. She was scared when she met me — had my heart racin’. I could see myself through her eyes.”
He hadn’t told you that part, and you worry he’d noticed that your heart hadn’t only been racing because you were afraid. Charles clicks his tongue, and surveys you, your dirty shoes, the wild look in your eye, and clears his throat.
“If you wouldn’t mind, young lady, I’d quite like to feel for myself, as well.”
A blush heats up your face and you step forward, throwing a tentative look at Logan over your shoulder. He nods, dispelling any fears, and you step forward until you’re standing at the edge of Charles’s desk. You reach across, shaking, and take the man’s hand in yours.
“Oh,” Charles murmurs, his pupils dilated. “That’s certainly new. You’ve no need to be afraid, dear, we only want to help you. As I’m sure Logan told you, it’s a dangerous world out there, for our kind.”
“And we’re safe here?”
“Yes.”
Logan brushes past you and rounds Charles’s desk, leaning down to murmur something in the man’s ear. You can hear their hushed, hurried voices, but can’t make out what they’re saying, and the longer you stand there as an onlooker, the more out of place you feel. You shift your weight from your left foot to your right foot and look out the window as they talk.
The sun is setting outside — the late summer glow illuminating the office, warming your face — and you decide to clear your throat, drawing the men’s attention back to you.
“If it’s alright, I’d like to be alone for the night. I think.”
“That’s alright, yes,” Charles smiles, raising a hand and curling his fingers inward. The door opens behind you, and you jump. “This is a lot for one day, I understand. Logan, if you would show our guest to a spare room? One in your wing, perhaps, in case she is in need of anything.”
You glance at Logan and watch him nod, then turn and wink at you. You roll your eyes at him. He doesn’t know you, and the familiarity with which he interacts with you is unnerving, but at the same time, you find him intriguing.
It’s almost like the man you met at the bar and the man guiding you out of this room are two entirely separate people. The man from the dive was overeager, compensating for being the one thing there that was out of place. This man is relaxed. This is his home.
You wonder as you watch him if this is who he really is. 
“Charles is telepathic,” Logan murmurs, almost as if he can also hear your thoughts racing. He glances over at you, holding your eye a beat too long. “He’s also telekinetic.”
“Hence the door opening on its own.” You pause. “And the creepy voice inside my head.”
Logan chuckles, shrugging and bending down to retrieve your suitcase from where it now sits at the bottom of the staircase. You watch the muscles in his biceps flex, your mouth suddenly going very dry. “You get used to it. People say he can read every mind within a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius of wherever he sits. Can’t imagine all that noise all the time.”
Humming your consensus, you follow him, gaze trapped between his broad shoulders. Even the back of his neck is enticing. “If he could read my mind, why wouldn’t that have been enough for him to know?”
“There’s something different about what you do,” he says, guiding you up the stairs to the second floor and down a long, carpeted hall. “It requires touch. Charles can read your mind, sure, but there’s more to your influence than just your thoughts. It’s baser, more animalistic.”
Finally, the two of you come to a dead end, and Logan opens the nondescript wooden door to your left. He walks inside without waiting to see if you’ll follow and places your suitcase down on the end of the twin-sized bed against the farthest wall.
“You need anything, I’m two doors down across the hall, okay? Seriously. Anything.”
You haven’t moved from where you stopped in the doorway to watch him, one fist pressed against the frame you’re leant up against. He brushes past you, so close you can smell his cheap aftershave, the whiskey on his breath still lingering, though he hasn’t once seemed drunk. The hint of something more pungent. You open your mouth — before he gets too far, you want to ask him the question you haven’t yet had the courage to voice.
“Logan?”
The man pauses, his face inches from yours. Your gaze flicks between his eyes, then down across mouth, to where his throat moves as he swallows. “Hm?”
“Why are you helping me?”
What you mean is, You don’t seem like a generous man. What you mean is, I’m not afraid of you, but I haven’t yet decided if I can trust you. What you mean is, Why me?
He pauses, considering your question, then places one hand on your bicep and squeezes. His eyes are wet, like someone who remembers too much and not enough. Before you can catch your breath, he’s moved on, that same hand now wrapped around the doorknob of his own room. A small smile graces the lower half of his face. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“I got a habit a’ pickin’ up strays.”
—————
The days pass by quickly, and they’re exhausting. There’s a war brewing, they all say. A war none of you had ever asked to be a part of, but have no choice in joining. You wake daily before the sun rises, called downstairs to do endless exercises to strengthen your control over your ability, you’ve come to think of it as. The problem is that you’re not sure you’re capable of the things they need you to be capable of.
“Can we stop, for today?”
You’re bent at the waist, arms dangling, both hands clutching the opposite elbow. It helps you decompress. This isn’t physically tiring work, necessarily, but the mental strain is undeniable. You’re avoiding Charles’s gaze, which you know will have a disappointed glean to them.
“What, can’t handle it already?”
You perk up at the sound of Logan’s voice, and when you turn your head towards it, you see him walking towards you across the yard, light wash jeans slung low on his hips once again. The sleeves of his white tee are rolled up, straining against the corded muscle of his biceps, the collar cut into a V at the front.
Since you first met him, you’ve learned a few things about Logan: one, he’s Canadian. Two, he can drink you under the table, and he will absolutely let you drink yourself to sleep, but he always makes sure you end up in your own bed at the end of every night. And three, his powers are more than just the claws: he has a regenerative healing power, alongside superhuman strength, and superhuman stamina. The thought of that last one makes you blush.
You spend most evenings with him on the floor of your room, drinking cheap whiskey while he chain smokes and deals you in after every round of cards he kicks your ass at.
“Need to work on your poker face, darlin’,” he always says, smirking and shuffling the cards again with his lithe, thick fingers. 
And on the nights when you can’t find sleep, he sits up with you in your room, reading Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, even some Stephen King, while you curl up on your side and let the even sound of his breathing lull you unconscious.
You get used to each other’s presence. You don’t talk much while you sit together – is there really anything more to say? He’d clocked you that very first day. You were alone in the world, before, but not anymore.
He doesn’t do this with anyone else, you notice. Allow them into his small circle of trust, or whatever this is. You’re friends, you think. He hasn’t let himself have many of those.
You’ve also learned a few things about yourself, the most important being that with some practice you no longer get a splitting headache using your ability; that you can control when and how you use it; and that you’ve been meditating on some other, perhaps more enjoyable and creative ways, to make use of it.
Although you’d tried to deny it from the start, unfortunately — mostly for yourself — the attraction you feel toward Logan is unshakable. He’s rough, and sharp, and impermeable, but he seems to have a soft spot for you. You can’t tell if it’s the circumstances under which the two of you met that have him feeling that way, but you’ve developed a fun back and forth over the last few weeks.
“What, sweet cheeks,” Logan pokes at you, left hand on his cocked hip. “Is it that hard for you, still?”
Shaking your head, you grin at him, one hand cupped over your eyes to block the sun behind him. You turn to glance at the back of Charles’s chair, already heading away from the two of you. Your attention falls back on Logan.
“C’mere, then,” you murmur, standing up straight and mirroring his body language. One of his eyebrows arches and his canine teeth appear as his smile widens. “I’ll show you how easy I can get it goin’.”
As he crosses the remaining bit of yard between you, that smug look on his face, you channel fury. You push every ounce of attraction and good will you feel toward Logan out of your mind, and you think: anger. I’m angry. At my circumstances. At what the world does to people like me. At how much I’m underestimated — at how much I underestimate myself.
By the time Logan has made it to your side, hand already outstretched, you’ve made up your mind. And you place one hand on the side of his face.
Immediately, you feel heat, but the cracking headache from that first day you’d met never comes. Instead, you feel an ache deep in your gut, a wave of want, of assurance that you’re where you need to be, with exactly the right person. You hold your palm against him for another minute and his face falls forward, towards your chin, before he wraps his hand around your wrist and pulls it away, gasping with relief when you let him go. 
Logan’s cheeks are flushed, and when he looks back up at you, chest heaving, you realize he hadn’t felt your anger. You didn’t have much to be angry about — sad, sure; scared, yes — so anger must have been the wrong emotion to pull from. You’d wanted to get him worked up, but not like this.
Instead, you worry you’ve just ruined any ounce of trust the two of you had built between you. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leans away from you, his eyes running from the top of your head, down to where your own hands now sit at your sides.
“I’ll talk to you later, kid, okay?”
Logan doesn’t let you respond, instead turning to leave you standing, heart falling, lost in your head in the middle of the yard, while all around you birds chirp and children play.
—————
“Well, well.”
You jump, the back of your head snapping against the top of the inside of the fridge, and you groan, pressing the heel of your hand to the now-tender spot, pulling it away to see if you’ve made yourself bleed.
“Burning the midnight oil?” Logan laughs, padding across the kitchen and rubbing a hand against the top of your head where you knocked it. “Sorry, bub. You okay?”
“I don’t know. Ask me in a few minutes when my eyes uncross.”
You’re too focused on the feeling of his fingers against your scalp to think about anything else. You glance down at Logan’s flannel pajama pants and his bare feet. He grabs you by the shoulders and steers you against the kitchen island behind you.
“Lemme get you some ice.”
You watch, back pressed to the edge of the counter, as Logan pulls a tea towel from one of the kitchen drawers and a tray of ice from the freezer, popping them out onto the towel and folding it into itself, wrapping the tail to give you something to hold onto. You prop it against your skull — instant relief. You eye him warily, accusatory.
“What are you down here for anyway?”
“Same thing as you, I think.”
Logan refills the tray with water and places it back into the freezer, and this thoughtfulness surprises you, you’re embarrassed to admit. You wouldn’t have thought him to be so considerate. Then again, he had just handmade an ice pack for you. Your eyes glaze over and your mouth goes dry just watching his fingers work. 
You haven’t seen him for days, not since you’d accidentally let him feel…whatever it is you feel for him. Every day when you’d gotten out of bed, even when that was before the sun rose, he would always already be gone from his room, the door open and his duvet cover tucked neatly underneath his mattress. He hadn’t taken any of his meals in the dining room with the rest of your peers, hadn’t joined in on any sparring sessions like he usually loved to do. His bike had stayed parked outside — you’d kept an eye out for it every day. You’d begun to worry that something had happened to him.
The silence starts to dig into you. You can’t help it; you have to break it.
“Thought you died, I didn’t see you for so long.”
“Yeah, well. I had some shit to take care of.”
You scoff at that. “I saw your bike outside, Logan, you never left the school. What kind of shit did you have to take care of?”
Another beat of awkward silence, and you can’t stand whatever wall has come up between you. You want to knock it down.
“You remember what you said to me in that bar?”
“What’s that?” Logan looks up at you, a sharp look in his eye. A warning, almost, but unfortunately, you’re feeling a little bolder than usual. Perhaps you’re concussed.
“You said that we were drawn to each other because of our abilities. I think maybe that wasn’t the only reason we found each other.”
He leans back against the freezer and stands quiet for a moment, his chest rising and falling with each steady breath. His dark eyes regard you in the dim light of the kitchen.
You step forward into his space, one hand coming up to press against his chest, through his shirt. The other, the one holding his makeshift ice pack, lands at your side.
Logan’s breath catches in his throat at your touch and he swallows around it, his heart stuttering under your palm. He’s waiting for the feeling to rush into and overwhelm him. It never comes. 
Logan exhales, then reaches up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear. Your cheeks flush a furious red and he chuckles at the feeling of it against his fingers. You’re tempted to shift your hand over to touch his skin, to fill him with this rush of unexpected desire you feel, but you can’t quell your thoughts that that would be a bad idea. Even though the position you’re in right now might be regarded as a bad idea, too.
Since you met, he’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t see you as anything more than a friend — if that. But you’ve been replaying the other day in the training yard in your mind, and you can’t shake the feeling that maybe he’s got the same desire you do.
“You know, you’re right,” Logan murmurs, and you cock your head, looking to his face for an explanation. He takes the towel full of ice from your hand by your side and holds it against your head for you. “What you think about me, it’s all true. I’m not a nice man.”
“I don’t know. You say that, but you seem pretty nice to me. You took me in. You’re helping me understand what I am, what I can do. Logan, fuck’s sake, you tuck me into bed when I drink too much.”
Logan laughs softly, tilting his chin to take you in from a different angle. Your heart squeezes in your chest.
“I just can’t figure you out. You act all mean and tough and scary, but I see the way you look at me, and I’ve only known you, what, a handful of weeks? I see how you are with some of the students. I see how you are with Charles. You got some deep, dark past you don’t want anyone knowin’ about, sure, but you’re a nice man, Logan. You’re soft on me. I can tell.”
Considering you for a moment, Logan’s lips parts to respond, then he thinks better of it. His eyes fall from yours to the way your chest expands with every breath. You’ve wondered about you and him, and that one look gives you all the courage you need to say it.
“Since I got here I’ve had this feeling, that with you and me, there’s something bigger. Tell me you feel it too, that I’m not goin’ crazy. And if you don’t, Logan, tell me that, then. Anything to stop this awful, sick feeling I get whenever you walk into the room.”
You wait to see if he’ll tell you to fuck off, that he doesn’t see you that way. That he’s soft on you, sure, but this is as far as it can go. Instead of saying anything at all, he surges forward to claim your mouth with his.
The kiss is hesitant, at first, before Logan can figure out whether you’re going to push him away or not, but when you open your mouth to deepen it, it turns furious. It’s all teeth, tongue, Logan’s hips caging you in and driving you back against the counter behind you. He’s got one hand wrapped around your waist, the other gripping the countertop, and when you carelessly bring a hand up to rest a hand against his cheek, Logan gasps against your mouth. The towel full of ice finds its way into the sink.
Shocked, he peels himself from you, panting. You hadn’t thought about whether you’d project or not when you’d touched him — and if his blown-out pupils are any indication, he’d felt it. All of it. The ache deep in your gut and the clench of your thighs. The flare of your nostrils as his scent hits you, heavy and earthy and masculine. The undeniable way you fit against him, your chest pressed to his, the shock of his hips aligned with yours, like you were made for one another. You want him to have you, have all of you, and with your palm still pressed to his skin, he knows.
“Is that really what you want?”
It’s practically a growl, and you pull your hand from him, allowing him to recover, but only slightly. He’s got himself worked up all on his own. 
You can see in his face that he wants you, too. You nod, bring one hand down to clutch the waistband of his pants and tug him forward against you again. He groans, gathering some of your hair in one hand and gripping it tight. 
“Sweetheart, I’m not exactly a — a gentle guy.”
“Somehow I don’t believe you.”
Logan laughs, breathy, and tilts his head back to take you in. He throws a glance down at your hand tucked into his pants, the backs of your knuckles pressed against the swell of his stomach. “I didn’t have you pegged for the fuck-me-in-the-kitchen type.”
“I’ll let you take me back to your bedroom, if you want.”
Whistling lowly, Logan leans his face in close to yours, the tip of his nose nudging against your cheekbone. “And if I told you I wanted to take you right here?”
“I’d tell you that’s fine, too,” you swallow, angling your face up to try to press your lips to his, but his grip on your hair stops you. He grunts, tugging a little harder, so you have to look into his eyes. They’re soft, wary. For all the talk he talks, he’s a man of few words when it matters, and you can tell he can’t believe you’d want a guy like him. You’re not exactly a gentle girl, either, but he sees how much more the world has gotten to him than it has to you. You’ve still got the potential to be someone who wouldn’t want him.
“You really want me?” You hear the unspoken emphasis. You could have anyone else, and I can’t see why you’d pick me. 
“Since the day we met,” you mutter, his breath against your mouth driving you insane. “Logan, please kiss me.”
He brings his other hand, the one that’s been holding your hips in place this whole time, up to press against your cheek, and he closes the distance between you once again. The hand still gripping his pants tugs them forward, and you can feel his insistent cock where it’s now pressing against you. You moan into Logan’s mouth and this seems to drive him mad, holding your head in his hands like you’ll float away and driving his tongue against yours, languid and fluid but at the same time persistent. 
“C’mon, doll,” he says when you break away to gulp down a breath, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I got a queen bed in my room.”
As Logan drags you out of the kitchen and to the wing of the mansion where the two of you live, practically a world of your own, you trace your fingers down his back over the top of his shirt. His body shivers under your touch and he laughs, turning to look at you as he pushes through into his bedroom.
“Hey, yeah,” you murmur, watching him drag his shirt up and over his head, exposing his bare chest and the patches of short, wiry hair growing there, the vein on his lower stomach that leads your gaze down to wonder at the bulge in his pajama pants. You tear your eyes away and meet his smug stare. “How come I gotta sleep in a twin?”
He laughs at you, reaching out to curl his fingers around the bottom of your sweater and lead you closer to him. He hums, muttering, “Don’t worry about it.”
Then he’s kissing you again, your eyes closing at the sensation of his mouth against yours. His hands are underneath your shirt, skirting across your bare back and now you’re the one shivering under his touch. His fingernails scratch gently against your skin and you moan again, sighing into his open mouth. He smiles before pulling away, only slightly.
“Feels good?”
You nod, flexing your fingers at your sides. You can’t remember the last time someone touched you so sweetly. He catches sight of your hands and runs the tips of his own fingers down your arms.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says, mouth close to the shell of your ear. He tucks his teeth around it, too, gently, but you cry out at the surprising sensation. “You can touch me.”
You nod and place an open palm against his sternum, his bare skin heating beneath your hand. You want him to feel the way your mouth has dried at the thought of being beneath him in his bed. You want him to know just how far you’ll let him go. When you open your eyes to look at him, a different beast entirely has crossed his face. His mouth curls into a self-satisfied smile.
“Hm,” Logan grunts, nostrils flaring, teeth baring further.  “I can smell how bad you want me, baby. Could down in the kitchen, too. I can feel how tense I make you. Do I still scare you? Huh?”
You shake your head, whisper, “No,” your voice hoarse. “You don’t scare me, Logan.”
“No, I didn’t think so. I don’t even think it scares you, how much you want this. I think it excites you. Think you been wonderin’ what it’d be like for a while, huh?”
Logan’s arm tightens around your waist and pulls you flush against him, your hand trapped between your chests. You gasp, the warmth of his body flooding yours, filling you with heat, with want, which then rushes into Logan, his eyes rolling back at the sensation. 
“I wasn’t sure about you when I first met you,” he bites out, tilting his head to meet your eye again. “But fuck if I wouldn’t move heaven and earth for you now.”
Your heart stutters at the admission, the reassurance that you’re not alone in the way you feel about him. You peel your palm from his skin and sigh in relief when his gaze softens. Logan pushes his face into your neck, lips pressing tenderly to your pulse point, forcing a soft groan from your mouth. You feel him smile against you and when his teeth graze that same spot, your knees buckle beneath you.
Tucking your hands back between your chests, you push Logan gently away from you and he goes willingly, a sharp contrast to the man who was rooted to his barstool the first time you’d tried to touch him. The look on his face would frighten you if he hadn’t spent so much time convincing you he wouldn’t hurt you. His expression is dark, contemplative.
Logan’s eyes watch, hooded with desire, as you back away from him, your knees buckling when the backs of them hit the edge of his bed. As soon as you sit, he begins stalking toward you, your heart racing against your sternum, and you meet his eye just as he reaches you. Taking your cheek in his hand, he angles your face up and watches as your eyelids flutter closed. His hand travels down, fingers running over the side of your neck and cupping the warm flesh where it meets your shoulder.
“I can feel your pulse,” he murmurs into the warm air between you. “It’s racing.”
You gasp when you feel his hand search out your heartbeat through your chest. Opening your eyes to meet his again, you see that the desire in his face has been replaced with something that looks frighteningly close to affection.
He grasps your wrist, thumb rubbing against the soft, sensitive skin above your pulse there, and guides your hand to press against his own heartbeat, a mirror to yours, thundering in his chest, too.
“You do this to me. Not because you want me to know what you’re feeling, sweetheart, because this is how I feel.” He swallows, voice thick in his throat. “I want you so bad.”
The confession comes out rasping, like the words had been ripped from his chest. Your hand trails down his bare stomach, the backs of your knuckles dancing along the planed ridges there. The skin beneath your fingers jumps when you skirt across it. Pushing your fingers into the waistband of the flannel pants, you groan at the sensation of the heat coming off of his skin. “This okay?”
“Fuck, baby, you’re askin’ me if this is okay?” Logan’s hand comes up to cup your cheek once again, and you glance up at the grin on his face. It lights up his eyes. It’s like Logan’s fighting two different parts of himself: the very human desire to be gentle, to be careful, and the beast inside of him that wants to tear you apart.
Laughing, you tug down on the elastic, cheeks heating when you don’t feel another waistband. He’s bare beneath, and as you’re eye-level with his hips, you come face-to-face with his flushed, heavy cock as you strip the fabric from him. The tip of it weeps as you palm him, stroking him gently so his foreskin pulls back and reveals the crimson tint of it. You can’t say you’re shocked by the size of him, considering how large a man he actually is.
“Fuck, Logan,” you breathe, mouth watering, and you know the way you’re looking at him would be a bit embarrassing if he wasn’t looking at you the exact same way, his lashes fluttering as you push the adrenaline coursing through your veins into him. He wraps one big hand around yours and squeezes, groaning at the sensation.
“Here, baby,” he says, pulling your hand from his cock and placing it into your lap. He laughs when you whine in protest, stepping out of his pajama pants entirely and leaving himself naked. You’re still fully clothed and it almost pains you. “Plenty a’ time for me to stuff myself down your throat later.”
The way he says it has a low, fuzzy warmth rushing into your gut, but you quit your protesting when Logan kneels on the floor at your feet. “Lean back.”
You do as he says and inch yourself further up the bed, knees still hanging over the side of the mattress, anchoring yourself to his bedspread with your elbows. Logan crooks his fingers into your own pants, kissing the skin he exposes as he pulls them down, down, leaving you in only your tee shirt and soaked-through panties. He eyes them as you unconsciously angle your knees outward, but ignores your desire completely, instead leaning up to bite the hem of your shirt and drag it up and over your stomach.
Gasping, you rush to pull the fabric from the grip of his teeth and pull it over your head, tossing it to the floor beside the bed and cupping the back of his head in one hand, fingers tangling themselves in the hair at the base of his neck. You ease him upward, his palms pressed into the bed next to your waist, and pull him into a searing kiss, hoping to communicate how you feel without saying a word. Logan pants into your mouth and squirms out of your grip, pupils once again blown wide. He leans down to press his lips to the base of your throat, your elbow falling back to the bed to hold yourself up. 
Your gaze follows his descent down your torso, watching as Logan drops a kiss to your breastbone, to the areola of your right breast, then to the one of your left. His lips engulf your nipple and you moan softly, biting your bottom lip when he flicks his tongue across it. He drags his lips down your stomach, settling against the knot of one soft peak of your hip bone. He bites gently and your stomach clenches at the feeling. When you place a hand against his cheek, his eyes flutter shut, his nostrils flaring at the feeling flooding his body. The pleased, humming warmth he’s making you feel. 
“Logan,” you whisper, watching him continue down, mouthing at the skin on the inside of your thighs, kneading the soft flesh there. “Please.”
“Please what, honey?” You can feel him smirk against you. “Gotta use your words.”
“Please put your mouth on me.”
“Am putting my mouth on you,” he says, smug, and you gasp, tossing your head back when he bites you again, this time enough to make your delicate skin bruise. “Whaddaya want?”
“Want you to fuck me.”
“With my mouth?” Logan tuts, bringing one hand up to pull your panties to the side and expose your warm, wet flesh to the cool air of his bedroom. Your hips twitch. “You sure?”
You angle yourself up, trying desperately to find his mouth and claim it yourself. He laughs at the desperate want plastered across your face. “Oh, fuck off, you god damn tease, just fuck me.”
Logan shakes his head, leaning in to lick along your wet cunt and a sharp, bright cry rips itself from your chest. Your thighs try to close around his head as he presses his thumb into your pubic bone and holds you open, laps at your clit, but he growls and grips one in his hand, wrenching it away from him. His eyes shine up at you from between your legs.
“Why’d’ya wanna do that, huh, baby? You want me to fuck you so bad, don’t make it hard on me,” he murmurs, wrapping his lips around your clit and suckling gently while you cry out. He carries on like that for quite a bit – just his mouth against the most sensitive part of you, fingers pressing into your thighs. Your legs shake and you cover your mouth with your hand; you worry about coming too quickly until he eases up, pushing one finger inside of you to fuck you with.
Your hand grips the hair at the top of his head, and Logan groans at the pressure. Hissing, he presses his palms flat against the insides of your thighs to wrench them further open, encouraging you wordlessly to hook your feet across his back. When he’s satisfied, he crooks a finger around your panties and pulls until they tear, the shreds of fabric no longer an obstacle in the way of seeking out your pleasure. 
“Want me to make you come?” The question is asked with his mouth pressed against your cunt, and you gasp, back arching, at the feeling of his words. “You wanna come on my tongue?”
You nod furiously, writhing as a second finger works itself inside of you, curling upward to meet head-on that spot inside of you that sends sparks behind your eyes. Your heels dig into the skin of his back and you reach down, blindly fumbling for Logan’s hand. He smiles wide and takes it, tangling his fingers with yours as your hips rut against his face. 
He talks you through it between strokes of his tongue against your clit, his fingers pumping in and out as he tells you how good you are for him, how good you feel for him, how he can’t wait to feel you around his cock. You throw an arm across your eyes and whimper, hips twitching as you come down, pulling his hair and crying out for him to let up. He places one last kiss above your cunt, smiling as you gasp, and leans back to admire you.
Logan places your feet on the floor and plants his hands beside you, using the mattress as leverage to hoist himself up above you. He grins down at you and for however fucked out he already looks, you know you must look a thousand times worse.
“Hi, gorgeous,” he murmurs, leaning in for a kiss, giving you a taste of yourself by easing his tongue into your mouth. You can feel his cock, weeping and solid and insistent against your hip. Fuck. 
You groan against him, your lips stretching into a smile as he kisses you languidly and reaches out to help you wrap your arms around his neck. “Here.”
Standing, Logan holds your body close to him. Your head notches into his neck and suckles there while he pulls you up the bed, settling you against the pillows underneath him. He props himself up on one hand as his knees push against the insides of your thighs, opening you up for him.
One hand on your flushed cheek, Logan fists his cock, smiling down at you. “Y’alright there, sweet cheeks?”
“Head’s fuzzy,” you murmur, reaching out to grip his hips with your hands. “Want you.”
Logan smirks, leaning back on his heels and running a hand through his hair, scalp sweaty. Your own fans out behind your head. He gawps down at you. “Look like a goddess like this, you know.”
Your blush deepens and you push a hand against his stomach. “Stop.”
“You do,” he smirks, leaning down to plant kisses across your face, down your jaw, to your neck. “Mm, so fucking pretty when I’ve just made you come. Smell so good.”
You gasp when he presses his mouth right behind your ear, gripping your hips. His cock drags across your stomach, a heavy reminder of his own neglected desire. You reach down to fist a hand around him and tug, pulling a groan from him.
“My girl want me to fuck her proper? Hm?”
Open-mouthed and with a heavy gaze, you watch as Logan sits back and fucks himself up into your fist, hips stuttering when you tighten your grip. His chest glistens with sweat, heaving as you push the burning feeling in your veins through to him. He gasps, stretching a hand down and holding your wrist still.
“Hey,” he growls, head thrown back. “Play fair.”
“Why should I?” He’s glaring down at you now, which only eggs you on. You shrug. “S’fun to watch you come apart like this, big strong man.”
Logan groans, pulling his hips back, and his cock falls from your grasp. “I’ll show you comin’ apart, baby.”
Sitting back on his heels, Logan wraps his hands around your hips and jerks them forward until your cunt is close enough to him that he would barely have to move his own hips to fuck his cock into you.
“You got a condom?”
“It’s okay,” you whimper, shaking your head. “Don’t need one. On the pill. I’m clean.”
Logan looks down at you, trying to gauge what headspace you’re in, if he should grab one anyway – and you shake your head. “Don’t need it, please.”
“It’s okay, it’s fine,” you repeat. He smiles, squeezes your hips tight. He nods, bringing one hand down to grip himself and ease toward you. Runs the head of his cock down your cunt, getting himself nice and slick, up and down and up again until you’re a panting mess, wiggling your hips. It’s torture. “Please, Logan.”
“Oh, now you’re askin’ nice?”
You groan, wild-eyed, and he wants to laugh at the look on your face but he chokes it back. You need him – bad – and he can’t say no to you.
“Alright, baby,” he says, hushed, gripping your thigh with the hand not currently around his cock. Guiding himself to your entrance, Logan pushes his hips forward, groaning as the head of his cock disappears inside of you. Despite how wet you are, the stretch burns, your body unattuned to his size. He presses forward, bit by bit, licking the tip of his thumb and pushing it against your clit to ease your discomfort, and you gasp at the feeling, eyes rolling back. “Shh, shh, it’s okay.”
Once he’s fully seated inside of you, he pulls your hips flush to his, leaning down to press himself to you completely. Hand still pressed to your clit between you, Logan circles his hips, watching your face, how you react. He watches your eyelids flutter, watches you pull your bottom lip between your teeth. He gives a shallow thrust to gauge your readiness, and you moan, low, in the back of your throat. 
“S’okay,” you grunt out, hands braced against the outsides of his thighs, eyes trained on his lips. “Fuck, please. I’m so wet, Logan, please, please fuck me.”
Logan groans, your words going straight to his cock, twitching inside of you. He grips your waist in his hands and gives another exploratory rut, this time short, puncturing. Your breath is pushed out of your lungs. He rocks his hips back once again, pressing forward slow before punctuating the thrust with a sharp jolt, shocking the air from you once again.
Your nails dig into his thighs and he nods, his forehead rubbing against yours. “Okay baby, okay. I’ll fuck you, yeah. This what you want?”
His hips ease back, pulling his cock from your warmth almost all the way, before thrusting back in, deep, to the point. Then again, and again, and again. Your head has fallen back, Logan having to hook an arm around the back of your neck as you’re forced up the bed.
“You’re so warm, pulling me back in, sweetheart, so fucking wet for me. I’m gonna fuck you so good, you’re so tight, god, like you were made for me.” 
“Fuck,” you whisper, mouth pressed to the side of his face. Your cunt tightens around him and you whine. “Already fuckin’ me so good.”
“You gonna come for me, baby? Yeah?”
“Yeah.” And you are. Again. You’re gonna come for him again. His cock is driving into you so fast you can’t escape the warm sensation in your gut – and you don’t want to. It feels so good, it’s like your whole body has turned to goo beneath him. You press a kiss to the underside of his chin, his beard scratching at your lips, but you don’t care. 
“Yeah, baby? Can feel your cunt tight around me, can feel you ‘bout to come.”
“Gonna come, Logan,” you gasp, reaching one hand up and gripping the headboard as tight as you can, but your elbow still folds, your arm putty with the pleasure. He brings his other hand up from your hips to hold you by the top of your head, to keep you from slipping further up the bed, and your hands instinctively come around to clutch his shoulders.
Immediately the pleasure coursing through you lights every nerve ending in his body fucking alive. You feel him tense beneath your fingers, pulse quickening.
His hips snap down onto yours, his cock dragging up against that rough spot inside your cunt, as your orgasm floods through you. You hardly register the deep rumbling coming from his chest as you cling to him. Logan’s breath comes gasping as the feeling of your orgasm floods through him, too, hands gripping the flesh of your ass to hold you in place while he fucks down into you.
His eyes are closed tight, stomach clenching, and when you drag one hand down to rub circles on your clit, he buries his cock deep inside of you and holds himself there. 
You scratch your nails gently down Logan’s back as he basically whimpers into the air between you, leaning up to catch his lips with yours as he rocks his hips, stuffing himself deeper, until you feel him come. He groans and spills himself into you, hips glued to yours, occasionally quavering with the aftershocks of his own orgasm.
“Fuck,” he huffs once he’s back in his body, one hand against your cheek, brushing your hair away from your mouth so he can press a kiss to them. His eyes search for yours, bright and enlivened. “You okay? Huh?”
You nod, your head loose on your neck, and he laughs. “Fuck,” he repeats. “That was fucking crazy. Is that how it feels every time?”
At that you sheepishly shake your head, eyes coming up to meet his. No, that’s not at all how it feels every time. You can tell by the look on his face he’s trying not to seem smug about that.
“That was good, though,” he murmurs, his face softening, “fuck, that was so good.”
He seems more relaxed than you’ve ever seen him. You cry out when he pulls his cock from you, still holding your face and whispering sorry, baby, sorry. He presses a kiss to your mouth between apologies.
He unfolds himself from you and stands, running a hand through his hair. Pulling his pajamas back up over his legs and his shirt over his bare torso, he tells you he’ll be right back, and you must fall asleep after that because the next thing you know you’re curled up on your side while Logan runs a warm, wet washcloth across the inside of your thighs. You hiss at the sensation and he nudges a hand against your hip until you roll over onto your back.
“You sure you’re okay? I didn’t hurt you or nothin’?”
“Mhm,” you murmur, reaching for him and he obliges, dropping the cloth to the floor and crawling up the bed to wrap himself around you, slinging your leg over top of his. “You just wiped me out, s’all. And who thought you’d be so fuckin’ talkative in bed.”
He laughs and presses his lips to the end of your nose, his nose grazing your forehead.
You pull at his shirt and kiss him square on the mouth, a thank you for making you feel so good. So safe with him. Your bare chest is pressed to his, and you know he can probably feel how fast your pulse is racing, arms wrapped around your back. You still in his grip when you feel something pressing against your bare stomach.
He’s hard again. A fire reignites somewhere low in your belly, your mouth watering, and when you catch his eye, he grins, like he can read your thoughts.
“You wanna put that mouth to use now, sweetheart?”
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uc1wa · 1 year ago
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18+ minors dni
OCT. 17 — KINKTOBER ‘23
KNIFE & GUN PLAY WITH JASON TODD
ktober m.list
tags: fem reader, blood, gun play isn't gorey, penetrative sex, cum play for a second, possessive jason, reader calls jason daddy once, (if i missed any pls message me!)
jason hesitated only slightly when you had mentioned having rougher sex. took a beat to read your face one night after dinner when the topic was somehow brought up, a tilt of his head and arch of his brow following.
it wasn’t like the two of you were purely vanilla when it came to your bedroom tendencies. you started by asking jason to choke you, your hand placing overtop of his to press harder—clearly nervous of his strength and your limits. then, jason tested out slapping… and with the way your pussy clenched around him, it was safe to say there was a green light in front of that too.
but… when you were playing with the switchblade that the man kept in his pocket when you had run the blade over your fingers gently, and the words, "i wouldn’t be upset if you used this in bed," fell from your tongue, jason could only smirk to himself.
"want me to put a lil’ tattoo on you princess?" he asks, holding his hand out in asking for the blade, to which you hand to him. you nod with a grin, lifting up the thin fabric of your pajama shorts. the soft flesh of your upper thigh being exposed, your fingers running over the skin. "right here," you say, the skin right under the hem of your panties being traced with your fingertip.
you look from the skin between your hip and thigh to jason who’s sat in front of you, his eyes darkening as he looks at your skin. the hand that’s not holding the blade grabs the soft flesh, squeezing it and giving it a little tap.
"'jason’s'… how does that sound?" green eyes meet yours, his demeanor changing to one of those that says he's ready to pounce on you at any given second. "mhm, mark me up. wouldn’t be your first time," you nod with a laugh, pulling up your top to show one of your boobs, a dark purple love mark sucked into the skin from two days prior.
jason tilts his head in thought, questioning if he should hold out on telling you his desire that followed yours. the desire that has just reached the front of his mind, a thought that only a questionable vigilante who's killed hundreds would have. his eyes trailed over your body as he does so, to which you scrunch your eyebrows. "yes?" he holds a momentary finger up at you as he silently walks away, making his way into your bedroom without a word.
a few minutes go by, your attention is turned to the television until the man walks back into the room. nothing has changed about him, besides the fact that he’s holding a hand behind his back. one end of jason’s lips is tugged upwards despite the nervousness to reveal the idea he was keeping away from you.
he takes a seat, sweatshirt bunching up around his hips as he brings his arm forward. now your eyes widen—excited and nervous yourself. the hesitation is understandable, as any other sane person would most likely make a run for it.
the shiny, clean metal was one you’d only seen when jason had come home from being the red hood. when he had come off of patrol and you were in the rarity of being awake at the late hour of the night, watching him strip himself of his vigilante clothing and tools. the tools he had hidden in the back of your shared closet, several locks attached as a safety measure.
the mechanism that your boyfriend had used hundreds of times—either to take a life or to severely hurt another. now, holding it in front of you, his eyes never leaving your face.
"why not both?" he asks, turning the gun to show you that the safety is on, continuing to open the slots where bullets would be found and showing that it was clear of any possibilities of harm.
while jason was around guns and every possibility of weaponry on a daily basis, you weren’t. but, you weren’t opposed to the idea, and the way your heart rate quickened and your underwear started to get wet was proof of that.
with wide eyes you nod and stand up to take jason’s hand, leading you to the room that you were normal to experimenting in.
you both were quick to strip yourselves of clothes, your mind occupied with ways that you could make use of the gun, finally landing on the one thing that you know jason would like.
on a carpet in front of your bed, you fall to your knees on the ground below you, hands sitting pretty and expectantly on your thighs. wide eyes watch your boyfriend smirk at the way you’re ready for him, finding his space in front of you, standing tall and proud with the gun still in his hand.
if jason hadn’t cleaned his guns religiously, you wouldn’t dare to put the one in his hand anywhere near you—god knows what would lie on the surface of it. but, jason took care of them as if they were his prized possession, the same way he took care of you.
so, he places the gun in front of him, right where his cock would usually fall if you were to suck him off. instead of him, though, your tongue slips between your lips to find the tip of the gun, letting it lay flat against the underside of the cool metal while his cock stands proudly behind it.
his eyes stay pointed downwards, watching the way you wrap your lips around the cold metal. while his face doesn't read anything but focus, his internals are going off the charts. his cock hard as a rock while his heart beats faster and faster in anticipation. anticipation of watching you suck his gun, and his cock, and fucking you with pretty metal touching your throat and scarlet running down your thigh from his idea of a tattoo.
while your soft lips left a salivated mess on the tip of jason's pistol, you decided to bring a hand to his member. thumb running over the tip, pleased to feel his pre and following suit in running down his length, beginning to slowly jerk him off. a soft smile tugging your lips when you watch his breath hitch in his throat from the contact.
like a flick of a light switch, jason's throwing the weapon to your bed with a shake of his head. helping you stand up with a hand holding your throat, forcing a choked whine to leave you because of the strength of your boyfriend. your eyes go wide when he leans down to face you, grip still holding the soft skin that coats your neck.
"i'm gonna give it all to you tonight, sweetheart. don't worry about that pretty head of yours, okay?" he questions, throwing you on the bed and finally releasing you, allowing you space and time to catch your breath while jason takes his time crawling between your legs that you oh-so gladly spread for him.
it should be a crime to be as wet as you are due to the minimal contact your boyfriends had with you. hardly laying more than a hand on you and dripping onto the bed without care, eyes meeting his dark ones and watching as he grabs the gun once more.
only this time, his confidence is at a high. all hints of hesitation leaving his body and the action of rubbing the opening of the gun between your folds is done selfishly. of course, he knows it feels good with the symphony of whines and moans you sing for him, but he can't help but to indulge in the sight alone. dark eyes watching the way your cunt flutters, begging to be penetrated rather than teased with the metal.
jason's hungry for everything you give to him.
"such a slut," he begins, locking eyes with you once more, "all wet from a fuckin' gun?" you babble something that sounds like a confirmation, and it makes jason scoff, halting his movements just where you need him; tip of his gun pressed and paused at your entrance. "beg for it."
your cheeks flush, turn red at the demand he makes. but, it's dumb to deny it. dumb to act like you won't fuck the killing machine that was just pressed to the puffy lips of your mouth.
"fuck me with it, please," you say lightly, knowing it's not enough, but wanting to push jason further. after all, he said he'd give it all to you tonight, so you'll make him prove it.
his voice grows deeper, louder and he nudges your clit that begging for attention with the metal, allowing weight to fall on it which makes you squirm under his harsh gaze. "fuckin' pathetic... fuck you with what?"
your eyes roll back, hips rolling forward in attempt to move the dead weight that is the gun and gain some stimulation. but, it's to no avail. your eyes grow wide, swollen lips closing before opening once more. "please daddy, wan' you to fuck me with your gun. gonna feel so good, please please please," you press, and jason eats it entirely. angry red cock spilling with precum, milky streak falling against one of his veins.
"mhm, princess," he says, moving the gun downwards and pressing it to your entrance once more, slowly, eyeing the way your hole swallows the metal that pushes inwards until it can't anymore. the sweet moan is something he appreciates, though he knows the size is only a fraction of his cock that you're used to. but, the coolness of it does enough to feel foreign and good.
with a cocky smirk on his lips, he begins fucking you with the weapon. pulling it in and out of you slowly, but increasing in speed with each thrust he delivers; a big hand holding it with his index and middle finger holding the trigger subconsciously. aiming straight towards your cervix, which he'll touch soon enough.
and he fucks you well. fucks you with an arm that has pretty scars and newer cuts littering the skin. veins starting on the top of his hand and trailing to his forearm pumping blood that's evident in the way his cock is begging for attention. but he wants you to cum once on the gun. make a mess out of it in a way that's unlike anything he's ever experienced.
and once you're arching your back against blankets, moaning his name out in a near yell, and attempting to move a hand between your legs to get him to stop fucking you, stimulation too much, he finally gets what he wants.
jason's perverted thoughts cloud his head when he's slow to pull the gun out of you. looking at the metal that's covered in your milky essence. slow enough that there's a string of wetness that connects you to the weapon, and he could cum from that alone.
but the real finale is when he realizes that your cum is filling the barrel of the gun, filling the once-empty space with yourself. he brings it to your lower tummy, spilling the mess all over you in a manner that's filled with pure filth. proceeding to throw the gun to the side, acknowledging the fact that it's served its purpose for tonight. the pain of his hard-on is finally coming to his attention, and he needs to stuff his pussy.
"how'd that feel, gem?" he questions, moving against covers and watching your half-lidded eyes. both hands pull your thighs up so he can push them back, tip teasing your swollen entrance. "g-good," you whimper, and jason would be lying if he paid any attention to your response. your convulsing pussy is the only thing that has his attention right now, the way you're attempting to suck him whole.
and without warning, he's pushing his entire length between your legs, filling you whole and halting his movements once he's completely surrounded by your soft walls. groaning at the sensation of you clenching around him, but resisting moving his hips the way he wants to.
one hand remains gripping the fat of your thigh while the other grabs the switchblade lying on the mattress beside your pretty figure. flicking it open with his fingers, somehow making it look like an art while he's in the process of doing so. your attention follows it, almost forgetting that you're being stuffed full of jason's cock without movement. unwillingly cockwarming the man.
"remind me, baby. where'd you want my name?" jason's eyes move to meet yours, and without fail, a whimper slips past your lips and he feels the tightness that's close to making him hammer himself into you. but he has the patience and self-control that you don't.
his palm meets yours halfway, letting go of your thigh and letting his hand fall overtop of yours, smoothing over the top of your thigh. in the space that's dangerously next to where he's laid out inside of you, and it makes him more hungry for you if that was possible.
he's transferring his blade to the hand that's closer to the skin where you want it, tracing only enough for your skin to become a shade lighter under the pressure. once again looking up at you, he takes note of the way your lips fall open while anticipation grows in your eyes. it makes him smile wildly, a reminder that you want this. that you're the one who asked for it.
"'s gonna hurt," you whimper, and jason shakes his head, setting the blade on your thigh while his big hand takes your jaw in his hand, squishing your cheeks. "you can handle it, baby. c'mon, where'd my strong girl go?" a smile pulls your lips upwards. "it'll feel just like that tattoo you wanted, it's like a trial before the real thing." he leans towards you, holding back a groan from the way he pushes himself deeper inside your cunt to do so, giving you a sloppy and messy open-mouthed kiss.
then he's pulling back, blade in hand once more, and beginning to get to work. the whimpers are a symphony to his ears as he presses the sharp tip against your soft skin, cutting his name so pretty in your flesh. his eyes watch the way the deep red liquid peeks through the cracks, beginning to drip down the side of your skin. the hand that's not cutting his name into you is squeezing and rubbing the skin of your stomach soothingly.
his hips moving in small circles, enough to give the both of you something, but not enough to make him mess up his painting.
"so fucking pretty, honey," jason says as soon as he's finished, throwing the bloodied blade on the floor to clean up later. but his eyes are unable to see his finished work of art, and jason isn't one to waste.
pulling out of you with a moan, he leans down to the expanse of your thigh, licking over the blood with his tongue flat. he doesn't take note of how you sit up, your eyes widening at the stinging but warm sensation. you watch the way scarlet red coats his tongue, finding its way to the corners of his lips while he sits back up on his knees.
jason's cock stands tall as he uses his thumb to collect the blood from his lips, dark eyes watching yours as he sucks on his own digit. longer than needed, but he can see you like it; whether it be your fluttering cunt or your eyebrows that furrow. he laughs, knowing he's completed what had to be done in order for you to fully be his property.
because now jason's pretty slut girlfriend can't show her cunt to any other man without reading jason's name right beside it.
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🏷️: @harleycao, @idyllcy, @hails227, @aviixol, @hopeannalea, @hearttjason, @roysjason, @blursotongz, @zaxlarza, @wartofart, @loviie-stuff, @nmw-am, @nightjarwings
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conundrumoftime · 2 months ago
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One of the fun things about shipping Haladriel and about Galadriel's story in Rings of Power, for me, is that we know exactly where this is going to end up. And I wanted to babble for a bit about where that place is because I have seen so many people view it as "she is retired to some woods to be a passive wife-and-mother who can do magic but in a mystical New Age-y way", and: no! No.
So a quick overview of where she will end up by LOTR:
Very much not removed from the war against Sauron.
She is constantly mind-battling against Sauron: One of the lines that inspired McKay and Payne's whole show was her talking about this: "I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought." In one of the versions of the Annatar story in Unfinished Tales, Sauron immediately realises she will be his 'chief adversary', and has apparently not changed that assessment 3500 years later.
She co-ordinates joint efforts against Sauron: The White Council that Elrond talks about in LOTR, the combined force of Ring-bearers, wizards and elf-lords that first drives Sauron out of Dol Guldur - she's not just on that, she founded it.
She gets Gandalf back after Moria and the Balrog: Galadriel learns what's happened to Gandalf from the Fellowship when they arrive in Lothlórien. The the Fellowship are sad; the elves of Lothlórien mourn; Celeborn loses it a bit and says Gandalf 'fell into folly'; but Galadriel sends Gwaihir the eagle to get him, returns him to health, updates him on the situation with Boromir, gives him some messages to take to the others, and sends him back on his way.
She is possibly in Lothlórien because of its position of strategic importance: from Unfinished Tales here, she 'saw that Lórien would be a stronghold and point of power to prevent the Shadow from crossing the Anduin in the war that must inevitably come' and that's why she and Celeborn go there. (There are other versions as with almost everything else in Tolkien, but this is one of them.) She's not there to hide away from Events.
2. Calmer than in TROP, but not all-wise and all-sweet and still pretty scary.
She is still tempted by power and world domination: "I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer [...] In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night!"
And, she doesn't just turn down the One Ring because it's abstractly eeeevil. She turns it down because she knows what she, specifically, would do with it. Sam sees a vision of the Shire, and tells her "I wish you'd take his Ring. You'd put things to rights. You'd stop them digging up the Gaffer and turning him adrift. You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work," to which she says that yes, she would: "That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it."
And saying she wants to rule the world here is not me joking about! This is Tolkien describing that moment in LOTR:
It was not until two long ages more had passed, when at last all that she had desired in her youth came to her hand, the Ring of Power and the dominion of Middle-earth of which she had dreamed, that her wisdom was full-grown and she rejected it
People are scared of her: The only scary moment we directly see is the Ring temptation, but she does other unsettling things. When she meets the Fellowship she tests them by reading their minds and offering something they really want to see if it would make them "turn aside from the road and leave the Quest and the war against Sauron to others." (She offers Sam a garden; the One Ring later on tempts him with the same thing.) Even the hobbits are a bit disturbed by this and Boromir, who's already said he doesn't want to go into Lothlórien because people who do that never leave again, absolutely does not trust her.
Éomer, a few chapters later:
'Then there is a Lady in the Golden Wood, as old tales tell!' he said. 'Few escape her nets, they say. These are strange days! But if you have her favour, then you are also net-weavers and sorcerers, maybe.'
She's scary! She's ancient and powerful and people are scared of her.
3. Married, but not in the character-limiting way the nerdbros want it to be and would have you believe it is.
I am not telling anyone they should ship Galadriel/Celeborn or even find it interesting just because I do, but, the angry nerdbros fancasting Celeborn as Henry Cavill and talking about how he'll come back to tame her and tidy her neatly out of the narrative are writing their own little AU headcanons because that is not what's in the text.
She's the more powerful one. Partly because she's one of the 'High Elves' - she's Noldor and has lived in Valinor seen the light of the Trees - which for various reasons about the way Tolkien's elves work just makes her more powerful, partly because she has a Ring of Power and Celeborn doesn't. It's her Mirror; she's the one reading people's minds; she's the one locked in endless mental battles with Sauron; she's the one the Rohirrim (whose lands border Lothlorien's) tell each other scary stories about. Celeborn at no point ever seems to have an issue with this, and calls her his 'treasure'.
They work together. Even in a big-action-sequences sense: after Sauron's defeat, Celeborn 'led the host of Lorien over Anduin in many boats' to Dol Guldur, where Galadriel 'threw down its walls and laid bare its pits'. But the rest of the time, too: she says of him that 'together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat'.
You really get the sense that they have been married for a loooooong time. An actual sequence of events in LOTR, somewhat condensed:
The Fellowship reveal there's a Balrog in Moria;
Celeborn goes "!!!!", complains about dwarves waking it up and says he'd never have let Gimli into Lothlorien if he'd known that;
Galadriel smacks Celeborn down for being rude to their guest;
Celeborn apologises to Gimli;
Galadriel tells the Fellowship that Celeborn is accounted the wisest of elves;
Boromir says something about "old wives' tales";
Celeborn, whose wife is one of the oldest beings in Middle-earth, tells Boromir not to be so dismissive because "old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know";
Galadriel hands Celeborn a drink.
Whatever is going on here is clearly something that works for them, is what I'm saying! And you don't have to find their marriage interesting just because I do, of course; but what it's not is some trad fantasy of domestic subservient-wife anything.
So where her TROP story ends up is ultimately with LOTR Galadriel: powerful, important, tempted to rule the world, a bit calmer than in TROP, a bit happier than in TROP, co-ordinating big strategic efforts in the war, married to someone who's got her back and adores her and they fall out a bit sometimes but generally work pretty well together, and still having Sauron constantly trying to get into her head. I am fine with this! I am more than fine with this.
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vampire-superstar · 1 year ago
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That's the entire post
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v1codn · 6 months ago
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i really truly think wilson taking the risk of doing chemo in an apartment because he'd rather potentially die in an old, probably not exactly sanitary place that homes a druggy cripple next to house instead of a clean an efficient hospital sorrounded by stranger medical professionals is something that is very poetic to me. in a way. and i like to think on it often
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clowningaroundmars · 2 months ago
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so many mike chiltons in the motorcity tag!!! here are mine :D
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kingofthecotas · 24 days ago
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twin skeletons | read on ao3
soulmate au, 2023 season | ~3k
it's uhhh kind of getting better but not really lads
——
Oberlungwitz, Germany 
The last thing Marc wants is to answer the phone. He’s sore, pissed off, and fucking humiliated.
But he answers, because Valentino had called after Mandalika. And he’d called about the fourth surgery, sounding almost guilty—as if, for the first time in years, Marc had said something and he’d listened. 
You didn’t call after Jerez.
He’s calling now. In fact, he won’t stop fucking calling.
“That bike is going to kill you.”
Marc sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t ask why do you care? because that answer is going to be more than he’s equipped to handle today. “It—it’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad? Marc.”
Despite it all, he’s never getting tired of this, of the sound of his name in Valentino’s mouth. It’s something, at least. 
“Whatever. It’s bad. Not a lot I can do about it.”
They haven’t been careful, haven’t crept around each other to figure out this new version of themselves. Valentino calls, tells Marc he’s an idiot, almost cracks the lid off the pressure cooker of the last eight years, and Marc will hang up before it gets too dangerous. 
And next time Valentino calls, he will answer.
This is an old argument, a well-worn path, one that’s hung between them since 2013. 
“Shouldn’t even be telling you this,” Marc mutters. “You run fucking Ducatis.” 
“Everyone can see the bike is bad,” Valentino says, pointed. 
“Fucking—obviously.” Because this is Marc’s circuit. He doesn’t like expecting things, but he should be head and shoulders above the rest. He should not be riding a bucking animal down the waterfall, feeling it writhe underneath him like it wants to leave him a smear on the asphalt. 
He should not be crashing five times at the Sachsenring. 
He didn’t race in Indonesia, in the end, and he’d told himself it was Álex that persuaded him. Maybe that was easier than remembering how his name sounded when Valentino called that first time. 
“I think I will not race,” he forces out, mirror-inverse of that conversation. “I might get hurt.”
Nothing. Just the silence to let him breathe. Marc’s grateful for it. 
“I’ll be in Misano,” Valentino says softly.
“Of course you will.”
“Marc.”
“This is not—” He doesn’t know what he wants to say. This is not me forgiving you, maybe. Except he probably already has. 
His arm aches, something deeper than his twice-broken bone, pulsing with his heartbeat. Valentino used to run his fingers over it, brushing the piece of his soul that lives under Marc’s skin over and over again. They used to—
Valentino used to curl his lip, used to act as if he thought Marc belonged to him. He doesn’t make the same demands he did back then, not since Mandalika, but they hover in the silence nonetheless. The worst thing is that Marc understands him now, understands why it scared him to have his life so intertwined with someone else’s. 
But they’re still not okay. 
Not for the first time, Marc wonders where they might be if he’d only lost the front in Indonesia, or if he’d only been flung over the handlebars, if his head hadn’t cracked against the asphalt. Not here, that’s for fucking sure. 
He doesn’t say that, because Valentino isn’t a hair trigger anymore but he’ll make a guilty little sound that twists Marc’s stomach. 
“I’ll see you in Italy,” he says instead, and the relief is visceral through the phone. 
——
Misano Adriatico, Italy
As promised, Valentino is in Misano.
Of course he would be. 
It doesn’t take him long to find Marc; he knows the place well, knows how to slip through the motorhome lot without being accosted. He knows just where to wait to catch Marc after his track walk, to beckon him with a tilt of his head.
Marc follows. Of course he does. 
It’s—
They’ve seen each other, looked each other in the face (refused a handshake), since they fell apart, since Valentino retired. Since Mandalika. They haven’t truly looked at each other for a very long time. 
He’s different, Marc realises. Older, yes, more stubble, curls winding out from beneath his cap, but more than that, he’s tired, mouth tight, eyes shadowed. 
“It was a, ah, scary moment in Germany,” Valentino offers to the silence between them.
“Which one?” Marc mutters, then, “Scary for you or for me?” Another jab. Maybe he just wants to see if the soft underbelly is still there. 
“Ah…” Valentino looks up, away, shrugs with his left shoulder. “Why are you—?” He stops. 
“Why what?” Valentino should not get to ask anything, really, but Marc had answered the phone. He keeps answering. Keeps cracking the door a little wider. 
He should stop. Probably. Maybe. 
Valentino finally meets his gaze, eyes blank—hiding—and tilts his chin at Marc’s arm, at the healed scars, the ruined skin, the mark hidden under his T-shirt sleeve. “Does it still hurt?”
“It’s been worse,” Marc says slowly. It had been worse after the surgeries. It had been worse after Sepang. 
Valentino half-reaches a hand out, eyes boring into Marc’s shoulder.
Marc swallows. “No.”
“Marc,” Valentino breathes, and before Marc can move away, there’s a hand on his right arm, a thumb brushing his mark.
It’s—
He closes his eyes, because then at least Valentino can’t see—but his body must give him away, must shudder as electricity snaps outwards from the contact. He doesn’t make a sound, thank God.
And then—he rips his arm free, slaps his hand over his mark, because Valentino does not get to do this. He was the one who didn’t want this, didn’t want them. He was the one who held Marc up in front of the world, in front of snapping jaws and hungry eyes, and said here, this one. 
He was the one who—
“Fuck you,” Marc manages, and his soulmark throbs with the echo of a kick. Inch given, mile taken. He won’t make that mistake again. (He’s made it so many times before.) “Don’t do that.” 
Valentino’s eyes are huge now, like he can’t understand—there’s the chink in the armour, Marc thinks with grim satisfaction. Except why is Valentino reaching out to him? 
They stay as they are for an excruciating moment—Marc covering his soulmark, Valentino’s arm still outstretched—before someone rides past on a scooter, too close to their hiding place, and the scene shatters. 
Valentino hasn’t touched his mark for nearly eight years. It had felt so good that Marc wants to throw up. 
He flees before he can think too hard about it. 
——
It must have been—
Here, Valentino was saying. Remember you belong to me. Remember I can do this. 
Right? 
I don’t want you, but we’re soulmates anyway. I hurt you. You can never really get away from me.
“Marc.” Álex’s voice makes him jump. “You’ve got the call in ten minutes, remember? Nadia and the team.”
“Yeah.” He stares at the kitchenette worktop, at Álex leaning over, at the part of himself on his brother’s wrist. 
“Are you okay?”
“Is this the right thing to do?” Marc whispers.
“It’s just a meeting.” But Álex knows him, knows what he means. “You can’t stay on that bike. It’s going to kill you.”
The echo of Valentino’s words—Marc snaps his gaze up to his brother’s face. “I thought Honda—I thought I’d be there forever.”
“Forever is a long time.”
It is. Marc didn’t understand that when he was twenty-one. 
“It’s just a phone call,” Álex continues. “No decision yet. You have some time to work it out, no? Remember your plan. You deserve to be on a fast bike.” Then he tilts his head. “What’s wrong?” 
“The team—” 
“Something else.” Of course Álex knows him better than anyone else.
(That’s what it should be like.) 
“Valentino’s here.” 
Álex makes a face. “It’s Misano.”
“He’s—he still calls me.”
Another face. “So?”
Marc rubs his right arm, an unconscious movement. 
“You know what—I won’t tell you what to do.” Álex twists his lips together. “But you know what I think.” 
“Yeah.” Marc taps a finger on his arm: skin, scar, soulmark. “But you—you felt it? When it happened?”
Álex’s expression twitches. “I felt it.”
——
He manages to avoid Valentino until Saturday morning; nowhere near long enough to gather his thoughts, but also—
It feels too long, somehow. He’s looking between motorhomes as he passes them, half-expecting to see the lanky figure waiting for him. He’s on his guard, that’s all it is. Can’t be caught unawares again. 
It’s a tightrope, a careful tread, and they could fall, they could plummet. Valentino could kick his feet out from under him. Again. 
Marc might believe it, if he didn’t know that Valentino has no need to: acts of self-sabotage well and truly over, he would never choose to reach for Marc again, would never pick up the phone, would never run his fingers over the imprint of himself unless he wanted to.
Maybe Marc hit his head so hard in Indonesia it knocked something loose in Valentino’s too. 
He’s not surprised when Valentino appears, waiting. And Marc moves towards him, thread-pull, caught on the line of his unreadable stare.
“I’m sorry,” Valentino says when he’s close enough.
“You’re sorry.”
“Yes.”
Marc controls his expression after a long moment, snaps his mouth shut. “Um. Thank—thank you.” 
“It was, ah, not right. To—” He makes a loose gesture. Can’t even say what he’s done, the line he’s crossed. 
And yet Marc would have given anything, once, to hear Valentino apologise to him. “It’s—fine. Don’t worry about it.”
There’s a flicker, not disappointment but something close, as if he were expecting more of a struggle. Marc is past fighting. 
His arm hurts and the bike is shit and he thinks—he thinks he’s going to Gresini. Giving up the fight. 
Ho turns and walks away. 
——
Valencia, Spain
He throws a bottle of water at the door once it’s closed behind Bezzecchi; it makes an unsatisfying thump, then a second one when it drops to the floor.
Fucking—kid. Holding Valentino’s grudges for him, so simplistic in his belief. Determined to make Marc’s shit day even worse. 
Then he wipes his eyes, crusted with an afternoon’s worth of tears, and collects the bottle, quietly embarrassed at himself.
Santi’s hands on his shoulders had been a weight like never before, and he’d sobbed like a child—that’s his team, his family. And he fucking left them. He couldn’t stay, but—
But. 
He scrubs underneath his nose, tries to sit in it just enough that he’ll be through it by tomorrow. Tomorrow means Gresini. Ducati. Start again.
There’s another knock on the door—not Álex, he wouldn’t bother—and if it’s Bezzecchi again, Marc is going to do something really stupid. 
It’s not. It’s—
Valentino has his lips twisted together, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He’s staring somewhere to the left of Marc. “Hello.”
“Fuck, Vale, not now.” A slip. Marc curses himself, but the vitriol quiets when Valentino looks at him, finally looks at him again. 
“I just wanted—” A long shrug. “It must be difficult. I—”
There’s no reason for him to be here—not a hard crash, not like in Germany or Indonesia, no reason for him to extend a hand again. It must be the same as Misano, as saying here I am, remember how we’re connected. 
And—fine.
If Valentino wants to play that game, if he wants to reach out and say look, I’m here, I’ll always be here, then—Marc lives under his skin as well. He’ll always be there. 
He steps to the side, stares at Valentino until he slips through the door, and makes sure to drag his gaze up Valentino’s arm, his shoulder, lingering on the piece of skin where both their soulmarks sit. 
Valentino notices, says, “Marc,” like he’s facing down a feral animal, and follows it up with, “You’re upset,” as if Marc is the one being unreasonable, as if Marc is the one who’s been unreasonable for the last eighteen fucking months. 
“No shit,” Marc hisses. The space between them may as well be an abyss. There’s a burning coal lodged in his sternum. 
Valentino solves half the problem for him, drifting around the end of the sofa and coming to a halt half a step away. Uncharacteristic of him, to be so off-kilter, so unsure of himself. 
Marc plunges in. His hand finds Valentino’s mark. 
It’s barely a second, a gulp of breath, a thread wound between them, and then Valentino pushes him back so hard he almost stumbles. Marc opens his eyes, the instinct of an apology forming on his tongue—
Valentino kisses him. 
It’s desperate-frantic-starving, teeth and gasps, hands in his hair, a grunt when his shoulder blades hit the motorhome wall. Finding his own hands useless at his sides, he blindly grabs at Valentino’s sleeve until he can touch it again. Familiar. As if it’s been minutes rather than years.
Valentino makes a noise like a groan, like he’s aching, and traces around the branch-twist of scars until he finds the mark. If Marc hadn’t been pressed against the wall, his legs would have given out when stars explode at the back of his skull.
They used to be so gentle, until they weren’t, until Marc rolled into the gravel or raced too hard or did something that made Valentino think of a future or a hundred other unconscious transgressions. They used to be so careful, except when they weren’t.
Marc grins, sharp against the corner of Valentino’s mouth, and curls his fingers into claws. 
This is what you wanted. He digs in, just a little. Remember? You wanted to tear me out. 
Another gasp, shuddering, and yeah, he can do it too. He’s still there. 
He expects retaliation; it’s not as if he hasn’t had worse, after all. Valentino used to get there first, used to fight with nails and teeth, and Marc would capitulate. He expects the same now: a scratch, a bite, have nothing on the lingering shadow of his boot. 
When Valentino says, “Marc,” he sounds like he did on the phone in the hospital in Lombok: the same wretched noise that meant stop, please, don’t hurt yourself; that made Marc listen when Álex told him not to ride; that meant you terrify me; that meant—
He swallows, relaxes his hand. Fucked it, maybe. 
Except Valentino noses around Marc’s jaw and whispers, “Bed?” Like he’s asking. Like it’s ten years ago. 
Like he cares what Marc wants.
For once, they want the same thing, so Marc twists his left arm and, impressing even himself, manages to open the bedroom door. There’s a huff into the crook of his neck, and he finds himself pushed backwards once again, going willingly this time because—
He doesn’t know why, and when Valentino drags his sleeve up, leans down, presses lips to his mark, it doesn’t matter. 
It could be nine, ten years ago. It could be Marc, twenty-one years old, biting back a desperate sob at the shivering heat, lightning arcing through sinew, and it’s not ten years ago and he’s not twenty-one but he wants, he wants, he wants. 
“Marc.” His name. Despite it all, he’s never getting tired of the sound of his name in Valentino’s mouth. “Marc—”
He tips his head back, allows himself to relax into it; his fingers wander through Valentino’s warm hair, gentle. An apology of sorts. 
Missed you, his brain hums, and when Valentino rubs his mark, he can almost pretend they’re thinking the same thing. 
Valentino’s hands move to his waist, to his jeans, careful now—he used to tug at Marc’s trousers, used to fumble the button in his eagerness, and this is foreign, delicate, so gentle. 
“Okay?” Asking again.
“Fuck’s sake—yes—”
Another laugh. Some kind of record, surely. It’s insane. They must be going insane together. 
He wishes he cared more. 
He kicks off his trousers and lets Valentino push him onto the bed, lets him trail kisses across his neck, like they’re something after all. He pulls back, searching, eyes darting side-to-side, wanting—
Marc almost slams the brakes, almost sends himself crashing to the ground, but he wants and Valentino wants and like it or not, the universe chained them together for a reason.
And they were good, before it burned to ash. Before Valentino dropped the struck match he’d been carrying since Laguna Seca. 
When Valentino rests his forehead against Marc’s shoulder and kisses his soulmark, Marc can almost believe it’s I’m sorry, I’m here. When he traces the outline of his soul on Valentino’s skin, he hopes it means I’m here, I’ll always be here, I didn’t leave you. 
——
When Marc wakes up—
He’s warm, sheets kicked around his ankles, solid heat against his back, and Valentino had been here, had let Marc scratch and snarl, had kissed his soulmark like it meant something. 
When Marc wakes up, there’s a hand on his arm, over his scars, over his mark, and it’s golden in his veins. For the first time in years, the bone-deep ache isn’t the only sensation in his right arm.
He doesn’t open his eyes. 
It’s not long before Valentino shifts, inhales sharply the way he always did—still does, apparently—when he’s falling out of sleep. He groans deep in his chest, and freezes. 
For a long moment, there’s nothing: no sound, no movement. Nothing, until Valentino extricates himself, moving as gently as if Marc is made of porcelain, and the warmth of his touch is gone from his mark. 
Marc can’t help the sound he makes, pitiful, when Valentino disappears and the familiar bruised ache is back. He’s carried it in his soulmark for so long he’s forgotten how it feels, how it should feel—
Valentino sighs. His footsteps, halfway around the room, halfway through collecting shoes and his shirt, pause. 
Marc does his best to smooth out his expression, to turn his face into the pillow like he’s still sleeping. If he opens his eyes, this will crack, splinter, collapse at his feet. 
Another exhale, and impossibly, the steps move closer again. Valentino brushes his hand over Marc’s forehead—pinched, despite himself, like it so often is—then rubs a thumb over his soulmark.
And fuck it—Marc can’t help that he sighs, that he relaxes, that it feels so good to have his soulmate touch him again. 
When Valentino says, “Marc,” on a breath, he sounds like he did at the start of them, in the hotel room in Monterey: reverent, careful, infinitely pained. The same way he used to say I love you. 
The hand disappears. The door opens, closes.
Marc opens his eyes. 
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hualianschild · 8 months ago
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the three thousand lantern scene 😭😭
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fleetn-crab85 · 4 months ago
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MST3K Textposts but specifically just Kinga Forrester because I think she's fantastic and deserves the world (literally)
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kujakumai · 10 months ago
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There is a near-universal fandom throughline of depicting Marik as gnc, sometimes rising to the level of effeminate stereotype, and obviously there is a reason for this--his character design very much reads to us as gnc. But I think it's very worth thinking about that Marik grew up in a society where he is the norm! Jewelry and eye makeup appear to be universal if not mandatory for tombkeeper men. Those are literally his father's earrings. By the time we meet him, Marik doesn't appear to be rejecting the accepted standards of power and masculinity among tombkeepers (from what little we see, domination over others and control of a strict and ritualized hierarchy), and is in fact meeting them quite handily, in ways that are sort of terrible for everyone.
And obviously I really love genderweird Marik who loves his pastels, but there is a lot worth exploring in Marik and Rishid climbing out of the caves to find a society that reads femininity into what they regard as neutral, and how weird that is, and whose father would probably be way more disappointed with them for removing their earrings than for putting them on.
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reestallized · 5 months ago
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This shitpost took so long to make and now it no longer looks like one
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